The next stop on our mission is a Black Hole; so we fire up the pistons, and our ship backs off the Sun and then slips and falls into a Warp Zone. “Boom, ba-dang, ba-dang,” goes the motor.
“I think we just hit something,” yells Cosmonaut Stegz from his side of the fuselage.
“We gotta get this hunk of steel off the road,” I shout, while pressing one button repeatedly on the control panel. “We can’t just sit here like a lame duck in the middle of the universe — the other spaceships are liable to surpass us!”
“That’s not asphalt from a paved superhighway that you’re viewing through your windscreen,” explains Stegz; “that’s the shoulder of a dirt road — in other words, we’re not winning the race: I think we’re wrapped inside a Black Hole.”
“Shit,” I pound the keyboard. “This literally sucks.”
“I’m worried about the weirdness of this environment,” says Stegz: “Can the ship withstand it? And do you think that we’ll ever be able to have good times again?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” I say, pushing a slide-lever forward to its maximum position: “we need to travel down this dark deep tunnel of death, and face our fate like men.”
The entire control room glows red.
“Now, follow my lead and put on your respirator mask,” I shout, “because we’ll be unable to breathe or speak for the rest of the trip.”
The spacecraft shakes.
“I think we’re slowing down,” Stegz removes his mask briefly to remark.
“Yes, I think the ship parked itself on a safe area of the expanse,” I remove my mask briefly to reply to Stegz.
“Praise God,” says Stegz. “Yo, Astro Bry, lift the latch and drop a pod down. Check the resonator and see if it indicates that we’re in a parallel world populated solely by crocodiles. For I think I just saw Pat Boone offering some velveteen rabbits to a couple of fur traders.”
We now exit the ship and begin floating through the darkness like molecules of time. It is with difficulty that we remain upon our space-donkeys, who keep braying to us that they’re running out of fuel.
“Everything is fine,” Cosmonaut Stegz tries to calm the beasts of burden, “we’re only being gestated by a Black Hole.”
Upon blinking, we find ourselves in a white bedroom. Eventually the monolith that controls everything responds to our supplications and allows us to be born again in our outer-space mission.
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