Ambient blue light came from a mostly closed door. The scent of burnt plastic could be smelled from outside and a thin line of smoke wafted out of the apartment. Inside, kneeled over a pile of gears and wires, could be found a male looking to be a few years younger than Roz.
With an inquisitive look and a half smile Roz peered through the open portion of the door. She watched Stewart for several minutes before knocking lightly.
Stewart, instead of acknowledging, leaned deeper into the pile in front of him. The sound of a bolt being turned free was followed by the twang of a nut hitting the floor and bouncing into the corner. One hand came up from the pile containing a bit of plating and the other held wires with a peculiar, unfamiliar connector on the end.
With a grin on his face Stewart brought his attention to the door, “Yes! Look at this!”.
The movement of Stewarts head caused a lens, strapped to his forehead, to swing above his head. Despite facing the door his gaze was not on the door at all, but on the connector on the wire in his hand. As he looked closer at the end of the wires and the lens slipped back in front of his left eye, Roz replied, “It’s beautiful Stu!”
“Yeah it is!”, the smile on his face widening just a bit.
“No, not that Stuy, come you gotta come see this ship”
With a frown on his face he shifted his hand full of wires, “How could a ship be better than this?”
Rolling her eyes and entering the room, Roz reached for Stu’s hand attempting to pull him to follow her. Parrying the attempt Stu dropped the plating he was holding and with a riposte he reached into the pile of rubble and pulled out a circuit board attached to the wires in his other hand. Stu placed the unit extracted from the rubble into a bag that already contained a circular object resembling a standard issue ceiling light.
“Oka-y”, Stu shouldered his bag and Roz yanked him to follow.
Stu was one of the few, probably the only one, that knew Roz’s route to the bay. Taking care not to be followed, but probably not with the same stealth that Roz would prefer they navigated their way to the crimson ship. The extra baggage that Stu had insisted on bringing kept getting snagged in the access tunnels and on ductworks as they progressed.
Roz popped out of the final grate first and quickly took position to both see the vessel and not be seen herself. Stu’s rear came out first with his torso yanking the strap of his bag. Roz looked at him in disapproval and was about to say something when footsteps could be heard down the corridor leading to the bay.
“Stu!”, she whispered while grasping his hips helping him with a tug.
The strap of the bag snapped, freeing the bag, Roz and Stu. All three flew back into Roz’s hiding spot with Roz and Stu landing on their bums and the bag on Stu’s lap.
Stu began to say something in protest, but was met with an index finger and a sharp shhh!
With a look of disdain that could only communicate fine, Stu flattened his lip, flashed a dimple and opened his bag to tinker.
Roz peered out from their hiding spot and watched the sleek looking man approach the portal to the rocket. Without any other action from the man the amber light on the door turned green and the swirling panels opened to accept him back.
At the instant the man was about to take his first step back onto his vessel a very loud click and a hum came from the direction of Stu. In mid stride the man turned facing Roz and Stu with a raised eyebrow and hands on his hips.
The hiding space was completely illuminated with a blue light emanating from the bag. Stu had a goofy proud look on his face looking at his success.
Roz, on the other hand, had a look of horror on her face. With hesitation she shifted her gaze from the stranger to Stu. Changing her facial expression to have a stern lip she elbowed Stu in the shoulder.
Stu lifted his head and saw the stranger, his goofy expression transformed as he exhaled, “Oh!”
The initial prompt to Chat GPT to send to Dall-E was to critic a revision of the above entry. I made small modifications based on the prompt with Chat GPT’s suggestions. Then asked the questions in the image captions to generate the images below:
