This time, I get quite upset over the lack of speed and efficiency with which my body responds to my vigorous exercise. Read on for a slightly more serious, in-depth discussion on it.

Now, I’m not new to exercise and fitness, but I haven’t always been interested in it. I’ve been going on and off regular exercise for six years now, and each time I get the motivation again, I’ll keep it for a little bit longer and work at it a little bit harder. I’ve been working out most days of the week since the beginning of march, and it feels like this time, it’ll stick. I’m still excited about it, and I still progress. Not as quickly as I would like to progress (see above video) but there’s progress.

Part of the motivation for me right now is that since I have chosen the path of an actor, it’s good to be fit and healthy as it expands my hire-ability not just from looking better but from being able to do more strenuous jobs. There’s also a vain motivation, of course, in that I would love to bulk and tone up a bit so I can look properly “cut” at least once in my life. I am already in the best shape of my life, which is funny at 30, but there is a high ceiling here, I’m nowhere near being buff or super-fit.

I do a cycle of three different routines at the moment. Usually, I’ll have one day of rest between each cycle, though I actually skipped the rest day this time as I have a lot of filming coming up. I change what I do before the routines, switching between running (usually around 6km), cycling on the exercise bike (30-40 minutes) and jump rope (trying to get to 20 minutes). Then the actual routines are focused on weight lifting and ab exercises. I also do my best to bike or walk everywhere instead of taking the bus. Once I get bored with the cycle I’m currently doing, I’ll device four new routines and start a new cycle.

Fitocracy, which I mention in the video, is one small part of that. It’s basically a fitness tracker that gives you experience points for doing workouts and completing quests (like “Do 100 dips in one exercise” or “Run a mile in under ten minutes”) and then you level up. When you have friends on there, it gets even more fun, as you can compete with each other and give each other props (an actual action you can make which is equivalent to “Like” or “+1″ on Facebook or Google respectively) for levelling up and working out. There are also groups to join and such. It’s like adding an online social RPG gaming layer to your fitness regime.

It’s still in beta, so it has some way to go, and I’d love to see them flesh it out with stuff like customisable exercises, pictures for the set exercises and the ability to create your own quests to share with your friends and people in your groups. Would also be awesome if you could get “loot” through doing quests and levelling. Like in Chore Wars, where you sometimes find magical items and other silly things to deck out your “character” with. It just adds an element of fun and could be another way to show off your progress in a visual way.

If you are interested in joining Fitocracy, let me know in the comments (and make sure you leave your e-mail address in it, it won’t be published) and I’ll send everyone invites until I run out of them. Are you working out or doing something else to improve your health and fitness? Or, if you’re not, what’s your take on things? I’d love to hear any opinions you have on the matter.

In this video, I go into a tiny amount of detail about Crowdfunding (Which I manage to call crowdsourcing twice) which is a newish way to fund projects that wouldn’t otherwise get funded. Read on as I go a little more in depth on the topic.

Now, I say “newish” for a reason. According to Wikipedia, it’s been around since 1997 when a band I’ve never heard of had their tour funded by fans. The movie The Age of Stupid (which I need to get around to watching) apparently also crowdsourced its funding, but here’s why crowdfunding as we know it today is a new thing: That took Franny Armstrong five years to fund. On Kickstarter, there are projects that get funded in a day. Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Adventure (DFA), which I mention in the video, was funded in a few hours. The Olloclip was, as I say in the video funded by people like me, and has proven to be a fully commercially viable product!

That is pretty amazing.

Taken using the fisheye side of the Olloclip for the iPhone.

Of course, it’s not all insane success stories. I’ve seen some projects falter and die with nowhere near enough funding, and I’ve seen projects that barely got the funding they asked for. Lords of Uberdark (LoU), which I helped fund, was one of the latter.

In crowdfunding, you don’t have to cast an incredibly wide net when you pitch your project. In fact, a myopic pitch could work in your favour. Tim Schafer is a funny guy who makes funny games, so for DFA, he made a nerdy, funny video. LoU is a game that takes Minecraft, which many others have done, but adds smooth terrain – a wet dream for many Minecraft fans – so he made a video basically just showing off the engine. With the Trigger Happy Camera Remote pitch, you have a bunch of guys who are obviously more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it, but they’ve already overshot the target massively. You don’t have to be a slick salesman (you could argue being one would work against you in a grassroots platform like this) but you have to be able to convey why you think it’s a great product. Especially with games, films and books, if you can’t engage the audience ABOUT your project, why would they believe you could engage them WITH it?

What has impressed me the most about crowdfunding is that it works for all sizes and kinds of projects and all sizes of markets. Whether it’s a garageband needing their rehearsal space’s roof fixed or someone wanting to build a massive underground park in New York. And the more people get involved, the bigger crowdfunding becomes. And here’s the strange bit: The bigger it becomes, the smaller the markets it can cater to, because suddenly there are more people out there actively looking and waiting for that one project that does the thing they want but which no corporation would ever produce.

Lords of Uberdark was just about funded, making every funder even more important.

Kickstarter is the only site that can really command the massive numbers right now, which makes sense since crowdfunding still is an emerging market and KS has been lucky enough to host some projects that have really captured the zeitgeist. The shame of it is that KS is still only open to US based projects and so if you’re trying to get something going elsewhere in the world, you’re relegated to equally good but less frequented sites like Indiegogo. What they need is something big that grabs mainstream headlines the way some KS projects have.

Here’s an idea though:

Why not make a crowdfunding aggregate site? One that categorises and archives and follows up on projects from all the different crowdfunding sites? Have features, interviews with people putting their pitches out there, etc. It could really bring this new, bottom-up grassroots market thing to a new level. I’d love to see that.

I’ve probably missed out a lot of stuff, especially downsides and problems with crowdfunding, so I’d love to discuss further in the comments. Give it a twirl.

UPDATE:

I just read the following quote at the end of an update for the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter campaign, and thought it was such a wonderful idea and very much in keeping with the grassroots ethos of crowdfunding:

[...] our power as developers will ultimately come from us sticking together.  [...] I am going to suggest that all of us that do utilize this form of financing agree to kickback 5% of our profits made from such projects to other Kickstarter developers. [...] once a game has shipped and created profit we funnel that back into the community of developers to fund their dreams. I am tentatively calling this “Kick It Forward” and I will be the first to agree to it. In fact, I will have our artists create a badge that goes on all Kickstarter projects that agree to support this initiative. Imagine the potential if another Minecraft comes along via Kickstarter and produces millions of dollars of investment into other developers.

]]> http://www.magnulus.com/2012/03/21/whats-he-on-about-crowdfunding/feed/ 0 http://www.magnulus.com/2012/03/19/minecraft-with-friends/ http://www.magnulus.com/2012/03/19/minecraft-with-friends/#comments Mon, 19 Mar 2012 08:32:28 +0000 Magnulus http://www.magnulus.com/?p=876
Minecraft. I like to call it Lego Survival. It has been around for nearly three years (May 2009) and I have been playing for almost as long (July). 24.5 million people have played it, and 5.3 of those have paid for it. I bought it after a day of playing the incredibly early pre-alpha just so I could customise the little dude I was controlling. For a week, I played constantly. I built a tree that went as high as it was possible to build. I was hooked, and I kept playing on and off since then.The game has gone through several versions, from the tiny, bare world of the original (now called Minecraft Classic, and still playable for free on the site) to the current, near infinite world with biomes, varying vegetation, abandoned mineshafts, villages, monsters and kindly beasts. The game is now massive. The core is the same, however: Every single thing in the world can be picked up or destroyed and placed somewhere else. Like Lego.

I played alone when I was in Minehead for a year, building the various things you see in the above video. Once I got back, I made my map playable online and has since messed about with my base together with my oldest friend, Bjørn Henrik. I will do some form of update with that base soon enough. Playing with someone else there has given the game a whole new feeling. Mundane tasks like harvesting building materials or clearing out an area are made less so by the fact that you have someone to work with. We keep the banter going on Skype. Recently, I decided to make Bjørn Henrik a skin as well, so I made the thing you see on the right here. It’s actually uncanny just how much it really reminds of him despite the low resolution. The T-shirt carries a Pixies logo, because he’s badass like that.

There are a multitude of ways to play Minecraft. That’s kind of the point. The game allows you to play it exactly how you want. You can spend all your time building increasingly complex mechanisms, you can just run around exploring, you can build to your heart’s content, and you can even breed farm animals. Want to play as a vegan? You can do that. Aside from that, a lot of people have been developing new rules for themselves while playing, restricting their play to make things more interesting. One popular game type is called Skyblock where all you start off with is a tiny heap of dirt, a tree and a chest with some stuff in it. This is all suspended in mid air. If you fall off, you die. Now, you go. Build. Grow trees and create cobblestone by combining the one lava block on the map with water. Create a fortress in the sky. It’s fun, to a point.

My main tree in the upper right, a little cottage in middle.

Another popular play mode is Tree Spirit Survival. You pick one tree, cut down all of it but the lowest log. From that point onwards, you can not go anywhere without standing on a log harvested from your ancestral tree. You use the saplings that drop from the tree to grow new trees, and the logs to build your path (roots). Any trees sown from the first tree can be used for your path. You’re allowed to drop off your tree to pick up materials you have harvested, but that’s it. It’s an interesting way to limit your freedom in the game as well as to play for a certain aesthetic.

At night, a view of both our tree huts, plus my farm in the foreground.

You are allowed to build using anything you find, but the compulsion to create a massive tree base is strong. I mean, you are a Tree Spirit, what’s the point if you don’t live in a gigantic tree? Remember how I said the first thing I made in Minecraft was a massive tree? Yeah, this game mode is like made for me. Not to mention the fact that the space you have above ground is now tree times as high as it was when the game first came out, so we now have the opportunity to create truly massive World Tree type structures. In good time, my tree will have a farm, animal breeding grounds and probably a coffee shop hidden up among its massive branches.

My first farm, ready for harvest.

Now, here you can see my wheat farm. Lovely, isn’t it? In Tree Spirit Survival, even a little thing like this is a bit of an accomplishment. To sow wheat, you need seeds. Seeds are found in some of the tall grass in the world as well as the wheat when you harvest that. Since you can’t move off your tree except to pick up things, you have to keep putting down logs to get to fresh tall grass. This means that making a tiny little farm like this takes a long time, and finally having a farm that fully sustains you is an accomplishment in itself. It may sound like a chore, but it’s actually great fun.

We’re still playing this, and we probably will be for a while. I’m thoroughly enjoying the challenge of trying to make my tree look natural without just making it a mess of leaves and logs. I’m working on a branch right now that will hold a new wheat farm. After that, I will keep working upward. Crafting branches, bedrooms, coffee shops, it all needs doing. And I can’t wait to be doing them. Once we tire of this gameplay mode, I will find my way back to the original base and then lay down a railway track between the trees and the base.

If you’re the kind of person who enjoys games like Transport Tycoon, Sim City, The Sims and such, I think you’ll find a lot to like in Minecraft. Try it out!

We gather at sunrise. That branch on my tree needs work.

Also: I hate having my headshot bookending the video, but it’s the done thing I’m afraid.

Not only that, me and wifeyface have now bought and moved into a darned house. We have been lucky enough to come into a situation where we could get a place of our own with a relatively small mortgage. We loved the flat, but the new house is perfect for us. There’s a garden (more for me than wifeyface. She’s very much an unfan of spiders.) and we have space to not just have a guest room, but an exercise room (same as the guest room) and  a library! Yay! More on the house later.

I have had new headshots done. I don’t want to sully my personal website with pictures of me trying to look good, so hop on over to my acting site if you want to see those. I hate self-promotion, and that place is my one place for it. So go there if you want to read about how amazing I’m trying to convince people I am.

If there’s one thing I’ve always been worried about, it’s how lazy I am. I have said as much before. I feel like I never have the drive to achieve the things I want. I would occasionally attempt to work against it by making lists and starting up a million little projects for self-betterment. It would last for about as long as I will normally be obsessed with a new game: Three days to a week.

Now, that might be changing. I’m starting easy. Every day I set up a list of what I want to achieve. Basically a To Do list. It’s mostly things like washing up and looking for work, etc, but I also include playing a computer game and drinking coffee for levity. It’s important to remind myself that it’s fine for me to relax as well, because otherwise I will sit down and not do anything for a bit and feel bad that I’m not doing the things on my list.

At the end of the day, inspired by this TED Talk I write a positive journal entry about things I’m grateful for, nice things that happened during the day, and if there’s something in particular I achieved. Sometimes, that journal entry is one line long, sometimes a “page” (as if such concepts exist in a digital world). The point is to end the day on a high point so I don’t go to bed worrying about all the stuff I should/ could or would have done if I was better/ smarter/ stronger/ cooler/ prettier/ etc. Seems to be working so far. And no, I’m not uploading those journal entries to any public websites. They’re too self-congratulatory and soppy (and personal) for the public’s eyes. I keep them safely locked up at OhLife, an e-mail based diary system. It’s quite cool, check ‘em out.

I’m also setting weekly goals. Right now, that is to start work on reviving Telling of Tales and starting up other voice acting projects. In the future, I plan on running parallel goals, like studying one topic an hour a day for a week, learning a new skill, etc. Right now, though, I want to keep it simple. Like in What About Bob, I’m taking baby steps into actually utilising the energy I have in me to get stuff done.

Like Bob Dylan said:
He not busy bein’ born is busy dyin’. 

I really liked to chew on the tender bit of a straw that comes just above the joint between segments. You have to kind of peel away the grass-blade bit that is on the outside of the top segment to get at the chewy centre, but I didn’t mind. In retrospect, maybe people wouldn’t have derided me for it if I hadn’t also brought bundles of the stuff into the classroom to peel and chew… Maybe. Stuff like that.

“That’s not so bad.” you might say. “I did that kind of shit when I was in first grade, too!” might be your next choice of words. I was fourteen.

Now, of course, I’ve grown up and things are a lot different. Thanks to the lessons I’ve learned through my adolescence, I’m loud, obnoxious, gangly, socially paranoid, I talk at length about shit if you give me half an indication you might find it interesting, and I don’t do quite as much weird shit without thinking. I’ll think about doing it and then think better of it.

When I was a kid, I didn’t stand out like a sore thumb. Once, before my skin had hardened, I smacked my thumb with a hammer (by accident. I wasn’t that crazy). Most of the skin on the upper half of my thumb actually loosened from the flesh of the finger and hung around it like strips of tiny, pink baby-venison. That’s the kind of thumb I stood out like.

Laboured, overly verbose similes aside, I was a bit of  a strange one. The kind of kid who caused all kinds of upset and confusion in classes but rarely actually got into trouble for it because the teachers felt sorry for me. To this day, I’m convinced some of them must have thought I was a bit… Special. I was completely unselfconsciously doing these things never thinking about the fact that someone might find them untoward.

A lot of people thought I did it to be the centre of attention. It has all the hallmarks of someone starved for attention, after all. There might be an element of this in it, but I still refuse to believe that’s the whole explanation. See, as I passed through my mid-to-late teens I started craving the ability to not stand out. I tried my best not to talk loudly at length about whatever jumped into my mind or tell jokes no one got because they weren’t privy to my own though processes (Sometimes, I’d try to explain my jokes, which just made them worse). I tried not to let my enormous energy out. Sit on your thumbs, hold your tongue. Sit on your thumbs, hold your tongue. I wonder if I can do both… *bends* Ow, no. That was a bad idea. Why are they all looking at me funny?

Josh is Mags is Josh: He effectively proves I haven't learned by portraying me very accurately in 2011.

So now I hold my jokes back if I gauge the audience not to be right for it. I don’t go on at length about coffee if I’m talking to a Starbucks customer/ employee. I try to keep my volume down. If I see a table and think I could probably jump it, I don’t jump on top of it, thump my chest and go AAAAaaaAAaaaAAAAAA!!!!

So I suppose I finally learned my lesson. I don’t stand out as much, so yay!

But I haven’t. And I do. Maybe not like a bloodied stumb of pinkish venison (what the hell am I on?) but certainly like a regular ol’ sore thumb.

It might take five minutes. Ten minutes. It could even take a whole day if I’m being really good. But sooner or later I will betray myself. And if I don’t, I’m standing there looking at that table going “No, Magnus. Don’t do it. You’ll get up there and once you run out of breath or your chest starts hurting, you’ll notice everyone looking at you. Maybe one or two will laugh. The rest will think you’re an attention-grabbing dickhead. You’re better off not doing it. Just stand there. Stop shaking.”

So what have I really learned? I suppose nothing. I still stand out, and when I stop myself doing something, I stop myself for what might be the wrong reasons alltogether. What if I did go on the table, and someone joined in? What if it turned into a delicious Tarzan-fest and we all turned out to have a fantastic time? Because that’s what I want. I want people to have a good time. And if I sometimes fail and people think I’m an attention-grabber, maybe that’s worth it.

Acting Out: Me as Robbie Rotten in Lazytown

I suppose now that I’m an actor, I have an outlet. I get to dress up in crazy outfits and frighten, delight and excite children (and some parents as well) for my work. This is making me realise that the lesson I never learned wasn’t what I need to do to not stand out, it’s that standing out is OK. And if you hold back who you are, how are you supposed to find people who think and act like you? HOW?!

And as long as you’re not standing out just for the sake of it. I still feel offended when I see people who do their best to convince people that they’re “original” and “peculiar” when really they’re just looking to create a media storm. Not that anyone would do that!

Oh God, I just gave her more attention, didn't I?

(For the record, if you click the link on that picture, I find the latter of the five interpretations most likely.)

So when I got the job at Butlins, we decided to switch banks. After some research (Well, after Marit had done some research) we decided to go for the diametrically opposite of RBS: A purely online bank. We went with First Direct.

The transition process was… Less than smooth. Mostly due to RBS’s incredibly annoying service and a speed of execution that was so slow as to seem as if it was in complete quantum lock, it took over two months to go from sending our application to First Direct to an actual account number. Granted, some of it was bad communication from FD, but I’m happy to direct my anger at RBS instead.

Aaaaanyway! The whole point of this massive wall of text was actually not to tell you about the bank we were with and the bank we left it for. It was to tell you about the conversations I had with the customer service people at First Direct yesterday and today as we were going through the final stages of setting the account up.

Yesterday, I spoke to a man who seemed very happy to speak to someone who was portraying the villain in Lazytown. His surprise at my main role seemed genuinely enthusiastic, and that makes me happy. He also made my wife happy, by referring to our joint account as being shared by “yourself and Doctor Hartveit”. We both relish any opportunity to be viewed outside traditional marriage roles. For example, at our wedding ceremony, the lady wedding us said “You may now kiss each other” at our request.

Then today, I spoke with a lovely young (by the sound of her voice) lady who took my security details. When spelling out important words, she would use the phonetic alphabet. You know, Alpha Bravo Charlie etc. Like most people I don’t know it by heart, so I asked if she was required to learn it for work. “Yes” she said. I thought this was quite cool, but what she followed up with was even better: “Before I did, I would always have to make it up. Like B for Banana and stuff. Sometimes I fall back into it, though. I’ll always say Unicorn for U, for example.”

I don’t know about you (if anyone could actually be bothered reading all the way down here), but I thought this was a brilliant idea. Imagine an alternative phonetic alphabet with mythical beasts and other wonderful things! Aragorn, Basilisk, Cerberus, Dinosaur… The list goes on!

Over and out!

PS: Did you actually read the whole thing?! I am impressed with your tenacity and stamina, and I need to keep you around, because you’re probably the only person likely to read any book I might publish.

Right now, I give you the SECOND of the two and a half episodes I originally wrote.

This was written quite a while after the first episode, as is often the case when I start a project, so there are some stylistic development here, though it’s still wildly off where I hope I will be when I start writing the actual book. (Hopefully by the end of the year) As you can see, the foot notes are nowhere to be found, which is quite definitely for the best.

BULBSQUAD CHRONICLES
Episode 2: A Team Assembled
(Printable version)

A little less than a week ago, the sun blacked out. A scout named Quark Nodgers was been sent in order to assess the “damage”, so to speak, and he had returned with a description that would utterly baffle the most imaginative drug abuser in the universe. The surface of the sun, you see, was, against all common sense, comprised of an immense number of light bulbs, all of which had burnt out. It was clear what they had to do right away. A team needed to be sent into the far reaches of space (and that’s really rather far) in order to collect new light bulbs. The team was dubbed The Bulb Squad. After a few days of considering the best candidates for the role of Captain on this mission, the executives in charge of Earth Station had sat down and voted unanimously for someone who was definitely not the former cab driver, and the scout who was sent to the sun in the first place, mister Nodgers. After he had delivered his report on the condition of the now defunct sun, Station Captain Schtankenfarten had duly noted to never allow Quark Nodgers near the BulbSquad. Granted, he was eager and, given a certain kind of crew, he could probably be a decent leader, SC Hause Schtankenfarten had to admit, as he knew he’d seen people with much less authority in their ways lead entire systems. The trouble is that this certain kind of crew would certainly have to be of the completely insane kind, as mr. Nodgers obviously was.
What Quark Nodgers didn’t know was that his application had been processed during the first hour of the first crisis meeting, when one of the executives had run out of toilet paper. What the board of directors didn’t know was that the Captain they had appointed, the famous and much-loved Captain Kysse Edwin Phase, was right now lying heavily sedated and thoroughly crushed between the wall and the mattress of his own fold-in bed. Quark had no problem with doing what he had done to get where he now was. It wasn’t as If he was a bad person, the board had obviously just overlooked his application in the chaos of it all, as well as his fifteen video-messages asking if they’d chosen him yet. Perhaps the anonymous threat he had sent in was slightly over the top. But that was beside the point. The point, as far as Quark was concerned, was that this was obviously the mission he had been born for, and if the directors failed to see that, he would just have to take matters into his own hands, or rather; his squishy, hand-like tentacle-ends.
All things considered, Quark Nodgers was quite satisfied with how he had tentacled things. Only a few hours ago, he had assumed command over the PMS Currency, the ship that was to venture into the far reaches of space and acquire 139 842 769 409 541 981 light bulbs to get the Sun up and running again. Looking out over the sleek and modern control room of the PMS Currency and supporting himself on some dramatically convenient railing, he thought about how easy it had been.

***

Watching his reflection change from his own, positively gorgeous, visage to that of the smug, disgusting, muscled and inexplicably popular captain Kysse E. Phase had been a disconcerting experience, no where near as enjoyable as when he had last used his cheap HoloGuise to “transform” into a beautiful, stark naked woman in order to lure the sexually hyperactive celebrity captain into his trap. He had tried running a hand across his “new” face, but had only experienced a flicker and splutter of light as he penetrated the holographic surface generated by the cheap device he’d had surgically inserted in his upper left nipple.
He had walked out into the corridor where he had bumped into a so-called Phase-hugger. The young, female officer had saluted him vigorously and enthusiastically blurted “Good morning, captain Phase, sir!” Nodgers had slung his arm up matter-of-factly and said, with a thoroughly practiced nonchalant voice, “Hey, sweet-cheeks!” As he moved on down the corridor, a small cluster of thuds sounded as the female officer fainted with excitement.

***

Captain von Schtankenfarten had been sitting in his office enjoying his fourth bottle of Swaï since the incident with the sun occurred. Well, he hadn’t been enjoying the first bottle, but about halfway through the second one, he had started enjoying not only his drink, but also the patterns on his carpet. Shadron, his blue-skinned personal assistant, would have been worried if he hadn’t seen the Captain performing his duties admirably in much worse stupors than this.
“Wh’nnn shoosh comessh t’ povw… W-w-when boosh comsh… Wh’n ya g-get right down to it, Iyam really de besht damn ca… cabsh… spasche-shtashiun-runny-pershun in thish whole galaxshee.” Shadron had heard the Captain say earlier that day as he was examinating a particularly fascinating curve in the pattern, and Shadron really did have to agree. Not just due to the fact that he was contractually obliged to, either.
He remembered the day Hause von Schtankenfarten’s wife left him. Between the moment she’d walked out and lunch four hours later, the Captain had consumed two entire bottles of Swaï and was rendered unconscious for an hour. After frantic ice-cold showering from Shadron, he finally came to, albeit without the use of his legs, arms or indeed eyes. Even in this state he managed to resolve five major employee complaints (two of which bordered on violent mutiny), sign one of the largest contracts in the history of Earth Station, deter two hostile takeovers, and assist in three births. Granted, most would agree that the sun suddenly switching off is a considerably bigger deal than being left by your wife.
As the high-headed captain approached the bottom of his fourth bottle of Swaï, the amount of alcohol in his blood-stream reached such heights that the alcohol cells had already formed a rudimentary intelligence and created two separate civilizations that were, in the spirit of alcohol, waging a war on one another, thereby killing each other off and leaving the host less and less drunk. Of course, violence never has a positive outcome, so the general destruction lead to a rather thrashing pain in the aftermath of the war. It had started somewhere inside his elongated skull and was now moving down towards his stomach. So if it wasn’t bad enough that he was gradually becoming sober, he was also in a great amount of pain. The Captain was, in other words, not really ready to talk to anyone or anything.
Not long after the cells had laid waste to his entire head, making every little sound reverberate across the barren wastelands, Shadron walked through the door accompanied by a striking man sporting a chin the size of a small asteroid and the surface of a particularly hard baby’s bottom. The fur-free kind. The barely distinguishable fwoosh of the door moving into the wall made the Captain cringe.
“Captain von Schtankenfarten, sir?” said Shadron quietly. Over the years, he had honed his skill in detecting various degrees of hangovers. This was clearly one of the more gruesome ones. Shadron turned the light switch to the far left, plunging the office into almost complete darkness.
“mmmmm- yes?” the Station Captain said wearily, shifting his gaze with a slow, deliberate movement from his feet to Shadron, then to the chin with a man attached to it. For a fleeting moment, he though he saw a stark naked woman standing at the exact spot where the man was standing, but the moment passed quickly, and the Captain decided that he was now not only sober and in pain, but was having hallucinations. Great. The alcohol cells must have developed chemical weapons already, he thought very quietly to himself. The moment the man opened his mouth to talk, he just knew it was going to be painful.
“Captain Kysse Edwin Phase reporting for duty! SIR!” the man shouted as he threw a magnificently square salute, Shadron hushing him frantically. He pronounced the last word ‘Sah’. He was one of those people.
Hause summarily hated the guy’s guts.

“If you don’t get that codding man out of here, I’ll stab him to death with my splitting head.” Hause hissed between his clenching and grinding teeth. He was considered by most people to be a man of great patience, but most people hadn’t seen him with this much of a hangover.
“But your head isn’t that sharp, boss! It’d take a really long t-”
“Exactly!” Hause spat viciously, his swimming eyes aflame “Now do something about it!”
Shadron nodded and moved over to speak to Capt. Phase. Hause cringed as he heard the idiot start to talk, but noticed to his relief that the man stopped and removed himself from the room.

***

Quark had a very good feeling about the meeting with Captain von Schtankenfarten. From the moment he stepped through the doorway, he immediately sensed a positive vibration radiating from the Station Captain. As Schtankenfarten looked at him for the first time (well, first time in this shape) he could see his eyes widening for a moment, clearly impressed by his appearance.
“Captain Kysse Edwin Phase reporting for duty!” he paused to draw breath for the finale; “SIR!” he said as he motioned his right hand towards his forehead in a perfect salute. No one could resist his salute.
He could see the strange little blue man with all the legs pitter-patter lightly over to the Captain, who seemed to be feeling quite ill. He was very red in the face and was clutching his skull with both hands. Must be quite a strain on a man when something of this magnitude happens, he thought. The little man whispered very quietly, for some reason, to Schtankenfarten. Quark could barely make out the words.
“Kysse E. Phase is the captain that has been appoint-”
“I know who he is, Shadron!” The broken man snapped hissingly. “I was the one who appointed him!”
Quark was feeling kind of uneasy, as he always did when people weren’t raising their voices. You knew where you were when people raised their voices.
“SIR!”
The Captain seemed to have another violent spasm of pain.
“Sir! Is there anywhere in particular you want me, sir?” The Captain seemed to really be having a bad time with his illness as he spasmed yet again. He spoke a few indistinguishable (not only due to volume) words to the blue man. The man answered and the Captain spat something back at him, at which he nodded and ambled towards Quark.
“Listen, could you go… inspect the troops or something?”
“SI-” Shadron waved his arms frantically as the Captain clenched his eyes shut. Realization dawned, as it sometimes does, even to Quark.
“Right. I’m off then.” Quark said quietly and left the room to look for his crew. His own crew!

***

Quark had then gone to see the people he’d be commanding. He stepped into one of the transportation tubes that ran along the core of the entire Earth Station, connecting every single module but one (this module consisted largely of small shops and pubs whose owners didn’t really like casual visitors.) and was swooshed away to the docking module. He slowly stepped out, wishing that they’d figure out this teleportation thing soon, and went to the debriefing hall where he was to meet the crew. As a wonderful start to things, none of the crew had arrived at the debriefing by the appointed time except for a gastropedestrian who was already inspecting the panels and the mass of coloured buttons with some sort of gadget, emmiting an occasional “tsk” and “oooh”. The gastropedestrian had a cautious and extremely concentrated look about his wide face. Calling it a face, though is somewhat of an exaggeration, as it consisted of a mouth the breadth of Quark’s torso and two wet eyes stuck to the ends of some fleshy stalks. These features were more stuck directly to his torso than actually put on a head with a neck. In short, he looked like a gigantic, highly evolved snail. Still no hands, though. Obviously the technician, thought Quark, who figured anyone with strange devices must be technicians. Well, I’d better say “hello”, then. Impossibly straightening his already ruler-straight back, he drew in a breath of air and let loose his unlimited authority.
“A-Teeeen-SHUN!” he yelled with as much bravado as he could muster (which is a lot) and to his surprise, and admittedly great pleasure, the snail yoinked its squishy body with incredible speed into his enormous spiral shell much like you, the reader, would see a regular garden variety snail do if you startled it, only with several thousand times more power. It made a sound like a small, inverted explosion and sent the gadget the snail was “holding” flying across the room and just barely missed Quark’s head. Coming from inside the shell were a series of mumbled vowels and consonants that, despite not knowing the first thing about the Gastropedestrian language, Quark could immediately identify as swearing. After a bit of this came a muffled and apologetic voice.
“I’m terribly sorry, sir! Y’just startled me, ‘s all. Won’t be a minute.” The voice said, and the body slowly started emerging from the shell again, unfolding itself in a vaguely sickening manner until at last the “face” emerged and the eyestalks pushed themselves outward and finally focused on Quark whom the eyes of course percieved to be Kysse E. Phase. There was something strange about the figure, though, but the snail couldn’t quite put his telekinetic finger to it. It was like he flickered. For a second or two, he even thought it looked like the Captain had turned into a naked woman, but he put this down to post-muscle-contraction shock.
“Chief Technician Furkle Terrence Brale reporting for duty, sir!” the Gastro said quietly, his vast mouth moving disproportionately much compared to the strength of the voice. He did his best to straighten his torso as a means of indicating a salute.
Quark was about to speak when a golden flurry of fur-covered limbs ambled past him. Half a second later, a woman of canine shape was standing at attention next to Furkle. The Hu’unt was standing on her hind legs, her back straight and her eyes keen. Her chest was heaving with heavy breaths, something that will draw the gaze of most men. Two breasts heaving is bad enough, eight of them will incapacitate even the strongest of men.
“Navigator L’an Morgafey reporting in, sir!” She said hurriedly, licking something red from her lip and adding “Am I late?” as a quick afterthought. Quark was sure he’d read the crew roster over carefully, and the navigator didn’t have fur, and wasn’t a woman.
“Are you sure you should be here? Where is Looke Cloudrunner?” This question obviously stirred something in the new arrival, causing her to anxiously shift her eyes around the room.
“He is… indisposed, sir. He said to send his regards and that he hopes his replacement; me, will be adequate. I was assured there would be no trouble with this.” She said, and Quark was sure he could just register a faint sound somewhat like a growl. The Hu’unt woman showed no hint of aggressiveness, but Quark felt the best thing to do was to not tempt his fate too much.
How smart a decision this had been he would come to find out later. Or at least suspect. Apparently, Looke Cloudrunner, the son of Randykins Cloudrunner, had been attacked on his way to the briefing. He was apparently in the infirmary ranting about snarling women with eight breasts and sharp teeth. He’d also been heard lamenting the loss of his right arm, but where his arm had gone was anybody’s guess. The surrounding corridors had been thoroughly searched but they hadn’t found even the slightest trace of it. No witnesses had been present, so it was hard to tell, but Quark made a mental note to be extra careful with certain employees.

Something now moved through the corridors that emanated such a sensual aura that even the light-metal walls seemed to swell and stiffen. Quark could feel it long before he could actually see the source. It was almost as if someone had such a sex appeal that it had become sentient and was floating around the place touching everyone . Even L’an and the snail seemed affected, though they were female and hermaphrodite respectively. L’an seemed particularly affected, in fact, and looked very confused, panting and growling as she moved backwards toward the wall, her tail securely placed between her legs. Furkle seemed to dry up as he strained his stalked eyes to see what was coming. The intensity grew, and just as Quark broke into a powerful cold sweat, a figure sauntered into the room with movements so suggestive they were almost not just suggestive any longer. Her hips gyrated just enough to make strong men weep and hands swaying around them in such a complacent way as to make the most sexually confident woman pack up and head home. There was more to her than her movements, though. Her skin was a sickly grayish blue that indicated advanced rot and her limbs all seemed to hang on to her body only by the thinnest of connections. Her eyes, perfectly half-closed in a seductive downwards gaze, were dead and grey and seemed to hold no emotion whatsoever. The impact of her raw sensuality was effectively almost cancelled out by the hideousness of her physical appearance, and the people in the bay were all left with the impression that they were simply looking at a very attractive woman. That’s not to say she didn’t have a fit body, of course. In fact, if you saw her in a dark room in which you could only see her silhouette, you might very well find her body to be quite a turn-on… that is, provided you didn’t notice the odd angle at which her head was attached to her neck, of course.

***

The man who appeared to be captain Kysse E. Phase appeared to wipe his forehead for no reason while underneath the HoloGuise projection Quark Nodgers was actually wiping a few beads of sweat from his forehead. His upper left nipple tingled slightly as a drop trickled down his chest and passed the nipple.
“Are you, uh…” Quark looked down at his charter “Reginae Londam Barner?”
“I am.” The woman answered.
“Uh, well. Um, welcome to the team.” Reginae purposefully strode past Quark and seemed not to notice his quizzical look as she passed him. He raised his laser pen slowly with a confused look passing his face before turning to a strengthened resoluteness as he seemed to make his mind up.
“You’re dead!” He exclaimed, almost sounding accusatory. Reginae looked at him as if he’d told her a trite joke.
“Really? I wasn’t aware of that.” She said, putting on an entirely unconvincing innocent expression.
“Excuse me,” Furkle the giant snail almost whispered in an apologetic manner and then seemed to cringe as everyone’s eyes turned to him.
“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but I also was under the impression that you were deceased. I mean, you are the famous physicist, right?”
“I am.” she answered again.
“But did you not die in that catastrophic accident fifty years ago?”
At this, Reginae cocked her head in a motion that is impossible to achieve with an unbroken neck.
“I’m here now, am I not?”
Furkle made an embarrased bubbling noise and seemed to roll in on himself.
“uh… Yeah.” He said, eventually, further retreating into himself. In the silence that followed, a sound that had been there ever since the supposedly dead woman had entered the room was finally making itself heard. It was a low growling, almost rumbling, noise and it came from the direction of the only one present with a tail and floppy ears. L’an had backed all the way up to the wall and was now ever so slightly sneering.
“Right!” said Quark, seemingly oblivious to the syrup-thick tension in the air.
“Everyone follow me to the docking bay! We are going to the ship and getting ready for takeoff!” he shouted, and though it seemed to have little effect on the mood of the small crowd, it did cause them to start shuffling awkwardly after Quark, who was already moving, into the docking bay module of the Earth Station. As they entered, a large window faded from black and into transparency to reveal what would have looked, to the layman, like an especially designed, and completely useless, luxury baseball. To the crew, it merely looked like an extremely luxurious, and completely useless, star ship.
It was completely spherical and gleamed with metallic red with bits of metallic green. A smaller and apparently almost completely transparent blob sat perched on top as if it was keeping watch. Kysse E. Phase, or the man who pretended to be him while the real man was stashed inside a fold-in bed, beamed with pride while he secretly sweated heavily under his projected good looks. He ignored the sizzling feeling on his cybernetically enhanced nipple and struck his arms out theatrically toward the window.
“Behold! The Pneumasonic Megadrive Starship Currency!”
The crew looked stunned, apart from the seemingly alive Dr. Londam Barner who seemed incapable of ever being stunned much like a rock would seem incapable of calming down. Furkle’s skin started oozing as he opened up the universe’s possibly widest and definitely most toothy grin while L’an Morgafey stood completely still with her tail between her legs as if stricken.
“We’re flying that?!” She prompted in a panicked voice. “Can it even move?!”
Engineer Furkle took a hold of himself and managed to answer,
“Quite so, my furry friend! I think you’ll find it a treat to drive! The driving mechanics are the most intuitive ever devised. It is said that even- “
“- that even a rich man’s idiot son could learn to fly it without flying lessons!” a voice interjected. A voice that seemed filled with confidence to such a degree there could hardly be room for any more.
“I don’t have much patience for that sort of thing, though.” The voice continued as it grew less echoed and more substantial and finally attached itself to an approaching figure in a suit. The best way to describe the figure would be to call it “well maintained”. It didn’t look particularly strong, nor did it look weak. It didn’t have a handsome face stuck to it, but rather a face that looked as if it was being held in place by all manner of girders and plastic holdings. In the middle of the face hung a bright smile. To say that it was toothy would be both very precise and wildly inaccurate. It seemed as though all his teeth had grown together into one big, white mass, which it had, in fact, through a long long time of evolution. He walked toward the newly arrived group with arms open.
“Welcome, crew! My name is Chadwick Con-Rahd The One Thousanth One Hundreth and Fourth! I’ll be your chaperone for this little trip!” Quark looked at him with disbelief as Chadwick moved towards him, and then turned his gaze to luck with disdain at Chadwick’s outthrust hand. He hesitated for a moment as he’s generally not supposed to touch anyone while his HoloGuise is activated, but his wish to crush the smarmy cod’s hand made him finally take Chadwick’s hand in his.
The suit-clad man didn’t look down at his hand, but he could sense a flurry of dancing light particles as their hands met, and he gulped as he heard a squelching sound when they locked hands. It was as if Kysse E. Phase’s hand had suddenly turned into a sweaty sort of putty. He looked up at the holographic face, struggling to keep his smile wide while trying to pull his hand free of Quark’s. Finally, his hand slid free and he shook it a few times while he looked towards the others. The assembled crew looked back at him with nervous smiles.
“I was not aware we were supposed to have a…” Quark bit back an insult “man of your stature with us on this mission.” Chadwick avoided the Captain’s mad gaze, not only because he was apparently trying to drill a hole in his head with his eyes, but also because he seemed to have a second set of beady, black eyes behind the big, blue, flickering ones in the front. Wait, flickering? He thought quickly. Nah. Furkle broke the silence.
“Pardon my saying so, but I think we might be late for our own launch? Should we get going, perhaps?”
Chadwick brightened, as did Quark, both men glad of the reprieve.
“The giant slug is right!” Chadwick exclaimed.
“Uh, snail, actually.” Furkle interjected ever so quietly, and he was promptly ignored.
“I can agree with that. GoodbyeChadwickNiceseeingyou!” Quark said without pausing for breath as he started running toward the docking pod. Chadwick gave a start and followed.
“YesQuiteI’llSeeYouLaterThen!” he blurted as he came up to quark. They were shoulder-to-shoulder now and for some reason or another were trying to push each other out of the way.
“Goodbye!” Quark spat through tight lips and clenched teeth.
“Yeah! Later!” Chadwick hissed with a wide smile and his two teeth clenched.
They both scrambled through the opening of the pod, barely fitting through the hatch and finally Quark kicked Chadwick in the leg and hurried to one of the chairs nearest the entrance. Chadwick sat himself down in the chair opposite him and they sat glowering at each other while the rest of the crew calmly sidled past them and came to rest in the pod. The hatch closed and just as the pod started moving, Capt. Kysse E. Phase briefly turned into a beautiful naked woman and back. By this time, everyone had already invented their own private psychosis to explain this visual phenomenon, and so they all ignored this.

***

After a short trip, they reached the PMS Currency. Chadwick disappeared to his quarters to “freshen up” while the disconcerting doctor complained that her arms needed tightening. Quark and the two others went to the blob at the top of the ship which turned out to be the navigation deck. His navigator and technician seemed to get along rather well as the snail explained how the controls of the ship worked to the Hu’unt woman whose tail seemed to wag more enthusiastically with every passing moment.
Yes, all in all, Quark was satisfied with how he’d handled things. He’d keep the rich splitter in check, all right. And now, as the launch neared, he grew anxious and giddy.
A gigantic surface Quark hadn’t noticed before flashed with the words “Incoming Transmission”. Quark accepted it. The drawn and hung-over face of Captain Hause von Schtankenfarten appeared all over the wall and spoke to Quark, or rather, Kysse. He instinctively gave a start, as anyone would if a twenty-meter tall head spoke to them, but quickly gathered himself.
“Right, Kysse. Are you ready for departure?” He asked wearily but obviously with more vigour than he had shown the last time Quark had seen him.
“Ready as a space trucker for fleeg, sir!” He answered, an answer that seemed to make the good Station Captain frown suspiciously for a second.
“Good. Count-down starts now, with twenty seconds to go.”
Twenty- nineteen- eighteen- A friendly, female voice drifted across the deck counting down from twenty. Just as it started, L’an quickly readied herself at the controls and Quark sat back in his chair.
Seventeen- sixteen- fifteen- fourteen- thirteen- twelve-
Quark leaned slightly forward and put his fist to his supposed chin. Light particles danced around the point of impact in his projected image of Kysse E. Phase. Hause, still on the big screen, frowned as he thought he saw exactly what he actually did see.
Eleven- ten-
Chadwick came in and sauntered towards the captain.
Nine- eight-
“Hallo, guys! Getting ready for takeoff? Just you wait! It’s such a smooth ride, this thing! You won’t believe it, man.” The rich, young man said excitedly.
Seven- six-
“It’ll go off like ZSSHWOOOM!” he continued and slapped Kysse E. Phase hard on the shoulder. He flickered.
Five- four-
The shape of Captain Kysse Edwin Phase disappeared in another flicker and left only the bemused shape of former taxi driver Quark Nodgers. On the wall, though, an even more bemused expression could be seen, and it was growing more furrowed and tightly knit by the second.
Three-
“What the-” Said Chadwick.
Two-
“Split!” Said Quark.
One-
“You!” Blurted Hause
- Nil!
“GO GO GO!” Yelled Quark, and the PMS Currency stretched into infinity.

What follows is the first episode of the BulbSquad Chronicles. The other one and a half will follow at a later date. It’s kind of shit, and the footnotes are cringe-inducing in their desperation to be funny, but there’s a germ of an idea here. The reason I’m putting it out here now is kind of to hold myself accountable. I want the novel to be so much better than this. I’m scrapping many of the characters and changing the arch of the story almost completely. If I release a book in a year and it’s just as bad (or worse) than this, please pummel me. Also, if a year goes by and no book is close to materialising: Please pummel me.

And now, without further ado;

BULBSQUAD CHRONICLES
Episode 1: Darkness Comes
(Printable version)

The Blue Planet. 3000 AN*. Winter.
Saying that it’s winter, though, is somewhat of an exaggeration, as the Earth is by now really just a big ball of tropical heat all year round. The only ones who use the terms normally associated with seasons is the fashion industry.
The earth’s landmass has long since sunk into the rising sea with the sole exception of Norway. Home of the moose. Land of the fjords. Of course, it’s a long time since anyone called it Norway. More precisely, the birthplace of black metal was renamed to Really Tiny Continent in 2046. Already way back when the human race still existed, they could see this happening. No one seemed to notice, though, except for the five people who read the tiny article in some obscure Norwegian newspaper in 1993 AD. Exactely WHY Norway rose from the sea instead of sinking into it like the rest of the earth’s landmass isn’t really known, which probably has something to do with the fact that nobody cares why. They’ve got something so much cooler now.
Stretching all the way around the Earth is a long belt-like station. Earth Station is a galactic way-point. A last place to make sure you have an updated supply of underwear catalogues and paper tissues before you set out on that long journey to the next galaxy, the Sodomite Dwarf**. It’s filled with bars, most of them with bits of anatomy in their names. You can always be sure to see at least one specie you haven’t seen before if you go to the Khoroma Fleeg* Bar any night of the week, and the five-level Duty Free Shop is always packed with travellers desperately in need of cheap DeathSticks and perfume.
The whole station is run from the control module all the way up north. Here, around 300 scientists and engineers constantly watch over Earth Station, making sure nothing unexpected happens. Lights are constantly flashing, and alarms are regularly going off every second or two. People are running to and fro saving the lives of everyone on the space station on a daily basis. And in the midst of all this, is one very small Captain. Captain Hause von Schtankenfarten. Though small is not an entirely correct term for the Captain, standing 7 feet tall, but compared to the relative hugeness of the space station and the population of staff present, he’s really quite tiny. There isn’t a situation over which this man doesn’t have control. He practically oozes control. Nothing could throw this man off his balance. Except maybe what’s about to happen any second.

You know how it looks when a lightbulb goes out, don’t you? First, it emits a slight -bzzzzzt- sound while it goes almost completely dark. Then it brightens up again briefly before it goes -bzzZAP- and flashes brightly for a nanosecond to make the plunge into total darkness even MORE startling. All that’s left is a faint glow in the middle of the bulb growing weaker and weaker until, finally, it is no more.
Now, imagine that and enlarge it to, oh, say one million times the size of Earth. That’s roughly how it transpires when the sun goes out. Apart from the fact that there is no -bzzzzt- sound. But we’ll use some artistic licence and say there was, just for the dramatical effect of it. And if we’re going to be dramatic about it, let’s heighten the sound level by about one gajillion billion times the sound a regular lightbulb would make. And don’t forget the short flash. Now picture that.

Needless to say, von Schtankenfarten gets quite a start from this. Looking directly at the sun, even through the special dark glass in the windows, as something like that happens, would make a bat see spots.
“WHAT THE RUDDY HELL WAS THAT?!” His startled voice shouts. No one answers. It is as if the entire station is holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for the sun to come back on, or maybe waiting for-
Power gone. Not a single light. Now, the soundlessness is absolute, as all sounds of machinery are dumbstruck. Still, everyone is completely quiet as if waiting. Waiting for…
A fair voice sounds through all the modules and decks of Earth Station as if it were a message from some higher being. “Emergency power: Activated” it says, and as if it were performing a spell, everything blips back to life. The lights fade in, the computers reboot, and the sound of the oxygen generator, like the buzz of a bee, flies back into the room. The people start moving and bustling about instantaneously at double the speed and intensity they had before the blackout.
The first one to actually open his mouth in the control bay is the Captain; “Alright! I want to know WHAT the hell just happened to the sun, and I want to know it five minutes ago!”
“But sir, we can’t afford to spend our energy on timetravel now! Not with the sun out an’ all!” says a squat shape beside Hause. “You can’t possibly be ser-”
“Idiot! Of course I’m not serious, Shadron! I said that to put emphasis on how quick I want it, and to prove myself as a man who knows what he wants. But now you’ve gone and ruined it.” He puts his hands to his face
“Oh, sorry, sir. Didn’t mean to, sir.”
“Juz… just leave it, okay?” The captain waves his right hand in a dismissive maneuver.
“Right, sir. Leaving it, sir.”
Hause looks up, his face a variation of purple “Oh, Shadron? Could you do something else for me?”
“What’s that, sir?”
“FIND OUT WHAT THE BLOODY HELL HAPPENED TO THE SUN!!”
Shadron, and everybody else in the room, can distinctly hear a vein in their captain’s forehead pop, and so quickly continues doing what they were doing. Shadron gives a small hiccough and scurries out of range.

After having retreated to his living quarters, Captain Hause is trying to relax. Carefully, and quite shakily, he’s pouring his bottle of Swaï**** into a large beaker, trying hard not to spill anything, which is proving difficult, as this is his third beaker-full. He’s just settling back into his comfy screet-leather chair as a blue blurr zips into his quarters.
The blur screeches to a halt right in front of the captain and as it focuses, the round shape of Shadron appears to be standing there with his right hand raised in salute. As always, this gives the captain a good amount of shock, and especially in the state he is in right now (that’s the state of Really Drunk, by the way), and the captain apparently believes an appropriate way to react is to spill half his beaker of Swaï all over his uniform.
“Bloody hell, Shadron! Is that really necessary?!” He exclaims quite irritably as he stands up as straight as he can in his state and makes brushing movements with his hands.
Shadron leaps forward with astonishing speed compared to his small, rounded body. It may that his six legs has something to do with his general briskness, but you can never be too sure.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, sir! Here, let me help you with that.”
“No! That’s okay! I’ll be fi-”
“Nonsense! I have to get you out of these. Now, bend over and stretch your arms over your head.”
The captain groans and does as his servant says. He might be Captain of Earth Station, and he might wield supreme power over the others there, but when Shadron sees something that needs cleaning, there’s not much von Schtankenfarten can do to argue. Shadron drags his captain’s uniform jacket off and chucks it absentmindedly into a hole in the wall as he says “Teleport to cleaning room.”. The jacket quickly disintegrates into a million shiny little molecules that fade away into nothing and after this whole, rather impressive, show of pretty colours and light is over, the fair voice of the station says “Teleportation complete.”.
“So, did you come here to scare me to sobriety, or did you have something useful to say?”
“Legs-” Hause lowers his pantswaist to below his bottom and sits down legs out. “- well, I came here to report about what happened to the sun. Teleport to cleaning room”
“Well, what did you find out?”
Dazzling lights fade. “Teleportation complete.”
“There was a man sent to the sun to check it out. He just got back. I’ve sent for him to come here as soon as he was ready.”
“You mean he’s on his way? But my clothes! I’m the Captain of this ship, I can’t parade around in my underpants!”
“Don’t worry. The clothes will be ba-”
“Incoming teleportation from cleaning room.”
“Ah. There you are. Nice and clean.” Shadron says lightly.
“Well give them to me, man! I have to get dressed!”
The captain hurriedly gets into his clothes while not at all avoiding sticking his oblong head half-way through the arms of his jacket in the process. Fortunately, his head is not much wider than his arms, so he doesn’t get VERY stuck, and in the end, he manages to just do up his fly as a sturdy, square-beaked man marches into the quarters and stops with an almost impossibly square and military stomping of feet and saluting of hands. Considering this particular man has what looks like odd tentacles with hands haphazardly stuck on the ends as arms, saluting that squarely is indeed a great feat.
“Quark Nodgers reporting for duty, ” he inhales for the finale “SIR!”
“Right. At ease… guy.” the captain says and waves his hand in a bored fashion. Nodgers slaps his back with his hands and stomps his right foot to the side.
“I was informed that you’ve been-” the captain starts
“To hell and back, sir! To hell. And. Back.” Quark Nodgers finishes.
“What? Seriously? Were you ambushed or something?”
“No, I was in no real danger, sir.”
“Then why did you just-”
“Melodrama, sir. Mark of a good soldier.”
“But you’re not a SOLDIER. You’re a- pfah. Never mind.” You don’t get to be captain without meeting at least a few hundred guys like Quark Nodgers. It’s best to just leave it if he wants to get any further this century. “What do you have to report?”
“When I laid out on this mission, I had no idea what was in store for me.” Quark starts, and the captain nudges Shadron for his Swaï. If he’s going to go through this, he’s going to need some serious drugging.
“As I strapped myself up in the cockpit of my trusty ship, Caramella (I call her that because she’s really sticky), I immediately could sense something was not quite right.-” As Shadron comes up to the captain with the bottle and beaker, his hand is relieved of the bottle in a swift stroke. A second later, he can see his master glugging down the Swaï like water. He couldn’t blame him.
“But like a proper soldier, I had to go on like normal. The mission must go on!”
Thirty minutes later, as the intrepid Space Buccaneer/soldier/whatever Quark Nodgers has just reached the surface of the sun, explaining in wide form the aesthetics of being face to face with something so fantastically huge and whatnot, Captain von Schtankenfarten has had enough. It is time to put this story to an end.
“Skip to the end?” he says impatiently.
“The rows upon rows of- WHAT?” Quark says, notably irritated that he has been sidetracked in his fantastic story. Never mind who it was who actually sidetracked him. Be it captain or king.
“I’m quite frankly getting quite tired with your story. Give me the short basics. The conclusion, if you will.”
“The… conclusion, sir?” By the look on Quark’s face and the sound of his voice, you’d think the word wasn’t in his vocabulary. Probably wasn’t either.
“Yes.” A look of exasperation seems to have frozen to the Captain’s face. “in one sentence.”
“The sun is really a giant ball of lightbulbs and now they’ve all gone blank, sir.”
“Really?”
“In short, sir… yes, sir.”
“Blimey.”

* Anno Nusmag. To make it easier for the common reader, the first year of the reckoning of Nusmag landed roughly on 500 000 AD.

** Originally named the Sagittarius Dwarf by the humans, it was renamed due to the circumstances around the first encounter with a being from that galaxy.

*** Fleeg is the foulest-smelling and strongest drink ever created. One glass will render you sightless for at least two days while at the same time giving you hallucinations of being attacked by asteroids shaped like armadillos. Naturally, fleeg is the single most popular drink in the entire universe.

**** Something With Alchohol In It. A very exclusive drink made for no other reason than to get rich people really drunk really fast when they REALLY need it.

Jones and I were on the cusp of adult life. We had no job or education, and we were both determined to leave our dingy, mouldy apartments behind and make an impact on the world. We felt equally confident in our own potential and just knew that we could climb the social ladder quicker than the other.

So we made a wager.

Goals were set for how happy, rich and educated we needed to be to win. And, of course, each of us set our sits on the highest-paying gig in town: General Manager of The Factory. Exactly what they produced in The Factory and just how we were meant to quantify our happiness, we didn’t know. We didn’t care. We were young and determined to move up in the world and nothing was going to stop us. We shook hands and went our separate ways.

I struggled. A lot. In the start, we both worked for what I’m fairly certain is an illegally low wage at Monolith Burgers. For some reason, I was rejected for the position of clerk and was stuck flipping burgers. Jones was welcomed in with open arms and was soon the assistant manager. What he said or did to that mustachioed toad in the employment agency to get ahead like that, I would rather not think about, but whatever it was he was doing, it was working.

Within five or six weeks, he was making more than double my own wage and had already worked his way up to Socket City where he was peddling their electrical goods. I kept my nose down, tried to balance work with studies and failing to such a degree that I missed a couple of payments on my rent.

But then, about nine weeks into our wager, something happened. I read in the papers that the notorious purse snatcher Wild Willie had mugged Jones and taken all his money. When I saw him in the hallway of the Security Apartments we had both moved into when the housing market took a plunge, he seemed upbeat about the whole thing. “Eh, it’s only money, right?! I’ll work it back up within the end of next week, man.” he said and shrugged his narrow shoulders under his garish Hawaiian shirt.

However, life was not so kind.

It was all over the papers: “The Economy Suffers! Jobs Lost!” the headlines read. You always assume that it’s not going to happen to you, don’t you. You’re untouchable, right? But no. We both lost our jobs that week, not that I was all that sad about not having to flip burgers any longer. After wolfing down a week’s worth of Fries (the idiot at the counter asked me if I wanted Fries with that… How was I not allowed to flip burgers while he got to stay a clerk?!) I ran down to the employment agency. My tenacity must have impressed Jabba da Tache, because he offered me the job of assistant manager right away. The market was down so the pay was no better than before, but I was finally moving.

When I came back to the apartment building, I was beaming. I knocked on Jones’ door to give him the good news. When he opened the door, he seemed his normal self. I asked if he got a job as well, but he said he’d stopped at the door and decided “you know what? I am going to enjoy some time off”. After all, he pointed out, he was way ahead of me in the wager. I tried to point out that currently, he was nowhere. Without a job and with no money, he couldn’t even eat, let alone pay his bills. He shrugged me off, called me a stick in the mud and slammed his door shut.

With Jones out of the way, and me figuring that he would probably be back on the market again as soon as he felt his stomach growling,I was speeding along. I used his downtime to take every chance I got and really working on getting that degree in engineering. With every new job, I would turn up at Jones’ door with a bottle of champagne. But every time, he would look worse and worse. He let his facial hair grow into a wild bushel, which is extraordinary as I previously wasn’t even sure he had any facial hair. He hardly ate at all, but would snap the alcohol I brought out of my hand every time I came by and start swigging it. He confessed to me that he still kept going to the employment agency every day, but for some reason couldn’t face actually applying for work. He would step inside and immediately turn away and spend the rest of his day staring out into nothing in his apartment.

Once, while I was watching him drinking himself into a stupor on an empty stomach, there was a heavy, agitated knock on his apartment door. Seeing that Jones was in no state to answer, I opened the door to find the landlord. He started to shout something, but seeing that it was me and not my friend and competitor-in-life, he only stood there gaping for a second, his face as red as the bricks in the wall at The Factory where I now worked as assistant to the engineers.
“Where’s that cretin Jones?!” he finally asked me.
“I have no idea.” I said, surprised at his ire.
“What are you doing here then?!”
“He must have left his door open, I figured I’d stay until he came back so he wouldn’t get robbed or anything.” I lied effortlessly.
“Oh, well… When he comes back, tell him to come see me in my office.”
“Yeah, sure thing doc!” I said and slammed the door in the landlord’s face. I was not at all inclined to send my friend anywhere near that massive, seething hulk of a man. As I turned my back to the door, Jones gurgled from the sofa.
“Whowazzit?!”
I sat down next to Jones and couldn’t help but notice that his Hawaiian shirt had lost its lustre and was going threadbare.
“How long has it been since you paid your rent, Jo?”
In response, he simply looked at me through red, watery eyes which were now deeply set in his emaciated, sullen face. Looking at this husk of a man who was only too recently so full of life and potential, I forgot all about our wager. I started to take out my chequebook.
“Tell me how much you owe.”
“N- No!!” Jones said, fumbling the chequebook out of my hand.
“You’re killing yourself!!”
“… ‘s not th’point. Y- yooo cannn’ helb.. me.”
I couldn’t watch this any longer. I picked my chequebook back up and walked to his front door. With my hand on the door handle, I paused. I turned around and wrote out a cheque for five hundred dollars.
“D- ddjon’t!!” protest Jones feebly, clutching my bottle of champagne and writhing in in his filthy sofa like a wronged child.
“I’m leaving it here.” I slapped the cheque demonstratively on the table by the door. “Do with it as you will.”
“Th- Thuh wager!” he sobbed.
“I don’t care about the wager… I care about you.” I turned, opened his door, and left Jones blubbering behind me.

Time wore on. My cheque was never cashed, and I couldn’t bear to knock on Jones’ door when I was promoted to General Manager at The Factory. The next time I saw him, I was on my way to buy a hot tub at Socket City when I was witness to a tragic scene outside the employment agency. Some naked man was being shoved forcibly out the double doors of the agency by the bulky man who works there. Despite the emaciated, nearly skeletal frame and the dishevelled state of his hair, the bright ginger hair, massive nose and lack of a chin was unmistakable. It was Jones. I put down my briefcase and ran over.
“What’s going on?!”
“This loon has gone far enough!!” the ‘tached Terror shouted at me.
“What’s he done?!” I asked, fully aware of the fact that he had probably taken exception to the complete lack of clothing (but surprising presence of a massive fig leaf). The man looked stunned that I could even ask him such a question, but forged on, holding Jones in a choke-hold. He didn’t struggle.
“This kook has been coming here for months now, turning and leaving without speaking to anyone! I knew there was something up with this dude, and now he’s here! Like- Like this!!”
“He hasn’t harmed anyone, though, has he?! I mean, look at the fig leaf!” The employment agency man pushed Jones away from him and looked about to slam his giant fist in my head. Thankfully, the situation dissolved as police arrived and ran at Jones. Dazed, Jones was shoved unresisting into the car and taken away. I picked my briefcase back up and walked on, vaguely curious where the police station could be, as I hadn’t ever seen it around town.

When I went to pay my rent a couple of weeks later, I got a shock as I saw Jones at the till. Not the half-dead, emaciated cave man I had come to expect him to look like, but a clean-shaven, spritely young man in a casual suit.
“Hiya, Magnus!” Jones chirped. “Long time!”
“You have no idea…” I stammered back.
After paying my rent, I invited him out for lunch. Since Monolith is the only place in town that serves food, we went to our old employer hand had a chicken burger. I couldn’t help but remark the drastic difference in him since I last saw him naked and blubbering in the street. Yes, he was still thin as a rail, but he had life once more.
He told me that an uncle had heard about his arrest and had called Jones in his cell. After Jones told him the sequence of events, his uncle paid bail for Jones and wired him some extra pocket money to get him back on his feet.
I felt slightly offended that he wouldn’t take my money, but some uncle’s cash was apparently good enough, but I didn’t press Jones about it as I knew he still considered our wager to be on even though it was a pointless battle for him at this stage.
When Jones had been escorted back to his apartment from the police station (He hadn’t paid attention to the road so couldn’t tell me where it was) he had looked around his high-status but completely empty apartment. Empty, that is, save for a cheque for five hundred dollars that still lay uncashed on his table.

He had showered, shaved and run down to Q.T Clothing with a towel wrapped around him and the cash from his uncle in his hand. He bought a casual suit and got a job at the renting agency, and here he was. Paying off his debt and quickly regaining his strength.
“It won’t be long before I catch up with you and win the wager!” he said with a small laugh.
“I always wondered, though…” he continued. “What do they produce at the factory?”
In answer, I threw my hands in the air.
“Damned if I know!!” I shouted, and we both roared with laughter. As I left to go back to my job, thinking how happy I was to see him back in full vigour.

It didn’t take him long to spring back. Two months later, he was debt free and worked in The Factory as an executive secretary. By the time of our wager’s one-year anniversary, I had already reached our wager’s goals for job and education (having finished every single degree the university offered) and was well on my way to both the happiness and money goals. When I finally “won”, I met with Jones in the same booth at Monolith. He was vibrant. He was now an investment banker and made almost as much money as I did. His studies were going well, and he was heavily investing in the stock market, feeling certain that T-Bills were going to pick up any day now.

“Congratulations, Magnus.” he said. “I always knew you’d win.”
Imaged flitted through my mind: A young, ginger assistant manager at Monolith, a bearded and unkempt man with no future, an uncashed cheque, a naked man staring mournfully at me from the window of a police car. And then I looked into the bright eyes of this successful banker and stock broker. A man who had gone to the edge and come back fighting.
“No.” I said as I shook my head.
“You win, my friend. You win.”