Downsville.

Electrodes to power, turbines to speed, wind in the willows, egg on your face. What the hell - why can't we get lift? We need lift, man, lift! Arrrgh! Where the hell is Mitch Macaphee when you need him?


Answer: Buenos Aires, at a mad scientist conference. You know as well as I do, don't you?


Well, friends and countrymen (and countrywomen, as well... and, well, city men and women... and dogs and cats and..... oooooohhhh!), your associates in Big Green have finally arrived in the environs of the small marbled greenish-blue planet we know as Earth. And when I say "environs," I mean atmosphere; straight down the chute in our rented spacecraft, nose pointed towards the upstate New York industrial ruin we know as the Cheney Hammer Mill. As John and the others are otherwise occupied, I have taken it upon myself to man the helm, with Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and the man-sized tuber (see his Facebook page) handling the navigation console. (Yes, it takes both of them to do that... and there's only one chair.) And as you may have gathered from my previous utterance, it's not going real well. Not real well at all.


Okay, full disclosure: I've actually never piloted a spacecraft of any kind before, let alone a rented one. And as many may already know, I don’t have any practical experience in the driver’s seat of any manner of flying machine. Oh, sure... I've dabbled from time to time - when a band spends as much of its working life in the icy void between worlds as we do, you tend to pick things up - but there's nothing that resembles skill in my method... nothing at all. In fact, we're in the midst of what might be described as an "unpowered descent" and I haven't the foggiest idea how I initiated it. (I pressed some pretty buttons, pulled a lanyard or two, and heard a strange crunching noise... that's all I remember, officer. Swear to Jesus or Moses or any of them saints.)


Ahead of me I can see the North American continent growing larger and larger. Pretty soon it fills the viewing screen. I point the rented space cruiser towards the dotted outline of New York State and begin looking for the inscriptions for "Little Falls". 100,000.... 75,000... 45,000 feet and still nothing! Then it strikes me... ouch! Damn lanyard hit me right in the face! (Rat bastard.) There was also something else... this must be a topographical continent, not a political one. No wonder there's no type, no little target-like symbol over Albany, no heavy lines for major thoroughfares. Looks like I'll have to land without those subtle cues. Marvin points to a fat-looking peak - could this be Bear Mountain? Need a map, damnit. Tubey - Look in the glove compartment. Good vegetable.


What's this.... the lights are going out. The sun has gone behind the horizon. I've got to fly this thing in the DARK? And my navigator is back on Facebook? Jeeezus.

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