The Most Boring Planet

Nathaniel is bored. His crew of Stuffians are bored too. They can barely stay awake. There is nothing new to do. They have done it all before. On Lectipas, they had entered numerous races, high-jumping contests, shoe-tying contests, eating contests, and breath-holding contests. Usually, they lost. They had climbed mountains and explored caves. The caves were always empty and after a while, all mountains looked the same. They repeatedly visited Planet Candy. They wore disguises in case The Mama-And-Daddy or some other adult was looking for them. The problem is that one can only eat so much candy before being full. They visited Earth (also in disguise) to watch whales, but most of the time there were no whales. Still fearful of the Fun Toy Syndicate, they avoided Gruezhe completely, but stopped at a Stuffian space station with a zero-gravity playground. That was fun for a while, but they soon got bored with that too. They stop on Soda (a Candy Wizard colony) to taste new flavors of soda, but find that the only new flavors are made for adults, such as kale, Brussels sprouts, and vomit.

They explore nearby planets, but most of them are lifeless and it takes days to travel from star system to star system. There are airless rock planets. There are airless ice planets. There are gas giant planets with no surface. Nathaniel catalogues and classifies them, but eventually starts seeing the same colors over and over. Gas giants can be bright yellow, dull yellow, bright orange, peach, grey, white, brown, striped, spotted, or striped and spotted. They can have rings, moons, or even moons with smaller satellites orbiting them, which Haticat calls “woons.”

Nathaniel keeps detailed descriptions of different kinds of mountains, cracks, and rain. He collects rocks of different shapes and colors, but soon he has every kind. Finally, they land on a planet with life. It is covered in jungle. There are no animals of any kind except for forty-five species of beetles. It’s very quiet. Not knowing what else to do, Nathaniel challenges himself to sit still long enough to count to one thousand. Finally, he finishes. “What now?”

“Let’s go to the library; we haven’t read every book yet,” Doctor Bill says.

The explorers visit a library on Earth. They all read books. Nathaniel learns about many new things, such as ferrofluids, smart metals, colloids, and liquid crystals. Then he reads a book about distant planets. Why explore planets yourself when others have done it for you? He reads about tidally-locked planets with permanent sunrise/sunset zones. He reads about planets with eccentric orbits giving them extreme seasons. He reads about common colors of vegetation on other worlds, such as green, red, purple, and black. He finds a book about record-breaking planets of the known universe, including the hottest, coldest, densest, rainiest, windiest, reddest, greenest, most poisonous, and most radioactive planets. “Why isn’t there an entry for the most interesting planet?” he asks himself. “I’ll discover it myself and be famous!”

Returning to the sky, Nathaniel and his crew set out to catalogue as many planets as they can. The first system they come to contains a large gas giant planet that is literally boiling away its hydrogen in great plumes. “Is this interesting enough?” Nathaniel asks.

“I don’t know,” Haticat answers.

“What’s creating the heat?” Fred asks

“I don’t know; how do we find out?” Nathaniel says.

“We’ll need a special kind of scanner to see inside and I don’t know how to build one,” Doctor Bill says.

In the same system is a water-covered world with oceans full of bioluminescent phytoplankton and another gas giant with oxygen storms and carbon dioxide storms spinning in different directions. While watching the storms turn around under them, they detect the approach of another ship. It is of an unfamiliar design, like two coins intersecting. While debating whether to say hello, they realize they are being pulled toward the other ship. Some sort of energy field sticks their ship to the hull of the other. They cannot engage the engines. Suddenly every surface vibrates and they hear a voice. “You are naughty! You broke the rules! Prepare for punishment!”

“Haticat, did you break some rules?” Nathaniel asks.

“No,” Haticat says.

“It wasn’t me, either,” Fred says.

The voices buzzes loudly. “you broke the rules! You are grounded! No spaceship! No Stuffians! No toys! No fun!”

Nathaniel is lifted by some sort of energy field and pulled toward the airlock. “No! No! No!”

“You must learn your lesson!” the adult buzzes.

“I don’t even know what I did wrong! How can I learn anything?” Nathaniel protests. The inner doors close and the release sequence begins. Nathaniel is held hovering in midair. His heart beats furiously. Then the outer doors open and Nathaniel is surprised to see himself on the surface of a planet where he is let down.

“Wait here until your punishment is over!” Nathaniel sees the two ships – his and the adult’s – still stuck together – rise into the sky and disappear.

Nathaniel looks around. He is alone. There are no trees, no rocks, no hills, and no cracks. The ground is perfectly featureless, smooth, monochrome rock all the way to the horizon in all directions. It is the most boring planet possible.

Nathaniel eventually gets over his anger and then the terror sets in. with no stimulus, he has no thoughts, no pleasure. It feels like nonexistence. The boredom and fun deprivation slowly chews away at his mind. This was a far worse punishment than anything the Mama-And-Daddy ever invented. He can feel his life force waning as his will to live is crushed. For boys and girls, play is an absolute need like air or food. He does a quick mental calculation of how long he has to live. He estimates 29 days. It feels like it has already been 500. Stuffians were lucky. If deprived of play, they would simply go into a coma and shut down. Nathaniel could not. His body could only sleep for so long before he needed to wake up and find food. Come to think of it, he would die of food-starvation before he would die of fun-starvation.

Nathaniel runs as fast as he can, hoping that a hill or something will be just over the horizon. There is nothing. He tries counting to 1000, but he has done that before. He gives up after reaching 37. He plays jump rope with his pants, but he has done that before too. He needs something new. The minutes pass. The hours pass. He starts biting himself just to feel something. More hours pass. It must have been at least twelve hours by now. The sun has not moved. This must be a tidally-locked world. How fitting that on such a bland, featureless planet, not even the skies change.

It is a story of great endurance, greater than climbing a mountain or sailing through a storm. With nothing happening in the real world for many days, Nathaniel’s thoughts turn inward. He begins a long journey of self-reflection. Entire libraries worth of thought run through his head. Who was he? What was his purpose? Why was he himself and not someone else? He spirals into insanity.

He begins to play out scenarios in his mind. What would he do if an aqua monster suddenly appeared in front of him? What should he do? What if instead it was an ice cream sundae? He imagines fighting with monsters and discovering new forces of nature. He imagines the adult returning with his friends, telling him his grounding was over. What would he do?

“That can’t ever happen again! We need to invent a way to protect us from adults,” Nathaniel says.

“We can’t; they’re too powerful,” Haticat says.

“They’re very fast, not stopped by shields, and only rarely tricked by camouflage,” Doctor Bill says.

“What if we killed them?” Nathaniel asks.

“Killing is against the rules! We’ll get in even more trouble!” Fred says.

“Oh, right,” Nathaniel responds.

“Yes,” Haticat says, “but…we couldn’t get into trouble if we killed all of them.”

Nathaniel perks up. “There’d be no one left to punish us! That’s a great idea! Let the extermination begin!” Without stopping to think, he hits the firing buttons for the ship’s laser cannons, destroying the adult’s ship, which explodes in a shower of sparks.

“Yes, that’s what I would do if I ever saw my friends again. That’s what I’ll do when my punishment’s over,” Nathaniel says to himself, lying on the smooth rock.

“Captain?” Fred says.

“Your punishment is over,” Haticat says.

“Huh?” Nathaniel says, still lying on the floor of his ship. He tries to imagine Haticat differently, standing on his head or different colors, but he still sees him normally at the same time. He can’t help it. “Are you real?”

“Of course I’m real!” Haticat says.

“Uh oh, I think you might have developed boredism, which happens when play deprivation destroys the ability to distinguish between play and real life,” Doctor Bill explains. “Fortunately, it’s usually temporary.”

“So I’m really back on the ship? I really blew up the adult?” Nathaniel asks.

“Yes, and you did a good job at it,” Haticat praises.

Nathaniel breathes out a huge sigh of relief. “I was so bored. How many days was I gone?”

“According to the ship’s clock, 0.017 days – about 25 minutes,” Doctor Bill reports.

“Well, that’s still a very long time,” Nathaniel says. “Let’s go on an adventure!”

---

Never stop asking questions, for learning is the true spice of life. Expand your world. Leave a comment and start a conversation. I’d love to discuss the underlying science and philosophy.

Did you like this story? Be sure to subscribe to my free email newsletter so you never miss an episode! New stories will be emailed to you every Friday at 9am-eastern.

Subscribe to my newsletter at the $8/month level for additional goodies, such as unpublished stories and artwork. You can also support my work by buying my books or by tipping me at BuyMeACoffee. It will be greatly appreciated.

Also, check out my other blog at WayOutDan, where I post photos, book reports, poetry, and more. Check out my other other blog at FloraAndFaunaOfTheUniverse, where I link to the exobiology-related art of others.

You can also write directly to Nate’s disembodied essence in the servers of Twitter (@nate4669201609) as he currently exists. He would love to hear from you!