Day 283, Lost key, spacecraft delusion

It can be a painful inconvenience to mislay your car keys at any time, so imagine the inconvenience when you mislay the keys to your spaceship.

I was changing the battery of the spacecraft key - they take those ridiculously fiddly hearing aid batteries, it’s a source of frustration throughout the universe - when there was a knock on the door from The Men From Porlock.

Well, The Men From Porlock can talk, they are famed for the hallucinogenic properties of their speech. Any conversation with them will prove a nightmare, their ability to infiltrate every crevice of your cranium, flooding your mind with vivid memories of the astro wars, flux gap particle accelerator explosions and of shiny guitars with galaxy burst paint jobs.

It was three days later when I came to, not knowing whether I was Arthur, Martha, Adam or Steve, and drinking real ale on a train through the dark peak listening to the high Elizabethan conversations of actual hard grained beer connoisseurs.

Eventually, once back at home after the most circuitous of journeys, the memory of what I had been doing before the door knock was completely erased. This is typical of The Men From Porlock and their galactic wide manifesto to spread confusion.

The key was completely forgotten. Only many moon cycles later did it dawn on me that the key had gone, no doubt dropped down the back of the cosmic sofa.

Now, at a time when it could prove to be of immense use, the time for my body MOT, it is still missing. After millennia there are some creaky bits, the spacecraft has the tools to instantly diagnose and repair any physical problem, pre-empting any of that doctoring guesswork. Yet here I am here, still trapped on earth, getting more rickety.

But hang on, what’s this I spot on my way down the hill.

It looks very like the key.

There are the chromium rectilinear facets.

There is the almost, but not quite, circular formation.

There is the blue light shining and triggering ancient memories of civilisations long lost.

Could it be, The Key?

On closer inspection however it turns out it's a child's hair band.

Bugger.

For official/internal use only:
6453

0-9