For those are wondering "What is "Prisoners of Gravity"?", here a quick run through:
"Prisoners of Gravity" (or PoG) was a very strange "infotainment" show that ran in Canada from 1989 to 1994. The program had a fictional back story about a guy named Rick. Disturbed by what he sees on Earth, Rick decides to escape by using a rocket engine to launch his car into outer space. This works until he crashes into the Canadian telecommunications satellite Reality One. Rick makes friends with the onboard computer Nan-Cy, short for Nano-Cybernetic 3000, and the two run a weekly pirate broadcast, in which they tried to prove science fiction, fantasy and comic books are the only things right with the world. This is actually better then it sounds :)
A ten-show package was released to American PBS stations in the early nineties, but the program couldn't find an audience in the US. There was some talk about producing an updated version a few years back, but that didn't get past the idea stage.
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Trapped In Space - In No Position To Sue
Chapter One: Once Upon a Starry Morn
Written by Teddog (Rachelle) email: teddog_3000@yahoo.com
Beta Read by Gypsy Jr.
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Whack! Commander Rick groaned, rubbing the bump on his forehead where he hit the ceiling. "That's going to leave a mark," he thought as he reached for the flashlight he had dropped. The headroom was much less in the lower decks then the rest of the Reality One. Rick had let this slip his mind and wound up bashing his head.
Rick shone the flashlight around. He saw what he had expected to see: nothing. Nothing but the vast series of catacombs that filled the lower decks of the satellite. The tunnels had always reminded Rick of air vents, but why would a previously unmanned satellite need air vents? Maybe some things were better left unasked. Satisfied with what he saw, Rick crawled down the tunnel towards the portal that led up to the main deck.
The hallways on the main floor weren't much bigger than the lower decks, but they did allow Rick to stand up, stretch, and shake the dust out of his gray hair. Most of the living space on the Reality One was situated on the on this deck; a room Rick had claimed as a bedroom, a tiny kitchen with a seemingly unlimited supply of freeze dried, prepackaged foodstuffs, and, most importantly, the master control room. Rick was heading towards the latter of the three.
The walls of the control room were lined with television monitors and exposed wires and there was faint buzzing noise of an alarm in the air. As he entered the room, Rick paused a moment to look at the reflection made by a monitor screen and the dull orange light that illuminated the room. The face that stared back wasn't great by any means; it sort of looked like Ray Bradbury, only younger and with gray hair. Thirty-four and already graying. It was a hereditary trait; his brother was only a year or so older and his hair had almost gone all white.
Rick sighed upon thinking about his family. They rarely spent time with him on Earth. Sometimes he wondered if they even noticed that he was missing. How long had it been? Four, five months at most? Rick shuddered at that thought.
The sigh didn't fall upon deaf ears. Across the room, a message flashed on a monitor that was smaller and slightly different than the rest. "YOU'RE BACK," the message read.
"Hi Nan-Cy," Rick replied, his sprits lightening a bit upon reading the message. Nan-Cy, or the Nano-Cybernetic 3000 if you wanted to be formal, was Reality One's onboard computer. She had befriended Rick shortly after he crashed his car into the satellite. She played a vital part in their pirate broadcasts, even though she wanted more time on air for herself.
"I TAKE IT YOU COULDN'T FIND WHAT SET OFF THE ALARM?" Nan-Cy asked. Earlier that morning Rick had been woken by the Reality One's "Something is Wrong" alarm. Whoever built the telecommunications satellite was too cheap to install a different alarm for each problem, so there was one big general alarm. This resulted in many wasted hours trying to find the cause, which could be anything from a burnt out light bulb to a massive air leak.
"No," Rick shook his head. "There wasn't anything downstairs." He collapsed into a large swivel chair located beside the computer. It spun lightly under his weight. "This is pretty stupid you know," Rick continued. "Looking around for whatever tripped the safety systems..."
"HEY, I DIDN'T BUILD THIS FLOATING PILE OF SPACE JUNK. IF YOU'RE SO TICKED OFF, WHY DON'T YOU REPROGRAM THE ALARM," Nan-Cy growled.
"Sorry to offend you," Rick said, trying to avoid a fight. "Programming is a foreign language to me. The most I can do is put Heinlein novels on to disk for you."
Nan-Cy didn't have an answer for that. Relived he didn't have to duke it out with his friend, Rick kicked back and put his feet onto the control panel. In the process his left foot hit a button labeled 'contact'. This button was used by Reality One's crew to send their access code to a person they wished to interview. That person would later call back when they wanted to carry out the conversation.
"HMMM... RICK?" Nan-Cy asked after a moment of silence.
"What is it?" Rick shuffled around in the chair, causing his foot to hit the button twice more.
"THE ALARM."
"I'll sleep on it, ok?"
"IT'S ELEVEN THIRTY IN THE MORNING, AT LEAST IN EASTERN STANDARD TIME." Rick was from Toronto, so Nan-Cy ran everything in EST to make him felt at home.
Rick pointed to his clothes. He didn't have time to change after being woken up, and thus, still had on his Doctor Who pajamas. "I'm still wearing my sleep wear. That's an excuse to sleep."
If she could have, Nan-Cy would have flashed a dirty look. "MC DONALD'S HAS STOPPED SERVING BREAKFAST SOMEWHERE," she pointed out.
"Fine, I'll go get changed and work on the alarm. Jeez." As Rick got up he hit the button a fourth time. This time he realized what he had done. "Oops," he said, staring at the button.
"WHAT DID YOU DO?" Knowing that Rick didn't have much experience on living in spacecraft, Nan-Cy didn't like what she heard.
"Hit the contact button." Rick grinned sheepishly
"THE SIGNAL WASN'T AIMED. WE, OR YOU RATHER, DIDN'T CAUSE ANY DAMAGE."
"Really?"
"MAYBE SOME STATIC ON A RADIO STATION, BUT THAT WOULD BE THE MOST OF IT."
Rick read the final message. All of his life he had been pretty lucky and living in outer space hadn't changed that. However, Rick didn't want to try to see how far his luck would go, so he left the control room to get changed.
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"Space is a vast place. Think about it; there are millions of stars out there. Anyone of them could be like our sun, a host to tiny planets that could or do hold life. Maybe even life that's more advanced then Earth's, but that wouldn't be a huge feat."
The speech sounded like it came from an infomercial and that was the way Crow T. Robot liked it. The spindly golden robot was explaining his new scheme to his older-robotic-sibling-of-sorts Tom Servo. No matter how hard Crow tried, the smaller bot wasn't buying it.
"What your point Crow?" Servo asked.
"There's something on Earth called S. E. T. I. It's a program that searches the sky for signals that might come from civilizations out in space. I figured that we might have a better chance picking up the signals out here on the Satellite of Love," Crow continued.
Servo shook his head. It was shaped like a clear bubble. This, combined with his small size, made him look as if he were a gumball machine. "It's not going to work," he teased.
"It will work," Crow retorted. "I've got the signal scanner set up and everything. Come on, I'll show you."
"No thanks," Servo said, hovering down the hall. "I've got better things to do."
"Like what? Counting your underwear collection again?" Crow called with a snicker. Servo was out of earshot and didn't hear him. Finding himself alone, Crow walked down a series of hallways until he reached his machine.
The machine/scanning device wasn't much to look at; it was composed of a keyboard, an old monitor and a couple of hard drives wired together. The whole unit was then attached to one of the SOL's receiving satellite dishes. Crow had found all the parts and built the mess himself. He was very proud of what he had done.
The bot looked over the monitor. There had been no changes so far. In fact, it looked as if the machine wasn't even picking up signals from Earth. "Maybe there's a loose wire," Crow thought.
As Crow went to check the connections, the machine sounded a beep. This was followed by two more a moment later. Crow climbed out to look at the monitor. When he reached it, the machine sounded a final beep.
"Wow! Four signals!" he proclaimed. He read over the data again. "None of them are from Earth!" Out of excitement, Crow took off down the hall. "I've got to tell Joel!" Crow shouted.
Joel Robinson was the Satellite of Love's lone human crewmember. He had built all of the robots onboard, with the exception of Cambot, whom he simply reprogrammed. This didn't affect Cambot's worth; he spent the same amount of time with Joel as the rest, and probably more.
That morning Cambot had joined Joel down in the satellite's workshop. Joel was working at a new invention. He usually came up with one or two a week, plus it helped pass the time. Cambot watched from the sidelines. There wasn't much too him (a hi-tech video camera attached to a long black tube), so he didn't get in the way.
Cambot peered over Joel's shoulder as the man wired together a calculator circuit board and a radio tuner. The bot zoomed in on the work in progress, then panned over to Joel. Cambot couldn't talk, so this was his way asking Joel what he was making.
"It's, it's..." Joel trailed off. He pulled back for a better view and scratched his head of messy brown hair. "I'm not sure what it is," Joel shrugged. Cambot understood. This was typical of Joel. The man didn't think about what he was building, he just built it. On the other hand, Joel wasn't spaced out; he was very well aware of the world around him.
Shortly after Joel went back to working, cry of "Hi-Keeba" echoed down the hall outside. At the same time both Joel and Cambot looked up to see a gold streak enter the room. The camera bot pulled back and the man held the invention tightly against his red jumpsuit as Crow jumped from the doorway onto the workbench.
"Crow, what in the world has gotten into you?" Joel asked. Sure, Crow was often the most hyper out of the four robots, but he wasn't usually this out of control.
"Joel!" Crow panted. "Ivefoundalienstheyreclosebyandtheysentasignaland..."
"Take your time," Joel said, trying to calm down the hysterical robot. "I can't help you if I don't understand what's wrong."
"Ok, ok," Crow started over. "I built this thing to look for signals like S. E. T. I., and I picked up something up that I think might be from ALIENS!"
"Oh, Crow," Joel sighed. "I suppose you want to call them back, right?" Crow nodded his head. "I'll see if I can trace the signal for you," Joel said, leaving the workshop. Crow followed close behind.
"If they are aliens, I feel Tom shouldn't be allowed to talk to them," Crow requested.
"Why?"
"Don't ask."
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Another buzzing sound rang through the halls of the Reality One. This one was louder than the alarm that had been going constantly since the early morning. Rick cursed as the sound reached his ears. He had changed into a T-shirt and was in the process of zipping of the fly on his jeans.
"Nan-Cy, what's going on? Rick asked as he stumbled back into the control room with the fly still undone. "We've never had two alarms at once."
"I WONDER IF I SHOULD START FILMING FOR NEXT WEEK'S BROADCAST?" Nan-Cy cracked upon seeing the fly. Half way across the room, Rick could barely read the screen.
"What did you say Nan-Cy?" Rick asked, thinking it might be important.
"NOTHING. SLIGHTLY MORE PRESSING MATTER AT HAND. IMPORTANT BUSINESS AND ALL," Nan-Cy said, quickly changing the subject.
Rick had moved in close enough to read the monitor. "What kind of pressing matter?" he questioned, more concerned the usual.
"ERR... WE JUST RECEIVED A CALL," she said, not really wanting to talk on the matter.
"Wait, we've gotten tons of calls and none of them sounded like this coming in," Rick said, finally pulling the fly up. "What gives?"
"ALL THE CALLS WE'VE GOTTEN WERE FROM EARTH. THIS CALL IS ELSEWHERE. THE SATELLITE ANSWERS THOSE KINDS OF CALLS DIFFERENTLY, AND THAT'S WHY IT DOESN'T SOUND LIKE NORMAL CALLS BEING RECEIVED," she explained, still not too keen on the subject.
"A call's a call. Look, if you don't like it, let me handle it," Rick offered. It wasn't like Nan-Cy to act this way. She was often the bolder of the two.
"BUT WHAT IF IT'S NASA OR THE CRTC OR WORSE?" Nan-Cy said, now almost in panic.
"I don't think NASA would care about an ex-physicist and a haywire computer trapped in a Canadian telecommunications satellite," Rick explained, giving the computer a hard look. He quickly changed it. "Nan-Cy," he continued. "Are you scared that someone's going to come for me and you'll be left alone?"
"NO, NOT AT ALL. JUST ANSWER THE CALL ALREADY," Nan-Cy replied in an attempt to cover up any signs of emotion.
Rick smiled as he set off to answer the call. He had found Nan-Cy's soft spot. To heck with those who say computers couldn't feel emotion. Rick tapped a few keys and the second noise stopped. Much to his displeasure the alarm kept going.
"Hello? Will you be peaceful aliens or the other kind?" a thin metallic voice said. Before Rick had a chance to respond, a second voice came across the speakers.
"Crow, what did I tell you about using the Hexfield Viewscreen?" The second voice scolded.
Only now did Rick notice that the video feed for the call wasn't working. "Hey, what frequency is your visual signal on?" he asked, hoping for an answer.
The second voice named off a set of numbers and Rick adjusted his signal accordingly. A close monitor was trying to pick up the signal, but all it got was fuzz. A swift kick fixed this.
When the display finally came online, Rick was astonished. Judging from the reaction he got, the other end was equally surprised.
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Author's Note: Nan-Cy never talked aloud in the series: everything she said came up on a monitor. In the book 2010 when HAL used a monitor to talk, everything was written in capitals. Because HAL is Nan-Cy's hero, everything she says in the story is written this way.
*Disclaimer*
(I write this because I'm the lawyer fearing girl I am)
"Prisoners of Gravity" and all characters and situations therein are owned by Mark Askwith, Rick Green, Daniel Richler and possibly TVO, but don't quote me on that. [If it is owned by TVO, does that mean everyone in Ontario owns a small piece of the show...?] The phase "Trapped in Space - In No Position To Sue" is from PoG, and is therefore also owned by the above.
"Mystery Science Theater 3000" and all characters and situations therein are owned by Best Brains Inc, with the exception of the term "Gizmonic", which is owned exclusively by Joel Hodgson.
Everything is being used without the owners' permission. I'm not making any money on this... blah, blah, blah.