The story of the S.S. Useless

This is a story about the intrepid crew of the S.S. Useless. The Useless is a Nonexistent class vessel and is the first and only vessel of its class to ever reach completion. Soon after completing the Useless, some of its leftover parts were used in building a planetary shield, plunging the planet into perpetual Nonexistence almost immediately.

This, of course, rather worried the crew of the S.S. Useless since they were now faced with the annoyingly difficult task of finding the Nonexistent planet. Fortunately, as everyone knows, Nonexistence doesn’t actually remove an object from existence. It more or less congeals around it, temporarily removing the item from detection by any means. Several esteemed Nonexistent scientists noted that this didn’t matter, since Nonexistence is quite something else from nonexistence.

After a year or two the crew, being a very democratic sort of lot, decided that the planet was probably not coming back for a while… at least they did so after clobbering very soundly the person that uttered the traditional “But what if…” phrase. Of course, they had to decide what to do next and a lengthy discussion evolved about where to go, what to do and who was Boss.

Finally, by general election and the fact that he controlled the kitchen knives, Head Chef Ronny was chosen as the new Boss of the S.S. Useless. Ronny was an intelligent and crafty person. He had to be since the average intelligence of the rest of the crew combined was estimated at the equivalent of a walnut’s. And Ronny even knew what an equivalent was! One of the first items on Ronny’s agenda, after ‘they’ stole a freshly baked pie that is, was the formation of a Military Police. After all, one couldn’t let pie thieves run around unchecked, could one?

So, Ronny had to find out who could be trusted with the honorable and sacred duty of bashing up people. Ronny looked through the personnel files and inquired among the crew as to who could be trusted and who could not. Most of crew quickly realized what the MP could mean for them, so they unilaterally chose Wimpy “Bollocks, I’m getting outta here” Jones. Ronny decided on someone else, since he thought Wimpy Jones would probably steal his pie anyway.

Ronny actually chose several people all at once, three to be exact. The first was called Brick. For obvious reasons.

The second MP was Jimmy Stewart, who consistently claimed that he was named after someone famous in an as yet undiscovered alternate dimension. Many people rather doubted this, but he did bare an uncanny resemblance to Muscle Pete, a famous muscle singer of the late 50’s, so they were inclined not to argue.

The last MP was probably also the smartest and craftiest. Probably because no one ever knew about it. He was so successful in playing dumb, his new Boss actually put him in charge of the MP! Him! Littl’ ol’ Mack. Well, Mack liked that just fine. When Ronny had finished detailing their job, preventing anyone from stealing his pie, he gave each of them a nice wooden club as a token of their office and a painfully white ribbon to put around their arms.

“Why the ribbon?” asked Mack, the new Commander.

“Well, I just thought it looked pretty. It does look pretty doesn’t it?” said Ronny.

“Off course sir, very pretty” Mack said complementing this with a salute.

"Very well, as a... as... as your new Boss, I order you to go out an’ ah..." at this point Ronny faltered and looked a little embarrassed.

“Kick pie stealing butt, sir?” Brick carefully provided.

“Yes! That’s it. Kick pie stealing butt.” Now very pleased with himself, Ronny turned a big smile on the newly appointed Commander and said “Please make sure no one disturbs me while I’m cooking.”

“Off course sir.” Commander Mack answered smartly.

“Now what do we do Sir?” asked a worried Jimmy.

“Don’t you worry, lad. I’ll think of something we can do.” With that, Newly Appointed Commander Mack polished up his club and smartly skulked off with Jimmy and the big bulk of Brick tagging along.

Over the next couple of days, the crew throughout the entire ship slowly became aware of a new threat as heads were dutifully bashed in by the MPs. In fact, the words military police slowly, but surely, entrenched themselves in the crew’s collective psyche. This resulted in several things happening at once.

There were off course the “law abiding” masses, the petty thief’s in training and last but most certainly not least, The School For The Mentally Deranged World Conquerors Against Military Police Taking Over The World As We Know It. Or SM-CAMPTO-WAKI for short. Nobody ever claimed Mentally Deranged World Conquerors were actually capable of producing ‘normal’ names, those that did, usually ended face down in a quickly growing dark red and sticky liquid. And it isn’t fingernail polish I’m talking about too.

After some organizing, which took the SM-CAMPTO-WAKI about three weeks, they launched their first strike at the malevolent destroyers of all that was good and just. In their eyes anyway.

After becoming accustomed to their new position on the ship and their newfound “Atoritee” as Brick pronounced it, the MPs took to patrolling different parts of the ship each night, looking for fresh heads to bash… eurh… lawbreakers to correct. On one such night, the MPs were patrolling the ship like usual when they heard a faint cry of “help” coming from a small alley like passageway. This confused the MPs, because normally the words “help” and “MP” were not associated in their minds.

However, they decided that since it might mean fresh heads to bash... eurh... correct, they would go and offer their assistance to the poor unfortunate law abiding citizen of this fine ship.