by Sollai Rhys
~~~
A trip through space
Dedicated to Nic Masman
The Mary Instant hummed within, its warp engine like a giant bee’s nest. The Instant's interior was practical before comfortable. Passenger cells, numbering eight in total, were mostly used for storage despite the ship's huge cargo space, the predominance of the ship. The design was square corners, heavy manual doors, padded walls for turbulence. All fine enough for Nebular Harris’s profession.
The exterior was a fat bunch of steely boxy bits, all vaguely trying to go the same direction, riddled with turrets and self-proclaiming bragging graffiti, mostly applied during the messy peaks of drunken parties. “The glory of NEBULAR’S ship surpasses even the fame of his cock!”
Nebular lounged lazily upon his golden throne of a captain’s chair within the ship's small command deck. He waved his scepter, a long golden rod that flashed different colours when aimed at a computer or machine. He’d click and the computer would respond, displaying its function on the main console for him to analyze.
Currently, he watched the process of the warp that played in bright colours and patterns about the exterior of his ship. To this display, he sucked the rear end of the Spat Slug, the otherworldliness of the creature's hallucinogenic slime fully enveloping him within the hungry jaws of existence or “isness.”
“Whatever!” He mumbled, intensely serene.
Point, click.
The announcement speaker console visuals fuzzed into focus before him. “Oooh!”
“Crew of the Mary Instant, this is your captain speaking! I want all of you in the mess hall in… immediately… whenever that is.”
He watched “immediately” materialise into the now.
“I have a very important announcement.” He pulled forth some sheets he’d written. He took a deep breath, giggled, then laughed like a nutter before reading.
“Inken gold like ruby rum fin,
Roll across the seas on winds borne by angel wing.
To fetch us a bounty full with gold like corn,
That may grow in our hands like a year's good spring.”
He broke down into a giggling fit.
The crew had assembled in the mess. The crew of one confused The Body, who’d half expected to meet new recruits or someone he might have forgotten about. Stranger things had happened aboard this ship. He had been trying to pay attention to his captain, who had now altered his voice, if The Body wasn’t mistaken, to sound like a parrot over the announcement speakers.
“Come along pirates, come along! CAW, CAW!”
Slightly confused, yet afraid to interrupt the captain’s valuable concentration, The Body listened with a forcefulness that stilled his mind from its usual wandering.
What parrot when? The Body asked himself, then pushed the thoughts away again, thinking on not thinking. He was, in fact, interacting with the strangeness of the captain's mood, a deeper, more subconscious intelligence seeing the captain's rambling for exactly what it was and sympathizing with it.
It seemed as though the parrot was somehow making fun of The Body’s simplistic mind. “CAW, the story, the story!”
Story? The captain's going to tell a story. The Body did not find the prospect at all hard to believe and he wondered vaguely whether the stir in his stomach was excitement at the idea or whether in fact being in the food hall, as usual, gave him an appetite.
“Heart and word
Letter off thon name”
I wonder what he could mean?
“Sack an tear
The lungs of the sighing wind”
Ahhhh…..
“Who is of and off
And who is thank you for yon beer
And bread of sat yin behavior
And stale aroma”
No, maybe not…
“That waft so through the fair
Lake thy mind and drown thon think”
Oh dear, If I were but smarter.
“Wit is thy candy
As swift is my laugh
But hark a deer”
And see not trotter on the sweet leafy air.
The Body added, surprising himself by thinking, quick as usual to suppress it before he started confusing himself with unanswerable questions.