Slartboz: A Scene Preview

Slartboz: An Offensive Thing

    A set event scene from the interactive fiction (IF) adventure game Slartboz (currently under development.) It occurs during the Laser Lizard expedition into The Wyldes, to find The Tank: 

   You (Abro) stumble into the middle of an argument -- or rather its tail end, it seems -- among your more senior (and supposedy mature & intellectual) expedition team mates: Riv, Bonk and Shnick.

    The other four (of the party's 8 total) were elsewhere out of sight, probably being more productive, or, at least on guard watch duty.

    Bonk had said An Offensive Thing.

    And he didn't realize it until it was Too Late. He uttered a short sequence of Anglish words which had one of the worst qualities a human utterance could possibly have anymore -- even in the lives of those otherwise suffering from the aftereffects of a foolish climate apocalypse and an accidental, total ecosystem collapse. 

    Bonk's word set choice was... well, frankly it... Did Not Conform.

    And far from it.

    Not per the Official Rules and Regulations anyway. (aka The ORR). 

    [Author's Side Note: The team carries three small portable copies (for sake of redundancy) of the printed ORR booklet, each laminated in vegplastic, and periodically Re-Blessed by their village's Senior DEI Priest. Currently, an old grumpy lady with three ex's, no kids and 9 cats -- named Gretchen Proudly Four Names -- who was sure to rotate her pronouns weekly, as her latest Self-Actualized Identity shifted back-and-forth due to her apparently turbulent moods, or merely due to the latest Courier-News Fad (CNF) distributed by The Temple of DEI ORR located near the submerged ruins of Old New Yawk Cyteen along the sea coast. The booklet covers had a solid purple color, both to symbolically embrace Normerika's long historical tradition of sapio-tri-sexual nudism, and to honor An Approved Minor Idol of The Temple (a short thin old royal from The House MPLS) and also because purple was the cheapest color they were able to mass produce at scale anymore, after the planet-wide nuclear firestorms had cooled off.]

    Riv: "Hey now... don't slart shame, manno!! Slarts are just like us heteronids."

    Shnick: "Only slartier!"

    Riv paused and looked sideways at Shnick, as if unsure he wanted his help. His thoughts drifted a bit in its search for a decision on strategy then. Suddenly, he remembered an old adage from his pop, adapted from The Before Times (TM):

    "If life gives you lemons, son, and you be desperate for Benjamins... make lemonade, byotch! Then the trick is in the pricing and customer discovery, bringing down the acquisition costs, etc."

    His old man was the wisest man he ever knew, in all of Pell, and a good provider, though unfortunately a pacifist. He died in a mine cave-in caused by a Giant Burrowing Radskorpion. The sweetest joy he ever knew since, strangely enough, was hunting down and killing that big dumb bug with his bare hands. And then eating its little brain while still fresh.

    Lesson, perhaps? *Don't ever fark with Riv, and don't ever touch his family.* There was a reason he was the unanimously elected leader of the Lizards since the disappearance of Gorm Radley.

    Riv shook his head and came back to the present moment.

    Riv: "Uh... what *he* said."

    Bonk looked unconvinced, or at least unimpressed. Shrugged, and then said:

   "Whateva you sa-sa-shay, frens. Whateva..."

    Bonk noticed you arrived. His eyes lit up. 

    "Hey Abro! You missed it, my lizard! A big stink pop. I stepped on one of them Woke landmines. KA-BANG!!! My bad, oops!"

    You laughed. You did like Bonk. He was your oldest fren. And due to an accident of birth he was never *fully* Indoctrinated like Riv, Shnick and (ostensibly) you yourself were.

    "Ha! That does suck."

    You grinned and gave him a thumbs up. Afterall they were best frens, and would always have each other's back.

    For life, of course. 

..... 

To encourage further development of the Slartboz adventure game, PLEASE please, super pretty please -- and for the love of all that glows green at night in your nightmares -- send USD donations (any amount helps!) to: 

https://cash.app/$mk2022akmar/ 

you can put "Slartboz" in the memo field of your CashApp send, if you like, so I know 

thanks! 

Mike, the creator 

on Itch.io:

https://synystrongames.itch.io/slartboz

in Mastodon:

https://toot.io/@synlogic