What’s this? Parchment? Could just be old vellum, you never know. Look for the watermark, that’s what Mitch always says. Kind of crisp and, well, fragrant, quite frankly. Good lord, throw that thing away.
Digging around for buried pirate maps of the greater Indian Ocean. What can I tell you? That’s what desperation will do to a man. Let me be the first to report that I am so sick and tired of this bloody island I could lay my head on an anvil and order the blacksmith to give me twenty of his best… that is, if there were a blacksmith in this deity-forsaken place. Yes, it’s that bad. Oh sure, I know what you’re thinking. Tropical paradise, isolated from the insanity of the civilized world. Peace and quiet, or as Elmer Fudd would say, “West and wewaxation at wast.” Yeah, well… that’s a lot of aloha hooey. I like civilization, damn it. I like indoor plumbing. I like having more than one dry cleaner to choose from. And just for the record, I hate fucking plantains! (And no, I haven’t been fucking them, so settle down… settle down….)
Another thing you have to remember about being stranded on a desert island — there’s nobody there but you. Oh, sure… we’ve got each other to keep us company, but frankly, I’ve been cooped up with these assholes for the last month and a half, bobbing around in a cramped spacecraft, and while I like everybody okay (except for Lincoln), enough is freaking enough, already. We’re all getting on one another’s nerves. Matt’s not talking to Mitch. Mitch is pissed off at Trevor James Constable. Trevor James has a mad on against John. John and anti-Lincoln have been exchanging ugly looks. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been copping an attitude lately. (He’s spending most of his time with the stabilization control unit on the command deck of the spacecraft. Only intelligent conversation he can muster.) And even tubey has had a falling out with the Mango tree.
Wow. Listen to me, dissing Marvin. I have been here too long. So what’s holding us back? Well, a spacecraft with no engine, for one. Not likely to fly again soon, even taking into consideration the scientific “brain trust” we have on hand here on Ben-Lostawhile island. Just try making an ion-magnetic interstellar drive run on coconut shells. Just try. (Mitch did, and the result wasn’t pretty.) Believe it or not, the most practical suggestion came from anti-matter Lincoln — throw a mast and a mainsail on the top of the mock-jupiter 2 and push it into the water, then use some worm-eaten piece of driftwood (posi-Lincoln) as a rudder. Lash a rope to the rudder handle and call it “mother hubbard.” (Okay, that last suggestion wasn’t so constructive. But it was better than what Mitch came up with. Coconut reactor vessel, indeed!)
Right, then — our task is clear. Build us a mast and sew together some scraps for a broadsheet sail. And, if luck smiles down upon us, dig up a pirate map that’s useful as well as being rancid… i.e. one that shows us the way to the subcontinent. Dig, men, dig!
