The Final Countdown - Season I

Episode 3: Part 4: Coffee Fluid

Previously on The Final Countdown...

A big red button has just been pushed. I can't even pause long enough to explain how we got up to this point. I'm way too excited. Or nervous. Maybe it's just gas.

The jumble of scrap flew across the room and landed in a heap at the foot of Ronnie's chair.

"Don't take my chair, dammit!" Ronnie squawked. 

In typical broken-down-spaceship-with-our-heroes-in-dire-peril fashion, the captain's console screamed out a piercing alarm just as things heated up with the jumble of scrap. 

"Fancypants!" Venti launched herself from one side of the yurt to the other with balletic grace. She stared at the screen and her eyes went wide. "You might want to take a look at this!"

The captain tore his eyes away from the scrap heap, which was really, REALLY difficult, seeing as how the scrap was now clanking together and beginning to look like a slightly-more-organized pile of scrap. He soared across the yurt, much less gracefully than Venti, and only just grabbed onto the edge of his chair before he smashed into the wall.

"Whoa, I almost pulled a Ronnie!" Fancypants wheezed.

"Hey, what the Hell does that mean?" Ronnie bawled. "'Pull a Ronnie?' That should mean 'saved the day' or 'fought a grizzly bear with my bear hands' or 'drank Firestarter cinnamon whiskey for three days straight and still aced my MCATs!' Not 'crashed into the side of stupid space yurt!'"

The piercing alarm gave Fancypants and Venti a perfect excuse to ignore Ronnie. It was so hard otherwise.

"Damn!" Fancypants punched his fist into the open palm of his other hand for dramatic effect. "Life support's down to 50%! We have to get this ship moving!"

Venti shook her head. "One: don't punch your hand like that, EVER again. Two: why does life support require movement? That sounds like really terrible design to me."

Fancypants frowned and punched his hand again, this time so hard he winced. "Part of the ship's propulsion system is blood, and blood needs to move to be effective. Keep up, Venti."

Ronnie bellowed like a beached manatee and pointed down at the scrap heap, which was no longer scrappy, nor heapy, in any way.

"There's a girl here!" Ronnie brayed. "Here, there's a girl!"

The scrap heap had built itself into the lovely form of a shapely woman, albeit a shapely woman with a giant hole where her intestines would have gone. Fancypants clapped his hands and raced over to his creation.

"Java's a woman?" Venti sneered. "Of course she is."

Fancypants grimaced and shook his shaggy head. "No, no, it's not like that!"

Ronnie grinned. "Then what's it like, huh? Why'd you build a hot girl robot?"

"I didn't..."

"Yes, you did, Fancypants!" Venti's eyes flashed dangerously. "You built a hot girl robot to keep you company on your space trip! You knew this was going to happen, so you built yourself a little friend if I didn't come along didn't you?" Venti crossed her arms in front of her chest, her left eyebrow sky high.

"But...I just...it's not...hold on a second! This'll explain everything!"

Fancypants grabbed the Java box and reached inside. He pulled out what looked like a standard, run-of-the-mill coffee carafe and shoved it into Java's intestine gap. Java's left eye glowed green, so Fancypants pressed it. A strange bubbling noise erupted from Java's guts, and a few moments later, the carafe was full of steaming, delicious coffee.

Java's eyes glowed red, and the whole robot came to life.

"Hey, bitches." 

Java was a baritone.

"Sentient coffee beans!" Fancypants explained, as if what he was saying was the most logical thing ever since 1+1 was determined to equal two. "High energy, quick-thinking, sentient coffee beans!"

"I gotta take a shit," Java said. "I've been cooped up in that box for weeks!"

"I think I'm in love," Ronnie cooed.

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