Pint-size Pineapples and a Great Big Cosmic Conundrum

A Shipment of Very Unexpected Pineapples

(Swearing warning)

Toxy arrived at his work station and struggled up onto the chair. He had a severe case of Short Person Denial Syndrome – SPDS was serious, and clinics had been set up, but he was in too much denial to admit that he needed help... which ironically was a key ingredient for him needing help in the first place. Instead of admitting that 3'2'' was maaaaybe at the shadowy perimeter of just a little on the short side, he'd opted for the belief that everybody else just had a pituitary problem, and he was the only one that was the right size. He wasn't short – the table was too high. The shelf had been put up too far up the wall. "Pint-size" was a secret workplace code-word for "bro". Yeah. Of course.

In any case, he'd made it. Nearly on time, too – three and a half minutes was a new record. His grandma had always been late too (it ran in the family, according to her, though maybe if she'd bothered to actually run at all, she wouldn't have been late all the time), but her philosophy was that it was okay to be late as long as you weren't "late for your own funeral".

Shame the pall-bearers had been caught in traffic, really.

He sank backwards into his seat. His legs didn't touch the floor – well, actually, they didn't even reach the edge of the seat. Talk about leg-room. He stretched forwards, his body at full capacity just to reach the "ON" button, when his eyes were violently assaulted by a flash of orange and pink that clashed in the most horrendous vision of tackiness in the known universe. Its tastelessness increased in frequency to form a single, horrific, tacky quantum singularity. It was so tacky it was almost beautiful. His tack created a tacky transductional matter curve fractal from the sheer force of his tackiness.

Toxy rolled his eyes fondly. That could only be Yaz Viva (character credited to @SarcasticSpaceBeing) who was the reason that orange could no longer be worn with pink, according to the official workplace dress code. It had been pushed through the intergalactic court and everything, but Yaz didn't really care – he ostentatiously wore every shade of pink and orange he could find, and whether it was to be a rebel or just because he had absolutely no taste whatsoever, Toxy had yet to find out.

He shook his head to clear his think-tank out (no, not his mind – a literal tank of Turiconian Thinking Fish that he kept under his desk) and booted up his Ventura Netscreen. The holographic news feeds buzzed into view. He dismissed them by swiping his finger through the air and tapped on the interweb. Back when Earth had a monopoly on this baby, it was the internet; but now that it spanned planets and galaxies alike, its web-pages and click-bait and tips for losing stubborn belly fat stretched all the way around to Andromeda. Everything was different – you could search for holidays in alternate planes of reality. You could research species reassignment surgery at the tap of a web-link. You could see what kind of Starbucks latte you'd be with Buzzfeed instead of doing your homework like you were supposed to.

Well, okay, some things had stayed the same.

He was just about to log in when a rattle from the next cubicle interrupted his thoughts. His antennae twitched with curiosity and he tried to lean around to see what was going on, but he couldn't see for the exact same reason he was always cast as the elf at corporate Christmas functions – he was, despite his protests and SPDS, only 3'2''.

"Pinot Noir is not made of peanuts," the Thinking Fish chanted ominously. Toxy ignored them.

He was just about to begin the dangerous dismount from his Burj Khalifa of a seat when a smug maelstrom of smart-ass energy whirled through the doorway and slammed him against the back of his chair through the sheer centrifugal force of its blow-hardness. Toxy groaned a quiet groan and rolled his eyes, his four pink pupils rolling so hard they almost entered an alternative echelon of existence.