Day 3: Hank finds himself stranded on a derelict alien spaceship. All in a day's work. To his surprise, he encounters a young woman, slumped against a wall in the cargo bay. She appears to be in poor condition.
Hank's ma didn't raise no fool; he knows what it means to be stranded in deep space -- he's outside the jurisdiction of Earth law! He promptly slips the woman a roofie and gets to it.
Unfortunately, Hank is cockblocked by the game designers, who throw a big fat "But thou must!" in his face. Hank is unperturbed. There will be other opportunities.
Day 8: For reasons completely unrelated to his relentless romantic advances toward the sole other inhabitant of the alien spaceship, Hank finds himself in an escape pod bound for a barren ice planet. Upon his arrival, he encounters these... things.
Hank shrugs, for he knows that beggars can't be choosers. Inorganic crystalline living spinal cords? Don't mind if I do!
Hank is heartened by the lack of resistance, but his experience reminds him just a little too much of his frequent bouts with tasers back home, so he lays off.
Day 16: After weeks of duress, Hank has managed to do what no human has ever done before -- he has located the homeworld of the fabled Heechee, the galaxy's most highly advanced civilization!
Hank is less concerned with this than he is with the fact that they all look vaguely humanoid. Score!
Disoriented, drenched in saliva, his nose raw and painful, Hank is positively ecstatic. A species of people who reciprocate when he accosts them at random in the middle of the street? He's had dreams about this!
Day 19: Having satiated his desires for casual hook-ups, Hank decides to take things in a more personal direction.
Playing hard to get, huh? Receptionists, receptionists never change.
Day 21: Memories of bedding gullible, rosy-faced Catholic maidens haunting his dreams at night, Hank is compelled to try his luck with someone a little more... spiritual.
Ah, the chaste, how Hank pities them. He knows in his heart that God celebrates all earthly pleasures.
Day 29: Once again, through no fault of his own, Hank finds himself drifting through the eternal void, aboard the very same starship where his journey began.
But this time, Hank has come prepared. It just so happens that the Heeche possessed the technology to render a person invisible, and Hank didn't have to be asked twice -- indeed, he's not quite sure he was ever asked at all.
Laughing softly to himself as he considers the impotence with which lesser minds would make use of such a device, he creeps up on an unsuspecting Space Terrorist.
As he slinks back into the shadows, Hank savours the lingering taste of terrorist aftershave, and the thoughts of the months to come...
how he fucked up something simple like that is beyond me.
