Huzzah!
Five snowflakes fell from the sky, so our administrators decided to cancel school. =/ They tend to over-react the weather here in good ol' Virginia. Thats why I decided to write the chapter early.
Now i'm bored.
And I tried to make the fuzzle sad. I'm glad it worked.
<~*~>
The generator room was a huge chamber built into the heart of the craft. Lined around its inside were two low floors of metal grating with long pathways leading towards a shimmering, cyan-green cylinder in its center. The object was tall and heavily plated with intricate metal gears and tubes that were constantly rotating, generating its own energy. At its top, surrounded by thick steel and a sticky silver liquid, was a paper-thin computer chip the size of a Vykker's fist. It was programmed with artifitial intelligence and ran on a tight scheduel: at exactly 10:00 pm, it turned all the lights in the entire craft off. At 6:00 am, it turned the lights in the entire craft on, minus the basement. The lights in the basement were always kept off.
It powered the entire ship. Certain parts of the generator could be deactivated, such as the private personel locks, but they entire thing could not be turned off, no matter the circumstances.
The ship was on a set course to an airfield hundreds of miles away; it would be three weeks before it reached its destination...
<~{.epidemic.}~>
Another day, another dollar. To interns this saying meant nothing. They were grossly underpaid and absurdly overworked, and, seeing as most worked in windowless airships their entire lives, often lost their conception of time. It was slightly depressing, and Nedd tended to ignore it.
Nedd was busily stacking fuzzle cages in order of use. The fuzzles were getting a kick out of scaring him; he was the kind of intern who seemed to be a magnet for trouble. He was always getting mauled by fuzzles or catching life-threataning diseases in some freak accident, and because of this he was always wide-eyed and wary. A fuzzle in a cage bared its teeth and puffed up its fur, a wild look in its eyes. Nedd jumped back, arms flailing, and felt ridiculous when he realised that the fuzzle was just trying to scare him. Nedd frowned smugly and shook the fuzzle's cage around, watching as it was thrown cruely from side to side.
When he was finished with his chore, Nedd pushed the cart of stacked fuzzles back into place and turned to leave. But something was wrong. He looked around, trying to figure out what was bugging him; he knew something was out of place, but what? He spotted an empty glass quarrantine cage in a corner. It was wrapped in a chain attatched to a broken padlock. He jumped in suprise, his head barely missing the cieling.
OH SH--!
He turned and started running at the same time, knocking over his freshy-stacked fuzzle cages. He paid it no mind. Nedd sped hastily down the hall, practically trampling anybody who got in his way, until he came to the domed room where his boss was working. The room was full of vykkers diligantly disecting an elum, but no interns. Nedd gulped; this made explaining a whole lot harder.
He ran up to his boss, humming loudly as he tried to explain his predicament. His boss spotted him and snapped
"What?! What is it this time? Did you give yourself a concussion again---"
"MMMMMMM!" Nedd howled. He grabbed a notebook and a pen and furiously scrabbled a few words, only to find that the pen was out of ink.
"What ever it is," his boss said shrilly, "it can wait."
Nedd began furiously making signals with his hands, but he was moving so fast that his boss had no idea what he was trying to say. A few more vykkers threw in some suggestions.
"I thinks he's saying that the guard slogs broke loose." One said.
"The ships' hurtling towards the ground?" Another asked.
"No, I think he's saying he burned a hole in the floor with a bottle of sulphuric acid--"
"What? This", a vykker mimiced one of Nedd's motions, "does not look like sulphuric acid at all!"
Nedd slapped his forehead and growled loudly. This was getting nowhere. He decided to use cherades, only slower.
He tapped his wrist with three fingers.
Three words. He held up one finger.
First word. He tapped his wrist with three fingers again.
Three syllables.
"Okay." His boss said. All the vykkers in the room left what they were doing and joined in, unaware of the bad news Nedd brought. Nedd looked around, trying to figure out a way to describe Cylonite. He rushed over to the dead elum's head, picked up a knife, and made a careful insicion across on eye. A blackish liquid dripped out. He pointed to it furiously.
"Eye goo!" A vykker said exitedly, sure that he was correct. Nedd shook his head. He opened a drawer, picked up a syringe, and pretended to laborously fill it with the blackish syrup. His boss shrieked,
"Cylonite!"
Nedd nodded exessively. His boss beamed. "Hey, I got it! So the first word is Cylonite."
Nedd held up two fingers,
second word, looking pleased; this was working better than he thought it would. He tapped his wrist with two fingers.
Two syllables.
He looked around. A fuzzle in a cage was dozing quietly. He pointed at it.
"Fuzzle!" another vykker called out. Nedd nodded again. He held up three fingers,
third word, and tapped his wrist with two fingers.
Two syllables.
Nedd thought long and hard. How could he possibly describe such a complicated word? He ran over to the sleeping fuzzle and opened its cage. It didn't notice. Nedd angrily slapped it and it sprang to life, hissing and snarling. The cage was wide open. It jumped out, biting and hissing, and scurried under a desk.
A vykker snapped, "Hey! Why did you do that? I spent days trying to catch that thing---"
"ESCAPED!" His boss yelled. Nedd nodded and waited expectantly. The vykkers were silent for a long time, unsure of what to do next. Suddently, everything fell into place.
"OH MY ODD!" A vykker screamed. "THE CYLONITE FUZZLE ESCAPED!!"
It was chaotic! Ten vykkers dove all at once at the emergency control button drilled to the wall. One of them grabbed it, punched it roughly, and pulled a phone-like object from its side. He spoke into it hurriedly.
We have an escape in section four, room 31.... caution advised... we have a dangerous, Cylonite-infected fuzzle roaming the premesis...
A mere seconds later four interns dressed into protective armor burst into a room, each wielding a thick rubber hose connected to a box strapped to their backs. They turned them on and immediately began firing a spray of anti-bacterial foam that flooded the room and bleached all the color from the walls. It was up to their waists and growing higher with each passing second. Vykkers were slipping and falling all over the place and Nedd was practically floundering in the stuff, unable to breathe through the thick wall of foam. The interns finally turned the hoses off and marched down the hall to disinfect the other rooms. Nedd's boss poked his head out of the lather.
"What the hell was THAT?!" He demanded, standing up. He slipped and fell back over, causing foam to fill the air. A vykker dressed in a similar protective suit entered the room.
"Its basic regulations," it droned. "Chapter four, sub-section seventeen, regulation---"
"I don't care WHERE its written," Nedd's boss snarled, "I just want it OUT OF MY ROOM!"
"I can't do that," The armored vykker said dully, "Chapter one, sub-section three, regulation 81, page six clearly states that anyone who---"
"Its RUINED!" Another vykker bawled. "OUR DISECTION! We were cutting AN ELUM TO PIECES! You've RUINED IT!"
"For all elum-related interruptions, please read Chapter----"
"MMMM!" Nedd snarled, his hands on his hips. "MMMMmmm mmm MMM MMM-MMMMM!!!"
"What he said!" A vykker agreed.
The armored vykker sighed. "My apologies," it said without the faintest hint of remorse. "But rest assured that even at this moment we are searching---"
"Uh." Two more armored vykkers shuffled anxiously into the room. Their faces were covered, but there was obvious embarassment in their voices. "Where did you say it ran away?"
There was a pause, and everybody wondered the same thing; who were these people? And more importantly, who hired them? They were disgustingly undertrained, yet worked with almost robotic order.
"Mmmm...." Nedd said, pointing to his left, where he had run from, "....mmmmmm mmmm."
"Thanks!" the vykkers said, hurrying out the door.
There was an even longer pause. Somebody in the back coughed. Then, finally, Nedd's boss said,
"Nedd, go get some more interns. We'll need to clean this up. And get me a new elum!"
Nedd sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was to go back to the room where the violently-infected fuzzle had escaped just to get an elum. He walked to the door, and his boss said as he left,
"Oh, and Nedd," Nedd turned to see what other ridiculous commands he had, "watch your step."