From "C.L.U." - Daft Punk
**This story is mostly not true**
“So. It has come to this.” The girl with the bright red hair glared at him.
I debated the merits of coming to his rescue. But really, he had done this to himself. He had slept through his alarm. He had failed in his sworn duty. He deserved the consequences.
But then a wet nose prodded my arm and milk chocolate eyes gazed at me hopefully. He sat back on his haunches, his tail wagging. “I don’t love you,” I told him.
His tail wagged more.
I sighed theatrically and turned away. The dog wandered back over to where the siblings remained in frictitious tableau. I had no doubt the girl would care for the dog as she always did once she had finished verbally eviscerating her brother but something needed to be done now.
“Alright then!” I whistled for the dog’s attention. His ears perked up. “Wanna go for a walk?”
He leapt like a happy frog and pranced in circles around the room. That was his way of saying: YES, YES, YES, OH PLEASE! He wasn’t a terribly subtle creature but his exuberant affection was endearing.
The extra tesser suit in the exit chamber was a little roomy but it would do. I filled the outer pocket with doggy bags and attached the subspace link to the dog’s collar. “Ok!”
The first few stops were made to the dog’s favourite comets so he could mark them again. For a centuries old science experiment, he had retained disappointingly ordinary dog instincts and behaviour. Then we tessered to a nearby astroid field. I let the dog run loose. Other than an obnoxious school of space fish and a shy rock hunter, I didn’t meet anyone (for copyright reasons, I can't mention the bounty hunter and jedi knight that were attempting to murder one another). When he’d had a good sniff and seemed content, I linked us to the ship and we tessered back to the exit chamber.
The ship was silent when we returned but I assumed the brother was napping and the sister had gone to her basketball game (one more win within this galaxy and they’d move on to an all-galactic tournament within the time frame of the fourteenth millenium).
I wrote a silly short story and heated up leftover meatballs for dinner. The red headed girl arrived home and we sat down to eat together. After awhile it seemed strange that her lazy brother hadn’t joined us.
“Hey, should I go wake your brother?” I asked.
She raised her eyebrows, “he’s not sleeping. After you left, I threw him in the trash compactor.”
I turned to look at the chute next to the sink.
“Oh it’s too late.” She cleared her dishes from table and set them in the cleaner. “I already ran the cycle and jettisoned the refuse.” She licked red sauce from her fingers. “He shouldn’t have forgotten to walk the dog.”
