On the menu tonight - pain.

Who: Lester and Lester
Where: The Mollopod ship orbiting Little Cheftonia
When: Sometime before the death of the Pulmonater.
 
<SNIP>"Well, you're so stringy," the Mollopod pressed a switch and Lester was tilted upright until he was eye-to-eyestalk with the chef. "You'll be good for stock though, once we cut you into chunks..."</SNIP>
 
Lester was frantically working on a plan. He surmised that if it all went well then he could get the Mollopod chef into the massive deep-fat fryer bubbling in one corner of the mammoth kitchen. He predicted that he would lose only a finger and maybe an eye in the process. Easy street.
 
"Y-you can't c-cook us.. me," Lester found himself saying.
 
"What?" The chef slithered closer.
 
"Yes. What?" Lester was taken aback as his ersatz self once again took control of the vocal chords. "I-if y-you c-cook m-me it'll be a d-disaster."
 
"I am the greatest chef in the Mollopod Empire! My creations should be known across the galaxy! There is nothing I cannot make into a magnificent feast!"
 
"I'm n-no good. L-look at m-me. L-look at m-my head... my hand..."
 
"Cybernetics," the creature effected a blubbery shrug, "and?"
 
"You c-can't cook these in the pot!"
 
"I know. We lower you into heated acetic acid. The skin peels off, taking grafts with it."
 
Lester could feel his other self starting to panic, he tried to think calming thoughts, wondering where he was going with this. "B-but it's th-threaded all th-through m-me. Th-there's n-not a b-bit of m-me that's not going to t-taste like a tin can."
 
"Threaded throughout... " the Mollopod mused as it drew closer to Lester. It peered intently at him, then stretched out a slimy pseudopod and began to examine him. Its wet, glistening paw mauled his metal hand, slid up his arm and left a dripping trail as it poked at his temple implant.
 
"R-run a scan if you d-don't believe me."
 
"I'll go and get one."
 
"I'm n-not going anywhere."
 
The chef snorted in amusement and squelched down to the end of the kitchen and out the door, leaving Lester strapped to the upright table.
 
"Great, now what? Wh-when he g-gets back, he'll b-bring a scanner m-much like our Sci-Scans. Th-they usually op-operate on a s-sub-ether w-wavelength of s-seventeen p-peta cycles." Lester considered this: "and?" The other Lester sighed, "th-that's g-good enough t-to make a b-bridge between our implant a-and the s-scanner." Lester grinned: "great, so you sneak out of our head, down the scanner wavelength and from there, presumably into the ship?" The other Lester was silent. "Well? N-not quite. I h-have to k-keep the p-ports open from h-here. I c-can't do that and u-upload at the s-same time. T-to difficult, even for me. If we h-had SNIDE, w-we'd b-be out of here in a s-second." Lester considered this grimly, "so it's me that has to go. I have to leave my own body, leaving you in charge? J-just temporarily. Like the last time? How long exactly were you in charge of my body? How long have you been turning it into this skinny travesty so blatantly unpalletable it's barely good enough for soup? How long since this body shagged someone not made of vinyl with a permanent surprised expression?" Lester was shouting now, flecks of spit forming at the corners of his mouth.
 
"It-it w-wasn't m-me. What? I'm j-just the p-punishment. J-just the cell." They both lapsed into moody slience. "H-he'll b-be back s-soon. I know. Fine. Wh-what? Fine. Let's do it. Upload me. But I want your promise I can get back in. I'll d-do my best. That'll have to do then." Lester stopped talking as the door slid open and the creature glooped over, waving a complicated looking scientific probe.
 
"Let's see what meat will make a good cut then, shall we?" It held the device up to Lester's head and there was a flash, like static earthing itself, between the probe and Lester's temple. "Strange," the creature quivered as it passed the device down his body, "the implants are only grafts... linked to your nervous system. Shouldn't take more than a few good slices to get this out..." the Mollopod trailed off as the lights dimmed. "What the?"
 
The lights dipped again, then rose to piercing brightness. Cursing, the chef crossed the room to an intercom panel. "Engineering, this is primary galley, what the fleishupt is going on with the lights?"
 
"Uh, we're not getting any errors here," the intercom crackled back, "are you sure there's something wrong?"
 
"Of course I'm sure! Get a team up here immediately or there'll be a severe rationing in your team's meals. Extra salt for all!"
 
"Sir, yes sir!"
 
The chef flicked the intercom off and turned back to Lester, who was gone. The automatic restraints had opened and the human was nowhere to be seen. The Chef reached over to a block on the counter top and withdrew a wicked looking kitchen-knife.
 
"Come on out, lovely juicy human!" It cooed and leaped, waving the knife at the shadows. Lester stepped out from behind the table he had been secured to.
 
"S-stay back!" Lester quivered as the Mollopod advanced.
 
"Get back on the chopping board, like a good animal," the Mollopod ordered and lunged forward with the knife. It gave a yelp as something metallic and hard slammed into its hand, knocking the blade flying. "What in the name of my mother's putrid pus?" The automated chopping board/ table was moving, swinging round for another strike. It cracked the Mollopod full on its eye-stalks then twisted, tilted and scooped him onto its surface. "Put me down at once you cheap and tacky appliance!" Any other curses were lost though as the table wrenched itself and sent the Molloped flying, straight into the six-foot wide vat of bubbling chip fat. The screams were deafening as it thrashed, struggled and eventually sank to the bottom.
 
After a brief pause, a timer went "PING", a roll of eight-foot wide kitchen roll unwound and with a hiss of hydraulics, the fryer's cage lifted up and deposited the thickly-battered corpse onto the worktop.
 
"Do you want fries with that?" A microwave asked Lester.
 
"N-no thanks," he said, then threw up.
 
"Oh for crying out loud," the microwave sighed, "it's not like I've fed that body much today!"
 
"L-Lester is that you?"
 
"No, I'm just a very cross cooking appliance, of course it's me! I'm stuck in the kitchen though. Can you help me get out to the rest of the ship?"
 
"I n-need some clothes."
 
"Later. Computer genius first, de-nakify later. OK?"
 
Obediantly Lester found the nearest terminal and examined it critically. "It's a level six encryption based user interface, presumably they've based it all on primes, or the roots of happy primes. It's extremely tough to hack."
 
"Smeg. We'll find another way," the microwave twirled its power setting knob in agitation.
 
"I d-didn't say I couldn't d-do it," Lester said and typed in a series of numbers into the keypad. A green light lit up. "Th-there, y-you've got c-clear access to the mainframe."
 
"Great. Hey wow, I can see everything. There's Dai. He's ok, they've put him in cold storage. It's not far from here. Look at this," as the microwave spoke a panel opened beside the computer terminal. "Take a gun and comm unit, I can keep in touch with you through it."
 
"I'm n-not g-good with guns," Lester quavered feebly.
 
"Now's a good time to learn. Grab it, what are the settings?"
 
"Uh, b-braise, toast, b-broil, chargrill and d-disperse."
 
"Avoid the culinery settings, go for disperse, put the comm unit in your ear and let's go. I'm turning the heating up in life-support, don't want to freeze now, do we?"
 
Lester struggled to put the bulky ear-piece, designed for a differently shaped creature, into his lobe, but he managed it in the end. Gingerly holding his gun he opened the door and stepped, naked, into the corridors of the Mollopod ship.
 
<To be continued, but I will accept offers of help from passing enthusiasts!>Share your photos with Windows Live Photos – Free. Try it Now!