The Stag Gem: Part 1 Chapter 6

Slightly above Earth…

“So that’s it, huh?”  Captain Limwash looked out of the view port window to the large blue green orb that hung patiently and alone within the infinite blackness of space.

Fractor, the bowl shaped medical robot rolled over on his three wheels to his large nosed leader who peered outside their floating egg shaped silver ship; his beady eyes staring cautiously towards their destination.

“Yes, Sir Limwash.  That is indeed Earth.”

“It looks a lot like our planet… green, blue, and full of clouds,” Limwash noted.

“Yes, most of the oxygen breathing inhabited worlds have a similar biosphere,” the robot responded.

“Oh cool, it’s got an orbital!” Limwash pointed towards the lifeless, gray moon.

Fractor’s programmed personality appeared slightly annoyed by his captain’s enthusiasm.  “Yes, sir; the planet has an orbital…”  He rolled back to the small and cramped flight deck.  “Master Limwash, we need to begin our descent to the surface now.”

The captain took one last glance towards the moon, “Isn’t that pretty large for an orbital?  It looks like it might be just as big as our home.”

“This Earth is much larger than Argonia.  So it is to be noted that its gravity will be much stronger than what we will be used to.  That is something for you to be aware of if you still plan on carrying around that incredibly large and unyielding sledgehammer of yours.”

Limwash slid down into his flight chair and fastened the seat belt.  “I would have you know that my sledgehammer is not just a weapon.  In my country, it is our cultural heritage.  All boys who go through a rite of passage are given a large hammer.  It’s a symbol of manhood.”

Fractor turned to his captain, “That is not true, sir.”

“You don’t know that!”  Limwash flipped the ship’s control over to manual; and began to maneuver the craft’s descent.

“Actually I do, Sir.  You ordered me to download all of the ship’s memory and that included detailed accounts of our whole planet’s recorded history and racial practices of all 107 countries and 354,378 cultures ranging from the prehistoric to present day high school cliques.  Absolutely nowhere is there mention of sacred large sledgehammers as a symbol of male pride, dominance, or prowess.”

“For a pile of wires and gears, you have quite the mouth on you.”

“Turd Out, Sir.”

“Excuse me?”

“It is a popular phrase of affirmative exclamation that is used by the Conrad Regional High School Football team, Sir.  I chose to use it to provide you with an example of the extent of my understanding of our host planet and emphatically agree with your last statement.

“Well, all that useless knowledge didn’t push out all the medical skills you have been programmed to do, did it?”

“Turd Down, Sir.”

“Stop saying, ‘turd’.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The ship began to shake violently as the large silver egg-shaped craft began to enter the Earth’s atmosphere.  “What did we do, get stuck with the oldest pod in the fleet?”

“It appears due to the planet’s much larger size, our ship has not been built with the specifications of Earth’s thick air,” Fractor yelled over the beeps, alarms, and the roaring wind outside.

“Thick air?  I am going to be able to breathe it once we land,” Limwash yelled back.  He frantically steered the craft as it raced through the clouds.  The friction of their speed created the allusion of a large ball of fire streaking down towards the planet’s surface.

“Absolutely, Sir; but it will take some time to adjust.” Fractor looked over at the control panel and watched the red digital numbers on the screen quickly increase.  “We might be traveling a little fast, Sir.”

“Introducing Fractor!  Medical Technician, History Buff, and Master of the Obvious!” Limwash yelled out as he continued to hysterically flip switches and turn knobs on the control panel, hoping to find the one button that might slow their descent.

Out the view port window, the white clouds finally ripped aside to show a gray and green continental land mass.  As they hurtled closer, major geographical entities began to take form.  The gray colors began to take on the distant shapes of mountain ranges.   The green colors started to form more detail with minuscule long grids of roads and highways, darting through specks of trees. 

A Foggy grey spot grew larger, turning into a collection of dots, then into a smoggy and unkempt collection of boxes and cartons stacked onto each other.  The boxes quickly took the shape of tall buildings reaching out above other buildings that in turn, appeared to sit callously among buildings smaller than them.  Wires, pavement, colors, signs, trash, and a sea of movement from people and vehicles came into focus as the ship rocketed towards the massive city.

“Fractor if I can’t slow this thing down, I’m going to end up crashing and killing hundreds of people!”

“Right there, Sir!  Can you aim between those two buildings,” The robot pointed towards an alley between two large red brick apartment buildings.  Besides two metallic green dumpsters and a black painted fire escape attached to the side of one of the tenements, the space was fairly empty.

“I don’t think we’re going to fit,” yelled the captain over alarms and beeping coming from the control panel as he struggled with the steering handles.

The alley came rushing towards the pod and with a large crash, there was immediate silence and darkness.

After either seconds or hours passed, Limwash slowly opened his eyes.  The inside of the pod hissed slowly as the air pressure in the cabin began to match the air pressure outside.  Some small lights on the control panel flickered on and off, giving the only light in the cramped and dark space.

Limwash grunted and sat up, rubbing the back of his neck.  “I can’t believe we survived that…” he unfastened his seat belt and felt around in the darkness for a light switch somewhere on the panel in front of him.  “Fractor?  Are you okay?” The lights hummed on once the switch was discovered.

Behind him, Fractor rolled back and forth on his side like a turtle on its back trying to get up.  “I am 97 percent functional, Sir.”

Limwash cracked a smile and crawled over the back of the seat and turned his bowl-shaped companion over onto his three wheels.  “There you go.  100 percent functional,” the captain remarked.

“Thank you, Sir.”

Limwash bent down and picked up his massive sledgehammer, “Are we ready to greet the people.  I’m sure there is a huge crowd gathered around the ship by now.”

“We need to be careful, Sir.  We have no idea what their reaction is going to be.  The inhabitants of this population center could be very hostile, or the host government could be less than welcoming.”

“Bah!”  The captain held up his hand.  “I am not only a skilled leader, but also a diplomat!”  He opened up the silver hatch and stepped out into the light.

“Oh!  Gah!”

“Sir, are you alright?”  Fractor rolled over to the doorway.  Limwash stood on a large black bumpy plastic floor.  Above him was a collection large greasy paper canvases that covered the ship.

“It smells like fried food here!  Are you sure this air is breathable?”   Limwash looked around.  Sitting next to the black plastic floor that descended into darkness was a large and deep paper barrel with a yellow letter ‘m’ painted on the side of it.  Black bubbling water rested in the bottom of it.

“Where are we, Fractor?  I thought we were aiming towards the alley?”

“Sir, I can not find any doorway, just cavernous depths.  Perhaps if you can climb through the roof we might be able to get a location of where we are.”

Limwash nodded.  Grabbing his massive sledgehammer in on hand, he climbed up the pod and broke through the oily ceiling.  His eyes immediately fell onto a twenty foot tall metal green wall.  With a quick glance, he saw the wall surround him from all sides.  They landed in some large private yard. 

Using the rusted indentations in the wall as foot holdings, the captain managed to eventually reach the top of the wall.

“Have you been able to determine where we are, Sir?”  Fractor managed to crawl through the hole in the paper canvas roof as he yelled up to his leader.

Limwash turned back down to the robot, his face frozen in fear and confusion. “It appears there has been a gross miscalculation,” he cautiously said.

“I do not understand, Sir.  Did we crash further away than we expected?”

Limwash stood up on the top of the wall, his hands outstretched.  “No!  We landed right in the alley!”  He kicked his foot in the air out of anger and confusion, “Right in the frickin’ dumpster!”

“What an interesting turn of events,” Fractor said.  “It appears that since our planet is twentieth the size of Earth, we are twentieth the size of its inhabitants.”

Limwash groaned and sat down on the edge of the dumpster.

“That would mean that you are roughly three and a half earth inches high!”

“How are we going to find this Stag Gem now?!”

“So that would mean that your massively large sledgehammer is the only normal sized object we have with us.”

“Would you stop calculating things?!”

“As you wish, Sir ‘LIttle Man With A SledgeHammer’,” Fractor joked.

“… holy turd.”