text: Somehow, and nobody really knows how, the James Webb telescope and the SLS saw no further delays after the coronavirus. This obviously led to the imprisonment of Jim Bridenstine on account of suspected witch-craft, but also led to the first permanent moon base which everyone thought was a great idea until one of the astronauts asked the engineers how to bake bread in space. It had been such a clear requirement that everybody had just assumed that somebody else would have sorted it out already. So now all they had was a bag of flour, a couple of sachets of yeast, a lump of butter, a standardised pinch of salt and six ravenous, carbohydrate deprived zombie astronauts. “Have you ever seen the Martian?” Capcom replied after several heated discussions in Houston, “Because you might have to crack out the emergency potatoes.” This wasn’t exactly what the astronauts wanted to hear but after being reassured that when you think about it potatoes are basically just a type of Peruvian bread and that no, they couldn’t use their rocket engine as a heat source, they started to adapt to a bread-free diet. But, in the wise words of Neil Armstrong’s local baker, ‘You can only stay sane for so long without bread’. Many people in mission control doubted whether they’d be able to last three months before the next resupply mission. Sure enough, two weeks into the mission the lack of bread related supplies was starting to create a serious toll on the astronauts and the first to crack was their resident baker. He wasn’t interested in studying moon rocks, growing potatoes or having a one in six chance of holding the record for the high jump, he was just in it for the bread. Something I think we can all relate to. The only reason he’d gone to the moon was to get in the history books as the first person to ever bake bread on the moon and since he couldn’t even do that, he started seriously questioning the point of even being there in the first place. So, when the other astronauts went off to take lunar selfies for their Instagram profile pictures, their baker spent the time he should have been thoroughly investigating the possibility of cooking potatoes using a toaster, to instead stage the greatest space mutiny of all time. At 22:10 UTC, if there had been an atmosphere the group of five would have heard the rocket engines roaring as they propelled the rocket high into the lunar sky. Mission control had been unsuccessfully trying to contact the baker for half an hour, anxiously waiting to see if they could justify advertising toasted potato as astronaut food next to freeze-dried ice cream in museum gift shops. After all that’s where most of NASA’s budget came from. But when the remaining astronauts came home to their moon base, everybody forgot about toasted potato and instead began to panic. “ Houston, we don’t have a rocket anymore,” Jane the lunar base commander stated knowing that when someone would inevitably make a film of this, they’d need something for the trailer, “do you have any we could borrow?” Capcom then replied, “Well at the moment not really, if there’s an emergency evacuation we could always try calling an uber.” “Copy that,” Jane said in probably the most disapproving tone in the history of ‘copy that’. Uber had expanded to offer space taxi services but until now NASA had always detested the idea of giving Dave from down the road controls of a space ship instead of astronauts who’d been specially trained for years. At that point though, they didn’t have any choice. All the officials at NASA were forced to announce the latest mutiny. Cancelling the long-awaited ‘foods which really shouldn’t have been invented, if you give us more funding we promise we’ll stop’ press conference would seem incredibly suspicious. So, they did what they had to, 20 minutes after Jim the baker had successfully completed his trans-earth injection burn the news was broadcast around the world, the first ever space-bread-mutiny and what some were already saying was the greatest mutiny ever. But it had only just started. The Basingbourne Bread Bandit first heard about it whilst patrolling Basingbourne woods, always looking out for easy bread to be made. Whilst stalking another of his unsuspecting victims, hiding in every bush along the way, he heard them talk on the phone to a friend about it. He then proceeded to sprint out and snatch the ciabatta from her grasp without stopping, with such skill, perfected over so many years, no relay runner could ever compare. That night, he climbed up the tallest tree in the woods and got out his stupidly powerful binoculars to gaze into the sky. Finally, he found what he was looking for - a faint light which turned out to be the space craft heading for re-entry. Whilst nibbling away on part of the ciabatta, he followed the spacecraft in the sky and did quite a bit of maths in his head to work out its trajectory. It was heading for the middle of the Atlantic. Four days to get to the middle of the Atlantic and find the capsule before the US Coastguard was a walk in the Basingbourne Park for the Bread Bandit. On the way he’d probably even be able to get some more bread stealing done. Parachutes flapping in the breeze, and Jim the Baker gazing out of the tiny window over the sea wondering when he would next fill his stomach with some bread sticks, cornbread or banana bread, the capsule gently splashed down into the ocean. Then, in the distance, he saw the Bread Bandit with half a loaf of ciabatta in one hand and the steering wheel of his speed-boat in the other, wearing sun glasses on an overcast day like the true madman he was. The bandit opened the door and at the sight of the ciabatta, Jim leapt into the speed boat. And not a moment too soon because right at that moment the US Coastguard helicopters showed up and they weren’t very happy. “Mate, you’ve got to come with me, if they get a hold of you, you’ll be court-martialled because you’re a military baker or something,” the Bandit said, although Jim needed no persuading. “Just give me that bread, please you don’t know what I’ve been through! I’ll do anything!” He cried in his breadless state. Smiling to himself after hearing that he’d do anything, he handed the bread over as they sped away, followed by quite a few helicopters out of blind hope more than anything. Afterall what could they ever do to a boat? Once they’d finally reached dry land, the Basingbourne Bread Bandit finally explained to Jim what he wanted him to do, “I gave you a fair amount of bread so I’m going to ask you for a small favour in exchange. You see, I’ve called an uber to the moon and I want you to take some bread from my stockpile and tell the astronauts that if they pledge allegiance to the Basingbourne Bread Bandit they can have an unlimited amount of bread.” Obviously, Jim carried this out since he’d said he’d do anything and obviously the other astronauts obliged, they might have been suffering from human bread-deficiency syndrome but they weren’t insane. As Jane put it ‘I don’t care just hand that rye bread over’. And that is how the moon became a pirate colony and uber became the most popular launch provider.