ZOGS! (c) 1989 N.D.Davies The everyday story of a race of poeple too stupid to comprehend tin openers. CHAPTER ONE: A Brave New World. =============================== The planet Testra was a lush paradise of a world which had been completely ignored when the Great Galactic Development Committee proposed it's 300 year plan for the colonisation of the lower quadrant of the Andarte Beta tract. This was partly because it was billions of miles away from the nearest industrial teleport station but mostly because the chairman's brother in law had a few planets on the other side of the quadrant which he could get 'at a knock down price' to start the project off. Completely and utterly ignored however, it had not been. Biopharm, the largest medical company in known civilisation, the company that brought you the do it yourself home limb suppliment surgery kit, the company that employs more medicine lawyers than all the rest put together, the company which has bought every known complete cold cure in existance, placed it in a small sealed chamber several hundred feet below the surface of some unknown moon or other together with it's inventor and a medium sized, radio controlled thermonuclear device just so it could continue making a fortune with it's best selling nose plugs that 'keep you clean and still let you breathe ( batteries not included ) '. Yes Biopharm had been to Testra. Well ok, if we're being strictly honest here, they just sent some unemployed natural history documentary makers off in a deep space probe to film it for later scrutiny. Incedentally the phrase 'deep space probe' is used by Biopharm vehicles division to describe a ship that has is no different from any other except that it's much cheaper to buy and takes a lot longer to get where it's going - but at least they knew the planet existed, which is roughly all they knew about it because they lost contact with the probe shortly after it landed. Just about every country from good old Earth had by now claimed a planet for itself and completely colonised it, allowing no immigrants and generally being very xenophobic. Everybody else in the galaxy, on the ordinary mixed nationality planets couldn't give a hoot and thought that New Yugoslavia was a stupid name for a planet, as was Luxemboug II, anyway they still always lost in the Univision song contest so who cares. Most of all everyone hated planet France because it had loads of creative people and natural resources and churned out an endless line of designer goods for which it charged an absolute mint. What do you mean: " what happened to the explorers on Testra ? " Oh all right then... The beautiful, lush, green, tropical, peaceful planet of Testra is inhabited by many species of plants and trees and even more species of small cute furry animals. Just about the furriest is the amster. To the casual observer the amster appears to be just a fur ball with a snout. In actual fact the brave little amsters' anatomical inventory is:- lots of fur, feet (obscured), mouth, eyes, stomach - of which the most important to bear in mind are: mouth, stomach. The stomach fills the entire of the creatures body and the mouth fills the stomach. There are NO casual observers on Testra. This is because casual is not a word that comes easily to mind when describing the behavior of any of the other indigenous species on this world. It can, in fact, be said that if it doesn't run faster than amsters do, it doesn't live on Testra any more. In the official Galactic Union of Media Employees constitutional contracts and prerequisites manual in the section for natural history documentary makers under the heading "Job description - a preliminary general overview" appears the following entry: "Casual Observer." The probe had landed in a large clearing and the first thing that was done was that the best boy was sent out to get some firewood and scout around. This was because the best boy had been getting on the nerves of the whole film crew for the entire journey - by asking them annoying questions such as "What does a best boy do ?" which they could not answer because they had left behind their copy of the official GUME contracts manual. Nobody actually needed any firewood as they had brought the Omnicorp solar powered storage camp fire and central heating unit ( which takes up slightly less space in the ship's hold than the 73 full volumes of the contracts manual would have. ) Next they sent a message of to mission HQ to confirm their arrival on the subject planet. As it turned out they got no firewood and burning the manual would have provided more heat than the camp fire did as it had been left in the dark hold for 2 months and was out of energy. Shortly after everyone had started arguing about whose fault it was and why Omnicorp are still in business anyway, they all stopped and listened to the strange approaching noise in wonderment. [Clunk ..... Schhrrrrrruck .. CLUNK ..... SCHHHHRRRRUCK] [etc.] The noise was getting nearer. So casual were these particular observers that they sauntered over to the camera and just about got it started in time to get a perfect shot of the now limbless best boy dragging himself along the grit trail by his chin. It was while they were conducting a live interview with the poor lad that an entire regiment of amsters completely devoured them. Thus the sum total of Biopharm's knowledge about Testra is: " Having a lovely time wish you were here. Ooh it's so pretty. " -- ____/ Hywel Williams \______ \_O_/ .-----------------------------------. |University College Swansea| | | Janet : cs9h7hhw@uk.ac.swan.pyr | |Third Year Computer Science| / \ | UUCP : cs9h7hhw@cybaswan.UUCP | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ `-----------------------------------'