Monday, August 27, 2007

Marooned

weiwizportrait0807This is a portrait I sketched of Weight Wizard the other day. He'd been sitting so long, just staring into space (i.e. that stuff right outside the spaceship) that I wanted to capture it. Those big, soulful eyes--! Even when he's pensive, he's beautiful. And that little Hercule Poirot mustache I made him grow makes him look ten years older, and three times as Belgian. Granted, the severity of his expression and the fact I used red pastel (the only thing within reach) makes him look like a Soviet dictator on a bad hair day, but hey, it's a sketch! What the hell do you people want from me? Blood? 'Cause that's in short supply right now. But yeah, Weight Wizard's a pint-sized hottie! I just wish... well, I'll talk more about Weight Wizard in a bit. You probably want to know about how we're doing with the whole "Tusker destroyed our main engine" problem.

I'm happy to report good news in that department. Yes, things are looking up! We're still reliant on our backup engine, which doesn't have anywhere near the power we need to propel the ship, but we've finally cobbled together a plan for getting out of this whole big mess. And it's thanks in large part to Storm Boy, believe it or not! Y'see, he's at long last off the sauce, and he's a real fountain of ideas now. Sometimes his thoughts run away from him and he starts off on some dumb tangent and he's babbling so rapidly I can barely understand what he's saying. However, all I have to do is slap him (which he seems to enjoy) and he gets right back on track. Kind of like when you whack the side of a holovision set to make the picture come in clearer. Simply put, the plan is this: we're going to use the countless bolts of Tharrian heat-absorbing fabric we've "acquired" and some other parts salvaged from the ship itself to construct some massive solar energy collectors. They will power up a battery of Storm Boy's design that should give us enough juice to limp into the nearest spaceport for proper repairs. As a reward for his hard work and sobriety I've promoted him from "Swab Trainee" to "Bosun." The news was enough to render him speechless. Finally.

Later, I overheard Storm Boy whispering to Rainbow Girl about some "surprise" he was cooking up for me. I don't know whether to be excited or scared.

Weight Wizard, on the other hand... I'm not sure what's going on with him. He seems pretty restless, like he always gets before he fakes his own death and runs off. Of course, there's nowhere he can go right now. Last night I tried to set up a romantic evening for us in our cabin, with candlelight and kangobronc steaks and a selection of scented oils and metal polishes, and also I had the stereo playing "our song" ("Superbeast" by Rob Zombie) over and over, but he never showed up. I hobbled throughout the ship, looking for him. I finally found him in the ship's library. He'd hacked into a file of love letters for Plant Lad from his various boyfriends. (I'd taken the liberty of having them forwarded to the ship while he's in his current dormant state). He was crying. It broke my heart. He looked up at me and went pale. His lips parted, like he wanted to say something. But he just couldn't conjure the words, somehow. He pushed past me and ran down the corridor. Maybe... maybe I'm smothering him. But he'll get over this, whatever it is. He just needs some time.

Rainbow Girl, Storm Boy, and Tusker are hard at work on the solar collectors and the battery right now, with me checking up on them every hour or so. And I ordered Weight Wizard to pitch in. It's not like he has anything better to do, what with my dingus having altogether vanished. And it's good for him to focus on something other than the two of us. I don't know how much he's contributing, though, because the rest of the crew isn't very fond of him, or vice-versa. So none of them ever ask Weight Wizard to do anything. I can see him through the porthole right now. He's just floating around out there in his spacesuit, all by himself, at the end of his tether.

7 comments:

Phillip said...

Jeeze. I hope it gets better for y'all, BB.

Bill S. said...

Weight Wizard looks even more nefarious than usual.

Jeremy Rizza said...

Phillip: Thanks. I'm sure everything will work out. Still, if you could start some kind of e-mail chain letter thing on my behalf I'd really appreciate it.

Bill S.: You're like the fourth person who's said that to me today.

Jon the Intergalactic Gladiator said...

TOo bad Triple A doesn't go to that sector, huh?

Jeremy Rizza said...

They have a no-pirates policy, anyway. The bastards! So you fake a distress call a couple or ten times and confiscate all their maps and coffee mugs and suddenly you're "the boy who cried wolf." What. Ever.

Skeleton Munroe said...

Sorry to hear about your dingus. My condolences.

So none of Rainbow Girl's various forms can survive in vacuum long enough to fly for help?

Jeremy Rizza said...

I'm taking up a collection for a memorial to my dingus. Er, do you have a PayPal account?

Rainbow Girl's top speed is about 35 miles per hour. So by the time she'd made it to the next spaceport, I'm pretty sure I would have killed and eaten the rest of the crew. (But not because we'd run out of food.)