Working hard for the boss man

Who: Lester, Lester, SNIDE, HM Queen Brittany, Seymour Niples, Efof, Wolfgang SweetslyWhere: The wreckage of the Blue Dwarf, near Castle BoobageWhen: About the same time that Jay is fighting a giant rabbit dragon thing
 
Seymour dropped the latest pile of bits and pieces in front of Seymour who lay what he was working on aside to peruse the junk. Seymour looked very pleased with himself at his haul.
 
'Crap,' Lester said slinging bits over his shoulder, 'crap, crap, rubbish, maybe... no, crap.' He rejected most of it, then found a single charred circuit board from which he pried a single chip. He realised Seymour was still standing beside him. 'I still need more bits,' Lester told him and Seymour sighed, turning away to begin searching again. He turned back.
 
'Can you hear something?'
 
'A soft keening on the air as of someone in great distress calling for help?'
 
'That's it exactly!' Seymour said looking for the source of the noise.
 
'No I don't hear anything,' Lester said, using the finger of his metal hand to solder the chip onto some wires. After a long moment he realised that Seymour was staring with perplexity at him. Lester sighed and looked up at him with intense brown eyes: 'It's Justin Pancake. The man who shot me. The man who arranged for myself, Efof and Dai,' he took a breath again, 'to be sentenced to burn at the stake. Naturally, I'm disinclined to assist. Feel free to go and help him get down from the extremely tall and precarious tower he's currently in,' Seymour started to move but Lester held up an authorative hand, 'after you've gone over there and brought me that portable AI display unit.'
 
'The porta-loo what?' Seymour tried to see what was being pointed at.
 
'The television with the tracks on it, I need that,' Lester told him and resumed his work.
 
Suddenly SNIDE came dashing over the wreckage, climbed up Lester's leg and bounced excitedly on his knee, chirrping and beeping manically.
 
'Where?' Lester asked him when he'd finished.
 
Chirpy beep buzz beep.
 
'How many?'
 
Werrt bloop beep.
 
'Well more than five? Less than a hundred?'
 
Chirp cheng ba-deep boop.
 
'Somewhere between eleven and thirteen, you mean twelve?'
 
'What is it?' Seymour asked, 'what's wrong.'
 
'Someone keeps asking silly questions when they should be bringing me the parts I need,' Lester said crossly. Seymour sloped off but heard Lester confirm with SNIDE: 'And they're definitely heading this way?'
 
Efof and Wolfgang brought Lester some more parts. Efof dropped the four individual bundles of bits he had been carrying under his arm. The Health and Safety Officer carefully placed what eventually turned out to be a graphics card, onto the same heap and feeling pleased with himself, turned to go.
 
'What's that over there?' Lester asked without looking up.
 
'Hmmm?' Efof turned back, 'what's what?'
 
'That grey box, over there, the one you both found half an hour ago and tried to hide,' Lester told them prising apart the remains of a food blender.
 
'Oh it's nothing,' Wolfgang tried to act innocent. Secretly he reached into his pocket and fingered the photo of Hasselhoff for luck, please mighty permed one, please.
 
Sweetsly's luck ran out: 'It's a games console, isn't it?' Lester asked with certainty.
 
'It's so cool,' Efof said excitedly, 'it's an AR unit with direct interactive feedback transfers! You plug it into your brain.'
 
'Give it to me,' Lester said. You could have kept meat fresh in his tone for a thousand years.
 
'It is vital,' Sweetsly said imperiously, 'that crewmembers be offered a period of rest and recuperation at the of every shift. I must insist that this game be present to those crewmembers and uh... members of royalty here present as -'
 
'GIVE ME THE DAMN BOX NOW YOU SMEGGING IDIOT!' Lester roared, rising from his seat like an avenging angel. He grabbed Sweetsly by the collar and hauled him forwards, dragging his shoes along the ruined ground. They reached the spot where Efof had stashed the console and Lester threw Wolfgang forwards to sprawl in the mud. 'Give me the damn game,' Lester demanded, looming over him. Wolfgang struggled to find his glasses again.
 
'I'm a superior officer in the JMC,' he began but got no further as Lester reached down, pulling him up by the collar again.
 
'You want to use the game? That's fine,' he growled, 'you want to fry your brain and leave yourself a giggling idiot? That's just dandy. But you do it AFTER we've gotten out of here. Do you understand? Now: Give. Me. The. Box.'
 
He let Wolfgang go, stumbling to his knees again and after a moment to consider his options, and looking into the fiery fury of Lester's eyes again, he crawled over, picked up the small gray box and handed it over to the Technician.
 
'Thank you,' he said and turned away, leaving the startled, ruffled and slightly choking Health and Safety officer behind him.
'Th-they don't know,' Lester whispered to himself as he walked away, 'well they damn well should,' he replied snappishly back at him. Y-you d-didn't. N-not until... Let's just get on with this, ok? B-but it m-might not even b-be anything like B-Bee Tea El. Doesn't matter, it's the the same damn thing.'
 
'You ok?' Efof asked Wolfgang as he got up slowly, 'that was a bit... well you know...' Efof gave a four-armed shrug as if that would somehow cover the strangeness of Lester's sudden ferocity.
 
'What was that about?' Seymour asked as he and Brittany joined them. The four of them watched Lester as he sat down, holding his dreadlocked head in his hands for a moment before proceeding to tear open the game box and begin to extract components.
 
'I intend to find out,' Wolfgang said hoarsely, 'upon our return to the Blue Dwarf that man... he is a crewmember isn't he?'
'Sort of,' Seymour confessed.
 
'That man, will be Court Martialled!' Wolfgang was incandescent with embarrassed rage, 'following a period of appropriate quarantine following a pan-continuum traversement of course.'
 
'I don't know,' Brittany said quietly, bouncing the now thoroughly bored and miserable Alota, 'if that is the same man I met on New Tenerife... I think you got off lightly. Alota needs changing. I don't suppose we have any nappies? No, of course not, I'll see what I can find. I think we saw a couple of cargo crates over that hill. Maybe they'll have something I can use in there.'
 
'What does she mean?' Wolfgang asked.
 
'Um, I think she means she's going to find some soft, maybe absorbent fabric,' Efof answered, 'and fashion them in a shape that will be comfortable for Alota to wear.'
 
'No, about getting off lightly! Who is that man, Ambassador?'
 
'I wish I knew,' Seymour mused, 'I wish I knew.'
 
<Tag Seymour and/or Wolfgang. The Sheriff's men are nearby with bazookoids, Jay is in the next valley over fighting a giant wooden rabbit, Guy of Gisbourne is on his way with a stripper and Lester's acting wierder than ever. What happens next?>Get the New Internet Explore 8 Optimised for MSN. Download Now