The Gnome Comes Home
and forever after October 28 became known as St. Patrick's Day
Captain Kinerah knew she should not have had that breakfast burrito in the galley before they made their jumps. The captain of the survey ship DELOREAN made her approach and kept one eye on the intruments monitoring the status of the nearby star out here on this far tip of the arm of a backwater solar system in the spiral galaxy. The panel told her that this sun was unstable, had been for some time, and was bathing the planet below with high doses of ultraviolet and gamma radiation. She flipped the comlink switch and advised her passengers to hold on as she initiated the braking maneuver to enter the planet's thin atmosphere. Goddam snipe hunt she thought, gripping the joystick and gritting her teeth as the ship bounced along the outer fringes of the atmosphere before letting the computer take over for final approach to the landing zone. Her co-pilot should have been upfront with her, but it seems he had gotten into the burritos as well and was currently curled up in a fetal ball in his bunk midships battling the same intestinal bug she thought glumly.
Bushie the porch gnome felt the heat of the noonday sun on his back like a hot iron. His burlap garment scratched at his withered and chapped flanks as he trudged on I-10 out of Pascagoula and away from the porch for the last time. The Lott clan, bereft of all but the home in Pascagoula let the gnome go as he was of little use to them any longer. The decades of abuse they dished out for sport and the neglect they demonstrated for fun left the gnome of little use to anyone at all. Walking, walking leaving behind the spiders and Karl the black snake who had been his only "friends" for so long. Other than them no one heard his whimpers at night as the ghosts of the dead and maimed soldiers and marines, their wives, fiances, and mothers, and the children unnamed and uncounted as 'collateral damage' in the myriad conflicts he had set in motion tore at him with their skeletal limbs and milky eyes. Ever westward he slouched, Gulfport, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans where he stopped for the night and crawled under a wrought iron bench in the blue light of Jackson Square to doze fitfully, if at all.
The DELOREAN set down on a high ridge overlooking what appeared to be a dry creek bed. The team from the Imperial Archeological and Historical Institute disembarked in the glistening environmental (e)-suits and set about surveying the landscape. This team of 3 men and 2 women were specialists in early human history and they were looking for something very specific on this trip. Much of human history through the early 29th century had been pretty well preserved but there were gaps, there always are. And this team was looking for clues to what happened in the years leading up to the singularity that occurred in the middle 21st century when artificial intelligence became viable and nanotechnology matured freeing mankind from his little world at long last.
Bushie the porch gnome made his way out of New Orleans for the last time. Again, westward he trudged in the heat and the humidity, now add chafing to his troubles as his calloused, fungus infected feet dragged on the cracking pavement out of town and on to Houston and from there further west still. It was 3 days of this when he came over the road and spied what he was looking for, the remains of a small 'ranchette' now overgrown with cedar trees, and wild horses, which the gnome feared in a primal fashion. So he avoided the horse herd, and they in turn gave the gnome wide lattitude because of the smell he gave off. The porch gnome made his way, bells on his nutsack jingling, to a pinion tree by an almost dry creek, oily green water making its way south to, well, wherever, the gnome didn't care. He sat down against that tree and drifted off to a sleep with no dreams, but as he did he felt an almost forgotten rumble in his bowels, and one final release, a salt denuded pretzel in the dust. Well, better'n chokin' on it he thought. And died.
The archeologists had been working this site and a few others like it nearby for the past 2 weeks and they were almost ready to pack up and head home across the galaxy when their most senior and dedicated member, a widower named Collins saw, in the late afternoon sun, a flash down by the creekbed. He walked over to the spot and began brushing away at what appeared to be fossilized human remains fairly well preserved in this atmosphere, but still, not much more than the outlines of bones, except for 2 tiny steel spheres the size of BBs that had settled in the pelvic region of the remains, which Collins collected in a lucite jar and headed back to the ship for final departure.
Once in orbit the team catalogued their samples and Collins finally brought out the miniscule steel spheres and put them under a microscope - on one side had been inscribed the word neuticals and on the other the single letter W.
Captain Kinerah told her passengers to get ready for jump as she made her way back to the head, Collins asked her what was up and the captain, never a fastidious woman, told him "calm down pops, I gotta hit the head and take a cheney, stay away from those black bean burritos. "
Captain Kinerah knew she should not have had that breakfast burrito in the galley before they made their jumps. The captain of the survey ship DELOREAN made her approach and kept one eye on the intruments monitoring the status of the nearby star out here on this far tip of the arm of a backwater solar system in the spiral galaxy. The panel told her that this sun was unstable, had been for some time, and was bathing the planet below with high doses of ultraviolet and gamma radiation. She flipped the comlink switch and advised her passengers to hold on as she initiated the braking maneuver to enter the planet's thin atmosphere. Goddam snipe hunt she thought, gripping the joystick and gritting her teeth as the ship bounced along the outer fringes of the atmosphere before letting the computer take over for final approach to the landing zone. Her co-pilot should have been upfront with her, but it seems he had gotten into the burritos as well and was currently curled up in a fetal ball in his bunk midships battling the same intestinal bug she thought glumly.
Bushie the porch gnome felt the heat of the noonday sun on his back like a hot iron. His burlap garment scratched at his withered and chapped flanks as he trudged on I-10 out of Pascagoula and away from the porch for the last time. The Lott clan, bereft of all but the home in Pascagoula let the gnome go as he was of little use to them any longer. The decades of abuse they dished out for sport and the neglect they demonstrated for fun left the gnome of little use to anyone at all. Walking, walking leaving behind the spiders and Karl the black snake who had been his only "friends" for so long. Other than them no one heard his whimpers at night as the ghosts of the dead and maimed soldiers and marines, their wives, fiances, and mothers, and the children unnamed and uncounted as 'collateral damage' in the myriad conflicts he had set in motion tore at him with their skeletal limbs and milky eyes. Ever westward he slouched, Gulfport, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans where he stopped for the night and crawled under a wrought iron bench in the blue light of Jackson Square to doze fitfully, if at all.
The DELOREAN set down on a high ridge overlooking what appeared to be a dry creek bed. The team from the Imperial Archeological and Historical Institute disembarked in the glistening environmental (e)-suits and set about surveying the landscape. This team of 3 men and 2 women were specialists in early human history and they were looking for something very specific on this trip. Much of human history through the early 29th century had been pretty well preserved but there were gaps, there always are. And this team was looking for clues to what happened in the years leading up to the singularity that occurred in the middle 21st century when artificial intelligence became viable and nanotechnology matured freeing mankind from his little world at long last.
Bushie the porch gnome made his way out of New Orleans for the last time. Again, westward he trudged in the heat and the humidity, now add chafing to his troubles as his calloused, fungus infected feet dragged on the cracking pavement out of town and on to Houston and from there further west still. It was 3 days of this when he came over the road and spied what he was looking for, the remains of a small 'ranchette' now overgrown with cedar trees, and wild horses, which the gnome feared in a primal fashion. So he avoided the horse herd, and they in turn gave the gnome wide lattitude because of the smell he gave off. The porch gnome made his way, bells on his nutsack jingling, to a pinion tree by an almost dry creek, oily green water making its way south to, well, wherever, the gnome didn't care. He sat down against that tree and drifted off to a sleep with no dreams, but as he did he felt an almost forgotten rumble in his bowels, and one final release, a salt denuded pretzel in the dust. Well, better'n chokin' on it he thought. And died.
The archeologists had been working this site and a few others like it nearby for the past 2 weeks and they were almost ready to pack up and head home across the galaxy when their most senior and dedicated member, a widower named Collins saw, in the late afternoon sun, a flash down by the creekbed. He walked over to the spot and began brushing away at what appeared to be fossilized human remains fairly well preserved in this atmosphere, but still, not much more than the outlines of bones, except for 2 tiny steel spheres the size of BBs that had settled in the pelvic region of the remains, which Collins collected in a lucite jar and headed back to the ship for final departure.
Once in orbit the team catalogued their samples and Collins finally brought out the miniscule steel spheres and put them under a microscope - on one side had been inscribed the word neuticals and on the other the single letter W.
Captain Kinerah told her passengers to get ready for jump as she made her way back to the head, Collins asked her what was up and the captain, never a fastidious woman, told him "calm down pops, I gotta hit the head and take a cheney, stay away from those black bean burritos. "
posted by The Vulgarian @ 11:31 PM
2 Comments:
At 5:20 PM,
Anonymous said…
A bleak futuristic landscape dripping with visuals worthy of James Cameron or Ridley Scott.
A poetic final bow of Bushie The Porch Gnome with visuals worth of Coppola.
Where do we go from here, oh Captain my Captain?
At 8:36 AM,
The Vulgarian said…
Um - panic?
Drink more?
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