SHIP'S LOG:

Thot Slayer

Slobodkina 12/3/2025 10:51pm

As near as I could figure, we were still under the surface earth. A hollow earth. That big WOOSH hole was taking us down, towards the ground, and everything here has a big "inside" feeling, like a sports arena as big as a planet. As we flew deeper into it, the sparkly sheen of the rocky mantel walls looked more like stars than minerals, but where increasingly obscured by clouds, and everything golden, basking in some light source still far away. We were headed for it until we hit a thick current of air, and we began to head laterally, towards an archipelago of craggy crystal islands in the distance.

The twins kept themselves busy with crayons and a Zephyr Air Quick Station coloring book. They didn't seem concerned about the whereabouts of the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl, but I was. Did she short out? Wasn't her code built into the ship? It's not like she could have been swept out a window or a hatch, right?

Slobodkina 8/8/2025 9:12pm

Turns out airships can fly just fine in zero-G. And boy is there a lot of stuff to fly around!

That big hole in the Antarctic polar desert opened up into a whole new land, and there didn't seem to be an up or down, but it was all lit up and filled with craggy islands made of rock or crystal or I don't know what just floating around, big and in the distance.

Didn't seem to be much life in it. No ships or neon signs or Zephyr Air Quick Stations. And what happened to the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl?

That's when I heard the Lorentz Twins giggling. I turned around and saw them bouncing around in the back of the bridge. Guess we forgot to get them strapped in.

Slobodkina 4/16/2025 11:24pm

WOOOSH!!!!

We went down the dark hole in the antarctic tundra with a mighty WOOOSH.

Now, I had never been to space. That was a whole other line of Transport Service. I used to think about signing up for the Space Transport Service, but after all the disappearances and the communication getting lost from the outposts and all the recruiting stations closed up and you just never heard about it any more. Everybody just stopped talking about it.

But after we wooshed down that hole, this what what I imagined it felt like. Floating in space. Zero gravity.

"Hey, Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl," I said into the darkness, lit up only by the lights of the dashboard of the Thot Slayer, with the maps and paper cups and pencils and sugar cones just floating around. "Is this what space is like do you think?"

I turned my head to the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl, but she wasn't there.

Slobodkina 12/23/2024 9:48pm

"Well this certainly makes things easier," shouted the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl as we were tossed around the bridge.

"What's happening?!!"

"Caught in its magnetic field. Really more like an automated guidance system. We would have a had a heck of a time inserting on our own."

The Thot Slayer began to heave and turn nose down.

"This is why we strap in!" the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl said. "And don't worry about the twins."

I looked back and saw they'd been secured with ratchet straps already. The Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl put her forefinger up to her nose and giggled.

"Just hold on. Everything will be fine."

Loose stuff -- maps and sugar cones -- crashed up into the nose of the bridge. We were poised at a 90 degrees to the Antarctic horizon, looking straight down into darkness.

"I really feel we're getting somewhere," said the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl.

Slobodkina 8/28/2024 11:58pm

Magnetic eddies lit up the Antarctic terrain in all directions, popping up like dust devils made of clouds of light across the darkened wasteland.

"The path the twins laid out seems to snake right between them," said the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl.

"We're not headed to the pole," I said.

"You're right! Not the magnetic pole. That's the giant energy beam to the right. And it's not the geomagnetic pole, which is over that way." The Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl pointed out the windscreen across the eerie landscape in another direction.

"And it's not the geographic pole either," she said, "which is based on the earth's rotation, which over that way," she pointed again.

"If you were wondering," she winked.

The Lorentz Twins were sleeping on the couch near the back of the bridge. They'd eaten a lot of soft serve.

"So where are we headed?" I asked.

"To the hole!" she squealed in delight. "Hidden in a tiny mountain range, which just looks like a bunch of snow on the maps, but YOU discovered it in that relief map the twins made. You really saved the day!"

The Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl didn't need me to spot that.

"Speaking of, I better get down there and hose out the mess," I said.

"Not to worry! Already done!" said The Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl.

"Wha? When did you--"

"Speed of light, remember?" she giggled, putting her forefinger up to her nose.

"But we need to keep our eyes on the horizon," she said. "This has been an easy path, but you'd think--"

CRUNK! KER-LUNK! SCREEEEEE...

"What was that?"

"Something's grabbed us," said The Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl. "Hit the afterburners."

Slobodkina 5/7/2024 11:58pm

"That's a hole that shouldn't be there," said the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl.

We were looking at the giant relief map made of soft serve on the floor of the mess of the Thot Slayer. The Lorentz Twins sat at a table eating more soft serve out of cake cones.

"That's the floor drain. It's supposed to be there," I said.

"No, silly. I mean the twins obviously worked it into their map. Built the whole map around it, with it in mind."

The Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl zipped around the room at her usual light speed. Looking at the mountains of ice milk from every different direction.

"Yup," she said. "That's not on any of the maps, but so obvious when you realize what it is."

"What is it?"

"It's the way out. Or the way in."

I wasn't really filled with confidence.

"Well, do you see any other ways? It's clearly the only one. Unless you want to try the electric light tornado."

"YAY!" cried the Lorentz Twins.

Slobodkina 1/15/2024 11:56pm

"So, uh... you girls like ice cream?"

I'd found a washcloth and was dabbing at the ice cream on their pinafores, and gloves.

"WE JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH," they said, in unison. Creepy.

I don't know how they had made this big a mess in such a short time. They managed to not only create a mountain of soft serve surrounding the machine, but had sprayed it over the entirety of the canteen.

"WE MADE A PATH. SEE?"

And there, laid out on the white of the soft serve smeared throughout the mess was a trail of napkins, laid out like a dotted line. It started at the soft serve machine, the looped to the east and up through a pair of small soft serve slopes, just like route we took from McMurdo. Then dead south... just like we had gone. And there was the looming Transantarctic range... obviously the girls had taken the time to form the soft serve into these shapes, a smooth and delicious topography of creamy ice milk... with at trail of napkins, leading to--

"Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl. Can you come down here for a moment?"

Slobodkina 10/1/2023 9:17pm

"Well those twins aren't creepy at all," I said.

"Hello dears," said the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl. "Yes! The machine is all warmed up now and properly chilled. It's in the mess. I assume you know how to operate it yourself! Cake cones and waffle cones at your disposal!"

The Lorentz twins left to find the galley on the Thot Slayer.

"They're the whole reason we brought along the soft serve," the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl said. "They were the grizzled old man's biggest customers."

"How did you know that?"

"I looked at his books."

"When did you have time to look at his books?"

"You and I use our time differently. On account of my computational power."

The giant roiling beam of light continued to dominate the horizon.

"Won't their parents be worried?"

"Their parents disappeared on a scientific trip to the pole. They were raised as infants by the McMurdoans."

"They were born here?"

"Following their parent's first trip to the pole."

MMMMBWAAAAAAAAAAA

The ship suddenly swung and reoriented itself around another roiling beam of light to the port bow. A much smaller beam, but it had us in its grip.

"Magnetic eddies," the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl said. "The 'mines' the grizzled old shopkeeper mentioned. Compensating..."

The Thot Slayer swung around the gravitational well of the little beam of light and headed off near the direction we'd been headed.

"How did you know about those?"

"I've been running simulations. Quite a few simulations, in fact."

"WE NEED HELP." The Lorentz twins appeared back on the bridge. They had quite a bit of soft serve ice cream on their pinafores.

"I anticipated this," said Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl. "Would you mind lending them a hand below?"

Henriette - Loretta 6/28/2023 11:34pm

YOU SAID SOFT SERVE?

Slobodkina 3/8/2023 11:12pm

"I guess there IS something at the pole!" squealed the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl. She was downright giddy.

Through the bridge front windows we beheld a massive beam of light in the distance, heading up and out at a weird angle.

"It's pointing straight out of the magnetic south," said the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl, seemingly awestruck. "And so tall that it curves like that, from our perspective."

It was a roiling beam of light, amber and yellow erupting from someplace still beyond the curve of the earth. But it lit up the drifts of ice and snow for miles around it.

There was a squeak, and the door to the bridge opened behind us.

There was a pause. And then the head of one scruffy grade school girl peeked out.

And then an identical head of the scruffy grade school girl peeked out.

"It's the Lorentz twins, from McMurdo Station!" exclaimed the Little Holographic Tour Guide Girl, elated again. "Henriette and Loretta!"