Today I actually fulfilled the daily nanowrimo quota! That’s right my little poison berries, I wrote 1568 words! Well alright, that’s a hundred words short but hey, more than ever!

In today’s passage you might notice a certain Professor Foglio, I feel like I should mention this is a nod to one of my favouritest steampunk webcomics. I’d tell you which, but that’s just silly, literary references are for careful readers who then appreciate them properly.

However, interesting tid bit, professor Von Tropp – noticed all over the place in what I’m writing and actually a somewhat important character to the loose storyline I’m aiming for – happens to be my pseudonym used in the … I’d say few, but it’s just one … thing I wrote for Steampunk Magazine.

Ze today’s writing:

The bats let out a little squeak when Moe gave them the water. Who’d have thought bats actually drunk water in the first place … certainly not Moe. Before Joe got him into this mess he thought a bat was that strange device used by sparks to smash creations gone bad.

Of course he’d heard something about a bat also being some sort of animal, but he was a city kid of high rank and mostly interested in everything mechanical. His parents aways joke that he learned the right-screw torque heuristic before he learned to walk. If he could have it his way he’d build a machine to do the walking for him anyway …

That’s an interesting story actually and I totally should relate it to you dear reader. There was once a time in young Moe’s life, I think he was around five, when he was so deep in thought about the movement of legs to facilitate walking that he nearly forgot to walk himself. This resulted in him accidentally taking a pee in the middle of the parlour.

But that’s not so interesting, let’s move on. Where were we? Ah yes …

Moe didn’t know much about animals, they were something you eat to keep the brain working. So it felt rather absurd to him to be taking care of this damned bats now. And to be on this trip! HA! Ludicrous!

Joe on the other hand, Joe loved animals. She had spent her youth frolicking around the ruins near the town she grew up in – I think it was Innsmouth – and observing all the different animals and insects.

To her animals were the greatest automata ever devised and whenever someone came to her with a brand new plan for some miraculous device that can do what no-one has done before, she just chuckled, shrugged and politely said “Yes dear, but what of ants, they do the exact same thing so much better” or cats or dogs or lizzards or anything really.

“Moe?”

“Yes dear?”

“Are you happy you’re here?”

“What, in the middle of nowhere, with a limping prancer, a bunch of stupid bats and a nearly empty boiler? I’m bloody delighted to be here Joe.”

“Oh nevermind”

“No … what is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Fine then, nothing it s. Let’s just climb back into the cockpit and hope the prancer lasts to the next town”

“Fifty miles …” she sighed.

The cockpit was one of Moe’s favourite modules for the grand master secret plan he’s been working on ever since entering graduate school. Right now it soared ten feet high and seemed as if floating on air. There was no canopy, just the breeze of freedom mushing up your hair and making the white aero-scarf flail in the air like magnificent poetry.

Moe and Joe plumped down on the velvet seat and started pushing buttons and pulling levers and checking gauges and shouting commands and whispering prayers and hoping the boiler had enough water and … and … and

With a loud whine of the steam turbine the first leg quivered and moved forth, swinging wide above their heads. The other front leg let out an ear-piercing screech that tore their hearts in two. It was like their beloved prancer was crying out in pain, but somehow mustering the strength to soldier on.

The cockpit started to rise and swing forward as the prancer was getting ready to pick up its behind and start walking. They were now twenty feet in the air and eating up the distance between them and the next town.

It was a bleak November morning and Joe was horribly late for her necropsy lesson with professor Foglio. She wasn’t very strict about times and usually seemed to rather forget she was even giving lessons to anyone, but Joe was raised with high standards of etiquette in mind. The fact she was even allowed to pursue an academic career at all was a high digression to her family’s plans.

She was late, but she didn’t run. Oh a lady never runs, she simply made quick steps and was getting quite winded when this stupid little ignorant fuck of a boy practically lounged at her and nearly knocked her down into the grimy snow.

And then the little bastard didn’t even apologise! He just stood there with wide eyes and snot dripping from his nose. But there was something … something about him that quenched her anger. Anyone else she would’ve ripped to shreds after such insolence, but with him, I don’t know, she just didn’t feel quite so upset as one would expect of her temperament.

After that her step wasn’t quite so quick, her face not quite so stern and her hair not quite so lifeless. I could almost wager it turned a bit blonder that day, brighter somehow, more sparklier! Her feet dragged in the snow and she couldn’t keep her mind off that dumb boy who just stood there with a cute little drop of snot on his nose and the cutest stutter in his words. Oh it was just such a delightful little picture!

When she finally arrived to Professor Foglio’s the shadows were already long and everyone was rushing out of their faculties like they’d just been released from prison. They ran to their dormitories, their society parties and their lovers. It pained her to see so many of her peers so utterly disinterested in science and yet pressing on in their academic pursuits simply to mooch off their parents a little longer and postpone the real world as much as they possibly could.

She took a deep breath, fully expecting a thorough thrashing about the propriety of being ten hours late, and knocked on the door.

Nothing.

She knocked again.

Nothing.

She knocked again.

The door slowly creaked open.

Sensing something to be wrong Joe carefully stepped into the dark room.

That’s funny, Foglio never has her lights off, not even when there’s nobody in the lab.

She stepped inside.

A floorboard creaked under her feet.

Silence.

Cold.

A butterfly flutter.

The sweet smell of roses.

A bat shifting his weight.

Floorboard.

Creak.

BOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

JOE NEARLY SHAT HERSELF!

And there she was. Professor Foglio in all her glory, laughing her arse off at Joe’s expense. She was a dabbler in psychology and had been setting up this experiment on the interaction of fear and worry for months now. Just waiting for the right victim to try it on – she believed her experiment subjects shouldn’t be aware they are partaking in an experiment lest it affect the results – and when around noon she noticed Joe still hasn’t shown up …

Well let’s just say Professor Foglio has been waiting in the dark for nigh on four hours now. She was a patient woman that one.

“You see Joe, when you’re dreadfully late, bad things can happen”

“By my soul miss, I didn’t expect to be this late”

“No, nobody does now do they? Why if they expected to be late they would just send a pneumograph to notify the other person and then they wouldn’t really be late would they?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Well my dear, you had your lesson. Now it’s time you go home, I have important work I’d been putting off to teach you about being late.”

“But I’m never late”

“Well, you were now, weren’t you? Go on dear, you can come back tomorrow and we’ll do the necropsy on our furry little friend over there then.”

“Won’t he … you know …”

“Oh no, he’ll be perfectly fine. You might have to strain your wrist a little since I put him on ice, but that doesn’t matter. In our line of work we can’t be too picky about the kind of specimens we get”

Joe chuckled.

“How much farther Moe?”

“Don’t know to be honest. This part of the desert is very poorly mapped and the locatorium is just bleeping non-sequiturs.”

“Or maybe it’s gone bad huh”

“Yes; because everything mechanical breaks down”

“Well doesn’t it?”

“Perhaps it does, but I feel much better taking these damned bats to Von Tropp in a prancer with a locatorium than riding on a horse with just a dumb map and compass.”

“Yeah … I guess. But all this machinery is making me nervous. What if that leg gives and we’re left stranded here with no food and water and shelter and everything else we need?”

“Oh stop that already, we don’t need your bad mojo. The leg is just fine and even if it breaks we’re still better off than on horse. At least we can use the rest of the prancer for shelter and there’s plenty water in the boiler”

“But didn’t you say …”

“Yes, the water is running low to run the machine, if we were drinking it there’s probably enough for a year.”

“So … how much farther?”

“For fuck’s sake woman! Look around you! There is NOTHING around us! The locatorium needs some way of reading its bearings. It can’t just magically pull them out of its shiny arse can it!”

If this were a sappy novel Moe would now appologise for snapping out at Joe out of frustration. But seeming as this is the real world they both just stayed quiet for a while, alone with their thoughts, pulling levers, gauging gauges, pushing buttons, stretching their eyes to see the first sign of settlement.

Tags: Psychology, Recreation, Steampunk