Deirdre Chen: Saviour of the Multiverse

Chapter 8

Deirdre

Deirdre was awoken by the feeling of feathers, gently brushing against her face. She looked down and saw orange webbed feet, which for a moment she thought were hers. The hypothermia delirium wore off and it dawned on Deirdre that the penguin that almost ate her was now carrying her to what looked like a lab.
  It opened its knees slightly to allow Deirdre to step out. Deirdre stumbled forward before being sucked up into a glass tube. It felt like 10 big hair dryers were blasting her all at once. She couldn’t complain; it had her warm and dry in seconds. As it lowered her down, robotic arms dressed her in a new suit, and to Deirdre’s shock, this one fit. It was snug but not tight, and the helmet gripped her head firmly.  Deirdre felt alive again.

Energy Level: 2

   When Deirdre touched the ground, the penguin looked straight at her.
  “Time!” the penguin squawked, and before she could ask why it was squawking in a Geordie accent, the penguin squawked again, “do ya see time, or does it happen to ya!” Its voice echoed in the cave.
  “It happens to you,” Deirdre said, and good god it didn’t half scream at her! It didn’t sound right, a human voice coming out of something like that. You know how we have lips and that to form words? This was all throaty instead.
  “Wrong! Does a river happen to a fish!?”
  “So, I’m a fish?” Deirdre answered, throwing her hands up.
  “For now, but soon you will crawl oot onto the banks and see the rivers in its entirety, its ebbs and flows. That’s what the Chronotiles are for. It hurt us bad to have to pull out all of those crystals, but I must complete my work.” Deirdre saw a tile, much like the one in her hand. It was being held by a machine that looked like a chopping board, with six, robotic arms. Two held the tile in place. Another two held the crystals. The last pair held lasers which shot through the crystals and carved images into the tile. The penguin pointed up to the dome-shaped ceiling. Deirdre saw that it was decorated with more of those Chronotiles. Each one had a different colour and pattern on it; some were arcs, others were like pretzels and others were like sideways 8s.
  “What are Chronotiles?”
  “Maps that help ya navigate, Minutes, Hours and Years. Ya see, Mengo is just concerned with throwing the biggest rock he can find. He’s clueless as to what that gauntlet can actually do.” The penguin clutched his stomach and groaned in pain.
  “Oh no, I didn’t do that to you, did I?”
  “Naw lass, ya only following the path set out for ya. Much like I am.” The penguin parted its feathers. It’d somehow strapped a button to its chest.
  “Wait at the top of the hill,” the penguin said to Deirdre.
  “What for?”
  “Not a monkeys. Don’t tell Ehutu that ya met me. I have to die now, see ya earlier.”
  It fell like a Roman general would on his sword. The moment the penguin hit the floor, it set off an explosion that started from the tile at the very top of the dome and continued outward in a ripple. Deirdre held her arms above her head in a reflexive and vain attempt to shield herself from the hail of falling tiles. Through her fingers, she saw little portals being torn open in the air around her. The tiles were being scattered, to where, Deirdre had no idea. What she did know was that as they fell, they exposed more and more of that drain-water sky. The last portal made a fizzing sound as it closed, and then a terrifying silence filled the cave. Deirdre stumbled around for a few seconds, mouth agape, eyes full of shock.
  The only thing she could do was walk to that hill.

#

   Deirdre was waiting on top of the mound, simply awaiting her fate to be turned into a warm, toasty skeleton, thanks to the suit. Deirdre thought that she’d end up being buried by snow. What gave her peace of mind was the sight of every cryo-volcano on Dayruntha erupting simultaneously, at least then she knew her end would be quick.
  Towers of blue, molten ice livened up the awful sky. Dayruntha was alive alright, in the same way a dead body spewing out its embalming fluid is alive. Why couldn’t her life end on a beach somewhere, overdosing on Gyros and Fanta lemon?  The canyon was filling with liquid nitrogen, turning the tiny mound into an even tinier island. A current washed the Penguin back down the cave and she saw its feathers absorb the colours of the crystals.
  Deirdre began using every curse word in English and Cantonese. She had actually listened to a giant penguin when he said, “Stand there!?” She was going to get soggy socks. There’s not much worse than soggy socks. Drowning in molten ice is one of them, but she’d experience the soggy socks first.
  “I am gullible,” Deirdre said to herself.
  “I am hopeless…”
  “I AM FART.” A glowing orange rope thwacked her on the helmet.
  “Grab on Deirdre!” Ehutu shouted. Deirdre looked up and saw a ship wobbling in the air. This thing had a beard of rust on it! The hoop wasn’t much better, barely held together by duct tape dotted around its circumference. Deirdre tied the rope around her waist and it curved upward like a monkey’s tail. A fraction of a second later, the molten ice drowned the tiny islet she was standing on.
The rope had her above the ship. As she looked down, she saw Ehutu sticking out of an open hatch, waiting patiently for Deirdre to get close enough to reach.
  “Alright Cassie, stop the hoop.” The hoop stopped around its axis. Deirdre did a double take. Was Cassie here?
  “Loving the new look Deirdre!” Ehutu shouted up at her.
  “How did you know I was her AAARRGGHHH!!!”
That ‘Aaaargh!!!’ was Deirdre screaming as the lasso disappeared, sending her tumbling asso over elbow.
Ehutu caught Deirdre by the wrists as she bounced off the bow.
  “I-
  “I am FART!” Ehutu was cut off by the disembodied voice.
  “-have my sources.” She strained the words out as she pulled Deirdre in with her gorilla strength.
  Ehutu lowered her down onto the deck, before using the walls as a drum kit. She was banging away at it like she was in a thrash metal band. I think the track was called, ‘Why won’t you work properly you useless bloody ship!’
  “Oi Deirdre!” there she was, sat in a cockpit that looked like a blister.
  Cassie. The windscreen curved around her, with two rows of three screens positioned above and below it.
  “Oh yeah,” Ehutu said, “Cassie wanted to make herself useful after I had to wipe your whole class, Credit where credit is due, she’s a decent pilot.” Good old Cassie! Although Ehutu had a laid back attitude to child protection laws…
  “Ehutu won’t let me do any rift travel; said it’s like letting a learner driver on the motorway. But my dad won’t even let our Daz drive around Morrisons car park when it’s empty, so I can’t complain.”
  “What happened to the super-cool badass ship?” Deirdre asked, only just noticing that she was in a scrapheap.
  “First of all, Manea gave me the wrong address for your school. I ended up at a takeaway shop called ‘Kebabarella’ which was bad enough, but then she put in the wrong grade of anti-matter, buggered the engine right up,” Ehutu grumbled.
  “Ah she made up for it Ehutu,” Cassie called over, “she got us this ship second hand.”
  “More like 102nd hand. Listen to that.” Ehutu pointed upward. “I AM FART,” the ship’s A.I said.
  “Every 30 seconds, without fail. Shame it fails at everything else.” We walked over to the cockpit where a mug of tea was resting. Ehutu held it out in front of her. It was a horrible brew, milkier than the famous way. Deirdre started to look around the ship. Ehutu saw her lips form a letter M. “She’s not here. Called away on urgent business. What’s more urgent than you, Deirdre? I swear one half of the resistance is run by nincoms and the other half by poops, who, if they ever had the wherewithal to work together would probably call themselves the poopnincoms!”