A flash for actual friday, no self prompt in Flash friday, August 9th 2013

"He's lying." "Guess who just walked in?" --- prompts from the prompt pile

“Morning Saul” “Heh” came the voice from the speakers. After thirteen months in space you get tired of a computer voice telling you the irrelevance of basing time on the revolution of a distant planet locked into a gravitational orbit around a distant sun. Joe was bored, figured if he was locked in Beckett play he’d rather it be Krapps last Tape than waiting for Godot.

Joe did his morning routine, check the life support, peed, opened a tinfoil pack of some dehydrated breakfast shit, he’d come to call all his meals Purina human chow. And sat down to the table, turning on the systems for gravity, or what he’d come to call grav-a-lox after his swede forbearers godawful way of preserving salmon. Tasted like they marinated it in turpentine and white lightening.

In the other chair was his suit, the self-contained little life support for fixing the ship or going for a stroll. He shuffled the deck, dealt out three hands of five cards each, held Saul’s hand up to the monitor. He threw in three cards dealt himself three more. Saul asked for two. Joe took four from the space suit. He pulled all the space suits chips to the middle.

“I fold” said the computer. “He’s lying” said Joe, “Saul, it’s funk to funky you know major toms a junkie” Saul was programmed to pick a David Bowie song at random when there was a David Bowie reference. He played panic in Detroit over the titanium grills of the speakers. There were about twenty discographies programmed in, only two from the twenty first century.

Joe won. He wrote a marker for Major Tom and pushed over some chips. Major Tom owed him 1.5 billion dollars. Saul just manufactured his own chips.

“Guess who just walked in?” Joe said.

Saul spins the discs and a Black Uhuru tune came up.

“Close Saul, but no microchip for you”

Joe looked out the window. The universe worked differently than the human mind. Joe thought, it’s us that abhor a vacuum, the universe doesn’t feel compelled to fill a shelf with tchachis. There’s more emptiness than fullness. It’s more like the human heart than the human mind.

“Shall I stop?”

“Hell no, Saul, Crank her up”