spacestation #ma
by SLAM
Editor's Note: The majority of this story is told as though I am reading it. So, you get several jumps back and forth from "me reading" and the actual story. Hopefully this is done in a way which is not too confusing!
(The IRC Version of this story is also available!)
One day, Christofori, master story-teller and bookkeeper, was cleaning up the library for the day, when he noticed a book sitting on the desk. He had been the librarian for many many years, and knew not only every book that was in the library, but every story in each one by heart! The thought of a completely new story intrigued him, so he took the book with him when he went home. It was "Spacestation #MA" by SLAM. Wait...SLAM...that was that odd little child who wanted to hear Christofori's other stories! This should be interesting, Christofori though as he sat down in his easy chair. He opened the book, and on page one...
Okay, so DOES ANYONE WANT TO HEAR A STORY NOW?
"Yes!" Christofori yelled eagerly, forgetting himself.
SPACESTATION #MA!
...eerie echo...
Christofori wasn't entirely sure how the book's title maintained that eerie echo, he'd have to ask SLAM sometime...
* * *
"Our story begins as we see a beautiful princess with a perfect bod, big titties, and all that stuff, casually throwing her clothes in the dryer. Her name was "grl," and although she and others thought of her as a princess, by profession she was a starship mechanic. She was hurrying to dry her laundry and take her ship, the S.S. 32MB, to move into a new job at...
SPACESTATION #MA! *eerie echo.
* * *
Christofori was taken by surprise again, and made sure to ask SLAM later what that was all about.
* * *
Finally, the Atomic Dryer (TM) made a "ding!" sound, signaling that the clothes were done after the 150ms tumble-dry cycle. She tossed the clothes into a suitcase, and threw it into the trunk of her ship. She then jumped into the Trusty old S.S. 32MB's cockpit, and blasted off for
SPACESTATION #MA! *eerie echo.
Leaving her entire life behind her for her new job. "Well," she thought, "at least my brother won't ask me to baby sit anymore."
Finally, she jumped into TCPspace, and, after a 90ms journey, warped back out, and beheld
SPACESTATION #MA! *eerie echo.
There were several landing platforms to choose from, but looking at her ship's configuration, the nice controller gave her clearance to land on the Windows platform. She was met immediately by Brainwash, the reluctant mechanic of the station's EtherDrive.
"Ay!," he said in a Scottish accent, "It's about time you were 'ere! The ports just had a pow'r surge and port 80's plum frozen over!"
"Aren't you supposed to fix that?" grl asked.
"Ay, lassie, I am," Brainwash said, looking her up and down for a second,
"But I don't know crap about networkin'!"
"Then why are you the engineer for the EtherDrive?" grl questioned.
"Well, SLAM thought I could handle the job till he came back. But if we don't get this port 80 fixed, NO ONE'S going to be coming back, and we'll lose our position in the cyberspace-time continuum!" Brainwash replied in a tizzy.
So grl rushed down to the reactor room with Brainwash immediately to check out the situation. Sure enough, just as Brainwash had said, the port marked "80" was fused shut! grl took out her red nail polish, and painted a red bull's-eye on the blocked port...
Then yanked out her three-foot-wrench, and gave the port a good beating. In seconds, port 80 was open and functioning again. Needless to say, plenty of people were waiting for
SPACE STATION #MA! *eerie echo.
to get back on the net again, and so the poor ops were nearly swamped as ships poured in. Some were just Tumbleweeds, who came and went, but they still confused the operators. grl rushed topside immediately to see if any ships needed assistance. Of course, many of them did, especially those on the Windows platform. They were always experiencing breakdowns from improper maintenance and lack of good workmanship.
"Ay, me!" Brainwash exclaimed, "at least this is some werk I can doo!"
He picked up his own three-foot-wrench and went to work immediately on a ship called the Modula Five, belonging to one Christofori. If Brainwash sucked at networking, he was at least a good mechanic, and grl was soon glad to have his help as the ships started landing. Finally, a ship that had remained silent to the ops the entire time made it's approach. It was the S.S. Trout, belonging to James-Bond. James-Bond apparently was a quiet type, and didn't even bother to acknowledge the ops, as he landed at his place on
the Linux platform.
"Well, shatter me shamrocks!" Brainwash exclaimed, "Ol' Jimmy there is needin' assistance! You finish up here, grl, I'm heading to the Linux platform!"
However, as soon as Brainwash got there, James-Bond had taken off again. But Brainwash had to stay because there was more coming his way. A ship called the S.S. NAB, belonging to SLAM, made it's approach. SLAM's ship was different. It slipped in half, and half landed on the Windows platform, while the other half landed on the Linux platform. It was a "dual-booting drive" ship.
grl started flirting with SLAM, and as she worked they swapped their favorite sandwich recipes. All of a sudden, Christofori walked over, and bludgeoned SLAM on the head with a piece of paper. SLAM greeted him cheerfully, and asked how his randomizing code was coming. Looking at the wimpy piece of paper in his hand, Christofori replied, "Not so good."
Christofori immediately struck up an argument with grl, and SLAM left them just as grl was pulling out her three-foot-wrench again. SLAM headed into the station, and went up three levels with the intention of finding some ph00d. It eluded him for several minutes, until he saw a vending machine clearly marked "ph00d." Inserting some csh into the machine (which he had retrieved from the Linux half of his ship) SLAM purchased some SIMM chips, and began munching away happily.
Suddenly, in walked none other than AcidDose, carrying three hundred bound sheets of paper.
"What are you doing?" SLAM asked him.
"I'm writing the code for my new tracker program," AcidDose replied, "It can rip voices from humans, animals, non-humans, stars, and even other dimensions!"
"Yeah, sounds great," SLAM commented, "can I get a beta version of that sometime?"
"Yes, of course," AcidDose replied happily, and gave SLAM a piece of paper with the address where he could pick up the beta.
"Thanks," SLAM replied, "Will it run on my 486?"
AcidDose made a kind of snorting noise, and walked on.
In the meantime, the argument outside between grl and Christofori had escalated. grl was now pounding away at him with a slightly bent three-foot-wrench, while Christofori was desperately hammering his randomizer module to spit out a good weapon. Finally, it surrendered a "golf clup," which isn't quite like a golf club, but good enough for Christofori's purposes, apparently. grl tried radioing the ops to send down security, but the ops were too busy trying to keep the incoming ships from speaking in French. grl pulled out a remote control, and summoned the maintenance bot, ModStats, to come over and help her.
ModStats couldn't do much physically, but he did make note of one of Christofori's comments, and posted it all over the station to embarrass him. Humiliated and defeated for a time, Christofori climbed back aboard his own ship.
Meanwhile, a ship called the "n00b" belonging to NeZbiE, finally pulled toward the station. Under the threat of being kicked, NeZbiE had finally stopped talking in French and trying to smack the ops with a Rather Large Trout (TM). Taking his example, his friend TrenteTrois also landed on the Windows platform.
Soon, a ship jumped in that had the shape of a cat. The side of the ship, which was shaved of fur, read "S.S. Pokkit." BardCat was the pilot, and he landed it on the little-used OS/2 platform.
"Hey!" BardCat yelled, "Can't a Canadian get some service around here?"
"No!" grl yelled over from the Windows platform, "No one here knows any OS/2!"
Disappointed, BardCat tried unsuccessfully to anger all the occupants of the station, and then took off again for his home planet, Quebec.
Thanks to the quick and skilled work of grl and Brainwash, the ships that had landed were speedily repaired, shppied up, and sent on their way. At least, they were SUPPOSED to be sent on their way. The ops had fallen asleep from the rough time they'd had keeping everyone from speaking French. So everyone just hung around chatting.
SLAM and AcidDose were sitting in the dining hall again, and AcidDose was telling him yet more about his new tracker. "Yes, all it does is produce chiptunes, because chiptunes rock."
SLAM heartily agreed, although he had no tracking skill. Suddenly, ModStats rolled in. It then switched from wheels to stubby feet, and waddled on over to SLAM.
"Christofori really wanted everyone to know what he was doing: 273 descriptions in all! Runner-up: SLAM[CD-CoS] with 272 total descriptions," ModStats sputtered.
SLAM, of course, was outraged, and dashed out to the landing pad to meet Christofori, the whole time readying his new Ninjutsu presets. However, SLAM was in for a surprise.
A ship called the S.S. Knife, piloted by none other than X-Acto, decided to jump out of TCPspace and barnstorm the Windows platform while the ops were asleep. He slashed past the door to the inside area just as SLAM was walking out...
BLAMMO!
* * *
Christofori jumped as the book seemed to explode before him. Lips quivering, he continued reading.
* * *
"SLAM went flying into outer cyberspace. X-Acto, listening to loud music, didn't even notice the impact as he went around for another pass. Christofori, against his principles, had fallen asleep in his ship, and didn't know what was happening. grl ducked and ran for cover as X-Acto came around again."
* * *
Christofori couldn't help but laugh at this story. It was, after all, funny.
* * *
Just then, pilotbris jumped out of TCPspace in his fighter, and targeted X-Acto's engines, seeing what was happening. X-Acto took a direct hit, and had to use the last of his power to emergency land on the Windows platform. He knocked over grl's multi-drawer tool set, which really pissed her off. Although she had broken her three-foot-wrench fighting Christofori, she picked up the two halves, and attacked X-Acto akimbo.
The *thwack* of the one-and-a-half-foot-wrenches woke up the ops, and they soon had control of the situation. They kicked X-Acto immediately for the damage he caused. They were going to kick guiltbris too, but...pleasurebris taught them something they didn't know how to do, so they let him stay. Joyousbris whooped so loudly, that he woke the sleeping dragon that was Christofori.
Christofori remembered his secret weapon, the powerful 1000-foor lightsaber OF DOOM! *eerie echo.
* * *
Christofori laughed once again at the echo effect that, while becoming cheap, maintained the mystery of its creation.
* * *
He pulled it out, and leapt from his cockpit yelling. grl's eyes went wide.
"What the blinkin' bloody blazes is..." Brainwash began as he walked back onto the Windows platform. He was just in time to see Christofori's saber swing across in a wide arc that cut through half the station.
Meanwhile, AcidDose was still in the dinner hall making crazy music, and felt the floor vibrate. He packed up his code (now 350 pages long) and left.
* * *
"Sounds about right," Christofori noted about AcidDose's described code.
* * *
Christofori saw the damage he caused, and saw the ops frown at him. The ops, fortunately, were having a good time up there at the moment though, so they let him off the hook when he shut the lightsaber off. Suddenly, one last ship, belonging to HyoCHAN, exiting TCPspace, and made a nose-dive for the Windows platform. He hit the platform at and angle, and bounced off, at the same time smashing into Christofori. His ship flew off into outer cyberspace, carrying Christofori with it, and HyoCHAN was thrown clear into the ops post of the station.
Christofori realized he only had one chance left. Using the powers he had only written about so far, he looked deep inside the
SPACE STATION #MA! *eerie echo.
to locate grl. He did so, and activated his lightsaber one last time. It stabbed through the shielding. Piereced the outer hull plating. Broke open a bulkhead. Shot through the wall. And grl barely saw the blade coming in time to duck...
It singed her perfect hair, but worse than that, it flew into the reactor, and smashed right into the already-faulty port 80! Immediately, tremors were felt all over...
SPACESTATION #MA! *eerie echo.
The ops, ironically, had just finished what teachbris had taught them, and thought that the station rocking was their fault somehow. They scrambled about in confusion. HyoCHAN, having been unconscious for several minutes, woke up suddenly, with the station rocking all about. He looked for his ship, but couldn't see it anywhere. He would have to hitch a ride somewhere...
As he dashed through the hall, he turned a corner, and ran into good old AcidDose. Ran into him so hard in fact, that HyoCHAN got knocked cold again. AcidDose, however, had the most messages in the entire station, according to ModStats, and didn't want to ruin his reputation, so he picked HyoCHAN up and carried him off to his ship. ModStats tried to follow, but suddenly a bulkhead marked "typhoon.ma.us.dal.net" tumbled from the ceiling and smashed his little boxy body.
Meanwhile, grl's perfect bod was down in engineering, desperately trying to fix the damage Christofori's lightsaber had caused.
* * *
"Ah, yes, back to the good part," Christofori mused with a smile as he read.
* * *
Suddenly understanding the stress of an engineer's job, she immediately developed an accent like Brainwash's. Brainwash ran immediately into the engine room.
"Mye stars, lassie, what've yeh done with me precious ports?!?" he exclaimed in his very perturbed and perturbing Scottish accent.
"Who are you talking to?" grl demanded, "you already said you suck at networking!"
Brainwash shut up, and went back topside to repair the ships, in case they needed to evacuate. grl kept rewiring stuff, crawling through tight tubes full of blinking lights, using a machete to slash through hanging cords, and the like, until she found what she was looking for.
Her two-foot, eleven-ish-wrench. A three-foot-wrench would be just too big for this job.
* * *
Christofori, just HAD to interrupt the story and laugh once again.
* * *
Painting port 80 once again with a bull's-eye with her red nail polish, she hurled the wrench into port 80, closing the circuit, and restoring their position in the cyberspace-time continuum. However, there was a slight lurch as they regained their balance...
And ModStats had taken that opportunity to go for a waddle out on the Linux platform. He went flying into space babbling "1370 lines, 1253 lines, 943 lines..." as he flew. The lurch also made it so that SLAM and Christofori landed right in front of each other on the Windows Platform.
SLAM immediately assumed Ichimonji no Kamae (defensive posture), to which Christofori replied with his randomizing script...
"Christofori teases SLAM[CD-CoS] with an uzi!" while also enabling his protective anti-slam shielding.
SLAM just couldn't resist the uzi, and went right for it...
And Christofori fired it...
However, he had messed something up in his script...Spelling it "uzi" instead of "UZI".
* * *
"A@&N(Q*NQW*WQ()M!*)" Christofori yelled, wondering why he would forget something like that, even in a story!
* * *
And it misfired. Igniting the entire magazine...And blowing both of them back into space in opposite directions. Totherescuebris manned his ship immediately, and flew off to pick up Christofori, since opinionatedbris thought that SLAM was too new to SPACESTATION #MA *eerie echo. to be rescued first. Luckily, though, SLAM ran headfirst into the cat-shaped ship of BardCat.
It saved him, but...
"NO NO NO NO NO!" SLAM screamed and kicked as the S.S. Pokkit touched down on the OS/2 platform.
* * *
Once again, Christofori broke out laughing.
* * *
SLAM knew what was coming next, so he tried to run from the ship. However, he didn't know how to "run" things in OS/2, so he head to learn to walk all over again, as he slowly but surely made it to the door. Finally, he reached it, and said, "I'm never using OS/2 again."
* * *
Christofori laughed, and noted, "It's like a bad trip."
* * *
BardCat, however, had jumped out of his ship, lugging along his massive rudely-named IRC client with him. SLAM, having made it to the station area, ran immediately to the dinner hall for some ph00d. BardCat caught up with him, and saw the strange vending
machine. "ph00d?" he questioned mockingly, trying to annoy SLAM, "ph00d is gay."
* * *
"ph00d is gay!" Christofori exclaimed, laughing, "I've got a /gay alias for just that reason."
* * *
Christofori would have answered him from his bar, the Kit-Kat, but he was floating in outer cyberspace on slowbris's ship. SLAM ignored BardCat as he deposited more csh into the vending machine and received a pack of GeForce 2 gum.
BardCat, not about to give up this time, followed SLAM to the Kit-Kat, where SLAM nicely decided to take over for Christofori, who was his friend anyway. Walked behind the bar, pulled out a rag, and started polishing the bar top. BardCat sat at the bar, asking for a drink.
scr00dbris started having engine trouble, and couldn't quite get back to
SPACESTATION #MA! *eerie echo.
right away. He tapped on the engine housing behind his seat. And tapped it some more. Cluelessbris kept tapping, not realizing the damage he was doing. Finally, the engine housing blew up, sending Christofori and shockedbris hurtling toward the station again.
They flew...
* * *
"Poor Arlenbris," Christofori lamented as he read.
* * *
They hit the window surrounding the dinner hall....
Crashed through...
And didn't stop...
SLAM was just about to put a martini in his paint shaker. Christofori flew into the machine, followed by accidentalbris, who bumped up the shake time on his way in as well. The door slammed shut.
* * *
"Uh oh..." Christofori commented as he read.
* * *
SLAM, not knowing what had happened, hit the start button out of instinct...
And the paint shaker started.
SLAM soon realized there was something wrong, because the machine was hopping and bouncing as if it had a lot of extra weight in it. However, it was bouncing and hopping so much, that he couldn't hit the off switch.
* * *
Christofori began to feel dizzy just reading about this ordeal.
* * *
So Christofori and shaken-not-stirredbris were trapped in the wobbling machine with a martini, which Christofori immediately drank. Just then, James-Bond returned, and entered the bar, uttering the only line he had said in the last week "Get me a martini, shaken, not stirred."
SLAM thought, "You have no idea..."
SLAM[CD-CoS] pulled out his flak cannon.
SLAM[CD-CoS] aimed his flak cannon straight at the paint shaker and triggered a speedy metal spray!
The machine shut down, finally, and he popped open the door.
* * *
"Sheesh!" Christofori exclaimed, "Why didn't you just unplug it?"
"Because that wouldn't have been any fun," the book replied, to Christofori's surprise.
* * *
He pulled out a martini can, which he noticed was unreasonably heavy...And poured it in James-Bond's martini glass. Out popped a drunk, confused Christobris. That's right, folks, the shaking can combine more things than just drinks. Librifori looked around in utter confusion. "Huh...wha?" he managed to stammer out. Not knowing exactly what to do at the moment, Cribolibri walked into a corner and began to do what he did best.
* * *
Christofori laughed yet again.
* * *
SLAM, James-Bond, and BardCat watched speechlessly, unsure of what to do. Finally, grl and Brainwash came into the bar.,
"Blow up the Blarney Blast!" Brainwash exclaimed, "not again!"
"You mean this has happened before?" SLAM asked.
"Ay, laddie, it has," grl answered.
"grl, is that a..." SLAM began to ask, wondering about the Scottish accent.
"Ay, laddie, it is," grl answered.
"Well, then, can you..." SLAM started again.
"Ay, laddie I can," grl answered.,
"WILL YOU STOP THAT?!?" SLAM yelled.
* * *
Once, again, Christofori laughed.
* * *
"Nay, laddie," grl answered, when you've been workin' as a mechanic as long as I 'ave, it sorta tekes o'er."
grl grabbed Librifori's hair as Brainwash grabbed Christobrilib in the butt. Out popped Christofori, while traumatizedbris sat there, still doing what he did best.
"Ay, a day o' celebration!" grl declared.
Christofori concocted a wine cooler for everyone in the house. grl and Brainwash jumped into traditional Scottish outfits, then climbed up onto the bar to dance. Brainwash made up a clever Irish song describing the occasion, which was so good that no one remembers it to this day. Mostly because of Christofori's wine cooler, which contained Nutra-sweet, which made everyone forget the details.
* * *
Christofori just HAD to laugh at that. Christofori shook up a shot of tequila for everyone in the house! "A Toast for SLAM[CD-CoS]! Here's to SLAM[CD-CoS]! May you have good fortune!" he exclaimed to no one in particular.
"Thank you," the book replied politely.
"No problem," Christofori said, and continued reading.
* * *
Christofori, sat in a corner, rubbing his head, wondering why his luck was so rotten today, while contentbris sat in the opposite corner and...yeah, still. Everyone was so happy, that they forgot about something. Two things, actually. Suddenly, SLAM signaled everyone to quiet down. turned on the radio. They all gathered round and listened carefully.
* * *
"Radio on a space station," Christofori laughed.
"Exactly," the book replied, "remember, this is like 1950's sci-fi, with things like grl's atomic clothes dryer."
* * *
It was a broadcast from ModStats, floating out in space! They could only determine one thing...
THAT THE SPEECH WAS IN FRENCH!
As they looked amongst themselves, they realized that NeZbiE and TrenteTrois were not amongst them! In horror they looked out the window, and as the voices on the radio screamed the French version of "Aiiiiiieeeeeeee!"
They saw two very fast moving ships coming towards to window. The ships smashed into the bar, hit the opposite bulkhead, knocked loose the typhoon.ma.us.dal.net beam, which kicked half the people in the room. Everyone was on the floor. SLAM was behind the bar, and the first to look up and behold on final object. A small, boxy object with short waddling legs, flying, and screaming
at the top of his lungs, "WARHAWK COULDN'T DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT TO STAY, AND JOINED #MODARCHIVE TWENETY-SEV...!!!"
SLAM's eyes widened as the flailing bot rushed in and smacked him right in the face. Upon creaming SLAM's head into the wall, ModStats finished quietly "...times."
However, a disastrous thing had happened. SLAM's head and hit a switch on the wall...
Which turned on a light..
Which pulled far too much power...
and overloaded a relay which blew, sending a surge down to engineering...
Which blasted port 80 yet again.
grl had been kicked when the typhoon.ma.us.dal.net beam had fallen, and SLAM was...let us say incapacitated. That left only one person who might, just MIGHT be able to fix the faulty port 80 again.
BRAINWASH *eerie echo.
Brainwash dashed downstairs, for the first time in...however long...being so scared that he managed to drop the Scottish accent. He saw that the problem was the same, Port 80 was a broken circuit. There was nothing with a length of two feet and eleven inches, except, except...
* * *
"Oh no..." Christofori said as he read, sure he knew what would come next.
* * *
Pointing one arm straight down, and thrusting his right elbow out, he leapt headfirst into port 80, closing the circuit! Once again, someone has heroically saved
SPACESTATION #MA! *eerie echo.
Betterbris finally recovered from his trauma, and fixed the typhoon.ma.ua.dal.net bea, which brought everyone back again. And everyone was happy, even SLAM had recovered, and was serving drinks again. Everyone was happy, of course, except Brainwash, Who was channeling about 15 megabits per second down on port 80.
"Hey, like I said, I don't know crap about networking!" he reminded the people upstairs.
Everyone, however, thought he had done a splendid job, and drank a toast to him. And, as we leave this beloved space station, we see all our heroes, patrons, and friends, celebrating their adventures and victories for the day...
Here, on the magnificent...
SPACESTATION #MA! *eerie echo.
The End!
:-)
"Bravo!" Christofori yelled, jumping up, "How DOES he do that?!?"