sovay | And make soft keening noises while curled in the fetal position

I said last night to

derspatchel that I felt bad about having missed my usual Boxing Day fanfic for

handful_ofdust. (Previous entrants: "Lackadaisy Yontif," "Lackadaisy Optometry." I like Mordecai.) We talked a little about Yuletide.

derspatchel expressed his thankfulness that no one has ever slashed the characters of Red Shift, Interplanetary Do-Gooder, seeing as he had taken some pains when creating the show to avoid setting up romances for any of the cast. It was four in the morning and I had just gotten out of the shower when the obvious solution occurred to me.

We spent the afternoon at the orthopedic surgeon's; Rob was fitted with a nice matte black cast (so as not to clash with any of his costumes for A Man for All Seasons) and sent home with instructions on its care and feeding.

I spent the evening writing.

RED SHIFT, INTERPLANETARY DO-GOODER
in
THE RAVAGES OF RULE 34

NARRATOR: A crash of interstellar thunder!

SFX: CRASH OF INTERSTELLAR THUNDER

NARRATOR: A brilliant glow from hyperspace, fading from crimson to deep blue!

SFX: HYPERSPACE GLOW

MUSIC: "RED SHIFT THEME" UP AND UNDER

NARRATOR: Yes, it's the adventures of Red Shift, Interplanetary Do-Gooder, brought to you every week at this time by Cosmo-Flakes, the Breakfast of Humanoids! Remember to blast off each and every day the Red Shift way, with a big bowl of triple-grain Cosmo-Flakes.

MUSIC: "RED SHIFT THEME" OUT

MUSIC: "EVERY WEEK THEME" UP AND UNDER

NARRATOR: Once again, the Confederated Amalgamated Consolidated Biscuit and Gasket Company, the makers of Cosmo-Flakes, brings you the adventures of Red Shift, the stalwart defender of justice and fair play throughout the Milky Way Galaxy. Red is accompanied by his trusty mechanic Lumpy, the brilliant Earth scientist Dr. Alberts, and the intrepid Penny Parker, Girl Reporter. Let's join them now as they pilot the starways, searching for wrongs to right, evil plots to foil, and injustices to unjustify! It's time for Red Shift!

MUSIC: "EVERY WEEK THEME" OUT

NARRATOR: This week's exciting adventure finds our heroes in between exciting adventures. In the peaceful aftermath of the space holidays, the intrepid crew of the Recalcitrant are reading all the books that have come out since their last exciting adventure, streaming all the media an exciting adventure prevents a person from regularly following, and avoiding all use of the ansible for the transmission of thank-you cards.

RED SHIFT: Nice work, Lumpy! I see you've finished downloading the Jetpack Jones holiday special.

LUMPY: And it's the new showrunner, so Londinium-426 should remain un-demolished for another year. What've you got there, Penny?

PENNY PARKER: From Centaurus to Carina on 2 GB a Day. It's a blogger's guide. I figure until I hear back from Mr. Fairman about my weekly transmissions, I might as well keep my hand in with the local group.

DR. ALBERTS: And speaking of local groups, now that we've concluded our solstitial festivities, I'm going to take this opportunity to catch up on my technical journals.

SFX: POTTERING AROUND KIND OF NOISES—FOOTSTEPS, SPOON CLINKING IN MUG, DESULTORY RATTLE OF KEYBOARD. GIVEN DR. ALBERTS' WELL-DOCUMENTED AFFINITY FOR COMESTIBLES OF ALL KINDS, THE MUG OF TEA HE'S SITTING DOWN WITH IS NOT A STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION. GIVEN THE MATERIAL HE'S ABOUT TO READ, UNFORTUNATELY, THE SPIT-TAKE IS PROBABLY IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID

DR. ALBERTS: What in Schrödinger's box—

SFX: FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING—LUMPY'S, IN FACT

LUMPY: Oh, thank Ackerman, Doc, that was you. Red heard a persistent sputtering sound and thought it was solar radiation messing with the Radaroscope again.

DR. ALBERTS: (IS HAVING TROUBLE WITH NOUNS) That . . . I . . . We . . . There . . .

LUMPY: Boy, you really did a number on this screen. Fortunately, this old monitor's seen worse than Earl Grey in its time . . .

SFX: KEYBOARD RATTLE—DOC IS BRINGING A WINDOW BACK UP

LUMPY: . . . And that's worse than Earl Grey.

NARRATOR: And quicker than you can say "No exceptions"—

LUMPY: Penny, it's not that I don't respect you as a person, and I am sure that in some other place, some other time, we could have been something else to each other, but even under those circumstances I don't think that's what a sonic socket wrench is for.

PENNY PARKER: (TO DOC) How did you find this?

DR. ALBERTS: (NOUNS)

LUMPY: And I'm pretty sure penetration depth isn't a euphemism.

DR. ALBERTS: (NOUNS)

RED SHIFT: "RedHotShiftAdventures.com."

DR. ALBERTS: (HIS KINGDOM FOR A VERB) I wasn't looking at the URL!

PENNY PARKER: You put a Google Alert on your name, didn't you?

DR. ALBERTS: One is always—Curiosity is—I wanted to know if the news about my Award in Hexagonical Sciences had gotten back to the Research Institute, all right? We haven't even had a minisode since then; I was beginning to think it would never be mentioned again.

RED SHIFT: I understand, Doc. The desire to know that you've made a name for yourself in the world is a very sentient one. I'm just not sure any of us ever want that name to include quite so many entendres. (BEAT) The quintuple one is very impressive; good job there.

PENNY PARKER: This is worse than the time Lumpy wrote us all into his metafictional vacation.

LUMPY: I said you enjoyed that vacation! This is worse than the time we were a fully poseable action figure line.

DR. ALBERTS: No, no. This is worse than that fanart the Cuddlykins forwarded us after their third-season finale. (BEAT) And that was phylogenetically impossible.

RED SHIFT: (AFTER A MOMENT, CONCLUSIVELY) My torso has never bent that way.

PENNY PARKER: I don't think anyone's has. Not survivably, anyway.

RED SHIFT: Well, in the case of the Pouch People of Planet Liefeld . . .

LUMPY: (INTERRUPTING) Please tell me there aren't any crossovers on this site.

DR. ALBERTS: What there is is bad enough! I never exchanged two words with Prince Hahk of Sunaru, let alone mucus.

SFX: KEYBOARD RATTLE

LUMPY: I definitely didn't have that scene with Sergeant Retcon.

RED SHIFT: Actually, that could still happen.

PENNY PARKER: And everybody knows Bunny has a thing for Lumpy, not me and—brushing my hair!

RED SHIFT: It's a truism of the Do-Gooder life, Penny: it takes all kinds to make a world. And some of those kinds make their own worlds with other people. I admit, once the nature of this site was made clear to me, I was expecting that torrid affair with Violet Spektra.

LUMPY: Including the baby?

RED SHIFT: (BEAT) I wasn't expecting to carry it.

DOC, LUMPY: (TRADITIONAL WINCE GOES HERE)

PENNY PARKER: (TO LUMPY) What are you looking so aghast about? You've written enough Jetpackverse fic to condense a dwarf planet. (MUTTERED) And you back it up to the ship's cloud, I keep running across it when I'm just searching for "turquoise."

LUMPY: Yes, but if I were going to write myself a torrid affair, it would be with an original character! Someone enigmatic, alluring, and adventurous—untrammeled, yet vulnerable—who could see the potential in a modest yet brilliant engineer with an appealing streak of engine grease across his cheekbone, the kind a sentient being wants to smooth away with one or more of zir thumbs before taking a firm grip on his hair and pulling him just close enough to see whether their pupils dilate in the same direction. Not—people I see all the time.

SFX: THE QUIET AIR-RECYCLING HUM OF SUDDEN CONVERSATION DEATH

DR. ALBERTS: I am sure I should be offended by that, but as I seem to have exceeded my capacity to picture interpersonal carnal activity for the afternoon, I am going to lie down and read something where even the molecules don't form bonds. There must be some nice, restful publications about the vacuum state somewhere in this benighted innertube.

MUSIC: CLIFFHANGER MUSIC UP AND UNDER

NARRATOR: Will Doc achieve his holiday in a complete vacuum? Will Red stop wondering if the baby would have his eyes? Will Lumpy ever be able to look his sonic socket wrench in the face again? These and other questions may or may not be answered in the next exciting episode of Red Shift, Interplanetary Do-Gooder, where somebody might say . . .

DR. ALBERTS: Vacuum fluctuations, no, Casimir effect, no, spontaneous emission, no, no, no, no, no! (CALLING TO OTHERS) Do you think it would help if I just searched for "suck"?

NARRATOR: Or—

PENNY PARKER: Am I going to need an Adult Content Notice to recap this episode on my blog?

NARRATOR: Or—

LUMPY: Cheer up, Doc. Look, I worked out a diagram of that last scenario and if you allow for Dr. Orinzell's four arms, it is kind of hexagonical.

NARRATOR: And I'm your narrator, reminding you once again that Red Shift is brought to you by Cosmo-Flakes, the Breakfast of Humanoids. Cosmo-Flakes! We've crushed the dreams of small children, destroyed the livelihoods of our competitors, and the terms of the out-of-court settlement prevent us from saying what we've done to your digestion, but at least we've never wished you a happy Life Day. Goodnight, all!

JE NE REGRETTE RIEN.

And make soft keening noises while curled in the fetal position

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