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The Journal of Arnold: End Week 3

Day 17  and 18 Wed and Thursday: House boat shopping

Today I had come to the conclusion that the best approach was to find a house boat so that if everything went south we could still retain our ‘home’ and leave the city of New Babbage behind.  I traveled the ”steamlands” searching for a seller, but everything I found was way too expensive.  On Thursday the results were not much better until almost the very end of the day just before midnight as I was returning to New Babbage.

Three odd men were unloading furniture off of a very old and rusty submarine.  The leader was wearing a diving helmet despite the fact he was unloading furniture, another was wearing some strange robes I hadn’t seen before and were definitely not native to New Babbage, and the other was smaller than a mouse wearing a tiny camera on his neck and taking pictures all the time.  The tiny fox I had met before…right after I had found the hospital for the first time. 

I was watching the events, intrigued, and eventually the leader kicked the sub and yelled “Stupid piece of junk!”

“It’s not the submarine’s fault.  It’s this place.”  Explained the man in the robes.  “New Babbage must be interfering with the engine’s power source.  It just can’t generate enough power to turn the propellers.

“If that’s the case at least everything else is working.”  Said the tiny one.  “When you need to leave you can just get a tug boat to take it further out, you don’t need to abandon it here!”

That caught my interest, especially since they were unloading furniture.  The possibility that this could double as a home was very promising to me, and the fact they were just going to dump it here meant I could probably get it cheap and still pay the docking fees with the prize money.

“Enough of that supersitious nonsense you two!  The ship is just dying and I don’t want to get trapped inside when it stops working all together.  Besides, I need a submarine that can work in the Vernian sea for the foreseeable future!  We’d have to get a new one anyways, and then what use would this one be!”

I walked up behind the man and asked, “How much would you like for it?”

The leader jumped, twisted, and fell down due to the weight of his equipment.  “Don’t scare people like that!”

In the end the man simply gave the wreck to me.  They took almost everything out except for a few things they decided they didn’t want anymore.  I was given the ‘grand tour’, but there wasn’t much to note except for a strange sound towards the back.  It was like a heart beat with a strange sound like a whale accompanying it.

“What’s that noise?”  I asked.

“Oh, that’s just the power source.  It’s usually much louder.”  Explained the leader, who I found out was here to study the local wildlife in the Vernian sea.

For a moment I thought of mice running on a wheel, but this was a much louder.  “So what’s the power source?  A baby whale swimming around on a wheel?” 

He didn’t have any clue what I was talking about of course, but he paused for a moment and then crossed his arms and shrugged, “If you believe the man who sold it to me fifteen years ago, a phoenix heart.”

I paused and stared at him the same way I had stared at Mr. Harvey when he told me there was a local evil mastermind.  “You’re kidding.”

“No, that’s what they told me, but I wish I was joking!  They even had the nerve to claim it’s combustion capabilities were eternal and would last forever!  It’s lasted fifteen now…and here I was starting to think it might actually run as advertised!  Bah!  Whatever it really is they just made it make these strange sounds to be mystifying if you ask me!  I’m warning you so that you can’t claim I didn’t…it may only be a matter of time till the doors won’t open either.”

“Wonderful.”  I said while shaking my head.  Knowing my luck it would probably happen too.  But I didn’t care what actually powered the ship so long as the doors still worked for the moment.  And I could always do something about the power source later…probably.  Besides the idea of a tug boat taking this place to our next home didn’t seem like that bad of an idea if things didn’t work out.

Day 19 Friday:  Finally!

It was well past midnight when they finally had moved everything out and where they were going.  He signed the papers over to me, though we didn’t have any witnesses.  Still I suppose the pictures that the little fox took will work for that.

I paid for the sea rights and then I went about the rest of the day looking for furniture, rust removers, and just basically window shopping.

But the best thing came when I happened upon Mr. Harvey and Miss Maddox meeting in the cafe.  The conversation had apparently gone well and she had been offored a position as the resident psychologist. 

He gave us a tour, though I had already roamed the entire area I knew
that Miss Maddox hadn’t yet.   Though this was when I learned how to get into the real patient rooms at the hospital. While we were looking at those, they told me that he was willing to train me as a nurse and Miss Maddox happily voluntered me.

Whatever.  I have no pride.  It will also give me something to do with my life considering the conversation with Bahn earlier made me realize I’m not actually living it at the moment.

We continued the tour and ran into Yang.  He seemed worried about something but in the end there wasn’t much substance to it.  It amounted to gossip about boogeymen really, though he was honestly concerned what he was saying was true and worth worrying about.  He wouldn’t even talk about it till we were deep beneath the waves in the facility.

I’ll keep an ear out though, just in case there’s something to all this.

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2 Comments

  1. Tepic Harlequin Tepic Harlequin April 17, 2011

    errrmmm…. don’t go to heavy on the runst removers, did that once on a boat i found floating, an after i finished, there wern’t no boat!

    • Gager Gager April 17, 2011

      I’ve decided the best approach is to clean up the interior a little and get rid of some of the rust and then line the walls with some kind of padding.  Even if I removed all the rust I wouldn’t want to fall against metal if the ship were to be rocked about.

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