The REAL Astronaut Story

[TEM]

Go to the dollar store and buy a seemingly unrelated assortment of products that when assembled correctly provide me with a means to contact my robot underlings back at the launch base.

Putting your degrees in Astrophysics, Robotics and Frugality to use, you purchase various odds and ends at a dollar store and create a device to emit a communique to the launch base's Robotic Assistant Team. You program the various robots to combine together to create a transportation device. The robots covertly steal various parts and reactors while the human operators are busy looking for their missing astronaut. Three hours of pillaging and welding later, a low-flying transport is heading your way with a ETA of two hours. Unfortunately the powerful and lengthy relay emitted by your cobbled together communication device left an aftershock that was detected  by the NASA scientists. You are aware of this negative after effect, the scientists know where you are located within a 30 mile radius. It is 11:00 AM. You are in your hotel room with a freshly dismantled dollar store device. Usable items left are Chinese poppers, a New Year's Day hat from 1996 and a plastic gun.

What do you do?

[Weegee]

I retrieve some tinfoil from a nearby trash receptacle and fashion it into a radar-resistant helmet by using instructions from Conspiracy Theorism Monthly. If it repels Xenu's mind sensors, then it'll surely deflect NASA's tracking signals. I then cleverly disguise myself as a bird by wearing the party hat over my face in a beak-like fashion before leaving with the fake pistol to fend off potential muggers.

[WarpRattler]

I pocket the poppers, cover the party hat with tinfoil from a nearby garbage can, wear the tinfoil hat, grab the gun (which may or may not be non-fake and actually a plastic gun like the ones in the third X-Men movie), and engage in some Solid Snake-style stealth stuff (minus the extended-length cutscenes, because I don't have the time for those) to find somewhere safer than a seedy motel.

[Glorb]

I go to a nearby convenience store and, pointing the fake gun at the clerk, demand all the money in the register. To show I mean mean business, I set off one of the poppers behind my back while pointing the gun a the ceiling.

[TEM]

I go to a nearby convenience store and, pointing the fake gun at the clerk, demand all the money in the register. To show I mean mean business, I set off one of the poppers behind my back while pointing the gun a the ceiling.

Although the cashier can obviously tell that the gun is fake, he sees that you are potentially unstable and gives you $200 dollars from the register. You tie up the employee with some flimsy restraints and put him in the back. You lock the store up and put the "Closed" sign up. It's 12:00 PM. Outside the streets are full of tourists as usual and there is no obvious government presence. Your robotic transport will silently set down behind the bar in one hour.

What do you do next?

[CrossEyed7]

I flip the sign back to Open and sell stuff for an hour. I need more than $200.

[Weegee]

One word: Casino. Lady luck is coursing through my veins tonight.

[TEM]

I flip the sign back to Open and sell stuff for an hour. I need more than $200.

Despite being an hour away from a journey that would make you one of the richest men on the planet, you experienced a thrill from your first act of theft that you had to feel again. You return to the tied up employee, gag him with a rag and apple, and reinforce the bindings that tie his arms and legs. You open the shop for business and ring out customers for about thirty minutes, gaining you and extra $50, before you notice the trickle of customers slow to a stop. Outside you spot police officers and FBI suits rounding up people and putting them into vans. Roadblocks are placed and every building is getting searched. In 5 minutes they will be entering the building you currently occupy. The convenience store has glass bottles of alcohol and heavy, bulky objects (cash register, hot dog cooker) that might be used as weapons. There is an exit to the top of the one story building, with similar sized buildings to both sides, and a front and back exit. The robotic craft sets down in thirty minutes exactly 3 miles from your position. It's 12:30 PM.

What do you do?

[Weegee]

I convince the hapless cashier to masquerade as myself by promising him a life of fame, wealth and a voyage to the moon. He consents, and I exit the convenience store under the guise of an innocent employee. The FBI would never apprehend a presumably Indian-American Quickie Mart worker, lest they be accused of racial profiling.

Which is wrong.

[Turtlekid1]

Throw some of the bottles of alcohol out the window, drenching the immediate area around the bar and throw one of the remaining poppers onto the wet cement to set the drinks on fire.  That should cover my escape out the back (come on, it's a bar; there's always a back door).

[TEM]

Someone didn't get an "A" in reading comprehension.

[Glorb]

I study harder.

[Turtlekid1]

I hack into the school's mainframe and change my grade to "A+."

[CrossEyed7]

But I spell it with a P and three Ms.

[TEM]

This story ends on a cliffhanger.