Epic Tales from Beautiful Minds: An Ooorah Anthology

#TeamEcrivain - Part Four: Normal? - @NimrodKirkpatrick

Ocean Deep: Someone Has To...

by AngusEcrivain

"I...never knew you... had such... a... vivid imagin...ation..." Jake stammered. The water was inordinately cold and in truth it was about all he could do to slowly kick his legs in an effort to keep the blood pumping through his veins. There was no way he was about to trade places with Leanne though for whilst they had both been through more than enough over the few hours prior, she'd had it far worse. And besides, what kind of gentleman would he have been had he requested she shift her body into the water that he might rest upon the small inflatable?

"Aurora sounds like... my... kinda'... woman..."

"She would," replied Leanne, chuckling. "Listen, Jake... You're gonna' freeze to death if you don't get out of the water soon."

"Yeah... I'll be... honest... I'm kinda' hop...ing the... pleuros decide... to eat... me first..."

"Well it's gonna' be that or the storm," she said, bluntly as she stared out towards the horizon. It was even darker there now and she could see the rolling clouds with far more clarity than before. "I mean, I definitely can't see rescue getting here any time soon."

"Someone will... Li... some...one has... to..."

// Normal?

by NimrodKirkpatrick //

The little orange-haired troll doll stared blankly from the dash and Dave 'Mac' McEnnesworth stared right back.

It was a staring contest he was never going to win, he knew that, but he had to try. That troll doll had been staring at him with its big orange hair, its plastic naked torso and those teeny tiny heart boxer shorts for weeks.

He wouldn't have minded, either, had it not been for the fact he had absolutely no recollection, none whatsoever, of acquiring the bloody thing on any of his off-ship jaunts, let alone fixing it to the dash with bloody superglue, of all things.

"Who are you, really?" Mac asked, shaking his head as he conceded victory once again. "Where the fuck did you come from?"

Mac chuckled. Idiot. It's not like the damn thing's gonna' answer!

He rose from his seat and stretched, then turned from the console and staring troll. He ducked as he exited the relatively tiny bridge, consisting as it did of nothing more than a computer console although granted, it was a ridiculously high-tech console with a raw processing capacity of ten Yottabytes but nothing more than a computer console nonetheless, set into the dash and a very, very comfortable wingback armchair.

The bridge might have been small but the vessel, Tracy, herself, was enormous, although most of her insides were taken up by the cold fusion generators that powered the jump drive. It took an inordinate amount of power, you see, to jump between different Universes, and as such Tracy had, on more than one occasion, been mistaken for a small moon.

Mac lit an Ecrivain's Special, hacking up what felt like half a lung in the process, as he made his way to the Chamber of Worlds, so-called because it was from there that he was able to select which Universe was his next port of call. Tracy would argue with him, of course, but eventually they always agreed to disagree, once Mac threatened to disable her voice recognition unit.