#128: Slither down the river

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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.

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. The DragonLady, Kamiko Akiyama, 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 if 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.

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

“Just open the door dear,” She 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 the 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.

The ArchMage seemed nervous.

“Bridge coming up?” Kamiko asked.

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

They 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” She said to him.

Had they 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 Kraken. The robots would transfer their loads of Ssmoke to their mother ship then fall into formation, collecting yet more pollution as they proceeded. Eventually there was a fair sized, if unlikely, formation spanning the entire width of the river. They were a clean up, pollution sucking formation heading south. They left clean water and clean river bottom in their wake.

At the end of it’s existence as a geological feature in the river, Flint Island had been pretty much totally transformed to Ssmoke already. No one but those 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. other than warning signs on the bridge above to alert anyone to NOT take the exit. The exits had also been barricaded.

Authors's note: the previous episode has been revised. You might want to read it again. I apologize for any inconvenience.

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The Next Episode will be
# 129: Bridge Out…
The Previous Episode was
# 127: Banana Slug…
the First episode was
#1 : Prologue
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