Memory's Domain

Somewhere in the wilderness of the mountains north of the Urban Sprawl that is the city of Los Angeles, a lone writer sits hunched in front of his computer. He has many things that he should be doing. He has to go to work in an hour, and he has to work on his application for admission to USC and he should be getting stuff together for his upcoming short film. He has less important things to do, however. Namely, he intends to work on Die Dumb, a series long neglected.

With a slight smile on his lips, the author blows the dust off of his thoughts and settles down to write....

"Now what?" said Malcolm.

(No, this is not a repetition of what he said last time. Nobody had replied yet, so Malcolm decided to restate his question.)

Darr stared at the non-twinkling starscape in the viewscreen, as if waiting for something to happen. Nothing did.

"If this were a good story," he said, "the author would drop us some type of clue that we could pick up on, and then we would follow it into deeper danger and excitement." He sighed. "Unfortunately, I'm beginning to doubt the ability of this author to tell a good story."

They were all silent for a long time.

"How about an orgy?" Darr said at last.

"That actually sounds good," said Fay

They put on some Polka music for rhythm, stripped down, and had Fay in zero gee Chinese Fingercuffs before long.

Afterwards, they drifted, naked in various places around the bridge, feet or hands hooked loosely in grips on the walls. Darr closed his eyes and went to sleep. Malcolm followed suite soon after. Fay, who was somewhat gooey in unpleasant places, and still horny to boot, stayed awake a while longer, which is why she saw the large alien battlecruiser looming in the viewscreen.

"Uh, guys," she said, pulling herself to the wall, and then to her pilot's station, "we have a problem."

"I think that she's right," said Feynmann. "Something really big just materialized in my sensors. It must have had some sort of cloaking device activated before now."

Darr was snoring still. Malcolm didn't snore, but he was similarly unresponsive. Fay hit the Red Alert button on her pilot's console. Warning sirens blared throughout the ship.

"Wha- huh -?" said Malcolm.

"Fu-shi-wha-?" said Darr.

Fay raised the shields just as the alien battlecruiser opened fire.

"We're under attack!" she yelled. Her comment was accented by a fit of violent shaking on the ship's part as several of the bigger guns on the alien ship scored direct hits. "Get to your stations!"

Darr and Malcolm came awake instantly. Darr kicked himself to his command chair, Malcolm to his own station.

"Open fire!" Darr yelled.

"Like shit I'm opening fire," Fay yelled back, "that thing is twenty times as big as us. I'm turning around!"

The ship swung out of the viewscreen. Malcolm hit a button on his console and the view became fully wraparound, immersing them in a panorama of space around them. The battlecruiser moved to their rear, obscured by the hellish barrage of fire that it was busy unleashing on the Wild Thang.

"Shield integrity falling rapidly," said Feynmann. "They're going to punch through in approximately thirty two seconds.

"Shit!" said Fay emphatically. She opened the engines all the way. Acceleration rammed them back into their seats. For a few moments, the cruiser behind them dwindled in size. Then it began to grow.

"It's catching up with us!" Malcolm exclaimed. "That's one fucking fast ship."

The hail of projectiles and lasers didn't let up.

"Shield integrity down to one percent," Feynmann said, "Breach in, oh hell, no time for a coun-"

Klaxons blared and warning lights flashed as the shields collapsed. Fay opened her mouth to say something, and then her jaw clamped shut as a tremendous explosion rocked the ship.

"Direct hit to the engine section," Feynmann said, still calm, as only a computer could be in such a situation, "hull breached. Life support failing. Power failing. Engines off-line. Backups off-line. I estimate that the next hit will completely destroy the ship."

Fay, Darr and Malcolm cringed in their seats, waiting for the death blow. It never came. Their ship tumbled helplessly, deprived of its engines, but the alien cruiser did not fire one last shot to rip it apart. Instead, it loomed closer in the viewscreen, bearing down on them.

Feynmann silenced the alarms as the alien ship grew ever larger, filling one huge swath of starscape.

"I think," said Darr softly, "That we're about to be boarded."

Will our heroes be slaughtered by alien snipers, or will they be taken on board the alien spaceship, to be made the subject of strange alien experiments or strange, alien revenge? You won't find out in the next episode, "Die Dumb VII: The Complete and Utterly Boring Personal History of the Drunk."