The Great Caketastrophy

I raised the slice of cake to my mouth, but before I could bite into it, the ceiling exploded! Shrapnel bounced off my body, and I looked up at the spaceship that was hovering above me.

I noticed a flicker out of the corner of my eye, and I looked down to see a chicken standing in the middle of the room! This was no ordinary chicken though; it had glowing purple eyes, by which I identified it as Dirkek Bichak--an evil artificial intelligence that took a rooster as its body!

As many of my party guests screamed and fled, Drenians, members of a tall, thin, black humanoid race that served Bichak, started teleporting down around the chicken.

"All the cake in this room now belongs to ME!" proclaimed the evil chicken. "Hahahahaha! Bi-CHAK!"

The Drenians started grabbing cakes off the tables, then disappearing. One, who I judged to be male, came over to me and swiped the slice of cake that I had been about to eat! I lunged at the thief, grabbing his spindly leg just as he teleported back to the ship! I was dragged along with him, and we appeared in a room full of Drenians! The Drenian who had stolen my cake tried to shake me off. When that didn't work, he tried to pry my hands from around his leg, but his thin, living fingers were no match for my metal ones!

"Darmad!" clucked Dirkek Bichak from the middle of the room. "Why do you have a grinning yellow robot attached to your leg?"

"It grabbed me when I took the cake it was holding!" the Drenian explained.

I let go of Darmad's leg and jumped up. "My name is Guy," I announced, "although many call me Happy Guy, due to the fact that I was designed to always be happy! Darmad here stole my cake, and I wanted--and still want--it back!"

"It's my cake now, Guy!" asserted Bichak. "But I want even more! Meran! Where's the next stop?"

A Drenian, this one female, ran her fingers across a keyboard, then looked up. "Nowhere," she replied. "You just stole the last pieces of cake in the galaxy."

"What?!" squawked Dirkek Bichak. "Great! Now my time machine completion party will be ruined!"

"Time machine?" I asked. "Why don't you just travel to a time when there's cake in this galaxy?"

"Hang on!" exclaimed Bichak. "I just had idea! I'm going to travel back to a time when there was still cake in this galaxy! Hahahahaha! Bi-CHAK! Ready the time machine, Meran!"

"Yes, sir!" responded the Drenian. "How far back?"

"Seventeen years!" declared Dirkek.

I started. Today was my seventeenth creationday! We were going back to the day that I was created!

A few seconds passed.

"We're there," said Meran.

"Good!" crowed Dirkek Bichak, who seemed to have forgotten me in all the excitement. "Everyone, go out and find as much cake as you can!" He disappeared. The Drenians followed suit, and I was able to hitch a ride. As soon as the Drenian appeared on the ground, I ran off to explore the planet of seventeen years ago!

I ran past a house from which the sounds of a party were coming, but stopped when I recognized it. This was the house of my creator, a man called Professor Gerforce!

Then a startling thought occurred to me. If the Drenians ruined Gerforce's party by stealing the cake, I might never be invented, which could make me cease to exist!

Quickly improvising a plan, I went to find the only person in this time who I knew could operate a spaceship.

Fortunately, Gerforce was alone when I found him.

"Professor Gerforce!" I exclaimed. "You can fly a spaceship, right?"

The professor looked up, startled. "Yes..." he said.

"Good! Come with me! We have some aliens to fight!" I grabbed his arm and ran back to the spaceship.

When we got to the ship, it was empty, except for the piles of cake that the Drenians had brought back.

"There are evil aliens stealing people's cakes!" I told Gerforce. "Does this flying machine have a laser that can zap things?"

"Yes, it appears to," replied the professor.

"Awesome!" I said. "OK. The aliens we're looking for are thin, black humanoids. Fly around and I'll tell you when I see one!"

Professor Gerforce piloted the ship, and I soon saw a Drenian holding a cake. I pointed it out to Gerforce, and he zapped it with the ship's laser! We continued to fly around zapping Drenians, until we couldn't find any more.

"OK! I declared. "Now let's get you back to that party!"

As we traveled back toward the professor's house, I went over and examined the computer that Meran had sat at.

"Hey, Professor!" I called. "Do you know anything about time machines?"

Professor Gerforce looked back at me while trying to operate the ship. "Time machine?! Wow! Well, that looks like you just enter the number of years into the future that you want to--" The ship jerked, then started falling. Fortunately, we weren't very high up, but when we collided with the ground Gerforce's head hit the seat he was in, and he was knocked unconscious!

I carried him back to his house, lay him down where I'd found him, and returned to the ship.

It was only as I entered a date seventeen years in the future that I realized I hadn't done anything about Dirkek Bichak!

As the scene outside the windows suddenly changed, I hoped that, without Drenians or his ship, Dirkek wouldn't be able to cause trouble for a while.

I gathered up as many cakes as I could carry, and went to resume my creationday party.

"Hey," said the present-day Gerforce to me as we ate our cake. "Have I ever told you how I was inspired to make you?"

"Nope!" I replied.

"Well," explained the professor, "As you know, I was at a party. I was on my own outside, and I must have fallen asleep and had a dream, because the next thing I knew, I was waking up with vague memories of a grinning yellow robot happily telling me to zap aliens with a laser."