[ SECRET POST #2350 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2350 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 135 secrets from Secret Submission Post #336.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 3 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Does anyone know the title of this short story?

[(Anonymous)]

There's this short story I once read that I really want to read again, but unfortunately I only remember bits of it and I don't recall the title or author or the characters' names.

Anyway, what I do remember is that there were two men alone in some little starship just cruising through empty space. One was the first-person narrator, who was kind of a sarcastic dick, and the other was his co-pilot, a kind of nervous nerdy fat guy who the narrator bossed around.

The two of them eventually get hailed by another little spaceship with two women in it, a friendly hot ditzy lady and her co-pilot, this gruff masculine woman with a unibrow. The narrator wants to have sex with the ditzy lady, so they accept an offer to have a few drinks together.

There's this long scene with conversation and hinting that there's some dark thing the narrator knows but the readers of the story aren't privy to while there's tension and some stuff I can't remember happens. But it finally comes to the light that the universe is about to end, and the two men are working some dreary job doing...something (I think collecting the energy from the universe's collapse?) and repeated going back in time over and over and over again to collect it. Or something.

Anyway, the universe is going to end, and the men can escape but the women can't unless they get in the mens' ship. But the women decide they don't want to live after the universe ends and stay. And the nerdy co-pilot of the narrator also decides he can't stand it any more and says he's decided to stay with the women and die.

The narrator fumes and yells and goes on long rants a lot, but eventually gives up and goes off in his spaceship to escape the end of the universe, while thinking about the co-pilot and the women and wondering if he shouldn't have let himself die too.

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

Re: Does anyone know the title of this short story?

[feathercircle]

No clue, but if you're on Livejournal, then whatwasthatbook or whatwasthatone might be able to help.

Re: Does anyone know the title of this short story?

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks!

Re: Does anyone know the title of this short story?

[(Anonymous)]

Sounds like something Heinlein wrote, except I think I might only be thinking that because of "The Number of the Beast."

Do you remember if it was classic scifi or modern?

Re: Does anyone know the title of this short story?

[(Anonymous)]

The prose and dialogue seemed pretty modern when I read it, but I'm not sure how modern.

Re: Does anyone know the title of this short story?

[(Anonymous)]

Seconding Heinlein (haven't read nearly enough to give you a title, but the style reminds me of the stuff of his I've read)

Re: Does anyone know the title of this short story?

[(Anonymous)]

SA

I was thinking of his Lazarus Long stuff. It's not about the end of the universe, but there are several times where it's got 4 people in a space ship escaping things.

If nothing else, I recommend the series for its fairly fucked up stories.

Re: Does anyone know the title of this short story?

[(Anonymous)]

I think I read something similar in Ray Bradbury's 'The Martian Chronicles' but it was more than a decade ago, so I can't be sure. It sounds very Bradbury-esque to me.