When Something Goes Wrong...

The earth word “Bewilderment”, is actually derived from an ancient Klintonian word meaning, “To humiliate oneself in the presence of a mirror.” And that, my friends, is totally random statement, having nothing to do with anything that will occur in this story at all. But that’s fine with the Klintonians, and if you don’t like it, they don't care.

Quark walked slowly down the hatchway. His metal feet clanked sluggishly along as they dragged along the floor. Life wasn’t easy as an android. Sure there was always the flash and glamour of being made out of gold plated titanium alloy, and it sure made it easy to catch a female android’s attention. Other than that, it pretty much stunk. Things always seemed to happen that weren’t expected. For instance, just five minutes ago he had been called to the bridge where the captain had calmly explained to him that in exactly twenty minutes he was to report to the T.E.A.M. site (Thermal Eradication of All Metalloids). He was told that his position had been demoted to that of a toaster, and he was to be blasted into smithereens by various explosives and other destructive weapons. ‘…Mostly,’ He mused, ‘just for the amusement of the demolition druids… sick, psychotic, morons….’

‘Not that it matters really,’ He thought to himself, ‘What am I after all, but just a dot of metal in an infinite universe of steel.

‘And now I’m starting to philosophize like Plato or one of those other demented old fools… crud.’

As it turned out, that was the least of his worries. For as he trudged down the long corridor to his demise, he was promptly zapped into an alternative dimension, set upon by a pack of rabid, deranged space penguins and thrown directly into the core of a black hole. Where he immediately and subconsciously thought, ‘Not again…’ and was then turned into a puddle of super-compressed, golden, metallic cool-aid.


Captain Ringo wasn’t an extra-special humanoid. He wasn’t even sure whether he existed or not, as some irritating, irrational thought from the left-side kept persisting. He wasn’t even really all that sure whether or not God, as the just-as-irritating right-side persons kept persisting, existed. So, to put it rather frankly, he was rather comfortably confused all around… just like a normal person.

The ship he rode in was “extra-special”. He kept assuring himself of this anyway. The ship was a normal ship in how it flew, and was quite the same as others in its method of operation. The biggest difference was in its origin. It had come from Nebula 5. The solar cluster Nebula 5, as anyone will tell you, is the home of all the best spaceships made. Why? Because, as advertised, their ships were made out of the most invincible alloy ever. Ionized-zeta 68.

Ionized-zeta 68, the brochure said, was definitively the most exciting scientific breakthrough in a very long while. It’s an extremely rare mineral that is gathered only a single molecule at a time. What is the reason for this? Because each molecule weighs, approximately, as much as a house. Well then, how does it fly? Quite simply put, it logically can’t, but logic isn’t always right. So, quite illogically put, the molecules of the mineral are so dense that the human mind logically realizes that it is impossible for anything to be that dense. So, therefore, the molecules must be the exact opposite. The molecules then assume an irrationally light state of existence, and take-off ensues. Following that are three pages of warnings and cautions against trying to make any logical sense of what was just stated, as well as six pages of health problems that may ensue because of the stress on your brain if you do. No one reads those anyway. (It is estimated that a record of three million deaths have been caused by reading all of the fine print involved in the purchase and manufacture of these ships, and it is not recommended that anyone that is at all intelligent should try to read it. As a matter of fact the company is now purely automated, primarily because all the regular human engineers went insane immediately after building the plant. But since they were mostly pompous, bigots anyway, no one cared.)

It flew smoothly through the deep blackness of space. Its chromed sides and wings glistened as the light from its fusion propulsion engines reflected off of them. Its purple electro-magnetic shield sparked in front of it where space dust was absorbed and vaporized.
The faint drone of the engines humming was the only sound that could be heard inside of the bridge, where its various crew lounged around awaiting Captain Ringo’s orders. Withel, a Hungron from Martel 5169, a moon of Martel, sat next to the main computer console in the center of the room slurping a Barbasin malt-drink (much like a shake from earth except bigger and warmed). It was chocolate flavored, his favorite, but somehow it just didn’t seem to have any flavor today. He carefully set it down on the delicate and highly moisture sensitive computer console. Immediately a gentle feminine voice asked him gently to please remove the beverage from the keyboard, and told him to please have a nice day. He glared questioningly at the drink, and scratched one of his long, shaggy ears in question of the order. He decided that he had better ignore it.

The other members of the crew besides the grunts, Hooy and Frooy, sat off to the left of the radar console where a holographic display showed the space traffic around the world that they were orbiting. They were cy-borgs, half-humans that had been rescued from a wreck in space just an instant before they would have been past recovery. On occasion you could still tell that the metal half of their face itched a little were it bonded to their skulls, but that was the price they had to pay for having memory 1000% better than a normal human’s. Slight beeping sounds filled the room as another ship passed closed by them, and the stabilizers kick in to steady the ship. The intercom crackled to life, “Warning, assume your positions, captain is approaching bridge.” Immediately everyone went into action, drinks were thrown into the airlock and released and candy wrappers thrown into the incinerator to be disposed of. The crew stood up and snapped to attention just as the captain entered the bridge.

“At ease, folks.” Captain Ringo was his normal, nonchalant self. “It looks like we’ll be heading into the Frenton Galaxy. I just received my orders from Admiral Gerth on planet Amoldith, and it appears that there is a time-continuum loop in quadrant 24, 98. We’ve been asked to go sort every thing out and plug it up with a time stabilizer or two. Any questions?” Hooy hit a few buttons on the computer and brought up a holographic image of the Galaxy. He peered thoughtfully at the display. “Captain, it appears that there is several quadrants in which time-continuum possibilities may have happened. How will we know where to look?”

“That’s quite simple, we start at one and go to the other… I think…” Frooy moved over toward the navigational counsel and punched in the coordinates.

“What is the estimated travel time, Frooy?”

“Sir, barring any space construction detours, it should take approximately 14 hours.” The captain looked suspiciously at the display.

Withel stood up and promptly tripped and fell on his face, and with a look of embarrassment asked, “Is there something wrong captain?”

“No, Withal, I just somehow have the feeling that this trip isn’t going to turn out quite as I expected.”

A long chill ran through every one of the crew member’s spines, as they jumped into hyperspace.
Then, just as the jump initiated, Withen was thrown across the room and into the bulkhead where he suffered a concussion and was hauled off to the medical station. Once there he received 68 stitches in his left arm (for absolutely no reason), and was tenderly beaten over the head with an aluminum chair. The computer deemed that his concussion was successfully treated and he was put in traction for his other miscellaneous injuries mysteriously acquired just at the moment he was brought into the medical station.


The huge battle cruiser, Titan, floated in the vast distance between the Frenton galaxy and the Grergian galaxy. The stars, being as far away from the ship as they were, looked like mere pinpricks in the vast canopy of blackness.

On board the ship in a dimly lit cabin sat the evil space-pirate Blintin Flithlefur. The darkness in the cabin suited his thoughts comfortably, and for him, the most dangerous of all industrialist-type, as he was officially named by the G.L.O.T.E. society (Galactic League of Terrible Evils), villains.

Yes, he was definitely the slimiest of all villains. His greenish membrane drooped to the floor in several spots, giving him the appearance of a giant, oozing, slug with legs. He reached his arm through his chest to scratch a place on his back that would have taken a human sixty-four years of hard and painful torture to be able to reach. His overly bulging sides drooped over the arm-rests of his chair as he stared out the window.

A fair distance away, just on the other side of the 53 moon of the planet Kwarf, orbited a small ship, its thrusters sparkled just over the horizon as it tried its best to hide from the huge, ominous, craft lurking in the overwhelming darkness of space.

Captain Blintin glared at the small ship, its captain, Smugle “the dice” Frith, a gambler by trade, was about to pay for cheating Blintin out of sixty-five trillion space credits. Blintin realized it merely scratched his enormous wealth, and it was hardly enough money to warrant doing what he was about to do to the puny gambler… He shrugged off any thoughts or remorse with a casual pinch of salt from a tray he pulled from deep within himself on his left side. (He had become addicted to it several years back and couldn’t get himself to quit even though he knew it would eventually shrivel his insides.) He smiled an extremely evil smile, … but what was the point of having a weapon given to you just for the purpose of destroying every living thing in the universe, if you couldn’t use it occasionally for your own plans.

He slithered out of his chair and sloshed over and pressed a button on an intercom by the door. “Sergeant Muth report.”

The intercom crackled to life, “Aye, Cap’n, ‘hat can ay do for ya’?”

“Do we have the enemy ship locked down?”

“ ’es, sa’, we most certainly do. They’re not going a blinkin’ foot ‘with out getting blasted to a wee smidgen of space dust.”

“Very good, and this time there won’t be any mistakes? It would just be terrible if the same thing happened that occurred to that cargo freighter. I mean having another android go right into a star… Well, lets just say that could cost someone their life…”

The Sergeant chuckled uneasily, “Ahh, no, sa’, that won’t ‘appen. Ay mean to say tha’ et shouldn’t… we’ve been ‘aving the mechanics a workin’ on et for a fair piece o’ time now, and…”

Blintin winced as the accent got worse, a sure sign that the strange creature was getting nervous, “That’s very good sergeant, I wouldn’t like it if that happened again. You may go back to your duties.”

A very definite nervous gulp came through the intercom, “Thank ye sa’, umm, good day… Ay think…”


Quark had been found as a puddle that had been hurled into space by the powerful blast of the star going super-nova. As far as he could remember he had been some sort of android on a very important ship, stationed somewhere in the Frenton galaxy. ‘Ah, those where the days… I think…’ he mused to himself.

It was a rather strange sensation floating in space, with no malleable structure. As a matter of fact, it was rather hard to pull yourself together. Perhaps that was why he had been going through extreme mood swings for the last six days.

He would have never had been found... if it wasn’t for the strange ordeal of getting splattered across the front of a passing Grergian space freighter. He had accidentally sent the entire bridge into a state of panic when they realized that they couldn’t see out of their
navigational projection system, the camera of which he had happened to land directly on top of. When they finally figured out what was wrong, they had finally sent a robo-technician out to squeegee him off. And, finally, after holding a rather calm conversation with the technician, trying to convince him that “No, he really wasn’t a space puddle that talked…” he was squeezed into a super-strength, crystal jar and hauled inside with their space crane (Androids never are very light…).

He spent the next hour and a half talking for the captain and his friends, neither of them were very bright, and were far from grasping the concept of molecular disarrangement… but both were amazed at the talking, golden, liquid with eyes.

Finally, upon arriving at a space station on the planet Frenton, he was issued, on a titanium cart, into the counsel of galactic elders.

Smugle Frith had been having a good day… until the little run in with Captain Blintin, from there things had gotten progressively worse, and now, seeing that things were at their climax, he was hiding behind the moon sipping a Fritholen lemocide drink. The tingle it sent up his nose he found quite soothing. The rest of the crew was off somewhere partying, but he really didn’t feel like going and joining them. He was the type of guy that you occasionally find on the Hulgarian moons of Glurp, a brave soul, one that preferred to face his destiny, and not run away from it.

As he sat there and stared haggardly at the huge ship through the window, important thoughts seemed to drift through his head. Where did he go wrong? Why did he always feel so inept? Was he really about to be vaporized for winning a game of cards? And why did his lemocide burn so much when it hit his stomach? He pondered this last difficult question for a bit and decided that he had better go and check out the party… to see if they had any drinks, of course, he told himself, he’d never be like them and go party at such an important time.

He walked toward mess hall chuckling crazily to himself. Just then the Titan open-fired.



Captain Ringo cried out in terror and bolted out of his chair where he had been dozing just seconds before. Withen looked at him through the slightly over-exaggerated mess of bandages on his head. “What is it captain?” He asked, a tone of puzzled amazement filling his voice.

Captain Ringo looked at him for a moment trying to get his bearings. “It was as if, for one split second, an extreme burst of nothingness happened; as if total nothingness happened somewhere for just one moment, and then was silenced forever.”

The entire crew looked at him in awe. Amazement filled their faces... They all burst out laughing… except for Withen, who, for some reason, just kept trying to scratch behind his ear with his foot. For one quick moment of absolute humiliation, Captain Ringo wondered why he had become a space captain.

He shook the feeling off. He decided he’d just file the moment away in his mind till he forgot it. ‘I hope that never happens again, that was…’

“Captain, we’re approaching Brason.” Frooy called out.

“Brason? I thought we were going to Frenton. Where are we?”

Hooy looked at him questioningly, “Don’t worry, sir, Brason is about half of the way there.”

A look of relief flooded over the captains face, “Oh, o.k. Why are we stopping here?”

Hooy just rolled his eyes and gave up. “Never mind captain.”

Frooy turned around from his console and gave his brother an icy glare, “That’s no way to talk to the captain.

Now captain, let’s think for a moment, what does this ship run on?”

“Um, I think I remember this from space school, umm, let’s see, wasn’t it hydro-carbide plutonium 65?”

Frooy raised his eye brows and gave the captain one of those looks that a mother gives her young child who just recited his numbers from one to ten. “Very good captain!”

The captain beamed with delight.

“O.K. now, this one is a little bit harder, where is the nearest hydro-carbide plutonium 65 plant?”

The captain thought hard, his brow wrinkling with concentration, “Um, Alpha 23 in the Ephron Galaxy?”

Frooy immediately dropped his eye brows, “You’re so dumb…” He shook his head and turned back to his computer panel.

Withen, who had calmly been listening the whole time, said, “Um, captain, I think the nearest plant, is on Brason.”

A look of relief past over the captain’s face, “Oh, that’s good, because I just noticed that this little arrow thingy is almost pointing to the big “E” on this gauge.”

Hooy and Frooy both turned and gave him an icy glare.

The captain caught their looks, “What?”



Quark sat in front of the galactic elders, their piercing stares not even fazing him the slightest bit. As a matter of fact he didn’t even notice them, of course that was mostly do to the fact that they had accidentally left him facing the door from which he had just entered.

The leader of the counsel, General Rinten Mooge, fiddled with his long gray mustache, as he watched the cart being placed in front of the long brown table. “Yep, I knew I should’ve had those space captains court marshaled when I had a chance. They brought us a cotton-picking space puddle in a jar.”

The oldest member of the counsel, a shaky, old man, in a wrinkled gray suit, looked over his pair of spectacles, “A puddle of waste, is a muddle of space… is what my great aunt Gertrude used to always say, or maybe it was my Uncle Albert, or maybe…”

The General mumbled under his breathe behind his hand, while shaking his head and rolling his eyes, “Old antiques, they just make me sick. Amnesia, that’s what it is…”

Helain of the Threth, the Threth being a somewhat barbaric tribe of aliens on the sixty-forth moon of Glit, said through her second mouth around several mouths worth of fangs, “A space puddle, oh my, how cute, and don’t you just absolutely love the way that gold coordinates with that gold?” She fluttered her eyes rapidly at the newest member of the counsel, a tall, dark man in a black suit.

He smiled kindly at her, and ran one of his four hands through his dark brown hair, “…Of course Madame Helain, I find it absolutely thrilling, but I think what the dear gentleman was trying to say, was that this thing doesn’t seem to be animate at all. As a matter of fact, I find that it doesn’t seem to have any qualities of intelligence at all, artificial, as was told us, or not. ‘Tis a shame really to waste all of our time coming here for nothing at all.

“By the way the name is Brond, Thames Brond.”

A jet black alien across the table suddenly sat upright across the table at the mention of the name, his jet black body almost completely invisible in the dark room, the only part of him that was visible was his glowing red eyes. He spoke in a smooth silky voice, “General Mooge, sir, it looks like I’m going to have to be going now. I, umm, have just noticed that the color black doesn’t complement this room at all. Good-bye, sir.”

He stood up and walked out into the hall.

Thames Brond followed him with his head, and watched him go, “Sir, unfortunately it looks as if I shall have to be going as well. Good-day.”

And, to everyone’s surprise, he briskly walked out into the hall, on his way out he lightly bumped into the cart, causing Quark’s liquefied matter to slosh to the right. The glass bottle he was in tipped over with a dull thud, and rolled off of the tray, shattering on the floor and spilling Quark all over the room.

Sparks immediately jumped from all of the power sockets to the liquefied metal. Quark, probably the most surprised one in the room, just barely kept himself from pouring down a floor vent. He looked about startled, where was he ? And what had happened? He suddenly realized that, miracle of miracles, he was standing on his feet! ‘Apparently,’ he thought to himself, ‘the intense voltage of the shock has realigned my molecules back to their original shape.’ He took a slightly wobbly step forward.

He had just noticed that there had been a slight splashing sound as he stepped forward, when all of the members of the galactic counsel let out a horrified gasp. He looked at them, somewhat mystified at the terrified looks on their faces as they stared at his waist.

He followed their gaze, and then scratched his head in puzzlement. Where his legs should have been was the table. He stumbled backward, his circuits humming with an intense sound of fright. Just then he realized that he was about to go off the back of the table, he threw his arms up to try to kept himself from falling off, but unfortunately he failed. He staggered backwards across the floor, and then realized what he had just done… he had staggered. His processors worked quickly, ‘If I can stagger I must have something under me, and if I have something under me and I am staggering upon it, or them, then they must be mobile.’ A look of brief understanding past over his face before he crashed through the wall and fell several thousand feet to the small planet floor.

~Thaillen (Josh)