.......And along came Artie, Part II

Artemis shuffled down the vacant halls of Blue Dwarf, calling out to anyone that might still be around. Every so often his freezer burn legs would give out and he would collapse into a swearing, angry mess, struggle to stand, and continue forward. After several hours of repeating this embarrassing process he managed to locate the comms room, which was devoid of life like the rest of the ship, but promised him a way to find any survivors. He plopped down in the comm chief's chair and rested his sore, almost useless legs. "You're a sight for sore eyes Artie" a familiar voice said. Artemis turned his head to see Holly's ugly mug on a nearby terminal. "Holly? Why didn't you respond to me when I was calling for help!" "Because I remembered how rude you were during our last conversation, I just wanted to let you suffer a tick to teach you a lesson" Artemis sighed, his bi-polarism kicked in, bringing about severe depression. "I'm sorry Holly, you know how it gets sometimes" "Yeah, so, what's new?" Artemis shot holly a devastated look. "My limbs are crippled, my lab is frozen solid, the crew is missing, and I probably missed all the new episodes of Androids!" "Yeah, about three million years worth of episodes" "Three million years? What happened!" "There was a sad bit of sabotage, the company tried to blow us up. The explosion released a lethal amount of Cadmium II. While you were frozen, most of the crew was killed or trapped in stasis" "Dead? Trapped? What about Rowlings? Stevens? Gunderson?" "They're dead Artie" "Cadbury? Addison? Carlton?" "They're dead Artie, they're all dead Artie!" "What about...." "Look, I'll sum it up for you. Most are dead, but a good amount survived. A group left not too long ago for a shore mission, and I think there's some still on Blue Dwarf" "Really? Good! Maybe one of them can help me thaw out my smegging lab so I can repair my damned limbs! Is the communicator system still working?" "It's worth a shot" Artemis dialed in the communicator to all open frequencies and turned on the microphone. "Hello, is anyone there? This is Dr. Artemis Pritchard on Blue Dwarf! Can anyone hear me? Come on pick up the damn phone!"

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