“Shields up,” Captain Ransom Nevermore barked.
“Aye aye, Captain,” said First Officer Angelina Octarina, just before the AI unit attacked her, ripping the top of her uniform half off as he moaned with repressed desire. She grabbed the tattered shreds of her uniform and tried to conceal her two ivory orbs.
The resident deconstructionist author tapped her note pad. “Can someone turn off that AI unit? His moaning is making it hard for me to write this fascinating multi-genre interaction.”
“El Capitan,” said Jefe Carlos, materializing on the bridge with five Mexican banditos wearing battered sombreros. “Hand over your weapons, por favor, or we will have to toast you over a slow fire.”
The incognito Secret Special Forces Agent in Charge stepped forward to confront Jefe Carlos. “Produce your Certification of Authority, or I will be forced to put you under arrest.”
Carlos sneered. “Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”
“Did someone say the Badgers stink?” A man in a plaid flannel shirt and baseball cap that had a big red W on it barged forward, looking for someone to fight. “We’re 14 and 1. We’re going to the Rose Bowl and UCLA better watch their backs and eat their sox.”
“Here’s my trenchcoat, sweetheart,” the man with the Fedora told Angelina Octarina. He spoke with a Camel dangling from his lip. “We can’t have those twin bazookas distracting the troops.”
Chief Engineer Wonky Spanner stuck his head up through a floor hatch. “I’ve fixed the shields, Captain. All it took was some ladies’ hair pins, a sticking plaster, and a Rube Goldberg contraption I put together from an umbrella, a bicycle pump, and sixteen gears driven by a moaning AI unit I handcuffed to a treadmill.”
Meanwhile Carlos and his banditos had begun to harmonize to an upbeat version of La Bamba. Not to be outdone, the man in the Fedora teamed up with the Agent in Charge to croon a melancholy, One for My Baby, and One More for the Road. Incensed, Captain Nevermore and Engineer Spanner tried to tune everyone out by breaking into the chorus of Nessun Dorma, from an opera by Puccini.
First Officer Angelina Octarina looked around, sighed, and straightened her trenchcoat. She waved at the writer, said the magic words, and disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
3 Responses
Trans Genre! Brilliant. I sense that there is a new wave of novels about to break in this new category. You’ve done it again. What a treat to wake up to.
I was born a Romance Novelist trapped in a Si-Fi Fiction writer’s body. I lived many, many years in the shadows, but I feel compelled to step into the light in an effort to lessen the plight of other Trans Genre Authors. It has not been an easy life, but I do not want your pity. Even though I have been continually shunned at Star Trek Conventions and have enough rejection letters from Harlequin to wall paper the Grand Canyon, I survived. I have overcome most of the discrimination and have even managed to find a niche where my words can thrive. My only remaining issue is that I do not know which restroom to use at my local library.
I don’t care what you say about mixed genres this is a fun piece to read and I love the Bogart reference!