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Acknowledgements: To Runnik for doing the beta reading during a most horrific and difficult time (September 13, 2001).
Disclaimer II: This ficlet is a parody of “Car Talk”, my sincerest apologies.
Time Frame: The future: good news! Everyone has survived (or come back), and now they gotta earn their bread.
Location: A broadcast studio in the UT
“Furlow, I see you finally got some mail. Are you going to read it to us?” Scorpy settled into the booth holding a cup of his newest vice, a double espresso from Starbucks.
“Yes, it was sent in by Steve Moonglow of Doobadoo three cycles ago with a question about his froomium generator. It seems it’s making a screeching noise every time the wormhole drive is engaged.” Furlow folded the letter, shaking her head.
“Aren’t you going to reply?” Scorpy sipped some coffee and looked quizzically at Furlow.
“It’s probably too late now for Steve. But for all the other Steve’s out there, if that is your real name, you need to get this repaired immediately. If ya don’t, you…” Furlow paused for a microt.
Scorpius, or rather neural John interrupted her, “You can kiss your ass goodbye.”
“Bwaa haa haa haa” Scorpius and Furlow laughed in unison. Neural John snorted.
“Seriously, if you have this symptom, you must get it fixed right away. This is a sign that the froomium generator is deteriorating, and when it reaches a certain critical frequency, you will implode when you form a wormhole. Believe me, you don’t want that to happen.” Scorpius said.
“If you want advice on prowlers, wormhole generators, love life, please contact us on channel double two triple one seven five nine double eight sixty-six fifty-four forty triple three.”
“Scorpius, I see you’ve become addicted to that Earth vice, coffee. How and when?” Furlow decided to ask Scorpius this question while they were waiting for a call.
“It happened shortly after I retired. I got the chance to visit Earth once they built the permanent wormhole between them and us. I was immediately hooked. Starbucks was looking to expand their franchise, so I convinced them to come here. Oh, Braca is signaling us we have a call. Yes, what is your name and where are you calling from?”
“Hi, I’m Lucy, human, and I’m calling from New LA.”
“That’s Lucy with an I?” Furlow asked.
“No, a Y.” Lucy said.
“Oh then you can’t be from New LA…” Scorpius began to speak when neural John interrupted him. “Lucy, let me guess, it sounds like you’re from Kansas originally. Am I close?”
“Yes, Topeka. Anyway, my husband and I are looking for a new ship. We are expecting our first in four months and we feel the prowler is too sporty and too small for us now. But we don’t want something boring like the mini-marauder. I mean, that’s like flying a bus. We want something a little sporty, but still safe and roomy with the baby. Oh, and we have two dogs, a small terrier mix and a cross between a golden retriever and a German Shepard.” Lucy said.
“Oooh, I’ve got it, I know just the ship you should get. Have you looked at the Blaxin Cruiser? Also, they’re really dependable. We don’t see many of them in our shop. And then it’s usually for routine maintenance.” Furlow said.
“Thank you, we’ve looked at them, and they did seem right. We’ll test one out tomorrow.” Lucy disconnected.
“Scorpy, do you remember last weeken’s puzzler?”
“You know I don’t remember these things. I’m too busy thinking about wormholes and other things.” Scorpius said.
“This puzzler was sent in by a listener, Steve from the Royal Planet. When he tried to create a wormhole with his cruiser by engaging his Froomium generator, he got instead a large explosion exiting out of the cruiser’s exhaust. Being the tinkerer he is, he deduced the generator had reversed polarity. The hint in the puzzler was shortly before he had this problem he ran into a magnetic storm. Do we have a winner, Scorpy?” Furlow said.
“Yes, our winner is B’nard Caz, chosen from the millions of correct answers we’ve received.” Scorpius snorted, recognizing the name as Scarran.
“What’s the matter Scorpy, cat got your tongue? Ya know, we only got five listeners, and one of them happens to be Scarran. It was inevitable one wormholes were open for general use.” Furlow quipped.
“I see we have another call. First name and where are you calling from?” Furlow said.
“Hi, it’s your old nemesis John Crichton calling from St. Pete. Bwaa haa haa haa.” John said.
Scorpius rolled his eyes when he heard John’s voice. * Is that man never going to leave me alone? * He thought. “Some of you new listeners may not know this but we all have a history with Crichton that goes back many, many cycles. Hey Braca, aren’t you screening these calls?” Scorpy could see Braca smirking in the booth. “Well John, what brings you to our little show?”
“I have a theory that the relationship between being happy and owning a trouble free ship is inversely proportional. All the time I was on Moya, bless her trouble free heart, I was tormented by you and my life was in shambles. But now that I own the Edsel of ships, life is good.” Crichton said.
“You may be onto something, Crichton. The happiest customers I have are the ones whose ships are always in my repair shop. Maybe it’s because they are forced to stay in one place. The other day this guy, we’ll call him Fred, came into the shop early to pick up his ship, which was in the sixth time this monen, and was chatting with one of the mechanics when there was a big boom. His ship fell off the lift. Luckily, no one was near it at the time. But Fred just laughed. I think he was relieved. And he’s not buying another one. Fred is one of the happiest guys I know.” Furlow said.
“Well I see you’ve wasted another perfectly good half arn listening to us. And remember, don’t fly like my partner.” Scorpius said.
“And, don’t fly like my partner” Furlow said.
“Don’t fly like either of them, neural John said.”
