EnigmA Amiga Run 1995 November/EnigmA AMIGA RUN 02 (1995)(G.R. Edizioni)(IT)[!][issue 1995-11][Skylink CD].iso/earcd/docs/sillyd1.lha/Adventure.doc

Text File | 1993-03-08 | 9KB | 162 lines

                    A certain great adventure


Tim was sleeping in his home. Actually he was not Tim, because his real name
was Timothy, Timothy Wiggins. But all of his friends called him Tim, not
because it would be easier to say, but because they had trouble in remembering
the whole of the name.
  So this Tim was sleeping. In his home, in the city of York, in England, on
Earth. He slept, because it was night. If he had been an owl, he wouldn't be
sleeping, but would be awake hooting. But he wasn't an owl, and he was proud of
it.

In the morning Tim woke to his mother's shout: "Breakfast, Tim!" He hobbled out
of bed, stuck his leg through the covers by accident, tripped over the hem of
his sheet and fell on his face of the floor. With tremendous self-control he
removed the covers from his leg only to notice it ripped a leg of his sleeping
trousers with it. Then he dressed in his day clothes. It went well, for a
change.

On the way to the kitchen he bumped into his big brother Malcolm. Both flew
into a sitting position on the floor. Without saying a word they got up and
went to the kitchen. Tim only had time to eat one slice of toast and sip a
little of his tea before the school bus came.
  "Behave yourself in school and have fun!" shouted his mother to Tim from the
door. "I wish you would make up your mind!" shouted Tim back. "What do you
mean, make up my mind?" asked the bus driver. "Oh, never mind", snapped Tim.
After a five minute quarrel Tim sat down.

His gaze was wandering on the buss wall, until it soon found something and
stopped in front of its discovery. It had found a digital clipboard. It
currently read: "stcard, put it in the mail, and if your answer right to this
simple question, you could win 30 000 pounds! The question, once again, is:
Wha" Just at that moment the sun was blinding Tim and he had to close his eyes.
  When he reopened them the clipboard read: "me and address, so we know to send
the prize to the right address. Good luck!" Then it read the same message in
German, French, Spanish, Norwegian, Eskimo, Cherokee and binary code. Tim
didn't understand a word of them. In the middle of the binary code message the
school bus stopped and Tim stepped out.

In school he immediately sat next to George White. George was his best friend,
partly because he liked him so much, partly because he was his only friend.
George didn't bother greeting Tim but buried himself in his mathematics book
instead.
  The teacher, however, greeted Tim. Her greeting was this: "Timothy Wiggins,
you're again 1.375 minutes late. Do this one more time and I'll give you
detention." Tim's protest that it wasn't his fault, but the bus driver's, fell
on deaf ears. This was definitely not one of his best days.

The school day went quite normally, until in the middle of the last lesson Tim
thought he saw how George's finger glowed a quarter of a second a bright, blue
light. He rubbed his eyes and denied the existence of this interlude. Soon he
woke to the teacher's voice: "Keith Baines, what do you mean by saying 'Croak'?
Keith Baines! Keith Baines?"

Keith Baines, Tim's third-worst enemy, had indeed vanished from the class. The
teacher thought the boy had once again went smoking in the middle of the lesson
and sent his parents a letter. As the school day was ending Tim went past
Keith's desk and found wet spots on the floor. They were shaped just like
frog's feet.

This was too much for Tim's brains. George's finger, "Croak", Keith's sudden
disappearance, the wet spot, this couldn't be just a coincidence. Tim followed
George to his home and had a little talk with him.

"What trick were you pulling at school? Don't try to wriggle your way out of
this, I saw your finger and all other evidence is against you, too", inquired
Tim of George. "Okay, okay, I'll tell everything, but turn on the radio first",
said George.
  Tim was excited. This was what they did in all the TV serieses, when the
agents do not want their conversation to be heard. He thought that classical
music would fit the situation best. No, good old Rock & Roll would be better
than that. Unfortunately all he heard from the radio was static. Luckily
George's parents were not home.

"All right. You're probably thinking that I am from another planet", said
George. "Yes, yes!" said Tim excitedly. "Then I'll have to disappoint you",
said George, "I'm from Earth just as you are." "Then how...?" asked Tim.
  "I'm not quite a normal person, however. I am a wizard", George told him. "A
wizard?" "Yes, your normal third-class self-taught wizard from the
Massachusetts wizard academy, a degree in telepathy and psychokinesis,
graduated 6th of September 1983." "Why didn't you tell me earlier?" queried
Tim.
  "I didn't want everybody to know it." "But then why did you turn Keith into a
frog?" "Because I hated him. He's from Mars and I can't stand Martians."

George also told Tim that it wasn't so unusual to be a wizard. Many other
people on earth were wizards too, he told. He told Tim that his French pen pal
Michelle la Plaz was also a wizard, so was his German exchange student friend
Heinrich Braun. He told Tim about the American wizard Mike Harold, the Italian
wizard Maria Ross and a South African wizard, whose name he was unable to
pronounce correctly. According to his approximation every fourtieth person on
Earth was a wizard.

Tens of light years away from Earth is a certain planet. Looking from afar it
looks like an identical copy of Earth, but viewed from a shorter distance it is
noticed to be completely different.
  The grass, earth and asphalt of the planet are independent, living entities,
who try all the time to catch and eat everyone who steps on them. Fortunately
it is very easy to rid oneself of their grip. What looks like water is in fact
freezing cold nitrous acid, a lethal chemical.

The planet had an atmosphere, like Earth, but its air was so heavy that the
earth entity had trouble in keeping itself together, because even on slightly
windy weather even little rocks levitated in air. The planet was uninhabited,
but something there fascinated the Earth wizard George White.

George wasn't too sure what it was, but he wanted to go to the planet never the
less. He decided to take Tim with him, because he insisted and knew that George
was a wizard.
  Tim and George dressed in the space suits they had bought from a supermarket.
George conjured up 200 thousand megatonnes of clams and glue. The clams formed
a tower held together by the glue. George couldn't conjure up anything else
without his magic book, which he had lost somewhere.

George and Tim began climbing along the clam tower. Tim counted the clams as he
climbed. "One, two, three..." he counted on ground level. "Seventy four,
seventy five, seventy six..." he counted at an altitude of one and a half
metres. "367, 368, 369..." he counted at an altitude of thirty metres.

When the boys reached the clouds, Tim had just mentioned clam number 3 629.
When they got out of the clouds Tim mentioned clam number 5 812. After Tim had
mentioned clam number 37 358 his spacesuit announced that they were outside the
Earth's atmosphere. He didn't care about it but continued counting. "56 836,
56 837, 56 838..." he counted as they passed Mars. "148 723, 148 724,
148 725..." he counted as they passed Uranus.

After some time Tim began counting in exponential form because he couldn't bear
saying such massive amounts of numbers. "4.7 * 10^23", he said when they left
the solar system. "3.5 * 10^34", he said, passing another solar system.

When the boys finally reached their destination, Tim had counted 582 769 295
014 759 451 865 890 389 139 630 683 104 826 295 762 201 583 clams. According to
George's approximation there were 165 847 clams less.

After reaching the planet's surface Tim hopped. He hopped to avoid the eating
efforts of the earth entity. George didn't hop. He jumped. He jumped to the
nearest spaceship wreck and began tearing pieces from its metal hull. He tied
two metal plates to his own feet and two to Tim's feet. Then he mumbled
something incomprehensible and the plates rose to an altitude of twenty
centimetres above ground level.
  Tim and George glided forwards. They glided over ghastly fields of grass and
the deadly poisonous ocean. They glided until suddendly George ground to a
halt. He sensed magic in the air. He banished the illusion and was amazed. Tim
was even more amazed. At an altitude of a half metre in front of them floated a
city.

The boys flew over the city and watched it. They saw strangely-dressed people.
George didn't know who they were, but Tim recognised the mediaeval mage's robe.
He had read about them in his history book. The people were all wizards.
  George was excited. At last he was in a place, where all people were wizards
and wizardry wasn't a bad thing in any way. He decided to stay on the planet.
Tim also decided to stay on the planet, because the mere thought of climbing
the clam tower once again terrified him. George banished the clam tower.

At this moment Tim and George are living in this city, which they have
christened Magicopolis, because they can't pronounce its local name correctly.
Tim is trying to study wizardry with George's assistance. He hadn't been
happier on his birthday than when he finally got the frog-changing spell right.