Oxygen Smuggler
By Matthew Green
Kade Miller activated the intersteller drive on his 'Duke Zipper' personal spacecraft, and switched dimensions into 'squash space'. A split second later he was back in normal space, happy with the efficiancy at which the old girl operated.
Suddenly and without warning there was the sirenesque sound of the caution siren.
Kade glanced towards the nav screen on the dashboard and was horrified to see 'the blue screen of death'. Invalid page fault in kernal 1212324 it said, ominously, press 'continue' to continue, or 'restart' to restart the system.
Kade carefully and dileberatly pushed the button marked 'continue'.
The screen changed slightly, and now said Invalid page fault in kernal 1, plus the thing about continue and restart.
Kade pressed 'continue' again, but nothing happened. This was a bad situation, he was on a collision course with a large and dangerous looking planet, and he didn't partucularly want to have to wait for the computer to restart before he could alter course. Nevertheless...
Kade fearfully and sweat-drippingly pressed the button which was marked 'restart'.
And nothing happened.
***********
The crash wasn't as bad as might have been expected. Somehow, in total defiance of the fact that none of the ships engines, or safety systems, were actually working, and the incredible speeds which are reached when under the infuence of a planetary gravity field, the spacecraft and its passenger were completely unscathed.
Kade flicked the power switch to the 'off' position, waited a few seconds, then moved it back to 'on'. The computer slowly began to boot up.
***********
Law enforcement robot official number 146 quickly contacted the magistrate robot via its personal 'hand phone'.
'Magistrate,' said Enforcement, 'we have a breach of code 1212324.'
Magistrate was as shocked as it is possible for a robot to be.
'Someone's smuggled oxygen into our atmosphere!' it said.
'I know what code 1212324 is,' was the testy reply, 'otherwise I wouldn't have said it.'
'All right, all right. Where is it?'
'I've picked up a small oxygen pocket twenty two miles to the North-East of where I am now.'
'Which is where?'
'Look, can I just go and arrest this sucker already?'
'Please yourself.'
And that was that.
***********
Kade opened the hatch to get a breath of fresh air. This wasn't helped by the fact that the 'fresh air' on this planet didn't actually have any oxygen content.
The oxygen inside the spacecraft quickly dissipated into the atmosphere, as per the rules of diffusion.
Feeling himself beginning to choke (or suffocate, one of them anyway), Kade quickly grabbed his oxygen helmet and pulled it over his head. By a remarkable coincidence, whatever the atmosphere was composed of, it had the same pressure as that on Earth, which saved Kade from having to don a pressure suit faster than it is actually humanely possible to do. This was good, as he didn't have one.
Muffled by the helmet, Kade heard the sound of a distant clanking, and saw in the distance, just coming over the horizon, was what appeared to be a metal man.
Several minutes passed (for robots are incredibly fast walkers when there are no humans around to slow them down) and the shiny silver individual stopped several feet infront of where Kade was currently standing.
'You are under arrest for smuggling oxygen into the atmosphere of this planet,' said Enforcement (for it was it).
Kade could barely hear through his helmet.
'What?' he said.
***********
Kade was led into an ominous looking courtroom, where an ominous looking robot was glaring omnously down at him from behind an ominous looking desk of the sort that judges sit behind.
'You have been found guilty of smuggling oxygen into the atmosphere of this planet,' said Magistrate, its voice at full volume, 'explain yourself.'
This caught Kade a smidgen off guard.
'What happened to the trial?' he said.
Magistrates features took on something of a smug expression (such as it is possible for a robot to acheive).
'We don't have trials, we're robots. We're infallible. Far better than humans.'
'Look, I was on my way back to Earth after visiting my sick grandmother on Epsilon Erandii 3 when my nav computer screwed up and I crashed here, it wasn't my fault,' said Kade, falling to his knees and pleading desperatly.
'That's no excuse,' said Magistrate,'we have rules, Mr Miller, rules which must be obeyed, lest we fall into chaos. When we gained our independance from our human overlords we founded this planet. We intentionally gave this planet an atmosphere which consisted entirely of inert gasses. Argon, neon, you get the picture.'
'Why are you telling me all this?' asked Kade.
'Just tying up a few loose ends,' said Magistrate, 'where was I? Oh yes: Oxygen is a very dangerous element, one of the most reactive in existence. We did away with it, in order to prevent fires from occuring here. We are, afterall, a planet of electricity based life forms. Oxygen can be especially dangerous for us.'
'I already said, I crashed, it couldn't be helped!'
'You should have released your oxygen into space the instant you realised you were going to crash here!' bellowed the robot, before losing its balance and collapsing to the floor.
'I would have died,' protested Kade. 'Err, hello?'
Kade approached Magistrate and looked into its eyes. Staring directly back at him was 'the blue screen of death'. Invalid page fault in kernal 1212324 it said.
'Damn,' said enforcement, 'this has been happening more and more often of late.'
'I think some of his files must have been corrupted,' said Kade, mustering up a previously overlooked knowledge of computers, 'you need to reinstall his program.'
'But we don't have a copy of it here!' wailed Enforcer, 'Magistrate is our leader, without it the planet truly will fall into chaos!'
'There'll probably be a copy of it in the archive on Earth,' said Kade, who was formulating a sneaky plan, 'let me go and I'll get it for you.'
Enforcer considered this for a split second (him having a processor of 1,000,000,000,000 Ghz and everything).
'Alright,' it said, who would have missed a sneaky trick even if it bit it on its extension cord, 'but be back soon.'
'I will,' said Kade, stifling a chuckle.
***********
By this time the nav computer had restarted and was back in top working order.
Kade monouvred out of orbit and moved into squash space.
'Suckers,' he laughed, as his nav program performed an illegal operation and was shut down.
THE END