SFSTORY: HMS Golden Lance #12 - In Transit

The HMS Golden Lance hurdled through space at approximately 3,000 times whatever the speed of light happened to be in that particular alterverse (or alternate universe). This would have given the local equivalent of Albert Einstein a stroke, or caused him to roll over in his grave, or frompled his graknar, or whatever the local equivalent of Albert Einstein would do if someone had taken his life's work and tossed it out the window like last year's Christmas fruitcake.

Onboard the HMS Golden Lance for which our series is named, Doctor Bing Von Spleen was considering his lot in life. It was not a good lot. It didn't have lakeside access or a good service road or even electricity. In fact, it was a pretty dismal lot all around.

Spleen thought back fondly to his days on Earth, where he partied, did lots of illegal drugs, slept around with willing co-eds, and generally got as much fun out of being in college as he could while doing the least amount of academic work possible. The fact that he was actually a college professor and not a college student might have had something to do with why everyone in authority was always upset with him. But all that aside, it was a good life, and money he stole from the college allowed him to create his first Automatic Beet-Peeler and Sub-Atomic Re-Integrator, or ABPSARI for short.

It was, however, that very ABPSARI that was responsible for his leaving Earth. It was sabotaged by Rader Vogel, a competing Earth Spamologist. Spleen did not notice this sabotage due to being blissfully unaware of anything, basking in a post-coital glow at the time, Rader Vogel having that effect on men, some women, most aliens, and the occasional small furry woodland creature.

Once injected into the veins of SFSTORY, Spleen bounced from adventure to adventure. He had so many adventures that they are still being told to this day, and perhaps will never all be told. Eventually, however, he retired, set up a research station, went back to Spam research, and soon began a lucrative side business designing and building spaceships powered by this mighty ABPSARI. One such ship, the HMS Golden Lance for which this serial is named, was sold to one Time Agent 357, who later used said ship to go back in time and adventure with said younger Spleen.

The older Spleen currently wished he was the younger Spleen, because the mind of the older Spleen was currently trapped inside the VAL 9000 computer on the HMS Golden Lance while the mind of the computer was trapped inside Spleen's body. Time Agent 357 and Diana Dark of Earth had also swapped bodies. Even Ralph the Giant Space Weasel of Anthrax V and Omegas the Former Immortal had swapped bodies.

Nobody was very happy with this.

"Biological bodies are disgusting!" shouted the mind of the VAL 9000 computer using Spleen's voice.

=Just clean yourself as best you can,= said the mind of Doctor Bing Von Spleen through the ship's speakers in what he imagined was a comforting tone of voice. =And please remember to eat something. Fuel intake is not automatic.=

"Grumble grumble grumble."

Elsewhere on the ship, Omegas and Ralph were teaching each other the finer points of operating each other's bodies. While Ralph wasn't having any problems adjusting, Omegas was particularly upset that he could neither drink from a glass nor suck from a straw using Ralph's weasel mouth. "All this lapping from the bowl is frothing all the fizz out of my beer!" he complained.

Um, let's go elsewhere, shall we?

357 staggered into his quarters. All in all, with the body swapping and getting shot at and everything, it had been a pretty rough day. He wanted nothing more than to get a good night's sleep. Well, he actually wanted nothing more than to get out of Diana Dark's body and back into his own, but a good night's sleep was second on his list.

After several minutes of fumbling, he finally managed to undo all the odd hooks, zippers, and fastenings that held Diana's clothes on. He was almost completely undressed when the bathroom door opened and Diana walked out toweling off 357's naked body.

"Eek!"

"Ack!"

There were a few seconds of fumbling as they grabbed for towels and throw pillows to cover themselves. Neither was entirely sure why they would feel a need to cover themselves, seeing as the only people present were the current and previous owners of said bodies, but the urge to cover themselves was overpowering nonetheless.

"I thought," Diana said as she adjusted her towel for the tenth time, "that we agreed to swap quarters until we could get back into our own bodies. Match the quarters to the body, so to speak."

"So we did," answered 357, trying to get Diana's body back into her clothes without actually exposing any of it. "It's been such a trying day, I must have forgotten."

"Well, accidents happen," Diana allowed.

Trying to reach for some more or less clean underwear, Diana saw the world briefly go dark around her, almost as if the body she was in (which was 357's) had faded out of existance and then just as quickly returned. Behind her, 357 reached for another pillow and felt the body he was in (which was Diana's) recover from a stumble he didn't remember taking, almost as if his intellect had faded out of existance and then just as quickly returned.

Diana and 357 regained their senses to find that they'd somehow fallen together and were now clutching at each other as they lay in the bed. They also noticed that they'd lost their towels and pillows.

"Eek!"

"Ack!"

"What the hell was that?" Diana asked, plunging into one of 357's all-purpose jumpsuits, disdaining niceties such as underwear or unzipping it first.

"Maybe we hit some turbulence," 357 offered lamely as he hooked, zippered, and fastened as quickly as possible. "I've noticed it happening a few other times recently."

"Probably some obscure plot point which will come back to bite us later," Diana suggested. She smiled.

"Possibly," 357 agreed. He returned the smile. Or tried to. Diana's face appeared to prefer a knowing smirk. "Well, I'd better..."

"Yeah, I guess we should..."

"Um, later?"

"Later."

That was weird, 357 thought as he entered Diana's quarters. He first evicted Omegas, who was using Ralph's nose to sniff through Diana's underwear drawer, and then climbed into bed without undressing.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a tall figure was cutting wood. Sure, he had automated devices that could have cut the wood for him, and for that matter had central heat and air and didn't need firewood in any case, but he liked working with his hands. He paused in his cutting, flexing his fingers to get the stiffness out, and checked the evening sky. Seeing that it was near nightfall, he set down the ax and headed back towards the cabin.

He took his faded and broken-down hat from a nearby fence post, put on a much-patched leather vest, and adjusted his mirrored sunglasses. Silver spurs jingling, he walked into the woods and out of this story for the time being.

A medium-sized, human-looking male being wearing impossibly expensive but utterly ridiculous-looking clothes, taupe sports jacket over mauve trousers, materialized on a nameless trading post asteroid. His own name was Dijon Mu'tard, former agent of darkness and currently toady for a power-mad dictator. Said power-mad dictator, renegade Time Agent Greez Hyperoik, had sent Dijon to this asteroid to wait for the heroes of this story and then destroy them utterly with what Dijon felt was an overly complicated and inherently flawed plan. Well, Dijon didn't know exactly what the plan was, as Greez's explaination had been roughly as clear as the Bakula Nebula, but Dijon was sure that it was overly complicated and inherently flawed, anyway.

Dijon looked around. He knew that he was supposed to be going to some store or another on the trading post asteroid, and that Greez was supposed to teleport him there, but Dijon realized that Greez had neglected to tell him which store it was. All Dijon saw in this section were fast food restaurants. In fact, he was standing right in front of one. It had a big green sign with yellow letters.

"Oh, no," muttered Dijon to himself. "Even Greez Hyperiok couldn't be so evil as to ambush our heroes here. Not here. Not the IHOW!"

Wondering exactly how one girded one's loins, Dijon entered the establishment. He was quickly beset by a pack of waitresses.

"Hello there!" snorted the tallest. "Welcome to the Interstellar Huddle of Waffles. Our special today is (snicker) waffles."

"Um, yes," Dijon said uncertainly. "My name is Dijon Mu-"

Dijon broke off as he was picked up bodily and thrown across the counter. A huge eight-armed creature weilding spatulas, forks, and frying pans stalked towards him menacingly.

"Gulp," said Dijon weakly.

"No, Kabnar!" barked one of the waitresses. "This is our new cook. Friend, Kabnar! Friend!" Kabnar, not taking her word about it, started sniffing Dijon suspiciously.

One of the other waitresses threw Dijon an apron. "The new owner said that he'd hired a cook. We've been waiting for you all day. Kabnar was getting a little irritated. He's been working seventeen days straight."

Kabnar finished sniffing and nibbling at Dijon's extremities and decided that even though Dijon neither smelled nor tasted quite right, but rather smelled of ill intentions and tasted of pure evil, he wasn't going to let a little thing like that cost him a day off. Kabnar grabbed his coat and hit the door running. Well, slithering.

"New owner?" asked Dijon in his best leading question voice.

"Yes, the old one was sitting around after a particularly bad day and said that he was so fed up, he'd sell the restaurant to whoever wanted to take it off his hands. A few seconds later, Mr. Hyperiok came in and offered him 10 credits for it."

"I see," said Dijon camly, though inwardly he was seething. Hyperiok had the only known working ABPSARII, or Automatic Beet-Peeler and Sub-Atomic Re-integrator Mark II, capable of granting any wish or desire, and here he was wasting it on frivilous things like getting a good deal on a restaurant! That really burned Dijon up.

And so, incidentally, did the grill, which he just realized he had slammed his hand down on while he was seething.

The waitresses all laughed loudly while Dijon ran around screaming for a while. As Dijon was soaking his hand in the sink, he thought dark thoughts about Greez Hyperiok. "This vaunted 'plan' of his had better work," he said to himself.

"What plan?" asked one of the waitresses.

Okay, maybe not as to himself as he thought. "Never mind."

What is the 'plan' of which Dijon speaks?
How will it affect our heroes?
How do our heroes plan to get their original bodies back?
Was Humpty Dumpty really pushed?

All this and a Spam-a-lama-ding-dong in the next exciting chapter of... SFSTORY! Now in color! (where available)

Copyright 2006 by Troy H. Cheek. Free to read, but please reprint only with permission.