Tag Archives: planet

3546. Winter field mice

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With the cold of winter fast approaching, field mice began to find ways of getting inside the house. Goodness knows how they managed to find their way in, but usually each winter two or three mice arrived somehow to set up a comfortable haven behind the piano, or in the cupboard under the sink, or… goodness knows where.

Harvey would set traps. Thus far he had caught two mice and was feeling pleased with himself. He knew there was at least one other mouse because he had seen it scampering across the sitting room floor and running beneath the grandfather clock.

He had four traps, and each morning, first thing, he would check them. But there was a problem. His young daughter, Heidi, all of nine years, thought that trapping the mice was cruel. “You have to care for nature and not destroy it,” she told her father. Besides, she had a pet mouse that she loved – so the salvation of mice was foremost on her mind.

Harvey didn’t want to go against his daughter’s care for the planet. He had to set the traps after Heidi had gone to bed. Then he would get up around 4 a.m., check the mouse traps, and put the traps away.

But Heidi knew. “You’re still trying to kill the mice, aren’t you?” she said to her father.

“Some things you have to do,” said Harvey. “Mice are dirty creatures. They can bring disease. We have to catch them.”

That evening at dinner time Heidi announced her plan: “I’ve let my pet mouse out. It’s free to roam the house.”

3488. Intergalactic populating

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It certainly was a privilege to be asked by the leader of my planet to go to Planet Zuatov and annihilate the entire population of Zuatovians. I had always had a longing to go to Planet Earth and annihilate the population there, but Zuatov was a second best option.

I don’t know why they need to send a living being to do the annihilation dirty work. Just sending a couple of capsules to do the trick would be equally (if not more) efficient. They didn’t need me to travel all that way just to pull the pin off the capsules when I got there.

Anyway, it’s all over now. I did what I was asked, and now Planet Zuatov is utterly devoid of Zuatovians. We have to wait a hundred years for the Zuatovian atmosphere to clear before we can populate it. One hundred and two years to be more precise. Zuatov will be the third planet we will have successfully populated.

I got given one of the highest awards of my planet for the sterling accomplishment I achieved in Zuatov. The leader of my planet said he wanted to see me next week. He said that now might be the time to turn our attention to Planet Earth. The stench of decaying bodies, he said, is going to be astronomical. We might have to wait longer than a hundred years before repopulating the planet.

3059. Dossiers

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I had been helping a group of inquisitive extra-terrestrials come to an understanding of Earth’s music. Our music was mumbo-jumbo to their ears. Of course, each of their hands has seven fingers so the development of their music has followed quite a different path. The nearest thing they have to our piano is an instrument they call a lyrostronium. Their music is as incomprehensible to me as ours is to them. Of course, I only have ten fingers!

By way of thanks for the help I had given them they invited me to visit their planet. Don’t ask me how we got there but we did. I was amazed at… at EVERYTHING.

They showed me a huge dossier on me! I had presumed they had collected information on me as a way of studying our music, but they said no. They have information on nearly everything that every human on Earth has done – every phone call, every Google search, everything written digitally… They bought it off China.

3050. Space alien report

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My planet is vastly more sophisticated than Planet Earth. When Earth was discovered there was life but no intelligent life. That was three million Earth-years ago.

I volunteered to be placed in an extremely advanced state of suspended animation and travel to Earth. The trip would take over three million years but to me it would seem simply like a good night’s sleep. I was told “The sooner you leave the sooner you will arrive.” My task upon arrival was simply to observe and report back to my home planet.

Everything on the trip went well. I arrived here about three Earth-weeks ago only to discover that its life forms had evolved into an extremely basic form of intelligence. They call themselves “Human Beings”.

The food here is horrible. The highest life form is hideous. The languages are so primitive that I find it well-nigh impossible to hold a conversation. Their bathrooms are disgusting. Their beds are lumpy. The weather is repulsive. I hate it here. I’m homesick. I want to go home.

3019. On that note

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(Please note that the time sequences in this narrative are Earth Times. The time sequences of other inhabited planets can easily be worked out by the numerous time-conversion programs online.)

The music of the Oyamians on Planet Oyama differs vastly from the music here on Planet Earth. A concert in Oyama can last two or three days. The orchestra plays a single continuous note. Many concert goers join in with the orchestra to present an extraordinary loud sustained note. In our musical system the note would be described as A flat.

After two or three days of listening to this note, when indicated by the conductor, the note suddenly changes. It goes, I believe, from the aforementioned A flat to perhaps G. The effect is overwhelming. It is mind-blowing. It produces a euphoria in the listeners like you wouldn’t believe. Although this climatic extravaganza has been witnessed by humans, three quarters of an hour listening to a single note is about all a human can take; let alone hearing the same note for two or three days.

Thanks goodness these Oyamians emerge from their pupae stage for a short period of time only once every twenty-seven years.

3013. The Earth’s tilt

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Dave looked forward every year to the Winter Solstice. He lived in the Southern Hemisphere so the cold of winter was in the month of June. Dave would put out a hint of Christmas in the living room – perhaps a touch of holly from the tree on the corner down the road, or the little statue he had of Mickey Mouse holding a sign that said “Let it snow”. (Not that it snowed where he lived but he could always dream of a White Christmas).

On the Winter Solstice, Dave and his wife would call into work ill, and spend the rest of the day roasting a turkey and generally preparing their evening feast. It was a celebration of hope; the long winter nights would slowly draw out into Spring. The movement of Planet Earth would shift. Things would become warmer. Snowdrops would sprout in the garden.

“The winter solstice occurs when the Earth’s poles reaches their maximum tilt away from the Sun. This happens twice a year; once in the Northern Hemisphere and once in the Southern Hemisphere,” Dave explained to his three children when they came home from school. “It is the shortest day and the longest night. The tilt of the earth changes direction.”

Except this year it didn’t. The Earth kept on going. It kept on tilting further and further…

2980. Stench

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This is the fourth day in a week of Science Non-Fiction. I thought I’d tell you about the Palvapii on the planet Palvapus.

The Palvapii have no ears, no eyes, no taste, no sense of touch. All they have is a nose – and believe me, it’s big. Other Societies in the Cosmos – “Alien” is regarded as a derogatory word as everyone is welcome; there is no such thing as an alien – as I was about to say: Other Societies in the Cosmos at first had an enormous difficulty in knowing how to communicate with them. Once a machine was invented that could translate their smells into words and images then everything was fine.

To them a shape is an arrangement of smells. Music is the arrangement of smells. Everything in the Arts is an arrangement of smell. In fact they have dozens and dozens of olfactory masterpieces.

I had the good fortune to visit Palvapus, and I couldn’t smell a jolly things. Everything is so subtle. When I was asked to speak at one of their conventions (via the translating machine) about five hundred filled the hall. Before I even had a chance to say “Good evening” most of them were vomiting. There was chaos. They cried (via scent release) “The stench! The stench!” I’ve never been so humiliated in my life.

I was ushered to the space terminal by Palvapii wearing masks. I boarded a spacecraft and left for home. So a word of advice to anyone who aspires to visit Palvapus: It’s a sixteen hour flight; don’t take a rocket that doesn’t have a shower.

2979. A guest blogger

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Hi. My name is Llelozuno and I am from the planet Kunkurn. I am immensely grateful to the highly intelligent and good-looking facilitator of this blog for inviting me to have my say. You might think it strange that I singled out good looks as well as intelligence. The truth is that the creatures on my planet are not noted for their loveliness in looks. A twrartgoh would look pretty in our company!

What I want to talk about is something I discovered in our library. I’d never heard it before and I suspect very few people have. It was extraordinary. The events happened eons back, which probably lends itself to becoming obsolete over time.

The article in the library pointed out a planet called Earth that was regarded as the most strikingly beautiful in the cosmos. The variety of living creatures was unbelievably stunning.  The quality of their arts was mind blowing – in the fields of literature and theatre and painting and music (although we from Kunkurn don’t really have a concept of sound). Their science was phenomenal. And what did these Earthlings do with their planet?

They bombed shit out of it.

2785. A seat on a rocket

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There was no doubting that Planet Earth was on its last legs. Space rockets had been commissioned to transfer Earthlings to a newly discovered planet for the sole task of propagating the human species. Old people (those over 35) couldn’t enter the lottery draw for a place on a craft. Several billion eligible contestants were to miss out. In fact only two hundred thousand were selected to fill seats to the new venture.

In an extraordinary coincidence, every politician was selected – even the old ones. Names had been drawn at random out of a hat. Honestly, you wouldn’t read about it. Who would believe that a coincidence like that could happen?

But that’s not the end of this strange piece of history. With the politicians gone, Planet Earth managed to survive and flourish. But the space crafts were sucked into an eternally spiralling vortex that had no time.  Enmity and hatred between the travelling political factions is destined to last for eternity.

2608. How the planet was saved

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Just beyond Emile’s property was a steep bank on the neighbour’s property. The bank was covered in scrub and served no purpose whatsoever. Emile often threw his garden weeds down that bank when the neighbour wasn’t looking. Nothing could be seen unless the neighbour took up rock climbing or abseiling or something.

On this particular sunny day Emile had dug a hole in his garden to plant a lemon tree and he had a wheel barrow full of clay and stones that he wanted to get rid of. The neighbour’s bank was the ideal place to empty the barrow. And the neighbour was away; in town maybe, for a good half hour.

Emile was about to wheel the barrow to the bank when he heard the phone ringing inside his house. He left the barrow and went to answer the call.

By the time the phone call was over the neighbour had returned. Emile was unable to empty his wheel barrow.

I know that some Readers will find this next bit hard to swallow. The world is full of cynical humans who refuse to follow science and replace the facts with some sort of mythological clap-trap.

You’ve heard of the straw that broke the camel’s back? Well, had Emile tipped the barrow load of soil down the bank at that precise moment it would have upset the entire balance of the planet. The Earth would have done a top to bottom turn. The North Pole would have swivelled to the South Pole, and vice versa.

The phone call had been a wrong number. But I have no doubt that it was some Angel of Mercy who was in the know. Perhaps (there is a possibility) that the wrong call was even made by God in order to prevent a catastrophe. Or it could have been a space alien with a vastly superior scientific knowledge to our own.

Anyway, disaster was averted. Later that day Emile managed to empty his wheelbarrow down the bank. But the dangerous balance of Planet Earth had shifted. We can once again relax with scientific certainty.