Turnips in Space is a serialized story told in 3 part episodes. This is the Part II of the first episode.
Part I can be found here. - Where a young Gnome finds himself interviewing for a strange crew on a spaceship.
In this chapter, Tome arrives at his new home to find an odd crew that is haunted by something they can’t see.
The trip isn’t terribly long. At least, not for Tome. Once the wonder of space travel wore off, Root and Rosie were soon serenaded by the sounds of their newest employee’s snoring. It was a gentle, peaceful snore. Nothing for a normal, well-adjusted gnome to get embarrassed by.
Unfortunately for Tome, he was not those things, so when Root roughly shook him awake he jolted and turned a charming shade of pink before asking,
“Oh my, did I fall asleep? I didn’t start to snore………did I?”
Rosie gave him a quiet, soothing nod while Root yelled “Yup,” accompanied by a hearty laugh and a loud, over-the-top rendition of a snore that echoed throughout the small ship. It reverberated in Tome’s ear drums, promising to remain with him forever.
But this embarrassing oversight was soon, if only temporarily, forgotten as Tome noticed something outside the window hanging peacefully in the nothingness of space. It was a gigantic, metal turnip. How do I know it's a turnip? Not a beachball, or a pumpkin? Or something else? He thought to himself. It was hard to describe, but the more he stared at it, the more sure he was.
It was round, but not perfectly so. The top of the object was covered in greenish antennae and dishes of various sizes and shapes all jutting out in different directions. The bulbous shape of the ship stretched into a point at the bottom of it, but the point didn’t appear sharp or straight. The metal had a reddish hue to it, the top more so than the bottom as if it was printed with a device that slowly ran out of color. As it slowly pirouetted in place, Tome could see several windows pop up here and there on multiple levels of the space station. Most of them were pitch black, but a few showcased rooms illuminated like little stages.
While he stared at The Turnip, Rosie began to talk
“We take jobs wherever we’re needed to try and figure out the strange mysteries of the galaxy.”
Mysteries of the galaxy, Tome repeated in his head. As he watched the station turn in place he looked into the visible rooms. In one room a silent ballet played out in front of him. At first it looked as though the artificial gravity was turned off as different objects flew across the screen with no apparent rhyme or reason. An exercise ball, a wrench, a tea kettle, some mechanical parts. But then a head popped up. It was a young gnome woman and Tome felt himself blush, as if he was watching something he shouldn’t. But before he could pretend to not stare, the woman locked eyes with him, smiled and waved. Tome panicked, looked around as if she wasn’t looking at him, and then awkwardly waved back. But she had already spun out of view.
“Everyone here has two jobs: One is related to keeping The Turnip running smoothly, and the other is to help Root and I on our various missions,” Rosie continued as another lit window came into view.
Tome watched a slapstick comedy unfold between a gruff, tall gnome and some kind of creature that he couldn’t quite make out from the distance. The gnome was attempting to threaten the other creature with a rolling pin and it fought back. But before Tome could get too invested in the show, the Turnip had turned too far and it was effectively over. Once Rosie was done with her explanation, Tome stood up and stretched before excusing himself and going to his bags.
He grabbed his luggage and wheeled it behind him. He met back up with Root at the airlock and Rosie soon followed.
“Welcome to The Turnip!” Root proudly proclaimed as he pressed a few buttons on the wall. The airlock let out a hissss as the two ships synchronized their cabin pressures. Tome rubbed his left ear and made ridiculous, open-mouth faces as he tried desperately to get his ears to pop. He was unsuccessful, much to Root’s amusement.
As the door opens, Tome is struck by just how green everything is. The ground is covered in soft, mossy grass. There are trees and flowers scattered around the open floor. Butterflies and bees flit around aimlessly.
Before Tome had the chance to ask how any of this indoor botanical garden works, a cacophony of clanging shattered the calm atmosphere. He looked over to where the sounds were coming from and saw a small, round robot duking it out with the tall, stone-faced gnome he had seen from the window. They were exchanging blows while entering the room from a doorway that now had plumes of dark smoke billowing out of it. The robot was defending itself with some kind of internal stun baton while the gnome struck at it with a cast iron frying pan.
“Hey! What’s the big idea? Are you hoodlums trying to blow us all up?” Root yelled over to them. Realizing they weren’t alone, both the robot and the gnome straightened up, hiding their weapons behind their backs like children caught playing ball indoors. “Well, what do you two have to say for yourselves?”
“It’s all his fault!” As he spoke, the giant of a gnome pointed an accusatory finger at the robot who leaned back in what would have been a dramatic gasp if it could breathe.
“Elowan keeps stealing my waffles. What do you need waffles for? You don’t even have a mouth!” The gnome turns his accusatory gaze back at the robot who, as they get closer, Tome realizes it looks an awful lot like a giant amanita mushroom. Its exterior was a reddish orange and was covered in white spots and different colored lights. This mushroom robot, Elowan, took the accusation as fighting words and leveled its taser back at the gnome who quickly moved his frying pan into a defensive position.
“Enough of that!” Root sighed as only an exasperated parent could, pinching the bridge of his nose as he did. “Elowan, did you take any of Merry’s waffles?”
Elowan beeped and whirred indignantly at the question. The other gnome, Merry, took the opportunity to bonk the droid on the dome. Elowan retaliated with a shock on Merry’s big toe. Both of them howled in pain.
“I guess Elowan isn’t much of a fun-guy, is he?” Tome said quietly. He had meant to say it quietly to himself but mistimed it and it landed in a quiet lull in between screams and clangs of metal on metal. Both of the combatants stopped in an unspoken alliance against this newcomer.
“Hey boss, who’s this?” Merry asked without taking his eyes off of Tome.
“Oh, right. Merry, Elowan, this is Tome. Tome, this here is Merry, our cook, and Elowan, our cybernetic assistant.” Root quickly ran through the introductions without much enthusiasm.
“How would you rate your level of companionship?” Merry asked Tome as if it was the most normal, serious question one gnome could ask another when first meeting them.
“Decent, I guess,” Tome replied.
“Do you enjoy a good game of fetch?”
“I don’t know… a bit?”
“How good are you at finding truffles in the wild?”
“Uh…excuse me?”
“Truffles. You know. Fancy mushrooms. How good are you at sniffing them out and digging them up?”
“Um, not very? To be completely honest with you, I don’t even like mushrooms that much.”
Elowan flinched as though struck with the frying pan again. Merry looked equally offended, a look of horror briefly flashing across his face. Merry composed himself again and then leaned in towards Root.
“I thought we agreed you were gonna grab a dog. What’s with the square?” he whispered loud enough that everyone heard him.
“The pound was closed,” Root responded a little too honestly for Tome’s liking. “Stop trying to distract me. Why is my kitchen on fire!”
“Oh yeah! That. I gotta handle that! See you around, new guy!” And with that, Merry was gone. He ran back into the smoke filled kitchen.
“And he doesn’t seem very Merry to me,” Tome said indignantly, once again to himself and once again too loudly. Elowan shook its cap in a disapproving manner.
“Hey, honestly. Did you take his waffles?” Rosie asked the robotic fungus. Once again, it beeped and shook its cap in the negative. “The ghost? Please, tell me you don’t believe that…”
Elowan shrugged its appendages and then excused itself through a different doorway. Tome looked to Root for confirmation that he had heard ‘Ghost’ correctly. Root laughed, speaking in what Tome took as a mocking tone,
“Oh, yeah. We have a ghost on board. That’s what our mechanic, Gears, keeps saying anyway.”
“Curious,” again Tome spoke more to himself than anything. “I wonder what happened to them for real? The waffles, I mean..”
“Eh, I’m sure it’s nothing. Let’s get you a tour of The Turnip, shall we?” Rosie said. But before Tome could agree, an alarm blared throughout the station. “Ope! We better go handle that. Tome, dear, feel free to explore. Living spaces are that way, Bathrooms are down that hallway, workstations are in the deck below.”
“And if you need an escape pod, just follow the emergency exit signs,” Root added, already halfway through the door. Tome stood there for a full minute in shock. He looked around and didn’t see any emergency exit signs. Were they all going to die right after he got the job? When he didn’t immediately perish in a fiery explosion, Tome decided he might as well drop his things off in the living area.
Tome never found the living space. The alarm stopped hours ago but the young gnome found himself lost in a labyrinth of hallways and staircases. Now here he was, drenched in sweat and fumbling his suitcases down yet another staircase into what he hoped would finally be the living quarters. The loud, mechanical noises coming from below didn’t sound too promising, though.
SKT-SKT-SKT-SKT-SKT-SKT
As he reached the bottom of the staircase he stopped momentarily to catch his breath. He stood there leaning one hand against the wall and failing to keep his luggage from toppling over. He heard something that he couldn’t identify. It wasn’t mechanical. Like something with a million tiny legs skittering through the walls around him. It echoed eerily throughout the room.
“Is someone there?” Tome called out, his voice cracking in fear despite his best effort to keep it in line. “Root? Merry? This isn’t funny, you know.” Of course either of them would have found the whole situation hilarious, Tome was sure of it. But neither of them jumped out to laugh at him. Instead, another voice responded.
“Hello? Who’s out there? Whatever ghostly business you’ve got, you better keep it away from me!” The voice was fierce and feminine. Tome dared not take a step closer.
“It’s just me. I mean my name is Tome. Please don’t hurt me!”
“Well then, stop haunting my engine room ya blasted ghost!” The voice responded.
“Oh, wait. No. You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not a ghost! I’m the new guy, I guess.” Tome flinched at his own acceptance of the title of ‘New Guy’ and hoped it wouldn’t stick.
The head of the woman Tome saw earlier popped out from behind the doorway, soon followed by the rest of her.
“Well why didn’t you say so in the first place! Come on in. And don’t mind the ghost. I’ll get ‘em sooner or later. My name’s Gears. Nice to meet’cha, new guy!” She extended a hand to shake. Tome gladly took it and gave as vigorous a shake as he could manage. As his hand returned to him, he noticed it was now covered in the same greasy gunk that covered the mechanic. He looked down at his own clothing. What was once a spiffy suit was now caked with dried mud after nearly getting run over earlier that day. Tome sighed as he wiped the grease on his now completely destroyed suit.
Gears didn’t seem to notice any of that, instead she waved for him to follow her before disappearing again into the room. Tome struggled with his luggage and followed her in.
Tome wrinkled his nose as he stepped into the engine room. It was, to put it nicely, an absolute mess. There were engine parts scattered across the floor as far as the eye could see. It was hard to tell where the actual engine stopped and the spare parts began. But this room clearly wasn’t all business. Gears had stacks of pizza boxes and take out containers piled here and there and everywhere. There were also board games and card games littered across the room. Some opened and half set up, others in disjointed piles collecting dust. There was a stack of books in the corner in a manner that would have caused even the most resilient of librarians to faint. Titles included everything from “Mechanics Tomorrow” to “The Occult: How Best to Witch Up Your Life.” And last but not least, in the corner of the room there was a very, very large, half dead cockroach. And by half dead I mean it was all the way dead but only half of it was present.
Gears, a whirlwind of mismatched colors and grime, mirrored the chaos of the engine room. Her grease-stained overalls hung loosely on her, her feet were bare and dirty, and her hair was a vibrant riot of at least seven different colors, haphazardly pulled back in a greasy ponytail that seemed to be perpetually on the verge of collapse. However, Tome felt his gaze fall back onto the half of a cockroach laying on the ground.
“S-Should we do something about that?” he found himself asking as he pointed at the corpse that would haunt all of his future dreams.
“What? Oh, no. That’s just Steve. Don’t worry, he’s cool,” Gears replied. “Actually, we figured there would be a new guy soon and so we got you something. It was Steve’s idea. Hold on….where did I put it?”
And with that, Gears started tossing things around the room as she looked for the gift, mumbling to herself the entire time. Some kind of very important looking cylinder flew through the air, no, not that, followed by three pizza boxes glued together and full of pinecones, why is that even over here! It’s supposed to be in the art section. Gear stops for a moment to inspect a green Uno Reverse card with dog-eared edges, there’s a lot of implications with that, before she flicked it, letting it careen wildly towards Tome. He lacked the reflexes to dodge it and instead caught it with his eyeball.
“Here it is!” Gear triumphantly proclaimed as Tome nursed his face. When his vision finally cleared he saw she was holding what appeared to be a very normal, 2 foot long stick. Either Oak or Sycamore from what he could tell.
“It’s a Redwood wand,” Gears beamed as she handed it over to Tome. “It helps to ward off evil spirits.”
Tome briefly considered letting her know that he was a gnome of science and therefore didn’t believe in either spirits or wands that warded them off. Instead he settled on a simple “Thank you,” and took the stick from her.
“I’m sure it’ll help me get out of plenty of stick-y situations,” Tome awkwardly laughed at his own joke. He looked up and saw that Gears was not laughing with him so he quickly stopped. Before he had a chance to explain his very good joke, the strange sound came back.
SKT-SKT-SKT-SKT-SKT-SKT
The overhead lights flickered erratically, casting grotesque shadows that danced across the cluttered room as the wicked sound echoed through the hallways again, this time closer. Gears looked around trying to catch a glimpse of her poltergeist while Tome jumped in place.
“What in the world is that?” Tome asked, his scientific curiosity overwhelming his innate fear.
“It’s the ghost. I don’t know why it’s haunting me, but I’ll get it one of these days. I have this ghost trap that I have set up, but it doesn’t seem to work the way I want it to.” Gears pointed with resolve to a small metal cube lying inertly off to the side of the room. As Tome’s eyes scan the room for some other explanation, he freezes and the blood drains from his face. Steve was gone!
Thank you for reading!
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