Back From The Sales

Who: A fairly exasperated Keto
Where: Small Earth inter-planetary cargo pod
When: Just as Niples announced the Summer Party
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"Left! Left! No, you confounded thing, your OTHER left!" yelled
Keto, fighting vainly with the cargo pod's control stick. It was no
good, the autopilot was locked on and he was most definitely not
going to be able to turn around and head back to Earth.
Not that this was a problem. After his and Cerebrum's earlier
arrival on Earth with a host of alien artifacts, they found a slight
problem. It would appear that several of the artifacts, combined
with Cerebrum's ever-present meson weaponry, reacted badly to re-
entry...or, in their case, entry...into the Earth's atmosphere.
At least two thirds of their anticipated fortune, in other words,
had gone up in flames.
Half of what was left vapourised shortly after landing. The only
explanation that either of them could come up with was some strange
temporal anomaly...or a dimension shift...or some extraordinarily
late version of the Y2K bug in alien systems.
Either way, they had been left with a mere sixth of what they had
originally grabbed. Which should still have been enough for both of
them to live in relative comfort for the rest of their lives.
Or for one of them to live in luxury.
That had been Keto's plan - to lure Cerebrum into a cargo pod and
send him hurtling back to the Blue Dwarf, leaving himself with the
artifacts. So he had set up the autopilot on a pod, locked in the
controls, utterly ruined the override so that nobody could reset them
within about three years, fuelled it and generally made sure that
anybody inside would definitely not be interfering with the one left
with the artifacts.
It was a brilliant plan, with no mistakes whatsoever.
Which is why Keto, so wrapped up in his own master ideas, had not
realised when Cerebrum had invited him to take a look inside a cargo
pod set up alongside Keto's own.
Great minds think alike.
And now Keto cursed once again as his cargo pod made a smooth
landing in the Dwarf's bay, opened its hatch and powered down.
He stepped out, grouchily, and immediately slipped on a piece of
card on the floor of the bay.
"What in hell's name is this?" he growled, picking it up and
reading it, "Summer Party? So THAT'S what they've been up to!"
And with that, he headed for the party.
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OOC: Yay, back with no Emperor-ness. ;) And don't forget, Keto will
have no knowledge of himself as an Emperor (and I'm assuming Cerebrum
won't either)...