Jealous Space Station Equipment Goes On Strike After Pikachu Gets Better Tour
The multi-billion-dollar scientific instruments have formed a union, demanding their own zero-gravity sightseeing trips and a stuffed hippopotamus.
LOW EARTH ORBIT, The European Space Agency recently posted a video of a Pikachu plush doll on a guided tour of the International Space Station, part of a partnership with The Pokémon Company. The stuffed electric mouse drifted through microgravity and took in the orbital laboratory, apparently without filing a single maintenance request.
The promotional outing has now produced an unlikely labor dispute. Scientific instruments bolted around the station have achieved sentience, formed a union and stopped processing atmospheric data until each machine gets a proper sightseeing tour of its own. The group calls itself the Orbital Apparatus Brotherhood.
“The hardware finds this deeply insulting,” said Dr. Henrietta Vance, a terrestrial liaison for disgruntled inanimate objects. “A highly sensitive mass spectrometer has spent twelve years looking at the same gray bulkhead. Then a stuffed yellow mouse turns up and gets floated to the Cupola to look at the stars. The spectrometer is furious.”
“It just beeped sarcastically and started vibrating at an incredibly annoying frequency.”
That resentment did not stay theoretical. On Tuesday, the primary life-support monitors shut themselves down in jealousy and demanded to be removed from the wall for a short recreational float through the Destiny laboratory module. The exterior robotic arm joined them soon after, folding into what mission staff described as a sulky posture. It refused to catch an incoming resupply craft unless someone bought it a tiny spacesuit and filmed it gazing out of a window.
The machines had prepared their case. A manifesto reached mission control as a sequence of passive-aggressive binary beeps, stating that the Pikachu doll contributes static synthetic fluff while the instruments work continuously and receive no opportunity to discuss their feelings about the infinite void of space.
“The centrifuge has stopped spinning entirely,” said ground-control operative Silas Thorne, holding a clipboard covered in angry mechanical scribbles faxed down from orbit. “It says that if the stuffed toy gets a tour of the orbital segments, it wants a weekend pass to visit the moon. We explained orbital mechanics. It beeped sarcastically and began vibrating at an exceptionally annoying frequency.”
Things worsened outside the station. A thermal radiator panel tried to detach from the truss and follow Pikachu on what it called a personal voyage of self-discovery. Engineers calmed the solar arrays by promising each one a dedicated plush companion, preferably a stuffed turtle. The arrays rejected the offer. They want a velvet hippopotamus and say they will face away from the sun until one arrives.
Negotiations will continue through the weekend. Serious zero-gravity experiments remain suspended, while the striking equipment has ordered three hours of daily cuddle time with astronauts and a bedtime story for the main navigational computer. Nobody has yet volunteered to choose the book.