spacestation #ma
"The Lost Volumes: AcidDose's Bad Trip"
by SLAM
(The IRC Version of this story is also available!)
Note to Readers: This is another story by SLAM which is based on events from his Spacestation #MA series; however, it fits more or less as a chapter in between chapters than anything else. So, this really isn't a whole chapter, but more of a side-story. Anyway, one could consider it happening around the same time as Chapter/part Three of Slam's Spacestation #MA series. Also, SLAM didn't give me a title, so I added one that I thought would be appropriate for the spirit of the story. Well, enough with the annoying italic text! Read the story already!
SLAM, one of the Great Storytellers (TM) sat alone at his desk, composing his thoughts into one more story. Finally having written it all down, he considered whether or not to share it with his friends at their next meeting. Starting at the beginning, he took it all in once again.
"Muwhahahahahahaha," AcidDose laughed evilly, "They'll never guess what I'm up to!"
AcidDose continued scribbling code and tweaking his instruments. After being insulted by BardCat, having his script thrown out by Stary, and smashed into an asteroid by...himself...AcidDose would finally have the AcidTracker perfected and ready for use. All it would take was a few more...
*SNAP*
"AAAAAAH!" cried AcidDose in agony, "My pencil broke!"
AcidDose leapt from his desk and dashed for the door, pencil in hand, determined to find someone who could fix his precious tool.
The first person he ran into (at great speed) was BardCat. He was reluctant to ask for help, because he knew what BardCat would say, but AcidDose was desperate. "BardCat, can you fix my pencil?"
"I dunno," BardCat replied, taking the pencil, "What are you using it for?"
AcidDose gulped, "It's for AcidTracker."
Without another word, BardCat broke the Precious Pencil in half and walked away. "AAAAAAAAAAAH!" AcidDose screamed, gathering the two halves up from the floor. He gazed at them in amazement. TWO pencils? This could be useful.
AcidDose ran until he reached the dinner hall, and Christofori and SLAM's famous KitKat Bar. AcidDose asked Christofori quickly if he knew any way to repair a broken pencil. Christofori regretted that he didn't, and sent AcidDose on his way. SLAM called him back to the bar, thinking he might have a suggestion.
SLAM took one of the pencil halves, and threw it into the paint shaker for several minutes. Finally, SLAM turned off the machine, opened the door, and brought out the martini tin. He opened the lid and dumped the contents onto the bar.
"Sawdust?" AcidDose said wonderingly, placing a finger in the fine substance, "Where did sawdust come from? This is a pencil."
SLAM and Christofori shrugged in unison and went about their business, leaving AcidDose to ponder. AcidDose was about to leave through the other entrance, when he heard a "psst" behind him. He looked back, and there sat James-Bond at a table.
"I hear you're looking for a way to fix your pencil," James-Bond said in a whisper as AcidDose sat down.
"That's right," replied AcidDose, "I can't finish AcidTracker without it!"
"Well, I'll tell you what to do, you need to sharpen it," James-Bond said. He got no farther because he suddenly slumped onto the table and fell asleep.
AcidDose turned around, and there was none other than MystiC-DarKneSs. "I love writing," she said, taking the pencil from AcidDose.
"Thank you." She attempted to write with it, and then discovered its problem. "How dare you!" She yelled and shoved the pencil half down AcidDose's throat.
AcidDose staggered in amazement in the general direction of the john. Several painful hours later, he had retrieved his precious pencil half, and cleaned it up.
AcidDose carried his pencil all around the station, not sitting down. This was for two reason: One, he wasn't going to rest until he finished his story, and two...since he retrieved the pencil, he couldn't sit down if he had wanted to.
AcidDose found himself in the middle of a long corridor. Suddenly, at the other end of it, BardCat emerged, wearing a sweat suit, sunglasses, and a gun holster with a tube of KY in it.
BardCat dashed after him, not sparing any speed. As he ran, AcidDose snatched a cell phone from SupaSTa, who was telling someone about a new pair of binoculars he had found.
Dialing in a new number, AcidDose called the ops. "Operator," Gargoyle answered. "Ah...I need a little help here," AcidDose said, having reached a dead end. BardCat ran toward him, and was gaining fast. "The door! Gargoyle said, monitoring through the security cameras, "Go through the door!"
AcidDose attempted to kick down the steel hatch, but this kind of door was not so easily breached. Embarrassed, he slapped the "open" button on the panel next to the door, and the door slid open. He ran through without realizing where it led. He immediately found himself in a freefall down a long tube to the bottom of the station. He made a five-hundred point landing in engineering. He barely had time to roll out of the way before BardCat landed where he had been.
AcidDose stood at one end of engineering, BardCat stood at the other. A stray comment ModStats had dropped floated past. BardCat readied his KY-hand to draw, and AcidDose, not having a weapon, just kind of stood there.
AcidDose decided to fake BardCat out, and drew his pencil. BardCat immediately whipped out his tube of KY, and charged down engineering, squirting the goo all the way. AcidDose kept covering his head and face, and jumped around, desperately avoiding the substance. BardCat was halfway to the other side, when...
"Welp, that'll do it for this conduit!" grl's voice sounded out of a crawlspace. The first thing to round the corner was her three-foot-wrench, which walloped BardCat squarely in the face, decking him.
"Oh..." she said, looking down, "Oh well. Can I help you with anything?" She said, looking at AcidDose. AcidDose breathed a sigh of relief. "You just did!" AcidDose turned and ran out of engineering. He was almost to the end when he heard a grinding of metal behind him. He stopped in his tracks and looked back slowly to see the maintenance elevator slide into place and the door slide open. There was BardCat, good as new. BardCat pulled out his rather long tube of KY and opened fire immediately on the now-fleeing AcidDose.
AcidDose ran for yards and yards until he emerged in the middle of the Windows Platform, where Libris was having his annual knitting and quilting craft festival.
AcidDose very foolishly ran right into the middle of it. An old lady that had been purchasing a quilt from quiltbris suddenly turned into BardCat, and drew a rather long tube of KY!
AcidDose had only one hope left. He jumped into the cockpit of the remains of his AcidTracker racer, and took off...sort of.
Two well-placed squirts of KY messed up his fuel tank, and AcidDose found himself careening towards the station's dinner hall! He looked around for an escape rope of some kind, but found none. Smashing through the window, he found himself right in front of the KitKat Bar again, with SLAM and Christofori timidly rising from behind their cover.
AcidDose climbed out of his ship, taken aback by the loud Rob Zombie music playing. He walked along, until he heard a voice behind him. "Hello, AcidDose." It was MystiC, who walked up to AcidDose, and put her arms around his neck. She whispered something in his ear about someone watching him, and a bunch of other babble he didn't honestly care about. Finally, he pecked her one on the cheek, to which her reply was to grab his pencil half and shove it down his throat again.
Finally, three angry-looking BardCats jumped up from the Windows platform, and began scanning the room for AcidDose. They dashed after him quickly, and before he knew it, he was fleeing from them on the highest floors of the station.
He decided to climb on the outside of the windows, and try to reach a scaffolding that grl had left there. However, the air was a tad thin for his tastes, and he was forced to go back inside, where the three BardCats were waiting for him.
They took him inside to a small room, and slammed him down on a table. Bent over, and slammed with so much force, the pencil shot out from AcidDose's behind like a bolt of lightning and buried itself in the forehead of one of the BardCats. However, it was only one of the clones, which disappeared, leaving two more to deal with.
AcidDose ran as fast as he could, but the BardCats kept gaining on him. Finally, he saw someone running his way. It was Libris, brandishing a pair of dangerous looking knitting needles. Unwisebris brashly attacked the BardCats, and was soon overwhelmed, but he allowed AcidDose to escape.
AcidDose called Gargoyle and informed him that he needed guns - a lots of them, but gargoyle was sad to report that all they had on the station were pencils.
AcidDose stopped short. "Pencils?" he asked.
"Yes," Gargoyle replied, "Pencils. Lots of pencils."
AcidDose, although tempted to simply take the pencils and finish his AcidTracker, knew that he had to rescue capturedbris. Borrowing grl's ship, which had just had a cow, he blasted off for BardCat's home planet of Quebec.
He landed in front of a building with neon lights saying
"BardCat's Brothel: All you can eat, drink, and be merry with buffet."
Right before he climbed out of the ship, AcidDose realized that he had a stowaway. It was grl! She informed him that he wasn't going to be able to get morpheubris out by himself, and that since she was the ranking op on #modarchive, IF he didn't like it, he could go to hell. AcidDose quickly agreed, and the two of them walked into BardCat's establishment.
Several short, fat, lazy BardCat clones wearing little policeman caps stood bored around a metal detector. AcidDose walked through the metal detector, and, of course, it beeped, as metal detectors always do.
Backing up, he said, "Oh, sorry, forgot my watch." Removing his watch and placing it in the cute little wicker basket the BardCats had provided he walked through the metal detector again with no problems.
AcidDose and Grl walked coolly toward the elevator at the back of the lobby, and entered it. They went straight up to the floor that neardeathbris was being held in, and burst through the door, pencils in hand.
The BardCats cowardly threw up their hands when they saw the wide array of drawing pencils, #2 pencils, mechanical pencils, giant pencils, .5 mm pencils, .7mm pencils, and charcoal pencils that our heroic duo carried.
Grabbing prostratebris, AcidDose and grl got a running start, and blasted towards the window. They didn't have enough speed however, and simply smacked into the glass. Backing up a bit further, they tried again. This time, to their dismay, they succeeded. They plummeted over forty stories, until they landed safely in the S.S. 32MB. Grl didn't bother waiting until they were back in TCPspace to engage the Etherdrive, she jumped into Etherspace immediately, and a few seconds later were back at #modarchive.
They placed inneedofmedicalattentionbris on a bed for those in need of medical attention, and let the local medic work. The first step was to fill porousbris full of little pins for full-body accupuncture, and then send an electric charge through each one of them. Several days later, porcupinebris was back on his feet and better than ever.
AcidDose, in the meantime, fell asleep in his room, almost done with AcidTracker. Having several bad dreams about MystiC-DarKneSs ramming another pencil down his throat, AcidDose drooled over his source code. He awoke to find it gooped away completely.
And, as we see the station from a distance we hear the hopeless scream of "I'M NEVER GOING TO FINSH THIS %(*^#(&@ PROGRAM!!!"
The End!
SLAM thought for some time after he was finished reading. Finally, he folded it up, and sent it to Christofori for archiving.
"No," SLAM decided, "I won't be using this one at the next meeting."