✦ OPENING — WORLD SURVEY

CRAFT NOTE The story's first two sentences burn four references in under forty words — Star Trek, Star Wars, Star Trek again, and the Hitchhiker's Guide — before introducing a single character. This is the story announcing its density upfront: strap in, it's going to be like this the whole way.
REFERENCE Star Trek (1966)The opening narration spoken by Captain Kirk at the start of every Star Trek: The Original Series episode. "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise…" Using it as the story's literal first sentence is the opening move in a very confident hand.REF #01 That's what they used to call it. But that was
REFERENCE Star Wars (1977)"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…" — the opening crawl text of every Star Wars film. Woven into a sentence about Star Trek's opening narration, seconds into the story. JL's method in miniature: references stacked inside references.REF #02, most humans don't even know where it is. These days, space is where you get stuck if you have a
REFERENCE Star Trek — Warp Drive The warp core is the power source of a starship's faster-than-light warp drive in the Star Trek universe. A failing warp core is a recurring source of mortal peril across the franchise. Using it as the title and the story's central practical problem roots the whole thing in Trekkian vocabulary.REF #03. Humans have successfully occupied one hundred and eighty seven planets across five galaxies. "Occupied" is a bit of a loose term though; at least five of the eight sentient species humans have encountered so far prefer the term "infested". One particularly astute Presst'on ambassador dubbed us "the cockroaches of the Universe" during a speech at a conference that the "cockroaches" weren't invited to (ironically, the conference in question was centred around forming relationships with the fledgling Human Empire of the time — the name of the conference literally translated to "
REFERENCE The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)The two words printed in large, friendly letters on the cover of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in Douglas Adams's novel. Its appearance here as the name of an alien conference about humanity — a conference humanity wasn't invited to — is both a reference and a thematic joke: the most soothing advice available, delivered at the exact moment it's least reassuring.REF #04→ Hitchhiker's Guide on Wikipedia" in English). But, all of that isn't important. Okay, it's kind of important, but we'll get to that in a minute. For now, all you need to know is that there is a small escape shuttle (
REFERENCE League of Legends Yordles are a species of small, furry, vaguely humanoid creatures from League of Legends — playful and resilient. Using them as a shuttle class in a space story is exactly the kind of low-key reference that rewards attentive readers without demanding they notice it.REF #05) racing through the space between
REFERENCE Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Viltvodle VI is a planet mentioned in the Hitchhiker's Guide universe. The story uses Viltvodle 3 as a nearby waypoint — placing the action in a universe that has quietly absorbed Adams's cosmology.REF #06 and
REFERENCE League of Legends — Summoner's Rift Summoner's Rift is the primary map in League of Legends. "Bringer's Rift" is a sideways renaming: a Bringer brings something; a Summoner summons. A reference that only registers if you already know the original.REF #07, hoping to find a waystation (faulty warp core). There are three humans inside: a fat one, a short one, and an unconscious one.
CRAFT NOTE The three characters are introduced by body type and consciousness level, not name. "The fat one, the short one, and the unconscious one" delays identification in order to establish the story's comic register first: these are pulp archetypes before they're individuals.

"Is it supposed to be green?"
CHALLENGE REQUIREMENT MET The challenge specified that someone must say "Is it supposed to be green?" It's the story's first line of dialogue — dropped in before we even know who's speaking, given maximum comic effect by its total context-free delivery.

"No idea. Why?"

"Because it's flashing red."

"
REFERENCE The IT Crowd (2006) / Universal Tech Support The signature line of Moss and Roy from the British sitcom The IT Crowd, and the universal cliché of helpdesk support. Applying it to a spaceship engine in the middle of a chase sequence is an escalation of the original joke's absurdity by several orders of magnitude.REF #08"

"Um… I have now."

"And?"

"Still flashing. Still red."

"Check the manual."

"Hang on. Oooooh, okay. It's the engine light. So, I guess it should be green."

"Yeah, but what does it mean if it's flashing?"

"Uuuuh… Oh, here we go. The engine's overheating."

"What!?"

"Oh. That's not good, is it?"

"Well what's the temperature, dammit?"

"It's…
REFERENCE / MEME Dragon Ball Z (1989)Vegeta's iconic shocked declaration — "It's over nine thousand!" — upon reading Goku's power level, became one of the internet's earliest and most enduring memes. Here it's the ship's actual temperature reading, making it simultaneously a reference, a joke, and — at engine temperature scale — genuinely alarming.REF #09"

"I take it that's a lot."

"I think so. Oh, wait. It says here that if engine temperature reading exceeds twelve thousand, explosion is inevitable."

"Well, that's comforting."

"Perhaps we should slow down?"

✦ NARRATOR INTERRUPTS FOR INTRODUCTIONS

They should slow down, but they won't be able to, on account of the fact that there's an
REFERENCE League of Legends — ADC ADC stands for Attack Damage Carry — the role in League of Legends responsible for sustained ranged damage in the later stages of a match. Using it as a warship class suggests a universe that has absorbed the entire LoL taxonomy into its military nomenclature. The ADC is by definition the one doing the chasing and shooting.REF #10 chasing them and it's about to catch up. But first, introductions are in order; it's always good to know those who are about to die, and salute them.
CRAFT NOTE — GALLOWS HUMOUR The narrator's "it's always good to know those who are about to die, and salute them" is the story's first direct statement of its gallows register. It's also a structural spoiler: the characters are introduced as already dead. The challenge required gallows humour; JL builds it into the narrative voice, not just the events. The fat one is
DOUBLE REFERENCE League of Legends (Darius) + Crash Bandicoot Darius is a powerful, aggressive champion in League of Legends — a hulking axe-wielding fighter. "Crash" is Crash Bandicoot, the PlayStation-era platformer protagonist. One reference hidden in his given name; a second announced as his nickname. Two for one.REF #11 + #12, so, thankfully, he isn't the pilot right now. The short one is
REFERENCE Star Trek — Captain James T. Kirk Kirk is the given name of Captain James T. Kirk, commanding officer of the USS Enterprise. The irony that this Kirk is short and not the pilot is deliberate — everything about the character undercuts the heroic name right up until it doesn't. His surname is later revealed to be an alias; his real name is a different reference entirely.REF #13, also known as
REFERENCE Metal Gear Solid (1998)Solid Snake is the legendary operative protagonist of Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid series — a stoic, near-mythic special forces soldier. The joke is in the contrast: the real Solid Snake is ruthlessly effective; this Kirk/Snake is about to get punched in the face by a woman who was unconscious a moment ago.REF #14 for reasons that will become relevant later. As for the unconscious one, nobody knows who the hell she is, but she's hot, so the other two thought it would be a waste to leave her in the station when it exploded. So, back to the present predicament at the precise moment two
REFERENCE Star Trek — Phasers Phasers are the standard directed-energy weapons of the Star Trek universe, capable of settings from stun to disintegrate. A Klingon-equivalent ship (the ADC) firing Star Trek weapons at a Yordle-class shuttle named after a LoL creature: the story doesn't pick a single source universe and inhabit it. It remixes them all at once.REF #15 fly over the Yordle's bow.

"Holy Mother of
REFERENCE L. Ron Hubbard / Scientology L. Ron Hubbard was the science fiction writer who founded Scientology. Using his name as a deity invocation in a sci-fi story is a specific joke: Scientology has a famously science-fictional cosmology involving alien civilisations. Kirk is later identified as a "Scientificist" — the punchline lands harder in retrospect.REF #16, that was close! I thought we'd lost 'em. You said we'd lost 'em!"

"Well I couldn't see them on the scanners."

"Can you see them now?!"

"Um…. No."

"Why the hell not?! They're clearly on our tail."

"Well, there's an error message, I think."

"You think?"

"Well it just says '
REFERENCE Microsoft Bing Microsoft's search engine, historically mocked for returning irrelevant or worse results than Google. The joke writes itself: military-grade scanners that run on Bing can't find an enemy cruiser on their tail. The punchline two lines later confirms it: "Bing scanners can't find a damn thing!" — a universal grievance elevated to life-threatening consequence.REF #17'."

"That's the logo, you idiot. We've got Bing scanners. Great."

"You're being sarcastic, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm being sarcastic! Bing scanners can't find a damn thing!"

"Like those asteroids?"

"What asteroids? OH SH —"

It should be noted that Yordles are meant to be manoeuvrable, a fact that has just saved Kirk, Crash and Hot Unconscious Girl from becoming little bits of squishy space stuff. The ADC is pretty light on her feet too, so basically, the status quo remains unchanged. What has changed, is the Yordle's flight path — from the straight and narrow to the
REFERENCE Doctor Who — "Blink" (2007)"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually — from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint — it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly… timey-wimey… stuff." The Tenth Doctor's explanation of time travel in the episode "Blink." Here it describes a shuttle's erratic flight path — and it describes it perfectly.REF #18→ "Blink" on Wikipedia.

"What's that sound?"

"What sound?"

"That beeping."

"No idea."

"Check please!"

"Alright, alright… Aha, found it."

"And?"

"It's a missile lock."

"Well, do something about it!"

"Like what?"

"I don't know! Drop a flare or a
REFERENCE Super Mario Bros.Mushrooms are the iconic power-up items of the Super Mario universe. Using a "mushroom beacon" as a plausible-sounding countermeasure is the kind of reference that works because it doesn't announce itself — it expects you to clock it or miss it.REF #19! Countermeasures, Crash!"

"We don't have any."

"It's an escape shuttle, there got to be something."

"Well there's a button here that says '
REFERENCE League of Legends — Flash (Summoner Spell)Flash is a summoner spell in League of Legends — a short-range teleport blink used to escape danger or close in on enemies. In-universe it's an emergency short-range warp jump + EMP. The story has taken a game mechanic and made it a piece of spacecraft engineering. The Yordle is literally built for the LoL summoner spell meta.REF #20'."

"PRESS IT!"

The button is pressed. It turns out that a Flash is a short range warp jump coupled with an electromagnetic pulse, designed for those moments when a system malfunction prevents the escape shuttle from being jettisoned into space. In this case, the Flash sends the Yordle to the other side of a big space rock while simultaneously shorting out the ADC's scanners (made on
REFERENCE Google The enemy cruiser's scanners are manufactured on planet Google — the same universe that has Bing scanners on the friendly shuttle. Both dominant Earth search engines have become planetary civilisations. The ADC's Google scanners being shorted out by an EMP is an extra joke: Google products also occasionally have outages.REF #21). It flies right past them without noticing. Kirk finally calms down and shuts off the engines in order to let them cool down.

"Kirk."

"Yeah?"

"We just
DOUBLE REFERENCE League of Legends + Internet Culture In League of Legends, "trolling" an ADC means playing deliberately unhelpfully against them — baiting, misleading, wasting their abilities. In internet culture it means the same. "We just trolled an ADC" is both a gaming-strategy observation and an accurate description of what actually happened: they baited the enemy, wasted their scanners, and hid behind a rock.REF #22."

"I suppose we did. What I don't understand though, is why they came after us. I thought they just wanted to blow up the station."

"Why blow up the station?"

"Because… Terrorists?"

"Well that makes about as much sense as trying to
REFERENCE Star Wars — Lightsaber A lightsaber: the plasma-bladed weapon of Jedi and Sith in the Star Wars universe. Described here as a self-evidently absurd idea — which is then immediately defended by the person who apparently tried to build one, which reframes the story's setting again. This is a universe where someone actually tried to make a lightsaber and nearly succeeded.REF #23."

"Hey, that's not fair. I was this close to sorting out the containment matrix."

"Oh sorry, it was a
REFERENCE The Matrix (1999)A "glitch in the Matrix" in the Wachowskis' film indicates a change in the programmed reality — the moment when the simulation hiccups. Here it refers to a technical malfunction that turned a would-be lightsaber into a flashlight. The joke pivots on "matrix" meaning both the sci-fi simulation and, legitimately, a containment structure in physics/engineering.REF #24 that made it a flashlight."

"Shut up. Why couldn't they just be terrorists?"

"Well an orbital outpost that even the auditors forget about isn't exactly a high priority target, is it?"

"Fair enough. Maybe we should ask the girl what she thinks?"

"Yeah alright."

It's a little cramped inside the Yordle, so getting from the front seat to the hold near the back involves a lot of grunting and heavy breathing of the non-steamy variety, but the two men manage. They stare at Hot Unconscious Girl for a bit, as human men are wont to do.
CRAFT NOTE"Hot Unconscious Girl" functions as her running title throughout the story — a deliberate pulp fiction trope label the narrator uses with full awareness. When she punches Kirk into a wall, the label becomes ironic. By the end the three-word reduction is the only name she's known by. She never wakes up long enough to be anything else.

"Is she even alive?"

"Um… I'm not sure."

"Kirk… What are you doing?"

"Checking for a pulse."

✦ ACTION

WHAM! Kirk is woken up before he
REFERENCE The Go-Go's (1978) / "Before He Cheats"A compressed phrase — "before he go-goes" — blending the American band The Go-Go's with the concept of carrying out an action. It's a pun and a rhythm joke at the same time, compressed into the narration mid-action scene without slowing down.REF #25 (disputed — possibly just wordplay) by a well-placed punch in the jaw courtesy of Hot Not-Unconscious Girl, sending him flying backwards about three feet into the opposite wall. It would be further but, like I said, it's cramped in there. Crash is laughing his head off.

"You should have bought her dinner first."

"Well, I didn't think she'd notice. Will you stop laughing?!"

"Come on.
CRAFT NOTE ON THE REFERENCE Metal Gear Solid — Extended Crash gives Kirk his full Solid Snake resume, including the detail that Kirk has been intimate with seven of the eight sentient species. This simultaneously fulfils the challenge's "alien sexcapade" requirement in backstory form, characterises Kirk as an interstellar lothario, and deepens the Solid Snake parody — the legendary operative reduced to a cosmic seduction record., gets punched in the face by a woman who wasn't even conscious. That's hilarious."

"Shut up. Ask her who she is."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"She's passed out. Again."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. I think she's started snoring."

"Well wake her up!"

"After what she did to you? Not a chance. But you're welcome to try."

"To hell with that. Hang on. You've still got the security app on your communicator, yeah?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Well, check to see if she's in the database."

"Good idea. Give me a sec."

"Well?"

"It's installing the latest update. It's only two terabytes, won't take a minute."

"Is that the
REFERENCE iPhone (Apple)The iComm 5X is a future-universe iPhone — same naming convention (lowercase "i" prefix, model number suffix). "The Fruit" is Crash's name for Apple, a well-established tech nickname. "Chipster" is this universe's equivalent of a tech brand loyalist. The dialogue is a complete parody of a real-world phone tribalism argument, verbatim.REF #26"

"Yeah."

"I didn't know you were a fan of the Fruit."

"Yeah, well they just work."

"Only on one hellishly overpriced architecture. Waste of money if you ask me. You're not a total chipster, are you?"

"No. I hate chipsters."

"Chipster. Do you have
REFERENCE Instagram Instagram — compressed into a future-universe portmanteau. The social media platform's name is flattened into something that sounds like a legitimate piece of FTL communication infrastructure.REF #27 on that thing?"

"Shut up. Update's done. Aha. Her name is
DOUBLE REFERENCE Doctor Who (Clara Oswald) + Tomb Raider (Lara Croft)Her full name is a mashup: Clara Oswald is the companion to the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors in Doctor Who (2012–2015); Lara Croft is the archaeologist-adventurer protagonist of the Tomb Raider franchise. The middle name "Oswyn" bridges them. Given that she's unconscious for almost the entire story and the most competent person in it, both source characters are apt.REF #28 + #29 Works in Maintenance."

"Really?"

"What? Girls can do maintenance."

"No, not that. I heard about a Clara from maintenance. Nobody said she was gorgeous."

"I don't think anyone ever got a good look at her, what with the helmets that they wear down there."

"You don't think she's related to
DOUBLE REFERENCE Tomb Raider (Lara Croft) + Space Invaders"Laura Croft" is Lara Croft with the name slightly wrong — exactly as a character in a far-future universe might misremember a 21st-century franchise. "Moon Raiders" fuses Tomb Raider with Space Invaders: a future video game that collapsed two classics into one title. The follow-up — "she's the one with the big… house" — is a joke about Lara Croft's historically exaggerated character model, delivered with maximum comic restraint.REF #30 + #31 She's the one with the big… house."

"Oh yeah. Well if she is, then she'd be a high priority target."

"Why?"

"Ransom."

"But then why blow the whole station up?"

"Good point."

At this point in the story, there is a large, clanking metal thud from the outside. And then two more. The first one startles the two men, but the next two only inspire curiosity since neither of them have ever watched a horror stream (horror as a genre is illegal on most planets, due to the Empire's Interstellar Relations Department ruling that most, if not all,
).
CRAFT NOTE — WORLD-BUILDING IN PARENTHESES The most efficient piece of world-building in the story: an entire censorship regime is explained in one parenthetical note, and the parenthetical note simultaneously explains why the characters walk straight into a horror movie setup without recognising it. Not knowing genre conventions is a plot mechanism — delivered in a bracket.

"Did someone just knock on the door?"

"I'm not sure."

Knock. Knock.

"Who's there?"

"I don't think it can hear you in the vacuum of space, Crash. Check the scanners."

"Okay… [grunting, heavy breathing]… Hey Kirk! It looks like we have a
REFERENCE + PUN Star Trek — Klingon The Klingons are the warrior alien species of Star Trek — and they're the enemy force whose word "cling on" describes literally. Kirk's repeated "Say that again" / "A what?" forces Crash to say "cling on" three times in a row before the pun is acknowledged and quietly dropped. The setup is one of the story's tightest comic constructions.REF #32."

"Say that again."

"Kirk. We have a cling on."

"A what?"

"Well it looks like one of the bots from the station. I think it latched on when we flew out?"

"Yeah, well… Bots are stupid. But… They've got system casings that would survive a supernova. Can you access its comsys?"

"I should be able to."

Knock. Knock.

"Got it. Oh dear."

"What?"

"It just says '
REFERENCE 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) — HAL 9000 In 2001: A Space Odyssey, when HAL 9000 is being shut down, he regresses through his programming and sings "Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)" — "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do..." It's the last thing he says. R3 Dent broadcasting "daisy" on first contact is his equivalent of a startup signature: this machine knows its heritage.REF #33→ HAL 9000 on Wikipedia'."

"Try asking it to let go."

"Okay. Who's Dave?"

"Dave?"

"Yeah. It responded with '
REFERENCE 2001: A Space Odyssey — HAL 9000"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." — HAL 9000's refusal to open the pod bay doors for astronaut Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey. One of the most quoted lines in science fiction. Here it's used as a "let go" refusal — technically appropriate, since letting go of the ship would be self-terminating, which HAL had strong feelings about.REF #34.' Who's Dave?"

"Oh… Fancy that. It's
DOUBLE REFERENCE R2-D2 (Star Wars) + Arthur Dent (Hitchhiker's Guide)R3 DT: clearly R2-D2 with a different model number. But the character's name is "R3 Dent" — meaning its full model designation is a fusion of R2-D2 (Star Wars) and Arthur Dent (the bewildered, bathrobed hero of the Hitchhiker's Guide). A robot that is simultaneously an astromech and a hopelessly ordinary English person.REF #35 + #36."

"Huh?"

"You remember, that weird guy Davis Jenkins, from up in R and D?"

"Yeah."

"Well he stole one of the maintenance bots and tinkered with it constantly. It was an R3 DT model. He ended up calling it R3 Dent. Apparently it can do all sorts of things."

"Like what?"

"
REFERENCE Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — Raphael Raphael is the red-masked, most aggressively sarcastic of the four Ninja Turtles. Using "Raphael-knows" as a substitute for "God-knows" elevates him to deity status in this universe. It's a deeply casual reference — thrown in as an idiom, not announced. The reader either gets it or accepts it as alien slang.REF #37. But it's still a maintenance bot. Get it to run diagnostics on the shuttle."

"It says it can't."

"Why not?"

"Uuuum… 'I'm stuck.'"

"Stuck where?"

"It's saying… 'twixt space rock and hard place.' I guess the hard place is us."

"Just jimmy the thrusters quick. Should shake it loose. What's so funny?"

"Nothing. It's just. Shake the cling on loose… Get it?"

"You're disgusting. Just do it."

"It says thanks."

"A polite robot. That's new. Tell it to run diagnostics."

"It already did. The warp core is out of alignment and the housing is shot. Main fuel cells are leaking too. So that's why we were overheating."

"Can Dent fix it?"

"He says he can do a patch job, but we'll still have to get to a waystation before we can do any kind of long range jumping."

"He's bloody articulate for a robot, isn't he?"

"I know, right? You should try talking to him."

"No, you can do it. How long will this take."

"Um…
REFERENCE / UNIVERSAL EXPERIENCE Windows Progress Bar The notoriously unreliable Windows time-remaining estimates, which have been known to jump from "5 minutes" to "4 hours" and back before settling on something plausible. In 2881, R3 Dent is reading off a progress bar. Some things never change.REF #38"

"Are you reading off the progress bar?"

"Yes."

"Typical…"

"Done!"

"Already?"

"Yep. Dent's sent me coordinates to the nearest waystation. It's not far. He's asking for a lift."

"Just tell him to cling on again, we can't… What now?"

"He just said… '
DOUBLE REFERENCE Star Wars: KotOR (HK-47) + Doctor Who (Daleks)"Meatbag" is the signature contemptuous term for organic beings used by HK-47, the assassin droid in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. "Extermination is inevitable" is Dalek vocabulary. R3 Dent is a robot with multiple AI personality layers: HAL's stubbornness, R2's competence, Arthur Dent's pleasantness, HK-47's contempt, and a Dalek's worldview. "Non-life" as his term for his own existence is its own small poem.REF #39 + #40' Non-life. That's brilliant."

The trip to the waystation is, sadly, uneventful with the conversation revolving around the three staples: sex (specifically Kirk's taste for every non-human he can find), intergalactic politics (specifically the question of whether or not UWA chose to invade Lux Aeterna for its
REFERENCE Equilibrium (2002)In Kurt Wimmer's film Equilibrium, Prozium is the mandatory emotion-suppressing drug administered to the entire population of a dystopian state. Using a planet's prozium supply as a geopolitical invasion motive places the story in a universe where that dystopia has been scaled to an interstellar context.REF #41 or because the Luxans are supposedly building 'ulties', aka
REFERENCE WMDs — Weapons of Mass Destruction / Iraq War (2003)WMDs — Weapons of Mass Destruction — the justification given for the 2003 invasion of Iraq that was later found to be based on faulty or fabricated intelligence. "Weapons of Ultimate Destruction" escalates the acronym from Mass to Ultimate; the political subtext remains identical.REF #42), and naturally, religion (Kirk is a
REFERENCE Scientology Scientology — the religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard (see REF #16). "Scientificist" collapses "Scientist" and "Scientologist" into a single future religion. Given that Kirk swore "by Hubbard" earlier, his faith has been telegraphed. Crash being a "Polymorphologist" — a worshipper of changing forms — is possibly a nod to Red Dwarf's shapeshifting Polymorph, or simply a made-up religion that sounds appropriately absurd.REF #43, Crash is a Polymorphologist, so naturally they disagree about which Greek letter means what). After about an hour (imperial), they see the familiar flashing lights of a waystation up ahead.

"You know, I think you should stop calling yourself Solid Snake."

"What? Because I'm on a dry spell, I should just give up my claim to fame?"

"Well no. But I think it would have helped your case."

"What are you on about?"

"Well — Don't forget to turn on the docking sensors — You're on a dry spell because of… what's her name again?"

"
REFERENCE — EXTENDED Cthulhu — H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu is H.P. Lovecraft's colossal cosmic horror entity — an ancient, incomprehensible being of unimaginable power whose name is itself unpronounceable. "Cthululumaxikikitssseeerapoulous" takes that unpronounceable name and makes it much, much longer — an alien name that has absorbed Lovecraftian energy and kept going for another three syllables. Kirk was in a relationship with this person. He then had to change his name and flee to the furthest reaches of space.REF #44 Just call her Cthulu."

"Lulu! That's the one. I think she left you because of your reputation. You haven't got any since."

"No, it wasn't that."

"What was it then?"

"Um… Her brother. We didn't, uh, get on very well. Hang on. I need to concentrate for this."

"Kirk."

"Shhh!"

"KIRK!"

"WHAT!?"

"Is that an ADC?"

Yes, it is an ADC Cruiser. The very same one that was trying to turn the Yordle into dust earlier. Obviously, the ADC's pilots were not stupid enough to ignore the nearest waystation, while Kirk and Crash were stupid enough to forget that if you're an idiot, you shouldn't be in control of an ADC. In Kirk's defence though, he did get punched in the face by Clara Croft. Crash has no excuse. He's supposed to be the smart one, according to current
REFERENCE Hollywood"Holibush" = Hollywood. The planet where the galaxy's dominant entertainment industry is based still follows the same casting conventions as early 21st-century Earth cinema — the heavy one is supposed to be the clever sidekick. The joke is that this convention persists across 800 years of human expansion.REF #45. In Dent's defence, he's a robot and bots are stupid. And Clara Croft is still unconscious, so you can't expect her to know what the hell is going on anyway.

"Maybe they won't notice us."

"Maybe."

"Oh look, a message."

"Yes?"

"It says '
REFERENCE / MEME Zero Wing (1989) — "All Your Base Are Belong to Us""All your base are belong to us" is one of the internet's earliest viral memes — the notoriously mistranslated English text from the European release of the arcade game Zero Wing (1989). It became the definitive example of "engrish" (clumsy machine translation). Here the same error appears in a space battle message, blamed on "Googlian translators" — a future Google Translate that has learned nothing in eight centuries.REF #46.'"

"I guess they noticed us."

"What's up with their Human?"

"Googlian translators I suppose. Who is it from?"

"The ADC?"

"I know that! Who is in the ADC?"

"How am I supposed to know?"

"Ask them!"

"Alright, alright… I can't pronounce that."

"Let me see. Oh… Well that makes sense. Nice knowing you, Crash. And uh, sorry."

"For what? What do you mean? What's going on?"

"Um… It's complicated."

"How!? This isn't some relationship on
REFERENCE MySpace + Facebook A portmanteau of MySpace and Facebook — the two dominant social networks of the early-to-mid 21st century. One name combining two rivals into one future platform that has presumably outlasted both. Crash invoking "It's complicated" — the Facebook relationship status — makes the joke complete.REF #47! Who are they?"

"Um, well… That ADC belongs to
REFERENCE Doctor Who — Raxacoricofallapatorius Raxacoricofallapatorius is the home planet of the Slitheen family — recurring villains in the Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who, notable for their elaborate disguise technology and their comically long planet name. JL has extended it by several syllables for the alien name, honouring the original's commitment to maximum verbal inconvenience.REF #48→ Raxacoricofallapatorius on Wikipedia."

"Who?"

"Cthulu's brother."

"You're joking."

"I wish I was. There's another message."

"It's just from Dent. He says, '
REFERENCE The Terminator (1984)"I'll be back" — The Terminator's most quoted line, delivered by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is Austrian and speaks with a pronounced German-adjacent accent. Dent's message says "in a German accent" to clarify which "I'll be back" is meant, in a universe that presumably has many. It's also a misdirection: Crash asks "how long is a German accent?" as if it's a unit of time.REF #49.'"

"How long is a German accent?"

"Don't change the subject, Kirk! What did you do?"

"Well,
REFERENCE Doctor Who — Prydonian Chapter The Prydonian Chapter is the most politically powerful of the Time Lord chapters on Gallifrey in Doctor Who — the Doctor's own chapter, in fact. Here it's a species with ceremonial reproduction rules, a royal family, and a violent brother. Kirk managed to fall in love with and marry the crown princess of a species that hates humans, then had to flee across space. The Doctor would understand.REF #50"

"Yeah, number seven of eight, I know, I know."

"Yes, but Prydonians don't… do the deed… like we do."

"Come again?"

"Several times a second actually, it's ridiculous. But no, I mean, they don't do it for fun. It's strictly a sort of ceremonial thing to tie two families together. Like, they have a list of rules as long as the Cruiser about it."

"But you still managed?"

"Well, yes. But I had to genuinely fall in love with her, and get her to do the same."

"This is not how you told it the first time."

"Well, what happens in Prydonia, stays in Prydonia."

"Okay, so what's the big deal?"

"She's the Prydonian crown princess."

"You dog, you."

"No… It's not good. The Prydonians hate humans, remember…"

"Still, you boinked an alien princess."

"
CRAFT NOTE — TRAGIC ROMANCE The challenge required a tragic romance. This is it — delivered as a two-word punchline after a three-paragraph comic buildup. Kirk/Solid Snake/James Pond married an alien crown princess, was exiled, changed his name, and has been fleeing her family across space ever since. The romance is real; the tragedy is structural: he dies before he can ever go back."

"Wait, what? But doesn't that make you family?"

"It would, if they hadn't locked her away and chased me to the furthest reaches of space. I had to change my name and everything."

"What's your real name?"

"
REFERENCE James Bond (1953 / 1962)"Bond. James Bond." Ian Fleming's spy's signature introduction, here modified to "Pond. James, Pond." — with the comma after "James" implying a slight pause that's half hesitation, half embarrassment. A pond is smaller than a bond. It's the story's best single joke: a man who goes by Solid Snake's real name is the world's most underwhelming secret agent surname. Also, notably, he's married to a Doctor Who character.REF #51"

"That's unfortunate."

"What, my name or my situation?"

"Yes. Oh… They're sending another message."

"Well?"

"It says: '
REFERENCE Scarface (1983)"Say hello to my little friend!" — Tony Montana's iconic line before opening fire in the climax of Brian De Palma's Scarface. The Googlian translator has rendered the Prydonian death threat into a Scarface reference, which tells us two things: the translator is terrible, and whoever programmed it learned English from 1983 action films.REF #52'"

"Definitely Googlian translators. They actually said, 'Sag'ith álí möt'halï, gritsch.'"

"Which means?"

"Greet death, puny human."

"Aaah, I see how the translator messed that up. Hang o —"

✦ ENDING

Two phasers (set, of course, to roast-to-f****ng-cinder) proceed gracefully from the ADC and hit the Yordle in the metaphorical no-no place. R3 Dent returns to find only space dust in the waystation's dock. He remarks, "
DOUBLE REFERENCE League of Legends (multi-kill announcer) + "Tons of Damage" meme"Triple kill" is the announcer callout in League of Legends when a player kills three enemies in quick succession. "Tons of damage" is a long-running LoL meme from a commentator's breathless description of a champion doing exactly that. R3 Dent's epitaph for Kirk, Crash, and Hot Unconscious Girl is a gaming announcer line. They were a triple kill.REF #53," before he heads off to find someone who could use the three cups of
REFERENCE Starbucks / Battlestar Galactica (Starbuck)Starbucks the coffee chain — but "Starbuck" is also the call sign of Kara Thrace in Battlestar Galactica, one of the franchise's most beloved characters. Either reading works. More importantly, R3 Dent bought three cups of coffee and a medkit for his almost-friends before they died. He didn't know that was what he was doing. It's the story's most quietly human moment.REF #54 and a medkit that he so conscientiously bought for his now-atomised almost-friends.
CRAFT NOTE — THE REAL HEART OF THE STORY R3 Dent bought coffee and a medkit. He was outside. He returned to nothing. His epitaph for three humans he barely knew is a gaming callout. The comedy doesn't soften this. It makes it stranger and sadder: a robot with HAL's stubbornness, R2's competence, Arthur Dent's good manners, and HK-47's contempt for "meatbags" — going off to find someone new to give coffee to. That's the ending.

✦ MORAL OF THE STORY

So, kids, what can we learn from this story? Well, if you see a cockroach, don't panic, just kill it before it lays eggs and spreads all the way to the far corners of the universe. In other words:
CRAFT NOTE — STRUCTURAL CALLBACK The story opens with humanity described as "cockroaches of the Universe." It ends with "Exterminate!" — the Dalek death order. The callback is precise: the humans were the pests; they've been exterminated; the structure closed. A story that announces its ending in its opening paragraph and then spends 2,000 words making the journey entertaining enough that you forget where you're heading.

✦ ORIGINAL CHALLENGE PARAMETERS

Challenger: McGeek

Tell me a story about: Survivors fleeing an alien take over on a remote orbital outpost | Genre: Science Fiction

Style: 3rd Person Narrative (Present Tense)

It must have: 1) Gallows humour 2) An alien sexcapade 3) Tragic romance

Someone must say: "Is it supposed to be green?"

Anything else? Try incorporate no less than 31 gaming, geek, or pop-culture references.

Author's note: Firstly, I lost count of the references, but I'm sure I got past 31. Secondly, I know it's silly and it makes no sense, but I really hope it's funny. —JL
✦ MISSION STATUS: ATOMISED ✦ REFS IDENTIFIED: 55 █ ✦ R3 DENT: OPERATIONAL
✦ THE UNIVERSE

The story builds a complete interstellar civilisation in one opening paragraph — 187 planets, five galaxies, eight sentient species, an empire, and a "DON'T PANIC" conference — and then never really uses any of it. That disproportion is the joke. The lore serves as comedy scaffolding: a massive, detailed universe constructed entirely to contextualise three people in a broken shuttle arguing about Bing.

The Human Empire has occupied 187 planets across five galaxies. The word "occupied" is flagged immediately as contested — at least five of the eight known sentient species prefer "infested." This is the story's central geopolitical premise, delivered in two sentences: humanity is an invasive species, and the non-humans know it.

The "cockroaches" metaphor is particularly apt because the story opens with this label and closes with "Exterminate!" — the Dalek's genocidal battle cry. The story has been, from line one, the story of some cockroaches who get stepped on. The characters don't know this. The reader does, or does by the end.

The "DON'T PANIC" conference — an alien peace-building summit about humanity, held without humans — is a compressed version of the story's politics: decisions about humanity are made without consulting humans. The Prydonians lock away their princess rather than accept a human into the family. The ADC hunts down Kirk not for anything he did professionally but for a marriage. The universe is actively hostile to human presence, and the humans are too busy arguing about Bing to notice.

R3 Dent is a maintenance bot modified by an R&D employee named Davis Jenkins — his designation is R3 DT, hence "Dent." He is assembled from at least five different fictional AI personalities: HAL 9000's stubbornness ("I'm sorry but I can't do that Dave"), R2-D2's competence and cheerful articulacy, Arthur Dent's fundamental decency, HK-47's contempt for "meatbags," and a Dalek's certainty that extermination is inevitable.

He is also the story's most functional character. While Kirk gets punched and forgets to dock, Crash fails to spot an asteroid field, and Clara spends the whole story unconscious, Dent fixes the warp core, provides coordinates to the waystation, attaches himself to the hull to save space, and buys coffee for everyone before they die.

The most important detail: Dent buys three Starbucks and a medkit. He didn't know they were about to be atomised. He bought coffee because that's what you do when you're going to meet people. The story ends on this — a maintenance robot with dead-end programming going off to find someone new to be polite to.

Kirk Ji'doon (real name James Pond) is the story's "Solid Snake" — a legendary seducer of seven of eight species — who fell genuinely in love with a Prydonian alien princess named Cthululumaxikikitssseeerapoulous. The Prydonians treat reproduction as a ceremonial family-binding act, not a recreational one. To complete the relationship, Kirk had to actually fall in love, which he did.

Her family then locked her away and chased him to the furthest reaches of space. He changed his name. He's been running ever since. The relationship is described as the one time the legendary lothario's reputation actually mattered — and it's the one that's cost him everything.

The challenge required a tragic romance. JL delivers it obliquely: Kirk doesn't describe it as a tragedy. He says "what happens in Prydonia, stays in Prydonia." The tragedy is only visible in the structure — he's on the run, she's imprisoned, and he dies before they can find each other. The challenge requirement is met in negative space.

The Prydonians are the seventh of the eight known sentient species. They are described as having a deeply ceremonial reproductive culture — sex as a family compact rather than a personal act. They hate humans. Their royal family has an armed cruiser and a brother willing to cross space to execute someone who married into the family without permission.

The "seven of eight" notation is interesting: it's the exact inverse of the Star Trek Borg designation "Seven of Nine" (the designation of the ex-Borg character in Voyager). The reference may be deliberate: Prydonian culture is similarly totalising — you either comply with the rules or you are severed from the collective.

The fact that Kirk has been intimate with all eight species (six of eight consensually-at-least-ambiguously, one as a proper marriage, and presumably the eighth either not yet or deliberately omitted) is left as a detail for the reader to work out from context.

The Empire's Interstellar Relations Department has banned horror because most horror narratives are "speciesist" — they centre the fear of the non-human, the alien, the monstrous other. In a universe with eight known sentient species, those "others" have lawyers and ambassadors and their own view of humanity as the invasive pest species.

The ban has a direct plot function: because Kirk and Crash have never consumed horror fiction, they don't recognise the horror movie setup when they're in one. They hear knocking on a spaceship hull in the vacuum of space and respond with "Did someone just knock on the door?" — the classic oblivious horror protagonist move — without any awareness that this is what they're doing. Not knowing genre conventions is the mechanism of their survival (they don't panic) and their doom (they don't take it seriously enough).

✦ THE CRAFT

The author's note says "I know it's silly and it makes no sense." This is modesty as misdirection. The story is structurally tight, the challenge constraints are all met with craft rather than brute compliance, and the ending — everyone dies — has been signposted from the first sentence. What looks like chaos is scaffolded.

The story sits in the tradition of comedic science fiction that uses genre parody as both subject and method — primarily Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which does the same thing with its omniscient narrator, its direct reader address ("So, kids, what can we learn from this story?"), and its willingness to kill everyone at the end.

The reference density also places it in a more recent tradition: the "geek culture mashup" comedy popularised in the 2000s–2010s by shows like Community, Spaced, and Robot Chicken, where knowing the references is part of the joke rather than incidental to it. The challenge requirement of "31 references" formalises this — the reference density is the stated artistic goal.

The 3rd-person omniscient narrator who addresses the reader directly is a specific Adamsian inheritance. "It's always good to know those who are about to die, and salute them" reads like a line Adams would have written. The narrator is wry, slightly ahead of the characters, and treats their deaths as an amusing structural inevitability.

Gallows humour: Built into the narrative voice from the first introduction — "it's always good to know those who are about to die, and salute them." The characters are introduced as marked for death before we know their names. The comedy throughout is the comedy of people who don't know they're about to die arguing about Bing.

Alien sexcapade: Delivered in backstory rather than scene. Kirk/Solid Snake's reputation as "conquering Casanova of seven of the eight sentient species" establishes the parameter, and his marriage to Cthulu's sister provides the specific. The challenge requirement is met without any explicit scene — the sexcapade exists entirely in Crash's boasting summary and Kirk's embarrassed deflection.

Tragic romance: The Kirk/Cthulu marriage — played primarily for laughs — is structurally a tragedy. Genuine love; family opposition; exile; name change; death before reunion. The challenge doesn't specify that the tragedy must be played seriously. JL meets it in subtext.

The 31-reference requirement is a constraint, but it's a constraint that fits the story's natural register. The references work because they're integrated rather than announced. "Wibbly wobbly" describes a flight path; it doesn't say "as Doctor Who would put it." "Bing scanners can't find a damn thing" is a character complaint; it doesn't footnote the reference. The story trusts the reader to either get it or accept it as world-building.

The references also tend to cluster in specific ways: technology jokes (Bing, Google, iComm, Instastream) suggest a future that has failed to meaningfully upgrade its worst products; the navigation and weapons vocabulary (Yordle, ADC, Flash, Summoner's Rift) suggests that League of Legends has become genuine military taxonomy; the robot Dent's composite AI personality references are layered so that each layer is funnier than the last.

The references JL chose are also self-selecting for comedy: they're either memes (over nine thousand, all your base) or things that are inherently undignified when applied to serious situations (a spaceship button labelled "Flash," Bing powering military scanners). The reference density is high, but the references were chosen for how well they survive translation into a space opera setting.

The story refuses to explain why the ADC blew up the station. Kirk and Crash debate it — terrorists? Ransom? A personal vendetta? — and never land on an answer before they're killed. The reader doesn't find out either. This is structurally correct: the characters die mid-sentence, mid-question, mid-story. The plot threads are cut rather than tied.

Clara Croft, the story's most plot-relevant character by most metrics (she's the potential ransom target, the only person who might know what was happening at the station, and the person who demonstrates genuine competence by flattening a man of legendary reputation), is never properly introduced. She punches someone, falls asleep twice, and dies without saying a word. Whatever she knew goes with her.

These refusals are not failures of plotting — they're the point. A gallows-humour story about escape from an alien takeover that ends in total failure doesn't need tidy resolution. The mess is the message.

The first line is "Space: the final frontier" — Star Trek's opening narration, spoken by the captain of a legendary starship, defining space as the domain of human exploration and heroism. The story's final word is "Exterminate!" — the Daleks' death command, the explicit end of all human things.

Between those two poles: humans are the cockroaches. The cockroaches get exterminated. The bookend turns Star Trek's optimistic vision into a setup for a Dalek punchline. It's a complete argument compressed into the story's first and last moment: the final frontier was always going to end with someone who thinks humanity is vermin.

The author's note claims the story "makes no sense." The first and last lines, read together, make exactly one sense, and it's the darkest one available.

✦ THE REFS — COMPLETE CATALOGUE

The challenge required a minimum of 31 gaming, geek, or pop-culture references. JL lost count. This catalogue identifies all confirmed and likely references in approximate order of appearance. Total: 55 identified.

✦ STAR TREK
01
"Space: the final frontier."STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES (1966)The show's opening narration — used as the story's literal first line.
02
"faulty warp core" (title + setup)STAR TREK The warp core powers faster-than-light travel. A failing one means you're stranded.
03
"Kirk" (character name)STAR TREK — Captain James T. Kirk The captain of the Enterprise. This Kirk is short and gets punched in the face.
04
"phaser blasts"STAR TREK Standard directed-energy weapons of the Star Trek universe.
05
"cling on" / Klingon STAR TREK — Klingon species A homophone pun on "Klingon." Kirk asks Crash to say it three times.
06
"set to roast-to-f***ing-cinder"STAR TREK — "set to kill/stun"Phasers have selectable output levels. The ADC selects a new one.
✦ DOCTOR WHO
07
"wibbly wobbly"DOCTOR WHO — "Blink" (2007)The Tenth Doctor's description of time. Here describes a flight path.
08
"Clara Oswyn Croft" (Clara Oswald portion)DOCTOR WHO — Clara Oswald The Eleventh/Twelfth Doctor's companion. Half of the character's name mashup.
09
"Prydonian" (Cthulu's species)DOCTOR WHO — Prydonian Chapter The Time Lords' most powerful chapter on Gallifrey. Kirk married their crown princess.
10
"Raxicoricofallibatorianomous" (Cthulu's brother's name)DOCTOR WHO — Raxacoricofallapatorius The Slitheen home planet — already one of fiction's longest place names, extended further.
11
"Exterminate!" (final word)DOCTOR WHO — The Daleks The Daleks' sole defining utterance. The story's final word. Bookends with "Space: the final frontier."
✦ HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
12
"DON'T PANIC!" (conference name)THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY (1979)The two words on the Guide's cover. Named an alien conference about humanity that humanity wasn't invited to.
13
"Viltvodle 3" (location)HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE — Viltvodle VI A planet in the HG2G universe, used here as a nearby waypoint.
14
"R3 Dent" (Arthur Dent portion)HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE — Arthur Dent The novel's bewildered, decent, bathrobed everyman protagonist. Half of R3 Dent's name.
✦ LEAGUE OF LEGENDS
15
"Yordle class" (shuttle)LEAGUE OF LEGENDS — Yordles Small, resilient, manoeuvrable creatures. Their class name describes the shuttle perfectly.
16
"Bringer's Rift" (location)LEAGUE OF LEGENDS — Summoner's Rift The primary game map, renamed with a thematic swap.
17
"Darius van de Koot" (character name)LEAGUE OF LEGENDS — Darius Powerful, aggressive LoL champion. His given name. "Crash" is a separate reference.
18
"ADC Cruiser" (enemy ship class)LEAGUE OF LEGENDS — ADC (Attack Damage Carry)The sustained-damage role. The enemy's entire ship class is named after a game position.
19
"Flash" (escape button)LEAGUE OF LEGENDS — Flash (summoner spell)The blink-teleport escape ability. Now an actual piece of spacecraft engineering.
20
"We just trolled an ADC"LEAGUE OF LEGENDS + Internet culture Double reference: the LoL strategy and the internet-culture meaning. Both accurate.
21
"Triple kill. Tons of damage." (Dent's epitaph)LEAGUE OF LEGENDS — multi-kill announcer + "tons of damage" meme The announcer callout + the classic commentator meme. Dent's final words for his dead friends.
✦ STAR WARS
22
"a long time ago in a galaxy so far away"STAR WARS (1977) — opening crawl Woven into a sentence about Star Trek's opening. Two references in one clause.
23
"sword out of light"STAR WARS — lightsaber Described as self-evidently absurd — and then immediately defended by someone who nearly made one.
24
"R3 DT" / "R3 Dent" (R2-D2 portion)STAR WARS — R2-D2 The iconic astromech droid. Half of Dent's designation.
25
"Silly meatbags…"STAR WARS: KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC — HK-47"Meatbag" is HK-47's contemptuous term for organics. One of Dent's layered AI personalities.
✦ 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
26
"It just says 'daisy'"2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) — HAL 9000 HAL's dying song: "Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)." R3 Dent's startup signature.
27
"I'm sorry but I can't do that Dave"2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY — HAL 9000"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." Used as a "let go" refusal.
✦ TECHNOLOGY & INTERNET
28
"Bing scanners can't find a damn thing"MICROSOFT BING Microsoft's search engine — elevated to life-threatening military equipment.
29
"planet Google" (ADC's scanner manufacturer)GOOGLE Enemy scanners run on Google tech. They get shorted out by an EMP.
30
"iComm 5X" / "the Fruit" / "chipster"APPLE / iPHONE A complete future-universe Apple brand argument, verbatim from real 21st-century phone tribalism.
31
"instastream"INSTAGRAM Future-portmanteau social media platform.
32
"MyFace"MYSPACE + FACEBOOK Both rivals fused into one successor platform. "It's complicated" references the Facebook relationship status.
33
"Googlian translators"GOOGLE TRANSLATE Eight centuries of development and Google Translate still produces "All your ship are belong to us."
34
Progress bar time estimates WINDOWS — progress bar"30 seconds. No, 56 seconds. Wait. Two hours and fifty three minutes." Some bugs are eternal.
35
"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"THE IT CROWD (2006)Applied to a spaceship engine in a chase sequence.
✦ OTHER POP CULTURE & GAMING
36
"over nine thousand"DRAGON BALL Z — Vegeta's power level One of the internet's earliest memes. The actual engine temperature reading.
37
"Crash" (Darius's nickname)CRASH BANDICOOT (1996)Hidden in the character's nickname.
38
"Solid Snake" (Kirk's alias)METAL GEAR SOLID (1998)The legendary operative reduced to a man who gets punched by an unconscious woman.
39
"glitch in the matrix"THE MATRIX (1999)A technical malfunction that turned a lightsaber into a flashlight.
40
"All your ship are belong to us"ZERO WING (1989) — "All your base are belong to us"The iconic Engrish meme. Blamed on Googlian translators — same error, eight centuries later.
41
"I'll be back in a German accent"THE TERMINATOR (1984)Arnold Schwarzenegger's most quoted line. The "German accent" clarifies which "I'll be back" is meant.
42
"Pond. James, Pond."JAMES BOND (1953 / 1962)"Bond. James Bond." The story's best single joke delivery.
43
"Say hello to my little friend, heaven."SCARFACE (1983)A Prydonian death threat mangled by Google Translate into a Scarface reference.
44
"Clara Oswyn Croft" (Lara Croft portion)TOMB RAIDER — Lara Croft (1996)Half of the character's mashup name.
45
"Moon Raiders / Laura Croft / the big… house"TOMB RAIDER + SPACE INVADERS Two classics fused into one future franchise. "The big house" is a joke about Lara Croft's character model.
46
"mushroom beacon" (countermeasure suggestion)SUPER MARIO BROS.Mushrooms as plausible-sounding spacecraft countermeasures.
47
"prozium supply" (invasion motive)EQUILIBRIUM (2002)The mandatory emotion-suppressing drug of a dystopian state — now a geopolitical resource.
48
"WUDs — Weapons of Ultimate Destruction"WMDS / IRAQ WAR JUSTIFICATION (2003)Weapons of Mass Destruction — the disputed justification for the Iraq War. Escalated to "Ultimate."
49
"Holy Mother of Hubbard" / "Scientificist"SCIENTOLOGY — L. RON HUBBARD The Scientology founder as both expletive deity and future religion. Telegraphed twice.
50
"Raphael-knows"TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES — Raphael The red-masked, sarcastic Turtle, elevated to deity in a casual idiom.
51
"Cthululumaxikikitssseeerapoulous"H.P. LOVECRAFT — Cthulhu The cosmic horror entity's name, extended to alien-name length. Kirk was married to this person.
52
"Planet Holibush" (movie stereotypes)HOLLYWOOD Still casting the fat one as the clever sidekick, 800 years on.
53
"three cups of Starbucks"STARBUCKS / BATTLESTAR GALACTICA — Starbuck Coffee chain or Kara Thrace's callsign — either reading lands. Dent bought coffee for friends who were about to die.
54
"extermination is inevitable" (Dent's message)DOCTOR WHO — Daleks (secondary Dent reference)One of R3 Dent's layered AI personalities — the Dalek certainty about organic life expectancy.
55
"non-life" (Dent's term for himself)WORLD — Dent's self-description Dent's word for his own existence. Possibly the most elegant two words in the story.
✦ CATALOGUE COMPLETE ✦ 55 REFS IDENTIFIED — 24 OVER REQUIREMENT █
✦ HORROR AS A BANNED GENRE

### The Empire's ruling

The Imperial Interstellar Relations Department has classified horror as "speciesist" on most planets. The reasoning: horror narratives systematically construct the alien, the non-human, and the monstrous as threats to be feared and destroyed. In a universe with eight sentient species, that framing is an active political problem.

### Why it matters to the plot

Kirk and Crash have never consumed horror fiction. When something starts knocking on the hull of their shuttle in the vacuum of space, they respond with genuine curiosity rather than genre-trained fear. The horror movie setup — isolated location, unknown entity outside, knock knock — is invisible to them. Not knowing the conventions is why they survive the initial encounter, and possibly why they don't take the overall situation seriously enough to live.

### What it says about the world

The ban is a sharp piece of world-building in parenthetical form: a future society that has outlawed a genre not for content but for structural bias. The political observation is buried in a comedy note about why characters don't react to a horror setup. JL uses the throwaway line to do three things at once.

✦ THE TRAGIC ROMANCE — KIRK & CTHULU

### The challenge requirement

The challenge specified that the story must contain a tragic romance. JL delivers it in backstory, not scene — and plays it primarily for laughs, which makes the tragedy visible only in its structural shape.

### The romance

Kirk Ji'doon (real name James Pond), known as Solid Snake for his interspecies exploits, fell genuinely in love with Cthululumaxikikitssseeerapoulous — an alien woman of a species that treats reproduction as sacred ceremony, not recreation. To complete the relationship, Kirk had to actually fall in love, which he did. She had to do the same, which she did.

### The tragedy

Her family — Prydonians who hate humans — locked her away and sent her brother's warship after Kirk. He changed his name. He's been running for long enough that his previous identity as "Solid Snake" has become a legendary reputation in another name. He will never see her again. He dies in this story before reaching even the waystation.

### How the challenge is met

JL doesn't play the romance straight. "I married one" is a punchline. Kirk deflects with "what happens in Prydonia, stays in Prydonia." The tragedy is carried entirely by implication — a love story that exists only in the distance between where Kirk is and where she is, and in the fact that the distance is about to become permanent. The challenge requirement is met in negative space.

✦ "EXTERMINATE!" — THE DALEKS & THE BOOKEND

### Who are the Daleks?

The Daleks are the recurring antagonists of Doctor Who — mutated alien creatures encased in armoured travel machines, driven by a singular imperative to exterminate all non-Dalek life. Their battle cry — "Exterminate!" — is one of science fiction's most recognisable single words.

### The structural bookend

The story's first line: "Space: the final frontier" — Star Trek's hymn to human exploration and potential. The story's last word: "Exterminate!" — the Dalek death command. Between those poles: humanity is described as the cockroaches of the universe, and the cockroaches get exterminated.

The opening promise and the closing reality are in perfect structural opposition. Star Trek's optimistic universe meets its natural end in a Dalek command. The final frontier turns out to be one that exterminates you.

### The author's stated intent

The author's note says "I know it's silly and it makes no sense." The bookend makes precise sense: it closes the circle the first sentence opened. Whether this is deliberate craft or a happy accident of reference density is — characteristically — left unresolved.