A: Happy Family!
B: Royal Straight Flush!
C: UNO!
D: COME FORTH BLUE EYES WHITE DRAGON!
E: I activate my credit card. -- Anon Guest
[AN: Changed one part of the prompt to be a completely different game. Pretty sure Nonny gave me two poker wins]
Boredom and captivity does strange things to Humans. As evidenced by Silly Season outbreaks. When it's a salvage vessel crewed by Humans, beset by twists of luck, it can get even stranger.
None on board had a complete game, thanks to an incident with micrometeors, EVA, and emergency patch repairs with intact pieces of derelict hulks. It was one of the primary reason they changed the ships' name to the Nightmare Adam, after the monster made by Victor Frankenstein[1].
It was also the reason they were playing whatever the flakk this was.
The cards were all the same shape and size, and Caer had made them all 'equal' by printing new backs for them and glueing them on. As for the rules... they were evolving.
"Community chest, I got the boardwal," crowed Al.
"Sucks to be you, I have Gin!" Dale gloated, showing the card.
"Mister Butcher drinks your gin, then," said Blaine.
"Nuh-uh, I have Goblin Brewery."
"Draw four," called Caer.
They all grumbled, taking turns to draw one card from the deck, each, until they had four new ones. They each had to reject four cards from their hands and add them to the bottom of the deck.
Captain Em had been watching them at it for an hour as they continued ploy after ploy against each other. Ze was no closer to figuring out the rules than when ze began. The good news was that they were getting closer to a port that could repair and revitalise the Nightmare Adam. The bad news was that the progress was slower than a glacier, and tug crews were still half a week away.
Half a week of trying to figure out Teenage Mutant Ninja Fizzbin did not appeal. Especially not when it really looked like a playing card version of Calvinball.
Ze returned to getting the infonet access back up. This time with a little more inspired desperation than previously.
Caer evidently followed the string of cusses to find hir on hir back and in the middle of a nest of cables and dubiously operational technology fragments.
"You not playing, Cap'n?"
"The only card I'm playing is the company Time card," said Em. "I'm buying the lot of y'all some complete flakkin' games."
[1] Bet you didn't know he had a name. For clarity, the monster's name is Adam Frankenstein.
[Photo by Sergi Viladesau on Unsplash]
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