Reminiscing

The wine bottle was empty. The floor was a mess. There was fresh chip in the bunk-room sink. Still, she was alone. Mindfully swishing the final drop of liquor around the pit of the bottle, she proceeded to speedily swig it down in a final sip, before falling to sleep on the floor, thankfully missing the previously-made mess from a few minutes ago as she did so.

Now she was dreaming.

<snip>

“I’m leaving!”

That was the last thing her mother had ever said to her. Moreover, nobody seemed to care that she was, as she had previously stated, leaving. Her hat was ever-so-slightly tilted over on her brunette little head, and Yasmin’s half-brother Jonathan kept persisting to poke at his mother’s pocket. This was about the most recognition she received.

“Ed, get the smeg OFF!” was exactly what Yasmin had been saying at the time when the door clicked softly closed behind Amelia, leaving the three of them: thumb-sucking little three-year-old Jonathan; Yasmin, wearing her sparkly new Neptunian party gown that her mother’d brought back for her as an apology souvenir from her trip to the planet’s beauty capital, after a row about a destroyed first edition of Jane Eyre - it’d been worth millions age-wise; and Ed by themselves.

Ed.

His mother’s husband - second husband, actually, if you turned out to be a gelviniaeist - was a sickly, strictly un-devoted husband who...

<snip>

Yasmin awoke to hear rumbling, and voices. On her way back from stasis, she remembered catching a glimpse of a giant hamster or something, but it wasn't THAT kind of voice. Instead, she could hear her crewmates, arguing about something.

<snip>

“Justin!” Captain Chrysler snapped. “This isn't funny. Let us out of this metal cell you've constructed, and let us go back to our rooms.”

“Not just yet. As punishment for abandoning me I've constructed an assault course for you. You're trapped like a rat in a maze, hahahhahahahaaa!”

The door buzzed and opened. Curiously, they all went through, Alex pushing Seymour.
“The skutters wanted to rebuild the drive-room. But where's the fun in that? So I told them to build this instead.” Justin said, his voice now coming from a monitor inside the room.

Ahead of them was an assault course complete with a flaming fire pit, a rope-walk, tarzan swings, hinged stepping-stones, swinging axes, and a spiked presser which slammed into the floor every few seconds.

“Cross to the other side to be redeemed!” Justin said, then laughed.

<snip>

"What the smeg!?" Yasmin literally yelped out, as something in the room, probably a wall panel, clattered to the floor beside her, and some guy in a wheelchair tumbled out, miraculously not falling out of his seat on the way down to the floor. Which was still all messy.

"Disgusting," he sniffed, trying to right himself upwards while she stood there, mouth gaping open. "Positively vile."

He looked snidely at Yasmin, and sighed pointlessly. "Well? Aren't you going to try and help me up?"

Yasmin shook her head. This guy looked like...well, like he'd been living in the woods for a century or something.

"WHY NOT?"

Yasmin shrugged, momentarily reverting back to her old, lazy, waited-upon self. "'Cos I don't want to?"

"Well, you'll have to help me, whether you WANT to or not."

Yasmin paused.

"Why?"

He looked like he wanted to cry.

"BECAUSE I'M A ROYAL AMBASSADOR!"

Yasmin paused. "Oh."

"Well?"

"Who are you?"

He rolled his eyes. "Does it really matter?"

"Yes."

He rolled his eyes again, and held out a shaky hand - still sideways-orientated, since he was still sitting tipped over in his wheelchair on the floor. "Seymour Niple, Queen Brittney's royal ambassador." Then he added, hoping maybe that she wouldn't hear him, "This is so embarrassing."

Yasmin mocked a curtsy, and quickly righted his wheelchair, as he brushed himself down, and slid off his jacket onto the floor, right into the gloopy mess.

Yeuch!

"So, what happened?" she asked Seymour timidly, really NOT wanting to know the actual answer.

Seymour sighed, as somewhere in his wheel, something clicked against metal. "You should know, missy."

Yasmin was clueless. "Know what?"

"We just came back from planet leave. There was a radiation leak. Where were you, miss..."

She bit her tongue anxiously. "Yasmin Adimar. First Technician."

Mr. Niple shook his head sloppily. "So, where were you, Adimar?"

Yasmin shrugged again. "Still in stasis. I think."

"S-t-a-s-i-s?"

She nodded. Seymour looked apologetically disgusted by her answer.

"Well then," he sighed. "I guess I'd better explain."

"Yep."

"We got back here only a little while ago, and then we found Mr. Pancake had taken over the ship...kind of."

"The hologram?"

"YES!" he calmed down a little. "As I was saying, yes, the hologram had taken over the ship...kind of. The others are all still trapped in this maze of his, or, should I say, DEATHTRAP!"

"Oh." Yasmin paused. "So, what should we do just now?"

"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps actually...GO AND RESCUE THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Yasmin stared at him, just a teeny bitty gobsmacked, before leisurely saying,

"Well, okay, but I was actually thinking more of having some more wine."