A brand new short Space 2047-style story inspired by the uploaded manuscript and its characters.
Brian believed that a decent cup of tea could save civilisation, improve morale and possibly stop Cedric talking about designer underpants for at least nine seconds. Sadly, aboard Are We There Yet?, the tea machine had developed a personality and that personality was deeply sarcastic.
When Brian pressed the button marked Ordinary Tea, the machine produced a cup that glowed purple and whispered, “Run while you still can.” Salomina said that was still better than the last cup, which had insulted her shoes and dissolved a biscuit. Karen scanned it and confirmed that the drink contained tea, antimatter and a small amount of unresolved emotional baggage.
The ship’s computer searched the uploaded Space 2047 records and displayed this useful fragment: For example, once, when he was younger, he fell off his bicycle, and he was very angry at it, extremely angry indeed, and whilst he was stemming the blood from his bleeding elbows, he swore that the bicycle would never…
Cedric volunteered to test the tea, but only after asking whether it would improve his chances with romantic robots. The tea machine said no. Cedric withdrew his offer immediately and claimed he had an urgent appointment with a sink plunger, which nobody wanted explained.
Brian, determined to be heroic, raised the cup to his lips. Before he could drink, the tea levitated, grew a moustache and announced that it was resigning from beverage duties to become an intergalactic traffic warden. Five minutes later it had clamped the toaster, fined Karen for looking aerodynamic and given Cedric a warning for suspicious trouser optimism.
Salomina solved the crisis by pouring the tea into the revisualizing device, which turned it into a polite scone. Brian called it progress. The scone called it Tuesday.
More Space 2047 stories and character posts will appear in the Space 2047 category.