Foston Slacks - Time's Flies

28

The bunk was considerably uncomfortable. Even more so as the ship continued to receive a battering from some unknown outside source. Unknown, that is, to Clara and Foston. Foston sat with his legs crossed at the ankles, hugging his knees to his chest and riding each violent shake with the expertise of a surfer on a particularly turbulent ocean. Clara fell about like a cuddly toy tossed around by an overexcited puppy.

"Can you, at least, tell me why ..." She paused as the entire ship shook again, reaching out with a hand to stabilise herself. "... we keep meeting different versions of me? Is it Time, is the petty, little penised git playing games with me, or what?"

"Well, here's the thing ..." Another shake and Clara fell from the bunk for the fourth time. Maybe the fifth. Meanwhile, Foston swayed a little. "... in any other circumstance, the chances of one person meeting another is dependant upon several factors. You know, the usual. Proximity, population density, number of possible locations, how much change you receive from a ten pound note, etcetera. These things can be quantified. However, when an infinite universe is taken into account, multi-multiple iterations of each universe considered and then multiplied exponentially by timelines bifurcating at an alarmingly regular rate and not even considering different realities and meta-realities, the chances, while utilising Breaches, of meeting oneself are so close to one to one that trying to implicate outside interference in such possibilities becomes almost a moot point."

"You don't know, do you?" Clara gripped the rough bed sheet in both hands and tried, gainfully, to return herself onto the bunk.

"Haven't got a clue. Sounds about right, though, doesn't it?" Foston closed his eyes as if enjoying a pleasant day on the beach.

"I don't know, either. I stopped listening after 'here's the thing'." She managed to clamber back onto the bunk when the entire ship lurched downwards. Then the ship lurched to the side. Then it lurched upwards, leaving Clara on the opposite side of Foston, feeling sick. "You know, in the tv shows and movies, they just sort of topple to the side when this happens. I don't think I can take much more of this."

"Not to worry. I'm sure everything will work out fine before long." Foston opened his eyes and smiled at Clara in that completely not-comforting fashion he liked to use when everything was absolutely not working out fine. "It usually does."

"Abandon ship!" The speakers squawked into life, the tune of 'La Cucaracha' playing as an alarm in the background.

Foston slipped from the bunk, adjusted his shirt cuffs, smoothed down the fur on his head and stood, swaying, before the electrified force-field. The lights in the brig flickered, blinked out, came back on far too brightly for human eyes, flickered again and then everything went dark. A second later, red emergency lighting switched on and Clara noticed the force-field no longer crackled at the doorway to their cell.

He turned, winked at Clara and moved out into the main brig area, pulling open a drawer and taking out his watch. He took great care in returning it to his wrist and sighed before reaching into the drawer again and pulling out Clara's bulging handbag. He held it out for her with a smug smile.

"Don't even begin to tell me you were expecting this to happen." She grabbed the handbag and slipped the strap over her head, wearing it across her chest. "It was just a coincidence. One of those coincidences that was bound to happen."

"Of course I didn't expect it to happen." He waggled a finger as he began to walk towards the exit of the brig. "And it wasn't coincidence, either. It was a matter of abstract providence."

"Providence? Like a gift from god?" Foston walked straight out into the hallway while Clara looked out of the brig doorway with far more caution.

"Abstract providence!" The ship began to list and Foston adjusted his walk appropriately. Clara stumbled and fell and windmilled her way after him. "Something somewhere (no, not Time, but, maybe, time) gave us this opportunity. Let's not waste it. Escape pods are this way."

He walked confidently, at an angle, down a side corridor. Turned elegantly on his heel and walked the other way pretending he hadn't made a silly mistake. The list of the ship started to become more pronounced. So pronounced, Clara could imagine it forcing its lips into awkward shapes to get the pronunciation correct.

A little further along that hallway, they found a red, rotating bulkhead light above a door, conveniently waiting open for them. A sign beside the door stated 'Emergency Escape Pod - Military Personnel Only!' in large letters. Beneath those words, smaller letters read 'Prisoners, Robots, Non-Mammalian Life Forms Use Aft-Section Torpedo Tubes'. Clara decided that that sign could go screw itself and pushed past Foston into the escape Pod, which was larger than she expected.

"Stop right there, separatist scum!" A familiar voice called from outside the escape pod. Clara groaned and watched as Derek's nose appeared followed, eventually, by Derek and Daphne, both pointing their little death pens at her and Foston. "And, can I say, the exclamation mark there was to indicate an order, not for any inappropriate hatred or anything. I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all, old chap. Needs must." Foston held out his arms wide and welcoming, stretching from beyond one side of the escape pod doorframe to past the other.

"It"s just that, not only are you prisoners, and, therefore, absolutely not allowed in any escape pods under any circumstances, but that escape pod is for senior staff only. Like me. Sorry Daphne." He gave Daphne a sorrowful look, then returned his focus to Foston. "I mean, if it was me, of course you could come along. It's just there's really only enough room for two senior staff members."

"No there isn't!" Clara shouted from inside the escape pod. "There's loads of room."

"No!" Derek grimaced, glaring at Foston and jerking his head in the direction of Daphne. Daphne didn't seem to care, only staring with an ill-disguised look of a hunter facing its prey. "There isn't!"

"There really is!" Clara offered, opening her arms wide to show off the inside of the escape pod. Derek couldn't see that, of course, his view blocked by the disturbingly calm Foston.

"No! There bloody well isn't! Look, are you going to come out of that escape pod? We have mere seconds left before the ship blows up and I do not want my only chance of survival stolen by separatist scum! And, yes, the exclamation point was deliberate!" Derek positively shook with unfettered fury. The death pen he held wavered between Foston's face, his chest and his nethers.

Throughout this, Foston remained, and Clara could not believe this for a single second, silent. He only smiled in a way that Clara had only seen on the faces of gamblers that knew, for an absolute certainty, that their opponent had, indeed, been bluffing this whole time, after putting every penny in the pot and the keys to their house and car, and simply was not aware of the four aces that the gambler held in their hand. The kind of calm smile that usually preceded several people losing various body parts in those old Japanese Samurai movies.

Derek was having none of this, of course, his nose positively wiggling in anger.

"Right! Daphne! Shoot them!" He stepped back, waving Daphne forward. "Shoot them now and get to your torpedo tube when your done."

Daphne stepped forward, aiming the death pen at Foston. At that exact second, as if by abstract providence, explosions began tearing through the ship. The sound of air being sucked into the vast blackness of space reached their ears. An explosion occurred a little down the hallway, causing both Daphne and Derek to turn in trepidation at their impending doom.

"Toodle-oo." Foston grinned as he pressed the escape pod launch button.

The door closed in an instant, cutting Daphne's hand off at the wrist. The hand landed at Foston's feet and he bent down to take the death pen from the fingers, placing it in his pocket as the escape pod engines pushed the entire pod away from the exploding ship at an incredible rate.

Clara stepped up to the window in the escape pod door and watched as the ship disintegrated in a series of blue-ish, orange-ish, purple-ish flames, two bodies floating away into the inky blackness. One of them without a hand. Clara knelt down to look at Daphne's hand and admired the manicure, jumping back when the hand moved.

"Oh, don't worry about that." Foston picked up the hand, turning the wrist towards Clara, showing a network of wires inside. "Only a robot. I'll get this sorted out."

"Right." Clara shivered at the still moving hand. "Which bedroom do want? The port side is bigger and has a hot tub, but the starboard side has a bath, a shower and his and hers sinks?"