Originally written to announce the beginning of the Ballon Brigade, a week-long virtual hackathon within the The Summer Of Making (our third “Universal You-Ship-We-Ship” program).

The Summer of Making — Chapter Numero Dos

THWAP! ← Oddly enough, that’s the sound your average ghost makes when it slaps into the hard-packed dirt floor of an ancient tomb, taken to ground by the nigh-unstoppable force of a dino-hug. The wriggling wraith wrestled against Explorpheus Jones, but everyone knows a ghost is no match for a dinosaur in a fight. Heidi Croft leapt off a nearby rock, landed with a forward roll, cartwheeled into a handspring, and finished with a roundoff that dropped her squarely on top of their ghostly prey’s wiggly tail, straddling it with her haunches to render it fully immobile. Knowing she had only a few moments to finish the job, she furiously tickled the squirming phantom’s bum as if it were the armpit of a younger sibling. BLORP. For half a minute the ghost burped up a steady stream of supplies: deck screws, PLA filament, wood glue, two ipads, a load of dimensional lumber, six Korean War-era military surplus bedpans, and even a few semi-valuable pokémon cards in reasonably good condition. Turns out these bad boys are filled with all kinds of good stuff, you just gotta know how to milk ‘em. Relieved of its contents, the ghost collapsed into the dirt for a good long nap.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: stealing from a departed soul? That sounds unethical. But not all ghosts are created when a living creature dies without clicking “Eject” on their soul, as most of you learned in school; ghosts are merely a sort of interuniversal ectoplasmic energy bubble, and you may be surprised by the range of conditions that result in their birth. Any concentrated deposit of creative energy in one universe can bubble out into another and pinch off as a wibbly-wobbly spook that gobbles up whatever loot may be lying about. You wouldn’t believe how many get spawned here whenever a hackathon happens in your world! It’s not good for ghosts to eat this stuff though, it’s sort of like when a sea turtle ingests a plastic bag because it looks like a jellyfish if you squint really hard… or if your brain is the size of a grape. Lol, stupid turtles. Anyway. ghosts may be scavengers, but if they fill their bellies with junk for too long they can die, so our heroes are doing them a service okay?

Heidi Croft and Explorpheus Jones laid out their loot in rows on the dirt and took stock of their haul for the day, marveling at how much more fruitful tomb raiding was proving to be when compared to their usual dumpster dives. Heidi’s paws quivered with anticipation as she eyed a mound of cotton candy they had squeezed out of a big fat poltergeist way up on Level 2 of the tomb. Cotton candy was a personal favorite of hers, but it’s not a food that appears very often in the life of a rugged explorer. She licked her chops. Her nostrils flared. She gazed longingly at the tufts of delicious puffy sugar, just sitting over there, looking all supple and sumptuous, practically teasing her, quickly dissolving into the rising layer of water that was suddenly soaking her feet.

Wait, what?? Water?! Explorpheus looked urgently at Heidi. She was crestfallen, her face frozen in shock as she witnessed the rapidly-diminishing tufts of her sugary treat vanish like some sort of cruel trick played by a witch in a fable. The moral of that story? Don’t count your sweets before you eats. Heidi trembled with glistening eyes as tears gathered to soggle her whiskers. She was devastated. Explorpheus grabbed her shoulders and shook her out of her trance. “We need to get out of here, now.” Heidi looked around and felt her tummy drop into the rising waters as she realized that a daring escape would mean leaving all their goodies behind. This was a terrible day! Explorpheus—not so distracted by material things—leapt into action and hoisted the snoozing ghost over her shoulders like a Bulgarian peasant-farmer hauling a goat. Together they ran back up the tunnel toward the main chasm into which this tomb had been carved. They burst out of the entrance and looked up at the sky through the maze of bridges and caverns and doorways they had spent all day navigating to make it down here to the very bottom level, where only the juiciest phantoms retreat to.

Thinking quickly, Heidi Croft hatched a plan and retrieved a rope from her inventory. Blast! They hadn’t brought the harnesses today, and there was no time to tie one swiss seat let alone two!! She’d have to settle for a simple loop around both of their torsos—but what knot to close the loop with… a double-bowline with a Yosemite finish? Perfectly secure, but they’d need to get free from the rope in a jiffy if they didn’t want to visit the clouds. She needed a quick-release knot, but which one? A basic slipknot couldn’t be trusted for this kind of load, and a halter hitch would be too hard to release under tension. Highwayman’s hitch? Not for a safety-critical application. Heck, no quick-release knot could typically be recommended for human (or animal) loads. Siberian hitch… manger hitch… pile hitch… ring hitch… each of them had some of the properties needed, but none had all at once! Heidi’s mind raced like a C++ application refactored for multithreading by an incompetent junior engineer. Just when it seemed that all hope was lost, the answer revealed itself to her tiny brain in a flash as if divinely inspired by the spirit of Clifford Ashley himself: the tumble hitch. It was so obvious, how could she not see it before?? But hang on, she needed a loop, and she’d only ever seen the tumble hitch used in the context of a rigid anchor! Was there an accepted adaptation for securing the working end of a rope back to the standing end mid-line without any hardware??? Dammit, there was no time. Heidi drew a deep, uncertain breath and made a call based on her instincts. She slung the rope around herself and her pal, looped the standing end into an alpine butterfly, and tumble-hitched the working end to the butterfly’s bight. It may not be technically optimal, but it would get the job done.

With herself and Explorpheus snugly bound together, Heidi seized the ghost by its lips, stretched them outward, and tied them off to the running end of the rope with a constrictor knot, topologically converting the ghost into a sealed-up sphere. “Quickly Explorpheus, tickle the bum!!” she shouted. The water was up to her thighs by now. Explorpheus couldn’t tickle quite as well as Heidi on account of her hooves, but she reached up and frantically tried her best to stimulate a reaction from the bubble of ectoplasm. Mercifully, her efforts were rewarded as the surface tension on the internal ectoplasmic membrane dropped and went negative, causing the ghost to inflate into a sort of balloon with an internal volume that was now less dense than the surrounding atmosphere. The external membrane underwent some kind of curious electrochemical process as it stretched, altering the hue of its subsurface scattering, cycling through a cornucopia of colors before settling on a lovely lavender shade. The purple ghost balloon shot upwards, jerking the rope that bound our two heroes together, lifting them out of the water as they clung on desperately to their slender, tenuous lifeline.

Once they were clear of the rim of the chasm, Explorpheus swung her tremendous weight about to give their bundle some lateral momentum. At the apogee of their swing, Heidi Croft yanked the tumble hitch loose, sending them both tumbling into the grass and releasing the ghost balloon into a tropospheric adventure all its own. Heidi got up and shimmied off some of the water that besoaked her fur and enwettened her booty shorts. She cast her gaze down the hillside, beyond the bramble forest, over the marshmallow hills, landing upon the shoreline where this island continent first arose beneath their ship. Except, the shoreline was a little closer than it was the last time they’d seen it. In fact, it was a lot closer. That didn’t make sense. “Say, Explorpheus… are we due for an extra high tide today?” Explorpheus came to Heidi’s side and gasped at the gaspworthy vista laid out before her. “That’s no high tide.”

Explorpheus looked at Heidi. Heidi looked at Explorpheus. They both had a sinking feeling. Epistemologically speaking, this was the correct feeling to have as it dawned on them that the island was sinking. Explorpheus looked up at the ghost balloon sailing ever higher into the heavens above. Heidi followed her gaze and immediately knew what her buddy was thinking. Staring up at the ghostly orb above them, Heidi Croft opened her raccoony little mouth to speak.

“We’re gonna need a lot more ghosts.”