The Time-Looped Teapot
Jonno Virek was beginning to suspect that the universe had a personal vendetta against him. All he wanted was a hot cup of something resembling tea. Instead, he found himself staring at a teapot stuck in a time loop.
The Clytemnestra’s galley looked normal enough at first glance — steel counters, humming appliances, a stale biscuit or two. But on closer inspection, there was the teapot, cheerfully rewinding its pour every five seconds. Hot tea. Reset. Hot tea. Reset. Again. And again. And again.
The ship’s cook, a twitchy young lad with a bad case of zero-gravity hair, wrung his hands. “It’s been going since yesterday, Mr Virek. Won’t stop. We can’t brew anything else.”
Jonno watched the teapot cycle through its endless pour like a perfectly choreographed tragic ballet. A burn mark on the bench suggested someone had tried to interrupt the loop. Clearly it hadn’t ended well.
“It’s a teapot,” Jonno growled, “not a quantum singularity.”
The cook’s lip quivered. “The chief engineer tried to unplug it. Now he thinks he’s a toaster.”
Jonno sighed. The Belt never failed to surprise him. He dug through the ship’s circuitry, isolating the galley’s local temporal stabiliser. Sure enough, a fried relay was stuck on ‘replay mode’, spitting the same five-second moment back into the world again and again.
Trying to keep a grip on what was left of his patience, Jonno jammed a screwdriver into the relay and twisted. The teapot flickered, hissed, then — blessed silence. The tea stayed in the cup. A small, normal, happily un-looped cup of tea. Jonno breathed out as though he’d just disarmed a bomb.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” the cook ventured hopefully.
Jonno’s eyes went wide. “Don’t you dare.”
After a thorough sweep of the galley to make sure no other appliances were preparing to revolt, Jonno gathered his tools and headed for the shuttle. The cook was still clutching his newly restored tea, eyes shining with relief. In the Belt, the simple pleasure of a normal cuppa was about as precious as antimatter these days.
Back in his cockpit, Jonno reflected on how a broken time relay had almost destroyed the ship’s morale. Out beyond the Belt, it was never the big cosmic horror that got you — it was always the tiny things that wore down your sanity. Teapots. Biscuits. Budgerigars with a grudge.
He took one last look at the Clytemnestra drifting away behind him, then turned for the next port. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have a breadmaker threatening to rewrite causality. But he wasn’t counting on it.
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