Sunday, July 27, 2008

Pushing a Cruise Ship

Setting: A huge cruise ship, like Titanic but more modernized.

There was this humanoid "pixie" whom I had seen earlier. She was blonde and quite cute.

That's why, as I see her again just as the elevator doors are closing, I panic and hit lots of elevator buttons hoping to re-open the doors so that I can go out there and see her again. One of the buttons I press happens to be the "alarm" button. It causes the entire cruise ship to sound an alarm. "Oops," I shrug to the others who are in the elevator with me.

The doors of the elevator open only when it reaches the lower level. Visible and lethal green gas is already seeping into the room (apparently, it's a security response triggered by the alarm), but the elevator is now out of service. We run up the stairs towards the exit, the green gas on our tails. To complicate things, there is a narrow glass maze with timed doors that open only every 2 seconds and then clamp shut so hard as to be able to pulverize anyone unfortunate enough to be standing there (think old-school Prince of Persia with the fanged doors). Inside the maze, we are still chased by "pockets" of green gas that seep inside the maze whenever the doors open.

After traversing many such doors, I exit the glass maze and step into a large hallway with metal detectors: the ship's security gate. There are three large lines to board individual smaller ships that travel to the mainland of our vacation spot. The cruise ship never docks; it just sets anchor far away from land while the smaller ships actually travel to the mainland.

Supposedly, everyone must board these ships, because they have to sink the cruise ship for "maintenance" while the passengers of the ship are gone. However, there are still about 100 people in line waiting to board the ships when suddenly the lights in the hall dim and turn blue. The modernized gates leading to the smaller ships close with a hydraulic hiss, and I hear a soft, low "thunk" as the first ship detaches itself from the main cruise ship and sets sail. Two more thunks follow.

We realize we are trapped inside a cruise ship that is about to be put underwater for "maintenance." Oh well.

[skip some scenes]

The majority of the passengers are still on land, and we have the cruise ship all to ourselves! Somehow, the ship is fine and dandy, and we are not underwater. We approach land.

For some strange reason, we are pressed to find "riches" from land and bring them back to the ship. For another strange reason, we can't simply bring the cruise ship to the beach and dock there; we have to jump into the water with snorkeling gear and PUSH the damn cruise ship with our bare hands until it reaches shore.

And so we do, me and two of my nondescript friends. We go underwater and push at the bottom of the ship's hull. It proves to be surprisingly easy, and the ship even seems to tilt and almost tip over a couple of times.

One of my friends ask, "What if we accidentally tip the cruise ship over and it falls onto us?"

I respond, "That's pretty much impossible; even a shark ramming the cruise ship head-on wouldn't budge it even a bit."

My other friend says, "Yeah that shark would definitely just knock himself out."

But we are still bothered, because the cruise ship is so light and really DOES almost tip over a couple of times. As the three of us align the cruise ship with the shore, I marvel at how easy it is to move the cruise ship just by myself. I wonder, "Why is it so light?" We turn around and look over our shoulders.

Lo and behold, the gigantic cruise ship is hundreds of feet behind us, and has not budged a bit. In fact, what we had thought to be our cruise ship was, in actuality, nothing but a large blow-up dolphin balloon.

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