#vgtracy

“It looks like a duck.”

“How can it look like a duck? It has four legs.”

“You’re calling them legs? They look more like flippers.”

“Hey, it was you who said it was a duck. Ducks don’t have four flippers.” I could hear Gordon frowning at Alan and rolled my eyes. They were obviously arguing about something. Gordon should be going to bed. We’d been out most of the day, in the rain and the mud and I swear I hadn’t gotten it all out of my hair yet. And I’d kept my helmet on the entire time.

There was a chance I was hallucinating mud, but honestly, there had been so much.

“It’s a turtle, Alan.”

As I rounded the entrance into the comms room, I came across the terrible two over by Dad’s desk, huddled over something.

The sun shining through the open windows was far too bright than it had any right to be, since Gordon and I had been up all night on the other side of the planet. The cool breeze tangled in my still damp hair, making me shiver.

“Don’t you mean tortoise? Its neck is too long for a turtle.”

Even I could see Gordon’s incredulity as he stared at his little brother. “What do you know about tortoises?”

“I know what a tortoise is! And that is a long-necked tortoise, not a turtle.”

“It doesn’t have a head, Allie.”

“Turtles have heads, Gords.”

“So do tortoises.”

It was at this point I realised they were huddled over Gordon’s phone, some kind of image on the screen.

I peered over their shoulders.

“Whoa, Virg! What the hell?” The fish jumped away from me. “Personal space much?” He stared. “You turning ninja or something?”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise and looked down at my bare feet. “Uh, no?” So it wasn’t often I wandered around without my boots, but I was in pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt and I really was beyond caring. “You need to go to bed, Gordon. We could get another callout.”

His shoulders dropped. “I know, I know. I was gonna go and then my search pinged me.” He held up his phone, but didn’t hold it still enough for me to see anything.

I closed my eyes. “Gords…”

“You know, the search that automatically pulls up mentions of us.”

I blinked slowly at him. “Eos manages that.”

“Noooo, I have a special search. Just for us. You know Two, you and me.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Curious. Anyway…” And this time he did hold up the phone still enough to actually see. “We got a complaint.”

It was my turn to drop my shoulders. “Another one?”

Gordon snorted. “What’s life without bitching about it?”

I groaned and turned around to head up to my rooms again. I’d only come down to check on the fish. He has a tendency to get distracted.

May I present exhibit A.

“I don’t have the energy for this. Let Jack handle it.” Jack Dunning our lawyer, a man and a firm we kept far too busy.

Mostly because some people sucked.

“But this is art, Virg. Just look at it.”

I blinked, but, of course, he had piqued my curiosity. I turned back to find him holding up his phone again.

On it was an image taken from the sky, probably a drone, of a burnt and muddy spot on a lawn.

It took me a moment to connect the dots, but it was obvious Gordon saw the moment I did.

“We made art, Virg. Look, we made a turtle.”

Alan grumbled. “I still think it is a tortoise.”

I ignored him, and, reaching out, took the phone from Gordon’s hand.

There was a headline. ‘International Rescue destroys $100,000 worth of landscaping…again.”

I arched an eyebrow. How does a chunk of lawn outside a collapsed conservatory cost $100,000? You’d think they’d have more to worry about off screen where the massive sinkhole had eaten half the building and the museum next to it.

Yet they were complaining about the front lawn?

“Virg?” Gordon was frowning at me. “You’re not taking it seriously are you?” A hand landed on my shoulder as he leant in to gesture at the photo. “This is art, bro. You drew a turtle.”

I was obviously too tired to understand what the hell he was talking about.

So he showed me.

“See, four VTOL burn marks for flippers. Landing strut prints for legs. Module deployment indent for its body. She sunk down quit a bit - that was a lot of wet soil. Ramp indent and pod tracks for the neck. Turtle.”

I wasn’t looking at him, but I could hear the grin in his voice.

I turned the phone around to get the image from another angle. “It doesn’t have a head.”

“Abstraction is one of your specialities, Virg, go with the flow.”

“You think we drew a beheaded turtle.” I could kinda see it.

“It’s a tortoise.” Alan folded his arms across his chest and frowned.

“It doesn’t matter. It is art. I bet I could sell this and make money for charity.”

“It’s not your photo.” Why was I even discussing this?

“Okay, I’ll pull one from our footage. I bet we have one and probably others. I could sell several. Get some money flowing for the people affected by the sinkhole.”

I blinked again. It had truly been a shit rescue and there were a lot of people in pain. “Tomorrow, Gords. You need sleep and so do I. Speak to John in the morning. Maybe ask Eos to tolerate you for the second it will take her to retrieve the footage.”

Gordon held up his hands. “Fine, fine. Will do. But I am going to do it, Virg. Virgil Tracy original art. The Flying Turtle Lands. Or The Landing of the Flying Turtle.” He frowned. “Do Turtles roost?”

Oh god. I turned away and headed out of the room fast. I was going to go to bed and face this later, hopefully after a bucket of coffee, or maybe not at all.

Hopefully.

I went to bed and I did sleep, long and well.

And by the time I had drunk enough coffee to become coherent the next morning, Gordon had raised 3.6 million by selling Flying Turtle prints online.

I may have made a thing. Been thinking about it for a while, tossing it back and forth in my head. Don’t know if it will go anywhere, or if I have any time to put anything in it, but here it is...

vgtracy.tumblr.com

So, yeah, if you see @vgtracy it just be Nutty :D

Nutty