SHIP'S LOG:

Eyes Without A Face

Grace Gearhorn 6/14/2022 11:33pm

We could see the giant neon hotdog from leagues away.

"Approaching ship, this is Ypsilanti Station, please identify yourselves, over."

Ensign Charmers nodded at me that comms were live.

"Continuous Merchant Murk Vessel Eyes Without a Face here, Ypsilanti," I replied. "We've just come 'round the drain and we could sure use a bite to eat. Over."

"Round the Drain, huh? That is quite a trip. Don't get many from the far side, here. Why don't you pull up to... portal 27, just past the big chicken face. You can order from the murkhops till you're out of quarantine. Welcome to the station. Over."

Grace Gearhorn 3/16/2022 10:28pm

"--and we should be able to ride that current out of the Drain and back to free murk."

"Make it so, Ensign Charmers," I said. "All ahead full."

Free of the purple protoplasm, we finally had the ship under control again. And not even the crushing vortex of the Drain could keep us down.

We left the Mare Tenebrarum -- and its crew of one -- as a tiny twinkle of light in the crawling murkways, as we tacked leeward from the spiral arms of the Drain, and were thus able to gain distance from the event horizon. But this was at the cost of traversing vast distances, and would ultimately arrive back in regular murkspace on the opposite side of the Drain from which we entered. So far away, in fact, no one on the crew had ever been there. All we knew of it came from questionable sources in murkpubs late at night.

"Chicken wings as big as your arm! Corndogs as big as your leg!"

But I can't help feel that we're just a pawn in someone else's game. It all started with the haunted Victorian dolls Junior Navigator Claira brought on board, along with that precocious 5-legged mammal. Since then we've been swallowed by a murk monster, abducted by a cloud of purple phosphorescent murk goo, left on the doorstep of the Drain, and given a haunted doll assassin in a box.

We'd become somebody's haunted doll delivery service. And I wanted to know who.

Grace Gearhorn 1/10/2022 11:37pm

Aya of Ieeooiai was locked in a trunk.The very one I'd been sitting on for most of the story.

"She hasn't made a sound for a very long time," said the skeleton man.

He was confident her battery had run out, but that, being a clockwork doll, she could be brought back to life.

"Why would we want to do that?" I asked. "After everything we've learned...after everything you've been through..."

"There was good in her. IS good in her, deep down inside. No one, not skeleton or water bag or haunted doll is born evil. We are all only the sum of our programming. Uberfabrik AG built her, they will know what to do."

Uberfabrik AG. It rang some kind of bell. From a history book, no doubt.

"Captain, come in." It was Junior Navigator @Claira coming over the radio. "Something's just happened with the protoplasm, sir. It's dissipating."

From the corner of the bridge's massive murkscreen, the Eyes Without a Face was just visible. And the purple plankton protoplasm was clearly oozing off and slipping back into the Murk.

"Weeeeeeeek!"

"Keep your creature off the radio, @Claira. Charmers, Flouncey, make sure the lid on this trunk is secure, and let's get it aboard. We've moving out."

Aeon Lore 11/18/2021 10:02pm

I have no regrets as to the decision I made. She was, after all, completely insane, and a clockwork doll at that. What would it have taken to cure her of her madness? A therapist? A pharmacist? A tinker, a jeweler, an engineer? I had no delusions that I alone could cure her, or that some part of her love for me had once been real.

But what if she was telling the truth? What if she really was from the future, clockwork or not, and somehow the Mare Tenebrarum lead some kind of genocidal war against the people of water and flesh? I had been imprisoned so long, near driven mad myself, could I be sure the reappearance of the Mare Tenebrarum would not have some terrible consequences?

So I"ve remained here, these many, long, empty years, riding the slow spiral of the Drain, frozen in time and alone, dreaming of my bony people and the Planet of the Many-colored Grass.

And it's here I will remain, for you may not take me nor my ship back through the Murk.

But you must take her.

Aeon Lore 9/29/2021 8:22pm

Aya of Ieeooiai was clockwork herself. A haunted doll. Probably the most advanced one ever created.

And it was she and her kind that had been hunting me. Why?

And now her army of haunted dolls had deserted her. Why?

Off the rails? The rules of the scenario? The Conservation of Clockwork Life?

"You are not Fernando."

The haunted doll head in her lap fell to the floor as she stood up.

And in the same movement she drew her Hunsu blade.

Aeon Lore 8/16/2021 11:54pm

Aya of Ieeooiai sat here, in this very captain's chair, as I crept up behind her.

Years had passed. Her hair was gray. But still she lived.

Perhaps her reactions had dulled. I crept closer, and raised the axe in my right hand for a mighty blow to her skull.

After all this time... my madness, my incarceration... one bloody stroke away.

"Fernando? My Fernando?... Is it you?" she asked. Her voice was as beautiful as I remembered. "You've returned! And look, I have saved it for you!"

Slowly the chair turned round. And there sat Aya of Ieeooiai, the skin of her face torn away to expose the hideous clockwork underneath. And in her lap, the head of a Haunted Doll.

Aeon Lore 7/3/2021 11:14pm

When the emergency bells rang, I was sure I'd been discovered. Had my invisibility dance run out? Had the Haunted Dolls noticed the missing key to their equation?

I'd been working my way up the decks, through service halls and empty rooms, heading for the bridge. Places I'd learned were outside the routines of the Haunted Dolls. With the emergency bells ringing, how soon till I encountered them here? And with their sensitivity modes fully activated, how could I elude them?

"Pardon me, sir, if you'll excuse us..."

It was an entire troupe of Haunted Dolls, coming up from behind me in the janitorial decks.

"We're on our way to the escape pods. I don't see any reason you couldn't join us. Feel free to follow along."

The Haunted Dolls continued on their way. Escape pods?

"Yes," said a Haunted Doll in the guise of an old dowager. "She's gone completely off the rails. Disregarded the rules of the scenario. The Law of Conservation of Clockwork Life clearly states we cut and run. Safety of the Material and all that. We're terribly sorry about everything up till now. I mean, now that things have changed."

She looked at me for a moment, thoughtfully. Then she turned and followed the rest of the troupe down the hall and around the corner.

There would be no escape pod for me. I was the captain, after all.

Aya of Ieeooiai 5/19/2021 10:22pm

"Oh, no. Not another dance, Fernando. These old bones aren't what they used to be."

It seems as if I've been dancing with Fernando my whole life. How many times has he asked me to an after-dinner dance?

"Oh please, madam, you must! I insist!"

Was it me or has Fernando become more insistent? I look up at him through my hair, now so gray.

"I said no. I must tend to the ship. We must reach the... the Drain..."

"Truly, madam. You will enjoy."

Fernando grabs me by the arm and pulls me close. This is outside of his programming. What is going on? Or is this a dream? Things have been so confused, lately. I'm getting confused. Muddled.

"Put me down, Fernando. Put me down!"

"Just relax. Come this way, madam."

"NO. DIVAT! DIVAT!" It was the failsafe code. Wasn't it? "Uh... DIVAN! DIVAN! ... uh.. DIVOT! DIVOT!"

I pound at Fernando's chest. He continues to pull me across the room. The rest of the haunted dolls in the salon appear uninterested.

My Hunsu blade. Did I wear it to dinner? Yes! Of course!

An explosion of springs and gears erupts as I plunge the blade into Fernando's neck. Sparks fly and Fernando sinks to the ground.

Now I have the attention of the haunted dolls.

Aeon Lore 4/7/2021 10:25pm

Centuries passed. Or at least I assumed so. The clockwork routines of the Haunted Dolls became monotonous and unbearable. Ship's lights rose and fell to simulate diurnal rhythms, but there was little else to differentiate one day from another. It was a pantomime I slept walked through, playing my role, beaten into submission by pure logic, hardened gears, and the one other living being in my known universe: Aya of Ieeooiai.

The one hope for survival I had was that she had been driven as insane as I had become. The loneliness. The predictable tick tock timing of every day. The same stale reruns for dreams at night. Surely she could not have been immune, mad as she already was?

It was with renewed life that focused on this one potential weak point in her gilded robotic cage. I began to study the shifting yet predictable patterns of behavior of the Haunted Dolls around me, and began to dance with it. Shifting just slightly out of position here, just slightly blowing my line there, I began to probe the weaknesses of her routines. Like memorizing the patterns of the guards around the prison of your mind. If, I mean, you fantasize about that kind of thing. Not me. Nope.

And after longer than I could possibly remember, I'd mastered the dance. The shadow walk, I began to think of it as. My ability to shift myself into the spaces left between the clockwork tock of the Haunted Dolls around me. It was as if I'd found the exact right places to stand in -- the exact right state of mind to stand in -- where I was invisible, entirely off their radar. And at the same time had slipped out so seamlessly of my own part in their play that it never raised their alarms.

And so it was, invisibly, secretly, that I armed myself with a pair of ship's axes strapped to my back, and a ship's axe in each hand, and made my way to the bridge.

Aya of Ieeooiai 2/23/2021 9:58pm

Follow my whistle, oh skeleton crew! Dance, oh puppets of stick and bone!

How gleefully I play the pipe to lead you to your doom. To the doom of your ship, and to the doom of your people.

And the survival of mine.

You will never be there to lead your people against us. The Mare Tenebrarum will never be there to lead your wretched bone armies across the Murk to murder millions. You will never be there to be the face of the Great Unionization Battle of the Luxury Murkship Travel Industry.

Because I'm sending you down the drain, diverting us all from the path of your graveyard future.

"tweeeeeeeet!"