Stranded (or 'Thoughts on Colliding')

It was broken. Beyond repair, Number One said. The word among the crew was that there “wasn’t a hope”. Number Two observed the ship, now mostly visible amongst the trees. Since the crash the cloaking device had been gradually losing power and now any curious rambler or UFO nut would have to try very hard not to see it.

After realizing that the ship was beyond repair many of the crew, now at something of a loose end, had taken to analysing their records of the planet and time in which they were stranded. The outlook was not good. They found numerous newspaper cuttings documenting a large ‘problem’, as it was optimistically called, due to occur in a matter of days. As they dug deeper into this mysterious, ground-shaking ‘problem’ that was to occur, they were bombarded with investigative journalism and thoughtful pieces into the nature of free will and questioning whether unimportant species such as those responsible should be mothered more by the wider inter-galactic community.

Resigned to their fate the crew sought to entertain themselves. This came in the form of betting absurd amounts of currency, which was now essentially worthless, on seemingly random events – such as the flight paths of passing owls, blackbirds and flies.

“A million says it’ll fly past that bushel of whatever and then…explode.” Proclaimed a clearly drunk Number Eight.

“You’re on!” Exclaimed Number Fifteen jovially.

The thing promptly flew past that bushel of whatever and then with equal promptness exploded as it was lasered by a gleeful Number Eight.

“A million, if you please.” Grinned Number Eight holding out his hand expectantly.

Number Fifteen somewhat dejectedly went to his locker and fetched the appropriate currency.

Other members of the crew had amused themselves with other pranks. Numbers Five, Nine and Three had gone out on a jolly to the closest settlement to the crash site and attempted to attain the services of prostitutes. The game they had set up consisted of taking their respective prostitutes to their respective rooms and seeing which one could illicit the loudest scream upon revealing his entirely alien genitalia.

However failing to account for the pluckiness of this particular planet’s sex workers, each was disappointed when no screams came and the girls set to work. Returning to the ship several hours later, Numbers Five, Nine and Three were silent and wide-eyed and curiously broke.

A day before inevitability set in a rambler stumbled upon the clearing the crashed ship had made for itself. As he gaped in awe Number Two slid nonchalantly out of the ship’s emergency exit hatch and violently insisted that he came in peace whilst waving what looked like a futuristic weapon around. He explained that the world was going to end in under two days and then watched, giggling as the rambler stumbled, screaming away.

“What were you doing?” Enquired Number One now lolling out of the hatch lazily.

“Just spooking some random. It’s almost lost all entertainment value – but not quite”

That night, somewhere on a nearby continent a chain of events was set into motion that would soon engulf the virginal planet. At the very same time Number Fifteen ran around the nearby town centre yelling “Redrum” in his best impression of intergalactic mega-star Jack Nicholson. Meanwhile back at the ship Numbers Seven and Eight were using some of the ship’s more abstract technology to launch the entire filmography of intergalactic mega-star Jack Nicholson out of the planet’s atmosphere.

In the morning Number One gathered the entire crew in the briefing room for one last speech.

“Now I know many of you are hungover and the last thing you want is to listen to me. So you won’t have to for much longer. As you all know today is the day when this planet and, due to circumstances bizarrely left outside of our vast sphere of influence, us will perish. I believe it’d be uncharacteristic of our mighty race to get sentimental or morbid now and in light of this, I’ve opened a military strength bottle of ultra-vodka – get smashed.”

The crew began to drink off their hangovers, drown their sorrows and saturate their fears as trees and buildings less than a mile off were torn out of existence and flushed into an unappreciative ether.

As everything began to wink out of being the crew sang songs and told jokes and did impressions of intergalactic mega-star Jack Nicholson.

“Here’s…” Was the last loud cry to come from the ship as it too un-became.

Interestingly enough, the only thing to escape the planet in the days before its destruction was a collection of films and a charred piece of thing. The films were picked up a thousand years later by a passing craft a million light years away and the charred piece of thing floated serenely towards the sun where it burnt into nothing.