CHAPTER TWO
the disc odyssey
As the dust settled on the grassy hills of Malvern, Worcestershire, planet Earth, Nina and Otto reflected upon the Emancipation Celebration. All that remained from the blissful weekend were some scattered cigarette butts and transient memories made with their new human companions. Never before had they enjoyed such musical freedom, living their wildest dreams, indulging on every genre conceivable.
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Despite this nostalgic euphoria, an unshakeable feeling gnawed in the back of their minds. It was the aching desire to share this new world with their musically oppressed compatriots on Vulcanize, still living under the cruel Villashlobo regime, unable to escape. Fear washed over them as their own memories of the TechNoFunPol Unit surfaced. Nina and Otto had escaped the regime through the portal, but many remained trapped in that brutal world of audial homogeneity.
Springing off the luscious grass on which they sat, the pair dashed directly to where the portal had formed, intending to transport back to Vulcanize and gather their new rave resistance. To their horror, it was no more. Underneath where the rift of spacetime had floated was a geometric maze charred into the grass. Ripardo Villashlobo, and his TechNoFunPol cronies, had found a way to close it from Vulcanize. Nina and Otto’s alien hairs stood on end; not only were the remaining Vulcans trapped, but their own escape had been discovered… It was going to be more difficult than they had hoped.
Without the original route back to Vulcanize, Nina and Otto had to get inventive. They began to collect things from around the festival site. Scrap metal, abandoned flare trousers, remnants of the Melting Pot stage, half eaten samosas, engines from abandoned farming equipment, an abundance of sofa cushions... Emulating the birth of Frankenstein’s monster, they crafted a rudimentary UFO. One, they hoped, which would take them on a voyage through space.
The voyage would take months, perhaps until late August, and would be highly dangerous. It would be their most expensive endeavour to date, due to the cost of constructing their spaceship and the gut-wrenching state of inflation on Earth. Nevertheless Nina and Otto ploughed on, day and night. Taught by her father, Nina led the engineering of the vessel and the propulsion design. Otto, who couldn’t change a lightbulb back on Vulcanize, put his exceptional DJ set preparation skills to good use, planning their route through the universe. To refuel, they would need to stop at inhabited planets along the way. Delicious local Malvern ale would make a good trade for fuel, eclectic celestial tunes and decorative items.
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After several months, their ship was finally complete. She was an astounding creation, standing proud in the centre of the festival site, her otherworldliness juxtaposed with the fields of wild grass and unripe corn in the Malvern countryside. Fashioned aerodynamically, she resembled the nostalgic shape of a vinyl record upon which they learned their craft. The propellent comprised of diesel and leftover Mazzy, a concoction explosive enough to enter orbit and comatose a human. They stood back and stared. She was perfect, and at first light, she would carry them through the cosmos.
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The Earth’s only sun rose over the rolling hills of Malvern. It was launch day. The time had come to name their shimmering voyager. As an homage to her form, and the best genre in the universe, they christened their creation…
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The Disc-O.
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As they boarded the Disc-O they looked back over the festival site and knew they would soon return. If their odyssey was successful, they would be accompanied with an army of eccentric Vulcan partiers, ready to do it all again.