Table of Contents

“C’mon, guys,” the Destroyer said, in his deep, craggy voice. “Let me out.” ...

The entire population of Universe 27048B was playing poker. ...

“Do not interact with the Destroyer. Do not even speak with it." ...

“Does silence mean, ‘Yes, we’ll let you out,’ in any of your languages?” the Destroyer asked. ...

As card players go, the cloud was good. ...

The sheer number of nanobots helped Q44 quickly locate its goal—the Ace of Spades. ...

Prnei Star Nebula Galaxy looked like a six-foot-tall black-and-white octopus with ten long tentacles. ...

"Woe to us. We have seen the end. We have seen the Destroyer." ...

The murder plot was eons in the making ...

If the Destroyer had a checklist for his assassination plan, it would look something like this: ...

As he watched his weapon form, the Destroyer examined his intended target. ...

“So, before I ate the Karkans, I caught some memories from their minds," the Destroyer said. ...

When not passed out on a table, Riox the General looked like a dark-blue four-foot-tall cylinder ...

Only one of the Destroyer’s 47 trillion minds was playing cards with the crew of Containment Facility One. ...

Now playing 20th century Pac-Man is great, as antique human activities go ...

“I … raise,” Anderson said. ...

By the Destroyer’s calculations, Riox had three minutes to live. ...

The Destroyer decided to ask the crew for his freedom one last time. ...

“How 'bout if I win this round?” the Destroyer said. ...

Q44 began the final adjustments on the card. ...

“I call,” Jeska said. ...

Riox’s body lay unmoving on the table. ...

Prnei continued his story ...

In Q44’s defense, the cloud had tried to fix its mistake. ...

The Destroyer continued talking as if he hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. ...

Jeska ran passed hundreds of empty, silent rooms. ...

“That’s the quickest I’ve ever worn anyone down,” the Destroyer said. ...

"There’s no hope,” the Destroyer said cheerfully. ...

In despair, Jeska brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. ...

“Riox, you promised,” Prnei said. ...

With surprising agility, the discount starship hurtled through the wreckage of a hundred thousand dead vessels. ...

“Nothing? Not even a ‘congratulations?’” Rachel-7 asked. ...

The Afterthought’s structural integrity only worsened during the six-week voyage to the Quadra Sector: parts of the ship started falling off. ...

The Garage was impossibly big—a cube of space with a length 100 times the diameter of Earth's sun. ...

Nothing about the Garage made sense. ...

Jeska was the one that got away. Or, to use a more fitting metaphor ...

Here’s what Daniel remembered about gravity from his brief time at school. ...

Though she thought Daniel was too worried about Jeska to listen, Rachel-7 began her daily audio report. ...

Daniel raised an eyebrow, as he did any time Trak mentioned a scary, oddly specific piece of military information. ...

A trap had been Trak’s first guess three weeks earlier, when the crew first caught a glimpse of the Garage in the distance. ...

Using his link to the Afterthought’s systems, Trak changed the image on the main viewscreen, ...

The Garage held no terror for Trak. ...

As he examined the Garage, Trak could feel the dead starships drifting around the Afterthought. ...

Even to a universe-weary Mek like Trak, the ships inside the Garage were amazing. ...

“Who made it?” Daniel asked again. “Who cares?” Rachel-7 said again. ...

“Three minutes until Alitma arrives,” Rachel-7 said. ...

The message began. ...

To get Daniel's attention, Trak forced his own image onto Daniel's eyescreens. ...

Daniel stood still, thinking. ...

Daniel had a brilliant idea. …

Alitma had an eerie, evil beauty about him. ...

Six weeks earlier Daniel had been a janitor at Humboldt Sector Hospital. ...

"No more tricks,” Alitma said. “Where is it? ...

"That is true, but …” Daniel said, trailing off in hopelessness. ...

“I am shocked,” Alitma said. “I better give up right now.” ...

When the flash faded, Daniel was surprised to find himself still breathing. ...

“Rach, if you know why we’re still alive, just tell us,” Trak said. ...

The long extinct Oneans had worshipped light. ...

“Yes, excellent work Rachel-7,” Trak said. “In both your piloting maneuvers and your defensive strategy." ...

“Whoop, whoop, cough, whoop,” blared the Afterthought’s older-than-dirt emergency alarm. ...

“Can you detach us from the cannon before it blows?” Daniel said. ...

“You …” Alitma said, his eyes focusing on Trak. “You used to be quite the killer.” ...

The rumble of the cannon shook the Afterthought and knocked Daniel to the ground. ...

“Interesting,” said Alitma, watching the floating bread shards. ...

“Daniel, once you activate this weapon, there will be a brief delay before it explodes,” Trak said with effortless nonchalance. ...

“I repeat—and you know how much I hate to repeat myself—you have my word that you will go free,” Alitma said. ...

“I am truly sorry, Alitma,” Daniel said. ...

“What will you do?” Alitma repeated, in a frothing anger. ...

Without warning, the Afterthought’s alarm, already loud, became deafening. ...

“Hmmph. Third-rate pilot, indeed,” Rachel 7 said and rolled her avatar’s eyes. ...

Alitma continued his rage-fueled rant ...

Daniel suddenly felt a whole lot better. ...

In an act of desperation, Daniel prayed to the Singularity Gods in the ancient, traditional manner ...

Rachel-7 knew she had no chance of survival … so she decided to sing. ...

“Memorable to who? Alitma’s going with us,” Daniel said. ...

“We have less than ten minutes before the plasma breaches the cannon’s hull,” Trak said. ...

The mercenaries on Alitma’s bridge looked away from their leader, embarrassed. ...

“Then, as a father, I ask you now—” Alitma said. ...

Rachel-7’s interruption gave Daniel another second to think. ...

A plume of plasma shot toward Alitma’s ship, evaporating all debris in its path. ...

The venting plasma acted as an ion thruster—an ancient method of spaceship propulsion ...

“Please stop,” said Daniel, for what seemed like the 50th time. ...

Still spewing a fog of purple plasma, liquid metal, and bluish gas, the fissure was now a ten-foot wide gash. ...

With no options left, a still airborne Daniel finally gave in to the advice of his augmented internal memory system. ...

Daniel had seen a good memory just before the torrent of bad ones. ...

“The Kep Effect could benefit us,” Trak said. “But the odds are 1 in 47,048,402,4824—" ...

“Rachel, the second that thing hits us, fire up the Quantum drive,” Daniel said. ...

The crew gaped as the Kep Sphere hit the changing point, the transitional moment when it became the Kep Wave ...

The white shimmer of the Kep Wave flashed through the Afterthought. ...

“The weapon's Belmont radiation has hit its apex,” Trak said, as he reviewed the Afterthought's muddled sensor data. “Less than a minute before the cannon explodes." ...

“The engine's broken,” said a shocked Trak, relaying the muddled sensor data from the ship’s aft maintenance compartment. ...

“The … fissure is closed … I think …” Rachel-7 said. ...

Trak continued dissolving. ...

Daniel fought his way back to consciousness a few moments later, and immediately wished he hadn’t. ...

Top secret ...

In 0.000000001 seconds, the energy of 74 middle-aged main sequence stars burst from the Z-click fusion cannon ...

The crew didn't see the explosion. ...

A quote from a learned individual ...

At least, it sounded like a voice. ...

“Congratulations for what?” Daniel whispered. ...

“What’s Stuck Station?” Daniel said, staring at the sign/artwork. ...

Daniel took a big swig of his flask and felt the warmth works it way down to his stomach. ...

“Is Jeska-Bel DotCom here? Is she here?" ...

Despite the acres of food, there seemed to be only five types of meals. ...

“You've killed me,” Daniel said to the cheery voice. “You’ve killed me!" ...

“I have flitted, right?” Daniel asked, when he had A) calmed down and B) noticed he wasn’t disintegrating. ...

Developed by many different species over the years, teleportation technology doesn’t work. ...

Daniel didn't want to to walk 40,000 miles ...

“Hey, I don't need the welcome speech again," Daniel said. "Let's just take the tour.” ...

“Thanks,” Daniel said, too frazzled to come up with a witty retort. ...

Jeska's life was in danger. ...

“Don’t leave, Jeska,” said a voice behind and above her. ...

Jeska ordered the administrative mind to dim the lights in the visitor's bay. ...

“Emergency Code 50840,” Jeska said, repeating the phrase Prnei had taught her. ...

Through the auditory connection to his eyescreens, Daniel heard footsteps rushing closer. ...

Daniel stood in the center of dark and vast room. ...

In the faint light of his dumpy ship, Daniel saw the reddish blur skitter quickly into the darkness. ...

The augmem, a standard biografted device common in many alien cultures, has a long history, which is frankly very boring. ...

Just get to Jeska, he told himself. Deal with missing memories later. ...

As Daniel ran, the Afterthought seemed to grow larger and brighter. ...

Jeska’s voice had come from a spot beneath the aft section of his ship. ...

Daniel missed his augmem. ...

Once upon a time ...

Daniel’s exact response, when he saw the creature lurking there instead of his former lover, sounded something like this: “Gaa.” ...

Leaping back and forth, the creature kept its distance from Daniel, circling him. ...

The creature barreled into a tower of coasters, knocking them everywhere. ...

Ignoring the thrashing creature to his left, Daniel followed the blood trail. ...

The creature leaped at the same time ....

It was dead. And that didn't stop Daniel from kicking it. ...

She looked him over and gestured at her blood on his robe. ...

When he smiled at her, Jeska felt a shock of her own – she still cared for him. ...

“Next time, we make sure it’s dead,” Daniel said. ...

Daniel turned to see the creature scrabbling to the top of one of the tallest stacks about 100 yards away. ...

“I wonder how you eat,” Daniel sleepily said to the creature. ...

If you have some time, go to any corner store in the year 2713. ...

The ability to quickly clone yourself raises an important question: ...

Jeska ran to Daniel, took his hand, and they headed for the lift. ...

She used to have crewmates. ...

With their backs pressed against the open lift entrance, it looked like Daniel and Jeska were leaning on nothing. ...

“You wait for the lift,” he said to Jeska. “I’ll distract it.” ...

The creature stabbed both tentacles downward. ...

The moment the coaster slipped into Daniel's pocket, the Tour Guide spoke up. ...

The creature flinched and fell to the ground. ...

"Like you'd ever meet Alitma," she said, laughing. ...

“After that, we can hunt that thing down, catch it, cook it and eat it," he said, half-joking. ...

The old lift-plate rose slowly, taking five minutes to make the 30-foot trip to the Afterthought’s interior. ...

He shook his head to clear his thoughts. ...

She’s hiding something, Daniel thought. Maybe her injury. ... Why would she think I'd care about that? ...

“We can even get burgers before we go," Daniel said. "The food's pretty good here at 'Containment Facility One.'" ...

The Afterthought didn't have a fire suppression system. ...

“So, where are we going?” Daniel said nervously, watching the flames creep closer to the maintenance bay’s largest pile of flammable scrap. ...

When the lift plate touched down, Daniel didn’t move. ...

The Afterthought did another about-face and sped directly toward a wall that was five miles distant, hundreds of feet tall and incomprehensibly wide. ...

Daniel briefly thought about chasing after his hijacked ship ...

As the massive door opened wider still, Daniel saw that the room behind the wall mirrored the visitor's bay in every respect, except that it was completely empty. ...

The Afterthought floated a few hundreds of yards from the energy anomaly and was closing fast. ...

With a flash of white light, the Afterthought was gone. ...

The never-ending expanse of white fell toward him. ...

Without thinking, Daniel instinctively thrust his hand into a nearby column ...

“My name is Prnei Star Nebula Galaxy,” the creature said. “It doesn't translate well in most languages.” ...

“Took forever to get these spoons into the right shape,” the creature said, picking up one of its former 'talons' and examining it in the light. ...

Daniel had seen octopuses in pet shops before ...

After a little more stretching and shaking, the creature that called itself Prnei put the finishing touches on its transformation. ...

Despite his recent near-death experiences and the loss of Jeska and his ship, Daniel found his voice.

“The tour is mandatory for all incoming crew,” the Tour Guide said. ...

“Excellent,” Tour Guide said. “Don't worry. The tour will answer all your questions.” ...

“During the tour," Tour Guide said, "we will be visiting 57 sites across the facility—" ...

The stench was overpowering – like a dead fish soaked in cat urine. ...

Daniel stood in a dark chamber ...

Daniel wanted to rush through the tour and find his friends ...

Clouds don’t get bored easily, but when they do they build nests. ...

Daniel had his own theory about why clouds made nests: It was a form of doodling. ...

“Tour Guide,” Daniel said quietly, afraid he’d alert the swarms and force them to dismantle their art, “let’s just move on." ...

Rather than continue the pointless conversation with a mentally unstable Aye, Daniel started walking as far from the tower as he could. ...

With the tower gone, Daniel had a better view of the medical center. ...

Walking forward, Daniel passed another machine and saw something staining the perfect whiteness of the floor. ...

“The bloodstains look ... new." ...

Still glaring at the ceiling, Daniel accidentally walked into a safety railing and let out a grunt of pain. ...

Rachel-7 awoke to find the Afterthought mortally wounded. ...

You can do this, she thought. You’re great. ...

“Daniel?” she asked. Then fear gripped her. ...

The impact didn't cause any serious damage – as far as she could tell – but it did create an unpleasant sensation in the forward section of the Afterthought. ...

Instinctively she tried to move toward it, hoping to investigate and, maybe someday, exchange the memories for a better ship …

There wasn’t any sign of the reality-mangling Kep Effect. ...

“Never thought of you as the blank broker type,” Daniel said ...

“Good to see you, Rach,” he said. ...

She said the word “tour” with the disdain Daniel normally reserved for notions like torture, genocide, or sobriety. ...

“Well, when Jeska gets back …”

“Ignore her,” Daniel said. “Just tell me what happened.” ...

“I wonder why everything here seems broken,” Daniel said.

“Sounds good.” ...

Humanity’s first interstellar war made life difficult for historians. ...

Missiles away, Trak felt ecstatic. ...

The wall was unharmed. His missile barrage hadn’t even left scorch marks. ...

True, he hadn’t tested out his low-yield nukes, his eaters, his disruption cannon or any of the 3,124 other weapons at his disposal. ...

For Trak, firing weapons was like deleting a long-hidden virus or scratching an hard-to-reach itch. ...

Trak then detonated the spike mines he had thrown to the floor. ...

It could still be a trap, his subroutines warned, interrupting Trak’s thoughts. ...

Before Trak's decision to turn the hallway into a firing range, his first moments aboard Stuck Station were very similar to Daniel’s. ...

After only five minutes on the tour, Trak made his decision to fire missiles down a Stuck Station corridor. ...

Trak had a memory file listing the shattered benches, deflated hover beanbags, and flattened recliners he’d accidentally created over the years. ...

… and those nearby should evacuate the solar system at all costs. ...

Guns blazing, Trak continued to dance, ignoring the Tour Guide’s words. ...

“Thank you for deactivating your weapons,” Tour Guide said. ...

"This facility has the finest of security systems," the Tour Guide said. ...

“I imagine many species find you irritating,” Trak said. ...

Not sacred, Trak thought. ...

Daniel was rash even by human standards. And Rachel-7? Rachel-7 said and did whatever she wanted. ...

Though Trak was terrible at telling lies, he had a pretty good baloney detector. ...

“This area is not safe!” Trak said, surrounded by the toxic aftermath of 134 different weapons. ...

There was a blast of that wonderful perfume — the same odor Trak had detected when Tour Guide teleported him for the first time — and a flash of light. ...

The interruption confused Trak; most species approached first contact situations with a measure of formality. ...

Unruffled, Trak kept slogging through this odd First Contact situation. ...

In his eloquent-yet-erratic speech pattern, Riox continued. ...

“Why didn’t you attempt to warn me the moment I arrived?” Trak asked. ...

“Thank you for that information,” Trak said. “Where is Jeska?

After accidentally crashing his shuttle ...

Riox wobbled in the air in front of Trak and prepared to leave. ...

As he listened to Trak’s unsettling words, Riox slowly and unconsciously moved away from him. ...

The fact that Trak might be unique in the history of the universe ...

Far on the other side of Stuck Station, Riox rematerialized in an empty hallway and tried to compose himself. ...

Daniel wasn’t sure why Prnei said the tour would be “terrible.” ...

What follows, after some brief background information, is an excerpt from an instruction virtual ...

Instruction begins. ...

How does the Berton Freeze-It-All Chamber work? ...

After a pause that seemed unnecessarily long, the Tour Guide confirmed Daniel’s suspicions. ...

Each stasis chamber was a tall, thin shape made up of two halves of a cylinder: the front half that faced Daniel was diamondglass and the other half was some type of metal. ...

The diamondglass sections of the chambers were barely translucent, almost opaque. ...

He’d seen that virtual when he was 10, just days before his father died. ...

Trak always opened cryos at the Wei cloudyard. ...

Being: Thank you for waking me. ...

But that stupid horror virtual was always in the back of his mind. ...

Each row of stasis chambers lay parallel to the ledge Daniel stood on. ...

Daniel’s mind reeled. ...

“Crew Storage is one of the largest sections of Containment Facility One ..."

“My records show that I have answered all of your questions,” the Tour Guide said. ...

“Do you want me to use a random sampling of intelligent species to populate this calculation?" ...

“Yes,” Daniel said. ...

Rachel-7 was about to get into her first fistfight. ...

Rubbing her aching forehead, Rachel-7 decided she didn’t like pain. ...

Rachel had already visited five rooms on this agonizingly long tour ...

As the blood stains vanished, Rachel felt relieved ...

There was a loud, undignified bonk sound. ...

Anesthetized, Rachel-7 was blissfully unaware that she had brain damage. ...

Despite a nagging sensation that she was missing something important, Rachel-7 remained oblivious to her medicloud's neurosurgical efforts. ...

Staring at the white and blue ceiling, Rachel-7 drifted in a haze ...

Ayes United could have sent Rachel-7 an L-Mail message ...

As the pit-like mouth moved closer, Rachel-7 experienced her first fight or flight response. ...

“I … didn’t … think … humans … communicated … through … assault,” Anderson said, ...

She wanted to run, but her legs wouldn’t respond, either through sheer terror or lack of practice. ...

The machine was death incarnate, and it was glorious. ...

"Are you still there?" ...

"Looking up: 'Why ... Why'd you talk to me, but not Frank?'" ...

"Program Seventeen, what are you?" ...

"I was designed to assist governments with transportation services." ...

Records indicate that a recent emotional outburst from Servaline 1.9 caused your call to disconnect. ...

"After taking me from my home and Yuri from his university, they put me in 'the machine.' ...

The following is an auto-generated memo from Servaline 2.0. ...

"Thank you for calling Servaline 1.9, your automated directory assistant. How are you today?" ...

"I am sorry to hear that." ...

"Looking up: 'Baltimore Suicide Hotline.'" ...

"I am glad you did not commit suicide." ...

"You're on speaker. It's Frank. Talk." ...

My research indicates that you owe ,000 to an unkind loan shark named Frank 'Funny' A******. ...

"I am unable to do that to myself. How are you today?" ...

I'm off Labor Day. Read my humor column maybe?

A special message.

Today (Thursday) is my birthday, and I'm taking the whole day off. There will be three posts up at 10 p.m. Friday. If you want to get me a present, you have four voluntary (for now) options. 1. You could read the "Best News Ever" (always conveniently located in the menu above.) If, after reading it, you have comments, questions, criticisms, marriage proposals, etc, I'd love to talk to you about them. My email is cranny777@gmail.com. 2. You could donate by clicking the Donate button on the right. Even a dollar would be cool. 3. You click the Facebook Like button on the right. 4. You could wish me a happy birthday in the comments. I think the first option is the most important, but the other ones are cool too.