Aara’s mind swam dizzily through a vat of dark refrigerated molasses, struggling and twisting to reach the surface where she could just make out a little light. After a long time, Aara finally achieved wakefulness to some degree anyway. She stuck her face into the velvety folds of the comfortable purple couch and groaned loud enough to make her point but not too loud as to make it hurt too much. Mike was nowhere to be found or at least to be heard because Aara had not mustered the courage to get up (or at least try to). All of a sudden a hand reached down and silently offered her a cup of coffee, she struggled into a slouched sitting position and glanced up at Mike thinking that maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. Receiving the peace offering she combed her dark hair out of her eyes and entered the living world.“We have our own ship, Aara!” Mike’s voice was full of boyish excitement but consideration kept it barely above a whisper. “We can go anywhere!”
Aara mentally took back the first statement “Oh good” said Aara, her voice dripping sarcasm, “What if I don’t want to travel with you and deal with your problems and be told I’m primitive when I seem to be the only one in the whole bloody GALAXY that can put 2 and 2 together? What if I don’t want to get unexpectedly plastered and wake up finding out I have no choice?” Aara stomped off to find a quiet place where Mike couldn’t inflict his damned optimism on her.
The first thing that she encountered was a largish greyish normalish machine that somehow was annoying her just by being there it was of course quite harmless, she passed it by assuming that it was just her headache and general bad mood that put a bad face on the innocent machine. She still wondered what had caused this sudden annoyance. Ignoring it, Aara walked decisively to the squat black machine that said it was an Advil dispenser, she hit the button and was reminded that she needed 2 intergalactic credits or Mulanian dollars to purchase a package of Advil. Aara dealt the machine a tight kick in the side and it spit out a small packet. “Thank you” Aara mused pleased that the all around machine fixing (in a literal term) technique worked on this ship. She wandered around for awhile opening doors at random, she found several interesting things such as a large fully automatic cappuccino maker, private couch room (beds seemed to be to much to ask for anywhere but Earth) and a auto drive coordinate computerized guide with numbers and a brief tourist sketch of the area. Aara decided to crash for awhile in the lockable couch room and soon fell asleep.
Mike was somewhat taken off guard by Aara’s tantrum but not wholly surprised by it. It was true that she had had a rather tough time of it in the last few days and it was equally true that she had not been nearly ready for the drink offered to her by their captors the night before. He supposed that he should have warned her, but didn’t so he didn’t think about it anymore.
Aara woke up three hours later, 6:30 am Earth time if her watch was correct, with what had decreased to the second worst hangover that she had ever had. Other than earlier this morning, the worst had been her second day of being 19. The first night had been rather interesting. Now she was stuck on an auto driven space ship with Mike, GREAT! Ouch she had thought that too loud. She groped around on the floor until she found the small packet of Advil that she had put on the floor, making good use of it she went to find some coffee. While walking down the hall she once again made contact with the annoying normalish, greyish, largish machine and once again felt a deep dislike for it, not knowing the reason for this at all, she decided to investigate. Upon some investigation she found a small sign on the back of it that said: THIS MACHINE IS A COMPLETE PIECE OF CRAP THAT PROBABLY WONT WORK BUT IF YOU WANT TO TRY IT GO AHEAD It said nothing about what it was supposed to do or how you were suppose to go about making it do that thing. Aara simply kicked it and it began to mumble and complain bitterly under it’s well I guess not breath but damn near close to it. As she watched it began to fill a Styrofoam cup with a dark coffee like liquid and her heart was momentarily filled with good will of man , when it was finished she took a sip and the joy drained from her like water from a bucket that is suspended 50 meters up in the air upside down. “Decaf!” she spluttered “No wonder the poor machine is depressed. With that she trudged down the hall in search for a real coffee and perhaps a better life.
Meanwhile on the bridge Mike saw a lush green planet approach on the display screen, Mike could almost smell the heady odors of the Mulanian Driumphunails..... MULANIAN!!!!!!! Mike’s mind swam as he tried to think of what to do, the would destroy him if they caught him, the amazingly wonderful all hated computer virus programmer that caused the mass breakdown, and total annoyance of the entire Mulanian culture. Unfortunately it was too late to do anything about it as the small vessel was already through the atmosphere and preparing to land RIGHT NEAR THE PLANETARY COUNSEL OFFICE!
