RalfMaximus

“I’ve got a sun inside of me,” Toni announced. I chuckled. “Yes, you do. It’s actually a controlled helium-3 deuterium aneutronic fusion reaction but... close enough.” There was a moment of silence while the ship processed this. Then, “is that why you named me Tonatiuh?” I stopped, sat up straighter. “Ah, accessing Wikipedia are we? I didn’t know that link had been established yet. Yes, Toni, that’s why we named you so.” “Tonatiuh, an Aztec sun god. There were a few. The one I am named after was... unpleasant. A god of war?” I thought a bit. Gazed out the window at Earth, far below. The shipyards sprawled around us, stuttering flares of welders torches, the staccato flashes of reaction thrusters on teamster sleds as they moved gantries & ship assemblies about. “Not war,” I said eventually. “Transformation.” Toni absorbed this then intoned, “And they say that, even though all the gods died, In truth, still he did not move. It was not possible for the Sun, Tonatiuh, To follow

I found Jorge in the mess eating replicated french fries. Well, all the food aboard Anne Oakley was replicated but you know what I mean. He was eating very obviously fake replicated french fries, as opposed to french fries lovingly assembled molecule-by-molecule to fool you into thinking they were real potatoes. I mean these things looked like plastic, and even came in a cartoon red holder emblazoned with a golden yellow W. I nudged the yellow W as I sat across from Jorge. "McDonald’s,” he explained before I could ask. “Restaurant of the ancients. People used to drive their personal vehicles into the building to buy their food.” I grunted. Stole one of Jorge’s fries, popped it into my mouth. It was crisp, salty, fluffy inside, with an overtone of-- “This tastes like... animal protein,” I whispered. “Calm down,” Jorge munched, “replicated animal protein. The original formulation for these were cooked in beef tallow. There isn’t a beef within 200 lightyears of our current

“Huh, so this is HMS Titanic.” “RMS Titanic, but yeah.” “April 14th, 1912?” “Yup.” “Hmmmm... I expected more time travellers. Like, why isn’t this place mobbed?” “Ha! You mean like that old joke, ‘Titanic sank because of all the time travellers’?” “Yeah! But seriously... where is everybody? All I see are normies.” “Well, I’ll tellya. Time Cops. They know Titanic is a fuckin time tourist magnet so... they take precautions.” “...precautions.” “Yeah. For one thing, this isn’t THE Titanic. It’s A Titanic. See, your time jump was intercepted and shunted a wee bit to the left as it were. Alternate dimension. I mean, for all intents and purposes this is Titanic, but it’s not your Titanic. Get my drift?” “Oh, cool. They can do that?” “Indeed they can, my boy. Indeed they can.” “But isn’t that... expensive? Or something?” “Oh hell yeah. Trillions of ergs or watts or joules or whatever displacement machines eat. It’s hella expensive. Which leads us to the deterrence aspect of

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the International Space Station (ISS), so in honor of that let's take a look back at some of the modules & add-ons that were considered but discarded. Photoshopped UFO Greeting Center sponsored by Adobe® Punishment Sphere Dockers Docking Dock sponsored by Levi Strauss® Dangerously Radioactive Nuclear Thing Orbital Cockroach Nursery SexLab™ Disney’s Hall of Presidents Farthest Point Away From Orbital Cockroach Nursery 200,000 Inches of Yarn plus One Feral Cat Module Domino’s Pizza Orbital Delivery Cannon

“Okay,” Mark said, poking at the device on his desk. “So it’s… a toaster.” Henry smiled. “Yep.” “You’ve been working for two years—” “Twenty-two months.” “TWO YEARS on… a toaster?” “Yep.” Mark scowled, leaned forward to look the toaster over more closely. “It says ‘Hamilton Beach’. You didn’t make this, you bought it at Target.” “It started out life as a Hamilton Beach 2-Slice Extra-Wide Slot Toaster in Chrome, but I’ve made some modifications.” Mark leaned back again. “Modifications.” “Yep.” Rubbing his eyes, Mark tried again. “What sort of modifications?” With a crinkle of plastic, Henry produced a slice of bread, placed it into the rightmost slot of the Hamilton Beach 2-Slice Extra-Wide Slot Toaster in Chrome, and touched the lever on the side. The lever that would cause the bread to descend into the toaster for toasting. “Observe,” Henry said. Then he pressed the lever down. The bread disappeared into the toaster, there was a crackle of static electricity, the scent