Thursday March 29th, 2018

The exercise:

Write about: the holiday weekend.

2 comments:

Greg said...

I think this catches me up with comments! Since I don't see an easy way of continuing the FMA-inspired story with this prompt you're getting a little more of the Solo instead. I hope you like it :)

The holiday weekend
"Which is your ship?" asked Duke. They'd stood up from the table and two more, human, waiters had come over with the bill. Solo had glanced at it and then handed it back.
"I'm good for it," he said. "You have my line of credit, account X7801." A waiter busied himself with a phone-sized device for a moment, then turned a little pale.
"You're a friend of Mr. Hup-hup-hup?"
Solo nodded.
"The slave-trader?" asked Duke.
"Tactful, aren't you?" said Solo. They started to leave the restaurant, with CPU and Letter-designate tagging along behind them. Ookie was still arguing with the doorman over the dress-code and hadn't succeeded in gaining entry to the restaurant. "He prefers to be referred to as a human-resources entrepreneur specialising in dedicated allocation and reduced cost enterprises."
"I see that Mr. Sir the Gentleman is skilled in euphemism," said CPU, his metallic head twitching from side to side as though he were malfunctioning.
"Beep beep, boop, thrbbbb-pssst."
"That's rude, Letter-designate!"
"My ship," said Solo, ignoring them, is the 'Holiday Weekend' in Bay 47. "I have some things to pick up before we leave; you can meet me there in... hmm, say six hours. If you have luggage make sure it fits in a case measuring no more than 55cm x 45cm x 30cm please."
"Beepily beep. Burrrrp."
"Letter-designate has identified that as an ancient measure known as 'hand-luggage'," said CPU.
"That's right," said Solo. "Hand-luggage only, gents. And madam."

"This is not the 'Holiday Weekend'," said Duke. They'd boarded the ship in front of Solo, who was carrying something that CPU had tentatively identified as a cattle-prod without explaining what one was. "This is the rather famous ship, The Falco."
"The Millenial, Falco, actually," said Solo. "It's a rental. Mind the rug."
Everyone stared at the brown, hairy rug on the floor of the space-craft.
"Luggage in the room at the back," said Solo. "Go to the toilet before we leave, it's a bit unreliable in-flight. There are fresh Ewoks in the cupboard under the sink." He touched a control and the door to the flight-cabin slid open. As it did so music started.
"Boop, boop, boo- boo-... BOOOOOOOOOP!"
"Um, Letter-designate is disturbed," said CPU unnecessarily. Everyone was staring at the side-table shaped droid already. "He says that this is called 'Rock me Amadeus' and is the theme tune for ships attempting the Kepler Run."
"Yeah," said Solo lazily. "I did that once. Dunno what the fuss about it is, I slingshotted around Kevoo to get up a bit of speed and everyone's going on about how I did it in half the time anyone else did. Took me three bloody weeks to slow down though. With dodgy toilet facilities."

Marc said...

Greg - aha! As you shall see from my previous comment, this pleases me very much!

I'm pretty sure Letter-designate is my favorite character here. But I'm willing to wait a bit before confirming it :D