The Most Annoying Planet

“This planet has moderate gravity, breathable air, and… a forest,” Doctor Bill reports.

“Let’s go,” Haticat implores.

“According to the records, this is planet Mochtel. It is home to large worms called Flurbibians. They like to draw. There’s no other information,” Doctor Bill continues.

“I’ve never heard of them,” Nathaniel says.

“Me neither, let’s make some new friends,” Haticat says.

“Take us down,” Captain Nathaniel agrees.

The pool-ship lands in a forest of waffle trees and other plants. The explorers grab their backpacks, scanners, and guns and step outside. Haticat pokes a trunk. “These trees are spongy.”

“They’re some sort of carbon foam,” Doctor Bill reports.

Fred bends over to look closely at some insects on the ground. They are orange and green. “These bugs are cool.”

Nathaniel is already hacking his way through the thick underbrush. His crew follows him. They walk for a couple hours cataloging the plants, bugs, and amphibians until the sun begins to set. “Are we going to return to the ship?” Haticat asks.

“Nah, I want to see what comes out at night,” Nathaniel answers. “It might be like a whole other world.” The sun sets and Mochtel’s large moon rises in the sky, so reflective it almost seems like day. The biting flies appear gradually at first. Their annoying song fills the air. Then they hear a rustling in the brush too big to be an insect. Suddenly, a frog-like animal the size of a bear pushes its way through the leaves. Upon seeing the explorers, it burps – loud. The sound is so intense, they fall over in shock. With his ears ringing, Nathaniel fumbles for his gun and attempts to get back up. The creature steps forward and burps in his face. The vibrations make his jaw hurt and he collapses again. When he looks up, the creature is dead. Fred has shot it.

“What is that thing?” Haticat asks.

“What?” Nathaniel says.

“What?” Haticat says.

“What?” Nathaniel asks again.

None of them can hear the second creature running up behind them. It grabs Fred in its mouth and tosses him into a tree. The other three shoot it.

When they can hear again, they decide to head back to the ship. The biting flies get worse. In the distance, they hear what sounds like more burping. Then they see flashing lights in the sky. Flies with strobing abdomens the size of dogs circle the area. Even far away, they are hard to look at. The contrast of light and dark is even worse than the brightness itself. Minutes later, one slips between the treetops and descends near them. They hide behind a large waffle tree, but the creature follows them. Nathaniel closes his eyes, but the intense light hurts him even through his eyelids. He covers his face in his hands and then turns around. He hears the creature clicking. It gets closer. Then it gets closer. Zap! He shoots in the direction of the sound and the flashing stops. When he opens his eyes, the creature is dead.

“This planet is annoying!” Fred complains.

“Ew, what’s this?” Haticat pulls his hand away from a waffle tree he was leaning on. It is covered with sticky syrup.

Doctor Bill steps away quickly. “It smells like barf.”

Then Nathaniel and Fred smell it too. “Oh!”

Haticat wipes himself on some leaves and they all continue back to the ship. More and more trees begin their nighttime sap secretions and the forest takes on a distinct vomit-like odor. It soon becomes overwhelming. Nathaniel’s stomach churns. He keeps his shirt over his face, but it is not enough. “Just another one hundred fifty meters.” Then he sees another burp monster. He shoots without hesitation. Two others retreat into the jungle. Fred shoots them in the back.

“This planet is dangerous,” Haticat says.

Finally, they reach the ship. At least forty strobing flies sit perched atop it. “Okay, shield your eyes and we’ll just make a run for it,” Nathaniel says. The four of them run for the door and immediately the flies swoop down. Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap! The adventurers fire wildly into the air, missing most shots, but killing enough to scare the rest away. They get inside and lock the door behind them. Haticat washes the sap off his hands and Nathaniel rests his overstimulated eyes.

Minutes later, there is a knock at the door. Outside are three Stegosaur-sized creatures. They identify themselves as Flurbibians and Nathaniel lets them in. They are less like worms and more like tailless salamanders with big heads and big, wrinkled butts. “Why are you killing our pets?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“Pets? You mean those wild animals that attacked us?” Nathaniel asks.

“They attacked you? What did they do?” the second Flurbibian asks.

“One burped in my face and another flashed me,” Nathaniel answers.

“You killed them for burping?” the second Flurbibian asks.

“They burped really loud,” Nathaniel clarifies.

“What planet are you from? Is it legal to kill another’s pet for being loud where you come from?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“Sometimes,” Nathaniel answers.

“They hurt my ears,” Fred says.

“You can’t go around killing things you don’t like just because you have sensitive eyes and ears,” the first Flurbibian states.

“What about noses? I still can’t get the sap smell out of my hand. If I can’t get it out, I’ll have to cut off my hand or go crazy,” Haticat says.

“Sap smell? From the waffle trees? What’s wrong with it?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“So, they attacked you? What did they do?” the second Flurbibian asks.

“I told you; they burped,” Nathaniel answers.

“Tell me again. What did they do?” the second Flurbibian asks.

“They burped. That’s bad enough,” Nathaniel says.

“You killed them for burping?” the second Flurbibian asks.

“We went through this already,” Nathaniel says.

“Why not go through it again?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“Again? Why do anything twice? That’s irritating,” Nathaniel says.

“Irritating? How can answering the same question over and over be irritating?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“Are your senses really wired so differently than ours that repetition doesn’t bore you?” Nathaniel asks. Turning to the other, he adds, “And I’ve heard of like-relativity, but I thought every being in the galaxy understood very high levels of light and sound as assault. That’s how flash-bang grenades work.”

“How could light and sound hurt anybody? Do they break your bones?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“I don’t have to break a bone to feel pain,” Nathaniel says.

“What? You have pain receptors outside your bones?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“So, you killed them for burping?” the second Flurbibian asks again.

“Shut up!” Nathaniel shouts at him.

“Would you kill an animal for tickling you?” the first Flurbibian asks.

Nathaniel glares at him. “For tickling, I would leave it stranded in intergalactic space.”

There is a long pause as they all look back and forth at each other. “How can answering the same question over and over be irritating?” the first Flurbibian asks.

“Stop it!” Nathaniel warns him.

Suddenly, the back end of the third Flurbibian explodes. Droplets of fecal matter spray in all directions. Intestines shoot out and stick to the wall. In seconds, the creature has drawn a cartoon face on the inner hull with its intestines. Nathaniel holds his nose as he, Haticat, and Fred back down the walkway, shooting. The Flurbibian collapses.

“You killed him!” the second Flurbibian says.

“He didn’t do anything to you!” the first Flurbibian says.

Nathaniel shoots the other two dead. “Teleport this mess outside and get us off this crazy planet!”

“Gladly,” Haticat remarks, powering up the engines.

Minutes later, they are in the upper atmosphere and speeding away. “We’re being followed,” Fred reports.

Far behind are three extremely long, cylindrical ships leaving orbit to give chase. They turn out to be very fast and quickly catch up. Fred starts to teleport small bombs outside and then detonate them with the particle beams. The closest Flurbibian rod-ship breaks and becomes two. Then, all four ships return fire in the form of lasers. “The force field is holding,” Doctor Bill reports.

“Power up the time machine. We’ll hop forward three days,” Nathaniel orders.

“Got it.” Haticat types in the spacetime coordinates and waits for the time crystals to rotate into position.

“Go!” Nathaniel yells. At that exact moment, as the ship fades from existence, the Flurbibians fire a backenergy pulse. The time machine vanishes first, pulling the force field behind it, pulling the rest of the ship behind that. The ship sits unprotected for only 2.2 microseconds, but this is long enough for all systems to go dead. It is pitch black inside. “What happened?”

“Uh, I’ll find out,” Doctor Bill says.

Haticat finds an emergency light and switches it on, but finds that the switch also pushes back on him enough to push him into the air. “Uh oh.” All of them are weightless.

“We need to get the gravity on, quickly,” Nathaniel says.

“First, we need to get these consoles running,” Doctor Bill says.

Nathaniel takes a nervous look at the pool of water all around him. It is now held in place only by surface tension and inertia. He hears a sound above. The hull blisters. It is expanding under heat from unshielded laser fire. “No, first, we need the force field.” He grabs the railing and pulls his way along the walkway to the generator, his legs flying upwards.

Nathaniel and his crew manage to turn the systems back on one at a time. Finally, all power is restored except for the engines, which remain stubbornly unresponsive, and the time machine. Nathaniel opens the time crystal chamber and finds it empty! “The time machine has left the timestream without us…”

More backenergy shots are fired, but with the force field back up, they are harmless. Then the Flurbibians park the end of one ship against the force field and erect their own force field around both ships, allowing them to drag Nathaniel and company back to Mochtel. After several hours and several attempts to breach the force field, the Flurbibians roll Nathaniels’s ship into a low spot between two hills and begin piling dirt against it. “They’ll bury us alive!” Fred shouts.

Haticat fires the particle beams, but they have already been clogged up with mortar. “We have to do something!”

Nathaniel sits on a railing, calmly watching the sky get smaller as more rocks and dirt are piled up. “I have a plan.”

“What is it?” Haticat asks.

“We wait,” Nathaniel says quietly.

“For what?” Fred asks.

“For the time machine to reappear in three days,” Nathaniel says.

“Oh,” Haticat says.

“You set it for three days, right?” Nathaniel asks.

“Yes,” Haticat answers.

Sure enough, the time machine reappears right on schedule. Nathaniel sets the coordinates for thirty years in the past, jumps there, displacing the dirt when he materializes, thus causing the low spot they were rolled into in the first place, then leaves the planet long before he ever arrives. Haticat finally gets the vomit smell out of his hand.

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