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IC:
Christon walked into his well-lit and not at all despairing home. He opened the door with his hands, not by kicking it in. He glanced in the mirror that particularly normal people put in their homes' entryways and ensured his false moustache looked alright. He placed his car keys on one of the many flat surfaces that existed in his home, banishing from his mind any concerns that he was in some sort of sick universe where everything was curved and rounded. His wife, Kitty, greeted him by taking his briefcase and kissing him on the lips, her false moustache briefly mingling with his own.
"You're going to have to put little Susie to bed, Chris. She's wide awake and she's been waiting for a respectable father figure to come home all night."
"I will, honey. Sorry for being late again, I was stuck at my office doing all sorts of boring things that normal private investigators do. Taking depositions, monitoring security footage, looking into insurance claims... you know, those things."
"It's okay. Your thankless, boring work as a totally normal guy is what puts food on our table. And I'm a supportive wife who doesn't deal drugs. Because that's what we as a society have decided good stories are about."
Susie the normal and not abused child ran up to Christon and grabbed the hand he used to open doors.
"Daddy!" She said, her false moustache glistening with hope, "I want a story!"
"Well, alright. Maybe one."
"But first, read me an introduction! Please!" Susie said, being neither a mutant nor an orphan.
Christon was wary of the book she had brought him which was entitled 'An Anthology of Introductions and Delicious Soup Recipes'. He knew just how exciting introductions could be and, for an ignorant child too underdeveloped to understand them, possibly very upsetting!
"Alright, let's go to your quiet and warmly lit bedroom and I'll read one of these introductions." Christon led her to the inoffensive room and cracked open the volume she had proffered after she was settled in. He began to read the introduction from said book. It was the seventy-ninth such introduction in the anthology.
"Like all good introductions," Christon read aloud, "This introduction begins by complimenting the intelligence of the reader. What a smart little reader you are. What a handsome, good, intelligent reader with pearly white teeth and no odors of uncertain provenance. You know your father, have excellent hygiene, and almost surely wipe from front to back. You're especially smart if you get offended by introductions, this one included. Apple pie. Moms. Purring kittens. Never forget they attacked us because they hate our freedom. God bless you and goodnight."
After reading that riveting introduction, Christon began his bedtime story in proper.
"This is a story about a land in our time, which we call the present because that's how people normally refer to contemporary time periods. The narrator in this story never curses. Captains of ships are almost indistinguishable from one another and, indeed, all characters are more or less alike. Narration offers no pithy commentary, but expounds at length about how space ships and lasers work. We're not invested in any plot to speak of, drugs are rarely mentioned..."
Little Susie yawned. The boring world that Christon had created was successfully putting her to sleep.
"There are no zany characters who use flawed philosophy to disprove inanimate objects. Technology, including windmills, was all discovered in the correct order. And every once in a while people get together to see who has the coolest space ships, but none of them will admit that anyone's space ships are cooler than theirs. They only append the word 'space' to words that a majority of people agree it should be appended to and nobody pauses to introspect about how a futuristic society probably wouldn't add the word 'space' in front of 'ship' just like how past societies didn't refer to maritime vessels as 'ocean ships'..."
The almost impossibly mundane nature of the world Christon described quickly put Susie to sleep, overpowered as she was by how incredibly boring the setting, its characters, and everything they did were. Christon let her sleep and went into the living room to enjoy a mutually supportive relationship with his wife when there was a knock at the door. He opened it, taking great pains to avoid kicking it in, to reveal the Mayor of the Ship. He was a large, jovial man who almost certainly would never embezzle money from orphans or sweep murders under the rug. Under his false moustache he had a real moustache.
"I'm sorry to be advancing the plot at such an unreasonable hour, Christon, but I had to speak with you."
"Is it a mystery? Or something you need solved that the force can't handle?"
"No, no. It's about your Private Investigator's license. It lapsed last week because you didn't resubmit for licensure in time."
"Oh, no! That is a very real problem for a Private Investigator to face! Can I no longer practice?"
"No, it's not as bad as all that. I granted you a temporary extension on your current license to give you time to resubmit for licensure. I did this because we aren't some sort of bizarre satire of democracy, but an actual, upstanding democracy that does reasonable things in reasonable ways."
"Uhm... okay. Thanks. I guess. So that's it?"
"Yup, that's it!" The Mayor left without making a rude comment about Christon's wife’s tits or Christon's wife, which was attached to them. Christon shut the door again and turned back to Kitty.
"Should we, like, fight or something?"
"No, I'm very satisfied with our relationship and see no need for conflict."
Christon stalked over to the ice cabinet and poured himself a glass of lemonade. It tasted like lemonade and contained no mood altering substances.
"Hoo boy." He said, "Nothing like going home from a normal day of work to not drink alcohol."
