Tony Takes a Cruise

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Which is probably a damn good thing cause I’m about to scream right now. What a fluckin’ trip this has been…

Sorry, Sal, let me back up. This is your cousin Tony and I’m on my way to Oahu. Not the Island, the planet… It’s the next stop on the voytinerary and by now I wish it was the last. By the way, I’ll need a coro when I get back to Jersey so if you can pick me up in Newark, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks Sal, I’ll let you know when I get data on the Ether flow. You can never tell when spacetime flucs hit during the Hib season….

I’ll tell you what happened when I get back… Thanks!

Message from Tony, extension 2

Hey Sal….Tony here.. Since I’m sitting in this iso-stand with nothing else to do, I’ll tell you what happened. Then we can talk about other stuff when you pick me up. I want to forget about this miserable trip as soon as possible so here goes…

You know that I took that cruise to Alpha Romeo a week ago, right? Funny that we named it after that old sports-veh they used to terradrive a thousand years ago but whatever…. I got suckered into going to one of the stops that was advertoasing about how hot and sexy their fems were. You’ve seen the ad, “Our fems will do you like there’s no tomorrow!” Well, I get there, and I find out that they don’t have a Sun so there is no tomorrow, no yesterday either. Just one long day……It’s always August 5th. Why they chose that day, who the hell knows but it’s always August 5th… Go figure….So anyway, me and a few of the other males from around the Galaxy are really pissed and accusing them of false advertoasing… We raised such a sneakstench that they comped us all with free liqui stims for the rest of the day, yep August 5. We still kept complaining but then they finally said they’d change the campaign from “like there’s no tomorrow” to “till the cows come home”, which doesn’t solve a thing since they don’t have cows. At this point we didn’t care. Someone else’s problem…….. Side note, they did have very hot fems, which you would only know if you were lucky enough to find a light flash.. The whole planet is dark since they don’t have a Sun, but grandma always said that she would have killed us if we’d done anything with any fems outside of our solar system…... Remember? She was so racist! But it stuck so I just drank and pretty much stumbled around in the dark. By the time the intergal cruise ship left I was more than ready to get the hell out of there… And that’s when the trouble began….

I was still hung over the day we left Planet Norefunds, which in retrospect should have been the tip off. Whatever…. Like I said, I was feeling really blaz and figured I’d better get something in my stomach, so I half walked, half crawled my way to the ship’s nourishment hall… I sat down and couldn’t understand the menu since that cheap freaking translator chip I got inserted wasn’t working….AGAIN, and I asked the waiter what was good? The waiter just looked at me like I was speaking Greek, which now that I think about it, maybe I was.

So, I just got up and walked into the kitchen where a cook was flipping burgers and I say, “Hey, whatdya got on that smells so good?” Guy turns around and I can just tell he’s from Jersey too and he says, “I got a hard on but I didn’t know you could smell it.” I start cracking up but there’s this Franconian sous chef who takes offense and gets all pissed off. You know how sensitive the Franconians are after they reach the age when their penis’s stop being able to uncurl. I guess I’d be sensitive too. Anyway, that’s when the shit hit the fan. Literally. Those Franconians are pretty disgusting when they are all riled up. This one crapped into his hand and flung it at the cook. The cook ducks and the Franconian shit hit the fan over the grill, and it flies all over the kitchen. And if that’s not bad enough, some of it also hits a few of the other cooks that had the misfortune of being Xlaxians, who are extremely sensitive to Franconian feces and in a matter of seconds they explode. Now there’s Franconian shit mixed with the remnants of Xlaxian cooks all over the kitchen including a big batch of Octite sea moss which happens to be the most popular part of the salad bar….

Just then a bunch of ship security creatures hop in, and they take me into custody and throw me into a virtual jail cell. Since it’s supposedly a virtual cell I realize that it’s an illusion and if I can get my mind relaxed, I can just run through the bars. I give it a shot and it doesn’t work. Now I have a virtual lump on my forehead that’s the size of a Burbo egg and hurts like virtual hell… I’m still dizzy when the security creatures return. They throw me inside the biggest one’s pouch and they bounce me to a judge. I try to tell him that I had nothing to do with the havoc in the kitchen, but instead, my freaking translator emits me singing the national anthem of the judge’s home planet and he stands up and slime tears start pouring out of his optical tentacles and he lets me go…

I run back to my cabin and lock the hatch and probably slept for two or three rest periods before housekeeping lets themselves in and rolls me out of the rem capsule. What a trip huh? I figured I’d just go to the gambling Casine and kill some time until they leave…

I tell ya Sal, I was on a streak that would make a guard at Shift-n-Go smile. I was up three million place credits and as soon as the felt square started cooling off I went to the fun bar and ordered a triple Camden. I shoulda stopped at one but when the toll booth is closed, you know what they say…

So, I’m feeling no pain except for the one still growing on my virtual forehead, and I see this beautiful boat-tat fem from Melikee moon and she’s giving me the eye. The one on the back of her head. And you know how much I enjoy doing it slappy style, so I figure, why not? I ask her, how much and she tells me four Unis and I ask her if she’d take six… I thought the fems from Melikee negotiated in reverse but that actually never made sense to me, and I think I overpaid but you know what they say about making fin decs after having triple Camdens… She took three but I guess she felt bad about it, so she threw in a testi wrap for free.

Grandma was probably rolling over in her terraspot but I couldn’t help it. That rear eye of her’s was amazing. It was a turquoise blue and that set against the jet-black fur on the back of her head would make a Vio-barth weak in the ……well, they don’t have knees, but you know what I’m sayin’.

Hold on, Sal, something’s knocking on the hatch. Be right back.

Message from Tony, extension 3

Hey Sal, I’m back… Sorry it took a while, but they announced a shuttle to one of the outer rings where the gravity waves are buzzing. Something to do with the erratic solar flares but I couldn’t pass it up. The shuttle used fission shoots, all the fusion models were in the shop, so it took us a while to get there, but it was worth the wait! As soon as I got there, I wished I had my board. The grav waves were awesome and even on a rented board I conti-surfed the whole way, jumping from one wave to another without stopping once… A few of them were so big they back bounced from one of the inner rings and I double flipped a few times but never lost the board! Wild! The crazy thing is that when you’re on the grav wave it creates neg time slots so the whole time I was surfing took zero forward-time. So, I actually got back on the same shuttle a couple of E-seconds after I arrived!

You would have loved it Sal… I was really meat-beat after all that surfing, and on the return shuttle I fell into a seat across from a family of Xlaxians. Three of the little ones kept looking over at me while I was eating some Hershey Kisses that I had in my pocket and without thinking I tossed them one each… They loved them and while they were still licking their little paws, you guessed it; Pop, Pop, Pop. They exploded.

Wasn’t my fault. How am I supposed to know every little thing that make Xlaxians explode? It’s Hershey’s fault. They should have warnings on those little foil wraps. The ma and pa were horrified, and the pa starts screaming in a high-pitched vibe that could shatter a pane of Kilian glass. He expands out of his seat and comes at me with a slicer, a real one. Looked like a Sun Tsu model. Anyway, I jump up and take off down the aisle as fast as I could. I’m jumping over lapcats like a race hurdler (you know they really shouldn’t allow pets on these shuttles. Just sayin’). But anyway, he was gaining on me, and I thought this might be my last horse buck. Then, all of a sudden, he stopped and started blinking like he didn’t know what was going on. OMLPG! Damn good thing that Xlaxians have that short term memory limit. He pockets the slicer, turns around and makes his way back to his seat where the ma is busy playing a virt vid game. I sit back down and a couple of E-minutes later we’re all talking like old friends. They invited me to dinn with them. I had a quantum steak. Ever have one? I don’t know what I was expecting but it was a little tough. All in all, it turned out to be a fun night… Tragic, sure…… but enjoyable.

So anyway, I’m back in my cabin now and I’m thinking of getting a 2D Vid before I turn in. I think I’m going with a historical docuflik called, How Cassettes destroyed Eight Tracks. Sounds like a war thing. Hope it’s gory with a lot of action. Come to think of it I think someone mentioned that it’s loosely based on the historical events of how our ancestors in New Jersey fought off the alien invaders from New York centuries ago. I remember reading about it when I was in P school. Evidently back then New Jersey was the wealthiest state because we had such an abundance of pollution. Every other state wanted it because they had to get rid of their ozone layers so the healing ultras could get through and keep them healthy… New York only had Staten Island’s pollution and that wasn’t enough, so they attacked, and we slaughtered the fluckers… Remember how grandma told us how tasty the bacon was that her grandma made out of the New Yorkers? She still had some of the old recipes. Pretty sure they had to marinate them in Deer Vinegar for a few weeks but after that she said they were delicious and surprisingly tender, especially the ones from Bronx. Grandma said the best meal she ever had was called Yankeefin…. Yankeefan stew….something like that.

Signing off but will send another message tomorrow. Should know when I’ll arrive in Newark by then.

Message from Tony, extension 4

Holy shit, Sal, I may have fallen into something that could change everything! I’m talking about more FinYuan than we could shake a jolt-stick at. Sal, if this is real, we could buy every ocean front home in Wyoming that we want. Hell, we could buy all of them!

Listen to this. It’s almost the last day on the ship before we air dock in Newark, so I decide to take it easy-breezy and treat myself to a good meal on a slow-moving asteroid I heard good things about… Food was mostly Martian/Mercurian fusion, but it was a little too heavy on Mercurian spice. I’ll probably be sneakstenching for days, but it was still pretty good.

So anyway, here’s what happened. On the way back from the resto I share an UberAlles with this old Fallopian guy. We start chatting and after a while he looks at me and asks if I’d be interested in an investment. I say, that depends, what kind of investment? He tells me he has a map of where the lost Vatican treasure is hidden but needs some seed finance to move the treasure back to Fallopia.

I know, I know Sal, it’s bullshit, right? That’s what I was thinking but being Fallopian he can’t lie or else his tubes start to clog up and they were crystal clear! Old guy had to be telling the truth. … The guy told me the whole story. Some war lord called the Catlic Pope crushed the Great Nun Rebellion…….. I heard that the Nuns were ferocious warriors, but they didn’t stand a chance. Evidently the only weapons they had were these little wooden things called rulers…..Anyway, after road-paving the Nuns the Catlic Pope raided the Nunbank which was top stopped with enormous reserves of FinYuan. They say it was accumulated over a thousand years of fixing a game of chance that they ran called Bingo. Not sure how but what I heard is that they had weights in the little balls that were picked, and then for the last five hundred years or so they eliminated B-12 completely. Not sure what all that means but the gamblers never had a chance… The Catlic Pope had ordered it hidden somewhere and life-forms from across the lower Cosmos have been searching for it ever since.

The map looks legit, Sal. I gave the guy all my gambling………………………………………….

Connection Lost