part 1: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/my-fruiting-body-part-1-or-something.312019/
part 2: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/my-fruiting-body-part-2-denobulan-panty-episode.312103/
One would might like to visualize an escape pod jettisoning from a ship in distress in a lovely arc, with a bit of spin, descending into the vibrant colors of a nearby alien world with perfectly earth normal gravity and breathable atmosphere down below. You’re imagining that right now. You’re probably imagining the color of the planet is orange, but this is not that movie, so stop it.
There was no planet.
The ECS Mom’s Spice Rack pushed off, a pirate ship attached like a space lamprey, or more vaguely like any kind of lamprey, along the hull of the beleaguered old starliner.
The pod drifted along with the motion it had already had and thanks to Newton, no more, so fairly slowly. No real motion was detectable.
Kapok waited until the craft were gone and started the distress call. Guduza stared out the single porthole for awhile, but there was nothing to see out of it but stars.
They sorted through the ECS survival kit. Thirty meal ration bars, water, water recycler with embarrassing nozzle thingies, holographic harmonica projector with personal amplifier, and an ancient but new-in-box dataslate for writing one’s last thoughts while awaiting a rescue that probably would never come.
“They really think of everything” Guduza said, checking out the flavor bars. Granola, Gravy, and Red. There wasn’t much Red.
Kapok turned on the holomonica and was played a very mournful cover of Mull of Kintyre.
Fifteen days later..
Kapok had taken to playing something very militant and annoying on the holomonica he called “Amok Time”, some ancient Vulcan metal tune for lover’s quarrels. Guduza had grown into a dull resentment to Kapok for eating all the Red bars early on. One of the recycle thingies had broken and having to share the remaining thingy had brought on a sense of shame, disgust, and UTI that this particular forum is not geared to handle in a tasteful manner.
They were out of food. They smelled. The Solid Waste Containment System was on the verge of not containing.
“Kapok, this might be the end. I think we both can admit that rigging up a distillery to make vodka out of half the meal bars using our recycled .. water.. was a terrible idea, but it has to be said, you ate all the red ones, and, well, I kind of hate you for that. Anyway, we’re starving, and maybe someone will find us, maybe someone won’t. But” he sighed, “I just want you to know, despite all we’ve been through, despite the fact that objectively a lot of it was your fault, you’re still my friend. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. When you die, I won’t eat you.”
Kapok nodded at his consideration.
“Also it was weird as hell watching you eat those meal bars with chopsticks.”
“Vulcans don’t eat with their hands.”
There was a chime inside the small escape pod. “Wait.. was that the comm? Someone’s found us!”
They both looked intently at the blinkenlights and the small display to see if a message was incoming. The seconds felt like hours. Finally a voice crackled over the speaker.
“Hi! I’m a Johnny Pod! Welcome aboard. I’ve just finished repairs and your Solid Waste Containment System is Ready to Disgorge. When you’re in distress and you’ve tried the rest, use a Johnny Pod!”
Guduza’s hopeful face turned to despair, “No.. no no no.”
There was a shudder as the Solid Waste Containment System dumped its contents away from the pod. The slight thrust from this, and the change in mass caused the pod to rotate ever so slowly. Just cause anything was better than looking at each other or the same stars, they looked out the porthole, and the yellowy-reddish world became obvious. And rather large.
“Hey, we’re headed to a planet. Uh, kind of quickly actually.”
Kapok said quickly, “Computer, identify nearest celestial body.”
“Hi, I’m a Johnny Pod! The nearest celestial body is… Borange 3! We’re on an uncontrolled gravitational pull to it and will be entering their atmosphere in twenty minutes.”
The pod had now rotated so far that the local star was now nearly blinding them , presumably Borange itself, a common old white dwarf.
“There’s a city in your descent path! Would you like to land at their spaceport? I can call ahead to arrange emergency teams to assist you.” Johnny Pod asked.
“Affirmative.” Kapok affirmed.
“Why the hell can’t you just say yes, K, after all this time, why do you do that?” Guduza interrupted.
“Countermand accepted. We’ll be landing in the Taurus Wastes instead. Please stay still for crash foam spray!”
They were immobilized by spray shooting out form the nozzles and embedding them in a thick cushion of thermal crash resistant foam. It smelled nicely of fresh bread.
“Nice touch” Guduza said, in a muffled way.
“Quite” Kapok said, barely audiably.
The pod burned through atmosphere, released its drogue chute, then the mains, then released the chutes for no apparent reason as they got within 50 meters of the ground, and the pod started rolling.
And it kept rolling. They could not see out the porthole, which was just as well as there was nothing to see. The Taurus Waste was a remarkably flat yellowy-ochre-ish stone plane nearly featureless which formed at an incline outside of the nearest city. It had stubbornly avoided attempts to break it up into adequate flooded grazing land for the colonists’s attempts to raise beefopotomi, hence its name.
After rolling for a remarkably long time the spherical pod finally rolled up to the edge of town, hitting a post with a bell attached to it, making a clang.
“Thank you for using Johnny Pod.” The pod said, and then broke into pieces. Kapok and Guduza fought their way out of the foam, struggling atop the piles of foam, only to see gnarly looking human colonists pointing plasma rifles at them.
“You came a long way, don’t you know! We haven’t had anyone drop in since, oh my word, it was what twenty years ago?” their leader, standing behind them said.
“Nah, cripes, Mildred, it was more like thirty, back during that blizzard.” Another argued, still keeping the rifle trained on the newcomers.
“Oh yes, you’re right, it was so cold that winter I couldn’t even get my fusion reactor started. Lamar had to go borrow a spare one from the Jones.”
“Tishawhat Jones?”
“No, no, J’hen Jones, the Andorian that used to win the butter sculpture ribbon at the fair every year. Some people said he was sweet with one of the judges but you know how people talk.”
There was general agreement at this statement.
“eh” said Kapok.
“Now just don’t make any threatening moves or me and the welcoming crew will have to atomize ya, and that’s no way to get started here on Borange 3.” Mildred said. “Our plasma rifles may not look loaded, but they’re loaded with the best plasma you can find and not rock salt, I tell you, whoever you heard that from, so just, you better watch yourself or you’ll see. And even if it was rock salt, it would still hurt really bad. Probably take an eye out or something. You keep your hands where we can see, em. We don’t take kindly to pirates around here. “
“We’re not pirates.” Guduza protested, “We’re entertainment workers.”
“Well you smell like pirates” one of the welcoming crew pointed out. That was hard to argue.
part 2: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/my-fruiting-body-part-2-denobulan-panty-episode.312103/
One would might like to visualize an escape pod jettisoning from a ship in distress in a lovely arc, with a bit of spin, descending into the vibrant colors of a nearby alien world with perfectly earth normal gravity and breathable atmosphere down below. You’re imagining that right now. You’re probably imagining the color of the planet is orange, but this is not that movie, so stop it.
There was no planet.
The ECS Mom’s Spice Rack pushed off, a pirate ship attached like a space lamprey, or more vaguely like any kind of lamprey, along the hull of the beleaguered old starliner.
The pod drifted along with the motion it had already had and thanks to Newton, no more, so fairly slowly. No real motion was detectable.
Kapok waited until the craft were gone and started the distress call. Guduza stared out the single porthole for awhile, but there was nothing to see out of it but stars.
They sorted through the ECS survival kit. Thirty meal ration bars, water, water recycler with embarrassing nozzle thingies, holographic harmonica projector with personal amplifier, and an ancient but new-in-box dataslate for writing one’s last thoughts while awaiting a rescue that probably would never come.
“They really think of everything” Guduza said, checking out the flavor bars. Granola, Gravy, and Red. There wasn’t much Red.
Kapok turned on the holomonica and was played a very mournful cover of Mull of Kintyre.
Fifteen days later..
Kapok had taken to playing something very militant and annoying on the holomonica he called “Amok Time”, some ancient Vulcan metal tune for lover’s quarrels. Guduza had grown into a dull resentment to Kapok for eating all the Red bars early on. One of the recycle thingies had broken and having to share the remaining thingy had brought on a sense of shame, disgust, and UTI that this particular forum is not geared to handle in a tasteful manner.
They were out of food. They smelled. The Solid Waste Containment System was on the verge of not containing.
“Kapok, this might be the end. I think we both can admit that rigging up a distillery to make vodka out of half the meal bars using our recycled .. water.. was a terrible idea, but it has to be said, you ate all the red ones, and, well, I kind of hate you for that. Anyway, we’re starving, and maybe someone will find us, maybe someone won’t. But” he sighed, “I just want you to know, despite all we’ve been through, despite the fact that objectively a lot of it was your fault, you’re still my friend. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. When you die, I won’t eat you.”
Kapok nodded at his consideration.
“Also it was weird as hell watching you eat those meal bars with chopsticks.”
“Vulcans don’t eat with their hands.”
There was a chime inside the small escape pod. “Wait.. was that the comm? Someone’s found us!”
They both looked intently at the blinkenlights and the small display to see if a message was incoming. The seconds felt like hours. Finally a voice crackled over the speaker.
“Hi! I’m a Johnny Pod! Welcome aboard. I’ve just finished repairs and your Solid Waste Containment System is Ready to Disgorge. When you’re in distress and you’ve tried the rest, use a Johnny Pod!”
Guduza’s hopeful face turned to despair, “No.. no no no.”
There was a shudder as the Solid Waste Containment System dumped its contents away from the pod. The slight thrust from this, and the change in mass caused the pod to rotate ever so slowly. Just cause anything was better than looking at each other or the same stars, they looked out the porthole, and the yellowy-reddish world became obvious. And rather large.
“Hey, we’re headed to a planet. Uh, kind of quickly actually.”
Kapok said quickly, “Computer, identify nearest celestial body.”
“Hi, I’m a Johnny Pod! The nearest celestial body is… Borange 3! We’re on an uncontrolled gravitational pull to it and will be entering their atmosphere in twenty minutes.”
The pod had now rotated so far that the local star was now nearly blinding them , presumably Borange itself, a common old white dwarf.
“There’s a city in your descent path! Would you like to land at their spaceport? I can call ahead to arrange emergency teams to assist you.” Johnny Pod asked.
“Affirmative.” Kapok affirmed.
“Why the hell can’t you just say yes, K, after all this time, why do you do that?” Guduza interrupted.
“Countermand accepted. We’ll be landing in the Taurus Wastes instead. Please stay still for crash foam spray!”
They were immobilized by spray shooting out form the nozzles and embedding them in a thick cushion of thermal crash resistant foam. It smelled nicely of fresh bread.
“Nice touch” Guduza said, in a muffled way.
“Quite” Kapok said, barely audiably.
The pod burned through atmosphere, released its drogue chute, then the mains, then released the chutes for no apparent reason as they got within 50 meters of the ground, and the pod started rolling.
And it kept rolling. They could not see out the porthole, which was just as well as there was nothing to see. The Taurus Waste was a remarkably flat yellowy-ochre-ish stone plane nearly featureless which formed at an incline outside of the nearest city. It had stubbornly avoided attempts to break it up into adequate flooded grazing land for the colonists’s attempts to raise beefopotomi, hence its name.
After rolling for a remarkably long time the spherical pod finally rolled up to the edge of town, hitting a post with a bell attached to it, making a clang.
“Thank you for using Johnny Pod.” The pod said, and then broke into pieces. Kapok and Guduza fought their way out of the foam, struggling atop the piles of foam, only to see gnarly looking human colonists pointing plasma rifles at them.
“You came a long way, don’t you know! We haven’t had anyone drop in since, oh my word, it was what twenty years ago?” their leader, standing behind them said.
“Nah, cripes, Mildred, it was more like thirty, back during that blizzard.” Another argued, still keeping the rifle trained on the newcomers.
“Oh yes, you’re right, it was so cold that winter I couldn’t even get my fusion reactor started. Lamar had to go borrow a spare one from the Jones.”
“Tishawhat Jones?”
“No, no, J’hen Jones, the Andorian that used to win the butter sculpture ribbon at the fair every year. Some people said he was sweet with one of the judges but you know how people talk.”
There was general agreement at this statement.
“eh” said Kapok.
“Now just don’t make any threatening moves or me and the welcoming crew will have to atomize ya, and that’s no way to get started here on Borange 3.” Mildred said. “Our plasma rifles may not look loaded, but they’re loaded with the best plasma you can find and not rock salt, I tell you, whoever you heard that from, so just, you better watch yourself or you’ll see. And even if it was rock salt, it would still hurt really bad. Probably take an eye out or something. You keep your hands where we can see, em. We don’t take kindly to pirates around here. “
“We’re not pirates.” Guduza protested, “We’re entertainment workers.”
“Well you smell like pirates” one of the welcoming crew pointed out. That was hard to argue.
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