Fire Flower Power
CONGRATULATIONS! I DID NOT THINK YOU COULD DO IT! You got me to NOT buy Ducktales #6! You have therefore won my "stupid, stubborn control freaks who WILL do the exact opposite of what I what just to prove they are in charge" award ! And if you think I bought DW, you are also totally delusional. (Since you are discounting the DW books, I suspect nobody else bought them, either.
By Sharan McQuack, Launchpad's wife.
One early morning, Mr. McDuck was reading the newspaper while eating breakfast. Until he read something that almost made him lose his appetite. Flintheart Glomgold had discovered caves leading under Fire Mountain. Flinty was going to send a robot car down the caves to try and find a way to the fireblossoms that live deep inside that volcano, the fireblossoms that can cure almost all ills.
() () I don't trust robots. Normally, robots can only do exactly what you tell them to. No more, no less. And that's if you're lucky.()(). Mr. McDuck thought, remembering Armstrong all too well.
So Mr. McDuck called up Launchpad and explained the situation to him.
"I want you to beat this robot car to the fireblossoms. If I know Flintheart, it will pick ALL the fireblosssoms, leaving none to reseed. The fireblossoms would become extinct. Out of sheer spite, to prevent anybody else from profiting of them and to drive up the price he can ask for them." Mr. McDuck said.
"I'll do it. Robots have trouble dealing with the unexpected. And inside a sleeping volcano, you need to expect the unexpected." Launchpad replied.
"If you fail, if the robot car gets there first-especially if it eliminates the fireblossoms- I don't pay you." Mr. McDuck stated.
"And if I get there first, keep the robot car from destroying the fireblossoms AND transplant some of the fireblossoms in the caves to see if they grow there- where they'd be easier to get to- do I get a raise?" Launchpad asked.
"Yes. IF you can do that. Fair is fair." Mr. McDuck replied.
So Launchpad flew a normal plane close to the caves that led to fire mountain and unpacked a piece of junk car. It had no roof, no back seat and it's doors opened up and out.
"You really think you can beat the robot car to the fireblossoms in THAT piece of junk?" Mr. McDuck, who would come to supervise.
"It's fast, it's tough, it's...adaptive. And I'm not wasting an expensive car driving thur caves inside a sleeping volcano." Launchpad replied.
So Launchpad got the car ready. Flinty soon arrived with the robot car. Launchpad jumped into the car and entered the caves first, the robot car soon followed him. And passed his junk car like it was standing still.
"It's not like you know which way the fireblossoms are. There are a LOT of caves down here, I bet." Launchpad muttered.
There were, indeed, plenty of caves down there. Most of them were dead ends or connected to other caves. The robot car wasted time going in circles or re-entering dead ends.
Launchpad marked a cave before he entered it, while the robot car refused to "admit" all the caves looked alike. The robot car even ignored the marks Launchpad made, lest Launchpad trick it by marking all the caves whether he entered them or not. (Flinty had it programmed. Of course it expected people to try and trick it!)
And of course the robot car had trouble with boulders and craters and other obstacles, it had been tested in a clean sterile lab not in messy real life. By people whose jobs depended on proven that obstacles could NOT stop it...whether that was true or not. And real life has no objections in throwing plenty of obstacles in your path, right on top of each other, while the lab acted like only one obstacle at a time was permitted.
Robots fear nothing. They can't be brave. They're machines. They feel no pain, no suffering. They are totally dispensable, being machine it doesn't matter how dangerous something is to them, they can easily be replaced.
Launchpad was scared. He does not like enclosed places like underground. This made him want to find the fireblossoms and get the bleep out of there as fast as possible. Launchpad remembered where the fire flower was and since he has an excellence sense of direction ( a useful talent for a pilot to possess) he choose caves that SEEMED to led in the right direction- but you can never tell with caves. They dead end, they curve, they connect up with other caves.
The robot car, being made by Glomgold, cheated. It drilled thur the volcano. Flinty didn't care if it hit lava, he had other robot cars. And if Launchpad wasn't any place as replaceable (2.) that was Mr. McDuck's headache.
()() Oh, Great. It's even going in the right direction. Well, why don't I follow it? I've been down here before, it hasn't. As long as it's going in the right direction, I might as well follow it. We're bound to hit another cave sooner or later. THEN, I'll see if it's still heading in the right direction. ()() Launchpad thought.
He did so. After a while, they did hit a cave. The robot car drilled in the same direction as before, the cave went off in another direction. Neither direction was right. Then, Launchpad noticed something. Water. Running down the cave.
()() All plants need water. Even ones that grow underground.()() Launchpad thought.
On a hunch, he ignored the robot car and followed the cave downward, planning to double back and follow the water to it's source, if necessary. After a while, the cave turned and started to head in the right direction. Soon, he reached the fire flowers first.
()(). The robot car doesn't know what living things need. Flinty doesn't care what anybody ELSE needs.()() Launchpad thought.
Launchpad dug up a few fireblossoms plants and carefully planted them in pots he had taken with him for that reason. He filled the pots with the surrounding soil.
()() I'll replant these in the caves as soon as possible.() Launchpad thought.
Then he used some machinery to move the rocks to hid the entrance to the fire flowers cave. Launchpad marked the spot so HE would know where they were. I'm not sure if he used his own initials or if he could not resist the joke to mark it "A.S". (3)
Then, Launchpad headed towards where the robot car was going. As he went along, he saw a tiny cavette near the ceiling. Dirt was dripping out of it. Launchpad climbed on top of the car and peeked inside the tiny cave, and saw it had plenty of good black dirt. Launchpad planted the fireblossoms there and marked the spot.
Then Launchpad continued on his way .Soon, he heard the robot car up ahead. As Launchpad got closer and tried to figure out how to stop the robot car, he passed some odd looking mushrooms. They looked remarkably like flowers, except they were gray. You could practically see the light bulb go off.
()() The robot car has never seen the fireblossoms. Neither has Flinty. They have no idea what they look like.() Launchpad thought.
Launchpad built several crude, childish barriers blocking the way to the flower mushrooms that merely attracted attention. He put up a sign reading: "These are NOT the fireblossoms. Do not pick."
The predictable happened: the robot car 'saw" the mushrooms, sent a photo of them and the sign to Flinty.
()Scrooge never let anybody see the Fireblossoms. He might have given them a misleading name, so people would expect them to be red or yellow, not grey. ()() Flintheart thought.
Flintheart ordered the robot car to pick all the mushrooms. Which gave the robot a hobby, there were thousands and thousands of them.
Meanwhile, Launchpad was searching for the entrance to the exit. (4) It wasn't long before what Launchpad was afraid might happen, happened: the volcano started to erupt. Probably the stupid robot car woke up the volcano by drilling holes thur it. The holes probably let cold air into the volcano.
Launchpad hastened to leave. Launchpad opened up the doors of his car and glide (even flew for a short distance) the car over cliffs , landing in an underground river. The light car floated, the tires spun and Launchpad got to the shore quickly.
"Chitty chitty bang bang, eat your heart out" Launchpad muttered.
()()I could of made this thing able to fly, but why bother? It might not survive all this in one piece. And the trouble with a flying car is, the only way to make a flying car is to make a drive able plane. Which means most people can't use it because most people can barely be trusted to drive a car, let alone fly a plane.()() Launchpad thought.
Launchpad kept going until he drove out of Fire Mountain. Meanwhile, the robot car was mercilessly picking every single mushrooms- and there were hundreds of thousands of them. Flinty tried to tell it to quit and get out of there with the "fireblossoms" it had while the getting was good, but the signal couldn't get thur. Since robots can't think for themselves, it went on picking even as the volcano erupted. Until it melted.
Launchpad was already a safe distance away. Later, after the eruption had ended and the volcano had cooled, he went back to check things out. The eruption had sealed some of the caves, they no longer led to the valley of fireblossoms. The only way to the main "vault" of fireblossoms was down the volcano. However, Launchpad found he could still reach the cavette were he transplanted the fireblossoms. And they were growing like mad and already starting to spread thur the tiny cave.
Launchpad reported this to Mr. McDuck and came back a few weeks later. The fireblossoms were crowded thur out the tiny cave. Launchpad transplanted some to other tiny caves he could reach. Soon, the fireblossoms were crowded thur those caves too. But nobody except Launchpad and Mr. McDuck know where those caves are.
Launchpad got his raise.
The End.
(1) See "Journey to Fire Mountain" by Me.
(2) Lord knows Disney tried. Like with Baloo. They'd have done better making HIM DW's sidekick and have Launchpad star in a show somewhat like Talespin. Only less lame.
(3 Stands for Arne Saknussemm. OK, I haven't actually read "Journey to the Center of the Earth". I just saw the movie.
(4) I have mentioned that I like Popeye, haven't I?