STILL DAY 1
[SLEEP CYCLE 1]

autolycus tossed and turned in his space sheets. He was sort of a light sleeper, and once something had woken him up during the night, it was very difficult for him to get back to sleep. And even though it was technically still daytime, this sleep cycle was no exception. Some sort of metal clanking outside of his quarters had jolted him awake a few hours ago, and he hadn’t been able to fall asleep.

It was ridiculous. The G. S. Galactic Chutzpah was a spaceworthy vessel, and of course there were going to be metal parts clanking around during the sleep cycle. If the mechanical parts only clanked when he was awake, the spaceship would surely sink beneath the galactic waves while they slept, and they would all get eaten by a GIANT SPACE WHALE like their crewmate Zaccino, immortal had.

Nonetheless, autolycus decided he wouldn’t be getting back to sleep any time soon, so he decided to go get a midnight snack. The pantry was always well-stocked with Space Cake and that stuff that looks like toothpaste but tastes like beef or carrots or broccoli depending on what color it was for such an occasion. He shuffled down the dark hallway, only lit by a blue light strip on the floor during sleep cycles.

When he got to the pantry, he opened up the Space Refridgeration Device and his mouth began to water. He quickly got himself a nice big slice of Space Cake and a tall glass of Space Milk, fresh from the Space Cows on planet Omicron-4, and looked for a seat at one of the many tables in the cafeteria.

To his surprise, he found one of the tables already occupied by a Cadet with a bowl and a spoon, noisily crunching away, so he decided to across from his fellow insomniac for some company. It was dark, and he couldn’t see his crewmate’s face, but he tried to be conversational all the same.

“So, what kind of cereal you got there, pal?”

His companion said nothing, but looked up from his bowl to stare straight into autolycus’ eyes with his own. autolycus noted that the eyes were glowing bright red and seemed to have no pupils, and that freaked him out just a little bit, but he decided to try and keep things from getting awkward.

“Say, from over here it kinda sounds like you’re eating batteries and nuts and bolts or something. Ehehehe… and probably washing it down with motor oil, from the looks of it. Heh… pretty stupid, huh?”

The other Cadet continued to glare at autolycus as he chuckled awkwardly. autolycus took a sip of his Space Milk to try to break the confrontation. Then he noticed that the other Cadet’s bowl was filled with a considerably darker fluid than the one in the glass in his hand. At this point he started to realize something was truly wrong, and tried to get up.

Before he could move, a metal hand slammed his wrist into the table, pinning him. autolycus struggled, but it was no use. He was stuck good now. His companion extended his neck far longer than a normal neck should be able to extend, right up against autolycus’ face. A sadistic, metallic grin stretched across his cold face. Then he spoke.

“OH, IT’S REALLY QUITE DELICIOUS. YOU SHOULD TRY SOME.”

“N-no, that’s all right, I wouldn’t want to steal it from you. S-see, I’ve got this cake right here-”

“I’M AFRAID I MUST INSIST. THE TASTE IS SIMPLY TO DIE FOR.”

And with that, the menacing creature pushed the bowl of batteries, nuts , and bolts in motor oil over to his side of the table. autolycus tried to knock it away with his free hand, but another metal hand came crashing down onto that one. Then a third metal hand popped out of the creature’s stomach and picked up the spoon. As the spoon picked up some delicious nuts and bolts, autolycus held his mouth shut tight.

“OPEN WIDE. HERE COMES THE CHOO CHOO TRAIN.”

When autolycus did not open his mouth, the hand thrust the spoon into his mouth, smashing all of his front teeth. autolycus gagged and sputter on the mixed taste of motor oil and his own blood.

“MAKE SURE TO CHEW THOROUGHLY BEFORE YOU SWALLOW.”

Two more hands stretched out and gripped his skull and lower jaw, and forced him to chew hard on the various metal bits in his mouth. It was more difficult with less teeth, and he began to lose those pretty quickly. A couple of times he got shocked by cracking open a battery.

“NOW SWALLOW.”

When the demonic creature offered another spoonful, autolycus had no choice but to swallow the first. So it continued until autolycus had finished the whole bowl. Then the creature tilted the bowl up and made him slurp down the rest of the motor oil. autolycus had passed out from the pain and toxins in his body long before then. When the hands released him, he dropped to the floor like a corpse. Grinning his metallic grin, the creature got up to leave the room.

“AH. NOTHING LIKE A MIDNIGHT SNACK.”

---

Like autolycus, Askthepizzaguy rarely slept, though for entirely different reasons.

Perpetually sleep-deprived, Askthepizzaguy spent his every waking hour down in the Space Gameroom in a zombie-like trance, either playing games or designing new ones of his own. He was constantly designing new games – games of all genres. He loved games. Some of his crewmates might have said that pizza was his thing, but they would be wrong. Games were his thing. Games were all of his things, ever.

But there was one game that Askthepizzaguy was particularly enamored with, and it was called Space Mafia. He had found an archive of it in an old, decrepit computer in a fallen building on the ruined world Zepchakis-Lefferon. To this day, he still had no idea what the “Mafia” part really meant, but he assumed it had something to do with a bunch of guys running around at night in silly hats and shooting people with their Laser Tommyguns. For some reason, the rest of the players of Space Mafia always wanted to kill these guys, and he had assumed it was because they kept shooting them with their Laser Tommyguns. This, Askthepizzaguy felt, was a reasonable assumption.

At the moment, Askthepizzaguy was reading a particularly engaging account of Space Mafia that boasted of Pirates, Ninjas, Robots, and Zombies, whatever those were. What intrigued him was that this account, at a glance, seemed remarkably similar to the situation that the crew of the Galactic Chutzpah was in at the moment. At his current point in the log, the crew members were about to name the spaceship they were on. Askthepizzaguy couldn’t wait to see what they would call it.

Which is why he was pretty annoyed when he heard some scratching and a groaning sound at the door to the Space Gameroom. Someone had probably forgotten to let the Space Dog out again before going to sleep. And when they did, it always fell upon Askthepizzaguy to let old Sparkplug out to do his space business.

When Askthpizzaguy opened the door, however, it was not a whining metal dog waiting for him, but a shambling, rotting Space Cadet. Askthepizzaguy was about to tell him he should probably get that checked out when his crewmate lurched forward and bit down into his shoulder, tearing off a huge chunk of flesh as he lifted his head back up.

“AAAAAAAAAAAHHH! I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, oh for Pete’s sake just LOOK at all this blood! Hey, wait a minute… this reminds of a game I hosted that one time…”

But there was no time to stop and think about it, because the rotting Cadet was reeling up for another bite. Askthepizzaguy hopped away just in time, and the creature tripped and fell forward onto the floor. Then, clutching at his shoulder, Askthepizzaguy had another, even more potent thought.

“I have to see...”

He muttered under his breath as he went back over to the console he had been sitting at. Looking at the log, he scrolled all the way down to the first sleep cycle of the game, noting with a little bit of giddy excitement the GIANT SPACE WHALE attack at the end of the ship-painting. Then, after a second or two, he found it. He found the place in the script where it says “Then, after a second or two, he found it.” And scrolling further downward, he SQUEEE’d with delight at what was to happen next.

“It’s happening, it’s happening! I can’t believe it! It predicts the FUTURE! The SPACE FUTURE!”

And Askthepizzaguy was so enraptured with the log of Pirate Ninja Robot Zombie Mafia in SPACE that he completely forgot about the creature crawling across the floor to him, which he now recognized clearly as the Zombie. Even as the Zombie began tearing at his legs his eyes remained glued to the screen.

It was just so awesome he couldn’t look away from it. But it wasn’t his own death scene he was reading.

It was the scene directly afterwards.

---

The Zombie grabbed the table to steady himself after his meal. Askthepizzaguy had truly been a choice piece of meat, and he was glad that he had chosen him tonight. Sucking his brains out with a straw had been just the dessert he needed to wash it all down, and the man had not been lacking in the brains department. Next time, he decided to pour the brains over ice first. That would give new meaning to the word “brain-freeze”.

As the Zombie got ready to make the long, shambling walk back to his quarters, however, he noticed a dark figure standing in the doorway.

How had he not heard this one coming? Sure, his hearing ability had not exactly improved since his ear drums started rotting, but he still should have been able to hear anyone approaching on these hard metal decks.

Before he could move, the dark figure drew a long, thin blade. It shined in the darkness and reflected light off of the intruder’s eyes, the only part of his body that was visible. Then the figure spoke.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Memnon.”


The Ninja continued to taunt his adversary.

“This is quite a feast you’ve had here… I’m kind of insulted you didn’t invite me.”

Then the Ninja lunged forward and sliced Memnon’s left arm clean off his festering body. The severed limb fell to the ground with a grotesque squelch.

“You might even say… I’m on the verge of flipping out.”

And suddenly, the rage contained within the Ninja was too much for him to withhold, and he really did start to flip. With a blood-curdling war cry, he flung the katana straight into the Zombie’s gut, where it stuck. Then he pulled out a pair of nunchucks and started flailing them around wildly in all directions, screaming the whole time.

Luckily for the Zombie, the wooden nunchucks were nowhere near as deadly to him as the katana had been. Sharp things could slice off body parts, as he had just recently experienced. Blunt trauma was much easier for him to endure. The Zombie shambled steadily forward through the barrage of blows, pushing the Ninja onto the defensive. Sharp Zombie claws raked at the Ninja’s body, which managed to tear his clothing but not to significantly harm him. All the same, the Ninja began to flip out even more at the defacement of his awesome stealth gear.

The Ninja was flipping out so badly that he grabbed the Zombie’s arm and just tore it straight out of its socket. Then he tried to beat the Zombie with his own arm. What he didn’t expect was for the arm to fight back. It reached over and grasped him by the neck, holding him in place. The owner of the arm cackled a gurgling death rattle as he stumbled ever forward. His other arm had crawled its way over to the Ninja’s feet, tangling him up down there as well. Just a few more seconds and Memnon would be close enough to take a bite… then his enemy would be finished, whether he killed the Zombie first or not.

But Ninjas, of course, are blindingly fast, even when they are flipping out. With his free hand, the Ninja grasped his katana, still lodged in the Zombie’s stomach, and wrenched it upward with all of his might, slicing Memnon’s chest and face clean in two. With its brain and nervous system destroyed, all the Zombie body parts fell to the ground, limp.

The Ninja then proceeded to break every computer in the Space Gameroom, rendering it unusable for the near future. By then, he had calmed down somewhat, so he left.

---

YES, STILL DAY 1
[WAKE CYCLE 2]

When the Space Cadets all woke up and gathered again in the Meeting and Bingo Room, a role call revealed they were three less than they were 48 hours previous. A search of the ship turned up three bodies, one of them already rotting. The Captain was not pleased.

“This is unacceptable behavior from one of our Space Cadets, and it cannot be allowed to continue. You must find the culprit who did this. It pains me to say it, but I will have to place the guilty Cadet in Space Jail.”

The Cadets all gasped in unison. Not Space Jail! There was no describing the sorts of horrors that went on in that place. Nobody wanted to go to Space Jail. But they agreed that, as far as this on-board life-borrower was concerned, better him in Space Jail than the rest of them dead. Especially if he was borrowing their lives without permission, and wasn’t planning to return them. That would be almost like stealing.

“So get voting on that. Oh, and I almost forgot. Our original course was slated for the nearby Asteroid Belt, but it’s said that GIANT SPACE WHALES have tubs full of Uranium in the caves back on their home planets big enough for them to bathe in. That’s how they can swim through space. And that’s a LOT of Uranium. I’ll leave it to a vote: choose whether to follow the GIANT SPACE WHALE or to continue to the Asteroid Belt.”

---

Alive: 24/28
Arjos
atheotes
BSmith
classical_hero
Choxorn
Csargo
DaveShack
Double A
dcmort93
edse
Greyblades
Jarema
Jolt
Major Robert Dump
Montmorency
robbiecon
SalmonSoil
Seon
The King
Thefluffyone93
wideyedwanderer
woad&fangs
Visorslash
Xehh II


Not Alive: 4/28
Zaccino - Space Cadet - Immortal, but eaten by a Space Whale
autolycus - Space Cadet - Bit off more than he could chew
Askthepizzaguy - Space Cadet - Died in madness having seen the future
Memnon - Zombie - Together he stood, divided he fell

The Space Cadets' Reserve
johnhughthom
Ironside