#35: Banana Slug - Hunting

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The Banana Slug was slow. A child in an inflatable duck pool toy could swim faster. Shelby swore that it was THAT slow.



Watching it move had all the thrilling, spine tingling, edge of the seat excitement of watching paint dry. On the other hand, they didn’t know where they were going so why be in any big hurry to get there, and how would they know when the arrived anyway?

Many of the residents took the opportunity to go fishing, to supplement their dwindling food supply. Time spent fishing does not count toward total life-time hours, any fisherman could tell you that.

Leaving the SmokeShip would have been a security risk for everyone involved so no one did that. No one knew what the risk of detection was but it was definitely higher if people were outside than if they were inside. No one went outside. They used avatars disguised to look like local animals to catch fish. There was a run on Avatars. Joshua was handing them out to those who didn’t already have them, children mostly. Oddly enough Joshua did very well with children. He couldn’t be rushed either. He took as long with each child as it took.

Joshua was a Mage. NO ONE wanted to piss off a mage. If Joshua wanted to take a long time with each ‘customer’ that was just fine with everyone.

“Why can’t I have a pink Hello Kitty, flying a red and yellow bi-plane, with twin wing mounted Gatling guns to go hunting ducks?” Sabrina Periwinkle asked.

“Geee” Ryan Slack said “Other than the fact that Hello Kitty can’t fly an airplane?”

“Can you fly an airplane Mr. Smart Guy?” the four year old Sabrina turned and poked the seven year old Ryan right in the chest with her finger. Rather she aimed for his chest. She was much shorter than he was and actually poked him somewhat lower. He hastily made a defensive hand maneuver and backed away.

“See how you are?” Ryan said. He knew exactly what had happened but he wasn’t in the mood to give in or give up. “You resort to violence. You know I won’t hit a girl so you try to poke me in the...”

“Ryan!” the voice of the token adult, that is Joshua, wasn’t loud. It din’t need to be. All of the children KNEW what the youngest Mage could do. They had no intention of getting on his bad side.

“Yessir.” Ryan all but stood to attention.

Sabrina wanted to cry. She’d set herself up for a fall when she poked at Ryan and she knew it. She was an unusually smart young girl and she was completely sane, as were all the children, oddly enough. She knew crying was a waste of time but she really, really wanted to. She stood there rubbing her eyes trying HARD not to cry.

“Let’s think about this logically” Joshua said. All the kids paid attention.

“Can you fly an airplane?” he asked Sabrina “It will, after all, be you doing the flying. You’ll tele-operate Hello Kitty to do so but it will be you.”

She quit rubbing her eyes. Now she really, really wanted to put her hand in her mouth. She hadn’t done that in forever, since she was three, two weeks ago. She looked at Joshua. “No”

“Do you want to learn?” Joshua asked. “I have these magic pills. They’re called ‘info-dumps’, they let you learn a subject about a zillion times faster than you would otherwise. It’d probably only take you about a week to learn how to fly a biplane.”

Sabrina’s eyes got bigger. That didn’t sound too bad.

“What kind of a bi-plane do you want?” Joshua asked. “There are about forty different kinds. Some of them only have a pilot but some have a gunner too. You’ll need a friend if you choose one of those.”

Sabrina’s eyes got bigger yet. She REALLY wanted to put her finger’s in her mouth.

“There’s a problem with the Gatling gun too.” Joshua told her. “it’s too heavy for those old Bi-Planes to carry. It’s noisy too. Do you want the Gub’ment to find us because your noisy Gatling gun is making too much noise? Then there’s the ammunition. It shoots so many bullets per minute that even if it you could get off the ground it’d only be able to shoot for a minute or two then it’d be out of bullets.”.

“Of course you COULD completely redesign the Gatling gun to get around those problems. I just happen to have, ummm...it’d take three info-dump pills. Metal working, metallurgy, ballistics...oh my. I was wrong. It looks like it’d take a lot more pills than that.” he said

“How long would each pill take?” Sabrina squeaked.

“Oh they’re real fast” Joshua said “but those are hard subjects. Lots harder than just learning to fly. They’d take a month each probably.”

Sabrina’s eyes got bigger. A month was forever to as four year old.

“Oh yeah” Joshua told her. “You’d have to redesign the the biplanes. None of them have controls that Hello Kitty can use.”

Sabrina’s eyes looked sad now.

“Another month?” she squeaked?

“Yeah...about a month.” Joshua confirmed.

“But what about Hello Kitty?” he asked her “We don’t have one of those programs in stock.”

“I’d have to learn how to build it huh?” she whispered. “How long?”

“About eighteen months” Joshua told her. “Structural Smoke Animatronic drone design takes a number of disciplines.”

“I’m only four years old” Sabrina said “That’s over half my life already!”

“As a matter of fact it is” Joshua told her. “Would you like to consider something else? How about a nice Eagle? Eagles are native to this part of the country. If someone sees an Eagle they won’t be particularly surprised. You can catch almost anything we’re likely to see on this river with an Eagle.”

Sabrina looked at the Eagle. She closed one eye then the other then tilted her head. Slowly she began to smile. The tears dried.

“Yes Please Mr. Joshua Mage Sir: “ She said “Could I please have an Eagle?”

“You certainly may my dear. Let me get it started for you.” Joshua said. He closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment. “Step over near the red door. When the Eagle is ready that’s where it will appear. It’ll take about half an hour. Oh. When you get your eagle you’ll need to practice driving it. We have several fields set aside for that purpose. Pick anyone of them. They all have animatronics targets to practice on.”

“What kind of targets?” Sabrina asked

“Oh...snakes, rats, mice, toads, some fish.” Joshua replied. “Things like that”.

Sabrina ALMOST backed down. She wasn’t into snakes, mice and toads. She held firm. She wanted to go fishing with her eagle. If she had to catch a few toads first so be it.

“Is that all?” Joshua asked her.

“Yes Mr. Joshua Mage Sir thank you very much.” with that she gave him a big hug and a sloppy four year old kiss. Then she toddled over to sit near her door and sat down to wait for her first drone to arrive, visions of Eagle fishing in her mind.



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The Next Episode Is
#36: Naomi - Ma'am…
The Previous Episode was
#34: Viper- The trip up river…
The First Episode was
# 1 : Prologue…
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Book One: SoulStone
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