: Prompting Needed_

Retrieval Duty

From Daily Quordle 374 (2/2/23): HAVOC, DEPOT, WINCH

Jabbish checked his clipboard again. The glyphs scrawled across the sheet read the same way they had moments ago before he had climbed through the portal. He glanced around with a groan. He had crawled out of a listing hatch door and into the wrong flaxing dimension.

In glaring contrast to the descriptions noted on the paper, he was not standing in a failing cryogenic shuttlecraft due for the moon of Titan in the Sol System. He was instead floating in the vacuum of space amongst a stunning array of havoc and wreckage that still had some of its lights working. All around him was the twinkling of various warning indicators and each one seemed to be in a mode of extreme distress. He paused then reached out to a shredded bar of hull reinforcement and swung around.

Wait.

From in the shadows of an alcove still intact enough to hide from the far-off sun, a smooth sheen of light glinted out and beckoned him to look closer. He pushed off the wreckage until he bumped into what looked like a recently disconnected cryogenic tube. The glass of the tube – now being illuminated by Jabbish's headlamp – was frosted over with trillions of tiny ice formations that seemed to be growing the longer he stared. He reached out with his soft hand and decided against the motion. If the glass was as cold as it looked, he was going to lose more skin than he reckoned on contact. He instead reached over his shoulder with his carapace-tipped claw and tapped at the ice. An intricate web of cracks first cracked then separated the ice into several plates of frost that spun lazily away from the glass. His headlight lit the inside of the tube.

Yep.

There, bound and gagged in his tube, was his package. He confirmed the name by comparing the translation of the sewn-on name tag on its jumpsuit to his clipboard. "Math-Eye-Yum", he said, though the vacuum around did little more than swallow the sound. His claw, still resting on the tube, clicked on the glass in a thoughtful pattern. His eyes swiveled in their sockets, his multifaceted orbs trying to find a prybar of some sort. The thickness of the tube's glass would more than likely be too stalwart to pierce using his claw. He was going to need force to crack this nut. His gaze settled on a winch whose hook and cable were beginning to form a metallic helix as it unspooled while it pirouetted.

Perfect.

He pushed off the tube and spiraled – rather gracefully, he thought – towards the winch and snagged the device, making sure to hug the cables in with it as he didn't want to drag the hook through the wreckage. His momentum carried him towards another large support bar, and he reached out with his leg to push off. He then cursed as his increased mass merely shoved the bar out of the way. His eyes spun wildly as his trajectory was altered too. His line of motion diverted heavily down and to his right. He finally found the alcove where the payload was as he drifted further from it. The pale sun backlit the mass of wreckage from its massive distance as he careened through the vacuum.

Blarmnits.

Jabbish held tight to the winch and the coils with his soft hand while twisting his head to glare down at its wrist. The chronometer there was softly lit as always with a wrapping line of glyphs that told him about his current place in the universe. He tapped the screen with his claw and the screen flipped over to the portal controls. One triple tap later and the fabric of spacetime rippled behind him, swallowing him into its elongated, starry tunnel. Seconds later, reality spat him out from the hatch he had crawled from minutes before, and he caught the edge with his claw. His limb wedged itself into the hinge of the door and he winced as his momentum was suddenly canceled by straining his back's joints.

That's gonna hurt worse in the morning.

He reoriented himself and then kicked off the hatch towards the tube. In moments after colliding with Math-Eye-Yum's celestial coffin, the winch's hook was secured on one of the supporting rods that ran horizontally around the tube. With another kick, he shot out back into the wreckage field. This time, he double tapped his chronometer and the device allowed him and the winch's mechanism to fall into spacetime. Slowly, he materialized back on the deck in the office's teleportation room and became aware of gravity pulling down once more. He engaged the winch's magnetic boots and slapped it onto the floor. The cord from the device was held taut through the portal that was rimmed on this side of things by the twin yellow and black safety pylons.

"Hey, guys!" he yelled to the workers in the paradox depot. A couple of eyes on stalks rose above the partition to look at him. "Are you the only one in there, Frank?"

"Yeah," came a morose, phlegm-filled reply. "Double duty today."

Jabbish put his hand on his hip. "Where's Kek-r'authu?"

"Retired."

"No shit?"

"No shit."

"Huh." Jabbish shook his head in wonder. Where had eighteen centuries gone? "Well, anyway... watch this!" He raised one foot and slammed it down on the lever that set the spool within the winch to rapidly wind forward. The cord hummed then snapped up once with a sharp twang that echoed through the eddies of the portal. The winch started to groan as the force of the gears within pulled mightily on the hook attached to the tube back in the space wreck. It only took two more seconds for the machine to come through as the spool began to spin quicker with a speed that made Jabbish begin to worry. He took three skipping steps backwards just as the tube and a potentially deadly spray of craft detritus were flung through the portal and into the teleportation room.

BLARMNITS!

The tube sailed over the winch just as the hook snapped off the support rod and it slammed into the far wall. Glass shattered and twinkled through the air as jagged ends of metal and polymer peppered the dark concrete wall as well.

"Holy hell," Frank said from behind him. He had to well to be heard over the echoing of the crash and the screaming of the winch. "Good thing it was already dead. It was dead, right, Jab?"

Jabbish shrugged as he walked over to the wreckage. The winch, only just then registering its load had been disconnected, shut off with a mechanical shudder. "Pretty sure, yeah." There was a small 'whoofing' sound as if the room itself exhaled. The spacetime rift sealed itself, leaving behind a few piles of steaming, brown goo. Jabbish pointed to the mess. "Paradox resi. Sorry."

"It's my lot in this life," the giant snail muttered. He slithered out from behind the wall and began to approach the goo, a dust pan in one small tentacle and a large straw in the other.