First Candy

“What year is it right now?” Nathaniel asks.

“4445,” Haticat says.

“And the time?” Nathaniel asks.

“Eight AM,” Doctor Bill answers.

“I can’t seem to remember the time from one second to the next; it keeps changing,” Nathaniel complains. “It makes it difficult to plot a spacetime interval on the…uh…circle thingy.”

“The time machine?” Doctor Bill says.

“Yeah,” Nathaniel says.

Eventually, they make it safely to prehistoric planet Candy, but it is not what they expected. The Candy Wizards have always been a bit mysterious about how exactly they transformed their planet into one of mostly sugar, but it was generally assumed to have started as Earthlike, with forests and savannahs, not the wasteland the explorers see before them now.

Gas pours from giant cracks in the ground. Boulders fire sparks at their neighbors. Pools of bubbling chemicals lie here and there. A bubble pops, spraying globs of a thick, honey-like fluid onto the rocks around it. Doctor Bill looks up from his electromagnetic scanner. “The fluid is highly acidic. I recommend not tasting it.”

They walk for a long ways before encountering anything alive. It is a crusty, green blob inching over the ground. It stops moving the moment the four explorers step from behind a plume of gas. “Well, this creature is made of about seventy percent sugar,” Doctor Bill reports.

“What are you?” the blob asks.

“You’re a person!” Nathaniel exclaims. “We’re explorers from another planet. We’re looking for the Candy Wizards.”

“Well, I don’t know what a wizard is, or a candy, or a planet, but my name is Frank and I’m an explorer, too,” the blob says.

Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill learn from Frank that there are three groups of people on the planet – the Sugar Boogers (like him), the Chocolate Monsters (also blobs), and the Garden Blobs, who live in and keep gardens. There are no people here that walk on legs or have arms or faces. Nathaniel is a bit confused about this, but decides to keep exploring.

The Sugar Boogers lead simple lives without much technology. They bathe once a year in the extremely rare honey swamps and spend most nights near glowing lava, deriving energy from the light, allowing them to metabolize water and carbon dioxide they take in from the air to produce sugar. They are kind of stupid and very boring, having no interest in changing their environment.

The Garden Blobs on the other hand, have been experimenting with pickling. They pickle things such as melons, squashes, and corn. They grow a variety of plants in small patches, altering their environment by pruning, irrigation, and the building of stone huts.

The Chocolate Monsters live in boulder fields. They are also experimenting with food, but instead of growing plants, they are attempting to turn stones into fruit. So far, they have produced chocolate-covered rocks and rocks covered in melon rinds.

“How did you do that?” Nathaniel asks.

“Microteleportation,” the chocolate scientist says.

The chocolate turns out to be highly-compressed cocoa devoid of sugar. It is quite bitter. “Eww,” Nathaniel comments.

Eventually, the explorers visit another garden town. There are picklers here as well, but there is also one Garden Blob experimenting with sugar. He has already candied melons, squashes, corn, carrots, potatoes, figs, and apples.

“The apples are best. Keep doing those. You’re on the right track.” Nathaniel offers to be the blob’s assistant, but it takes several attempts to convince him to accept help. However, they eventually learn together how to perfect the candy process for oranges and vanilla. “You should put them together.”

“Mix different foods? Are you crazy?” the Garden Blob asks.

“I might be, but what does that have to do with it?” Nathaniel asks.

One day, the Garden Blob shows up in the kitchen walking on two legs, with a single arm dangling. “I like your style, so I thought I would try it.”

“Um, okay, but people might think we’re twins,” Nathaniel jokes.

“Huh? What’s twins?” the Garden Blob asks.

“Oh, never mind, those haven’t been invented yet,” Nathaniel mutters.

“You’re a strange creature, but your form is more efficient. I’m growing some more arms, too. They should be ready soon.” The Garden Blob walks away unsteadily and begins sorting ingredients on the shelf.

Haticat whispers, “Hey, Nathaniel, I think this is how the Candy Wizards start. They copied you.”

“Wait, are we…part of history?” Nathaniel asks. “Have we…always been part of history?”

“Interesting question,” Doctor Bill says.

“That’s awesome!” Fred exclaims.

Nathaniel continues to work with the Garden Blob, making further suggestions. He convinces him to invent mints, to train bacteria to speed up the candy process, and to start texturing his skin like moss (like true Candy Wizards do). Then, he discovers where his master has been getting the sugar. He has been harvesting Sugar Boogers. The explorers are horrified. This leads to an argument, but they cannot convince the blob to stop. Refusing to have anything to do with the process, they leave town.

They hike for a few days. Nathaniel starts to consider going back. “If we go back to help him, we’ll be helping to kill innocent people. We’ll be bad guys,” Haticat says.

“If we don’t help him become the first Candy Wizard, there might never be a race of Candy Wizards, and there might be no candy!” Doctor Bill says.

Finally, they arrive in the boulder piles where the Chocolate Monsters live. One scientist is using microteleportation to replace the cells in a stalk of celery with quartz crystals. Nathaniel suddenly gets an idea. “With nanoteleportation, you could remove the carbon from limestone and use it to make sugar.”

“Hmm, that makes sense, but how can we compress teleportation wavelengths to atomic sizes when the apparatus itself is made of atoms?” the chocolate scientist asks.

“Easy, just bend space with an antigravity focus,” Nathaniel answers. “I’ll show you.”

One year later, under Nathaniel’s guidance, Garden Blobs, Chocolate Monsters, and Sugar Boogers are working together. Trained bacteria ride teleportation waves in and out of stones, converting them into candy. All three races reform themselves into Humanoids, more and more resembling Candy Wizards and each other. Nathaniel’s work is done.

“So, we don’t know for sure whether we changed history or not,” Haticat says.

“Right. They might have eventually started working together on their own, or the Garden Blobs might have simply harvested to extinction the other two races on their way to becoming Candy Wizards. We don’t know. What’s important is we have candy.” Nathaniel chews on a chocolate mint of a variety not seen on modern planet Candy. He relishes its prehistoric simplicity.

“Yes,” Haticat agrees.

“A job well done,” Doctor Bill comments. “Where to next?”

“I don’t know. Let’s find out,” Nathaniel responds.

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