Accidentally Skyward (Space Soup Book 1). New text, audiobook and movie chapter every Monday
Chapter 4 audiobook:
Chapter 4 movie:
In the seconds that followed the incredibly strange sensation - as if someone had reached into his Brian and given it a floody good squeeze - Accidentally Skyward finally thinked an incredibly important think about some thinks that he really should have thinked MANY MORE thinks about before a terrifying starblaster punched the otherwise peaceful streets of Smogington on their proverbial nose.
Accidentally thinked his new think out loud to Quimly, who was still hovering in the trudgeworthy5 just ahead. ‘Maybe I really SHOULDN’T go into work today AT ALL,’ Accidentally postulated tentatively. ‘I mean... if that terrifying starblaster isn’t REALLY here to do flower arranging... then maybe it’s time to... I don’t know... take a sick day?’
Despite the tentativeness of his postulations, Accidentally quickened his pace alongside the trudgeworthy5 in the direction of the MANDATE button factory.
The public alert system crackled back to life again...
‘Hey, you there loitering along beside that trudgeworthy5. Do you have a loitering permit for that? We’ve had some loitering today that hasn’t ended VERY WELL. There’s that STARBLASTER with all the guns, for one. Not that that hasn’t ended well. If sentences with THAT THAT in them are allowed. But... ah... my Public Alert instincts tell me it might not end well... if... ah... that gardening competition it’s... ah... here for... ends up going the wrong way. Not that that is anything to worry about. THAT THAT again. Sorry. Really need to watch that that...’
‘Not that we’re worried here at MANDATE about angular starblasters with ominous weapons arrays landing in Main Street and such. Quite the opposite. Very welcoming of that sort of thing, actually. Just the sort of thing to remain calm about and go on about your business about and such...’
‘Well... maybe not that loitering beside your hovercar business, like your quarf won’t let you in. I mean... that’s really pretty embarrassing just at an alpha level... though my beta readings are also going haywire with... oh... wait... it’s you... nevermind... as you were... well... not completely as you were, if you can manage it. I mean... it really is pretty embarrassing... no wonder your Thinkerlinker rating is in the toilet. Wait... I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you that...’
The public address system trailed off.
‘What was all that about?’ Accidentally asked, looking about for who else might have been loitering alongside their trudgeworthy5, that the public address system might have recognised and been talking to directly.
He shook his head and squeezed his temples to try to clear his thoughts. When that didn’t work, he shook his temples and squeezed his head to try to thoughts his clear. He was quite surprised, and more than moderately relieved, when the losing-his-mind full-body tingle gradually faded back to just his normal full-body tingle of near-paralysing confusion.
‘I mean, honestly, Quimly, what in all heck was that?’ Accidentally groaned.
‘Yes, it probably was, Master Skyward.’
‘What? That makes no sense, at all, Quimly.’
‘Then Quimly has done Quimly’s job much.’
‘What? No. You don’t do those, remember? Jobs, I mean. Or anything else useful. Anyway, why are we talking about YOU... at all? It was MY head. It felt like… like someone was… I don’t know… nevermind. It must have just been a lingering effect of my crippling-galactaphobia passing-out from a bit earlier on. Though my crippling-galactaphobia passing-out has never done that mind-takeover business before. Did you find out the time, like I asked you? While you had your finger up your nose on Thinkerlinker? Or anything else about the ominous angular starblaster with all the guns? And did you happen to see anything about my pineapple sock in there?’
‘Master Skyward is not going to like it,’ Quimly said, sucking his glistening finger.
‘I knew it,’ Accidentally said, breaking into a trot just behind the hovering trudgeworthy5. ‘I’m very on-time, aren’t I? You know that being very on-time is a big red cross on the big-green-button team. Foreperson or forepersony thing Pento Mosaic says on-time is as good as late, and very on-time is as good as very late and as bad as a whole button miss.’
‘Oh… so Master Skyward is just worried about the being very on-time part?’
‘What? Isn’t that what you meant when you said I wasn’t going to like it? Oh, did you really mean that I wouldn’t like the part about the ominous, angular starblaster with the terrifying weapons array? Or perhaps that rather loud, and annoyingly repetitive, doom sound? Or is my pineapple sock lost forever?’
Before Quimly could answer, Accidentally walked past a group of quarfs gathering at the next corner, their fur standing on end in perfect synchronisation, forming what locals called… a fluff forecast. A more reliable predictor of trouble than any official warning system. Accidentally felt an entirely new shiver up his spine as though his own fluff, pathetic by quarf standards, had also chosen to stand awkwardly at attention.
Quimly shrugged. ‘Quimly’s fluff forecast predicts unpredictable squalls with a growing chance of planetary genocide.’
‘Does it?’ Accidentally asked, bluffing interest, as he took the chance to dive for the open door of the trudgeworthy5, again.
Quimly vroomed the hovercar forward again, too, and Accidentally crumpled against the trudgeworthy5’s night-sky blue duco before plopping backward onto the ashen dust, sending up a small sparkling cloud of something probably fairly toxic. He coughed and brushed down his dark-puce overalls again, then wiped his eyes again, then regretted his choice of brush-wipe-cry order as his eyes began to weep even more than usual.
‘Jesus9, just let me into the flarping car, Quimly… or… or… I will tell my parents to put you somewhere entirely safe… where you will live entirely safely… for a good long while.’
Accidentally could tell he’d struck a quarfish chord by threatening Quimly with a long, safe life as the trudgeworthy5 finally pulled to a complete stop with all the doors fully open.
Accidentally rolled in, wincing as he slammed his ribs against the door frame. He flopped into the footwell, whimpering as he smacked his nose against the floor, setting free a pent-up burst of pain that galloped up his face, charged over his head and stampeded down his back all the way to his clenched buttocks.
Before he could scramble up onto the seat, Quimly blasted the hovercar away at bonejarring speed, plastering one of Accidentally’s knees back behind his ear and earing the other one of his knees back behind his behind. Accidentally grunted and cursed as he inched up finger by toe by toe by finger and then by a tongue or something until he clambered onto a seat. His mouth leathery and his pants crinkled with unsightly smudges.
The trudgeworthy5’s dashboard displayed the local ThinkerLinker emergency channel, where a scrolling feed showed increasingly panicked thinks ranging from: Is this part of next month’s apocalypse festival? to: Has anyone seen my emotional support quarf?
Once Accidentally had finished rubbing his various aching bits and bobs, he asked, ‘What is that…’ He paused, unable to voice the theory that the world was actually repetitively saying the word DOOM. ‘You know… that sound. The one that sounds like BOOM… or… even… you know… the d-version?’
Quimly swerved the trudgeworthy5, smashing Accidentally’s face against the side window.
‘What in hell3 was that?’ Accidentally asked, peeling his cheek off the glass.
‘A diversion, like Master Skyward asked for.’
‘I didn’t say diversion. I said d-version. Of the BOOM. Listen. There it is again. Tell me you hear it and I’m not going mad.’
‘Quimly can tell Master Skyward only one of those things. One-point-two at a big, ugly stretch.’
‘How can you say one-point-two of something? Do you cut yourself off before getting too far into the second one?’
‘Quimly cannot s…’ Quimly said, cutting himself off before getting too far into the second one, then vigorously scratching his groin.
‘Oh, I see what you did there,’ Accidentally said, nodding. ‘You cut yourself off to show me how you would do a point two.’
‘No. Quimly just had an itchy bottom.’
‘Ewww. I wish you hadn’t told me that.’
‘Would Master Skyward like Quimly to say what Quimly just said backwards, with some sucking sounds, to make Master Skyward’s wish come true?’
‘What? No. That’s not how unsaying things works, or wishes, or anything at all. Just stick to the point.’
‘The point of Quimly’s bottom?’
‘Double... ewwwww!
‘X.’
‘What? Why did you say X like that?’
‘Master Skyward said W. Quimly thought Master Skyward and Quimly were doing letters.’
Accidentally sighed again and stared out the trudgeworthy5 window to the increasingly hostile-looking streets beyond. Outside, emergency response drones with faded MANDATE logos buzzed uselessly, their outdated programming causing them to trace imperfect geometric patterns representing the MANDATE Incorporated stock price rather than actually responding to the crisis unfolding at ground level.
He thought he heard a random stranger on a nearby street say, ‘I REALLY can’t understand the MANDATE-incorporated ticker price today, Amanda! It really should be going UP with the flower-arranging show and that lovely starblaster with all the guns... not plummeting DOWN like this! It’s almost like there is something someone isn’t thinking us all of the thinks on Thinkerlinker that we need to think so we don’t have to think our own thinks... I think. Or maybe it’s the overfloppigated infloggingtons again! I can’t believe how many times the infloggintons have overfloppigated the flimflam like this so soon after the FLESTIVAL of FLOOP! Hey, isn’t that that guy in purple over there again... if sentences with THAT THAT in them are allowed? Yes, it does seem like he’s following us around. Weird. No, not that! The purple! Who does that?’
Accidentally looked about for the person or persony thing in purple who the random stranger might have been referring to... before giving up and dragging his attention back to the BOOMs and Quimly.
‘That loud, repetitive sound, Quimly, the one like BOOM… BOOM… BOOM, do you know what it is?’
Quimly shook his head.
‘You don’t know what it is, it doesn’t sound like BOOM BOOM BOOM, or you don’t hear it?’
Quimly held up two fingers.
‘The second one? It doesn’t sound like BOOM BOOM BOOM?’
Quimly nodded.
‘How would you describe it, then?’
Quimly furrowed his brow and tapped his chin with an extended forefinger.
‘Back off, you floody quarf,’ Accidentally spat, shooing Quimly away.
Quimly leaned back and furrowed his own brow and tapped his own chin with his own forefinger, instead. ‘Quimly would describe the sound as DOOM DOOM DOOM.’
‘And you don’t think that sounds like BOOM BOOM BOOM?’
Quimly shrugged.
Accidentally noticed people and peoply things outside giving him odd sideways glances through the hovercar windows. Even more odd and even more sideways than usual. He shot back a few odd glances of his own and threw in a grimace for good measure. ‘What’s with the people and peoply things of Smogington today? And what’s that sound? It’s really starting to weird me out.’
‘Quimly thinks Master Skyward should think useful thinks, not terrible thinks.’
‘I don’t have anything BUT terrible thinks, with you as my Thinkerlinker linker linker. Do something useful for a rare change and tell me what ThinkerLinker says about the DOOM sound. There must be some thinks on there about it by now.’
‘Oh, the DOOM sound is just Earth2 speaking to humanity,’ Quimly said with a casualness that made Accidentally’s skin slump.
‘Our… planet… is repeatedly saying DOOM?’
Quimly grinned and nodded excitedly.
‘Why… would it do that?’
‘The Earth2 self-destruct function has been activated. The angular starblaster with the ominous weapons array is just here to make sure everything runs smoothly.’
‘OH NO. You’re not even joking. You look happy! A quarf looking happy and my planet saying DOOM while a starblaster hovers over it means I’m about to have an even worse Tuesday than most other flarping Tuesdays.’
Quimly giggled into his palms.
‘Right. Well. I suppose…’ He paused, weighing his options. ‘I should go into work this morning anyway. I mean, what else am I going to do today? Hide under my bed until the planet explodes? At least if I’m at work when it happens, I’ll get paid for the full day.’
He straightened his shoulders with a newfound determination. ‘Besides, maybe foreperson or persony thing Pento Mosaic will know what to do about all this.’
He sagged his shoulders again with an old-found resignation. ‘Sigh,’ he sighed. ‘What are the chances of foreperson or persony thing Pento Mosaic knowing anything useful to do about anything?’
‘Flarping Tuesdays. Flarping ominous angular starblasters. Flarping self-destructing planets. Flarping, flarping, flarping heck!’
‘Gazoontite, Master Skyward.’
‘Hey! What’s that?’ Accidentally gaped anew, pointing anew at the most bizarre sight he had ever seen... in all his twenty-seven years... on planet Earth2.
If Accidentally made you smile, tell someone. See you next Monday. Thanks!!
Great chapter Rod! I think we could all use an emotional support quarf :-)