According to official documents leaked by a concerned ferry worker, BC Ferries' latest audacious innovation will involve sailing within “gunnery range” of destination ports and then heaving to, while all passengers presenting an “Experience The Connivance” card will be mustered on the gun - 'er, lifeboat decks.
One by one, each passenger will be stuffed into the mouth of a gunpowder-filled cannon, tamped down, and fired ashore.
Parachutes, helmets, padded armor, life-jackets and Starbucks coffee will of course be made available for an additional $459.35 charge.
All “left behind” vehicles will be impounded and recycled as scrap in exchange for internationally traded carbon credits that will, in turn, be used to help offset some of Alberta's grotesque tar sands greenhouse emissions.
I am not making some of this up.
Asked to elaborate, the $300,000 a year liquidator who disbanded Ogden aviation and 25,000 jobs before being hired by the remotely headquartered Visigoth Party to deal with BC's "unprofitably subsidized" ferry routes, promised only that sailing times would be substantially reduced and traffic congestion at ferry terminals "virtually eliminated." The mysterious new measures were apparently agreed to behind closed portals at a recent off-planet meeting with an inter-galactic council concerned over steadily rising ferry fares - particularly on minor routes, such as the Betelgeuse-Aldeberan and Denman-Hornby runs.
I know that's a headful.
But there's more.
Describing the capsizing danger from such massive discharges as “moderate,” one Gulf-crossing crewmember who insisted that his name Dudley Dooright not be used, said that on the big “Super Duper” ferries, up to 60 passengers could be shot ashore with each broadside.
“Heck, the Hornby, Denman and Quadra boats won't even have to leave the dock,” he added.
Galactic Exclusive:
BC FERRIES TO SHOOT PASSENGERS OUT OF CANNONS
By William Thomas
When an alert Gulf Islander noticed gunports cut into the sides of her local ferry, and Hornblower-era cannons swaddled in restraining tackle along both sides of the car deck, she was not reassured after her curious queries were politely brushed off as “fleet upgrades.”
With the new “Super-Size Me” boats now sprouting tiers of steel-shuttered gunports like flagships out of Nelson's era, alert corporate media types have begun gingerly inquiring whether war is imminent. Or if the ships are going to be sailing up the Squamish Inlet towards Whistler to fire some sort of elaborate pre-Winter Olympics salute.
“Neither,” responded the American Admiral of the BC Ferry Fleet. “By 2010, we'll just award ourselves all your oil and water. And there probably won't be much snow for skiing.”
According to this tireless executive, the latest equipment upgrade is “actually part of our never-ending corporate quest to reduce costs, improve customer service, and line our own pockets with outrageous bonuses, undeserved salary increases, and other pirated public Pieces of Eight.”
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