Submarine Sandwiches
markcmarino
Submarine Sandwiches
Lot of water up here in Minnesota, Cathy said taking a long drag off an e-cigarette as the rain poured outside Sarah’s Table Chester Creek Cafe. Vaping, as they call it. (Rob thought it strange that her e-cigarette was part of her Ay-phone. It’s the latest app, she explained. All the kids are doing it, she said, blowing rings of data.) In fact, so much water in Duluth, she said, not unaware of the presence of writers from epically parched Southern California – we’ve got 10 percent of the world’s fresh water. Of course, that will change when the oceans rise and consume our world as they did poor Atlantis.
Then she asked, have you heard about the family who tried to prep for evacuation of the second Atlantis by moving into a mythological mechanical (mythmech) submarine shaped like a sea horse -- which the dad and son thought awesome but the more practically minded daughter and mom thought it ludicrous. You see, in a sea horse or sea-horse-shaped submergible, the bulk of the free space is in the middle whereas the outskirts, the extremities as we should call them, are horribly narrow – offering not even enough room for a family member to fold themselves up. But why be so extreme? asked the father, winking at the son, and the gals just rolled their eyes.
So they get on this boat, and for a while at least, everything is kosher or halal, if you will. The Sub-Family Robinson are getting cozy in their front row seats to the sinking of Atlantis 2.0 as they joyfully submerge and explore the world of whales and killer jelly fish and megasharks. Most of the underwater topography astounds them, since Atlantis is the only land they knew about, geography not being prominent in the new Atlantian Common Core standards. All was going swimmingly until one day, Mom and Dad look up suddenly while the kids are launching into another continuous hour of bickering and hurt feelings and boundary drawing and as the sub is filling up with the uncirculated gas of emotions, they realize that they will be confined to that ship for eternity. That was only the second day of their test run and incidentally the day Atlantis 2 sunk to its watery grave. Well, said Cathy, taking a hit off the headphone port of her AyPhone, you know what Sartre said about hell, and he hadn’t even stepped foot on a submarine shaped like a sea horse with a wide middle and tiny, constricting extremities.
MM
Rob Wittig
Likewise, all four later downplayed the danger. Now that we all know the outcome of the Comical Coup — seizure of broad executive powers by a bronze-coiffed buffoon, the walling of the borders of the District of Columbia, the rapid re-establishment of order by loyal troops — it's difficult to imagine the genuine fear in the hearts of the intrepid family of four as they pedaled gamely up the Potomac.
As I study the surveillance video archives now, I believe it was crucial to the success of the Big Idea that the family paused inside the human-powered submersible to rest, paused for food, and paused sometimes just to crack jokes. The meandering course of the cartoon-like, sea-horse-headed Atlantis 2 — its seeming purposelessness — made it appear innocuous enough for the (admittedly rather dim) Guards of the Demagoguery to tow it the rest of the way into the heart of the capital, lash it to a dock without inspecting it thoroughly, and then abandon their posts to watch the Super Bowl.
The 2 hours and 35 minutes of the big game during which the fearless four were tiptoeing to the South Gate to let in Colonel Hazwri and his US Marine Battalion and complete the Big Idea must have been truly harrowing, though they did famously stop for chicken sandwiches... which, in fairness, they ate on the run.