MAIN SEQUENCE
Arnold Breen woke with a splitting headache, to the annoying beeping of the air quality alarm. During his sleep, the fan in the ship's carbon dioxide scrubber had stopped working. It was a groggy Arnold Breen that opened up the unit, lubricated the fan, and removed the wad of hair that had jammed the mechanism. As he reassembled the unit, Arnold noticed that he had lost one of the bolts holding the covering grill on.
"How can I lose a three inch bolt in this tiny ship?" Arnold wondered. "I better find that before my next EVA" he continued to think to himself, as he duct taped the cover on, "or that sucker might jam the airlock."
After fixing the air supply, Arnold started his one daily luxury brewing - real coffee. It took about seven minutes to load and brew and, as always, Arnold found himself helplessly waiting and watching for the process to complete. "Maybe this will clear my headache" he hoped.
Finally the little light flicked from red to green, and Arnold quickly snapped the coffee bulb out of the percolator. "Aahhh, uh, crap" the prospector thought as he took his first drink. The cheap brand of filter he used had burst again, and his coffee was full of grounds and little bits of paper.
Dejectedly, Breen looked through the nightly sensor scans of the nearest asteroids. Carbon, carbon, carbon and more carbon. If he didn't find precious metals soon, he would have to postpone the scheduled maintenance on the ship again. If he didn't at least find an ice bearing asteroid, he would have to skip his weekly shower again too.
As Breen sat pondering the string of bad luck he had faced ever since jumping to explore the Eta Carinae system, he heard the ship's voice alarm activate. "Radiation warning," the ship said, "elevated neutrino levels detected. The atomic power plant may need immediate maintenance. The engine is going offline."
"Crap" said Arnold, now talking to himself. "What the hell can I do about that way out here?" he continued.
"Navigational warning," continued the computer, "the nearby stars do not match any data in the star charts."
"What the hell?" said Breen, as he opened the view port.
As the first light from the Eta Carinae supernova began to fill the cabin, Arnold could feel the quick rise in temperature, and see a huge eruption of stellar material coming right at him.
"Collision warning," began the computer...
"Life IS a bitch" thought Arnold Breen. "What's next?"
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