One post every six months is a doable goal, surely?

Blogging about not blogging is a kind of anti-meta-blogging joke that doesn't even really amuse me.
There's a distinct lack of concentrated awesome, isn't there? Where is the concentrated awesome?
I think the space travelers must find it at the Core of the Galaxy:

"Exploding Suns! Galaxy-eating Singularities! Holes in the Very Fabric of Reality! Superintelligent beings made of Pure Thought!"

"Down, boy!" Bob made calming motions at Brown.

Brown grinned. "Don't try to kid me, you faker. You're as excited as I am."

Bob coughed.

"Are there really things like that, there?" Donna asked.

Before either Bob or Brown could answer, the MM vented steam loudly enough to make them jump. "Nobody knows what's there."

"But it must be something pretty amazing, all the same," Brown insisted. "Maybe something every more amazing than we've ever thought of."

The MM performed the mechanical equivalent of a shrug. "Perhaps, perhaps not. In any event, we won't know until we get there. In the meantime, I'm long overdue for a maintenance overhaul. If you want me, I'll be in the mechanics bay rebalancing my mainsprings." He clanked off around a corner and somehow disappeared in the distance at the same time.

Donna shuddered. "That's so weird."

Brown chuckled. "That's nothing. You should see the engine room!"

"I don't think I want to."

* * *

"Let's review," Bob said. "It looks like Xanthippus' distorter has sent him round the bend from merely mad..."
Bob bowed.
"...to omnicidally insane."

"What?" Donna asked from her upside-down post on the overstuffed chair.

"He wants to kill everything in the universe."

"What he wants," the MM said, "is to enslave everything in the universe."

"There's no practical difference," Brown argued. "He can't do that, and he'll either accidentally destroy everything with that distorter by trying, or else when he figures out it has no chance of working he'll destroy everything on purpose. You saw what he did to the..." he paused, glancing at Donna. "To the boarding house."

"Hmmp." Donna said. "I'm not a little kid. I know that wasn't a boarding house."

"Hmmp yourself. Little girls are supposed to be sweet and innocent," Brown began.

"Oh stop it! I hate that kind of stuff!" Donna snapped. "I told you, I'm not a little kid!"

Brown cleared his throat. "Oh. Um. OK. Sorry." There was a brief silence. "Anyway," he went on, "One way or another, X is going to end up destroying the universe, either on purpose or accidentally, if someone doesn't stop him."

"Agreed," Bob said. The MM emitted a mechanical sound indicative of assent.

"Then we better stop him," Donna said.

"How?" Bob asked.

"How should I know, you're the science guys."

"I don't know either," said Brown, "but I think X, at least, thinks we have some way to stop him, based on his actions. Something I have, or can do..."

"Or me, or Donna, or the MM," Bob suggested.

"Maybe." Brown was dubious. "I think he was aiming at me, though, even before we left Earth."

"Maybe it's this thing," Donna said, gesturing to snap the "spagoyenator" into sudden visibility.

"Maybe. But we don't know. For now, the only thing I can think of is to track him down as fast as we can and try to think what can stop him while we do it."