kagablog

Dr Dali sat buckled into his pilot’s chair. He was wearing his Captain Nemo uniform and consulting various holographic schematics of the planet below. He had used the rocket thrusters affixed to the outer walls to take them out of their stationary orbit and into the area above one of the poles. Gradients flickered onscreen, tracking the massive structure as it crawled slowly through the glowing void. A green target light pulsed on one of the maps and a small counter ticked down the diminishing distance between it and the yellow blip of the flying temple. When the lights had aligned, Dr Dali pulled down the brass horn of the intercom.

“Are you in position?” he asked.

Taty perked up when she heard and leaned over to the button console intercom of the shower sphere.

“Aye aye Captain!” she shouted with enthusiasm.

She was in her spacesuit, minus helmet and gauntlets, hovering over the red button and waiting for the command to push it. The Doctor could have of course activated the mechanism from his control booth, but recognized that Taty would need to play some vital part in the rescue operation to avoid getting in the way. To avoid tantrums, he assigned her the role for which she had been rehearsing all month: that of button pusher. Needless to say, she was pleased as punch with her job description.

“Wait for my signal,” his voice boomed back commandingly.

“Roger!” she shouted excitedly.

Back in the command booth, he raised the heavily accessorized walkie-talkie to his cubist face and cleared his multi-form throat.

“Calling Number Nun,” he radioed.

Number Nun, who was adrift in a haunting seascape of shattered ice, received something of a fright at the sound of the strange voice in her head.

“Who is this?” she demanded. “What have you done with the girl?”

“This is Doctor Dali, perhaps you have heard of me? In any case, I can assure you that I have done nothing sinister to the young lady.”

“You are the one responsible for the destruction of all those sinners aren’t you?”

“Why, yes I am as a matter of fact.”

Number Nun nodded to herself, processing this information.

“A most effective purging,” she conceded.

“A compliment?”

“My morality circuitry is still in debate.”

“Well, I’ll just have to do something about that circuitry. Forgive my curtness, but the young lady has asked that I bring you aboard. Are you in favour?”

“Thank you for the invitation. That would be lovely, yes.”

“Top notch. Look over to your right would you…”

Number Nun turned her sensor sweep starboard and detected the enormous tube falling from the skies. It was some miles distant and fell like a great silver snake, crashing into the distant waters. She observed as it began to approach at great speed, trawling through the air like a badly scribbled ballpoint line. Icebergs battered against the machine, as its persistent grinding grew steadily louder. She zoomed in closer to find that the head was dragging some meters above the water, sucking up sea spray. Its suction tube hung too high to draw in water and the waves became distorted into vortices as it passed.

“I have your device in my sights,” she reported.

“As an Excelsior Missionary Model, I assume that you come equipped with standard retractable chest-mounted catch-line?” Dr Dali enquired.

“Of course.”

“Well then, fire your line when the suction device is within range and catch a ride up the tube. I have deactivated the post-atmospheric heating coils, so it should be a relatively smooth trip.”

Ice fractured between the glass breasts of Number Nun. A portal along her sternum opened as a tiny, transparent torpedo extruded, protected by a sliver of casing.

“See you on the other side Dr Dali,” she signed off, readying herself.

The pipe was by now almost upon her, towering into the turbulent sky like the trunk of some endless elephant. She fired her torpedo at the appropriate moment and watched as a glassy line unspooled from her inner core like a glistening spider’s web. It pierced the weathered, metal casing of the vacuum pump at an oblique angle and extruded grappling claws, which held fast. She locked the spool and was then instantly dredged from the surge. Seaweed trailed from her flying form like ragged wings, as she curved above the churning water, smacking through the tops of waves. The pulled in the line and managed to maneuver herself perfectly into the yawning mouth of the encrusted pipe. She disengaged the torpedo head as the powerful inrush caught her, sucking her quickly up the undulating subway to the sky. Above her the dark pipe receded like an endless, flexible train tunnel which whipped about with violent grace. She rode the artificial wind with a rather smug look upon her face, almost as if she had known all along that something like this would happen.

When Dr Dali was certain that the android Madonna was in the tube, he pulled down the tube and sent word to Taty.

“Alright, you can retract it,” he called. “I’ll keep the suction going till she’s aboard.”

Taty slammed the red button in triumph, knocking herself horizontal with the force of the blow.

“You can go meet her in the chamber I showed you on the map,” Dr Dali sad, signing off.

Taty squealed with delight, pulling on her helmet and gauntlets before launching herself up the corridor. She flustered maniacally through the lounge and control booth, rushing out of the airlock before the Doctor had time to turn. She purged the passage and entered the icicle blasted passages of the haunted castle in a fizz of joy. Light strips along her gauntlets, helm and chest console illuminated her like a deep-sea jellyfish, while she passed through the massive honeycomb of desolation, dodging tables, chairs and other weightless obstacles. When she finally emerged into the sunken lot, the pump site was gushing out a majestic plume of frozen air. This geyser fluffed out into the yawning, floodlit space in a ceaseless detonation of glittery vapour crystals. The pipe was evidently still in the process of clearing the atmosphere and frozen gasses gushed steadily, knocking about the weighty boulders of sea ice as though they were nothing more than soap bubbles. Taty soared down from the ceiling trap and swirled happily into the twinkling mist, searching this way and that for a sign of her long lost friend. The silver plume abruptly died as the pipe left the atmosphere, venting its last dregs of shimmering effluvium into the clutter of ice. When the torso of Number Nun eventually sailed from the hole, trailing fluid dynamics and frozen seaweed, Taty was waiting above like a candy coloured angel. She caught the limbless torso of the robot and hugged her helmet against the translucent collarbone as they both twirled into a spin, pin-balling off the various glacial masses. Number Nun scanned for frequency and all of a sudden could hear Taty crying out in her head.

“Mother Superior!” she was shouting, clinging to the nun as though she were the raft of salvation itself.

“Oh Childbride,” Number Nun tut-tutted down at her with a smile. “No need for formalities.”

“I’m so happy now,” Taty sobbed, as they spun slower and slower, drifting through the sparkling fields and ice blocks, finally en-route to the moon.

Dr Dali was at his monitors, watching images of the pair turning in the mist. He switched camera angles, as though at the ballet, before finally losing interest. He flicked a switch and killed the engines of the suction device, steepling his white gloves in deep thought. He turned to Devoid who was playing with a bundle of wires.

“We have plenty of sex-droids down in storage which I can cannibalize for parts,” he mused rhetorically to the god. “Get some arms and legs for this nun.”

Devoid finally managed to un-snag the wires and a series of monitors went blank. It twittered to itself, clawing away at something else, utterly oblivious to the Doctor’s prattling. Dr Dali turned happily to the little god and regarded it with academic seriousness.

“Soon we will let you out my little friend,” he confided grandly. “Soon you will be fulfilling your great and sacred quest – all those centuries you waited in the dark! Soon it will all be over…”

Devoid fell off the table, fighting with a paper clip.