Beyond the Event Horizon With Snyder and Tompkins

Snyder awoke to Tompkins sitting on his face for the third time this week. A year ago he would have been livid, but by now the resignation had set in. He pushed Tompkins off with a firm thrust of his hand.

-"Dammit Tompkins! Of all places..."

He trailed off as he attempted to resume his sleep.

Tompkins made no reply.

Snyder attempted to roll over and resume his rest, but he was awake now. Eyes bloodshot he rolled out of his cot, headed toward the coffee machine while Tompkins followed.

They both sat on a bench in front of the large window, really the only window on the ship. The silence was deafening, the view was infinite, and the coffee was burnt.

After a few minutes, Tompkins finally got the nerve together to apologize.

-"I'm sorry Snyder, it just feels so much warmer on your face than in my bed."

-"I know Tompkins, you've told me that more times than I care to remember. Can't we just enjoy the view for a bit?"

Tompkins, ignoring his companion, began to stroll away absentmindedly. Snyder sighed, as he already knew where his four legged friend was going.

The holo-shed doors read, "IN USE", but the view screen was already patched through to the live feed from inside. On the screen was Tompkins sitting alone on a shelf next to an expensive looking glass vase. He pushed it off and it fell to the floor and shattered on impact then immediate rise from the fragments, reform, and place itself back on the shelf next to Tompkins.

-"Great," Snyder thought to himself, "he'll be busy for at least an hour."

While Tompkins was busy, Snyder resumed began his ongoing quest of finding dental floss. At first it had started as an inside joke for himself, then sort of like a mindless task that was actually quite meditative, but after the first year of searching it became more like his sole purpose.

For about ninety minutes, Snyder scoured the ship for scraps of leftover dental floss. The AI in charge of production of essential items would only produce two half foot lengths of the stuff a day. The rest would have to be scavenged from what Snyder referred to as his "Slob Years".

During his search, Snyder thought far back to when he first met Tompkins about ten years ago. Initially he thought he'd be exploring the furthest planets in the galaxy and maybe even the next, but after launch a video recording revealed that the actual Operation Upsilon was a bit of an odd experiment, presumably why they used one of the seldom used Greek letters. It turns out the governing body just wanted to know what would happen if a shuttle was shot into a black hole, using a living participant was just icing on their cruelty cake.

It turns out, when you launch a shuttle into a black hole the communications and guidance systems get fried and no data gets transmitted. Fortunately for Snyder and Tompkins, this black hole just spat them out in some unknown corner of the universe instead of crushing them into the void.

So for ten long years, Snyder and Tompkins wandered around the ship aimlessly with nothing but each other and the void and dental floss.

Tompkins emerged from the holo-shed with a jaunty stroll. He appeared to be quite pleased with himself. He found his way to Snyder, who had managed to pocket nearly two dozen strands of dental floss, and sat near him on the bench overlooking the window. In a moment of warmth Snyder attempted to pet Tompkins, but was met with a hiss and a loud, "NO!"

Tompkins was no longer in a good mood and stormed off. Snyder let him go and returned to his floss hunt. Tompkins, meanwhile, went into Snyder's room and relieved himself all over his cot. The pillow, blankets, sheets, and even some other parts of the room were soaked in an impressive amount of cat urine. He nodded his head approvingly and thought to himself, "That'll teach him."

After a long day of searching, Snyder had finally called an end to his quest for floss. He had found roughly forty pieces of loose dental floss in total that day and for the first time in weeks he felt satisfied with his efforts. He stored his find in a small footlocker in his room. Smiling to himself, the odor found it's way to him. He gagged. Tears streaming from his eyes he began to shout,

-"GOD FUCKING DAMMIT TOMPKINS! IS THIS BECAUSE I TRIED TO PET YOU ONE TIME!?"

Tompkins was nowhere to be seen, leaving Snyder to his fit of rage. He began flinging his bedding out of the room and attempting to mop up as much of the stinking cat urine as possible. He was not successful.

"This was the last straw," Snyder shouted to himself, "and isn't it my good god dammed fortune that I finally have enough floss!" He slammed the door and rushed to his footlocker filled with thousands of strands of dental floss. He dumped the strands onto his bare mattress and began working as fast as he could, fueled by the stench of the room and shouting along the way about the dammed cat and the idiots in charge of Operation Omicron.

Hours passed by, and Tompkins began to grow restless for his Snyder-face sleep pillow. The shouting had ceased for a few minutes and was replaced with an eerie quiet. Tompkins decided to use his secret vent entrance to see what was going on.

Creeping through the cold, dusty vent. Tompkins inched toward the light of Snyder's room. Peering through the slats of the vent he saw Snyder standing on a stool, which he thought was odd. He decided to enter the room and see what was going on and perhaps apologize for his actions. What Tompkins saw was Snyder tying a noose made of thousands of strands of dental floss to a light fixture. They locked eyes.

-"Snyder, what are you doing?"

-"Well... would you believe flossing?"

-"You think this is the time for jokes?!"

-"You're right, you're right. It's... it's been a long ten years buddy."

-"I know and I've been with you for all of them."

-"Right again, but it's different for me than it is for you. I don't go pissing all over your stuff."

-"You're right, that was my bad. But is all THIS really necessary?"

-"I think it is."

-"I know you must feel like your losing your mind, but what will I do if you go?"

-"I... I dunno.... I just don't know what to do anymore."

-"..."

-"You're right, maybe we can survive a few more years together."

-"..."

-"I love you too Tompkins, but if you piss in my bed again I'm killing us both."

And so the pair floated on for a time.