Astra Zartraxx: Humorous Space Adventurer

Cross-Referencing a Good Time

The Dark Light drifted into Gertral's space, shining brightly with flashy lens flares and sparkles, courtesy of some aesthetic 'improvements' Astra had added. It drifted into orbit around the local planet.

Astra smiled, carefully adjusting his clothes and setting their appearance for party-mode, causing the morphomaterial to instantly adjust itself. For Astra this meant bright, clashing colours and, for some reason, a fake parrot on his shoulder. He bounded down some stairs on his way to the ship's teleporter.

"See ya later, Sen!" he shouted through a doorway.

Sienna rolled her eyes at the computer integration module before her, reflecting that she could finally get some work done while Astra was away. She just hoped he wouldn't call on her to work out the bill, like he did last time. Or the time before that, when he wanted her to tell him the measurements of the pole dancers. Or before that, when he forgot how to call her and called her to explain how to call her, thereafter calling her to work out the cost of losing a bet about some strippers' measurements.

She sighed, and concentrated on what she was doing.

"See ya later, Sen!" Astra's voice called from door, as he barrelled past in the other direction.

Sienna counted to five before she heard him coming past again, ad quickly cut him off, "Bye Astra, have fun."

Astra leveled a smile at her, "Thanks babe, good to know you care!"

Sienna growled, but relaxed again as she heard the teleporter activating. She worked in blissful silence for five minutes, before hearing the teleporter again. She frowned, thinking Astra couldn't be back yet if there was alcohol involved.

Seconds later, Astra tumbled through the door looking rather dishevelled. The parrot on his shoulder was set at a jaunty angle, its feathers ruffled and sparse. Astra's cheeks were shining red, and blotches of lipstick were scattered over his face. His hair had been flattened and parted into a much neater style than he usually wore it, and a number of sweets were stuck to his clothes.

"Hey Sen, wrong party!" he said brightly, before pulling himself together and heading back up to the bridge. Sienna listened closely to what happened next.

"Ship's computer!" Astra called.

"Yes, sir! You look even better than you did previously sir!" The slightly synthesized voice responded happily. Sienna made a face and stuck her tongue out.

"I always look better than I previously did, ship's computer! Now set a course for the festival with the highest alcohol content that doesn't consist of old ladies and gin!"

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Astra drifted forwards, his sleek space suit effortlessly traversing the bar with its innovative momentum-shift module. He raised his auto-glass and set it to Dorlexian  gutcruncher cocktail before sweeping it through the massive cloud of alcohol around him. The bar's antennae relayed the necessary ingredients to the auto-glass as it synthesised the drink. Astra grinned his most striking grin as he lifted the drink through the stabiliser field around his head, downing it in one gulp. Then, grin still in place, he drifted over to a nearby Slartin whose yellow head tentacles had tickled his fancy, and would hopefully tickle much more.

The bar Astra had graced his presence with was an advanced technological establishment situated within a vast cloud of alcohol, currently enjoying it's opening night. Patrons wore suits that would allow them to move safely through the frozen wonder while still enjoying the wonderful drinking, laughter and comraderie that bars are typically meant to facilitate. 

The bar in question was the Gunfarthel Klack Ack'Nebar, which translated to 'Hah, enjoy your useless, poisonous ethyl-cloud, foolish trader', a name whose origin has sadly been lost to history... Luckily, scholars of the massive university system in Faldo 732 had created a device for listening into parts of history for just such an unfortunate loss.

The device, the answer to history's enigmas, was aptly named Oracle.The construction of Oracle had been a complex and lengthy undertaking,  forced to span multiple dimensions in the quest to find acceptable domains in which parts of it could be built. 

For instance, the Jirlallian Squee Lypanizer had to fold around itself twice in negative time to work, with, for some reason, a bell attached to it. Naturally, negative time doesn't exist in most dimensions, so the researchers had to build the Lypanizer in dimension 80aH085, which conveniently allowed objects to fold around themselves, as well as having the necessary negative time. The bell was provided by our own dimension.

The device was initially to be used as a window into the universe's greatest moments, to answer great questions and to reclaim the lost socks of truth from the washing machine of history. However, on the day of assembly, a highly experimental focusing device was found to be missing. Upon tracing down the newly formed Department of Experimental Accuracy which was  responsible for its construction, the university council found that the whole faculty had been caught in an unfortunate pseudo-spatial event, transforming them all into pugs with miniature graduation gowns and beards.

This nearly spelled the end of the scholars ground-breaking work, until an old janitor passing by pointed out that there were perfectly capable focusing devices in existence in our very dimension, and that the university wasted huge amounts of money on weird devices and new faculties that simply got themselves killed or trapped in other dimensions or, you know, transduced or I don't know, what have you, but guess who has to clean it up afterwards for minimum wage, eh? Go on, guess?

One raise in salary and an express order later, and the university had their hands on a brand new Palirtil sub-atomic, phase-structured, mega-processor reprogrammed for focusing work and ready to be installed.

The brave minds of Faldo 732 held their breath as they activated Oracle, and were overjoyed when the device flashed and beeped into life (unnecessary flashing and beeping, but added for the effect). The joy, however, was short lived. The focusing device was not powerful enough to find specific events within the entirety of history throughout the universe in all known and unknown dimensions, but only to randomly trawl specific dimensions. 

Not ones to waste opportunity, the university council stuck the Oracle in an accelerated time capsule. The capsule caused time to pass at an astonishing rate, one hundred years for every one that passed outside of it. They then proceeded to hire a slew of people, luring them in with promises of luxury for the rest of their lives if they were willing to monitor the oracle and record the rare occasions when it happened to find an event in history.

The end result of this is that we now know the origin of Gunfarthel Klack Ack'Nebar. It was simply the name of a band the trader who bought the cloud had started, but had quickly failed when the drummer ran off with the lead singer's girlfriend. Oracle has provided many such insights into the universe, a truly magical device indeed.

Author's note: Votes and comments always appreciated:)