PROLOGUE (or The Way This Whole Mess Began)
Somewhere, in the very vast reaches of the deepest of deep space, there is a very tiny planet. The planet is small despite laws in the universe that would seem to indicate that planets cannot possible be this small and still withstand the forces of space, but there is also some evidence that would point to a mishap in intergalactic mail that should have been speedily delivered to this planet at the time of its creation to alert its inhabitants that the planet would simply not do. This type of communication is often lost in transit (damn meteors), or is delivered prior to the planet’s inhabitants being fully evolved to the point of being able to decipher the communication, which is how the square, invisible planet in the middle of the Milky Way continues to exist despite the impossibility of said existence.
The planet is called Myklox Prime by its sentient inhabitants, the Zomi people, and the inhabitants are sadly unaware of the fact that their planet is in total and complete violation of universal size-related guidelines. While the inhabitants themselves are also quite tiny, they are unaware of anything amiss with their little world, and they have lived in peace for a few million years.
Until five years ago.
Five years ago, a devastating evolutionary process took away the Zomians’ beloved delicacy, snum goi. It wasn’t so much evolutionary as it was an accidental result of an experiment by a very cocky scientist with too many test subjects who escaped his cocky lab and commenced in spreading an accidental snum goi-killing bacteria throughout the tiny planet. It really didn’t take long since the planet is only the size of Texas, and the Zomi people quickly found themselves without a single bit of snum goi.
Not only were they without their beloved snum goi, they were unable to grow it any longer due to the elusive and fancily complicated nature of the quickly dispersed bacteria. The bacteria could not be contained, the snum goi could not be grown, and the very cocky scientist was quickly fed to an animal of great ferocity and enormous size (at least when compared to the rest of Myklox Prime’s inhabitants). Zomians around their tiny globe were extremely displeased.
It was decided that a team of researchers, scientists, and other useful Zomians would need to leave the planet in search of similar plants that could be genetically altered to recreate their beloved snum goi. Several of the very sensible, reasonable and intelligent scientists on the planet suggested that this was a very silly solution to a stupid problem, but then quickly found themselves recruited for the space voyage themselves because they were the best scientists on the planet. It was quite a bad situation for the lot of them, but then you really should avoid openly disagreeing with snack-related opinions on a small planet, no?
The voyage was planned, and the scientists flitted off to the nearest planet to look for snum goi, quite disgruntled and unhappy. The first trip was to the planet Wontwyrk, which was inhabited entirely by sentient talking tree moss that had evolved to a point where trees were no longer needed. Had the Zomians known about astro turf football fields, this planet would have been a large mass of evolutionary irony, but the Zomi scientists simply threw up their hands and headed to the next planet, Stylwontwoark. Stylwonwoark had a plant very similiar to the snum goi berry, but when the scientists tried to alter the plant’s makeup to make it more like snum goi, the berries went feral, gained intelligence, and took over the entire planet in a matter of three days.
Things were clearly not going very well for the very unmotivated snum goi non-fan scientists, but upon communicating their double failure back to Myklox Prime, they were sent even further out into space, where they were knocked off course by a very tiny space particle (remember, they are very tiny creatures in general and their spaceship is incredibly miniscule) and ended up on the planet Direnshelpaltina.
The plan on the intended destination planet had been to cultivate a certain plant that they knew existed that was almost identical to the snum goi berry plant, and when they unknowingly landed on a different planet, they found what they believed to be the correct plant and made the adjustments they’d already designed and planned in transit. The results were quite terrible, and no one speaks of what happened or why T’im the ship janitor disappeared.
Now, three failures behind them, a tiny crew of Zomian men have begrudgingly set off a fourth time, heading for a planet named Earth, hoping that they will finally be done with their snack finding endeavors so that they can return home and provide their famished people with the snum goi they have gone without for half of a decade now. No matter that a snack food is a silly reason to voyage through out the dangerous vast reaches of the universe! No matter that none of them really wanted to go in the first place! This last voyage will bring victory, fame, and the conquest of the furthest planet the Zomians have ever managed to reach via space ship.
And most importantly, it will produce tasty treats, or they are all likely to be fired and told to stay on Earth.
Now I have 1175 words of a novel that just materialized as I kept writing, and it would appear that I’m now writing about a cyborg man named Wendell who refuses to fight crime and save the planet because of a manufacturing mishap that has resulted in his constantly craving french fries. Since he was supposed to be the planet’s last ditch effort to same humanity, his creator, Peter Stimple, is in seriously trouble with his higher ups, and chaos will surely ensue.
I’ve been through a lot of changes this year, changes that I’m incredibly thankful for, but finishing grad school, passing my board exam, getting married, starting my first “big” job, losing a co-host on STeaP, AND trying to muster up the energy to write a fifth novel this November just wasn’t going to happen.