The rocket is finished.
The shape is Apollo like, although I doubt this has a relationship with aerodynamics. The Kandinsky is a triangle with rough corners that lead down to a flat base. The original inspiration is more likely to have been a child's drawing than from blueprints.
But the ship is fascinating to look at. Vibrant plants are stitched around the steel, and the trees slot together in perfect tessellation. There is one door, fashioned from eight rollercoaster seats twisted into a circle of metal. The paw of a theme park mascot forms the handle. I wondered if these changes were reflected on the inside too. A queue formed to renter.
We are used to saying goodbye to our new acquaintances whenever we were about to the depart, but the robots didn’t even has a voice, let alone wanted to say farewell. The second we cross the threshold, we are back into our unchanged home, like the tiger had never died.
Papers still cluttered the desk of our cabin in a messy bundle, next to a half drunk cup of tea without a drop of mould. The Butter Mouse hopped up on the shelf, bigger from tip to tail than ever before. Outside the window the robots were onto their next task. With their arms in the air, a helter skelter grew from the ground.
There was no warning to our lift off. The rocket sprung upwards not with the booming roar of hundreds of litres of jet fuel, but the clean spring of a rollercoaster shooting us up into the air. The traction made our knees buckle.We left Richter like something was unfinished, or we had left something behind. This was our last journey to somewhere new, before heading back home. Weird.
My theory was correct by the way. Above us was a thick of sheet of ice, unbroken except for a ragged hole big enough to pass through. A blizzard pelted down through this opening like an broken snow globe. We shot through, and the world below us was gone, replaced by a frozen landscape with
There’s only a few weeks left. I’m sure we will have lots to discuss. I still don’t know what to do with The Butter Mouse.
Our hole in the ice.