My Crazy Hot Interstellar Affair

38. Woman Attacked by Homicidal Hummer

Andie had no sense of how long it took her to climb the elevator shaft rung by rung, the crackling pale yellow light flickering in and out of existence. All she knew was that her biceps and quads burned so badly she thought they might spontaneously combust. Painful blisters erupted like tiny unwanted volcanos on her palms. Without the "unitard of the future," the ascent wouldn't have even been possible.

To keep her mind off the pain, she ran through the items on her To Do list.

1. Find Oliver and save him from prison or the Space Kork dining room or brain reassignment or whatever punishment the Amu might have planned for their errant prince.

Andie nearly missed the next rung at the thought of Oliver's lovely, infuriating, brilliant brain being tampered with. Not on my watch!

2. Locate Sterling, probably from the 2010s neighborhood, and save her from an eternal life of eating anything she wanted and never getting fat and/or having sex with the most glamorous celebrities earth has ever conjured.

Suddenly reverse-abducting Sterling didn't sound as easy as Andie initially thought it would be. But no way could her friend prefer this phony existence to her life on earth. Right?

3. Secure a spaceship with the key in the ignition or the correct security clearance code taped to the windshield or whatever enabled someone to turn the thing on. Then hustle Sterling and Oliver on to the ship, and return to earth.

4. Somehow shut down the Star Enquirer's operations.

Andie really looked forward to this. Because getting rid of the Amu would be even better than getting a refund on your Federal tax return. Better than when a bank statement balances on the first try. Better than seats next to Chris Pine at the next Star Trek movie premiere on IMAX with a full orchestra accompaniment and a post-show fireworks extravaganza!

Well, maybe not better than that last one, but certainly better than the others.

"But not better than one of Oliver's mind-blowing kisses, which you will lose once you destroy his family's operation," Bad Andie muttered.

Andie swallowed hard. "Can you please not mention Oliver and mind-blowing in the same sentence right now? And I know what, or whom, I might have to give up. But I cannot allow the Amu to continue their abduction scheme. I have to stop them."

"Well, I suppose there's always Chris Pine."

"I don't want Chris Pine."

"Then why do you want to sit next to him at a Star Trek premiere?"

"I never said ..."

"You did!"

The benefit of arguing with Bad Andie was that before she knew it, Andie had reached the top rung, above which was what remained of the elevator box.

Carefully avoiding the broken glass, she stood on the top rung, praying it held, and gripped the top part of the frame. She heaved herself up, hands and feet balanced on the metal bar, like she used to do when she was a kid climbing monkey bars in the schoolyard.

Even though Tom Cruise must've recently traversed the quicksand-like substance, it was still there, magically plugging the hole to the lunar surface. It must restore itself after someone passes through, setting up for new victims. Strange that no one else had fallen into the chase scene trope for the entire 20 years Tom had been there. This meant that either the other inhabitants of the celebrity moon paid better attention than Andie, or the sinkhole was a trap made especially for her ... maybe to separate her from Oliver.