Page 1 (?)

Rain...

The Yellow Princess, and her friend, FR1END, were walking back from the shops (they went to buy sandwiches), when it started to rain

...ARROWS!!!

The Yellow Princess and the GIANT robot!

Deep in the bowels of the planet, The Yellow Princess and her friend, FR1END, have found the remains of an ancient automaton society! Is this the beginning of a new adventure, or the end of this one?

(that's supposed to be ominous and threatening).

Yellow Princess - dinosharks...

The Scarlet Pilot and his Secret Space Plane (interior)

Far beyond the normal spacelanes, in a space-plane built for long-distance, one-man trips, a pilot dressed entirely in red is talking to himself. Or... is he?

The Yellow Princess and The Case of The Thing That Happened on The Way Home for Dinner

This is the first draft, of the first chapter (?) of a story I told my kids the other night as a bedtime story. The stuff with the collapsing stars (and resulting singularity), the Dinosaur-Sharks and the Pizza delivery guy all happen in part2.

All characters, concepts and situation are ©2011 Gene Whitlock (mofo).
Specifically this goddamn story. K?

It was March in deepest space, and the Yellow Princess was sailing through those self-same deepest reaches on her way home from a party. She was piloting a specially-modified version of her Aeroble. This one had a liquid cockpit, designed to support her modified mermaid DNA.

As the pod screamed through the inky void, she sang along happily to her much-loved Jason Botherstone:

"bab-eee baby, bab-eeeeeeeeeeee oh baby!" she sang with eerie auto-tune accuracy.

The Princess' robot companion, 'Fr1end' was NOT singing along. He/she/it didn't have much of an opinion about music. In fact, being an automaton, he/she/it didn't have much of a personality - (at least, that's what he told us at the time of writing!)

>ting ting ting ting<

The proximity alarm sounded with a soft melancholy. Beating rhythm in-time with the pre-adolescent formulaic lyrics of track 17, (track 17 is 'baby, my baby'. Just so you know when someone asks). Friend started to say, "that will be Gogomoth, home of the Ribula Sand Beetle! AND site of the last battle of the Ribula Sand Beetles during the-"

The Princess turned up the volume on her "songs". 'Hmpph' said the sullen, yet unemotional robot.

As the case will happen in situations like this, the princess had turned up the music up way too loud and as a result she was now wearing ear-plugs as well. In the incident report she submitted later, she would cite this as being the reason she didn't notice the HUMONGOUS GREEN SPACE SHIP that warped into existence just in front (and to the left, (or 'port-side')) of her tiny, yellow space ...thing.

*BOOM* went her proximity alarm (it did that sometimes) *BOOM BOOM*. 'Mistress - if there was a way for sound to travel in the vacuum of space, I'd say something like, 'holy crap that's loud!', but obviously there's not so-'

'I'm sorry, did you say something Friend?'

'uh... big space-'

'I can't chitchat right now, as much as I'd love to, but there's a giant enormous humongous spaceship sitting right where I'm planning to fly!'

'and you're still formatted as a mer-'

"BOOM! Tiny yellow Craft! We are the Pulsimartes, and you are our prisoneerrrrrrrrrrrr"

'oh' said The Yellow Princess AND Friend.

* * * (I think that means there's a break here * * *

On the other side of the Crab Nebula, the Yellow Princess' brother, the Scarlet Pilot, was having problems with his Secret Space-Plane. "damn! crap and jabaloooka!" he said

"the oberon cyclotrometer isn't reading outputs again! Now I'll never get home in time for dinner!"

Tonight was pizza night, and the Scarlet Pilot really loved his four-cheese pizza (and truth be told he could have warmed one up in the secret space-plane's micro-galley (that's a kitchen on a ship), but after the popcorn disaster, the ship's sentient computer wasn't letting him cook anything other than a glass of water!

"Sir, have you tried turning it off and then on again?" said the Secret Space-Plane's sentient computer.

"No, I... -what?"

"Have you tried turning it off and-"

'I could turn YOU off you know!"

'but I control the life-support systems, and then you would die"

'but I'd die happy'

'I think you hold me in contempt for no reason other than you've grazed your knuckles'

'I haven't grazed my knuckles! Now leave me alon-OW!'

'there, see? Grazed knuckles. Let me do it'

'you, sir, are a disembodied voice, and part of the ship's meta systems'

'I'm also smarter and older than you'

'shaddup!'

Ker-Klunk!

'what did you do?'

'fixed it'

'did you fix the -'

'yes'

'and the-'

'that too, and the quark-synthesis overdrive modulation system'

'but we don't have a... a one of those'

'we do now. You best strap in if we're to- oh...'

'I don't like it when you say, 'oh'. You're a computer, computers only say oh and there's a bunch of ones to go with it'

'oh, binary humour, how droll'

'I try my best'

'I think you should know, your sister's robot friend- '

'you mean Friend?'

'yes. indeed, 'Friend', has posted an alert status on the royal message boards. I believe he's also tweeted an SOS. Let me check his Tumbler...'

'stupid computer'

'don't call me stupid just because I'm better connected than you!'

'status update:"I am a d0rk", but see, the 'o' is a zero'

'Heh, binary humour... Um.., yes, sir, you should know - your sister has been kidnapped by a Pulsimartes combat patrol'

'crap'

'on a stick, sir. I would suggest this is now a rescue mission - Shall I engage the engines?'

'Go faster buttons to maximum, old-buddy!'

The ancient red space-plane shuddered and fair-kicked like a mule before condensing into a faint blue after-image.


Because of the ugly, ugly distances involved, the Scarlet Pilot and the sentient computer still had several days (even travelling through worm-holes, hyper-space and quantum-multiplied factors of the SoL (speed of Light) in which to experience being best friends, enemies, ambivalent travelling companions, and even surrogate parent-child simulacrums.

Nonetheless, the Secret space plane travelled faster and more directly than any other vessel in the void. (It was rumoured a souped-up car on Dehetross-prime was faster, but the police had since seized the vehicle and impounded it under 'anti-hoon' legislation).

They soon reached the point from which Friend had posted his various status updates. Sure enough, the Pulsimartes ship was still in orbit, albeit with a skeleton crew.

When the Scarlet Pilot hailed the Pulsimartes ship, the maintenance chief told him, in a tone of voice that was far-too-chipper for someone in a military support role, "No guvnor, they all gone down't the planet for a picnic! I sure you go down you be able't find 'em easy-like! Just look for beach and fishing, they happy to have another guest they will!'.

END OF PART THE FIRST!

The Scarlet Pilot

Locked in the heart of his sentient space-plane, the Scarlet Pilot nudges the old lady into orbit around a brave, new gas giant...
'This looks like a nice place for lunch', says the pilot.
'you are NOT cooking in my galley again! You burnt the diodes on the fridge last time!' says the sentient space-plane.
'But... can I make a sandwich?'
'you can make that in the cockpit! Here's the bread...' >ker-thud<

The Scarlet Pilot and his Secret Space-plane are NOT friends sometimes!

The princess' birthday

Likely as not, the princess would celebrate each solar-cycle with an arty smarty party.

Her friends would sing and dance and shout about, while the rest of the Amber Citidel went into quiet shutdown - monitoring the galaxy was clicked over to autopilot.

Today the princess has received a new dress. A yellow one!

Oh... and a big ass disintegrator gun.

slime and monsters and stuff... it's almost Xmas eve!

The yellow princess and her Woodland chum ride high! The princess is friends to all manner of creature, big and small, flesh and steel! Today she stands hard against the powers of meanness and bad ideas! Her water rifle is full, and action is on the cusp... of... um... happening! YEAH!


The Scarlett Pilot is the Yellow Princess' older brother. He spent 100yrs trapped in the hollow earth, during which time his experimental jet went online, became sentient and then upgraded itself with the power of awe-some! WOOOSH!


Prairie Dog Sue (also Prairie Dog Sioux).
We don't know much about who Sue was, or what she did. It's likely she had some sort of cowgirl motif going on, which is odd because this...pseudo daguerreotype was found in the ruins of Venice.


MONTER-SAURUS! Part monster, part dinosaur, ALL FUNK!


Sometimes mice are scared of stuff. Oh crap indeed!


Emporer Tiger-ette. This guy was going to be a CNY visual, except I kinda forgot I'd drawn him. So... here he is now!



Killer slime - the creature stepped out of Adrian Liew's site... ooze ooze...

RETURN OF THE YELLOW PRINCESS

The Yellow Princess and her robot companion, 'Friend'.

Seven cycles passed before the princess felt ready to leave the Amber Citadel and rejoin her family on the royal homeworld.

Her brother, the Scarlet Pilot was still listed as missing, but she knew (because he was that way inclined) that he was almost certainly not 'missing'. Instead, he was likely 'otherwise detained'. *snort* boys! etc etc.

Her best friend, a mechanical man who had accompanied her everywhere since she was less than a baby, advised her to rest easy, but the princess was eager to be away at once. There was a mystery on the space-lanes and she was determined to track it down!

The Cops (and a goddess)

The floating goddess... This is a version of Chang-e, the moon goddess, but on a floating chunk of heaven. This came to me during a meeting, there's more to it (mountains and sky), but this is a partially complete version...

These are the cops chasing our earlier Killer (the croc)

The Thrubmar Mercenaries!

The Thrumbar mercenaries are nasty folk. They work and work and work until the work is done, then they assign themselves into committees to ensure there's more work to do.


Oh, and they carry big-ass guns.

If you pay them enough, if you can find them, they'll do what you ask. For a price. Cos they're mercenaries. Which means they only care about money. Not princesses. Money. Sweet, sweet money.

The Blue Beastie

This chap has issues with gravity and fear.

I don't yet know if he's a friend or foe to the Princess, but I do know he wears a blue spacesuit, and he floats around. A lot. He also screams. Incessantly. (that means 'without cessation') (which has nothing to do with toilets).

The Yellow Princess

...Here she is! The Yellow Princess!

Guardian of the spaceways and friend to small crazy animals. Secretly a baby space-monster herself, the princess fights for freedom, safety and chocolate from here to Innaminka station. Fear her card-guns, flee from her pithy shouts of 'STUPID BASTARD!' and praise her good handwriting!



This one also came from the daughter. She announce that she was THE YELLOW PRINCESS! (and then shouted her battle cry, which I'll reveal in another piece of art, soon enough).

The Aeroble

My daughter invented this one in Duplo (Lego for little hands) and announce it was an 'Aeroble'.

The Yellow Princess rides in this iron capsule as she ventures out into the dusty universe saving lives and spreading happiness! The Yellow Princess is our friend!

Our Black Father

The secret hero in a thing I'm hauling together for my beautiful atomic kids (cos we is a nuclear family)

This is The Black Father (logo pending)

He's a ninja, philosopher, archaeologist, social anthropologist, avenging angel, father-figure type.

When trouble hits, The Black Father slip-slides from points unknown to wherever the hell you might be. Swords blazing, guns shining and poetry burning! Screaming Hell! It's The Black Father! *WA-HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*