Re: **Action** \"Disasters part 2\"

Who: Cerebrum, Appendix, a member of the crew who is quite mad
Where: Psychiatric offices
When: Time to panic
> Alotta did the only thing she could. She tuned in to a shipwide
> frequency and annouced through her microphone. "Attention,
> attention, everybody hold on to something and be prepared for a
> crash landing." Then she added for an after-thought. "But there's
> nothing to be alarmed about, at least some of us should survive….."
The Appendix was doing what a perfect psychiatrist would do, and was
attempting to come the paranoiac who was in the room at the time of
the announcement. Meanwhile, Cerebrum was doing what a normal human
being would do.
"WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" he yelled as he strapped down his equipment.
[Don't worry.]
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, DON'T WORRY? The SHIP IS ABOUT TO CRASH!"
[Well, if we're going to die, why are you taking the trouble to strap
down the equipment?]
"Do you know how much I paid for this? I'm not going to lose it!"
Several minutes later, after the crash landing
Cerebrum's equipment was heavily damaged after the crash. Somebody
was going to die, he thought, as he looked over the wreckage.
"Excuse me," said a guy who came into the room, "but the captain
wants you to help calm people down."
Cerebrum remained montionless, looking at the end result of a process
that had turned five thousand dollarpounds worth of equipment into
five thousand dollarpounds worth of scrap metal. "Calm. I just lost
my equipment. I'm extremly calm. Sort of how lunatics with space
psychosis delerium seventy-two B are calm as they knife their victims
repeatedly. I own a knife. You have five seconds to get out of this
room before I use it on you."
As the man fled, the Appendix asked, [Wasn't that bit rude and
threatening?]
"Do you want me to get started on you?"
[I wasn't being critical; no, no, no. I think you did the right thing
back there.]
"Good, keep that attitude and you'll go far in psychiatry.
Thirty minutes and three bottles of blue pills later, in the meeting
room
> "So we're on an unknown planet. In an unknown part of the universe…
> that is assuming we're still in the same universe and also not in a
> parallel dimension…. And we're sinking. So has anyone got any
> suggestions?"
Cerebrum had calmed himself down enough (through rest and through use
of a lot of drugs) to attend the meeting.
He raised his hand. "Even though I'm a psychiatrist, and not studied
in nuclear physics and rocketry, it seems to me that even if we do
get the ship floating, we'll never be able to get it out of the
atmosphere with our own engines. But fortunately, my insanity allows
me to think up of different options that sane people wouldn't even
consider. I propose that the engineering department construct a great
big shield made out of neutronium, rendering it indestructible, that
we attach to the underside of the ship. That we detonate fifty
nuclear bombs at the same time under the shield, which will shoot the
ship right into orbit. It might be bad for the land value of the
surrounding region, but I'm sure that nobody here owns real estate on
this planet. So the only other problem is that it would irreversibly
irradiate most of the water on the planet, cause a nuclear winter on
the planet, contaminate most of the atmosphere and kill ninety-five
percent of all living things on the planet. But since we don't know
anybody on the planet, there are no problems there either."