# 106: Henry Drake :Welcome Aboard

..............................................................................................................................................

“Just ride on in.” the Voice from the Huge CuttleFish said as it placed a few tentacles on the side of the bridge. The tentacles formed a gangplank...kinda.

Henry looked at the monster. At first glance it had resembled a giant cuttlefish. Up close and personal...not so much. It kind of reminded him of a whale shark with that mouth. The mouth was YUGE, but it was surrounded by tentacles...something like he imagined Chuthulhu might look like. Or perhaps it looked more like a monstrous catfish with tentacles instead of whiskers. He supposed that it didn't really matter.

Henry looked down the gangplank...into the cavernous mouth. Then he looked at Fluffy’s feet. They were almost underwater.

“The Devil or the deep blue sea” he muttered “what a choice.”

He slowly rode fluffy over the gangplank into the mouth.

..........................

“You can get off Fluffy any time” the voice said “ the crew quarters are up that ladder.”

Sure enough..there was a ladder..more like a set of stairs actually.

“You can redecorate it any way you want” the voice said. “Sorry there’s not a whole lot of room.”

Henry entered the crew quarters. It reminded him of one of those large greyhound bus luxury motor home conversions that RockStars used to ride around the country in.

“That’s perfectly Ok.” Henry said as he thought back over the decades in which he lived in a truck. “I’m used to roughing it.”

The most luxurious truck that he’d ever owned paled in comparison to this. He said “ I think I can manage”

......................

After a short orientation in which the functions, capabilities and various options of this Fluffy were explained the voice said. “Well that’s about it. Any questions?”

“What about my Fluffy?” Henry asked.. referring to the one that had cleaned the bridge. "do I drop him off later or what?”

“Oh no.” the voice said. “No need to worry about that. Your old Fluffy has been integrated into this one as we were speaking. It’s part of it now.”

“Gotcha.” Henry said.

“Well if you think of anything else don’t hesitate to call” the voice said. “ I’m gone.”

And it was.

“Imagine that” Henry muttered...then he realized that he’d forgot to ask about the cigars.”Dammit”

......................

A few hours later Henry was reclining in his Captain’s chair smoking a FINE cigar and watching the river shore slide past. Fluffy was following a submerged road that paralleled the shore underwater several feet about it’s surface. He wasn’t making very good time because Fluffy was eating the road, or rather the asphalt. Also every time they come upon a vehicle Fluffy ate it too. Inside Fluffy the vehicle was processed. All chemicals and materials needed to make SSmoke were removed...everything else was dumped.

Fluffy was grazing. Unlike cattle which left cow patties in their wake Fluffy left sand.

He’d found the cigars earlier. Fluffy had a well stocked walk in humidor.

Henry looked down the river road and compared it to his 3D navigational display . It was pretty cool actually. It beat the hell out of anything he’d ever had in a truck.

“It ought to be somewhere around here. “ he muttered

“Ah..there it is” he said as huge tanks appeared from out of the gloom. It was an oil refinery all right. Possible millions of gallons of crude oil in the storage tanks, not to mention diesel, kerosene, and gasoline that had been refined before the disaster.

“Time to get to work” he told himself...

....................

It took a while, a few weeks, perhaps a month, for Fluffy to pretty much eat the refinery. When he was done all that was left was a layer of sand several inches thick. It looked like a beach.

There was no carbon. Not one bit. All the petroleum, the greases, the tar from the road, all the plastics, the paint, was gone. All the organic material was just gone. Fluffy had converted the necessary materials to SCrystal then ‘birthed’ fast mantas periodically during the process of consuming the oil refinery without even slowing down. That which was not used was dumped. Oxygen and Nitrogen bubbled to the surface. Everything else became sand. Fluffy left a lot of sand behind.

Just like on the bridge.

The Fast Manta’s had departed, at speed, upriver.

Just like on the bridge.

The refinery was gone...time to move on.

“There should be a town up here somewhere” Henry said to himself....

........................
The Next Episode Is
#107: Daniel Freemartin -He made the call…
The Previous Episode was
#105: Melvin - Cuddle Huddle…
The First Episode was
# 1 : Prologue…
..............
Book One: SoulStone
..................................................
I'm

@everittdmickey
.
I write
SPECULATIVE FICTION
My books on Amazon.
I engage in political commentary
and
generally talk about anything that strikes my fancy
on
Steemit
and
Sola

When watching the LameStream FakeNews Media

it's hard to tell what’s true or when they are lying isn’t it? It seems that they are more interested in influencing public opinion than they are reporting the facts.
SteemPunk Snail Image from Pixabay