Space Vixen Trek Episode 4.135667: Walking the Planck, sub figura XVI

By Rainbow Albrecht

A dorky genius, struggling financially and under his little wifey's thumb, goes for a quick trip to space with his best friend the knuckle-headed linebacker. They take a prototype spaceplane out for a spin. Their plans for a three hour tour are interrupted when the navigational computer gets the Blue Tickertape of Death.

They're hopelessly stranded. Worse, the jock ate too many beans. At least the nerd is nowhere near his greedy creditors and especially his control freak wife. Then he discovers the horrifying reason why he hasn't made a plug nickel from his super duper invention.

In this thrillingly cheesy tale, they must not fail, they must not falter, and especially they must not be late for supper. Other than that, space pirates - enough said!

*** The young engineer's friend drops by.

"Butch came in a day early, and I just wanted to let you know that we're probably going to be a teensy bit late, maybe..." Harsh noises emitted from the receiver of the telephone. Albert held the handset away and winced.

Butch grinned broadly and swung his arm with a wrist flourish as if he were cracking a whip.

"Yes, darling, I know you wanted to see me soon, but I was hoping to hang out with my old pal here... No, this doesn't mean I like him better; it's just that I haven't seen him in ages... No, dear, we're not funny, as you put it; we both happen to like women. Oh yeah, and I specifically like you. Anyway, I'll let Butch know that today might not be the best time."

The athlete sighed. "Come on, Pardner, can't you spare a few hours for your best pal? Be a little assertive, for the love of Mike!"

*** They take his spaceship out for a joyride, but end up nowhere.

Albert reached to the console, and noticed that a piece of ticker tape was hanging out of a slot on the console. It was blue with black edges; this was not a good sign. He ripped it off, looked at it, and frowned.

"You can read them weird computer dots?"

"Of course. It says STOP 0x00000041 (0x00001000, 0x0000adfe, 0x00004000, 0x0004678f)."

"Wuzzat? Huh? Huh?"

The nerd sighed, reached under his chair, and retrieved a volume that rivaled the size of the Manhattan telephone directory. He thumbed through the error reference guide. "MUST_SUCCEED_POOL_EMPTY - the parameters are the size of the request that coughed up a hairball, number of pages used from nonpaged pool, number of requests big enough to make it blow chunks, and the number of pages available. We got gremlins in one of the kernel space drivers, and since it runs in Ring 0, the whole computer bugchecks, just because somebody wrote lousy code."

"You know I don't speak Swahili."

"It means we're up the crick without a paddle."

*** Yet, through an incredibly improbable plot crowbar, they find that the utter void is filled with danger.

"They pirated my original design, the prototype I've been trying to patent! They stole my thunder! Those - those damn dirty apes!"

"Avast!" said a loud voice. They turned around. Two men confronted them, dressed in motley, both sporting scruffy beards and earrings. The one on the port side had a prosthetic hand in the form of a hook and a black three cornered hat with a skull and crossbones design at the peak. The one on the starboard side had a scarf tied behind his head and a peg leg.

Albert noticed that this spaceship had handicap plates, so he turned to the one on the starboard side. "Excuse me, is this your bucket of bolts here?"

"Aye. And a stiff price ye'll pay for messin' with me ship!"

The other one crouched down, looked fierce, and said, pithily, "Arrrr!"

*** Will our brave protagonists prevail in battling the buccaneers from beyond, so they can get home before the hotdish gets cold?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rainbow Albrecht
• Release date: Aug 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311040558

Rainbow Albrecht

Rainbow's parents met during the Summer of Love. He was conceived and born in the back of a VW Bus. When he was one, they attended Woodstock (Rainbow was particularly impressed by Grace Slick's awesome voice).As the years went on, his parents brought up their love child to be an environmentally conscious liberal embodying peace in the world. In the fullness of time, he became an environmentally conscious reactionary who believes in peace through superior firepower. Today, he fixes servers for a living but would prefer to be a supervillain plotting world domination on a remote volcanic island.Becoming a dictator is a tough career change to pull off, so he channels his evil genius into creative writing. Mostly it is science fiction and fantasy parodies, and he aims for the golden mean of cheesiness which makes a story so bad that it's good.

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SPACE VIXEN TREK EPISODE 4.135667:

Walking the Planck

svb figvra XVI

by Rainbow Albrecht

Copyright 2014 Rainbow Albrecht

Smashwords Edition

Dedicated to Michele Gaddis, who helped inspire this story, is a hot nerd babe, and - best of all - somehow puts up with the author.

A hulking man with a military style crew cut slowly opened a door, careful not to make a sound. He looked in and spotted his intended victim. A young engineer, his back turned to the door, sat at a drafting table, carefully poring over a blueprint. He took a measurement and then dialed the number into his slide rule. The giant crept stealthily forward as the unsuspecting young man continued to check his design meticulously. As he approached the engineer from behind, the muscles rippled under the back of his skin-tight shirt.

The giant, towering over the seated man, first raised his hands up to his own face, then lowered them to either side of the engineer's head. The musclebound man jammed his thumbs into the engineer's ears. The victim screamed out a blood-curdling cry as the giant laughed sadistically.

The engineer turned around angrily in the swivel chair. "Drat it, Butch! We've been out of high school for years now, and you give me a wet willy! Why do you do this? Why!?!"

Because it's so much fun to make you shriek like a little girl. He smiled.

The engineer glared at the giant furiously. Then he burst out with laughter. You haven't changed one bit!

Neither have you, Albert!

Say, the telegram said you were coming in tomorrow morning. Maybe there was a transcription error or something. Anyway, I'm sorry that I wasn't there to pick you up.

No biggie. Just as I got off the choo choo, I saw your dorky old pal - what's his name, the one what always useta wear that propeller beanie?

Eugene. And he's not a dork.

Butch snorted.

At least once you get to know him, that is.

"Yeah, right. He just got off of his split shift at the five-and-dime. Would you believe that Woolworth's made him an assistant manager trainee? And his complexion has really cleared up. I remember when he had a near-fatal case of zits. Anyway, he knew where you've been hanging out, and was nice enough to give me a lift. He's got a beat up old 2075 Packard hovercar now, but at least it's way better than those dopy old roller skates."

Yes. As you know, Butch, since the Second Galactic Conflagration, Earth's economy has been roaring, and prosperity is now within the grasp of the common man. Before, there was widespread unemployment, but now it's easy to get a factory job, and the market for durable consumer goods has boomed.

Yeah. Nothing like a little butchery to pump up the ol' economy, right? Anyway, I thought I was coming in tomorrow too. But they opened up the new magnetokinetic track at the College Station terminal a week ahead of schedule. I upgraded my ticket so I could be on the maiden voyage, first class of course. It was a little expensive, to put it mildly, but Coach better not say one peep.

Wow - the new Great Plains line of the Taggart Meteor!

Sure 'nuff! It was one heck of a sight watching them trees zip by at 300 kilometers an hour.

Say, I better tell Dolly that it's boys' night out. He picked up a telephone handset and dialed his parents' number, ELm-256.

Pleasantville has direct dial now? Progress!

Mabel signed up for the Space WAVES as soon as Earth joined the heroic fight to liberate the Galaxy from oppression, and the phone company kinda hadda upgrade to one of those computerized switches, 'cause the whole labor force around here either was in uniform, patriotically serving their planet, or was on the farm, growing crops for the homefront and soldiers abroad, or working at the defense factories, supporting our vital war effort.

Except us. We was in college.

Albert cleared his throat. After an uncomfortable silence, he resumed. Gosh, isn't full employment a good thing? And to think, when we were in elementary school, there were hoboes eating bark off the trees. Anyway, Mabel got promoted to Captain, but alas, she went missing on a deep space patrol.

Gosh, that almost makes me regret all those pranks we pulled on her when we were teenagers. Almost.

Albert winced as a sharp voice emitted from the handset. He replied, Oh, it's you! Sorry, I didn't realize you had picked up. Mabel was Pleasantville's old phone operator before she joined the Space Navy, dear... Yes, I know you heard me say that, but you did ask, right?... No, honey, she's not an old girlfriend - remember, I never had any girlfriends before I met you, and besides, she's kinda scary...

Butch laughed. "Is the little wifey getting jealousy issues over Mabel? If only