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[Kazz]

The land of Ysteria is vast.  So vast, in fact, that the village of Podunk rarely appeared on Ysterian maps.  It was a tiny agricultural community, nestled in a circle of mountains, famous for absolutely nothing, and from which no notable people claimed origin.  But the Podunkian people did not mind their humble lifestyle; the wars which tore apart faraway nations did little to affect them.

For the past twenty years, however, the village of Podunk failed entirely to appear on Ysterian maps.  This was because, during a particularly violent windstorm, the majestic flying city of Aeropolis had drifted away from the kingdom to which it belonged.  A great shadow settled over the village, and the crops suffered from the lack of sunlight.  The farmers were forced to butcher their livestock to feed their families.  All of this escaped the notice of the city's inhabitants; after all, Aeropolis utterly blocked Podunk from the map.

So, the Podunkians lived in poverty for decades, surviving on the tiny fish from the streams and an especially nutritious form of dirt.  They tried often to contact the Aeropoles, waving flaming sticks in the air as their magical carriages flew to and from the floating city; but the Aeropoles quite liked the change of scenery.  The few that visited Podunk expressed pity for their plight, but promptly forgot about them as soon as they returned home; their lives of luxury gave them little time to worry about the tragedy below.

---

An old roacher awoke one morning and looked out his window.  The day was remarkably warm and windy, considering the shadow.  He walked outside and summoned his daughter, who wore filthy pigtails and a dress made of rocks.

"Petunia," he said.  "Do you smell that?"

"Yes, Pa," she said.  "It smells like farts."

"Now, now, don't use that language," he said.  "I don't mean the ol' fart smell.  Somethin' smells... fresh today."

The old man took a swig of mud liquor and stared at the bottom of the floating city.  The minerals which composed the base of Aeropolis were lighter than air; the weight of the buildings above kept the city from flying away.  The city had barely moved in years; the mountains blocked most of the wind, and the city was quite securely nestled in the resulting pocket of air.

However, the city seemed to be moving.  A strong wind was starting to blow, and what little sky was visible was a dramatic shade of pink.

"Did you milk the roaches today?" said the old roacher, still staring into what counted for the sky.

"Yes, Pa.  Got almost half an ounce out of 'em," said Petunia, proudly holding up a pail of roach urine.

"That'll be good for a month," said the roacher.  He patted his daughter on the head, then wiped the filth onto his pants.  "Go on and play with your friends."

"Yes, Pa," said Petunia.  She put the pail down and walked off to the town square, where a group of children were sitting in a circle, staring at the ground.  She happily skipped up to the circle and sat with them.

"What ya'll doin'?" asked Petunia.

"We're sufferin'," said a boy.

"Oh, golly, I love sufferin'," said Petunia.  She grabbed her chest and winced.  "Oh, the pain, the pain..."

"Gee whiz, Petunia," said the boy, "you sure are good at sufferin'."

"Oh, yeah," said Petunia, "I've had loads of practice."

The wind had gradually increased in intensity, but all at once it grew to a whistling crescendo.  The city above was rocking oddly around the valley.  The adults were stepping out of their houses and gathering in the square; some urged their children to do their suffering inside.

Then, there was a great explosion.  A fireball careened off of the edge of Aeropolis and came hurtling toward the village.  It exploded into a field of fresh dirt and skidded along the ground, stopping a mere half-mile from the village.  It looked like an enormous steel vehicle, covered in flickering lights.  It had been blackened by the atmosphere, and was billowing smoke.

Meanwhile, the floating city had been knocked off balance and began to spin.  It rotated rapidly, then wobbled, then finally the weight of the buildings caused the entire island to flip upside down and come to rest.

All was quiet for just a moment.  Then, slowly, there came a rising number of voices, screaming in unison, and a rain of Aeropoles came splattering onto the valley.

"S'pose we ort to get inside," said Petunia.

[EmaWii]

Tristan Foxer hung in the air for a moment before he fully realized what was happening. Of course, no one really knew, but certainly the ground was above him, slipping away. More pressing, however, was the other ground he could see hurtling towards him if he crained his neck back. Thankfully as a stow-away on the majestic flying city of Aeropolis, he was prepared. He closed his eyes and began to count...

On his twelfth birthday, Tristan's parents gave him the present they thought would help him most: an all expenses paid trip to Aeropolis. They were old enough to remember the launch of the marvelous place, although they had never been able to visit, and once it drifted away their chance seemed gone forever. Rather than watch their son succumb to one of the few soul-sucking lifestyles residents of the slummier Lower Pipe neighborhood had to choose from, they gathered a small sum and sent him, via air mail, of course, to the flying city.

His mom saved tips serving coffee at the cafe squashed beneath 100 floors of government offices downtown, while his dad gave up his morning coffee (before a mind-numbing day of vending machine quality assurance) in order to scrape another few dollars. They bought a huge packing crate half full of hay, two loaves of bread, and a parachute. Of the latter, Tristan remembered his mother words exactly, "Never take it off. Of course, the first thing they do with stow-aways is throw them right over the side!"

Well, it hadn't come to that. Or had it? He gritted his teeth and tugged the line. For a couple months he had hung on by loitering out of sight at the back of a deli when they threw out the slimier cold cuts and day-old bread, even left-over sweets. It was an alley dwellers paradise, really, but the city was very strict on who dwelled in their alleys. Maybe it was for the best that he was hurtling through the air at this moment, because there was no telling what that man he had finally been caught by the other day would do to him. Seemed nice enough, somehow-- at least, he hadn't thrown him over the side...

Tristan had miscalculated slightly and when his parachute caught the wind he sailed up into the skyline of downtown Aeropolis, of which he caught little through the crack he had opened his eyes. Just the horribly topsy turvy outline of skyscrapers plunging towards the valley. Made him feel a little sick, really, so he closed his eyes again and tried to wait patiently for the new ground to find him.

[Bongo Bill]

To be the Mayor of Podunk was largely an honorary position, as the flyspeck village was peaceful and well-set in its ways even in the most turbulent of times. Still, it was a title that Grant Lee bore with as much pride and dignity as could be mustered in a farming town that hadn't had rain or sunlight for most of a man's lifetime. People looked to him to perform such vital mayoral duties as adjudicating domestic or property disputes, giving speeches on holidays, and remembering to unlock the drunks on Sunday mornings. There weren't many holidays or drunks any more, but there were disputes aplenty, and he did well enough at adjudicating them that he'd been fairly re-elected for twelve years in a row, and fourteen years in a row before that (interrupted only by one year of incumbency for his only challenger, a wooden effigy of a pig, in an incident which most Podunkites would prefer to forget).

The view of the valley outside Grant Lee's office window was as bleak as ever, but this morning something seemed off about it. Maybe it was that creeping patch of yellow on the far hills. Or maybe it was the topsoil-and-mushroom burrito he'd had for dinner last night. No, he decided, it had to be the strange coloration on the hillside. Sunlight? Could that be possible? He immediately rushed out his front door and looked up at Aeropolis.

It didn't hold his attention for long, however. A falling, screaming person landed with a gruesome, wet noise onto a barrel next to the mayoral office door. "Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!" Grant bellowed, leaping in the opposite direction of the impact. He was not one to lightly take the Lord's name in vain, but more important concerns were on his mind: namely, what to do now that Aeropolis had decided to start raining people onto his town.

Across the street, outside the tavern, standing on a barstool, was Marty McMahon, a notorious troublemaker. "Behold, my brothers!" he addressed a small but growing crowd. "A miracle has occurred!" Another screaming person, this time a woman, landed in the middle of the road. "Our prayers have been answered! Meat from heaven!"

"Now wait just a minute here," said Grant, but it was difficult to hear him over the sound of a yelling man crashing into the roof of the general store ("Every day is barter day! Grade A roach urea 30% off!")

"Yes, my brothers!" McMahon continued. "Tonight, we shall eat well and heartily! Come, stoke the fires!"

Grant tried to say, "And just what are you intending to burn, Marty?" but the screaming overhead seemed to have grown louder. Fortunately, someone in the crowd managed to shout, "But ain't that cannib'lism?"

"If we were not meant to eat this meat," he shouted, pausing just in time for a yelling child to fall in the mud nearby, "then why would it fall upon us now?"

"That's quite enough!" the mayor shouted. "Now, I don't know how much you've been drinkin', McMahon, but it's clear to me that it was too much!"

"Mr. Mayor!" Marty said, pausing once again to let a calm and silent Aeropole fall stomach-first onto a fence post. "For decades, we have starved under the shadow of our oppressors! This bounty is ours!"

"You get yourself down from there, McMahon, before I - " but it was not clear precisely what Grant Lee would have done, a he was suddenly and unexpectedly crushed by a falling person.

He survived, though, don't worry.

[Thad]

"Captain?  Captain Abu-Bakr?  Earth to Captain Abu-Bakr...in a manner of speaking."

"Hm?  Oh, it's you, Johnson.  What is it?"

"Well, it's just...you've been staring off into space, quite literally, for the past twenty minutes."

"Hm?  Yes, I suppose I have."

"...You wish you were in combat right now, don't you."

"Stop goading me, Johnson; you watch too many movies.  You and Li can reenact whatever canned speech you want.  Take your pick: either I complain about how I'm not on the front lines, or I say my first duty is to evacuate civilians and that's just as important, but deep down you know I'd rather be on the front lines anyway."

Li cocked her eyebrow.  "Captain, if you didn't want us to treat you like a cliche, you wouldn't be standing on the bridge with your hands folded behind your back trying to look majestic."

Abu-Bakr cracked a slight smile.  "All right, you've got me.  I'd be happier helping the war effort.  Ferrying civilians is an important job, to be sure, but a robot could do it."

Alan's silver face looked up from the controls.  "They say we lack your strong intuition, Captain."

"All the more reason I should be in combat."

"By the way, Captain," Alan said, "we're ready to jump."

The captain nodded.  Alan turned on the Fasten Seatbelts sign, and Al-Bakr spoke into the intercom: "All passengers be advised that we are preparing to make the jump to the Ullr system.  Please strap yourselves in securely."

Abu-Bakr, Li, and Johnson sat and secured themselves.  Alan watched the monitor in front of him.  "All passengers and attendants accounted for."

The captain nodded.  "Helmsman, let's wrinkle."

There was the typical pulling sensation of a hyperspatial shift, and a green-blue planet appeared in the viewscreen.

Then there was a rumble and a whine.  The lights flickered.  Some stayed out.  The captain looked back at the viewscreen.  "Alan, we're off-course.  What happened?  It didn't feel like an attack."

"No, it didn't," Alan agreed.  "I'm seeing signs of a serious solar storm here -- it came out of nowhere; otherwise we'd have received warning by now.  But I have worse news, Captain: it seems to have killed the navigation systems.  I can't get us back on course."

Abu-Bakr swore.  "Life support?"

"I see no signs of life support damage, but I don't think it's a risk we should take.  Bluntly: if we sit here in this storm waiting to be rescued, I calculate our odds are poor."

"What can we do?"

"Hyperdrive seems to be working, though I don't want to push our luck.  I think I can chart an Earthlike planet on our current trajectory."

Abu-Bakr nodded.  "Log our trajectory into one of the drones and eject it, just in case it sticks around for someone to find."  He reached for the intercom.  "Please remain calm.  We have jumped into the middle of a solar storm, and we're going to need to make our landing on an unplanned destination.  Please prepare for another jump."

"What do you think you're doing, Captain?" Li asked, aghast.  "Even if we land on an Earthlike planet, who's to say it will be inhabited, let alone offer us any chance to get off it?"

"You heard Alan," Abu-Bakr responded.  "I'm captain on this boat, and right now my strong intuition is telling me to listen to the robot."

"The drone's off," Alan announced.  "I'm going to make the jump."

"Do it," Abu-Bakr responded.

Another lurch, another blue-green planet on the screen.

"No satellites," Johnson groaned.  "Looks like we've got some cities down there, but they haven't made it as far as rockets yet."

"What's that sheen at the pole?" Abu-Bakr asked.

"Our sensors are in poor shape," Alan responded, "but it looks metallic."

"Hm," Abu-Bakr said, "floating metal.  We may get off that rock yet."

"Aren't we getting ahead of ourselves?" Li asked rhetorically.

"Right you are," the captain responded.  "Alan, can you get us down safely?"

"We're on-course for it," Alan responded.  "I don't expect anything to stop our landing.  As for safely?  I've got drones working to repair the instruments and, more importantly, verify the conditions of the heat shields.  When I told you this was our best shot, I meant it; we're going to survive.  But as for the ship...well, we had better hope we can get our hands on some of that flying metal, because she won't be going anywhere for awhile."

Abu-Bakr nodded and pressed the intercom.  "Passengers, we are on course for an unscheduled landing on an unfamiliar planet.  The situation is well in-hand.  Dinner service is to begin immediately.  Drinks will be served."

[Brentai]

It was hard to miss the guy with the battered leather hat and coat, standing out on the hillside that would have cast a shadow over the village of Podunk had Aeropolis not been casting a shadow upon it.  He struck an odd and striking figure, standing tall with his bags of scrolls and equipment, the inked quill stuck behind his ear, the thick and elegant glasses, and the bladed tools at his hip.  He would be a hard person to miss indeed for the casual observer, but fortunately for him the incredibly obese, already-deceased corpse of an Aeropolan aristocrat managed to do it, landing several feet away with sickening boom.

"Jehoshaphat be DAMNED," said the man, "There's a jumpin' VILLAGE there?"

He cupped a hand across his eyes in disbelief, trying to make out the details of the impoverished hamlet and trying to decide whether or not it was a mirage.  The last thing he wanted to do was to journey down into the rain of screaming bodies below what the maps used to say was Aeropolis.  But as he squinted and cringed, he knew he had to.  He had to mark the exact location of the tiny village and any surrounding features.  Because he was Kerry O'Rondon von Yster, Master Surveyor of the Royal Cartographers' Guild of Ysteria, and his maps were ALWAYS up-to-date, detailed and accurate, come sunny weather or a rain of OH JUMPIN' FLEAS AN ALAPHONT.

With honed reflexes Kerry dived out of the way of the great falling beast, rolling as he hit the ground in order to barely escape the impact of the alaphont with the earth.  The shockwave of the collision threw Kerry partly down the side of the hill, and as he managed to stop tumbling he whipped one of the scrolls out of his bag with one fluid motion.  With inhuman speed he opened it up and took his quill in hand, marking his location on the cloth map almost immediately with his masterful training.  As her suspected, Kerry was right smack underneath what appeared on his map as "Aeropolis Petting Zoo and Donkey Shows".  With trepidation he looked upward and squinted at the black specks in the sky that seemed to be growing larger.  He pushed his glasses to the bridge of his nose and then he saw them.

"Hedgehogs," growled Kerry to himself, "It's time to move."

Packing his items up with one fluid motion, Kerry began to run as the sky became filled with tiny spikes.

[Kazz]

The very center of Aeropolis, luckily for the village of Podunk, was the least populous area.  A large spire-shaped building, known as the Palace, was the center of administration on the  island; the surrounding areas were massive estates held by the city's various lords and magistrates.  A lifetime of wealth, and the prevalence of magical carriages, conspired to make most of them obese; a fact that the Podunkians now greatly lamented.

However, in the top of the spire lived a strange individual.  He was not a particularly wealthy or privileged person; rather, Artemis Q. Blatt was a genius.  He was the architect who had designed and built Aeropolis.  He had an encyclopedic knowledge of its workings, he understood the mechanics that kept the city balanced, and he had several contingencies planned in case of any emergency.

Despite his genius, however, few people listened when he advised them to tether themselves to the ground.  He designed an attractive, jewel-studded elastic harness which would have held even a portly Aeropole to the island, but he was able to convince very few people to install them.  "If the worst should happen," he said, "your ceiling is not intended to hold you and your belongings."

Still, it gave Artemis little satisfaction to dangle from his former floor and watch the inhabitants of the city tumble into the dark valley below.  A weakly mumbled, "I told you so" was drowned out by thousands of terrified screams.

He had been keenly aware of impending disaster; he went to the windows after every gust of wind, checking the horizon nervously for storm clouds.  The object, whose path he'd followed through a spyglass from the upper atmosphere all the way until impact, was now resting in a smoking heap below him.  He would have retrieved his spyglass again, for closer inspection, but his roof had snapped off when the object impacted.  Most of his old blueprints and diagrams and tools had fallen into the town below.

The town below...

"Oh.  You fool.  You fool, you foolish fooling fool."

When the Great Storm came, and the island broke its anchor and drifted away, Artemis thought that the island was lucky to find such a convenient pocket of mountains in which to rest.  The air was refreshing and cool, the scenery was lovely, and the hills provided some cover from future windstorms.  "There's no chance that the island will drift away," he had told the Council.  "In fact, I've concluded that it would take a great deal of force to even move the island from here.  There's just no probability of flying off again.  However, ah... there is the slim, indeed miniscule, possibility, that, should a Great Storm level force approach the island, that it will, er, roll a bit, and then sort of tilt, and then sort of... flip upside-down.  It is rather top-heavy, you see."

The Council had laughed, then.  They unanimously approved the motion to leave the city where it lay; after all, any effort to move it now was likely to cause disaster.

Artemis didn't laugh.  Artemis designed a tether.

Now, hanging from it, he saw something he had never considered to be possible.  Directly below him were buildings.  Over there, what appeared to be a farm... but it grew nothing.  Over there, something that looked like a ranch, but he saw no animals; just a sheer brown surface that undulated curiously.  Over there, the wreckage of the peculiar object that hit the island.  But everywhere, people.  Not just people falling from the sky and crashing into buildings and splattering on the ground, but people dodging those people.  There was a farming village beneath his city, and he'd ruined their lives.

The wheels turned in his head.  And he knew what had happened.

"W-W-Why didn't anyone tell me?  Why?  And now, and now THIS happened!  They, they, they built a bomb!  They built a bomb in the sky!  And they crashed it into us!  To destroy us!  They knew what would happen, the bastards!  Those poor, mud-caked farmers are actually master weaponsmiths, genius-level engineers who destroyed my city from space!  It makes perfect sense!"

Artemis, with fury in his eyes, scrambled up his tether and opened a secret compartment in his former floor.  From it, he removed an odd cylindrical machine and a book of matches.  He lit one match and placed it into a tiny stove; the machine spurted and choked before beginning to billow steam.  A propeller extended from the cylinder.  Artemis strapped it on before extricating himself from the tether and falling.  The propeller kicked and finally spun rapidly, and Artemis flew sloppily through the streets of the ruined city.

When he came out from beneath the island, he pulled a map from his coat, and steered himself toward the city's birthplace.  There had been an attack by a previously unknown enemy, literally lurking in the shadows.

It was time to declare war on Podunk.

[Ocksi]

An ominous crack tore through the office, shaking but not quite breaking Mark's focus.

He knew, staring intently at his screen that soon he would discover the secret.  Soon he would have the answer.  Soon he would be noticed and rise to the top.  This was it, he was on the verge of a major breakthrough.

Bang.

It was as if the office could barely take the strain of his concentration, as if his determination to find his answer were literally ripping the skyscraper from its foundations.  He could feel the intensity all around him, the fervor his brilliance was causing throughout his workplace.

But Mark tuned out his frenzied coworkers, ignored their panic.  Sure they were scared, why wouldn't they be?  Mark Thompson was about to solve the problem most of them had been working on for years, since they were brought into the corporation.  The problem most of them had studied at Aeropolis University for years.  And he'd cracked the puzzle.  They were helpless to stop him.

Mark had found the definitive answer, far and away the best method, which could never be doubted.  His foolish coworkers' tantrum couldn't stop him now.  They could hiss and moan and run about the office all they wanted.  Mark Thompson found what was without a doubt the most profitable avenue for advertising the Ghetti Corporation's Self-Saucing Noodles.

He was getting promotions.

As he raised his fists in triumph, he began to understand that something was wrong.  The bosses weren't lifting him on their shoulders and carrying him away to his new office with a window and a position in middle-management.  They, much like him, were laying on their backs, on the ceiling, holding their compuscreens above them, continuing work, as several of their obviously less dedicated underlings scurried about as though an office building had never turned upside-down before.

Standing, Mark walked eagerly to his direct supervisor, unplugged his drive, and handed it to the boss forcefully.

"Sir, I believe you'll find with the information I've compiled here that what we need isn't television commercials or city-wide web advertisement."  Smirking, as though he had just discovered god, Mark crossed his arms.  "What we need... is flyers."

"M... My lord!  This is brilliant!"  His supervisor's jubilance was barely audible over the final thundering roar of steel ripping from concrete.  "You, my good man, are going places in this company!"

Mark could hardly tell if the lurching in his stomach was his body joining the building accelerating 9.8 meters per second or if he was just so excited over his amazing work in the field of analytical marketing.

As his legs splintered upwards, he knew: Mark Thompson was a marketing genius.