Not even remotely Port Block related
A Good Day

A worthy question to which I have decided that the correct answer is 'no reason'.

So here we are.

Over the past 20 years I have written a story or two over and above the Port Block scratchings you will find hereabouts. These I wrote mainly to get ideas banging around in my scone out of my scone so I could use my scone for something else. Its been a thought to put together some Lego models to illustrate these stories, but one would have to come to the conclusion after all this time that this is not staggeringly likely. And since the stories are to hand, there seemed to be no reason not to host them, and the odd email I get from time to time asking for more tales of Port Block seemed like a reason to do so. There's just one for now, because it happened to be in a format that lent itself to publication, and I am an extraordinarily lazy man.

If anyone feels moved to put together worthy Lego renditions of scenes from the story, email them to me, and I'll be only too happy to add them in...

The day had gone remarkably well. Things were finally coming together. The house was looking better and better. It had taken him months of brooding over Better House and Garden to find just the right fence. Then he'd spent a small fortune going out and buying just the right kind of oxyacetylene torch. And then he'd spent all day out in the blazing sun, with his torch and his fence and his trusty magazine, scoring (not burning) all the bare wooden fence posts, until they looked just like the ones in the magazine. He fully intended to spend all day tomorrow giving the fence the three coats of lacquer prescribed in the magazine, waiting the mandatory two hours twenty-five minutes between coats. He got out of bed once more and peered out into the night sky, over the quiet vacant lot next door. No, still no sign of rain - tomorrow he could indeed lacquer the fence. Happily he returned to bed, with a satisfied smile crinkling the corners of his mouth, and fell into a restful sleep, full of perfect fence posts, beautiful houses, flowers, and functioning parking meters.

He awoke irritated. The clock on his clear stained wooden bedside table said 2.15am, in as much as it ever said anything. It did not make sense that he should be awake, nor that he should be irritated for that matter. Yesterday was a positively wonderful day, and today was to be the crowning achievement. Then he registered the whine. It was that damn cat, the one from the vacant lot next door, with the shrieking, moaning whine. It sounded as though the cat had graduated from mere singing to full opera. He was contemplating going to the window and doing something futile like throwing a boot into the darkness at the noise. In fact he was a good two-thirds of the way toward a definite commitment one way or the other, when there was a loud crack, and a flash of light from outside the window. Then an eerie silence fell. The cat's whining was bad, but it had simply not occurred to him to shoot the cat. As he settled back to sleep to warm and fuzzy dreams of picture perfect posts, he noticed that there was a faint smell of burning in the air.

A Good Day

The day had gone remarkably well. At least in as much as any day spent screwing the lids on toothpaste tubes, followed by an evening cleaning public lavatories could go remarkably well. He knew that he should lose the toothpaste job. There was talk that some enterprising Chinese grandmother had finally invented a machine that could automatically screw on toothpaste tube lids with 100% accuracy, rendering the current 97.89% accurate machines completely obsolete, and at a stroke consigning the national workforce of the Guild of Toothpaste Tube Lid Screw-er-On-er-ers and Ancillary Workers to the post-industrial scrap heap. He should be looking for a job that offered more security for his old age, but the pay was not bad, and he'd almost got the knack of sleeping while screwing on the lids, and that had to be worth something. The lavatory job wasn't much of a job title either - Lavatory Technician First Class - but it did have its perks. You simply would not believe the stuff people leave behind in public lavatories - watches, gloves, umbrellas, radios, girlfriends. Technically they all belonged to the local council, but he was pretty sure the council didn't want them, so he treated them as tips. Every day on his way home he stopped by a local 24 hour pawn shop, opposite the functioning parking meter, to convert his tips to cash. $29.34 today. Yes, today had gone remarkably well. And now, it was about to get better. After the day's desperate tedium, and the big haul in the tips department, it was time to relax to Concerto Number Seven with Mr Albinoni. Now was the best time too - it must be midnight or 1 o'clock in the morning (he wasn't precisely sure, as he'd inadvertently sold his own watch to the pawn broker last Wednesday - or was it Friday). Outside it was very quiet, as he settled back to lose himself in the music.

He found himself again about an hour later, when he came back from where ever he'd been, with a feeling that someone was putting sand in his oyster. Last time that had happened was when he'd been minding his own business, trying to listen to music, and he could hear that fastidious fool from across the vacant block singing to his flower pots in the background. This time he was minding his own business, trying to listen to music, while that demonic spawn of evil of a cat was singing an opera down in the vacant lot. He got up, went to the window and peered out into the darkness. He couldn't see the cat (not that it was particularly surprising that he could not see a black cat in a dark vacant lot at 2am) so he yelled at it and waved his fist about. This did not seem to have any material affect on the cat's singing, but it did make him feel a little better. He huffed and padded back to his comfy chair. He sat down, folded his arms across his chest, and listened to his music, steadfastly ignoring the cat. Unsurprisingly, that failed miserably. Putting a pillow over his head certainly stopped the music, but it only muffled the cat's performance. He went to stand up, and promptly fell over the boots he had discarded earlier. Lying face down on the floor, he realised that his boot and the cat were obviously conspiring to destroy his evening, so he decided to bring them together. Perhaps they would fight amongst themselves, and leave him alone. In one fluid motion, he scooped up his boot, flung it out the window, and fell over again. It occurred to him that perhaps he should have aimed the boot. However, there came the rewarding sound of the boot hitting something rather substantial, like a car's windscreen, or a cat's head. In any case it did not deter the cat. In fact, he had a suspicion that the cat might just be singing a little louder. Perhaps, he thought, he should duck down to the pawn shop, buy a gun, and come back and shoot the cat. He could always pawn the gun again. To his surprise, someone beat him to it. There was a loud crack, and a flash of light from outside the window. Then an eerie silence fell. He remembered that his boot must have been lying somewhere near the cat, and he hoped that it had not been injured in the blast - he really couldn't afford a new pair of boots. He settled back into his comfy chair, and idly noticed that there was a faint smell of burning in the air.

A Good Day

The day had gone remarkably well. He'd caught two mice, teased a canine and almost caused a car accident. It was the car accident that pleased him most. Revenge always pleased him. Those four footed metal noise makers had almost run him over often enough. His tail still had a kink in it where a particularly arrogant car had actually trodden on him. So, a good day. So good in fact, that he felt like singing. What a wonderful idea. It was quite dark now, so he figured it must be about 9pm. He stopped and sniffed the air, deftly swinging his furry (and slightly kinked) tail. 9.22pm. Bedtime! He started heading to his vacant lot fairly prancing along, thinking how wonderful it was to be a black cat in the suburbs. He got back to his lot and surveyed it. A quiet lot on a quiet street, two storey houses all around - a veritable amphitheatre, just made for singing in. And he would make those walls ring tonight. He padded up the lot towards the back, towards the cardboard box that served as his stage. About half way there something hit him squarely on the nose. It must have been fast, because he did not see it coming, and when he opened his eyes, it was gone. He started down the lot once more, and it hit him again. After it hit him the fourth time, he decided not to walk up the lot, but to sit and consider his situation. He hadn't had this much fun since some urchin humans had tied firecrackers to his tail. He counted to eight, stood up, and made a bolt for the back of the lot. This time it hit him very hard and threw him back. Well, he thought, that's enough. Any sentient species should learn after five times. There were obviously forces he did not understand that did not want him to sing here tonight. That didn't particularly surprise him. There were many things that he did not understand - why for example did the council put parking meters at all the parking spots, when none of the meters worked? He turned around, and padded off down the road, wondering whether the parking meters weren't a canine amenity, and whether the forces he could not understand would permit him to sing in the park instead. He was not therefore in the vacant lot when there was a loud crack, and a flash of light, followed by an eerie silence. He was four miles away, in the park, and about two-thirds the way through a reasonable feline rendition of "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina". He did not notice that there was a faint smell of burning in the air in the vacant lot.

A Good Day

The day had gone remarkably well. Coming here always had the potential to cause him stress. Still, it was over now. Theopoulos Charles Macpherson the Third does it again, he thought, as he lounged in the command chair of his star hopper. He looked out the windshield with a wry smile. Sitting here like this always seemed a little voyeuristic. The ship was sitting quietly on a quiet vacant block in a reasonably quiet suburb, watching the quiet street. The street on the other hand was not watching him. In fact even if the street just happened to look this way, it would not see him. Not with the shroud functioning. No-one could even know he was there unless they actually walked up and fell over him (or in the case of small animals, fell into him). A good thing too. The locals on this planet had a habit of reacting pretty strangely to the unknown or unexpected. And his star hopper was not the sort of thing that one would ordinarily expect to find sitting on a quiet vacant block, in a quiet suburb and so on and so forth.

Nonetheless, the star hopper would not be here much longer. Almost absentmindedly he cast his eye back over the storage bays in the rear of the hopper filled (in fact possibly overfilled, no, probably overfilled, that is to say, Lord help him if he needed to get the toilet door open back there later on) with his precious cargo.

Since gold was considered valuable on this planet, he had brought some with him. He still could not understand the fascination with the soft yellowy metal. He preferred good strong cast iron when he could get it. However, gold they like, gold they get. He had managed to get it exchanged into local currency, and then exchanged the local currency for his cargo. There was some currency over, which he carefully put away in the hopper, towards his next mission here.

The more he thought about it the more he was sure that it was the contents of those storage bays that were his favourite things in all the universe. Better than the feel of Altair mud between the toes. Better even than the whorehouses of 40 Eridani. Better even, he decided after much deliberation, than being mistaken for intergalactic rock star Blast McTavish at the biennial Blast McTavish Groupie convention on Planet McTavish. He shivered involuntarily.

The only problem with the stuff was that procuring it was of course illegal. Being caught here, doing this, was a bit like being caught at the zoo in the monkey house, trading peanuts for bananas with the monkeys. Monkeys! Ha! Good analogy that. Local science held that this species of sentient being had actually fallen out of the trees at some stage. He chuckled at his unconscious' superlative sense of humour. Then he remembered his circumstances, and his good humour sank a little.

The Quarantine Police would not enjoy his good humour. Then again, Quarantine Police never seemed to enjoy anybody's good humour. Not even their own. Their idea of a friendly greeting went something like "Surrender your vessel. You are in violation of some by-law prohibiting something or other", usually something worthwhile. He knew this was their form of greeting because this was the way that they always greeted him.

Tonight, he thought, the greeting would go, ah, "Surrender your vessel. You are in violation of Commonwealth Foreign Relations by-law 143(7), prohibiting contact with underdeveloped sentient species". Well, at least they had the underdeveloped right.

These people were still burning dead plants and animals to create heat and light. That was only a little different to banging the rocks together. And there were philosophers who earnestly contended that banging-the-rocks-together societies were higher on the scale of civilisation, lacking some clearly uncivilised traits like atmospheric pollution, genocide, and ulcerated cancer of the colon. In any case Theo knew in his heart of hearts that these were pretty backward folk, because he had noticed that they were still fooling around with cyclotrons, and thought themselves pretty clever. He did feel a certain understanding. It was fun.

Get a great big pipe, and lay it out in a huge circle, say 40 miles across. Evacuate all the air, and install electromagnetic field generators every metre or so, and voilą, cyclotron.

Alright, so the hardware was not particularly inspiring, but the fun you could have with it!

Take some tiny charged particles, put them in the pipe, and magnetically whiz them around faster and faster. When you have them whizzing around good and fast, say almost as fast as light, you inject some other particles in the other direction, being very very careful not to bang them together. Then you whiz these new particles up to a decent speed. Then, and only then, do you bang them together, in an annihilation chamber (ooo, what a name!) and wham, a few really little particles, and a whack of gamma radiation. A bit like banging rocks together actually. Great fun, but Theo hadn't played with a cyclotron for years.

Strictly kid's stuff.

The navigation computer's summary for this planet said something like 'a tad underdone', which was true, apart from the 'tad' part. NGC-11739-A-III was definitely underdeveloped. NGC-11739-A-III! He was beginning to sound like his navigation computer. That was no name for a planet. Anyway, when in Eridani, do as the Eridani do. The locals called this planet Earth, so Earth it should be.

There is a name for a planet, he thought. Theo hadn't had time to research the derivation of the name, but he had a fair idea of the meaning. He had noticed the that was the very same sound made by locals then they stepped in animal manure. It was clear to him that local theology espoused that the planet was some sort of huge ball of excrement left by a galactic super canine. Religions could be pretty peculiar on these backwater planets.

But backwater or no, he had braved strange lands, foreign languages and customs, not to mention the Quarantine Police, and he had succeeded. He considered opening one of the storage bays, if only for a look. No, every minute he delayed was only tempting fate. He leaned forward and tapped the appropriate controls to start the engine pre-heat cycle. He had noticed last time he was here that there was an Earth animal called a cat, whose whining crying was very similar to the sound made by the engines during pre-heat. He relied on that to satisfy any curiosity that the sound may otherwise have pricked. As the indicators on the console began to rise obediently, Theo cast an eye around the lot. At a second storey window of an adjoining edifice there was the silhouette of a man peering down into the darkness of the now not-so-quiet lot, shaking his fist. Perhaps the singing of the cat was not popular with him. With a little relief Theo watched as the man huffed and padded away from the window. Theo was however a little surprised a few minutes later to see a large boot leap out of that same window, and describe a perfect parabolic arc which terminated in the approximate centre of his windscreen. With lighting speed, Theo deduced that catsong was not popular. Theo was unfastening his belt to go outside to remove the boot when every other green light on the console began flashing an arrogant pulsing red, as if they had all suddenly developed hemmoroids.

Theo checked this, tapped that, and peered into the other. He was the subject of an extremely sophisticated sensor scan, from a source not on the planet. He grimaced. Hemmoroids had indeed appeared, two probably, borne in a patrol ship emblazoned with the logo of the Quarantine Police. It was about then that his earphones started talking to him. Something about surrendering vessels, and being in violation of something pretty damn important. Theo tried to think of some equally friendly greeting he could reply with, and failed, so he turned off his headphones.

As his fingers flew across the console cold starting the engines, and his toes did some seat of the pants calculations for navigation, Theo found enlightenment. He now knew with utter confidence what it was that was his favourite thing in all the universe, and that was not being chased by the Quarantine Police.

In the fifteen seconds before he could get the ship off the ground, Theo thought furiously (which he always found painful) to determine how they were tracking him, how they had found him. All he'd done was activate the engines. Engines! This hopper had had a gamma radiation leak forever, and gamma radiation was about as common as functioning parking meters on this planet. Three times he had had the hopper in to have the leak seen to. Three times! The Commonwealth Department of Consumer Affairs would hear about this. In the meantime, he had a gamma radiation leak, and a Quarantine Patrol ship stuck to it tighter that a tongue to a sled in the middle of a blizzard.

As soon as enough of the lights on the board showed green Theo pulled the stick back, and shoved the throttle forward. Theo noticed that there seemed to be a boot on the windshield, and wondered how it got there. There was a loud crack, and the sudden ignition caused a nasty lick of flame from the engines as the hopper shot forwards and up. As the hopper bolted through the night-time atmosphere, Theo idly remembered that he had seen a man from the house next door out that afternoon in the sun, at his fence with an oxyacetylene torch, carefully scoring (not burning) all his fence posts, obviously trying to match them to a picture in a magazine he had kept looking at. Theo wondered whether the house in the magazine was also scored like the fence posts, and like the man's house now was.

His attention was dragged screaming from the wreckage of his wondering by the flames he could see licking across the windshield of the little ship as it flung itself across the sky. None of the malfunction indicators seemed concerned, and a few seconds later the flames died away to leave a rather unsightly brown stain, roughly boot sized on the windscreen. Boots will do that if you manage enough atmospheric friction. Theo sighed. It would probably take all weekend with a bucket of water and a razor blade to get that stain off. That however assumed that he would be in any position to determine his activities for the weekend, which seemed rather unlikely at this stage. Certainly the patrol ship that was closing on him seemed to think it unlikely. At least, he thought, if he had to surrender the ship, they'd have to clean off the stain themselves.

But Theo had escaped patrol ships twice before. He combed his memory for useful hints.

His first escape he still did not fully understand. As near as he could figure, just when they had him, their starboard engine had taken pity on him, and failed in such a way that their navigation could not detect (nor handle). This sent their ship off on a dizzy, twisting twirling path that would have made the most fastidious bureaucrat drool with desire.

His second escape had involved landing on the hull of a freighter that was departing the surface of a mining planet. Tricky, but he had the flair for it.

Unfortunately he could depend on neither of these methods here. First of all, he had found patrol ship starboard engines to be a fickle lot who would just as soon turn you in - one certainly could not depend on their altruism and appreciation of the free enterprise spirit. Second of all, there were no freighters leaving the planet, and none were due for quite some time. He'd have to wait a long time. In fact he'd probably be waiting in prison. There would be no help from a planet full of monkeys that still thought cyclotrons were pretty clever.

Idiot! There was the answer! Theo never ceased to be amazed at how clever his sub-conscious mind was, and how dumb his conscious mind was. He head butted his hand in disgust, sending his headphones sliding forward off his head, and careering down the console to the floor of the cockpit.

If the bad guys were tracking gamma radiation, he'd really give them something to track. Maybe the cyclotron would be of some practical use after all. Theo deftly allowed the police ship to close to within a quarter of an orbit (alright, so perhaps he bolted just as fast as he could, and the superior police ship closed anyway, its all a matter of perspective). Theo began scanning the horizon for a functioning annihilation chamber, oozing with gamma radiation. Bulls-eye. As the police ship came ever closer, Theo lowered his ship down through the atmosphere, keeping himself between his pursuers above, and his bulky rescuer below. On the patrol ship's scopes, the Theo's radiation leak seemed to grow larger and larger. Together, the ships bored down through the atmosphere. When Theo finally pulled out, as steeply as the hopper would allow, his tiny leak was a mere spec on the patrol ship's scopes, compared to the blaze from the cyclotron.

The Quarantine Police ship closed in to take over the subject vessel and arrest its criminal pilot.

Soaring spacewards, Theo saw the telltales on his sensors that indicated that the patrol ship had set down beside the small squat building that housed the annihilation chamber. Just for fun, he turned off his shroud. For 11.3 seconds, his ship was visible to the naked eye, and just about every satellite, early warning system, missile defence system, radar tracker, infrared sensor and meteorological scanner on the planet. If his understanding of it was right, Earth people would have this airspace and the ground below crawling with everything from airborne interceptors to clairvoyants within fifteen minutes. His only regret was that he could not be present to see two officers of the Commonwealth Species Quarantine Department try to explain to Earth's military and civilian authorities precisely why they were attempting to arrest a cyclotron annihilation chamber.

With a few deft strokes, Theo set the ship's trim, and oriented her for the jump out of the system. He sat back. Now would be a good time to open up one of those storage bays full of his second most favourite thing in all the universe. He turned on the cabin lights, and climbed out of his seat, treading on his headphones. No matter.

The storage bay door hissed slightly as it unsealed. Theo reached inside and broke open one of the rough cardboard boxes, and drew out one of the round yellow cylinders, cool against his hand. Four red X's were stenciled on the outside. Legend had it that it was called Four-X because the locals couldn't spell beer. Maybe they couldn't spell, thankfully spelling was not a requirement for good beer brewing. Anyway XXXX was just as ridiculous a name as Castlemaine Perkins, or Australian.

All that did matter was that in the back of his little star hopper, he had twenty-eight cases of the best beer in the universe.

;-)