"The Greasy Comet" smelled like old engine oil and broken dreams. It was, to be kind, a space-diner wedged into the side of some random asteroid. The kind of place where truckers with too many tentacles and bounty hunters with too little morale stopped to eat something that could technically be called food.
Amelia—or "Miss Paradox," as the six-armed cook liked to tease—swirled a sugar cube in her "coffee." It was a thick, black substance that seemed to stare back, like an existential abyss in a mug. Clipped to her belt by a frayed cord, a neon-pink Tamagotchi with a cracked screen started beeping, annoyed.
Boredom analysis: 98.7%. Imminent risk of a poetic and ill-advised decision. The voice, a bizarre mix of radio static and a game show host, came from the tiny device.
"Shut up, Zig-Zag," Amelia grumbled, not even looking away from the coffee.
She was at the bottom of a pit of boredom. A boredom of galactic proportions, one that made the vacuum of space outside the window look like Disneyland. The last adventure—escaping a sentient black hole that fell in love with her and wanted to "consume her love" in a very literal way—had been a total drag. The roots of her hair glowed a vibrant red, but the tips, a mess of purple and pink, were faded, almost gray. A perfect reflection of her bad vibe.
"The usual, Miss Paradox?" The voice of Glarth, the cook, sounded like rocks rolling in a can. Two of his arms wiped the counter, one served a green sludge to a lizard-like customer, and the other three were scratching different places on his giant insectoid body.
Suggestion: Order the engine lubricant. It has more nutritional value than that sludge you call coffee, Zig-Zag beeped.
"No, Glarth. Not today," Amelia said, ignoring the pesky AI. "Today I want... beauty. Something pure, you know? Unfiltered. I want to see where the stars are born."
Glarth stopped scratching. "The Nursery Nebula? That's about twelve parsecs and three time-paradoxes from here. And the food there is garbage. Just gas and dreams."
"Exactly." A real smile spread across Amelia's face, making the tips of her hair flash a sudden pink. She tossed a small, milky stone onto the counter. It shimmered with the image of a stolen kiss from a king who hadn't even been born yet. "For the drink."
Glarth picked up the stone with a pair of tongs. "A pre-paid moment of déjà vu. Fair."
Amelia stood up, stretching. It was time. She closed her eyes, blocking out the diner's noise, and focused on the desire. Where the stars are born. Not the image, but the idea. The cosmic violence of nuclear fusion, the graceful dance of gravity, the first photon of light tearing through the darkness.
Her mind, that buggy map of reality, began to hum. And that wasn't a figure of speech. It was her parents' fault, a couple of obsessed theoretical cartographers. They didn't map countries; they mapped reality. Their crazy idea was that all universes were connected by a network, the "Zero Point." One "ping" to that point, and voilà: the definitive map of everything that exists.
Of course, they didn't count on their young daughter tripping over the main power cable at the exact nanosecond of activation. Instead of "pinging," the lab "pulled" the Zero Point in. And the epicenter of the disaster that rewrote local physics? Amelia. She didn't get superpowers. She became the bug. Her body fused with the map. Traveling, for her, was just an act of will, a desire strong enough to bend spacetime.
The colors in her hair began to swirl, a vortex of red, purple, and pink. The world around her started to thin, the edges of the counter flickering. A smell of ozone and cinnamon filled the air. The route calculation was almost complete. Zig-Zag went quiet, a rare moment of self-preservation. It knew that interrupting the Focus was like poking a black hole with a stick.
That's when a stray desire, a mundane craving from the pit of her stomach, shot through her concentration like a drunken comet:
"...and some french fries. Some perfectly crispy french fries..."
The Tamagotchi let out a digital shriek of panic. ALERT! INTRUSIVE THOUGHT DETECTED! ABORT! ABORT! REDIRECTING TO CARBOHYDRATE CRAVING!
Too late. The mental image was so strong—the perfect golden-brown, the glistening salt, the satisfying crunch—that the travel calculation choked. The harmonious hum turned into ugly static.
With a final crack that sounded like a million toothpicks snapping at once, Amelia vanished from The Greasy Comet.
She landed with a dull thud.
The air was hot. Dry. Salty. And silent. Way too silent.
Landing complete, Zig-Zag's voice chimed, dripping with sarcasm. Welcome to Planet Cholesterol. Population: Fried. Probability of cosmic beauty: 0.001%. Probability of indigestion: 99.9%.
Amelia opened her eyes. She was on a vast, golden plain under a deep purple, starless sky. Instead of stars, giant white crystals, the size of small moons, floated above, casting a soft, diffuse light.
"What the...?"
She bent down and broke off a piece of the ground. It was shaped like a stick. It was, without a doubt, a french fry. A geologically perfect french fry. The entire planet was made of french fries.
She laughed. A loud, hysterical laugh that echoed across the silent plain.
That's when she felt the vibration.
The ground began to tremble. From the soil, tall, slender figures made of dark, obsidian-like crystals started to emerge. The Silexians. The natives. And the sound of her noisy existence had just shattered the perfect silence they had cultivated for millennia.
The vibration grew into a high-pitched hum that made her teeth ache. It was the vibe of pure, absolute, and silent fury.
Amelia stopped laughing. She looked at the dozens, then hundreds of crystal beings rising from the ground, all of them focused on her.
"Ah," she said to the furious silence. "This is bad."
Tactical analysis: Silica-based enemies. Suggestion: Offer them a data plan. Or run. Running seems statistically more viable, Zig-Zag advised.
Far away, in an office that existed outside of time and space, a being watched the scene in a mirror of liquid obsidian. He wore a pair of glasses on the tip of his beak and adjusted the feathers on his shoulder. Dr. Qwakthulhu, the Metaphysical Arch-Duck, sighed.
To him, Amelia wasn't a girl. She was an error in the matrix. A walking anomaly who could, with a sudden craving for junk food, manifest an entire planet from scratch, breaking a hundred laws of physics and gastronomy in the process. He didn't hate her. Hate was a messy emotion. He feared her. Wherever she stepped, the rules melted. And where chaos reigned, the truth could leak out.
He watched the Silexians preparing to purge the source of the noise. With a low quack that bent the light in his room, Dr. Qwakthulhu opened a file. The title glowed with a cold light: "Containment Protocol: Paradox."
For the stability of the universe, the glitch-girl needed to be... deleted.