Tardax woke up at seven narns just like he always did. He rolled over to look out the portal in his pod and saw that it was mainly black with flecks of light as usual. There wasn’t much to look at outside, but he did it every morning anyway, just in case.

He sat up and threw his flippers onto the floor, wriggling them into his slippers. He sat there for a moment trying to muster up the courage to start his day. He wasn’t sure that he was capable, but his body moved anyway, seemingly without the assistance of his neural processor.

He hobbled over to the bathroom and relieved himself of the fungus that his body had processed while he was sleeping. He shaved the bacilli off his snout that had grown there overnight. The bacilli didn’t like it much and they complained feebly, but they had little choice in the matter, being microscopic and all.

Tardax stretched his tentacles to their full extension as he walked back into the living quarters. They tended to get stiff while he was sleeping. He flicked on the feed and turned it to his fitness routine. He always exercised first thing in the morning, before his neural processor was fully flowing, so that it wouldn’t have a chance to complain. Otherwise, he might not ever do it.

A cheerful Sendaxian female appeared on the screen and started telling Tardax what to do. He always used this exercise routine because he thought the female was attractive. He liked the way her tentacles flowed when she moved. She told him to stretch, run in place, do jumping jacks and all manner of things that he would be highly embarrassed to have any of his crew see him do.

When the routine was over, he bid farewell to his lovely lady exercisist and flicked the feed to see what was happening in the universe as he made himself a breakfast of flordax with mealgoat and glees. There was nothing like a fresh, hot cup of quiznine in the morning.

As he ate his morning meal, he heard that the planet Snarlox was trying, yet again, to take over the galaxy. Will they never learn? The Snarloxians were a primitive, hostile race. Their technology, which they considered the height of scientific prowess, was so antediluvian that the rest of the galaxy had dispensed with it plaeons ago.

Tardax put his dishes in the tube, took a cold mudbath, put on his captain’s uniform and exited his pod. As he walked to the bridge, he sighed, wondering what preposterous situation the galaxy was going to throw at him today. This supply mission to Plargon would keep him in deep space for another full rotation before he made it back to Sendax, his home.