A Sci-Fi Story Break

Day in and day out, a beautiful princess would travel from her lovely home across mountains and rivers to her humble scientific research laboratory. Just like every other day, she entered the fluorescently-illuminated lab, rinsed her coffee cup of yester-residues, refilled, and carried on with the days tasks. When the digital clock tolled 6pm, like so many days before, she gracefully dislodged her ass from her swivel chair and departed for home.

This particular night, however, was like no other.... For you see, what the otherwise impeccably hygienic princess neglected to mention to anyone is that when she "rinses" her gilded UPMC mug, she is doing little more than splashing out leftover liquid. What harbored beneath was something much much worse. Something not prince nor pauper, not knight nor ogre, not samarai nor Karate Kid could have ever anticipated. On this night, something was born, yes BORN, right there in that coffee mug, and the fate of the beautiful princess and her lovely Land of Oak were in grave danger.

That evening, a force of pure evil erupted from the mug in a form that could only be described as fungal in nature. Lord Mocha-Molda had arrived, bringing with him a gang of Coffee-Mates who swore to act on their vendetta against the princess and her mighty weapon of running tap water. Destruction ensued that night and the caffeine charged vandals sacrificed nothing - they ran high and low to stain every important document the princess had ever produced. Satisfied with their work, the gang of java warriors returned to their hiding place at the bottom of the coffee mug.

The sun rose, yet again, and the princess greeted the day with a strange new feeling. She was tired, and tired she had been many times before, but this tired, this was a tired that was oh so new. As she showered and prepared for her daily journey she couldn't get past the extreme sleepy that had fallen upon her. When she arrived in her lab, she filled her mug as usual, unknowing to the fact that an army of cruel and toxic coffee militia were awaiting her to drink them in where they could launch an all out attack on her innards.

Just as our beauty was about to take her first ill-fated sip, she was interrupted by the charging in of a crew of shady figures dressed in full white suits.

"PUT DOWN THAT GOD DAMNED COFFEE MUG, LITTLE LADY" shouted the IACUC official, "DON'T YOU KNOW THAT FOOD AND BEVERAGE CONSUMPTION IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED IN LABORATORY ENVIORNMENTS???"

IACUC, or the Institution Animal Care and Use Committee, had unknowingly become the knights in white for our poor, rule-breaking, young researcher.

"WE ARE INCINERATING THIS MUG!" they shouted... "AND DON'T THINK WE DON'T SEE THAT CHIPOTLE BAG IN THE TRASH!"

Slightly embarrassed but thoroughly relieved to have lived to research another day, the princess laid a tender kiss on the cheek of IACUC official and assured him that no more snacks would be enjoyed in her laboratory.

And they lived happily ever after...