SHIP'S LOG:

Invictus

Nathan Hill 12/5/2025 10:16pm

Luckily, Marta, formerly the kindly old woman, or vise versa, had to move on to other duties. Leaving First Mate Quiller and @Ensign Filbert and I and a select number of other crewmen of the Invictus at a watering hole on the giant station.

"We need to leave a skeleton crew on board," I said. "We'll take shifts."

This particular bar was packed with sky sailors from places I couldn't imagine. A group with long silver hair and nails, another of big burly human-sized guinea pigs stuffed into matching jumpsuits with Soviet era insignias, individuals that looked half robot, and full robot, swarthy little monkey-pigs, one that may have been made of flame...

"We don't seem to be in any danger..." Quiller said tentatively, looking around.

And it was true. Nobody seemed to be taking any notice of us. In fact, the way they looked right through us was somewhat demoralizing.

"At least their beer is good!" Filbert said enthusiastically, hoisting his icy mug up to his face again.

"You don't know what's in that. It could make you sick," Quiller said.

Ugh. I knew what that was like.

"Cheers!" I said, lifting up the mug from the round Quiller had somehow ordered.

"Marta gave me these," Filbert said, brandishing a fist full of colored strips of paper. "They work!"

"Well let's not spend it all getting wasted," Quiller said. "Drink up. We've got exploring to do."

Nathan Hill 8/10/2025 9:35pm

Well this was a surprising turn of events.

"Oh I saw that coming," I said.

"Oh no you never did," said the kindly old woman. Er, Marta. Was that really her name?

"But what's this about 'Anti-sense?'" First Mate Quiller asked, "That doesn't make any sense. Either."

"Yeah," I said, something making sense to me for the very first time. "Isn't a big dose of 'sense' just what everybody needs?"

"Ah, see, that's exactly it. It's the overwhelming self-assuredness that causes the gravity implosion. There are stages where it still can be cracked, before it takes over. Your gridlet is a candidate, so we're working on an uplift."

"Oh, I see," I said.

Nathan Hill 4/18/2025 3:07pm

"And a number of gridlets just flatten. Well, morally, that is. Crushed under the weight of maximum entropy."

Marta was explaining it all to us. I wasn't really following.

"I see," I said.

"But Witch Delivery™," First Mate Quiller said. "It sounded so cool. Witches are cool, right?"

"Just corporate cultural appropriation," Marta said. "Apprehending rebellious outsider ideas and using them to witch-wash just another consumption-based eco-destructive entropy vector, leveraging time-honored worker exploitation techniques."

"And the kindly old woman on Toadsbottom lane?"

"Using the Witch Delivery™ network to transport a highly volatile poison pill. An anti-sense mine."

"Anti-sense?" I asked.

"Yes," said Marta. "We never meant to endanger you, or whoever was going to do the actual transporting. You're just the victims of gig-wage slavery. If you'd just delivered the package, none of this would have happened. But I can't help but feel partly responsible."

And that's when Marta reached up and removed her incredibly life-like mask, revealing the kindly old woman herself!

Laroop the Ninth 12/25/2024 10:09pm

In the Lower Hyperplasmodic Observation Chamber, my fellow Lattice Sisters swarm.

"They make the droplets!"

"They are dripping up!"

"They are growing their droplets," Sister the Seventh cooed.

"Hush," said Sister One. "Their worlds become gravid. Let us watch their droplets grow. For now."

Ensign Filbert 8/30/2024 9:02pm

"It's the Captain," Sylvia said. "And first mate Quiller."

And a whole bunch of other people, and airships. It was the biggest floating aerodrome I'd seen in my life. And it was making me oddly nauseous. Maybe some kind of "bends" because of some insane altitude we'd reached? How high were we? The altimeter was on he fritz. 

"Shouldn't we open the hatch?" she asked. 

"Didn't the captain have some sort of safe word he said he'd use in situations like this? When he might be compromised but can't let his captors know?" I asked. 

"Dramamine!" the captain said through the intercom. 

"Sounds like it!" said Sylvia. "Opening the hatch now."

Nathan Hill 5/10/2024 11:07pm

The hangar bay on the Dutch Baby looked a lot more sensible now.

"Everything is TOTALLY inside out when you're traveling up or down the ladder," Marta said.

What had been a towering, dizzying, breathtaking infinity of colonnades and rafters had settled into a still enormous, but thankfully finite space.

"Still, she is still a dimensional super lifter, so she's a hefty girl," Marta said.

"What are those? Drifting around? Cargo containers?" asked First Mate Quiller.

"Airships!," Marta said. "And see that one right there?" she pointed. "Next to that yellow and blue striped bulkhead?"

Quiller and I pretended to see what she was pointing at.

"That's your ship, I believe? The Invictus? C'mon and I'll take you to her dock."

Nathan Hill 1/17/2024 11:16pm

"Sometimes it's better if we don't try to explain it, sir," Marta said to the captain.

"Oh, nonsense," said the captain. "Have some respect for a fellow airship captain! And his stalwart crew. Welcome aboard, captain!"

This ship's captain stepped towards me and stuck out his hand. It swayed in front of me like a giant log. My wooziness increased.

"Perhaps don't get too close, sir," Marta said.

"Ah, yes, I remember. The twins, right?"

"Yes. The Ricardos."

The captain pulled his hand away.

"Still, better you hear it all at once," said the captain. "I'm captain Raymond Gina Jimenez, and you're on board the Dutch Baby. We're dimensional super lifter, detailed to the Fractal Core Watchdog Group. We're level 57, and you were down there on level 23 -- which in this case means an universe 34 times smaller than ours, exponentially."

"Exponentially?" I asked, getting dizzier.

"Exactly! See, I told you they were sharp, Marta," said the captain. "We're not just '34 times larger,' we're 34 to the 34th POWER larger. So, when we want to meet each other in person, once of us has gotta make a BIG change, if you know what I mean." The captain winked. "And as I've had my hands quite full lately, it made a lot more sense for you to come up here."

It's when he said "come up" that I lost it. Got most of it into Quiller's trash can.

Nathan Hill 10/3/2023 10:45pm

"Captain," Marta said.

"Yes?" I answered, and Quiller elbowed me in the ribs.

"Yes?" said a handsome man at the head of the bridge, not turning away from the panel he was studying. In front of him, the the window was filled with stars.

"I have the extraction from Gridlet 97746b. The Toads Bottom Lane incident, sir."

"Ah, Witch Delivery™ country!" said the captain. That got his attention. He turned to face us.

"Any trouble with the resizing process?" he asked.

"Resizing?" I asked. Now that he mentioned it everyone did feel... really big...

Quiller found a trashcan in the corner and quietly threw up.

Nathan Hill 7/2/2023 9:43pm

The waitress led us though the warrens of decks and lifts of the enormous... ship? It was more like a space station.

"Oh, it's a ship alright," she said. "And you can call me Marta."

"I think I'm going to be sick," First Mate Quiller whispered to me on an especially long elevator ride.

"Your head does look sort of... enormously large," I whispered back.

"Oh! Do you guys have dramamine?" Marta asked. "I'm sorry. I totally forgot to mention."

Marta fished around in her purse.

DING!

"And here we are!" said Marta. "The bridge."

Nathan Hill 3/12/2023 9:27pm

"Permission to come aboard," said the waitress.

"Permission granted," said one of the guys in uniforms standing around this little cargo bay. The one we entered after leaving the mop closet.

The waitress started walking out the door of the cargo bay and Quiller and I followed. We went through the door and found ourselves overlooking a vast, vast space, circled with decks like our own as far as we could see in all directions. Decks to the left and right, and dizzying spirals above and below. There seemed to be clouds in the heights and depths.

"Don't worry about the scale," the waitress said. "You're still just very tiny."