It was the year 29587340985634907632095340673245683244623959234763286236 and, waving to the offical paparazzi as instructed, a trio of spacepricks descended the ramp from the operations building to the idling van destined for the launchpad. All three spacepricks swaggered but only one inartfully. He was the party who carried with him in his spaceluggage the extra set of spacegarb colored the way the Powerful criminalized.
As the vehicle trundled along the planet Tresillyion, and as in the closing distance the spacerocket increased in height, the other two spacepricks did spacepractices involving sextants and sequences. The third clutched the overhead safety bar and tried not to toss up the cookies he'd stuffed his face with the night before. In a series of shenanigans, he'd used the spacedoctors' anger about his face-stuffing, and their sending him to the medical bay for atypicals, to shuffle into his spaceluggage the illicit spacegarb. "Level with us," the spaceKGB torturers had asked some spaceplace in his auditory processing, as he'd executed complicated plot moves in the restroom while pissing out of his quite conventional male genitals. "Are you a faggot?"
Slowing, the van neared the launchpad. To Mr Sequence, Mr Sextant described how skillfully he could button-press different sequences; to Mr Sextant, Mr Sequence described how skillfully he could -- his dumbphone rang out Nokia Tune.
As it turned out, the call was for Mr Sextant. He took the rotary phone off its yellowed cradle. "Yes, dear."
"You are not allowed to go to sea," Mrs Sextant said, as Mr Sextant swallowed his exasperation carefully. "You have to live exactly here. In Dallas. Come home. Now."
Across their lifelongingly mortaged ranch-style home, Young Glenn Sextant, on puberty's cusp, awoke into the night. He crawled to the kitchen, opened a cabinet, and removed his go-bag with the unusually unstickered laptop and mortifyingly colored clothes. Equipped, he opened the front door and parachuted out into the Indus Valley Civilization.
Dinosaurs greeted him. A stegosaurus informed him that sadly, there was no place to plug in his laptop. The battery was dying, so he'd have to watch the pirated file of the movie Hidden Figures in another universe. He looked around for Tyrannosaurus Propangdex, worrying it might be he.
Into the ocean he went to palaver with Actually Powerful primordial eukaryotes. They said something axiomatic, as old as the hills now covered, the Shakesillyian spaceprick saw as he gazed down -- the launchpad elevator was rising -- with unethical cottage industries bellowing up smoke.
The launchpad elevator completed its climb. As he exited the elevator, the silly spaceprick suddenly -- perhaps predictably -- panicked. Did he, in fact, remember to bring the reflagged clothes? Toward the spacecapsule he walked the plank. Ring, rang, rung went his unpatched smartphone. His girlfriend! As the paparazzi official and unofficial tele-boom-zoomed, she murmured something encouraging. Into the ears of history he blurted uniquely: "What a babe!" Startled at what he assumed was thoughtcrime, he dropped the smartphone (it floated down gently like a health-improving potion from a spacegame spacedivinity).
He wished he could better comport himself. But it was time to contort himself, right into the spacecapsule.
This is the draft version of my flash fiction for Week Eleven of this year, self-published on 20 March 2022.
Please see douglaslucas.com/fiction/flash2022 for information about this flash fiction series of mine, its international 4.0 BY-NC-SA Creative Commons licensing, how to send me comments and all the moneys, etc.