The Odyssey rang like a bell.
The airlock hissed. Lia drifted across the void, her tether line snaking behind her like a silver tail. The alien ship’s hull was warm, humming with a language she couldn’t hear but felt in her teeth. She found a manual hatch—a circular iris that, when touched, irised open with a wet, organic sigh.
“It seemed like a good idea,” he said, weeping with laughter.
A small, crescent-shaped platform glowed under a single spotlight. On it sat a top hat, a pair of white gloves, and a carrot-shaped wand. And behind the stage, trapped inside a glass cylinder filled with a bubbling, cotton-candy-pink fluid, was a creature that looked exactly like a giant, two-foot-tall plush bunny. Its button eyes were dark, its fur was pristine, and its stitched-on smile was frozen in perpetual cheer. Bunny Girl--39-s Strange Alien Adventure.rar
She didn’t tell them about Floppy. Some things are better as a mystery. But she kept the carrot wand, which now sat in a glass case in her quarters, and every time the crew got too serious, she’d tap it against the bulkhead.
The cylinder hissed open. Floppy hopped out. His movements were not like a rabbit’s; they were like a stop-motion puppet’s, jerky and deliberate. He hopped once, twice, and landed on the stage. He picked up the top hat with his paw, placed it on his head, and turned to her.
The wand on the stage levitated, twirled, and a real, holographic carrot materialized in the air. Lia caught it. It smelled of saffron and ozone. She held it up to the cylinder. The Odyssey rang like a bell
Floppy’s stitched smile widened into something genuine. THAT IS MY FAVORITE SET LIST.
The carrot dissolved into light and was absorbed into the bunny’s fur. The pink fluid in the cylinder began to drain.
She was the ship’s anthropologist and, by strange coincidence, the only crew member currently wearing a pair of fluffy white bunny ears. It was a bet she’d lost during the last hyperspace jump. The ears, embarrassingly, were magnetized to her headband. “Don’t say a word, Aris.” The alien ship’s hull was warm, humming with
On the view screen, the source resolved: a derelict vessel shaped like a giant, cracked pistachio nut. The Odyssey ’s sensors registered no life, but one energy signature pulsed in the cargo bay—a single, compact power source shaped roughly like a rabbit.
Inside, the ship defied physics. The walls were a soft, velveteen pink, and the floor was a checkerboard of lavender and electric yellow. The gravity was whimsical—one step was heavy, the next made her bounce three feet in the air.