“I didn’t think this Sid was a full dwarf? I thought he had some extra DNA put in him to make him slightly taller?”
This riled Sid a bit, “Are you making aspersions about my heritage?” he started to square up to Bloin.
Gunby got between them, “Come on you two, we need to be friends while we’re in this situation.”
Both dwarves looked up at the half giant and relented.
“So how are you going to help us?” Arthur asked.
“I know where the code book actually is, I visited that section of the castle when I was on a school trip years ago.”
“I thought you came from the Fantasy dimension like us?”
“As I said it was a school trip, an Interdimensional school trip.”
“I reckon the Author’s just made this bit up because he saw his friend at Monk’s Cross today,” Sid said quite quietly to Plattington.
The colonel deferred to the obvious favour shown by the Author to the dwarf policeman. “Righto, lead the way then, but make sure we circumnavigate all impassable barriers and dangerous situations.”
“That’s going to make it a little boring for the readers isn’t it?” stomped Sid.
“Well,” thought Arthur a little more as he spoke to Bloin, “you could make sure we encounter funny things and not dangerous ones.”
“You mean replace action with humour? I don’t know about that, the rising and falling of action then humour then introspection keeps the readers gripped.”
“With the way the Author writes I should think that would keep the readers griped,” joked Sid, at my expense.
“Well we need to return to the courtyard then, this section leads to the Killer Kastle.”
“...?” said Plattington.
“Bless you,” replied Bloin.
“What a waste of time this section has been,” grumped Arthur.
“Well not really,” reasoned Sid, “we’ve had the bit with the guard snoring, and you crashing into the Christmas tree with the mini aeroplane.”
“I’m not convinced,” nonplussed Arthur as he followed Bloin and the others back out.
Once they had returned to the courtyard Bloin then led them to a side door. There was a sign on the wall next to the door that said ‘The easy route to the code book missing out violent encounters.’
When Sid saw it he mumbled, “The Author must have set this bit up.” He looked at Robo Sid, “You know, when we first started this adventure I thought it was really going to be sensible.”
“What are you talking to me for Mr ‘I still want the funniest punch line’,” replied the robot version of his clone self.
“Are you sore at that?”
“Wouldn’t you be? I am the AI version of you.”
“OK then, I’ll let you have a few then.”
They passed beneath the arch and started down some steps towards a door at the bottom.
When they got there Arthur tried the door, it was locked, “It’s locked,” he told the others, “Can anyone pick locks?”
“No,” replied Plattington, “but I have a book on how to do it, I was going to learn how to do it for this adventure but time caught up with me.”
“Give it here,” demanded Arthur as he held out his hand.
The corporal gave him the tome and Arthur tried flicking through it to get the gist.
“We need some picks.”
“Here you are,” sniffed Sid as he offered his palm to the colonel.
“What’s that?”
“I keep it up my nose.”
Arthur shook his head, “Picks for picking locks, not nose pickings!”
From his pocket Plattington retrieved a small leather bag, “Here.”
Arthur laid it on the floor and looked through it, “Did you actually try to pick any locks before we came?”
“The one to the medicine cupboard, but I failed,” replied Plattington.
“You weren’t trying to get to the alcohol were you? Like Hook in the film Zulu?”
“No, it was the closest lock I could find.”
“Oh, well you have a go first then while I carry on reading about it.”
Sid moseyed over, “I suppose now would be a good time for some lock picking puns.”
“Oh, go on then,” mumbled Arthur as he flicked through the book a second time.
“Aren’t you going to pick me up on it?”
“What?”
“Pick, pick a lock.”
“Oh, very good. Can you do all the puns, it’s just I’m trying to read.”
“I could pick someone else to do it. Robo Arthur for instance, or Ruhtra?”
“Uhh, go on then,” then Arthur pursed his lips to the side and held the book upside down.
Sid decided to go to Robo Arthur, but he was in deep punning mode with Robo Sid already, and he didn’t want to compete with that, so he turned to Ruhtra who was looking at his watch.
“Is that watch real or is it part of you?” asked Sid.
“It’s part of me, why?” as he said this the watch slurped back into him.
The dwarf looked a little bemused, “Arthur said I can pun with you.”
“About what?”
“Lock picking.”
“I have a little difficulty with puns, different culture and all that.”
“You just be the straight man then.”
“Can I be the straight man while glooping down the steps?”
“Why?”
“Then I’ll be a fluid straight man.” He wobbled around a bit to try to make it funnier.
“Just pretend to be Arthur.”
“With all his pomposity?”
Sid had to bite his tongue, for he knew that Ruhtra was twice as pompous as Arthur was. “Yes,” he hissed slightly.
“Well go on then, pun away.”
“Your face when I pull this face?” (He pulled a funny face.)
“A pic-ture?”
“I’m supposed to have the punch line!”
“Well I’ll have to ask you the questions then, where’s the script?”
“There isn’t one, only an old tablet box that the Author scribbled on.”
“Well show me that then.” When Sid had showed him he asked, “Actor who played ‘King’ Kong in Dr Strangelove?”
“Slim Pick-ens.”
“The thing he used on his guitar?”
“A pick?”
“Something that I had dropped on the floor I have…?”
“Picked up?”
“Something the REAL Sid used to bash people over the head with?”
Sid was getting angrier, “A pick axe handle. Now if you don’t give me a better lead in you’ll be in a pick, a PICK-LE!”
“I say old chap, I’m only doing what you asked. Different culture and all that.”
“Here, I’ll write one down for you. You ask it, I’ll punch line it.” Sid wrote something on my old tablet box.
Ruhtra read it to understand it before he began to give the delivery. “What do you call a man who chooses time pieces for customers at Tescos?”
“A clock picker?” Then Sid began to laugh really loud because he thought his own joke was so funny.
Ruhtra looked down at the piece of old card, “What do I do with this now he asked?”
[I took it back, they shouldn’t have had it anyway.]
So now we go back to Arthur and Plattington who were having no luck at trying to pick the lock on the old wooden door. As Ruhtra came up to them he asked, “Do you want me to slime in through the keyhole and have a look around?”
“I thought you said they might have anti-shapechanging technology at the beginning of this story?”
“Well they might do, but at least I can get you through this door.”
Arthur pursed his lips and shook his head slightly, “Go on then.”
So Ruhtra slimed under the door. They heard sounds from beyond then Ruhtra opened the door, “You wouldn’t have got in anyway,” he explained to them, “there was a bar on t
he other side, it wasn’t even locked with the key.”
Tutting Arthur looked forward into the dark then spoke to me, “We’re not going to leave the cliffhanger on going through another door opening are we?” asked Arthur as I left the cliffhanger on going through another door opening.
CHAPTER FIVE
“This is where I’ll leave you,” said Gloin, “I’m not equipped for a steampunk battle.”
“What do you know that I don’t know?” asked Arthur.
“The Author.”
“Well thanks for your help Gloin. Maybe I’ll see you back at the fantasy dimension sometime.”
The dwarf policeman waved as he started back up the steps.
As Ruhtra looked into the passageway beyond he noted, “There’s an electric barrier, so they were prepared for a shape changer.”
“They might have just been prepared for thieves,” commented Sid.
“Or that.” He sat down on a nearby chair.
“What are you doing?” exclaimed Arthur.
“I’m useless until you get rid of the electric shield, so I’ll wait here.”
“Lazy slob,” insulted Sid.
“Or lazy blob,” said Robo Sid, “especially when he’s in his fruit bowl.”
Sid kind of opened his mouth but nothing came out.
“Never mind trying to outdo Robo Sid with the quips,” urged the colonel, “we need the electric shield down. It’ll kill us as well as Ruhtra.”
“As long as the switch was no further away than the length of my arm then I could switch it off without it harming me,” offered Robo Arthur.
“Can either of you two see where the switch is through the electric shield?” Arthur asked the Robos.
“Another couple of letters and you could have asked the rooibos,” tweeted Sid.
“Get it together Sid,” ordered Arthur, “stop talking about South African tea and do something useful.”
“What like?”
“Get the others to throw a defensive perimeter around us.”
“There’s one exit, the door. We need one man guarding that.”
“Look I don’t know, just make yourself useful.”
So Sid ordered Chatteris to guard the door while Robo Sid and Arthur looked for the switch in the room beyond.
“It’s there,” spotted Robo Arthur of the electric switch.
“Are you sure it’s not just the light switch?” asked Robo Sid.
“Either way we cannot reach it with our short arms.”
“They’re not that short,” grumped Robo Sid as he waved his not too short arms around, and hit Gunby on the Foreign Service Helmet.
Gunby looked angry, “If you need that arm ripping off, just let me know!”
Robo Sid stood up to his full height, as Gunby did.
“Have you found it yet?” asked Arthur of Robo Sid, to stop the posturing.
Robo Sid backed down from his encounter with the half giant, “Yes,” he told the colonel, “but it’s too far away for our arms.”
“How are we going to switch it off.” fretted Arthur while pulling his beard a little.
“We could break the 4th wall?” suggested Sid.
“What?”
“We could go around the cameramen, bypass the special effects creating the electric shield and switch it off.”
Arthur looked really perturbed, “What?” he babbled again. “No, no, no, let’s try for a more sensible suggestion first.”
“But funny?” queried Sid.
“Well of course funny, you fool.”
“And?”
“So you know you’re a fool?”
“I thought you did too?”
“Just say the funny suggestion that will work without breaking the 4th wall too much.”
“Can I break it a little?”
“How?”
“Lift up the skirting board and make the mouse hole big enough to get through.”
“Doesn’t the mouse hole also have the shield going through it?”
“No it’s shielded if you look,” said Sid while he held up the skirting board a little, “the mice can get straight through.”
“Well then,” interrupted Ruhtra as he stepped towards them and made himself into a mouse, “let me oblige.” (Though the last bit was a squeak because he was so small.)
As Ruhtra went through the mouse hole Sid jibed at him, “Make sure Mr and Mrs mouse don’t get you,” he smirked.
As soon as he had got to the other side he turned himself back into the copy of Arthur and strode towards the electric switch to switch it off. He then turned to the others and smiled, “If I had known it was going to be that easy I wouldn’t have needed you lot at all.”
After the initial kerfuffle of Arthur staring out Ruhtra a bit they all noticed, in the centre of the room, on a podium, the code book.
“Don’t say this is going to be like the Indiana Jones type thing?” moaned Sid.
Arthur looked at him, “You mean the snakes on a plane?”
“Noooo, the filling a bag with sand and replacing the golden idol with it.”
Looking around Arthur commented, “I don’t see any holes in the walls where the poison darts could shoot out?”
Ruhtra just grabbed the code book.
Arthur screamed a, “No,” but nothing occurred to the shapechanger.
As he looked at it Ruhtra commented, “It’s all gobbledegook to me.”
“The goblin from the old White Dwarf magazines?” asked Robo Sid.
But nobody else cared to try to outpun him.
“Outrun?” said my spell checker before I changed it back to outpun.
“Give it here,” demanded Arthur of Ruhtra. When the shapechanger had complied the colonel flicked through it, it was empty. He looked up, “There’s nothing in it, it’s empty!”
Sid knocked Ruhtra on the shoulder, “Go on, give it to him.”
Sneering at Sid the Zathanian complied.
Arthur was now holding two code books, “What’s this then?”
“A joke?” weaselled Ruhtra, as one of the code books gradually started to slurp back into his body.
The shaking of Arthur’s head showed his contempt, but as he looked at this code book at least he saw there was something written in it.
“Who reads Hoo?”
“Who?”
“No Hoo.”
“I read a bit,” said Gunby, “my Ma, well, the real Gunby’s mother taught him/me and I sort of have a little of it still ingrained in me.”
“Can you read it?”
“Let’s see,” he scanned the first page, “it’s a recipe for bread.”
“What!” went ballistic Arthur, “we’ve been on this hair-brained mission, nearly got killed by tea pirates and Andacians all for a bread recipe?”
“Well it is in code,” explained Tresham, who was defending his friend, “So maybe you have to skip some of the letters or words, based on a number or group of numbers.”
“A skip code?”
“I know a skip code,” smiled Sid. “I saw a man eat biscuits,
He ate them off the floor,
He covered them in Kerosene,
And sucked them off the floor,
His name was Ooh Aaah Flibbity,
Gibbet Gingivitis Tom,
Scumble Doody Flooby Doo,
And his middle name was John.”
“That’s not a skip code,” derided Arthur, “it’s a skipping rhyme.”
“But wouldn’t it be funny,” he thought, “if that was the cryptographic key?”
Arthur gave the book to Gunby, “Try it.”
Gunby was nonplussed because he didn’t understand what his commanding officer was talking about.
Seeing the half giant’s confusion Arthur tried to explain, “What you need to do is say the rhyme, in Hoo, and see if the metre or words match up with the words of the recipe.”
“I don’t understand what you mean, and I don’t know the rhyme off by heart. Do you expect me to be a code brea
ker within a couple of minutes or something?”
Sid interrupted, “He could compliment the Author, like the real Sid and Arthur do, to be able to break it?”
This was not to Arthur’s taste so he decided, “No, we’ll try to break it ourselves, and nobody tries to sneakily compliment the Author, that’s an order!” He looked at Gunby, “Read us the recipe.”
Beginning to read the half giant began, “A flub and a flue of flour…”
“Arthur interrupted, “A flub and a flue?”
“About a cup and ¾. Then it goes on to say a tang of water… which is around 7-8 oz of water.”
“Good,” he then spoke to Plattington, “You write this down.”
“In flubs and flues or in cups and ounces?” asked the corporal/bombardier.
Sid mimicked him quietly, “In clubs and queues, where the big man bounces.”
“Both!” wanted Arthur.
“Well Gunby’ll have to go a bit slower then,” asked Plattington.
The colonel nodded at Gunby to slow down.
“And read it again so’s I can get it down.”
Gunby looked at Plattington, then the code book. “A… flub… and… flue… of… flour…” He glanced down at Plattington to see him writing it down in his notepad.
[How can we get through this without being too boring but also funny?]
Sid heard my thought and spoke to me, “I could do a funny routine and by the time it’s finished they could be finished.”
“But it should really be linked to the bread recipe etc.”
“I can do a few code puns.”
“Or you could have a daydream sequence, that’s also a bit surreal.”
“What kind of dream sequence?”
“On a river?”
“So, do I have a wife, like the real Sid?”
“What difference does that make to the dream?”
“Well, I could be boating with my wife on the river.”
“No, you don’t have a wife.”
“I could meet my wife, on the river bank.”
“Do you have anyone in mind?”
“Well no, not really, I’ve only been around for 6 months, and I think I’ve only seen one woman in that time?”
“Who was that?”
“The blue receptionist in the Tulox cloning factory?”
“You mean she was sad?”
“No, you know, she had blue skin.”
“So would you like a blue skinned wife then?”
“Would that mean we had light blue babies then?”
“Light blue hairy babies probably.”
“That would be a nightmare.”
“Well a nightmare is still a type of dream.”
“So am I really going to get a blue wife then?”
“No, just day dream it for now, and we’ll sort you out a wife after the adventure.”
The East Anglian Bombardiers And Grenadiers Page 4