Sparky's Submarine

DROG20110725

I dreamed that I was playing  Axelpyre's youngest child, a somewhat incompetent chemist and engineer. He sat atop a ramshackle submarine, in the middle of an alley, brick building on one side and sandstone on the other. In that regard the game looked a little bit like Minecraft.  The submarine was setting atop a rectangular carriage that was little more than a frame for two electric motors and a slew of batteries. The controls for the cart were at the end of a long ribbon cable that reached up to the edge of the open cockpit.

You're way ahead of me. Yes, open cockpit. Did I mention that Sparky here was an incompetent engineer? Hush now and let me finish telling what little bit of action followed.

A Roc of indeterminate origin croaked out it's hideous warning from high over the buildings of this rather crowded part of the city. For not non-obvious reasons, Gnomes are quite terrified of Rocs flying overhead and squaking  out their names. Now I knew that the Roc would never have fit in this narrow alley, but it seemed that the game would come to a standstill if Sparky didn't have some sort of action creating reaction to the sudden appearance this menace. 

He floored the vehicle, thrusting both control sticks forward. At this point in the dream I stopped playing and began living the part. The motors whined to life and the submarine launched itself out of the alley, in reverse. The motion was so unexpected that I fell forward and the controls slipped out of my hands and fell down onto the floor. The fall caused a bump that momentarily stopped one of the motors, causing the contraption to make a sharp right turn not going in the correct direction, of course, on a oneway street. Other cars honked and swerved to get out of the way. 

The road went down hill towards the shore of the local bay. I scrambled for the controller, but the bouncing caused me to miss it, knocking it, instead, off the ribbon cable! 

I managed to get myself upright and to get the pair of submarine propellors turning. I reversed thrust and that slowed the vehicle down, some. By varying the torque on the submarine's engines I was able to veer a little to the left or right while driving the wrong way though traffic and the signals. For good or I'll, the Roc had spotted me and was flying low over the buildings waiting for a clear shot at me. His presence had scared many of the drivers of open carriage autos off the road all ready, so my path was mostly clear to the bay. 

With a much smaller bump than I expected I drove off the road that ran along the shore and heard the rocky causeway grind away the electric carriage, flinging the sub into the shallow water. I was still driving backwards, with one eye out for the Roc.

The Roc was banking over the cities edge and coming around for another pass at me.

"All hands, dive! Dive! Dive! Dive!"

There was no one else aboard. And as I struggled to empty the buoyancy tanks, I realized that I hadn't installed the dome for the cockpit, yet.

"All hands, prepare for emergency surface!"

Frantic now, I looked at where I was headed, set the motors to full reverse and barely managed to roll the sub over just in time to avoid being plucked out of it by the Roc.

I slewed the craft around just in time to miss a bridge abutment. "All stop!" shouted to my non- existent crew. I put the engines in full forward and brought the craft to a stop under the brick and concrete supports that lifted it up away from the shore to arch gracefully to the far side of the bay. I could hear the Roc high over the bridge squaking out it's frustration. 

I also thought the moldy algae smell was a little overpowering for a game.