BAPC camping trip 3: In which plants turn out to be communication systems, a distress signal is received from deep in the Arches, and plans are made

When we left on our camping trip we expected it to be just that, a camping trip. We hang out, tromp around in the woods and along the lake, build a campfire, eat whatever, do a little canoeing and kayaking, maybe even take a dip, and, for me at least, take a pile of photos. The usual stuff. To be sure, we were camping in a strange planet in a galaxy long and ago and far away – for that’s how these things are, no? – but still, camping is camping, no?

No. It turns out that camping was just camping, not at all. But we didn’t know that for awhile.

We started exploring along the shore. All these marvelous weeds and wild flowers.

But then we began to get suspicious. See those glowey tassely things at the tips of those tall grasses? I know what’ you’re thinking, it’s just sunlight reflecting off the surface of the tassely things. Of course that’s what it is, but sunlight isn’t just sunlight. It’s energy, it’s information, and above all, it’s messages. We began to suspect that those tassels are in fact transdimensional information transfer and dispersal units (TITDUs).

And that thicket of weeds?

Intergalactic cross-bar switches! We were camping in the middle of an interdimensional communication nexus.

And just how did we figure all this out? We were hanging out around the fire when the sky started to glow and we began sensing trans-sideral vibrations oscillating in the visual plane. The sky took on an eerie glow.

And then an image materialized and hung before us. It looked like the arches, and it didn’t look like the arches. The form was there but the color was agitated.

Then we saw them, Sparkycan and Gojochan, in orange and blue. Finally the image stabilized and presented them to us in their true aspect.

We’d left them behind in the arches to guard the seKrET portal. They told us that the Pentagonians had been creeping around in the Arches, taking measurements and making plans.

Adam: What kind of plans?

Sparkychan: They want to drill a well.

Rahid: Drill a well? Why?

Gojochan: They’re after green cheese.

Greg: Green cheese! You can’t pump green cheese from a well!

Bill: Right. Everyone knows that all the green cheese in the universe is on the Moon. And you don’t drill for it. You just dig it out of the ground. It’s right there on the surface.

Sparkychan: Try telling that to the Pentagonians. They’re sure there’s a big pool of green cheese under the arches and that it will make them rich. Jersey City will be the capital of green cheese and they’ll have cornered the marked on it.

Rahid: We’ve got to stop them.

Adam: Right.

Gojochan: But how do we do that?

Eke: The Feather of Destiny.

Sparky and Gojo together: The Feather of Destiny!

Adam, Bill, Eke, Greg, and Rahid: The Feather of Destiny!

And so, as the sun set, we sat around the fire making plans to seek out and find the Feather of Destiny so that we could save the Arches from the depredations of the Pentagonians and their crazed search for green cheese.

Stay tuned.

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Previous episodes:

• Fire in life and animation
• It’s BAPC week at New Savanna! Exclusive photos of the seKrET camping trip to another galaxy long ago and far away