Terror Of The Fun Sponge

Captain Nathaniel was running from the police of planet Pookatel when he first lost his memory. His plan to elude them by flying his saucer-shaped spacecraft through an ion channel ended up frying his brain. It also made him thirsty.

Nathaniel finds his backpack and rummages through it for a bottle of water. Underneath his spare blanket he sees a small, black bag. “What’s this?” He opens it to find a blue-grey, spiky-looking sponge and reaches in to take it out. Suddenly, he feels as if all his pleasure, energy, and creativity are forcefully sucked out of him. He is overcome by excruciating boredom. Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill, dependent on him for their continued life energy, collapse onto the floor of the ship. Gasping, Nathaniel backs away from the strange object. “Colossal sponge apocalypse,” he mutters. What a strange thing to say! Where had he picked that up? He can’t remember. Crawling over to his pilot Haticat, he attempts to wake him, poking him over and over. As he feels his own energy slowly replenish, Haticat groggily rises. “What happened? What is that thing in my backpack?”

“You don’t remember?” Haticat asks.

“No,” Nathaniel says.

“It’s a fun sponge. It absorbs fun,” Haticat answers.

“Why do we have one?” Nathaniel asks.

“We weren’t in the channel that long. How much do you remember of your life?” Haticat asks.

“Well, I remember you, and Fred, and Doctor Bill. I know that we’re running away from the police, who are trying to return us to The Mama-And-Daddy,” Nathaniel answers.

“What about Allison?” Haticat asks.

“Yes, she’s too annoying to forget. She wants revenge on us,” Nathaniel says.

“What about the Spinosaur?” Haticat asks.

Nathaniel searches his memory. “No.”

“What about the rusty robot?” Haticat asks.

Nathaniel searches his memory. “No.” He pauses. “Tell me everything; I don’t want to forget my life.”

“Okay, I’ll do the best I can,” Haticat says, now sitting up straight and feeling much better. “I’ll start with how we met…”

The universe was not always the way it is today. History, geography, and even physics have changed dramatically several times. In the days of Nathaniel’s childhood, things were very different: There is at this time only one language spoken by all sentient beings. Though some beings may have to communicate using smell or flashes of light, the grammar and lexicon is still the same. There is also only one religion. All matter and energy are known to have been created 4413 years ago by the elusive god-entity Y, who also created the first generation of sentient life. No telescope can see farther than 4413 light years because light has not travelled that far yet. There is no sex. There is no evolution. Life is created by mysterious, powerful, and meddlesome beings known as “adults,” who both care for and rule over beings known as “boys” and “girls.” Children never become adults and adults were never children. Boys prefer active, imaginative play while girls prefer dull play that mirrors everyday life. Adults prefer no play and are annoyed by it. Instead, adults love to punish and create countless, arbitrary, sometimes inane rules in order to have an excuse to punish. It is very much a childhood universe.

Nathaniel’s story begins as a small, green-feathered dromaeosaurid Dinosaur created by the living spacecraft adult named The Mama-And-Daddy. It brings him from world to world and teaches him about the universe. He sees many interesting plants and animals in his travels. He visits a world of cycads and talking Dinosaurs (Lectipas). He visits a planet made of candy ruled by sugar-rich Candy Wizards (Candy). He meets Humans, Hammer-Faces (hominids with flat faces and jointed necks), Meekons (apes with many toes), and the cobra-like Heltas. He meets Zleesnits (cylindrical creatures with telescoping legs that snap together to form bridges and towers) and Nops (flying, teardrop-shaped creatures with sonar). He reads many books about chemistry, geology, astronomy, botany, and zoology.

The Mama-And-Daddy later creates a sister for Nathaniel. Allison is an annoying, selfish, pink-feathered Dromaeosaur who is also a girl. They do not get along. Soon The Mama-And-Daddy brings the children to the planet Gruezhe, where boneless, furry, psychosymbiotic beings live that feed on play. Called either Gruezhlings or Stuffians, they make great companions for either boys or girls, depending on the gender-type of play they can feed upon. Allison adopts bear-like Stuffian Matilda and rabbit-like Stuffian Sarah, while Nathaniel adopts turtle/cat-like Stuffian Haticat, bear-like Stuffian Fred, and rabbit-like Stuffian Doctor Bill.

Nathaniel and his new friends have much strife with his annoying sister and his unfair parent, but it is bullies that he has the most trouble with. He is bullied by robots, giant bugs, and other Dinosaurs. Some bullies can be driven away by a verbal chant. Others can only be driven away by violence.

“Hey chicken! Get out of this field. I want it,” the Spinosaur commands.

“There’s another field right over there,” Nathaniel says.

“It’s too sunny. Give me this one!” the Spinosaur insists.

“We were here first,” Nathaniel says.

“I’ll make fun of you. I still have to get revenge on you for calling me a turtle!” the Spinosaur says.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!” Nathaniel yells.

“Shut up! You’re a lost chicken!” the Spinosaur yells back.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!” Nathaniel and Haticat chant together.

“Fine, I’ll break your bones,” the Spinosaur says. He picks up a stick and chases after the boys, who run as fast as they can out of the clearing.

Even worse, some bullies make use of psychoparasitic organisms named fun sponges to steal fun from other kids for their own use. The fun sponges work by sucking all fun from those they touch. Nathaniel is bullied on multiple planets by multiple bullies making use of these organisms. Finally having had enough, Nathaniel steals a fun sponge and bullies the bullies. He and Haticat find stealing fun addictive and less work than playing for it. This causes them to lose many friends. When they realize the constant presence of the fun sponge is robbing their joy and compelling them to take joy from others, they destroy it and vow to change their ways, but their former Dinosaur friends refuse to forgive them.

Even on other planets, the boys are seen as bullies. Sometimes they ask innocent questions or point out differences about others that they merely find interesting but the others find embarrassing. Sometimes they react to attacks from real bullies and are accused of bullying for their reactions. Meanwhile, sometimes those truly bullying them are thought of by adults merely as playing a little rough. Adults are always clueless and the boys are always in trouble.

They decide they must disarm all bullies by destroying every fun sponge in the galaxy. The organisms are just too dangerous. Stealing another sponge, Nathaniel and Haticat (now with Fred and Doctor Bill) experiment to learn more about them. Since disorder is relative to the observer’s biases of what constitutes order in the same way that text has meaning only to those familiar with the language, entropy is relative. Thus, paraentropic reactions are possible that experience entropy differently than normal reactions. Fun is a paraentropic reaction stored as relational movements between particles, which is why it cannot be stored in solids unless in the changing connection of synapses or in tiny gas or liquid pockets throughout. This is why life on Gruezhe is spongy or fibrous. Its high surface area and air content also makes it quite flammable – fun sponges especially so. The boys ultimately decide that fire is the most effective weapon against them.

They still need a way to handle them safely. Measuring the change in size of the sponge’s gas pockets when different classes of play are present, Doctor Bill determines their fun exchange frequency to be 43 hertz. Different materials have different fun exchange frequencies. Even empty space has a fun exchange frequency of 256 hertz. Since 43 hertz is close to the fun exchange frequency of zirconium fiber, it makes it an effective shield against fun drain, so they procure zirconium gloves to handle the sponges without harm.

Following a period of intense conflict with Allison, Matilda, Sarah, and The Mama-And-Daddy, the boys run away from home. While on the run, they discover a store in which adults unwittingly sell the fun sponges as toys. They kill all but one of the sponges by bunching them into pairs, forcing them to feed on each other. They keep the odd sponge leftover in Nathaniel’s backpack. Then they learn that billions more are grown in the equatorial mountains of Gruezhe by the Fun Toy Syndicate for sale in more than a hundred star systems. Nathaniel vows to destroy the farm, but just as he buys his first spaceship (finally making him a real captain) he is pursued by the Pookatel police. He eludes them by flying through an ion channel connecting the planet’s magnetic poles to that of its sun, losing much of his memory in the process.

“Yes, I remember running from the police. I just don’t remember anything about sponges or the Fun Toy Syndicate,” Nathaniel says.

“That’s what really happened,” Fred insists.

“So now our mission is to destroy Luggerglug Farm on Gruezhe,” Doctor Bill says.

“Yes, I suppose I can trust you guys, but do we have a plan? This ship doesn’t even have weapons, does it?” Captain Nathaniel asks.

“No, it doesn’t. We had thought that maybe we could take one of the farm tours they give to see how their operations work before brainstorming ideas. That was our only plan,” Haticat says.

“Well, set a course for Gruezhe, then,” Captain Nathaniel orders.

“Yes, Captain,” Haticat responds, slipping in to the pilot’s seat.

They arrive in orbit around planet Gruezhe eighteen hours later. They take a tour of the farm, but the Syndicate catches on to them, forcing them to leave in a hurry. “They’re getting away!” The two agents drive hovercraft after the fleeing boys. Something whizzes by Nathaniel’s head and sticks in Haticat’s back. It is a tranquilizer dart! The agents in a third hovercraft circle them, trying to get a clear shot. Three darts hit Doctor Bill, two hit Fred, and two more hit Haticat. The Gruezhlings are immune. At least a dozen more hit the ground around them. When the boys are almost to the ship, one dart lodges in Nathaniel’s exposed tail. He starts to feel just a bit dizzy by the time he reaches the spaceship. The boys enter and lock the doors. Fighting back dizziness and the urge to sleep, Nathaniel begins the takeoff sequence. In ten seconds, the antigravity engines whisk the ship up and away.

Not giving up, the boys sneak back to the farm and engineer a virus to kill the sponges using the Syndicate’s own laboratory, but they are found out and almost captured again. Later, they return to place the virus into the farm’s watering vehicles. This time they are captured. The boys wake up inside a holding cell and are interrogated by an adult Human named Gineene. “How old are you?” she asks.

“Fifty-three-point-three weeks,” Nathaniel answers right away.

“Good, so you’re old enough to know better,” Gineene says.

“Know better than what?” Nathaniel asks.

“The rules. Did you know it was against the rules to be out in the fields at night?” Gineene asks.

Nathaniel pauses a moment. “No.”

“Why were you in the fields?” Gineene asks.

Nathaniel tries his hardest to lie. “I…was trying not to kill all the fun sponges.” He clearly still needs more practice.

Gineene pauses, mulling over Nathaniel’s cryptic answer. “We know you opened up one of our farm machines. Why?”

Nathaniel tries even harder to lie. “Uh…I was looking inside for…an elephant.”

“An elephant?” Gineene asks.

“Yes,” Nathaniel answers.

Gineene pauses again. “Do you know what the penalty for lying to the Fun Toy Syndicate is?”

“No,” Nathaniel answers.

“Lying is a first-order crime. We already found the virus you designed and every tank is being checked and cleaned right now. Your plan has failed.” Gineene says.

“I didn’t design it; it was Doctor Bill!” Nathaniel suddenly says. All four boys proceed to blame each other for their crimes.

“Enough! You’re all being punished for first-order crimes,” Gineene declares. “I only want to know why you did it. Why do you hate fun?”

“I don’t. Fun sponges aren’t fun. They take fun,” Nathaniel explains.

“Other kids like them. I see them running away, trying to dodge from getting hit while other kids throw them, all of them getting exercise. Playing with fun sponges is good for you. You’ll be held here until you learn to like fun sponges, or for ten years – whichever is longer,” Gineene dictates.

“Ten years?” Nathaniel gasps. Being only one year old, this is a longer amount of time than he can fully imagine. He huffs and puffs and pounds on the wall. Gineene walks away.

A few minutes later, another agent arrives with a rolling bin full of fun sponges. In fear and shock, Nathaniel watches as the agent stuffs the sponges through the slot in the door one at a time. They cover the floor. “I brought you some sponges to play with. You’ll learn to like them when they’re your only toys.”

“What are we going to do now?” Haticat asks, feeling tired and a bit play-hungry.

Nathaniel grinds his sharp teeth and paces in the only open space he can up against one wall. A few seconds later he stops. “I have a plan – but Fred won’t like it,” he finally says.

“Huh? What? Why?” Fred sputters.

After discussing his plan, Nathaniel and his crew reach an agreement. Nathaniel grabs two of the sponges and holds them together so they die when they try to feed off each other. His entire crew immediately faints. Struggling to keep from crying, he kills all the fun sponges this way two at a time. Afterwards, he rests for a bit fighting the oppressive boredom and frustration he feels. Finally, he lines up all the dead sponges from wall to wall in a row. He then takes Fred’s right arm and places it firmly against an end sponge. Having learned before that dead fun sponges are a life force vacuum, he knows that Gruezhling life cannot help but grow into them and take them over. Very gradually, all three Stuffians begin to wake. “C-Captain?” Fred mumbles.

“Just hold still and tell me when you can feel the far wall,” Nathaniel says.

“I feel strange,” Fred says. His Gruezhling body fibers grow rapidly into the dead sponges, rewiring their cellular machinery.

“Can you feel it yet?” Nathaniel asks.

“Yes,” Fred answers.

“Try moving the sponges without moving your body,” Nathaniel orders.

Nathaniel, Haticat, and Doctor Bill watch as the long row of fused sponges contracts slightly and the tip twitches. “Good! Excellent! Now try lifting,” Nathaniel says. Fred visibly strains and the row of fused sponges rises right up off the floor and curls up like an alien tentacle. Excited, Nathaniel jumps up and opens the food slot of the door. “Now try to reach the control panel!”

Soon they are out of the cell. The boys run down the hall past a desk where three guards sit. “Hey!” one yells and reaches for a gas gun, but Fred knocks him over with his tentacle. The other two guards lunge for Nathaniel and Haticat, but Fred wraps his tentacle around their legs and trips them. Nathaniel jumps on one guard’s back and uses it as a springboard to jump over their desk and grab a second gas gun just as the first guard finally gets hold of his. They fire at each other from one meter apart. The guard misses. Nathaniel doesn’t. The guard is hit in the face with the compressed gas and knocked unconscious. Blood oozes from his nose. Nathaniel fires at the other two guards, knocking one out with a blow to the chest. The other ducks and runs away before sounding the alarm and disappearing down the hallway.

The boys run through the sponge processing facility getting in shootouts with the guards. It is not long before they are surrounded. Separated from the others and not noticed by the guards, Haticat thinks a distraction might give them all a chance to escape. He follows some pipes through a hole in the wall outside to a set of fuel pumps. Climbing down the first pump, he pulls the lever that opens the valve. Fuel begins to pour out of the hanging nozzle. A large puddle of smelly fuel forms between the three pumps. Haticat does not recognize this smell, but is reasonably sure it is a flammable hydrocarbon of some kind. He reaches into his bag for a match, lights it, and throws it in. Whoosh!! The puddle flares, illuminating the whole side of the building.

The distraction works. The agents leave Nathaniel, Fred, and Doctor Bill to grab their firefighting equipment. Sprinklers activate. The intercom crackles out orders. Haticat begins to climb up a ladder to find his friends. Seeing Haticat below, Captain Nathaniel yells, “Haticat!”

“Here!” Haticat shouts back. The boys climb to meet each other. Just when they reach the same level, they hear a loud boom. The windows explode into flying shards. Through the empty holes the boys see that one fuel pump has exploded, spraying droplets of burning fuel in all directions. Fuel spills freely from the broken pipes. Haticat’s plan worked a little too well.

The voice on the intercom crackles, “Attention all agents: evacuate the building immediately.”

“We’ve got to get out of here now!” Nathaniel exclaims. The boys run to the nearest stairwell, passing agents that now take no notice of them. In fact, they barely even acknowledge their presence at all. Just as they reach the stairwell, a second explosion rocks the structure. The fire roars louder and the sound echoes around the inside of the building. Convective currents driven by the heat force foul-smelling air down the stairwells. It smells of sulfur and metal. All of them are surprised by how quickly the fire spreads. Reaching the ground floor, they find themselves in a sort of hovercraft garage. Agents climb in hover-cars and hover-trucks and drive off. Nathaniel leads the way to the nearest hover-car, climbs in, and peers at the controls. He quickly figures out how to drive the thing and is soon speeding away across the fields with his crew to the last known location of their spaceship.

BOOOM!!!! Behind them is another explosion. Jets of pressurized fuel spray in arcs tens of meters long, igniting the surrounding sponge crop. Fun sponges are very flammable and the fire spreads rapidly. “The fun sponges are burning! Do you think the fun sponges will all burn up?” Fred asks.

“Hmm. They certainly grow close enough to each other for the fire to spread across the entire farm if the agents don’t put them out soon,” Doctor Bill says.

Haticat smiles and bounces, barely able to contain his glee. “They won’t. They can’t. Remember? The tour agent told us that they use the fertilizer vehicles to put out fires with their mist, but right now their tanks are being virus-tested and cleaned out.”

Doctor Bill tilts his head back. “Yes, that’s right. So even if they do get the fertilizers out in time, they’ll only succeed in spreading the virus. The sponges will die either way.” The three Gruezhlings watch as the fire grows larger behind them, swallowing both the building and the fields, and sending up an enormous column of black smoke into the beautiful blue sky.

Finally, they reach the farm’s edge where the terrain is too uneven to drive. The boys get out and hike toward the ship. It is right where they left it. They all quickly climb inside and Captain Nathaniel sits down in the navigator’s chair. “Let’s get out of here before anybody sees us.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Haticat says, dropping his bag on the floor and strapping in to the pilot’s seat.

Fred seals the hatch and powers up the antigravity engines, still flopping his tentacle around. He plans on making a search later for something sharp to remove it with. Soon he will have the scar of a hero.

Doctor Bill takes the sensor station. “You know, fun sponges still live scattered around the equatorial mountains, so the syndicate may one day rebuild – but it will take them very many years.”

“Then we’ll just come back,” Haticat says, running his usual pre-flight safety check. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“Up. Exit the Gruezhe system in any direction – top speed,” Nathaniel orders.

“Yes Captain,” Haticat answers gleefully, and they speed away into the sky. The adventure has only just begun.

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