Pancake's Day

Who: Justin Pancake
Where: Corridor
When: As Rosette and Harris play wargames, and before the sub goes supernova
Justin's fingers gripped around the edges of the metal wallplate and he pulled
with all his strength. He wasn't a very strong person, and was still either
hungover or still drunk and so his balance wasn't so great. He pulled again and
the plate eventually came away from the wall, exposing wires and pipes. He fell
backwards and the metal sheet sandwiched his head against the floor.
"Smegging wallplate." He said, scrambling to his knees and peering into the wall
cavity. He saw a mess of wires which were all jumbled up. "Smegging wires!" He
said. When the Blue Dwarf had first been constructed, these wires were probably
neat and tidy and it was clear which one went where. But after several years of
rewiring by idiotic engineers (like Justin), nobody had any ideas which wire did
what.
Justin started to pull on one wire, careful not to pull too hard and snap it.
Knowing that if it did snap, the consequences could be as minor as the lights in
the nearest bathroom might go off, or he'd trip the emergency self destruct
sequence. The wire lead to a rusty pipe. "Smegging pipe." He said. This pipe was
supposed to take super-ionised plasma from the engines into the Wormhole Drive,
and the fact they were cracked and rusting should have been of major concern.
"Zat is a major Helth unt Safety hazard!" Said Wolfgang, writing something down
on his clipboard behind him. Justin's head spun around. "How long have you been
there?" He asked.
"Long enough to notice you're not vearing de appropriate health unt safety
goggles, or de recommended anti-static gloves."
Justin sighed. "The goggles are for pussies." He said, and then looked down to
the gloves he was wearing, yellow marigold gloves usually used for doing the
washing up. "These gloves will do!" He said.
"No zey won't." Said Wolfgang. "Zey are not anti-static."
"They're rubber. They'll do."
"All Engineers are issued with anti-static gloves. Vhere are yours?"
Justin's mind leaped back to last night in the privacy of his own room where he
was wearing the gloves and rubbing himself over with erotic oils. "Oh they feel
so nice on my skin!" he remembered saying to himself, before putting his gloved
hands down the front of his pants.
"They... got dirty." Justin told Wolfgang.
"Next time... you must vear ze gloves!" Wolfgang said. "And fix zat pipe. It
looks ready to burst. Ve don't vant red hot plasma flooding zis deck!" He walked
off, and Justin put some sellotape over the pipe, just hoping that it'll hold
until someone else's shift so that he didn't have to deal with it.
Just then, he felt a cold steel hand clamp down on his shoulder. It was like a
metal vice locking onto his flesh, then it pulled him backwards where he
sprawled on the floor. He didn't have time to even get up before the machine
grabbed him again. It picked him up and held him in the air.
Justin saw the creature now, it was an eight foot tall robot with a head like a
novelty condom machine. He recognised the configuration as Krylon, the robotic
killing machines they'd encountered last year. It lifted him high by his neck,
which was quite painful.
It then raised it's other arm, which made a clunking noise as the configuration
of the arm changed. The metal casing slid back to reveal a chainsaw, which
immediately started to spin. The chainsaw was brought towards Justin's face.
"Noooooo!" He cried out. "What about my destiny?" He asked. His mind thinking
back to when the mysterious time traveller named "Potential" had shown him his
exciting future of being a Captain of a Human/Hymenoptera spaceship. "What about
the 'corridor of infinate perversions'?" he asked, referring to the secret
message he'd seen everywhere. "You lied to me Potential!" He called out to the
ceiling.
Just then, there was the sound of a laser, and the robot stopped. It dripped
Justin and fell backwards, where it disappeared into a cloud of dissolving
holographic pixels.
Behind him was Rosette and Chris Harris, Rosette still holding her laser rifle
pointing towards where the robot had been.
"Good shooting!" Said Chris and slapped Rosette on the shoulder.
"Are you sure?" Said Rosette. "I was aiming for that little smegger!" Her voice
was full of animosity towards him. But Justin didn't notice. "Thanks Rosette, my
hero!" He said, and bounced over to her, ready to give her a hug. But the rifle
remained trained on him. "Don't come near me you horrible little man." Rosette
said.
"Oh.... sorry." Justin said. "What's wrong?"
Chris Harris pushed Rosette's gun so that it pointed into the ground. "Okay, I
don't want any unnecessary casualties." He told her, then turned to Justin.
"Look, sorry mate. We were doing a Security drill and one of the hard-light
holograms escaped. We should have got to it earlier, but we wanted it to be
realistic."
"It could have killed me!" Justin said, and then he thought for a moment more.
"Actually... it couldn't."
"Oh?" Said Chris.
"Because I've seen the future. I've seen that one day I'll become the Captain of
a great spaceship, with Humans and Hymenoptera living hand in hand!" He said.
Rosette crossed her arms and looked at him incredulously. "...So I know that
nothing will kill me. Nothing until after that day. My future is certain..."
Rosette turned to Harris. "Ignore him." She said.
"What's he on about?"
"Just his deluded fantasy. He idolises the Hymenoptera. He thinks it's 'cool' to
like an evil enemy who has killed thousands of Humans!"
Justin furiously shook his head. "This isn't a fad, like pokemon... or
transformers.... or iphones... The Hymenoptera are the most powerful creatures
in the universe. I know where I stand when they come to take us over." He stood
with his arms firmly crossed, and Rosette and Harris left him alone. He heard
her say the word "Freak" as she walked away.
Justin knelt down by the bulkhead and again looked at the tangled mess of wires.
His eyes noticed something, words were scratched into the rusted metal behind
the coloured wires. It said "Corridor of infinite perversions." Justin grinned.
Just then his phone chirped, and he quickly answered it. It was Seymour Niples
who was talking in quite a bored voice. "Mister Pancake, I have someone on the
phone for you. I'm not sure why I'm the one passing these messages on, I'm a
Royal Ambassador, not a receptionist."
"Who is it?"
"It's William Eckerslike, head of the Jupiter Mining Corporation." Said Seymour
sounding most bored. "I'm not sure what he wants with a cretin like you. Did you
steal his wallet or something?"
"He's a friend of mine." Justin said.
"No he isn't don't lie." Seymour replied.
"He is, just put him through!" Justin said. He heard the noise of Seymour
hanging up the phone, and looked at the message written on the wall. His time
travelling acquaintance "Potential" has admitted to writing messages to him
whenever something important in his life was about to happen. "This is more like
it!" Said Justin to himself.
"Hello? Mr Eckerslike?"
<To be continued. So what does the head of the JMC want with Justin?>