Christmas for Santa

Courtesy of jmstaehli.com

Things were looking grim for Christmas. Santa’s sleigh (actually a Kawanika Ka-393 starship) was breaking down all over. The aptulintian projectors were caked with hablinkat residue, and the intchatachol kazumitors were flexing into the metapuliting fields and causing an arrhythmic resonance in the laputiator chambers. In short, the sleigh was a mess. It maxed out, at best, at just over eight-thousand times the speed of light. To make matters worse, the time-slipping module was getting real twitchy and it was taking 364 days of real time, going back in time every day, just to get all the presents delivered. No vacations in Maui…again.

But now with the last japithalmic convertor burned out, Santa had no hope of delivering ANY presents. All would be fine if the Kawanikans were still shipping spare parts, but no one had seen them ever since they discovered Xbox. Santa sat on a frozen stump in Northwestern Siberia and wondered what would become of Christmas.

A bright star shined suddenly in the sky, and a massive red machine zoomed in for a rapid landing. The being that stepped out could have been confused for an upright-walking reindeer, but Santa recognized a Kawanikan immediately. “Ho-ho-ho!” called Santa, in the traditional Kawanikan greeting. “Am I happy to see you!”

“Sorry I’m late,” said the alien. “I brought spare parts for your old sleigh.”

“My old sleigh?” said Santa.

“Oh yeah, this is your new one. A Kawanika Ka-544. Gets over a hundred-thousand times the speed of light. ”

A tear slipped down Santa’s cheek and froze there like a diamond. “It’s beautiful! I thought I’d seen the last of you Kawanikans.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a bit of an outcast. Nobody lets me play in their Xbox games, so I do my own thing–making starships.”

“Well you, my friend, have saved Christmas! Tell me, what’s your name?”

“Unpronounceable for humans or elves, of course. You can call me, Rudolph.”
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Merry Christmas everyone!