SHIP'S LOG:

The Mephitis

Katz Spindle 12/2/2024 5:11pm

I spent some time roaming the grounds before dinner. The grass was trimmed, the pyramid tall. A few children with balloons and cotton candy wandering around. Where were their parents?

9 was a little late for dinner for me, and the corn-on-a-stick was looking like just the thing.

"ELOTE en stick" the vendor corrected me.

"How much?" I asked. "¿Cuánto?"

"Free! Todo incluido," said the vendor.

Perhaps @Captain Pirate IX had purchased us passes? I wasn't wearing a bracelet or anything.

I wandered back out to get a view of the pyramid, eating my corn. The sun was just about set, and I watched some vultures picking at a trash can.

"Whoo!" I heard. From the jungle?

"Whoo! Whoo!"

They have jungle owls?

"Whoooo is joining me for dinner?"

I turned, and it was Captain Pirate IX.

Captain Pirate IX 8/8/2024 11:59pm

Ah, Chichen Itza. Terminal Classic style. My favorite kind of pyramid.

It's one of my favorite places to come and unwind. My own Fortress of Solitude. I come here a lot. And this time it's be brought someone to share it with.

"It does feel oddly... familiar, " @Katz Spindle said.

"Your place is down plaza to the left," I said. "Dinner at 9!"

Katz Spindle 4/17/2024 10:38pm

The Captain's always had a special interest in me, and it makes me uncomfortable.

Not in a creepy way. Not like that. It's just weird in terms of my relationship to the rest of the crew when he singles me out.

"Mask?" The captain and I are in the airlock.

"Yes, of course," I answer.

He opens the mask cabinet, which is filled with an array of theater masks from greek plays, Javanese theater, Noh plays, festival masks from Mauritania, cheap 20th century Halloween masks...

Sure, I was top of my class. But you don't want that to follow you around your whole life.

"Excellent choice," says the Captain. He always says that.

"Ready then. On three. One... two...."

The Captain pulls the lever on the airlock door.

Engineer Bernard 12/27/2023 11:55pm

"Heading, Captain?" I ask.

@Captain Pirate IX looks lost in thought. As he does more and more these days. Chalk it up to his enigmatic charm. We'd just dropped out of the wave and were coming in over the long curve of a shoreline. There was a mildly tropical forest of palms just beyond.

The Captain stretches. "Well, I suppose it's time to meet our destiny," he says. It's one of this signature lines. "To the pyramid."

"Aye aye, to the pyramid, Captain!"

"And call up Katz Spindle to join me on the ground for an excursion."

"Aye sir."

Captain Pirate IX 9/11/2023 9:29pm

Riding the Waveform is one of the best parts of the job. Not only does it look AMAZING from the inside, but it creates a subtle vibration throughout The Mephitis that is both wonderfully relaxing and stimulating at the same time. Plus, really not much to do during the ride -- no steering, no loading, no unloading. We're out of radio contact for the duration, so no pesky calls or distractions. Nothing to do but keep an eye on the instruments and enjoy the ride.

Purple and green auroras spill over the bow of the ship. The background radiation shimmers. The ship hums.

For all my fame an notoriety, is it wrong that THIS is when I'm happiest?

Engineer Bernard 6/14/2023 10:57pm

"Ready to initiate harmonic release, Captain."

"Hold steady, Engineer."

"Holding sir."

Outside the windscreen the night sky spins past. This part always makes me dizzy, even though the ship doesn't feel like its moving at all.

"And.... now, Engineer."

"Harmonic release initiated."

"Retract the docking crystals."

"Retracting crystals"

There you could feel something. A little bump. A little free fall.

"Now give her the juice. Slowly."

"Giving her the juice, Captain."

And that's where you feel that agreeable acceleration deep down in your belly.

The point of the maneuver is to ride the knob torque from a Quick Station boost up into a nearby waveform current, then match the the amplitude with a little bit of juice. If you do it right, you can ride the frequency for as far as you like with hardly any energy expenditure at all.

"And, matching.... now. We're riding the wave, sir"

"Well done, Engineer."

All I did was push the buttons. It's the Captain who invented the maneuver, so if anybody knows how to do it right it's him.

The infamous @Captain Pirate IX.

Doctor Argosa 2/24/2023 11:59pm

SUBJECT: @Captain Pirate IX

The subject sits on his cot reading a book. Later, he will likely spend an hour stretching and working out on the exercise bike, then prepare a small microwave dinner in the kitchenette.

Viewing hours end at 8pm, at which time the CCTV screen is deactivated, and the subject leaves the small cell to return to his family for the night.

This is because the subject in the mock Droste containment chamber is not Captain Pirate IX. Naturally, no one can view Captain Pirate IX without being subject to the Droste Effect, contained and controlled as it is in the real Droste containment chamber. This subject is on display for informational purposes only.

The real Captain Pirate IX exists in concrete constraints at the center of the real Droste containment chamber, straining against the maddening effects of his eigenstate looping at the speed of thought from one reality to another and back again to ours, spinning, spinning, jiggling in a bottle like a radioactive jumping bean, the fulcrum point of the grinding crush where realities meet, allowing us to generate enormous amounts of power.

Or at least that's how he was described, in the original blueprints. Naturally, no one can view Captain Pirate IX without being subject to the Droste Effect. The original engineers sealed themselves within the Droste containment chamber in order to maintain the power couplings, and ensure that Captain Pirate IX remain restrained.

It is believed that continuous exposure to the Droste Effect will leave both Captain Pirate IX and the engineers effectively immortal.

Captain Pirate II 11/21/2022 11:57pm

I was remembering the postcard. Thunderheads over Chichen Itza. Me, in the picture, with the postcard in my hand: THUNDERHEADS OVER CHICHEN ITZA, with a little me you can just see, holding the postcard in my hand... It all still felt like someone else's vacation...

WHAM @Captain Pirate pummeled my face again with his fist.

"This universe just ain't big enough for the both of us!" Captain Pirate cried, wheeling back to take another punch.

"Okay, little buddy, you can take it easy..."

A pair of arms came up from behind Captain Pirate and pinned him in a full nelson. A big guy, with a huge chest and biceps, but looking oddly familiar...

"Captain Pirate V, at your service!" he said. Captain Pirate gave up struggling.

"Ready for those zip ties, Captain Pirate III."

A woman suddenly appeared and zipped Captain Pirate's hands behind his back, then rapidly hog-tied them to his ankles. She could have been my sister.

"Droste Fever," she said. "Don't hold it against him."

Glancing around, I'd lost sight of all the choco lonis and Doctor Argosas in this refracted mirror world. Come to think of it, wasn't I in some kind of flying saucer?

"We'd better get a move on before we attract a crowd. We're mostly good natured, but there's really no end of us who would insist on offering opinions," said the big guy.

"Roger that," said Captain Pirate III. "Preparing for translocation..." she began to fiddle with her bulky watch.

"Where are we headed?" I half mumbled. My face was swelling.

"To liberate Captain Pirate IX! Ready three?"

"Ready five."

"Hit it."

choco loni 8/30/2022 10:06pm

CHOCO LONI’S NUTS

hey check out my nuts. I’m a nutseller. biggest nutseller in the tri-market area, with the biggest selection of nuts in the biggest stalls in the biggest malls in the tri-cities.

this slippery nut will escape the owner’s fingers at a moment of its choosing, when it senses where it needs to go.

the down-down nut, always dancing. if shelled, it floats.

rip-barrier nuts. plant them around your house and disconnect from the eigenstate. sail the seven seas!

now if you’ll excuse me it’s back to my numbnuts. choco loni is old and needs her balms.

Doctor Argosa 6/18/2022 11:54pm

"--and it is at this moment that the wave function collapses and reduces to a single eigenstate. Next slide please."

I take a moment for a drink of water. La Paz is hot this time of year. And this lecture hall is stuffy.

"Now, as you can see in this diagram, this new eigenstate exists in an entirely different universe. But those in the immediate proximity of @Captain Pirate IX during these events actually witness the change, as their own quantum states undergo an abrupt transformation, but retain information--in the form of memories--of the prior eigenstate. This is how scientists were first able to identify and harness Droste Energy, which powers the great cities and standard of living that all of us enjoy today. Any questions?"

My students look as lost and bored as ever.

"Yes, uh, I have a question, @Doctor Argosa!" calls a small voice from the shadows up high in the back. I don't even know their name.

"Katz Spindle, third year, sir."

"Yes Katz. Your question?"

"How do you keep it stable? The source, that is.@Captain Pirate IX. Why aren't we just flipping channels wildly all the time?"

"Ah, excellent question, Katz. You see, unless one is right there to observe the change--to be part of the change--then nothing changes. Everything--all of this--" I gesture across the room and towards the large open windows and the colorful city beyond, "has always been here... had its own history, arrow of time and all that. The rest of us haven't gone anywhere. It's @Captain Pirate IX who's flipping. And that's what provides the power. Like an engine..."