Excerpt: Informata, or A Story of A Girl and Her Adventures on the Internetional Highway

They stepped inside. The twin engines loomed above them, roughly circular and perhaps twenty feet in length. They hummed quietly, but she could feel how hot it was inside as they warmed up.

They weren’t like any engines that Rain had seen before. They looked a bit Frankensteinish – much like the Celestra Selena Elaxan Ravenna Ciaran Renata Santa Maria Seraphina Giovanna Ferraria Mary Sue in that they looked cobbled together, as opposed to being designed to look like they did.

“The engines are an ugly bunch, I know,” Elaine said, but there was a lot of proud in her voice, “And they’re hardy. Sure they’re a pain in the neck quite a lot of time, and they need constant repair and maintenance, but they’ve stood up to quite a lot in their time. They’ve gotten us out of more scrapes than I care to remember.”

“Jack said you can do miracles.”

Elaine snorted. “I have to, these engines give us so many problems. He likes to tell the story of the time where I had to use whatever was at hand to boost the engines, which was a hot glue gun, a stick of chewing gum and some shoelace. And damn if it worked.”

Rain smiled. She liked Elaine, who seemed quite comfortable being a woman in what was predominantly a man’s world still.

“Anyway, we’re starting them up again,” Elaine said, leading her to the railings. “The engines extend down out of the ship, and they’re basically what drives the entire ship. They provide lift, propulsion, electricity, and all sorts of things.”

“Do they have names?” Rain asked mildly. They peered down the railing, at the ground several hundred feet below the Celestra Selena Elaxan Ravenna Ciaran Renata Santa Maria Seraphina Giovanna Ferraria Mary Sue.

“They do,” Elaine enthused. “The left one is Billie, and the one on the right is Jean.”

“Billie… And Jean?” Rain raised a brow.

Elaine grinned. “I figured we might as well go with the Michael Jackson theme we’ve got going on anyway.”