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Ooozing on the River

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“Everyone was fairly tense” The DragonLady told them all.

“Is it any wonder that we were?” She asked them “We were, quite literally, if not going WHERE no man had gone before, we were going in a mode of transportation unlike any before”

“But we managed” She continued. “Everyone held up fine. If I recall from what Cody told me.....”

DRAGON LADY

The Banana Slug defined ‘massively parallel, highly redundant and widely distributed’. It was all of that. Everything on it and in it had a back-up and the backups had backups of their own. Triple redundancy was the minimum, hence the three control centers I was told.

At the tip of each eyestalk and at the tip of the tail were the functional equivalents of the wheelhouses of cruise ships or of the cockpit for an aircraft. Like those of the cruise ships, the Banana Slug’s wheelhouses were roomy. The Magi were not the least bit crowded by the presence of the observers. In fact there was plenty of room for more. I was with the ArchMage in one eyestalk, Marc TwoFeathers was with the second Mage, that would be Chad in the other eyestalk. The tail pod held the Third Mage Josh and Captain Parmalee.

The SmokeShip continued to ooze off the demolished island and into the water. Soon it was entirely off site yet only partially submerged. The unlikely apparition continued to ooze on.

“We’ll bottom crawl for a while to see how things shake out, when we get further downriver into deeper water we’ll see it she’ll float and how the ripple-rouser works. Open the forward bay doors Hal, we might as we’ll seine for carbon,“ The ArchMage said.

I was old enough to know what he meant, the other’s, not so much.

“Just open the door dear,” I told Marc, who had no clue what Shelby had meant. “He’ll get better. Perhaps. One can hope.”

A totally baffled Marc, did indeed open the forward bay doors which looked remarkably like a huge mouth. The Banana Slug began to gargle river water as it moved. Any impurities were filtered out of the water, processed and then routed to Smoke Forges. Never can have too much ssmoke was our mantra.

The navigational canal of the River in this section was mandated by Federal Law to be at least nine feet deep and four hundred feet wide although it was considerably deeper now due to the flooding. The Banana Slug took a big chunk of that and a considerable height extended above the waters surface.

I noticed that the ArchMage seemed nervous.

“Bridge coming up?” I asked.

“You can see it now.” he replied, nodding slightly.”I’m glad we are moving so slow.”

We were, indeed, slowly crawling along the channel bottom toward a highway bridge that spanned the river. The Banana Slug slid under the bridge easily. No problem at all.

“I thought we were taller,” He muttered.

“Now’s a fine time to find out” I said to him.

Had we been floating there might indeed have been a problem. The spinal mounted wizard’s tower might have been too tall, even when fully retracted as it was now. Bottom Crawling had definite advantages.

Through the dark of night and in the cold fog, the Banana Slug crawled down river. From time to time it was joined by the recalled Bottom Feeders and the Kraken. The robots would transfer their loads of Ssmoke their mother ship then fall into formation, collecting yet more pollution as they swam along. Eventually there was a fair sized, if unlikely, formation spanning the entire width of the river. We were a clean up, pollution sucking formation heading south. We left clean water and clean river bottom in our wake.

At the end of it’s existence as a geological feature in the river, my Island had been pretty much totally transformed to Ssmoke already. No one but those of us who lived there knew that however. The sewers, the grow tubes, the dome, all the infra-structure for that matter and most of the homes and other buildings were smart-matter. The discovery of large coal seams under its surface had been a bonus. The coal had been converted to Ssmoke. The smart matter had reconfigured, and the town had just, left. It had crawled away on the river bottom.

Leaving no trace of it’s existence behind.

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To Be Continued

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I hope you are enjoying this
Yarn

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Perhaps you might also enjoy
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That's my Blog
in which I pontificate on Technology,
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In my Blog I write about,
and hopefully engage my readers in discussions about,
the possible lifestyles that we will encounter after
TEOTWAWKI happens.
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It WILL happen, one way or another,
probably something in between.
One thing is for sure and for certain though,
the world will NOT remain the same.
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So Come on Down!
Sit a spell.
I got the Coffee on.

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The Hobo Picture is a Public Domain image from
Samantha at the Worlds Fair
by Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
Illustrated by
Baron C. De Grimm published by
Funk and Wagnall's Company 1893
Unless noted
All other Illustrations are from
Pixabay

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