Chapter Text
The Hail Mary was not going well. Even with all the money in the world, there were so many options to build a new vessel. The crews were too busy building other projects to even consider a new one, even with all of the authority Eva Stratt commanded. And diverting resources from the construction of the International Space Station was a no go at this point. Trying to build a new spacecraft in time to do anything was starting to look impossible.
She opened up her email in the vain hope that things were going to turn around. But one email had caught her eye. The subject line was “Spaceship?” and the sender was… Comedy Central? She turned around to the other people in the room. “Does anybody know why we’ve gotten an email from …Comedy Central? Does anybody know what that is?”
“Uh, isn’t that a new cable channel?”
Eva groaned. She didn’t have time to watch cable. On the other hand, at this point she was desperate. She read through. One of their programs apparently featured a working manned spacecraft, with pictures of a man in a red jumpsuit and three… peculiar looking automatons.
She sent a reply back. “We’ll take it. What do we need to do to commandeer the ship?”
Not too long after, they had received schematics for the vessel, including the means to relay into it. It was decently advanced stuff, actually, sourced from a Minnesota based think tank of engineers. Sounded a bit like Bell Labs, now that she thought of it, just… a bit weirder. It came with a functioning warp drive, two-way video communications in an age where receiving a static image was an affair that could take hours, and a functioning life support system tagged “please don’t ask about it”.
It was going to be perfect. All she needed to do was to hack into it and set up a webcam. She’d done harder things before, right?
Eva’s computer was beginning to receive video from the mysterious spacecraft. The signal settled on a shot of an empty theater, displaying an image of the Moon in rotation before pulling back. A strange series of shutters closed before settling on an off white room with a desk situated just in front of the door, upon which sat three buttons and two robots apparently made from spare parts were gibbering with excitement at a tired looking man in a red jumpsuit. He looked towards the camera situated in the bridge, and introduced himself. “Hi everybody, welcome to the Satellite of Love, I’m Joel Robinson, and these-”
He didn’t get through his sentence before the red-bodied robot interrupted him to praise him. “Oh you see he introduced himself, what a perfectly thoughtful thing to do.”
Joel continued. “These are my robots Tom Servo and Crow, and I’ve installed in them a protocol module that makes them believe everything I think, say, or do is utterly brilliant.”
Eva looked at the display on her screen with befuddlement. She supposes she should have known better than to blindly accept a vessel from a random cable channel, especially one that advertises itself as focusing on comedy, but this seemed ridiculous. Why hadn’t she heard of any of this before. Her stupor was only broken by the sound of the man named Joel announcing “We’ll be right back.” like he was on some low-rate television show. Considering how she learned of this, that may actually be the case.
Eva panicked, saying “no, no, stay on…”, trying to get the man’s attention but the signal eventually dropped into static. She slumped in her chair frustrated, just in time for her good luck charm to walk over. Dr. Ryland Grace peered over Eva’s shoulder and asks “Hey, what are you working on?”
Eva sighed. “We got a tip from somebody that they got a working spaceship that we could use. It’s manned and apparently capable of spaceflight, but… it gives me a headache.”
Grace raised eyebrow. “Why’s that?”
Eva simply said “You’ll see.” as the feed roared back to life. Oh thank God. She had vaguely recalled that there was a way to get the host’s attention, and sent up a ping. The red button on the desk lit up, and was lightly tapped by Joel. “Uh oh, fasten your seatbelts, Crate and Barrel are calling.”
Instead of the usual faces though, they saw a crowded control room. “This is Eva Stratt of the Petrova Taskforce. As of now, we’re commandeering your ship to save the human race.”
Joel looked perplexed. “The Petrova Taskforce?”
The red bodied robot laughed. “Nina Petrova! The Russians have taken over and now we’re gonna get the best of Soviet filmmaking.”
The golden robot remarked “So… no better than the American films Doctor Forrester has been sending?”
“Exactly, Crow!”
Eva was not amused. “Oh God, I don’t have time for this. Here’s your mission: the sun is being eaten by an alien microbe called the astrophage. We need to find any answers we can come up with, and since your ‘satellite’ apparently has the capability for interstellar travel-”
Crow interrupted with “Interstellar travel? When did we get interstellar travel?”
Tom responded “You mean we could have just left Earth’s orbit this whole time?”
Joel looked to his robots and reminded them “If we did that we wouldn’t get cable, and we’d never find out what happens in the next Star Trek!”
Tom replied “Yeah, and hopefully they’ll find somebody who can write Data better.” He muttered “Lousy Pinocchio syndrome…”
Eva glared back. “As I was saying, since your Satellite can travel deep into space-”
This time Grace interrupted. “Wait, satellite? Why would it be able to do that? Isn’t it supposed to stay in Earth’s orbit?”
Eva grimaced and shoved Grace aside. The robots were being irritating enough and she did not need more people talking back to him. “Look, I am trying to prevent another ice age. Can you please cooperate?”
Joel looked back to his robots. “Yeah, come on guys, let’s hear her out.”
“Our team is going to send your ship to Tau Ceti in the hopes of finding out anything that could help save our planet. Your mission is to make contact and send us any information that could help us deal with it, okay?”
Joel nodded blankly. “Okay, I guess.”