Tuesday, June 20, 2006, 10:59 - Stories
***This is a fictional story, No offence to Kenya, Kenyans, Cashews, Cashew Farmers, or any other persons***
by Naveed and Brian
CHAPTER 1
We were out at sea for four months, returning in our submarine. The waves crashed against the U.S.S. Kenya. The tumultuous sea swallowed my ship completely.
* * * * *
I recall nothing afterwards 'til I awoke again near the base of Mt. Kenya; my crew was nowhere to be found. "Ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-u-u-p" I was approached by a mountain goat, its hooves almost magically pointed to the summit of the mountain as it yelled something that sounded close to the word 'up.' I had no choice; it was a sin in Kenya to disregard the advice of a mountain goat. So I headed up the mountain, only to learn that it was the biggest mistake of my life.
It was on the long hike up through the dense, lush underbrush that I began to first notice the only way I could ever survive, though I did not know it at the time. There appeared to be many nuts, each about the size of my thumb and half moon in shape. It seemed to me that these could be cashews, but I was not hungry enough to try them yet. In training aboard the USS Kenya, we learned that the last thing you should do is eat potentially dangerous food when in unknown areas. I prayed that over the mountain there was a nice McDonalds, with fatty, artery-clogging food. After several hours I came to a ledge overlooking the sea covered in the bushes loaded with the nuts. While I was observing the sea to see if I could find any sign of my submarine, a few goats snuck up behind me and said "Ba-a-a-a-a-up, ba-a-a-a-a-a-u-u-p," so I began to climb the mountain again.
* * * * *
My legs grew tired, thoughts swirled within my head. Where the hell am I? My stomach growled with a vengeance; the last time I had eaten anything was the feast one night ago while aboard the U.S.S. Kenya. I sobbed softly, as I remembered the great submarine, and of course my trusty crew. We called her the Queen of the ocean. A goat travelled along my side, constantly urging me to go "b-a-a-u-p."
"I got the idea, sheep. Hey, you have any good meat on you?"
I began fantasizing about having roasted lamb, but it seems as though the goat caught the hunger in my eyes, and he quickly made a run for it, before the situation got desparate. Those cashews were looking mighty appetizing now.
CHAPTER 2
My legs felt like they were filled with lead. Looking down the mountain, I saw how far I’d come. I thought that I was about halfway up the mountain, but there was no way I could get anywhere near the top without food.
I never realized how hungry hiking can make you. But then again I had never hiked up a mountain 10 hours a day for 3 days without food. I found myself missing the slop they tried to pass off as food on the USS Kenya. It seemed like years since I have seen another person or anything civilized.
I thought to myself, "Should I go back and eat those cashews?" But what I found on the horizon next answered my question.
The sheep was gone now, as I hiked peacefully up the tallest mountain known to man. This happened during a freak accident when a pilot crashed into Mt. Everest and knocked off the top. I searched the summit, no signs of life. Except...
On the horizon sat a quaint McDonalds. I ran, with any strenght I had. My legs were so tired I felt like I was gliding. Quickly opening the door, I busted in.
"FOOD! THANK GOD! YOU HAVE FOOD!"
"No, we have McFood," replied the cashier. Her eyes dropping as she responded in her monotonous voice. It had obviously been a long day for her. I thought it must be hard having to drive up a mountain to go to work.
"What's the difference?"
"Oh, you're not from around here, are you? McFood is made solely of cashews."
I thought a second or two, before deciding that cashews would be the only thing I could get my hands on, so I gave in.
"I'll take the McKenya burger!"
"Are you sure?"
"Why not?"
"We have the McCashew burger, too"
"What's the difference?"
"One is poisoned..."
So there I sat, I had to think hard before making a decision that could end my life. I stared down at the skanky menu, only two items, and I gave a snicker. The cashier gave me a nasty look and I apologized.
After several minutes of pondering the situation, I ordered.
CHAPTER 3
"Can I have a McKenya Burger?"
The cashier gave me a nasty look but said nothing. She slowly handed over the burger, as if it was a sacred ritual. I was so hungry I took the first bite through the wrapper, eating the paper in the effort to get at the delicious sandwich inside.
That was when the cashier started laughing. Her laughter rang off the cliffs and valleys that surrounded the mountain, scaring all of the wildlife into their homes. All the plants within 50 feet of the store shriveled up and died.
"Just a guess, but did I choose the wrong one?"
"Yeah, sucker and there is only one antidote, the Golden Cashew. The bush that it grows on is in the center of the mountain."
"So, I’m going to die?" I asked, already knowing the answer
"I’d say the side effects should kick in in ahhh, about a day or two. Here are your supplies." She said, handing me what appeared to be a shotgun and a leather pouch.
"What are these?"
"That’s your cashew rifle, shoots cashews about 500 feet, and your cashew sack, for holding cashews that you aren’t using."
I wandered the mountain, pondering how I would ever reach the top. I looked up towards the summit. There was no way I'd make it in two days, I was a gonner for sure.
I carried my leather pouch and rifle, remembering clearly what the cashier had told me, "You get one cashew shot. You waste it, and you're dead." She never specified what waste it meant.
As I wallowed around in my own self pity I thought of my desperate situation some more, "I need a sherpa." And as if the goat gods had heard my prayer, I soon spotted a man running in the distance. He was being ushered by a pack of mountain goats, as was typical.
"Hey! Slow down!" I yelled across the mountain, my voice echoed across the valley beneath me, which of course triggered the man to turn around.
"OY! You're alive?" The man replied in his thick Irish accent.
I found my first crew member, half Irish, half Kenyan. Patrick O'Flaherty.
"Ye, but not for long, you see..." I explained my situation to my good Irish friend, after all, two heads are better than one.
Pat and I discussed the events of recent days and came to the conclusion that there was something not right about this island. Since when do submarines sink? We decided that there was a lot more to this than first met the eye, including the cashews. Pat said that he had eaten a few, but they gave him a stomach ache.
'Aye, they weren’t actually that bad. And there is a stream back a ways, incase you are thirsty.'
I had resolved not to eat or drink another thing, but thirst got the better of me, soon I was guzzling noisily at the stream.
'This water is so good, it has to be fattening.' I yelled to the rolling mountains. Birds flew off in all directions and a warm breeze started blowing up the mountain and ruffled our hair. We set off for the summit, this time with a hope and feeling better with the whole situation.
CHAPTER 4
"Pat, you ever heard of the golden cashew?"
"Naw, be there such a thing? Sounds but merely a fable to me."
"Well, it better be real, it's the only thing that'll save my--"
"Arse?"
The nights were cold, the days were hot, we soon learned Kenya did not have a favorable climate. I thought of the crew, the submarine. What went wrong? Where were the others?
"We lost a lot of good men last night."
"Lost?" It was always Pat's nature to be optimistic, but in some cases his optimism just seemed like a sheer lack of common sense. "There are five men out there. Och, I bet you they're still alive."
His bet seemed a bit one sided, for there were only three floating devices on the ship, granted that Pat and I took one each, it was most probable that only one other crew member had survived.
"Ay, what are you doing, anyway. Don't lose site of your goal. Find that bloody cashew, for the life of ye."
We climbed all night, no sleep, and now, I have only a matter of hours to live. But the question is, how many hours?
By then I didn’t even know what was worse, the hunger, the lack of sleep, the pain from my aching feet or the realization that I was going to die. I was actually leaning toward the lack of sleep being the worst, but we couldn’t stop then, we only had about 150 feet to the top, but this looked like the toughest going yet.
"I’d say that I have about 8 hours until I start feeling weaker and most likely dieing from the poison"
"Och! Don’t think that way! I’m sure that ye have at least 15 hours left."
"Bloody…" I yelled, there seemed to be a stairway cut right into the mountains side, which appeared to go right up to the top.
We scaled the last 100 feet to the top as quickly as we could, but as soon as we got there we were disappointed.
At the peak of the mountain there was only a hole about the size as the manhole covers back home.
CHAPTER 5
"Well, it's not all bad!" Patrick called from the middle of the mountain. He was peering inside the empty space where I figured the golden cashew bush should have been. I stared in wonder, the hole was filled with liquor.
"Says roight 'ere it's cashew ale."
"Pat, we can't get drunk at a time like this!"
"Drunk? 'oo says we're getting drunk!"
An hour later we were completely wasted. As we sat together in the summit of Mount Kenya. We climbed the tallest mountain in the world, and I had 6 hours to live, yet we weren't sober enough to appreciate the situation. And so, with our cracking, drunk voices, we sung the song of the U.S.S. Kenya.
Let's sing a song for the ol' days
Let's sing a song for the crew
Let's sing a song for the Queen
Let's sing a song for you
Let's sing a song for the good ol' times
Let's sing a song for the sea
Let's sing a song for our drunken rhymes
Let's sing a song for me
We awoke the next morning. Surrounded completely by a tribe of indigenous Kenyans. What seemed to be the leader stepped in front of the rest and spoke in a foreign tongue. His face oddly resembled that of the cashier. We were tied up and taken to a small hut, a little down from the summit, on the other side of the mountain.
"Och, maybe they be nice people, eh?"
They threw us into a stone cell deep in the heart of the mountain. It was damp and very large. I was sure that there were hundreds of rats in there with us. The funny thing was that I was not dead yet.
"Hey, Pat, why do you think that I’m not dead yet."
"I says that the burger never was poisoned"
"What? That doesn’t make sense"
"Yeah, ‘t does. We walked right into a trap."
"You mean that they just told me that to get me to the top of the mountain so they could capture us?"
"That sounds about right"
We lapsed into an uneasy silence. We had no idea what they were going to do with us. I thought that they were going to either kill us and eat us or turn us into slaves and make us work in cashew fields all day long.
I was awoken by a whip that morning. My fate was clear: Cashew Farmers.
"Wake up you bloody ingrates."
"Och, calm down."
The sun beat down upon my back, we had hours upon hours of brutal labor ahead of us. I wonder if Pat could see any good in the situation now.
"At least you're not poisoned, right?"
"Ha ha, too right," I knew he had the right attitude.
I looked around the cashew fields. Each worker had to fill up a large barrel of cashews before they could rest for the day. I wondered if there were enough cashews for all the barrels, I figured not. However, in the distance there was a man nearing the end of his shift.
"OY!" called Patrick.
"O'Flaherty! Be that you?" the man bellowed back at us.
"Aye, it be me! Long time not see, eh, Flannigan?"
Michael Flannigan, the third and final crew member of the U.S.S. Kenya that was still alive. Rumor had it he was a British spy, but he had not done anything to raise our suspicions.
* * * * *
The sun was ousted from it's throne up in the sky as the moon took it's place. Mike, Pat, and I sat by the bars of our cells.
"So, what happened?" I asked Mike.
"Ye see, I went down to the McDonald's roight? But I ate the McCashew, and the cashier told me it was poisoned. O' course I went searchin' for tha golden cashew, but it be nowhere to be found."
"Aye, I ate the McKenya, turns out it wasn't poisoned."
"Och, we got right cheated. Why do they want us?" whispered Pat.
"This is the 'cleansing' period. The strong ones live through the labor, and are sacrificed. The weak ones, well I'm not quite sure what 'appens to them, just try and live this through."
"Sacrificed? For what?"
"Och, they be a bunch o' psychos," Pat added again, he was talking in an unusually quiet voice.
"Their God, Zorgoth."
CHAPTER 6
After about 2 weeks of hard, back breaking work in the acres and acres of cashews, our time had come. It was time to be sacrificed. All of the work had toned our muscles, we were going to be nice and buff and ready to be sacrificed. The captured people around us began to drop like flies. Stepping over dead bodies was almost a way of life after 2 weeks of it. No one bothered to pick them up.
But we survived, at least there was plenty of food, the cashews were not that bad to eat if you got used to the taste and the stomach ache.
When the day finally came it was a bit of a relief. My bulging biceps were quite ready to be sacrificed but I still decided to come up with a plan.
* * * * *
"Flannigan," I called from my cell, I figured my arms were strong enough to bend the bars open, I was wrong. "You still got your shotgun?"
"Sure, do," he responded from the darkness.
"Alright, all's good." He didn't question me, and let me to my work. I barely went to bed that night. During the night I was able to draw up a map of at least half the island, for I hadn't explored the other half; in addition, I drew up a half-decent escape plan, but my chances of survival were slim. I blew out the candle as the light streamed through the windows, and heard Pat call from the cell nearby.
"Och, you're gonna get us all killed with yer plannin'."
* * * * *
We were hauled out of our jail cells in the most hostile manner, whips and all, and were set in line before a spewing pit of fire and lava. What I presumed to be the sacrificial pit. As I stared down into hell on earth, the chief recited his sacrificing incantations to the beat of three large drum players...Bom...Bom...Bom
Bom "May the Zorgoth" Bom "be known for his merciful soul" Bom "and may he accept our" Bom "plentiful sacrifices" Bom "the best cashews of the land" Bom "and the strongest men of the island" Bom "Bring Peace to our lands."
The pace of the beats quickened, and the first man was to be sacrificed. He yelled and squirmed in defiance but was no match for knots so tight they must have been tied by Zorgoth himself. I eyed the cashew barrel behind Flannigan, he was ahead of Pat and me in line.
I heard the cock of a gun, which quickly initiated the cock of my head, I turned to see Flannigan sneak out a shotgun from underneath his clothes, or what remained of his clothes.
"Alright, boy, give me the map."
I turned around, and reached my left hand into my pocket, while at the same time drawing my shotgun, and I turned around to face Flannigan. Shotguns staring each other in the eyes.
"Don't be stupid Flannigan," I snickered.
"Och, ye blew yer cover," I heard Pat call from behind me.
I eyed the barrel of cashews behind Pat, it was upright and ready to be sacrificed, but the spewing lava did it's toll, there was a weak bit of wood on the barrel, where if enough pressure was applied, the whole thing would snap into pieces. I had my mind set, the escape was clear.
"Och, don't waste your shot, laddy."
"Shut up, Pat. Now hand me that map of yours."
"Over my dead body," I answered coldly.
O'Flaherty fired his gun...the air was pierced by the sharp noise of the shotgun. The cashew raced towards my chest and the impact caused a small crescent shaped bruise, before it bounced off of my body and fell harmlessly to the ground.
"Och, ye wasted yer shot, lad, now ye asked fer it."
My sites were aimed right for Flannigan's eyes; moving my gun a bit to the left, I fired.
"Ha! Missed your shot," Flannigan called, satisfaction ringing in his voice, "now you get to die with me, you filthy Irish basta--"
Before he could finish his sentence the barrel behind him erupted, causing cashews to bury anybody nearby, this included Flannigan. The tribemen ran to the broken barrel in fear that they had angered Zorgoth. Cashews shot into the spewing pit, and caused a stack of smoke to rise towards the heavens, higher than any man could throw a spear. Pat gave me an optimistic look, but the unusual part was, I gave him the same look of optimism too; I had created the perfect diversion. The advice of the cashier echoed in my mind.
"Don't waste your shot."
"Och! 'urry your arse up, let's get ootta this freak show."
Chapter 7
We ran at a steady pace, watching the lava behind us turn restlessly under the smoke stack caused by the cashews falling in.
"Och, we won’t make it in time." O’Flaherty called from behind me. He was right, we needed a faster source of transportation. Suddenly an idea struck me.
"Take the goats!"
"The goats?"
There was a flock of goats ahead of us, "Just take one and ride it down the mountain."
"You’re bloody insane!"
* * * * *
The goats proved to be nothing less than a trusty steed. We were soon at the bottom of the mountain and soon to the shore of the island when Pat spotted a ship ahead.
"Well I’ll be," he was on the verge of crying, as he squinted his eyes to peer in the distance. An Irish vessel sailed gallantly towards us. They had seen the lava and cashew smoke stack, they were here to save us. The cashews that had "poisoned" us, were now saving us.
After much anticipation we walked aboard. The crew seemed vaguely familiar, and it soon hit me. "Welcome aboard the U.S.S. Kenya, Captain MacKennya."
MacKennya my old nickname…I was back with my old crew again, and back in my old position: Captain Doyle MacKenna of the U.S.S. Kenya.
"Och, I told ye ‘twas going to turn out right."
(comments/reviews/and ratings are much appreciated!)
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Monday, June 19, 2006, 10:19 - Announcements
Okay, I don't know if it's the server, but it probably is, the test thenr.net worked but this server has some problems with cookies and Zone Alarm. The log in is not right, and it has many bugs; furthermore, the server here is down almost 60% of the time! ... so much for 99% uptime.Anyway, I'm not pleased with the service here, so I'm probably going to be server hopping 'til I find a good plan and reliable host. But, no dear thenr.net will still be up during my search. And once AHP allows more registrants, I think that we will be set.
But for now, let's enjoy our uptime.
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Well it's a couple minutes later, after playing aroud with some settings, I think I can work with this place; it's just the inconsistency that makes work difficult. Still hoping for AHP to open back up... quality hosts, they were.
PS there are some viewing bugs here, when typing in the URL if it doesn't work try it with and without the www, it's weird like that
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Sunday, June 18, 2006, 17:41 - General
Ladies and gentlemen. THENR.NET IS OFFICIALLY UP!There will be forums pouring in soon, hopefully.
Anyway, I'd like to be the first to congratulate you on finding this gem of a webpage. The Kenya Story will be moving here soon, and will join my articles in this "blog"-like website; rest assure this is NOT a blog... the name sounds degrading.
Anyway, give me some time and I'll have some things going on... perhaps a golden cashew contest where you must find the hidden golden cashew; first to find it wins. It'll be coming soon. However, for the time being we're getting comfortable in our new server and website.
I'm excited, and I can tell you are, so what are we waiting for?
Now a few bullets about the site:
-Don't forget Kenya Story will be moved here, and the new sequels will be released here.
-Check the right column regularly for new info, releseases, stories, links, and contests... all the goodies are on the right!
-I will also be allowing others to post their articles on thenr.net. Just email me your article with a name and an email address and I'll read it over to see if it's appropriate. (use the contact me link to send all emails please.)
-Any email with an attachment will be DELETED before read, so please if you're sending an article type it out in the email.
Thanks so much for visiting, your support is what makes us thrive.
LET THE THENR-ING BEGIN!
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