We didn\'t know when we were well off...
Who: Lester, Justin and Callum KochanskiWhere: Latest Blue DwarfWhen: Far too long into the process
Lester looked wistfully at the "DANGER HIGH-VOLTAGE" sign on the wall beside the latest PENIS he was required to repair. He looked with longing at the thick power cables and wondered just how much it would hurt to stick his metal hand in, grab them and hold on until he exploded.
SNIDE was surprisingly helpful this time, as was Justin, seemingly to want to prove it wasn't him who blew up the last one he'd asked Lester to watch him as he'd made the required repairs.
To be honest, it wasn't difficult anymore, since they'd made the same repair every hour for the last two days. Lester lifted his metal hand and activated the display screen. It showed the number of blue dots starting to dwindle as the "viral engineering" really began to take off. Hopefully they'd be able to get on top of it and start sending back more Blue Dwarfs than were arriving. Lester attempted some maths on this:
One Blue Dwarf arrives, it starts drawing in multiple Blue Dwarfs, say four per hour? Lester arrives at Blue Dwarf, spends two hours getting to know the crew, averting suspicion, learning how to communicate, overcoming unknown social faux pas such as malciously shaking hands. Lester then spends two hours training technical staff on repair. Four teams despatch to other Blue Dwarfs to start training them. In the mean time their own ship is drawing more Blue Dwarfs in...
Lester suddenly had a horrifying vision of himself as an ancient cyborg, flitting between Blue Dwarfs for years, sending them back to where they came from, on and on, for years and years. With Justin Pancake.
"Woah, Lester, dude, shush!" Justin had his hands on his ears.
"What? Sorry?"
"Lester, you were screaming," Justin gawped, the technicians on this Blue Dwarf, entirely populated by Jazz musicians nervously fidgeted with their saxaphones and occasionally tootled some free-style to break the tension.
"Sorry," Lester sighed. "Looks like we're done here."
"And I didn't blow it up," Justin smiled. "No, no you didn't." Something like a smile crept lopsidedly onto Lester's face, looked frightened to be somewhere unknown and scuttled away again. "Come on SNIDE," he called. The little robot had wedged itself into the bell of a tenor Saxaphone and was making urging motions at its player. The music-engineer took a deep breath then blew a stream of cacophonic notes that sent SNIDE hurtling into the air to land on the back of Lester's EVA suit.
They trooped over to the launch bay, stomped up the ramp of their tired Blue Midget and blasted awkwardly out of this latest Blue Dwarf.
"You see," Justin folded his arms, "completely not blasted apart, totally intact, one hundred percent A-OK. I think I've earned myself some time bashing the bishop."
"It's not that you do it," Lester sighed, "it's that you have an infinite number of gleeful euphamisms for it that you declare. But yes, you did well, we're finally getting on top of..."
Lester was interrupted by a shocking explosion that sent them spiralling off course. He fell against the control panels, then down to the floor as the ship lurched again and again. Justin's hands struggled for purchase and in the end he had to let go of his undone waistband to get a good grip on the controls. He hit the emergency cut out and wrestled the tiny ship back to a more stable course.
"What the smegging smegging smeg smegging happened to the smegging ship?" Justin wailed as he pulled up his trousers. "I was really looking forward to that session with Mrs. Palm and her five lovely daughters!"
Lester struggled into the co-pilot's seat and checked the damage control systems.
"We've lost the entire port engine. Coolant failure it looks like. How did that happen?" He punched in some more commands and frowned. Then he switched off the screen.
"What? What is it?" Justin asked as Lester managed to turn even paler.
"N-Nothing," he said, "I'm going to wake CK. Back in a bit." He got up and passed out the cockpit, through the mid section. Justin looked over his shoulder, then back to the screen. After struggling for twenty minutes he managed to turn it on. His face blanched into a rictus, horrified expression as he read the same thing Lester just had.
***
"You what?" CK had slept through the explosion and was now up and gradually joining awareness with the help of a bottle of Glen Fujiyama. "Say it again, only make it make more sense."
"The log details show Justin Pancake logging on about two minutes before we left Blue Midget and shutting down the coolant systems, including the safety overrides."
"Little rat bastard," CK growled, "I'll turn him into mulch!"
"I don't.. I don't think that... that.."
"For smeg's sake spit it out!"
"I don't think Justin did it, he's he's not smart enough," Lester looked upset at this, biting his lip thoughtfully. CK glared at him, then shrugged, "OK, fair enough, so the big idiot's given his login to someone else."
"I don't know, it's biometric, so unless he handed over his body at the same time..."
"Ach, I knew this would happen," CK said and crossed the room to the small arms cabinet, "bastard Star Trek episode. Right, we go out, we find a Justin with a dodgy beard and we make him eat bazookoid until he stops twitching. Got it?"
"Urm... yes?" Lester sagged under the weight of the bazookoid CK threw at him.
"And if ye happen to "accidentally" (CK used actual airquotes) shoot the real Justin in the head, then I'll write it up as industrial accident." He grinned, leaving Lester unsure as to whether or not he was serious and stepped through the hatchway into Starbug.<Tag Justin and CK>For the best free wallpapers from MSN Click here!