Ryan’s first date with Nebula started at the Lithium-Flat Outpost, a retail colony perched on the edge of the radioactive Gamma-Ray Geysers. He had saved three weeks of mall security pay for a table at The Event Horizon, a restaurant where the soup was made of literal stardust.
“It is romantic,” Ryan said, adjusting his itchy clip-on tie. “Look at the twin suns collapsing.”
“I am allergic to collapsing suns,” Nebula replied, her third arm emerging from her lower back to frantically scratch her neck. “And the waiter is a Hive-Mind. He keeps forgetting which of us ordered the carbon-neutral pasta and which ordered the bowl of raw electricity.”
The evening plummeted when Dover the Escalator arrived, clanking across the salt flats on his railing-appendages. “I am here to provide an emergency exit,” the sentient stairs moaned, his voice echoing through the vacuum. “I sensed your social anxiety from the food court. It feels like a structural failure in my soul.”
“Go away, Dover!” Ryan hissed, but it was too late. The Hive-Mind waiter tripped over Dover’s bottom step, splashing the raw electricity directly onto Ryan’s lap.
The kinetic energy sent Ryan flying backward into a display of Grav-Spliced Mannequins. As he hovered six feet off the ground, glowing blue and smelling like burnt hair, Nebula checked her chronometer.
“Is this the part where we kiss?” Ryan asked, his voice three octaves higher due to the ionization.
“This is the part where my father, the High Inquisitor of Sector Seven, arrives,” Nebula said, pointing at a spiked dreadnought dropping out of warp.
The ship’s tractor beam locked onto Ryan instead of Nebula. “Great,” Dover droned as Ryan was hoisted toward the warship. “Now I have to update my insurance policy for accidental human abduction.”
(This story created by a California Earthquake on July 18, 2026. Magnitude 3.1 – 6 km NW of The Geysers, CA. URL: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc75398761/executive)
