FanFic: The Recollection of Crankshaft | Current Chapter: 14

[HUnewearl_Meira]

Well, the wait has taken a bit, but here it is, folks. The sequel to the Recollection of Meira. I can honestly say that the delay is directly related to the release of PSO Episodes I & II. You'll find that the style of writing is subtly different, but as it should be. This time, we take a look at Pioneer 2's local life from the perspective of a FOnewmn. So, without further adue, I am happy to present, The Recollection of Crankshaft: Chapter 1.



Chapter 1

I suppose that to keep some measure of formality in this document, I should start by introducing myself. My name is Professor Crankshaft R. Differential. I have a Ph.D. in chewing gum, and I'm a professor of Mechanical Physics at the University of Pioneer 2, otherwise known as UP2. We're a modest school, and we don't accept anyone outside of our city. Mostly because our city is the only unit of civilization on the ship. We're also the only accredited college on the ship. Our Science Department is booming, and our Athletics program is moving along quite well, because, being the only college on the ship, all of our teams win by default. Both of them. Of course, some day, someone's going to figure out that we can pit our Men's Lobby Ball team against our Women's Lobby Ball team, and then our Athletic department is going to be in trouble.
I am not a hunter, nor do I play one on the glowing box. I am, however, a really tall Newman. I stand at a gangly six feet and two inches, and my spiky blue hair sometimes catches the top of a door, especially when I'm wearing my platform shoes, which add another good four inches to my overall height, making me just two inches shorter than the standard door size. Most Newmans wear platform shoes because they're short and they want to look taller. I wear them because I'm tall and I like to scare the sweet cream out of my freshmen students. It's funny how a bold High School Senior can become a timid College Freshman in a mere couple of months.
I'm writing this story, because I feel that in my goofy platforms, I have literally stumbled over something that others should know, and probably don't. This is knowledge that's mostly reserved for high-level government officials like Principal Tyrell and the Council, but it's mostly information that's been retrieved by Hunters. I'd sum it all up right here, but then that would make the story itself rather anticlimactic, and this entire book would be rather unwarranted. I can see it now. The book reviewers are all saying, "This book by Professor Differential is great! You only need read the first three or four paragraphs, and you're as good as finished!"
Well, I'm just gonna have to hold you in suspense for a while, and make you earn it. In the mean time, I'd better pick an arbitrary date to start this from. It all started one day when I was talking a stroll down the street, but I was strolling down the street for a very precise reason, so I suppose I need to explain that part first.
Being a young, taller professor at the most prestigious college a resident of Pioneer 2 can hope to go to, and in fact, a professor at the only college that a resident of Pioneer 2 can go to, I often receive letters. Big ones, small ones, ones with good grammar, ones with bad grammar, and ones with grammar like mine, which often defies explanation, even though it may very well need it.
So anyway, yeah, I get letters. Some are on official business, some are from my local worshipers, and some are from raving college women that want a piece of Crankshaft. Well, maybe not as many as I would like, but it's happened once or twice. Much to my dismay however, I've yet to receive one from one that appeals to me. I'm not going to say that I've ever gotten a letter from a beached whale, though I might consider suggesting that I've gotten one from a beached octopus. That was one MEAN octopus, too.
So, yes, letters. Must attempt to stay on topic. It's funny how receiving things here and there can complicate your life. One day, an undisclosed number of months ago, I received a letter from a former student. It was full of questions about machinery and photons, and so forth. So, I'm reading this letter, and preparing in my cortex, ideas for a reply, but then someone walked through my office to get to the bathroom and totally ruined my train of thought, which, strangely enough, caused me to drift off in thought about sandwiches, and the amount of energy it takes to gnaw on one, depending on the staleness of the bread. Or maybe I was thinking about where I was in the letter. Could be either, I suppose. On the other hand, at some point I figured out that with just the right balance of staleness and wholesome goodness, you can eat a sandwich and burn more calories than you're consuming.
So anyway, I got off on some tangent, so I decided to put the letter down, and go have a stale sandwich. Luckily, I didn't have to go far, because I just happened to have one already prepared for me by some admiring person, who I'm quite certain must've been myself. Ah yes, that's right, I had prepared the sandwich for lunch, and forgot to eat it. So this, being around mid-morning three days later, on a Monday morning in fact, I decided that it was time to make good on the eats.
It was a good sandwich, but the bread was stale. Given this, my reaction was to go to my mini-fridge and extract some preserved milk. The expiration date was about a week after Pioneer 2 left Coral, but I took a hint from our mode of transit, and tweaked the fridge with a strange combination of home-built particle accelerators and exotic refrigerants, all stuck together with chewing gum. And duct tape. In any case, in addition to keeping things cold, the refrigerator also keeps things in a temporal pocket, so every second of time in there is something like ten years to my time. Milk was my test subject for this.
Of course, my first thought on testing it, was to stick my head in, but then I thought about what would happen if I were to stick my head in and activate it, and I realized that I probably wouldn't like that very much. So instead, I rigged the light switch to my little customization unit, so that it shuts on and off, depending on whether the door is open. My only problem is that I then had to choose whether the light was to stay on or off. When it occurred to me that, the difference between it being on or off was immeasurable because of how slow the power drain would be. It's interesting to think though, that the life expectancy of the bulb in my refrigerator is about ten years, but then, ten years from the day that I installed my customization, it will only have been about three seconds. Well, plus the time that I had it open. Then again, the mini-fridge was twelve years old, already when I customized it. So by my calculations, the bulb could've blown up all over my milk any nanosecond now.
So anyway, I got some milk, and I poured it into what I'm supposing was a clean glass. Now that I had my milk, I took a drink, then dipped my stale sandwich in it. The drink was obligatory of course, because well, I had to make sure that it wasn't soured. I at least knew that it was still liquid, because I was able to pour it out of the carton. It had been in my fridge for ten years, after all. So I dipped the stale sandwich into the milk, and decided that a thought that was in the back of my mind through all of this was indeed right. That thought being that a bologna and cheese sandwich probably wouldn't be very pleasant when dipped in milk. It was malleable now at least, so I figured, the heck with it. It would do.
It eventually hit me that I'd be better off to go and get buy something to eat, rather than crunching on this milky sandwich. This determination came to me when it dawned on me that a person with my high metabolism doesn't need to worry about eating stale sandwiches to burn more calories when they eat, because in theory, I could power a nuclear mini-fridge for a month with just a single meal.
So my associate comes out of the bathroom as I'm making a funny face while trying to consume this rock, and she says, "Crankshaft, why don't you go out and buy a fresh sandwich?" My associate, Laya, is a well-dressed blond woman, by the way, always with her fancy dresses and big hats. She is a professor of Technical Physics, of course.
At this point, I dropped my sandwich and bizarrely yelled, "No, I will not go on a date with you!" Which, I sometimes do when she speaks to me, simply because it disturbs her so much.
"I told you to buy yourself some edible FOOD, Crankshaft! Go!" She pointed at me accusingly, and made a mean face. Though as hard as she tries, she really does have difficulty looking threatening. Not like me, and the way that I tower over short people like a really tall person over a vertically impaired midget. As opposed to a vertically gifted midget. You know, the kind that plays professional sports, laughs at short midgets, and smacks his forehead on countertops when he gets in a rush and walks without looking.
So I decided that I needed some food, which therefore lead me to the cafeteria, where you can get stale food that convincingly portrays itself as fresh food, but your stomach just might tell the difference. Actually, I'm rather certain that all the food is indeed fresh, at least once a week. The rest of the week can be debated on. I have to say though, nowhere else have I ever seen preservatives injected into an otherwise untainted apple.
I stared at the selection for a while. It was the first day after a weekend, so the food, as far as I can guess, was fresh, at least. The hot stuff was still hot for reasons other than the microwave lights, at least. Still, for some reason, deep fried butter sticks and the many variants offered in the cafeteria weren't seeming very appetizing to me at the time. Maybe I was a little woozy after eating so much of that stale bologna sandwich dipped in milk, or maybe the food is just genuinely bad there. But then I remembered that it was only mid-morning for my personal sleep schedule, so I therefore didn't need to eat anything to begin with.
So I started to wander back to my office, when a student stopped me in the hall to ask about the test I had given on Friday. Typical questions about whether or not I'd graded it yet, and my typical answers that consist of things like, "Yes. You got an F." or my personal favorite, "Uh... My dog ate it!"
This made me think of when my next class was, which I recalled wasn't until the mid-afternoon. So I thought I would take a walk. I hate it when I get an idea to go somewhere, though, because then I'm faced with the task of deciding where to go, even though I have no urgent need to go anywhere. Besides, I still hadn't gotten anything to eat, even though I didn't need anything.
Forgoing the decision to figure out where I was going to go, I decided to just leave, and I took a stroll down the street. The streets are always interesting. They're full of an odd mixture of intelligent people, and people who have peculiar accents that make them sound like they flunked their language classes beyond any measurable level. These people tend to be the most dangerous though, because in light of their failings, they often turn to crime to make a living. I think. Maybe I'm wrong, and it's all just a ruse by the intelligent people, who are all secretly out to get us.
I strolled down the street and did some window-shopping. Staring at windows for an extended period of time, though, tends to get boring. I never understood the premise. Glass isn't that interesting. Sometimes the stuff behind it is, though. So I looked at that instead. Why is it that clothing shops out number even food shops? I can't walk down the street without seeing half a dozen clothing shops for every half of a different shop. Shops like Gilbert's Outpost, Hilda Blue and The Space dot the urban plane like clothing shops in a mini-mall. It's absurd. The thing that bothers me most is that the variety isn't even that expansive. Admittedly, though, I see what some of my female students wear, and I suppose I shouldn't complain. Why, if it weren't for stores like these, the eye candy jar would run dry before too long. Either that or we'd all wander around nekid, but I think I can appreciate clothing stores for being present not to allow that in some cases.
I eventually saw a huge, tank-like android wander by with a young, pointy-eared woman. They were talking and joking as they wandered along, and seemed an auspicious couple. Pretty short she was, but well-endowed indeed. They stopped for something to eat at a cafe across the street from an electronics store, which made me remember that I hadn't gotten anything to eat for this new meal that I had invented for myself.
Having my fill of looking at stuff that I do not own and shall not buy, I decided to walk further down the street, and maybe I'd be lucky enough to find that cafe that the android and the young woman had wandered to. I had its entrance in plain site, after all. As I approached the shop, I noticed something moving through the crowd quite swiftly.
I stood and blinked for a moment, then saw what it was. It was another tall Newman guy, much like myself, but he was running, desperately trying to get away from something else that was running through the crowd like a big oppressive group of people or something.
So this guy, keenly dressed in green and meticulously maintaining balance on snazzy platform shoes to accelerate his height to new levels of intoxication, pushed his way through the flowing crowds of the streets, careful not to knock anyone down, but certainly bumping into things. He seemed pretty well quicker than the big group of strangely oppressive individuals that wanted to probably beat him goofless, but watching someone be chased by a HUmar and a couple of RAcasts is like watching someone be tracked by a couple of rangers and a hunter. Sooner or later, the rangers are just gonna give up and shoot, and the hunter's gonna catch up and lay down the smack. I suppose that goes without saying, though.
So I'm watching this guy rampage through the crowd, desperately fleeing the group of oppressive individuals who seemed like they wanted to do something rather unpleasant to the guy that was running. I would imagine that each one very well may have had many curse words of great variety and varying vulgarity running through their heads at sporadic intervals. I think, at least. I can't imagine that someone would remain cool and calm, whether they were the hunter or the hunted. Or the ranger or the ranged. Whichever is more correctly applied to the described situation.
For some reason, through all of this, I was just standing there with a peculiar expression on my face, which I would describe had I actually seen it. Finally, after what seemed like paragraphs of time and information, this other tall Newman in snazzy Newman-like style clothing, likely purchased at one of the innumerable clothing shops in the city, came running toward me, and by chance, clunked into me. Perhaps this was deliberate, perhaps it wasn't, but I'm rather inclined to think it was, as he then looked me in the eyes, and thrust a couple of articles into my hands and said, "Take these, I'll find you to get them back at another time!" Or something to that effect. At this point, he madly ran in the direction he was headed in, and I calmly sidestepped the unwitting group of strangely oppressive individuals who were chasing the other guy.
So now, I had these objects. One was a large token-like object, designed to be placed in a proper receptacle, which would be worn, and it would light up slightly. I later figured this out to be a Section ID. I am as of yet, rather unclear of the exact identity of this Section ID, though all things considered, for a layperson non-hunters' guild member such as myself, such things are of little concern. Also in my hands, was a key and some manner of compact disc, which I was unclear of the purpose of, but figured that it probably contained some sort of vital information that I would eventually find had no purpose but to be of no purpose to me. Mind you, this was not a technique disk, which is considerably different in design. This was, rather, a data disc of some variety.
So that is how everything began. That is what started my whole involvement in this loopy ordeal, which I shall attempt to describe in the coming chapters of this writing.



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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HUnewearl_Meira on 2003-10-22 12:31 ]</font>

[Toyzferall]

LOL! That was so awesome! I VERY rarely laugh out loud at text... It's just not that funny. But this was great! I've read something else by you, I believe... And it was good, too. Really good stuff! I wanna learn that, dress up like a FOnewm, and give it as a speech to my drama class! Of course, you wrote it, though... Anyways... Good! I'd love it if you'd chec kout my fanfic, and at least write a chapter on it. It's a group thing. So far, noone has even approached me on the topic of doing it. But enough ranting. For the last time, this was good! Can't wait for the rest...

[HUcastAndroid888]

Must...have...more.
Is this going to have any references to the Recollection of Meira, or will they be two completely different stories?

[AzureBlaze]

I like the story so far!
It's a nice change of pace, for being both humorous and written in first-person. The professor is eccentric and hilarious in his wandering description of what's going on. I can't wait to see what happens next, keep this up,

[Kupi]

Once again, your verbal artwork never ceases to amaze me, Meira. You've got a humorous quality that I love about written stories! ^_^

BTW, are you on the Gamecube version? We need to run into each other sometime if so!

[HUnewearl_Meira]

Heh... Crankshaft is indeed a wordy individual, isn't he? My attempts at defining his personality through context have already succeeded in annoying my fiance who nonetheless insists on a desire to hear the story out. I apologize to those who loved Meira and hate Crankshaft, but Crankshaft does move along a bit more quickly in Chapter 2, but not without the obligatory anecdotes that define the way he thinks. Also, to answer HUcastAndroid888's question (for others who are wondering, as I answered the question already via private message), if you're attentive enough and you remember The Recollection of Meira vividly enough, then you'll notice that Meira and Zeirom have already made a cameo.

And just so that everyone who is interested is aware, I do indeed have the GameCube version of PSO, but alas, I have no modem or BBA. I am, however, awaiting a BBA ordered directly from Nintendo, so in theory, as soon as Nintendo restocks, I shall be running around online. If Nintendo's website is to be assumed as honest and otherwise correct, then I should be online by New Year's. Hopefully. Maybe. Urg...

All right, so anyway, here comes Chapter 2. Brace yourself for more of the absurdity that is Crankshaft.


Chapter 2

Laya is a lovely young woman. Being such, she also has lovely hands, which are adorned with lovely knuckles. These knuckles, I have, from time to time, had momentary opportunities to study, as they bent, being the joints they are, to ball her lovely hand into a fist, which would then be thrust roughly toward my nose at an accelerating pace, as if she wanted me to get a really good look. These study sessions generally don't last very long, however, as they are generally terminated after those lovely knuckles have strayed too close to the body of my nose, and have caused nasal ruptures to appear in a logically random arrangement.
Don't get me wrong, I have no particular feelings for Laya, though I find that as a colleague, she is rather pleasant to be around. That and she's very intelligent. Even though, she still seems to take my compliments the wrong way. Many studies of her knuckles have begun with phrases being emit from my vocal cords, such as, "You have a very large hiney." And, "You smell very fragrant, today."
Nonetheless, it is because of these random studies that I generally like to carry tissues on me. Not that carrying a package of tissues has anything to do with anything; I just thought I'd throw that out there, because I would therefore have an opportunity to express the behavior Laya sometimes exhibits around me.

When I returned to my office, I was confronted by a glass of milk and a stale bologna sandwich, which wished to rival the hamburger and cola I had purchased at the cafe down the street. I placed my new food next to my old food, and sat down to watch the stare match occur between the two. My arms folded on my desk, my chin on my arms, I watched. The combat would be between a larger hamburger filled with ground meaty goodness and a variety of condiments, with its sidekick being a tall frosty glass of cola, and a hardened bologna sandwich with the stank of ages on its side, with its war companion, a glass of 7 year old milk.
It was a fierce competition, but fortunately for me, this battle was a beauty contest, and not a trial of sentiment. The milk was promptly dumped down the sink, and the sandwich disposed of in a wastebasket, which would hopefully be emptied before the mayonnaise on the sandwich developed its own self-awareness, and choose to eat me.
As I sat in my chair at my desk, leaning back, and displaying my really tall shoes to all the world that would happen to see into my office, I looked around. My desk is in the middle of the room, and it's more or less, a medium sized desk. Nothing fancy like they have in government offices. There's no sleek titanium or laconium edges, and my desktop does not have a computer console built into it. It's more old-fashioned, made out of wood, and naturally, there are papers scattered all about.
Most of the papers are tests or homework that have been graded, or are in the process of being graded. I tend to eat at my desk, which I would imagine, is why my students sometimes complain of having grease spots or ketchup stains on their returned homework. Since they started complaining about the ketchup stains, I try to compensate for the inconvenience, by smudging them into a smiley face before it dries.
There are three doors into my office. One enters from the hall, one enters from Laya's office, and the other enters from the restroom. If your point of entry is from the restroom, then my first question when I see you may very likely be, "How long were you in there?" Most considering that if you enter from the restroom and I never saw you enter, then I really have no idea how long you've been in there, and if I've been around for a while, then I may expect the answer to be truly absurd.
I have many shelves in my dusty office, all of which are cluttered with more papers, assorted junk, old mechanical experiments, and a variety of tools. The shelves are not an aesthetic type. They are purely for function. The frame is bare metal, and the shelves themselves are bare wood. The whole thing is adjustable. And they work. Though, I had to move one so that now the door out to the hallway doesn't open all the way, because Laya was complaining to me that she couldn't get to the restroom with the shelf right in front of the door to her office. That conversation, of course, broke out in an incident of me yelling, for everyone to hear, "No, I will not go on a date with you!" The conversation ended, of course, with a study of Laya's lovely knuckles. Which figures, I suppose. We were in the middle of the cafeteria at the time, during a lunch break, no less.

After the problem of having food to eat, that has not yet been eaten was finally solved, I developed a profound desire to examine what I had gotten stuffed into my hands. First came the section ID. The symbol itself was a bright shade of blue, while the background was a very dark black. The whole thing was made from some manner of polymer, so it had a very high-gloss finish to it, making it shiny and smooth and all high-glossy. The symbol was made of a polymer as well, and was semi transparent, while the black part it was embedded in was most definitely a finished and dyed metal of some variety. There were also four gold prongs lined up on the back, offset to one side from the center. They were spring loaded of course, so they could be pushed in, and they'd come back out. This is where this device plugs into an ID slot and can therefore be powered to light up the symbol, and also, to store data concerning gate passes and such. There was a name engraved on the side. "Fender Clutch", it said. I shrugged, having finished my analysis of that, and moved on to the disk.
The disk was small. Perhaps three and a half centimeters in diameter. The data area wasn't very large either, but it used a high-density storage format, and it was also re-writable. The evident storage size was considerably larger than what is publicly available, which leads me to believe that it probably came from a research facility of some sort, which I do suspect, that the crew of Pioneer 1 indeed did set up several research facilities on the surface. Well, one at least. Possibly two, I suppose.
It was while I was studying this, and just getting around to examining the label, that I noticed Laya looking over my shoulder. "What are these things?" she asked.
"They're homework papers. I hand them to students, they fill them out, then return them to me an--" I was interrupted from my glorious explanation, when Laya got annoyed at me.
She yelled in my pointy ear, "I mean the things on your desk, you blue-haired freak!"
"The homework papers?"
"No!"
"The... Papers with homework on them?"
She shook her head, as she crossed her arms and brought up her hand to rest her forehead on her fingers. A loud aggravated sigh came from her mouth.
"You're not talking about the computer terminal screen floating over the corner here, do you? Laya, I'm disappointed in you. You should know this stuff by now. How do you access your BEE messages and simple mail?"
Her eyes closed, and looking rather tense, she slowly iterated to me, "Why do I even bother asking you questions?"
"But isn't that another one?" I asked, then quickly turned to look thoughtful and continued, "But then, I suppose that you may not have been projecting the question at me; except that you referred to me as 'you' which indicates that you indeed were talking to me. So indeed, it would be another que--" I stopped only because she grabbed my face with one hand.
She then snatched the section ID with the other held it up and yelled to me, "What is this?? And the disc you were looking at, what is that??"
By now, I was more clear on what she was inferring about, and therefore able to answer her. Removing her hand from my face, I said, "Oh! If you wanted to know about THAT, you should've said, 'What's that section ID' and 'What is that super high-density data storage device mini-disc', instead of, 'What are those things on your desk', you see? Sometimes it helps to be more specific." My next thought was, "Oh, she's giving me another study of her knuckles." The rest was pretty foggy for the next couple of beats.

As I came to, I sat up, and checked my upper lip for blood. Evidently, she'd missed my nose, but successfully crammed her fist into my cheek bone. This explained rather effectively, why my cheek hurt so much. With my vision returning to me, I looked around, and saw that Laya was examining the section ID.
"So where did you get this? And who is this Fender guy?" she asked.
"Well, you see," I replied, "I took your advice and went out to get some food. After being mildly distracted by looking at windows, then briefly distracted by looking at the items behind them, most of which were clothes, as there are a lot of clothing stores in this city for some deranged reason..." I paused, trying to remember what I was talking about, but continued, "What was the point that I was making? Oh yeah! So, I got distracted on my way to get food, but then carried on by following the lead of a large android and a somewhat short, pointy-eared woman who was breastily gifted, and got to a cafe, but was distracted again when I got to the front of the cafe because another tall pointy eared guy, not unlike myself, came running through the crowd, chased by a couple or three mean looking guys, that made me think of an oddly oppressive group of aggravated individuals." Mind you, I left no affliction at the end of that sentence to indicate it was finished, not for the purpose of annoying Laya, but because I honestly couldn't think of where I was going with it, and I think it may well have been an incomplete sentence, but yet, with the properties of a run-on sentence.
"And?!?" Laya demanded of me.
"And uh... Hmm.... So... He smacked into me, then looked at me for a moment, shoved those in my hand, said something about finding me later, then took off."
"So he just gave you his section ID and a mini-disc?"
"Yeah. It gives me the notion, which I should probably ignore, that I should use it to go down to Ragol and have a look around. I hear they have cake down there."
In retrospect, I believe I was correct. I should've ignored that notion. Unfortunately, where ever I am involved, there is a new law of mechanical physics that must be applied to everything that I do. And that law can be summed up in one simple equation: Notion = Motion. This, of course, means that as soon as I finished the class I was teaching that afternoon, I headed for the lobbies on the Hunters' Deck.

The lobbies are a dramatic departure from the streets. Primarily because, wandering around in the lobbies, there are no shops, and I'm fairly confident that if I anger someone, they can, and probably won't hesitate to pound me into a gooey mush on the counter. As I entered the first lobby, I looked around. Fairly drab, but there was a nice view of Ragol out the window.
The usual variety of Hunters were wondering about. Some seemed intelligent, some didn't. One group of muscle-bound men seemed to be making a point of hitting on every pointy-eared woman that came through. The rest of their time seemed to be spent grunting at each other, and posing dramatically.
I was intimidated by these HUmars, as their dramatic posing skills far exceeded my own, so I quickly made my way to the counter, snapping the section ID into a proper receptacle, that I had purchased on the way.
Standing at the counter, I looked at the lady standing on the other side for a moment. With a blank stare on my face, she looked back at me, waiting for me to say something, naturally, with an absurd smile on her face, which looked mostly fake, but was obviously part of a job requirement. I really wasn't sure what to do here, but there was a console in front of me.
"Can I help you, Sir?" she finally asked.
My blank stare persisted, and after a moment, I finally figured out the most proper response I could make. I pointed at Ragol out the huge dome-ish window and said, "I want to go there."
"Sir... Do you have a party waiting, or are you planning to create a new team?" When I heard her ask this, I stared blankly again for a moment. "Sir?" she asked.
I pointed again. "There. Send me there."
"All right, Sir..." she said. "If you would just type a name on the console in front of you, I can send you to the Hunters' Guild, where you will be able to go to the surface."
"A name?"
"Yes. It can consist of anything."
"So, I can give it, say, some variety of curse words of great complexity?"
"We'd generally prefer that you keep it polite, Sir."
"So what if I just give it my own name?"
"That will be just fine."
"All right, now you're makin' sense!" With that, I promptly typed in, "Pencilneck", and let the woman behind the counter take care of the rest.

Before I knew it, I was standing in the Hunters' Guild. There was a large thing in the middle of the room, with some sort of hologram spinning around inside. On the other side of that, was another counter. There was also a large window with a view of the planet, and on the same wall as the teleporter back to the lobby, there was a door that lead out into the plaza. I didn't know that it lead out into the plaza at the time, of course. My natural inclination was to go to the counter.
Standing in front of the counter, I stared at the woman on the other side for a while. This time, I didn't see her face at first, though. This time, my attention was instead attuned to the strangely low-cut of her uniform. From my elevated position, I could've sworn that I was looking down upon a crevice large enough to hide some absurdly large vehicle in. I could've gone on staring at this, but she soon asked me, "Can I help you, Sir?" A perfectly generic phrase, indeed. This time, I didn't say anything. I just pointed out the window.
She looked out the window, then back at me and said, "Sir?"
Without changing the expression on my face, I continued to point and said, "I want to be there."
She looked again, then back at me and said, "Would you like to commission a quest, or would you like to take up a quest, Sir?"
I dropped my arm. "I don't need no stinking quest. I just want to go to the surface."
"Then all you need do, Sir, is go out that door, and take a right at the large door in the wall," she replied. I stared blankly at her again for a moment, then turned around, and started heading for the door that she mentioned.
The door opened as I approached it. Simple enough, seems like most doors on Pioneer 2 are automatic. As if it would kill someone to have to turn a knob every now and then. Just imagine all the cases of carpel tunnel syndrome that would be reported. Our medical centers would be flogged with people complaining of nasty door knob turning injuries. Then door knob companies would get sued for medical bills, and of course, pain and suffering. I suppose the principal would eventually have to step in, and tell someone to stop complaining. I think he should administer a big, disrespectful man-slap to one of those whiners. I hate those people.
Door knob injuries, indeed. In my day, we didn't HAVE door knobs! We had to open doors with our teeth! Well, we would've if I were really old. And it would explain why I wouldn't have any teeth at an old age. Except that I'm young now, and I have all my teeth, as far as I know. Can you imagine trying to open a solid titanium door with your teeth? The dental industry would be booming. People would be getting mechanical prosthetic teeth left and right, and it would probably be up to me, the university's Professor of Mechanical Physics, to design them, because I'm all smart like that, and I've got a reputation in mechanical matters, plus I've got a Ph.D. in chewing gum.
So I stepped through this automated automatic door, which automatically opened for me. Directly in front of me, a distance which I don't want to bother estimating, was the door into the local medical center. Very important for hunters, is a medical center. They use medical centers quite extensively, because they have very significant medical needs. They're even worse than Diabetics. Great Light forbid that there should be a diabetic hunter. Egad, that would be a bad thing. Poor diabetic hunter. I should buy him some insulin.
Off to my left, there was a bit of a corridor, or rather, maybe a bridge. It was a foot-street, if that's a valid descriptive word. There was a small shopping district over there, and a checkroom for hunters to put what they buy down there. At this point, I made the reasonable assumption that weapons could be purchased at this location, and being the logical, albeit easily distracted fellow that I am, I proceeded in that direction.
The shops themselves are a neon extravaganza, with big neon signs containing neon lights that cast neon light on everything around them. It's interesting what happens when a little bit of electricity is run through a sealed tube containing a gas consisting primarily of neon. The interesting thing here, is that the neon gas, even though it's a gas, and not solid matter, will conduct electricity just enough that it will travel through it. The result of this conductivity, is a light spectrum starting in the ultra-violet range, which is what causes the glowing effect. The exact color of the light is determined by the color of the glass the tube is constructed from. The neatest thing about a neon light tube though, is what happens when you put one lengthwise in a hydraulic press, and crush it. Glass flies all over the place. Looks even neater when there's an electrical current running through it.
So in any case, after a moment or two of standing around and grunting with the clerk behind the Weapons counter, I purchased a simple cane. More or less just a stick, but it had a fairly blunt photon surface on one end, which made me think it might be fun to go and smack something upside the head for no good reason. I fear this sort of thinking may be exactly why many hunters become hunters to begin with. Perhaps it's a hypnotic effect of the photons, that it just makes you want to go out and plague something with severe photon burns.
In an excited manner, using the most exaggerated movements I could scheme up, I dashed out the door, and narrowly maintained balance on my over-emphasized PLATFORM SHOES, only to leap halfway across the foot-street, and pose dramatically as I landed, facing the big door to the room with the teleporter to Ragol in it. I hummed some random tune as I pointed my shiny new cane toward the door, attempting to formulate something that would sound like the theme of some comic book super-hero, though the exact details of my success are sketchy at best. I think I more or less just ended up humming the theme from my personal favorite prime-time show, The Guild.
The Guild is an interesting show. It's a Hunter Drama about a group of Hunters' Guild members who go and solve mysteries down on Ragol. It stars Kelley Murphy as the HUmar known as Infurno. Great show. One time our hero, Infurno, cornered, with no way other way out, missing one mechgun, took a rolling dive and shot down the Barbarous Wolf that had him cornered. It was almost poetic. Most consider that episode to be a classic. Well, that and the episode when he had to confront his evil twin half-brother. That was quite dramatic, as well. Shoot, if I'd been there, I woulda gave him a mean punch, right in the nose, myself. There is not a curse word with the proper degree and variety of vulgarity to properly describe that individual.
Anyway, I was standing there posed dramatically, with the few civilians that were wandering around staring at me like I was some sort of deranged freak. At which point I broke my pose and yelled at everyone, "What?? Haven't you ever seen a dramatic pose before???" It was like they were sheltered or something. Gosh.
At this point, I remembered what I was here for, and I approached the large door at a jogging pace. As I got to the door, it started to open. I figured this was good. I believe that it had a motion detector, as well as an RF signal to read gate pass information from section ID storage devices, as well as a wearable computer terminal signal. I figure on the terminal signal, because a menu popped up on the terminal device I had hanging from a belt strap around my waist.
Given that, as I stepped into the teleporter pad, I observed the menu on my terminal. There was a list of four sites available to me. Forest, Caves, Mines, and Ruins. Knowing what I know now, evidently my good friend, who's not actually my friend, but is in a figure of speech, Fender Clutch, had really been around. Nonetheless, I chose the forest because it just seemed like a good idea at the time. I wanted to see what the Forest was really like. Plus, I figured it would be a pleasant place to start exploring. It's nice to see the sun every now and then.




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HUnewearl_Meira on 2002-12-11 23:52 ]</font>

[Hikosaka]

I really like how it's going so far. Well written and humorous as well. I'm looking forward to the next installment.

[Kupi]

I honestly don't think I've read a non-professional work that has been this funny. O_o I actually laughed aloud at this (in a good way), which kinda disturbed the guys in my computer class... >_>()

Keep up the good work!

[HUnewearl_Meira]

Sorry it took so long to get this next chapter up, folks. My computer's been down lately (just getting back up... and with a massive new hard drive at that), so I haven't really had readily available internet access, but even more of a stunt to the growth of this fic, I keep forgetting to take my disk to work with me to bring the file back home (I generally work on it during lunch). Oops. Oh yeah, and my BBA came in, so I'm online with the GameCube now, too. I'll be around, so I hope to meet many of you online! In any case, good news, I've got a good chunk of chapter 4 written already, so hopefully I'll have that up within the next week or so. Hope you all enjoy!



Chapter 3

Teleporters are interesting devices. When teleporting, you feel a slight tug for a moment, and then you find yourself at your destination. The technology behind the device is based on the concept of taking a point in space in one location, and dragging it to a point in space in another location. The effect is very much the same as the Ryuker technique, but using computers and the necessary mechanical components, the results can be much more exact, and as a result, pin-point locations can be teleported to, instead of just a generalized, familiar location, like, say, a deck on Pioneer 2.
The exact function of the teleporters is even more interesting, however. At some point in the history of our culture, a study of the technique of Ryuker was done, and it was found that is is indeed very similar to the archaic series of Gra techniques. The Gra series, however, has not yet been written to technique disks, as it is one of the most difficult series of techniques to learn, and even more difficult to describe, as it deals with the direct manipulation of gravity. A Force that manages to master the Gra series would not be far from mastering other neat techniques such as Telekinesis, which it is said, some varieties of Force did at one time have mastry of, not to mention the ability of Telepathy. Some old legends even speak of an order of Forces, the leader of which, at the end of his life span, would seal all of his memories in an artifact, so that the next generation of leadership could adopt them. This tradition may still exist, but I really can't say.
Oh yeah, I was explaining the Teleporters. All right, well, see, Ryuker is accomplished by more or less, causing a gravity spike between where you are, and where you want to go. It's quite localized, and there are actually a great variety of ways to do it. The Ryuker technique, relies mostly on the user's force of will, but telepipes use a broad spectrum of sound waves to accomplish the job. More telepipes now contain digital components that keep the gravity spike pointed at the location where it's going to go, however, a Telepipe can never lay a gravity spike where one end is in a vacuum. The actual teleporters, however, use the most efficient method.
The method that the teleporters use is powerful enough to send a party from one location at Point A, to another location at Point B as far as ninety thousand lightyears away. There are two types of teleporters on the Pioneer 2. Personal teleporters, and the big teleporter. The difference between them, is the power source, but they still operate on the same principle. The method is to heat a number of spinning ceramic disks within a magnetic field, to generate a large amount of anti-gravity. This anti-gravity is then reflected into a spike to the destination, by a very sharp magnetic field. This happens all in an instant, as all that is needed is the gravity spike, so the occupants of the teleporter don't even feel it. Once the spike is made, the location in space is pulled to the teleporter, and the occupant of the teleporter is tugged to the other location in space. Once the teleporter has been cleared, the magnetic mirror is dropped, and the gravity spike is therefore destroyed.

So, tangent asside, back to business and down the straight and narrow, I got down on the surface of Ragol using this teleporter. The first thing to greet me was a butterfly floating about. After a moment of flinching at it, I realized that it was harmless, so I marched onward.
Proceeding from the small room that I was in, onward through a laser gate, I came to a larger room, where three chubby yellow fowls fell from the sky, stood, and approached me. There were, in fact, quite cuddly-looking creatures, and they did in fact, seem to be qutie friendly, as they were approaching me in a fashion that did very much reminded me of marshmellow peeps.
As they surrounded me, I had visions in my head of myself as the magical Rappy Master, with beams of holy light all around me, and as I knealed down to pat the head of the one in front of me, my vision was suddenly shattered when the obscenely misguided thing jumped up and bit me. It BIT me! I suppose that this is the first important point I wanted to make about Ragol in this document. Ragol has these huge chubby birds that will BITE you! They BITE! They will peck and nibble you to death, if you let them!
My first reaction to this, was, of course, shock. If I were to wear contact lenses, they surely would've been ejected from my eyes when they popped halfway out of their sockets that day. So I just stayed there for a moment, knealing, my eyes more open than I'd ever experienced them being open before (well, accept for maybe the time when I stuck my hand in my toaster and found something fuzzy in there, but that's a different story altogether), and finally, after a moment of this, I jumped and yelled something which was very likely some obscure obscenity that isn't necessarily existant in any known language other than perhaps the language of Holy-cow-oh-my-god-what-the-heck-was-that-I-don't-know-what-it-was-but-holy-cow-oh-my-god-that-actually-rather-hurts-like-some-obscene-thing-that-grabs-you-and-makes-you-feel-pain-for-a-while-because-it's-mean-and-it-friggin'-HURTS.
After that moment, I was playing golf, using my cane and some giant marshmellow peeps. Some jumping up and down, grunting and yelling ensued, but soon stopped as a group of very large dog-like creatures appeared. Savage wolves, indeed. To summarize what happened after they showed up, I ran around in circles while they chased me, until I eventually jumped a closed gate and found a teleporter to the next area of the forest. I sincerely hoped that the next area wouldn't be quite so hostile.
Much to my own dismay, I spent a good amount of time running around in circles again in this second area of the forest, which is indeed, a garden in front of the Central Dome. First, I ran in circles whilest trying to escape the wrath of giant bipedal gophers of DOOM. Then, I ran in circles whilest trying to escape the bite of giant basketball-sized vampire mosquitoes. The mosquitoes, however, I was able to subdue, after finding a group of devil-birds, and batting them at the mosquitos' nest. I also ran around in circles from more obscenely large dog-like things that wanted to eat me. Barbarious creatures, they are.
Soon enough, I found myself running from a massive fire-breathing ape of severe bruising, and I ran and ran and ran around in circles from this thing, screaming at the top of my lungs. Just as I thought I was going to be out of breath, though, something astounding happened. I ran into the back of the ape, and promptly fell over. As I looked up, the monster wobbled, and fell forward. Evidently, I had made it dizzy.
Wasting no time, I jumped up and posed dramatically for a moment, before taking my mighty cane, and jumping up and down on the monster, occasionally thunking it on the head. I laughed maniacally, and yelled taunts consisting of things along the lines of, "Ha-HA! And you thought I was just running away! Mwa-ha-ha-ha! This was my plan all along!! Joo will phear the wrath of Crankshaft The Almighty!!!"
I soon moved to just thunk it on the head from in front, and laughing maniacally, but this was slowed to a gradual stop, followed by a loud gulp, as the beast lifted itself from the ground, and looked at me. I wiped mud from its fur and said, "Isn't that a lovely coat you have there? I have one just like it, at home. Wonderful designer brand, I think. Isn't... it?" Thus, running in circles and screaming was re-commenced, until I was snatched from the ground and waved around in the air, as the thing howled.
For a moment, I thought I was doomed to have my head slammed and rubbed into the ground like a king-sized crayon in the hands of some derranged giant toddler. Luckily for me, however, a ranger-type person just happened by and blew a hole in the beast the size of a watermelon.

He was a goateed man. Blue head band. His blue garb reminded me of some military-type person. I looked at his very large handgun, and determined that he must have been a RAmar. He approached me, and helped me up out of the thing's hand. "Are you okay?" he asked.
I looked at him for a moment, then manually checked to make sure that everything was in the right place, and promptly nodded, "Yes. Everything seems to be in working order."
"Good," he said. "First time down here?"
"Nah, nah, I come down here once a week to get a work out. See, I had that blasted horned giant monkey right where I wanted him when you came in," I replied.
He looked at me strangly. "Then... You were trying to commit assisted suicide?"
This I had no answer to, so I just made a strange face.
"Anyway, I heard screams, so I came to help."
In a valiant attempt to salvage my pride, without missing a beat, I said, "Those were the screams of my female travelling companion."
The ranger looked around, then back at me and said, "Then... Where is she?"
Another quick reply was necessary to maintain my poor cover, "The thing ate her."
The ranger looked at me funny then replied, "The Hildebear ate her?"
"Yes. The Hildebear ate her."
"And that's why you were screaming when I came in?"
"Well, no, I was screaming the whole time because I was being chased around in circles by a rabid moose-ape that wanted to fold me into a mangled pretzel and wear me as a hat."
"Ugh... You certainly need help. Why were you running from it? Surely you at least know Foie," he said. He confused me.
"Foie?" I asked. Hey, I teach Mechanical Physics, not Technical Physics. Honestly, I've never even so much as set foot in Laya's classroom.
The ranger smacked himself on the headband. "All right, all right... You clearly need help. This is your first time down here, after all."
I jumped at the chance to jump at his assumption. "HA!" I said, "How do YOU know that this is my first time on the surface of Ragol?!? I DID tell you that I come down here often for a workout, did I not??"
Always the ranger, this RAmar had a quick comeback. "Well, my dear Watson, the first clue was the platform shoe prints in the moss on the sides of the rocks, where you escaped from the Boomas and wolves. More importantly, there was when I got up here and found you desperately screaming for your life, being swung around in the air by a Hildebear. Plus, a guy as loosely built and otherwise gangly as yourself obviously doesn't get much workout time. You're quick to come up with a reply to insist your rightness, no matter how wrong you may be, so I would guess that you're probably a college professor."
I wanted to reply to this, but alas, his ranger-logic was correct. After openning my mouth to speak, and pointing a finger in his face for a moment, I backed away, and instead offered my hand for a handshake and said, "My name is Professor Crankshaft R. Differential."
Given that, he took my hand and replied, "They call me VanGarrett." We shook hands, then I quickly turned around and took a few steps, only to find myself in a teleporter.
Looking down at my personal terminal, I said, "Oh, inside the Central Dome... I wouldn't mind taking a tour."
As I reached to hit the button, I heard VanGarrett dive in with me and yell, "Noooooo!!!!" Alas, to my misfortune, I didn't comprehend his intentions until I found myself looking at a terrible fire lizard. Though technically a wyvern, this thing was considered to be a dragon for its sheer size and verociousness.
"What the heck is that thing??" I yelled, terrified. I nearly soiled my pants. I was personally threatened by a Hildebear, and now THIS thing.
"Well," VanGarrett said, "Though it's technically a wyvern, this thing is considered to be a dragon for its sheer size and verociousness. No one's really determined how it got in here, but supposedly there's a whole colony in the Central Dome. Now RUN!!"
We split off, he went left and I went right. Or maybe I went right and he went left. It doesn't matter, he went one way and I went the other. With a series of jumps and screams, I managed to avoid being hit directly by its talent of breathing fire. I was frightened.
VanGarrett yelled at me, "Crankshaft!! Go smack its ankle once or twice with your cane! Prod it really well right at the joint!"
With a grunt, I complied, and dramatically run at it from the side, while he shot at it, providing a distraction. As per VanGarrett's instructions, I jammed the skinny end of my cane into its ankle, and realized that if I could lodge it in between the bones, I'd have a crude lever to really mess it up with. As such, I did. The dragon squeaked, and I pushed it up, until the dragon fell over, and VanGarrett started pounding away at its head with his gun.
I started to charge at its head to triumphantly stomp and jump up and down on it, but VanGarrett yelled at me. "No!" he said, "Don't get up there! You've done your part! Now just hang back and don't get killed!"
My next reply was, "What did you say?" At which point, the dragon jumped into the air, just as VanGarrett got in one last fatal blow, and the dragon consequently fell on top of me.

When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed. I felt okay, though more or less like I'd had a dragon fall on me, and I spent the next several hours being healed at a hospital. My thought at that moment was, "Hey! I'm in a hospital! Where're the hot nurses??" So naturally, I started looking around and drueling. I didn't notice any nurses right off, but I did notice Laya. "Oh!" I said, "Laya! Sorry, I was expecting to see a hot nurse. Am I drueling?"
Laya got up, approached me, and I was expecting to get to study her knuckles again. "You are lucky, Fender, that they found my BEE address on the back of a picture of myself in your pocket."
I stared at her blankly for a moment. I remember thinking that it was too bad that I hadn't gotten to see any nurses yet, but on the other hand, seeing Laya being so friendly was a reasonable consolation. I considered what it would like to see both a nurse as well as Laya. "I wonder," I said, "What you would look like in a nurse's uniform?"
My next interior monolog consisted of something to the effect of, "Those are the knuckles of a woman who is very gentle inside."
Fortunately, I just happened to be in a hospital, so all was well. When I woke up again, there was a nurse standing next to me, filling out some manner of paperwork stuck to a clipboard. She soon hung it up on a hook next to the bed, and looked at me. She told me, "Your friend seemed rather aggrevated when she left."
"Yeah. She always takes my compliments the wrong way. So am I ready to leave?"
"You sure are. Just so you know, the ranger that brought you in has already paid for your stay."
"Woohoo!"

[HUnewearl_Meira]

Great gobs of gravy, a new chapter!! Err, yeah. Sorry this took so long. There just aren't enough hours in the day anymore, so I robbed some time from some random unimportant task like, eh, sleep or something, so that I could finish this chapter. Don't tell anyone, but I also wrote the first sentence or two of the next chapter, while I had the idea rolling.
Heh, so, yeah, here's the next chapter of Crankshaft's absurdity. A bit more beating around the bush, and but some vague foreshadowing has been included. Maybe after this chapter has been read a bit, I'll post a poll concerning whether or not you'd want to be one of Professor Crankshaft's students. Because, well, indeed, we get to see what he's like in the class room in this chapter.


[EDIT] Goodness! I posted the message, and forgot to post the chapter! Bad I! No cookie!


Chapter 4

I returned to my office, and sat down behind my desk, at which point I started shuffling around papers to look busy and otherwise important. After a moment, Laya, the short lass that she is, entered the room. Now, I had something rather lewd written here, but after proof-reading this chapter for me, Laya hit me and told me to remove it.
So, anyway, moving on, Laya entered the room, and I observed how stunningly short she really is. Possibly about as short as an adult can possibly be, by my figuring. She does pack quite a punch, though. "Your vertical prowess pleases me greatly," I said.
She looked at me like I was some sort of a freakish, freak-thing, and said, "What?"
"You're short. It looks good on you."
Her look got more disturbed and she proceeded carefully toward the restroom.

As I sat, I pondered my trip to Ragol. Just who was that unmasked RAmar? He said his name was VanGarrett. As I pondered, I placed my personal terminal into a device sitting on my desk, and proceeded to download my new information onto my computer. After doing so, I realized that I had a message. Evidently, he'd also exchanged with me, something called, a 'guild card', which, I assume, is a selection of data used by Hunters' Guild members so they can get a hold of eachother at any time. A quick catch phrase was included in the guild card. "If I can't fix it, then I can shoot it," it said. I found this mildly humorous, though I suppose that this was his attempt to describe his specialties.
Then, I was about to read the message, when Laya came back out of the bathroom. I looked at her, she looked at me. So I wiggled my eyebrows at her, and she looked at me like I was crazy again.
"What is wrong with you?" she asked.
"Well," I said, "Now that you ask..."
She looked at me with this expression like she was thinking, "Oh my Light, he's going to say something that I probably don't want anything to do with."
So, I carried on, saying, "See, I've got this weird sharp pain in my--"
She cut me off saying, "--I do NOT want to know, Crankshaft!"
To this, my reply was, "Well, you did ask, didn't you?"
She shook her head and gave a frustrated look, then came over to my desk and sat down. "So what happened down on Ragol, anyway?" she asked.
"I ran some laps around stuff, and jumped a few fences. Then a dragon fell on me. You should've seen the horned ape I killed. It was pissed," I bluntly claimed.
"You killed it?"
"Well, yeah, sort of."
"Sort of? What do you mean by 'sort of'?"
"I mean that a ranger ran up and blew its head off, right before it would've used my spiky cranium to write its name on the ground."
"I almost wish it did..."
And then I had a thought that was bothering me. "I just had a thought that's bothering me," I said.
"I'm going to regret this, I'm sure, but what was your thought?" I knew she'd bite. She always does. She's got a soft-spot for me in there somewhere, I know it. Sooner or later, I shall find that soft spot and exploit it. That's right. All the macaroni and cheese I can eat.
So, I told her of my strange thought. I said that I thought, "I just thought," I said, "That we could've just spontaneously popped into existence five minutes ago with all of our memories set in place, and everything around us, just poof, right there the way it was five minutes ago." That is what I said.
She looked at me, and I think she was about to say something, but then I continued, only louder, so I don't know what she said, but I said, "And the thing that REALLY bothers me is!... There is absolutely no way that you or I could ever prove that what I just said isn't true!!!"
Then she stopped talking, and looked at me, as though she were in thought, I and I stared back at her blankly. If I could read her mind, I would think that she would probably have been thinking about a way to prove, well, something that would make certain, err, well, I think that she would've been thinking about how one would go about uh, hm. I think she would've been thinking about some sort of way to create evidence that you can indeed cause a HUcast to grow a full beard over night. Since I can't read her mind, however, at the time I was only able to assume that she was thinking about Kelley Murphy's scene on the previous night's episode of The Guild, where his character, Infurno, had to strip down to his boxers to cope with the heat of some cave type place he was in, where there was lots of lava and hot stuff. Myself, I had to eat a plate of hot peppers to get into the mood.
So anyway, Laya was about to say something else, but she stopped, and continued to appear to be thinking, as she walked out of my office, and into hers. Then I heard a noise that I couldn't identify at first. It was a sort of beep. Not an alarm, but some sort of an alert. It alerted me. It alerted me, and my first thought at this was that someone was trying to alert me, and they were succeeding greatly.
I observed a funny shape on my terminal, it appeared to be a box with a "V" in it. Further analysis revealed to me that this looked strikingly like an envelope. Given this revelation, I curled my lips to create an "Ooo"ing sound, because I like to make that sound when I realize something. I also like to make that sound when I want to confuse someone greatly.
The message was short and to the point. It came from VanGarrett. The just of the message was something to the effect of, "I would like to learn more about you. Meet me on the Skyly deck at @800 beats."
The mention of time, reminded me that it was currently @600 beats. This is a fairly early morning class for most of my students, and I sometimes forget to sleep between my @350 beat class, and my @600 beat class. Today, however, I was fresh out of the hospital, so I was well rested. The strange thing about living on a starship, is that there is no sun, so there is nothing to prompt you to say, "HEY! It's late at night! You should be in bed, you flaming insomniac!!"
Flaming. Now there is a multi-purpose adjective I've never quite understood. I've been told that it's used to describe you if you're queer. I've been told that I'm strange, and I've also been told that I'm weird. Weird and queer are synonyms, but from what I gather, you would describe me as being weird, but you wouldn't describe me as being queer. Though furthermore, I sometimes wonder what the difference would be if someone were described as being flaming weird, as opposed to flaming queer? I suppose I could continue on this, but Laya tells me that what I had intended to write here could get me into serious trouble, mostly concerning this 'political correctness' thing that I seem to be oblivious to. The whole thing sounds like a vicious evil plot by people with low self-esteem to bring the rest of us down. They're against The Man! Great Light help The Man! They're against the Man! Who's the man? I'm not certain, but it may be Principal Tyrell.

So anyway, it was time for my class. This particular class was in chapter 23 of the text book, which happens to be on the subject of Protonic Combustion Engines. Mind you, that's Protonic, not Photonic. There is no typo, the typo does not exist. I speak of positively charged matter components, not individual building blocks of energy mass gravitically pulled together to form a tangible effect. Pay attention though, the lecture I gave in this particular session applies to what happens later.
So, I said to my class, "What can any of you tell me about the concepts behind Combustion Engines?" A perfectly legitimate question for a highly generalized category.
The jester in the back raised his hand and immediately yelled, "They make things go!"
My response to this was a hearty, "Very good, Mr. Overmind. Tomorrow, I will quiz you on the mechanical principles behind poor grades." I grunted and nodded, then looked around, and continued, "Does anyone have an idea that can be regarded as resembling an intelligent response?"
A lovely young woman raised her hand and waited patiently. I stepped toward her, and pointed. "Yes, Kataclyn?"
"They make utilize energy for motion by combusting fuel?" By combusting fuel, she said! Indeed, I agreed with her, but I have a particular way I like to describe it.
I jumped up and did a little happy dance, that I sometimes see athletes perform variants of after they score a goal. "HOO-YEAH!" I shouted, then took a very serious overtone to calmly state, "That is correct, Kataclyn. Very good." I then proceeded to energetically (and indeed, I do so energetically because I've got this obscene level of metabolism) explain, "Now, now, you see, combustion engines, to borrow the copyrighted term from Andrew 'Overmind' Gonzalez up there, make things go BUUUUME!!! And that BUUUUME! causes energy to fling about in whatever direction it's allowed!"
I stopped for a moment, to walk to the photon board hanging from the wall, so that I could illustrate. I drew a diagram at first. I drew a little box, with the word "FUEL" in it, and from there, I drew a line to a box that said, "ENGINE", and then I drew a plus symbol (+, for those who aren't sure), and then I drew, in big colorful letters, "HOT THING", and then I drew and equal sign, followed by, with extra underlines, "BUUUUUME!" I then pointed dramatically at it, and explained, "This is, for all intensive purposes, what a combustion engine does. There are several kinds of combustion engines, however. The most basic of which, is the External Combustion Engine, otherwise known as a Rocket Engine, which you should've had explained to you in a class about the time you were knee high to my platform shoes." I gestured concerning this last comment.
Then I continued, "There is also the slightly more interesting Internal Combustion Engine, which works by using pressure and electrical charges to shove a metal cylinder back and forth down a hole cut to fit it, which in turn, makes a rod turn. Really really fast. But those are inefficient, as they tend to pollute air, which can be rather bad on a ship like ours, and even more bothersome, an internal combustion engine doesn't make things fly, except when propellers are put to use, and those are noisy and dangerous. Some people have lost pets due to these things." I went on.
"The subject of Chapter 23, however, is the Protonic Combustion Engine. Does anyone know how the heck that thing works?" Silence. "Good, no one's been reading ahead. So anyway, a Protonic Combustion Engine works on the idea that Protons contain energy that can be tapped through a complex series of magnetic, electronic, and stupidly obvious solutions. Now, can anyone explain to me, how Protonic energy differs from Nuclear energy? Yes, K-420?"
A stout android popped up and properly explained, and I might add, with an accent that makes me think he was built by stoners, "Nuclear energy results from forcefully breaking down the atoms, most easily resulting from the use of radioactive, and therefore unstable, materials, where as Protonic energy results from fusing electron-starved protons into clusters of new atoms, most ideally, O2 or NO2."
"Very good, K-420. Now can you also explain what makes this ideal for personal vehicles?"
"It produces non-toxic exhaust, and streets can be paved in any three-dimensional path using magnetic leads."
"My goodness, you paid attention last semester! Now, now now, tell me why it's not ideal for large vehicles such as space ships!!"
"The magnetic load would be sufficient to destroy the ship, instead of a trace amount, and having to pave its own path, and the Proton generation would generate more gravity than the matter can sustain."
I did my happy dance again, but then stopped suddenly, noticing something. "Hey!" I said, "Is that an antenna I see behind your shoulder?"
"Err, no, sir."
I approached K-420, and examined his shoulder. "Like poofy hair, it isn't! You're surfing the net!"
"Um..." the android gurgled, and it looked at me. "Does that mean that I'm losing points on my grade?"
I looked at him sternly, with fury like that of an angered professor looking at a cheating student, and I said to him in the harshest voice, "No." Then I walked back to the front of the class, looked at him and explained, "Heh, don't worry, I asked a question, and you gave me a correct answer. But if I catch you surfing the net while taking an exam, I'll flunk you like you've never been flunked before. Ever seen a grade so bad, that it had to resort to a dead alphabet to describe it? Oh yeah, baby."
I further explained that day, that Protonic Combustion Engines are slowly being replaced by Photon Drives, though the same systems of streets are still to be used, but perhaps without the need for paving. Then I assigned homework consisting of a number of questions within Chapter 23, a question ripped off from chapter 2, and one random question from chapter 35 of the text, mostly because I like to mix and match-- I sometimes assign a question from a previous chapter so they have to remember what the heck it was, and I sometimes assign a question from a later chapter just to confuse the heck out of my students, and figure out which are resourceful enough to figure it out, and which aren't.
Class being over, I went to meet a drinking buddy of mine, Dux, at a cozy tavern near the college. Dux never really gave me details about his occupation, though I do believe he's a member of the Hunters' Guild. Nonetheless, I enjoy listening to him talk when he's smashed. Which, this was a convenient time, because my morning class was over, and I didn't have another class until late that evening, so effectively, between @690 beats and @350, I am totally devoid of anything resembling class.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: HUnewearl_Meira on 2003-02-26 00:21 ]</font>