Loki’s Misshap

It had been months since his return from the north, and Loki was feeling restless.  If he had been a normal child he’d have exerted his energy with games and activities.  Sometimes he bounced off of the Sonnerstein furniture while swinging a wooden sword at the other kids.  He still enjoyed such games, but the lad was not an ordinary child.  He was something compelled to tear apart machinery and create something new in its place.  

Unfortunately, it would make the Clockwinder upset if he climbed the nearest clocktower and tore the mechanisms apart.  He needed to find something else to catch his eye and his fascination.  Something that wouldn’t have him cleaning up the Clockhaven sewers with his own toothbrush.

For the moment he was sitting atop the roof of the Sonnenstein residence and watching the night sky over the Quarry Hill Lake.  He could actually see the moon for once as he gazed out into the distance.  A clear night sky like this was rare even when overlooking the ocean.  He enjoyed the view and reminisced about his journey back to the Sonnersteins home.  The spiders taking over Haven, the kitchen burning from his experiment, finding the abandoned pub after the spiders drove them out, and finally his efforts to restore it as a beergarden. It had been a long time, but he was paying the doctor back for the damages he had made.

As he watched the celestial body floating in the sky like an angel, the lad decided to borrow the family telescope.  He hopped up and slid down the side of the roof, grabbing the edge and slipping inside the window with skillful, yet reckless abandon.  He returned with the large lensed, powerful scope and focused on the moon.

At first everything was out of focus, but eventually Loki began to make out the surface area of the alien surface.  He found craters and ranges that made the boy wonder what was hiding underneath them.  As his imagination soared, dreaming of purple and green mooninites coming in peace to destroy the world, he paused his roving eye as it glimpsed what might have been a man made structure.

He struggled to relocate the strange base that he had passed over too quickly and had lost it completely.  Had he only dreamed that it was there?  Were there people on the moon?  

He scoured the moon desperately trying to recapture the image before he put up the telescope and slid towards the open window, telescope bounding behind him.  If humans had been to the moon then his adoptive father would have had some kind of record!

Loki rushed down stairs to the family library. He looked up past history and recent and was shocked to find that New Babbagers had visited the moon in the past. They had even had a station located there!  He quickly flipped to the page of how they traveled and looked at the aether ship.  The container they had created must have been so tight and heavy, how did they make it that far into the aether?

Loki continued his research learning about the powerful steam engines they used and the wonders of cavorite, a material that made things weigh nothing within space.  It sounded amazing but not something that the little boy could get his hands on.

But to his young mind, Loki was certain that just because he lacked cavorite did not mean that he was stuck on this planet.  If he created a steam engine powerful enough to reach the moon he could still be the first child to reach the moon all by himself.

His impish mind racing, Loki decided that he would build a rocket to reach the moon and meet with the other scientists who lived there.  The only problem was that he didn’t have the equipment to build such an amazing device.  Yet.

Though Loki had somehow overlooked the problem of the mechanics and some of his planning was off, he went about New Babbage harvesting parts from other people’s various mechanical devices. Loki was certain that he could return them after his adventure was done with and hopefully no one would know they were missing.

Once he had gathered the mechanical aspects, he knew that a normal steam engine would not be enough without cavorite.  He would need to create something better than steam.  A Super Steam.  He grabbed one of his Dad’s fine napkins and started to draw a chemical concoction that he now labeled as Deepcore.  With this concoction burning instead of water in the boiler he would reach the moon without any doubt in his impressionable mind.   

He finished his work and looked over the volatile elements he had labeled for his machine.  Grinning, he muttered, “Oi as a matah a fac’ thees ‘ere gonna improve upon aw steam engines.”

Despite his thought for how long this project would take him it consumed several days of his life without him realizing it.  He fell asleep against his work and his family had to retrieve him for bed.  He refused to tell them what he was doing, saying only that it would be a surprise.  When he did finish the lad was surprised at himself and even more surprised at how many gadgets he actually had to…borrow.  He hoped the clockwinder wouldn’t miss just one little clock.  He’d needed the hands for the gauges.

Loki walked along the length of the house before the big payday, before he threw the switch on for the first test run of the new engine using Deepcore. The excitement was overwhelming and he needed a moment to pace the house to steel his nerves.

Soon Loki sat next to the huge machine, which towered over him and could not fit through the front door, and flipped all the switches and pulled the levers. His machine flared to life and the boy let out a squeal of accomplishment.

* PSSSHT* * BZZDT* POP* resounded through the home as gaskets broke loose, a meter shot across the room shattering glass.  The lad ducked for cover as his machine started to burn the strange liquids that he had merged.  

Loki bit his upper lip trying not to curse his misfortune.  He had only just started paying his dad back for the kitchen, and he had forgotten his promise to wait for his dads to start up the engine.   He then realized with the mounting pressure that if he didn’t do anything he was going to destroy the entire house this time.  

He jumped to his feet and rushed to the giant boiler, forgetting the most important thing in his rush to action, and that was to flip the machine off before rushing forth.  He opened the hatch and climbed inside with growing terror that he would not make it in time.  He could smell the pungent pickled fumes of his special steam, which was thick like a fog over the vernian sea.  In his cheer at creating a new ‘steam’ he had forgotten the emergency for the moment.  

Another gasket breaking soon brought the lad back to reality.  The frazzled child blindly felt for what he needed to break apart to stop the machine, and activate the emergency vents.  Tearing apart the metal and devices he had painstakingly put together the lad felt a sudden rush of pressurized steam billow forth and through his device, covering him as he huddled down and held his breath.  He could feel his fur burning as it was coated with a foreign substance as he lost consciousness.

He awoke in his own bed surrounded by the rest of his family, who looked very relieved that he was waking up.  Both Dads were upset that he had broken his promise, but were glad that he had not burnt down the house.  He would lose his lab and library privileges for a few weeks, but his punishments seemed rather light.  

He soon found out why when he was given a mirror.  The Deepcore steam had turned his fur completely blue!