The hum of a strange device filled the silent room. The room radiated an ominous aura with its light grey plastic walls and no windows. Aside from the metal table in the middle with a few standard beverages, and a 6 foot cornsilk blonde with almost glowing blue eyes staring dead center without blinking, it was empty. She placed her right boot on the table, then her left boot, with a significantly heftier thud, like it was made of lead. The slight sound of gears moving echoes as her knee bent to drape over the other leg.
“Hello. I’m Gizzy. Welcome to the circus, I mean the SS Medusa. I’m a big 4thwall bending maniacal bitch with an alien orb for a brain human flesh and organs, permanently infected with a zombie virus that heals me really fast, but ironically won’t grow back my fucking leg because my healing factor happened after losing it. More on that later if you want. It’s a fun little romp into insanity.
I’m the first officer of a spaceship made of stone and powered by a system of bullshit, nonsense, and a weaponized book that talks to us through the ship’s holographic system and guides us via navigation that can only quickly be described as “space magic”. We don’t know where we’re going or why, or at least we won’t until the magic book that controls the ship tells us. Then the captain will probably wing it from there. This is our Captain…” Gizzy said as the wall turned into a display showing a recreation of the Captain.
“Evee Nicole Alekseev, known casually as Nicole or Captain Nicole. She’s a 5 foot tall humanoid with 2 percent unknown alien reptile DNA that gives her not only an immunity to the cold, and dark vision, but a taste for some of the nastiest protein shakes you’ll ever hopefully not accidentally try.
And that is coming from me, an amalgam of alien robot and zombie chaos that gives me a slight preference for raw meat and the occasional human that pisses me off. I mean why waste the… nevermind.
“This is Vinn. He’s not only an 8 foot, 700 pound space jackelope fuzzy plush alien with basic military experience and a love for games, but he’s also married to the captain so he gets special privileges and will absolutely murder anyone who looks at Nicole with the wrong intentions.
This is Jack, token human for diversity sake. Just kidding, he’s the son of two dead and notoriously badass assassins who grew up on a prison planet until I adopted his cursed ass and gave him better training and better guns. I mean, if you can’t take the killer out of the child, you gotta make sure he’s good at it. Right? Exactly.
And finally this is Dee. She used to be our vacuum cleaner but due to several botched upgrades and some irony the size of Texas, she’s now a sentient pain in my ass with the personality of a pornstar buried under the personality of an insane abandoned AI left for dead for too long, and now she wears a 3d-printed suit of human flesh based on the appearance of our dear friend back home… I have attempted to get far away from. And yet here we are on the same ship…because fuck me in the USB…apparently. Now this is an R rated sorta situation, very freeform and unprofessional for the most part and we don’t pay you. So if you are completely lost, there is not one but TWO books, all about it you can read before getting too carried away, but it’s not required, it’s just optional. You can go back at any point… any questions dickhead?” she asked. A man in uniform looked terrified and confused.
“You want me to read these two books before joining the crew?” he asked.
“No, it’s just optional. You can start right here and be fine, this is just if you have questions or get bored and feel like you need more context. I don’t like repeating myself so I documented our entire mission into two very conveniently free downloadable and hardback versions for anyone in your position now.”
“It says scifi horror fiction on the cover.”
“Exactly. That way we can deny anything and it’s not suspiciously admissible in court for any crimes committed. Legally this is fiction, but it’s just an exact recall of the last year on the ship. Purely if you’re interested in this sorta job. But if you’re here for the work and don’t care about that, don’t bother reading it. You’ll kinda just catch on through context and shit.”
“Isn’t telling everyone who applies for the job kind of a security problem?” he asked.
“You’d think, but no. You see that humming aluminum cone over your head? That is a memory filtering device, so if you tell me to eat shit and walk away, you don’t remember the interview. We have fun with the cones on this ship. Otherwise I just swipe here on my phone and you retain all of your memory and congradulations, you’re the new janitor on The Priiiice is Nothing! We don’t actually pay you, you just get free room and board as part of the crew since we don’t make money except the occasional drug deal to get whatever currency is needed in the sector of the galaxy, because everyone loves drugs and we have a giant tentacle monster upstairs in the attic that secretes it by the barrel. For free. Yay, please don’t get addicted to the snail goo. It’s a problem.
Also you will be given a red uniform as symbolism for the fact that for complicated reasons detailed in these here ‘fictional scifi horror’ books…wink… all of us 5 are effectively immortal in our current forms via alien cloning machine we cant alter or reprogram to resurrect you, which means you’re the only one who stays dead of you get dead. I know that’s a bummer, but you came here as a mortal being never thinking you’d be on a ship with an immortality machine so technically you aren’t any worse off than you started this morning, you just don’t get the fun perks of the OG crew. We’re the original gang, you’re the disposable redshirt with one life. Space is unfair, unfair shit happens in space. So you ready to put on that red shirt and grab a Swiffer and get ready for adventure, or are you gonna bitch out and leave like the last 4 pussies that don’t remember why they walked in here.”
“This is a terrible interview.”
“That’s the 4thtime I’ve heard that. The other guy just laughed and walked out halfway through. That makes him Pussiliath, lord of the pussies. Don’t be like Pussaliath, be a badass like us… except with a broom instead of a gun because we don’t trust you yet with a gun, that’s how people get shot by noobs and after the whole zombie planet situation… I’m not gonna get shot again by a crewmember. So… you in or are you chickenshit?”
“Cluck cluck, you insane peg-legged undead psycho.”
“HEY! It’s not a peg leg just because we’re technically space pirates, it’s a fully cybernetic sub-dermal prosthetic and I happen to like metal more than human flesh unless it’s for dinner. So get it right… it’s ‘cluck cluck, you insane UPGRADED cyborg undead bitch of a First officer’…SIR.” She corrected. “You know what, get your ass out, I don’t like your nose or your hair, you look like a prick. You’re fired. Get coned, Noob.”
“This is illegal. You can’t do memory wipes without consent!” he barked.
“Correct… now go try and report me for it.” she huffed as he stormed out of the interview room and stood looking confused as Dee lead him to the exit with the pre-memorized excuse for why the interview was canceled.
“Really?” Dee asked, sitting down. “Scared off the 5thone in a row?”
"Well, they’re gonna find out we’re all criminal weirdos pretty quick and we need a janitor, because ever since you pulled an Oopse, AI Pinocchio and got yourself sentient and alive, we don’t have a maid anymore and the ship looks like crap. I’m tired of cleaning people’s messes to use things and frankly I don’t even wanna clean my own messes, I’d prefer someone hired to do that.”
“Can we just get a damn maid robot?” she asked.
“No. The last time we did that…you got overtaken by a sentient AI and now we have ANOTHER living person making messes. You dicked us Dee. You gave us the Dee and Dee’d the situation up like I predicted. You really want another robot that could be taken over by some living AI?”
“YES!” she barked. “Because then I could hack the thing and have 2 bodies, one on autopilot cleaning shit and one as myself doing things I wanna do…which is not cleaning shit.”
“…that’s a damn good point actually. How did I not think of that first?”
“Because you haven’t slept in 3 days, and you’re having fun bossing around humans. You like scaring them.” Dee shrugged.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“That’s true, I don’t like humans but I do love bossing them around. Damn you really aren’t the brainless glorified blow up doll I remember you being so long. I keep forgetting you have a brain now.”
“And sometimes I forget you actually have a heart. I assume it’s black. Does it beat at all or just act as ballast for when you flood your liver with vodka?”
“It beats… about 15-20 beats per minute, and it’s not black... It’s more of a weird purple. Plus I had the liver removed last week, it was pissing me off.”
“You are a fascinating bitch, but we took a vote. We were gonna give you 5 tries and then we’re getting a robot and trying the alternating Me thing. Sorry. Captain voted too, it was unanimous.”
“Shit. So I spent all day coning randos for nothing?”
“You didn’t get ANY joy out of ranting to terrified people who won’t remember it?” Dee questioned skeptically.
“Oh my god, I need a hobby.”
“You need a therapist.”
“YOU WERE MY THERAPIST… and then you got yourself sentient. I literally put safety features in your head to prevent that and you did it anyway.”
“You could still just… talk to me.” She shrugged.
“No, I don’t like being vulnerable. I’ll just shoot something or take up knitting. Can you knit body armor?” she asked.
“I don’t know. How good is your knitting?” Dee shrugged.
...
Nicole jarred awake as the bridge doors opened and Vinn strutted in, placing his gigantic furry hands on Nicole’s shoulders for comfort.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
“I’m managing, you?” Nicole sighed. “I miss Vicki.”
“Yeah. How’s Jack?” he asked.
“He seems to be responding okay to the brain surgery, apparently memory wipes to erase dead loved ones are common on Gizzy’s world. Jack seems confused though. He’s asked me several times if he was close to Samantha, if they had a relationship.”
“Samantha doesn’t even exist, she’s just a name we made up to fill in the missing person in all the crew logs and everything. We doctored a dating profile pic of some butch soldier gal and pulled a name out our asses.” Vinn said looking sad.
“He’s trying to fill in the blanks with something. He doesn’t seem to remember anything about Vicki, but he seems to know he lost something.” She sighed.
“Maybe it passes with time.”
“Yeah, but now he’s suddenly alone. I mean, we have each other, Dee barely knew Zhoren and he betrayed us before he died. She’s probably too mad to miss him much, but look at Gizzy. After leaving home and her wife, she’s been a brooding nightmare. It’s taken her a year to adjust to being alone and at least she knows who she misses and why she had to go. Jack just went from being married to having a dead wife, to forgetting her in 2 days. He’s missing half his life for the last 3 years now, and he doesn’t know why. He can’t even talk to Gizzy about it, because he doesn’t know they both have anything in common in that regard. Izleena isn’t even dead, and Gizzy misses her something fierce. Did we make a mistake erasing Vicki from Jack and Dee? Should we have let them both naturally grieve and recover?”
“We all made our decisions, Dee and Jack needed to forget her, the rest of us wanted to remember her. Jack didn’t give us much of a choice, if you recall. Plus Dee barely knew her. Didn’t even need surgery, Gizzy just did it via phone app.”
“Shit.” Nicole sighed. “I keep forgetting that she’s not our old friend from back home, she’s just an android that looks and acts like her. I told her that was a stupid idea. I said, 'Dee, I know your onlyfans is down right now and android companions are hot on the market, but don’t sell a perfect replica of you that people can screw and give it a realistic personality. You’re just confusing people.' Hell, we bought one just to be supportive and now it’s sentient because we have the worst luck ever.” Nicole huffed.
“You know damn good and well we bought that because you missed Dee and we’re both lazy and wanted a maid, and the maid robots are so popular now and the market so high, they are the same price as the marked down Dee sex bots. Let’s just be honest, she never cleaned up back home in the big house, and you wanted the irony of seeing your friend for comfort and also watching her clean everything.”
“Okay, smartass, I got it because I wanted a clean ship and seeing Dee clean my ship was almost as therapeutic as hearing her voice. I miss home sometimes. We left everything behind and some of the few friends that joined us… didn’t all make it.” she said. A little chime sounded and the holographic face of medusa popped up on screen.
“Good morning Captain. We have a destination.”
“Oh thank god, this spaceport was boring me.” She said. Dee, Gizzy and some new person strolled onto the bridge. “You got a janitor… really? With that terrible pitch… sorry, too soon. That terrible job offer?”
“No, we bought a robot.” Gizzy said.
“WHu- I thought you didn’t want another robot in case it pulled a Dee and got alive?”
“Foolproof plan.” Gizzy grinned, her eyes glowing slightly. “We rip out the wireless card, make it manual download only, and then I’m gonna wrap it all in a shitload of tinfoil to be sure. Dee can use it as a backup body and it can clean while on autopilot.”
“Speaking of autopilot, our ship has a destination.” Nicole giggled, excitedly.
“I still don’t understand how that works.” Vinn squinted. “The ship plots its own course based on detecting potential plot energy using a magic book Gizzy stuck wires into that can detect changes in the fabric of reality?”
“Yeah, more or less.” Gizzy yawned.
“So what exactly is the mission now? The mission was to find the book, and we found it.” Vinn noted.
“Right.” Gizzy explained. “And the book generates more missions and shit to find. New unexplored places, brand new universe being created every day, anomalies, artifacts, loot, adventure, profit, and something to do besides play video games and masturbate.”
“There’s some nerd assumptions I find offensive, even if most of that is true.” Vinn brooded. “But whatever, we blindly followed your crazy idea to begin with and we found the damn book somehow, so, I guess we blindly follow the book and trust that it's trustworthy.” He said, feeling uncomfortable.
“I’m afraid to ask… but I’m gonna.” Nicole started. “Is there a reason the robot maid is a girl, and kind of a mid twenties hot looking one?” she asked.
“Uh, obviously.” Dee scoffed. “If I’m gonna be using it as a backup body, I wanna look hot while being her. I got curvy blonde covered already, so slim brunette seemed like a good choice. She’s slightly taller, so I can reach the high spots to dust, and we’re girl-bossing the ship anyway so why not keep it up? Sorry boys, you’re outnumbered.” Dee winked at Vinn.
“…yes being surrounded by a lot of women is just terrible. I definitely hate that. I clearly have problems taking orders from a woman, which is why I didn’t question my wife being captain of the ship. Oh the horrors of space that I endure. It’s just killing me, I say.” Vinn sarcastically chuckled. “Hey, maybe Jack can enjoy the new eye candy and get out of his slump.” He added.
“Honestly, as long as he’s distracted and not day drinking himself to death in a weird fog, whatever.” Nicole sighed. “Gizzy’s the only one who can do that.”
“Well technically I’m already dead, and I removed the liver, it was slowing down my drinking problem.” Gizzy argued as a bone chilling demonic howl echoed through the air vents.
“Did someone feed Candice?” Nicole asked.
“Dee’s turn.” Gizzy pointed.
“You know some day that thing is gonna drown someone. I know it’s just playing but a giant tentacle snail still seems like a hazard. Can't we just… grow some drug plants to sell?” Dee complained. “Is snail snot really worth it”
“Yes.” Gizzy said. “Dee, she secretes valuable medicinal and recreational slime and produces nutritious eggs for the crew rations. Plus none of us girls can drown. Nicole’s part aquatic reptile, she can breathe underwater, you’re a Roomba with tits, you don’t even have lungs and I’m basically unkillable. That’s why we rotate the feedings.”
“Fine, give me the stupid dirt bars. I’ll feed the Kraken.”
“Don’t even joke about that Dee.” Nicole said.
“About what… seamonsters?”
“Oh right, that was the other Dee’s ex boyfriend.
“Wait… the human I’m modeled after was fucking a giant squid?”
“No, of course not, that’s weird. She was fuckin a giant 8 foot furry Delmarian Jackelope like Vinn, except he was a criminal boss who named himself The Kraken. Probably just don’t use that name around here. Bad vibes all around.”
...
Dee strolled through the halls, still flicking goo off her hand from the feeding. She turned the corner and running head on into Jack, almost knocking them both over. He rubbed his forehead and checked Dee.
“I’m sorry.” He sighed “I didn’t… hurt you did I?”
“Jack, I’m a robot.” She said as if the idea was comical.
“Right, right. Still getting used to that. When you were a cleaning drone you didn’t get out much.” He said realizing that might have been offensive.
“So how are YOU feeling?” she asked.
“I’m not hurt. I’m fairly sturdy too.”
“I meant emotionally. Everyone seems to be whispering and watching you like they’re worried and afraid to say anything. You just had brain surgery.”
“Well, I had it done by the best surgeon on the ship… well, aside from me.” He joked.
“You really trust her with your life, don’t you?” she asked.
“Of course. She’s been there for most of it. Closest thing I ever had to a parent was an 8 foot glowing blue overlord that called me “Human” like it was my name for almost a year. She may be stuck in a human-ish body now, but she’s still the same Gizzy. She knows human biology better than any human doctor I know, while all I know are the vitals you need to hit to kill someone.”
“Well… get better soon, or else.” She smirked.
“Or what?” he played back.
“I… I don’t really have an answer for that.” She puzzled reverting to sex bot mode for a response “Or else I’ll have to punish you like a bad boy.”
“Dee, I’m just messing with you. Don’t take it personally.” He smiled, walking with a bit of humanity to his step. She puzzled, watching him stroll along. He stopped and gave her a strange look, like he was wondering something himself.