Wake The Dead On Planet Jupiter

Q: If SCUL flew a mission and nobody showed up, would it still make a sound?

A: YES!

The unrelenting heavy radiation started early in the day — the real nasty kind that penetrates your bones. Figment had already scrubbed due to an extreme fear of water, and only a few brave pilots made it to MRC. As mission time approached, only Dr. Claw remained, with Wombat arriving at 45 minutes to launch (Skunk was busy building a rocketship).

The mission launched, intended to be a quick, routine milk run loop of the city, if nothing else, to maintain our longstanding streak of leaving no Saturday unpatrolled. With no specific destination in mind, we swung by Fort Madison in an attempt to wake Nosepicker from his infernal slumber with catcalls and pebbles tossed at windows. Our efforts proved unsuccessful, but did finally provide the inspiration for the night's mission objective: we would attempt to solve the traveling salesman problem by zigzagging our way through the city buzzing as many pilot forts as possible with various forms of sonic disruption!

Set to an industrial soundtrack of assorted cEvin Key projects and side projects on Dr. Claw's miniature radiobox (stuff we could never play on a "regular" mission), and moving at double to triple standard fleet velocity, we headed toward Davis, hitting Fort Tower along the way, but Threespeed was nowhere to be found. We doubled back through Davis in extreme stealth mode and headed up the Summer Street g-well to hit Fort Summer next, where we encountered another missed connection (we later learned Stogie had indeed heard our hoots and hollers, which prompted several hours of creative productivity for him).

After finally cresting the Summer g-well, it was smooth sailing down to Fort Benatar where we hailed Megaseth, again to no avail. Next up was Fort Issimo, but no pilots were to be found there either.

We continued to Harvard at warp speed via the sleepy streets of Avon Hill, where we again flew under the radar of the unsuspecting populace. After a quick jaunt out Brattle and back along Mt. Auburn, we set off to buzz Moose at Fort Inman.

At this point, we could have easily declared victory and headed back to base, but Wombat's pride would not allow him to navigate so short a mission, so we forged onward through Central and the back streets of Cambridgeport, and on to the Kendall Globe (we heard there might be some steam there...).

Following a circuitous route intended solely to increase our mileage, we looped back past Zygoat's post, where we FINALLY made human contact, and each pilot received their first and only high five of the night! Zygoat graciously offered to let us inside to escape the radiation, but the end was in sight and we had to press on. One last fly-by of Pecan's Fort Sogo (she wasn't home), and we were almost home free.

Back at the launchpad, we executed the extremely rare "flying pilot count maneuver" (which was surprisingly difficult to pull off), just to make sure we hadn't lost anyone. All in all, we managed to cover almost 17 light years in just over two earth hours, and only got a little wet... not too shabby!