Author: Ashley G. Thomas

Mudlizards

These creatures are a scourge on humanity – there’s no other way to describe them. Well actually there is. They are ugly, nasty, foul, cruel, stupid, slimy, smelly creatures whose sole purpose seems to be to take over Earth with increasingly complex plots. They also hate me. Unbelievable. Just because, on occasion, whilst saving rat Cat’s skin I may inadvertently have thwarted one or other of their stupid plans.

mud lizard

First on the Play Planet and then at Dinosaur Skyland I’ve had to deal with them interfering in my life. Cat has been little help, constantly refusing to help protect me from them. Honestly, at times I could believe he was in league with them.

Mud Lizards had first been encountered on a deep space mission in the middle of the  7th decade of the 21st Century, on the planet Plasmolidium in the star system Trappist-1. Actually, I believe the planet was supposed to be called Plasmodium because the explorers who first landed there found something very similar to the malaria parasite on Earth, that had been eradicated on Earth yonks ago. However, when the planet was registered, the official filling out the inevitable form forgot to turn on his audio spellcheck and well, the rest is hystery as they say…..

Anyway,  a few years later in 2170, when a heavily populated Earth ship landed on Plasmolidium, it was discovered that something much bigger lurked under the mud flats on the planet – the Mudlizards. These fairly advanced (though as I wrote above, revoltingly ugly) creatures ate almost all of the humans who were on the ship and sent 2 survivors back to Earth with a message carved on their foreheads. The message was fairly short (obviously as it was on 2 foreheads) and basically was a declaration of inter-stellar war. Essentially, the first fight that followed was a draw but then a few years later we won the second big fight and Mudlizards wound up being quarantined on the planet Amora. Which is where I wish they would stay!!

Unicorn Racing

We all know what a unicorn is, don’t we? A mythical creature that’s been in stories since forever. Well, since about 2125 they’ve been real.

Basically, another output of cloning was what so many children on Earth had wanted to see for so many years. Having heard all the mythical stories growing up, like the Zombies v Unicorns trilogy (ok maybe I was a bit strange as a child…) finally unicorns were there for all to see.

Outline of a unicorn

Initially developed by ClonaCat (a company which at that time had failed dismally to clone cats with the same characteristics as recently deceased and much loved family pussycats) unicorns instantly became a massive hit in recreation areas for children and as real participants in plays and other live shows (now of course less frequent but still much sought after).

A few years after the unicorns started to be a kids attraction, some racehorse stables bred a couple and were allowed to include them in horse races. That changed though after several champion horses felt the unicorn in the race too often in their rear end and the horse racing governing body stipulated that horse and unicorn racing must be separated.

So whilst horse racing continued on its long-established path, unicorn racing developed its own unique niche. Unicorn racing was much like horse racing, the only difference being that there were more injuries to jockeys who often had to spend as much time with their ass in the air off the unicorn as they did on it. In fact, the Unicorn thrust (as it came to be known) gradually became a central feature of unicorn racing tactics and length of unicorn horn became as key a characteristic of a champion unicorn as speed!!

Sonic Radar

Cat had many technologies to call on in his role of protecting me from all manner of dangers. He was pretty rubbish in my view at this protection malarky and always seemed to leave it to the last minute to grab me from the jaws of disaster. I think he enjoyed doing that (leaving it to the last minute that is!!).

image of radar screen

Anyway, one tool he had which was generally very useful, was his highly sensitive sonic radar. Unlike normal radar that detects objects and their movement, with sonic radar, Cat could also detect sounds very accurately. This basically meant that he could detect the smallest of objects easily, even if they remained totally motionless.

He often remarked that he always knew where I was because he could readily lock onto my brain, despite its size…….. cheeky little automaton!!

Crocodillo

Ahh, now a crocadillo was one of Earth’s first attempts at using inter-species cloning in the ‘specialist’ pet industry. By the second or third decade of the 22nd Century, crocodiles had become quite popular as pets in certain parts of the World. This was in large part due to a highly successful airplay programme called Crocodile Challenge.

In CC (as it came to be known) the challenge was for individuals to domesticate a crocodile using a highly specialised approach to animal training developed by an old European countrywoman whose name was Agspeth Abernacleton. The Abernacleton’s were well known for their wildlife parks across Europe and Agneth developed a training  methodology based on implants that enabled her to control even the feistiest of animals, including crocodiles. After the success of CC as an airplay spectacle, the sale of trained crocodiles as pets went through the roof. Eventually, however, the unfortunate deaths of a few owners got noticed and it came to be realised that Agneth’s training approach had some flaws in it that only became apparent longer term.

At about this time a new generation company called CloneMate were experimenting in the area of exotic pets and for some unfathomable reason made a crocodile and armadillo hybrid. Armadillos were quite docile and cute and the most aggressive act they tended to practice was rolling up into a ball. This non-aggressive nature was just as well because the resultant hybrid, the crocadillo, was to all intents and purposes an even more armoured than usual crocodile.

The Great Radiation Flood

The great radiation flood of 2212 was a tipping point for humanity and one hell of a shock for the US President of the time. President Rip van Trumplestein, a third generation Mexus, was just in the middle of a World speech on the success of the 98th Climate change programme when his hair started to singe in the midday sun in Fairbanks Alaska.

Anyways, as ‘Old Don’ (as he was known to his supporters) got doused in firespray by one of his bodyguards, news broke from the Earth Space Platform that 2 black holes had collided in deep space. The net result of this collision was a massive release of cosmic radiation that had, on that day, hit the Earth.

Radiation symbol

Of course ‘Old Don’ had been told about this several years before and he had dismissed it as ‘fake scaremongering’ originating from Sinosovurea, that was designed to wreck the ozone layer regeneration industry on Earth. Well having got that one wrong, and with his rather dodgy hair smoldering, Old Don went back to hosting ‘Play your Fossil Fuels Right’ a much-loved reality airplay show (well it wasn’t really loved but his cronies told him it was).

Meanwhile on Earth, regeneration of the ozone layer became a real priority and production of ozone in the upper atmosphere was rapidly increased, but due to the high energy requirements of ozone generation, Earth began to quickly warm up. Fortunately at around this  time, Professor Wai-Nott had advanced with his experiments on Bryllium and within a few months of the initial first flood of radiation, Earth had a new ozone equivalent layer to protect its former President’s beard.

Sinosovurean

One of the earliest other planets discovered with human-like life forms during The Discovery Period of 2150 – 2200 was Sovurea. The planet had previously been identified as an Earth-Analog and a friendly and advanced civilisation there warmly welcomed the first humans who arrived  from the China Space Academy.

Image of planet

As it turned out the Sovureans were remarkably similar to rabbits on Earth (not in looks but certain other habits…..) and the first astronauts from China who landed there founded the Sinosovurean dynasty at remarkable speed. No one is sure they meant too, but mating for a Sovurean is a bit like a handshake is to us Earthlings, so they didn’t really have much choice.

Air Stars

Earth used to have film stars or movie stars or TV or music stars, when entertainment was totally dependent on some physical piece of hardware (TV, music player etc), that a user had to turn on and connect to the world wide thingummyjig wotsit, or whatever it used to be called.

But then the engineers at some company named after a fruit, suggested people could be simply implanted with a chip that would allow them to see and listen to performers essentially in the air in front of their eyes.

Image of brain

Of course, most people thought this was bananas (not the name of the company) as how would it work in practice?. I mean if you were sitting in a train would the images appear in front of your face and would everyone else see that and hear that?

Well no, actually it didn’t work like that at all. You see if you were in a public space the aircast would effectively play inside your head. You would see and hear everything you would on a physical display but it would be private, inside your head wherever you were. When you were at home or at work you could connect what was in your head to an external display.

Airplay technology led to a new revolution in entertainment and many performers were never actually seen live at all but only through aircasts (i.e. inside people’s heads) – some of these performers became cult figures and mega-rich. Hence the term ‘Airstars’. In fact, I often play one in my head and he’s 12 and a multi-billionaire – another one of the MacBeckham clan that bought Scotland centuries ago.

Inter-Planetary Championship Football -Explain Please!

Well it’s a bit complicated really because it involves 4 goals and 4 teams.

Picture of a football

Two goals and 2 teams are real (they scream if you kick them) and 2 are virtual. Each football club has 2 teams in the game. One team of real players that it employs, and another that is made up of virtual players drawn from the top 250 virtual players in the Trans-Planetary  VSoccer virtual game played by children the galaxy over. The exact makeup of the club’s virtual team is determined by a random selection made 1 hour before kick off from the top 250 players list.

The match kicks off with the 2 real teams playing each other and the 2 virtual teams playing each other. The two pitches are set at right angles to each other and they share a common centre circle . Spectators can watch on their screens at home or by hovering over the stadium.  As the pitches share a common centre circle, play on one pitch can actually cross over play on the other, which can be a bit confusing for both players and spectators.

During the first 15 minutes of the first half that’s how it must continue. At the end of the first 15 minutes each team manager can select up to 4 players from the virtual teams, who are playing their own match, and ‘step’ them into the real physical game. The 4 real players who step out take up positions in the virtual game and play that for the next 15 minutes. At the end of this 15 minute period the teams switch back to as they were at kick off.

During half-time it gets even more complicated as each team manager has to decide on a fixed combination of real and virtual players for each game for the whole of the second half.

The scores from both games count towards the final result. So if a team wins both games they get 10 points. Win one and lose one and they get 5 points. Win one and draw one and they get 7 points.

See, all very simple really though tactics can get very complicated as clubs can draft in young kids (normally under 5 these days) who act as the club controller of the virtual games. Honestly, they can get paid a fortune. There’s a 6 year old, I think he’s one of the McBeckham clan, who is a multi-millionaire already the little Oik!!

What’s so special about a Bryllium mine?

There’s nothing really special about the mine, but Bryllium is a very special and precious element. In the late 21st Century the deep space probe VirginGalaxy returned to Earth from a planet called Luminem that orbits the star Copernicus (or Copper Knickers as my old astronomy avatar used to say) in the constellation of Cancer.

Image of test tubes

Some jolly clever chemists analysed the properties of Bryllium and found that if mixed with certain well know Earth elements and compounds, the product could very effectively replace ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere to protect us poor Earthlings from our Sun’s increasingly dangerous radiation. It was a jolly brilliant invention (which might be why it was called Bryllium I suppose, but I might be making that up…..)

I’m an ITI you know

ITI – or Intergalactic Tax Inspector. That’s me. Wow, and what a job. I would never have dreamed of a job like this when I graduated from my local Learning World at the age of 27 with 137 digital badges covering topics from languages, alien lifeforms, history, lasers in society, through to communication skills, martial arts and mathematics. I was fully expecting to drift from homework to homework earning variable sums of credit. How lucky I was to be recommended by one of my old tutors (who obviously realised how talented I was) for a government sponsored fast track civil servant programme.

Fully intending to become a virtual government official, proofreading and air publishing new local laws, I managed to get on the wrong hoverbus outside the New Trainee transit station and the next thing I knew someone was taking my maths capability to a new level and telling me that I was going to become an ITI.

galaxy

So here I am, several years later earning a good salary, travelling the galaxy with my trusty (ha ha) companion Cat, checking out the tax affairs of individuals and major corporations across many globes. I had quickly gained a reputation for managing complex and quite dangerous missions with the help of Cat. Of course, it (Cat) would have many believe that much of my success was down to it. But I knew better. I had lost count of the number of times I had pulled its furry tail out of the fire.

We sometimes would undertake missions on good old Earth, in between our space travels, and here again all of my skills and staggering capabilities came forth to ensure I succeeded, helping to make Cat look vaguely useful in the process. Cat acknowledged my skills, only recently telling me that my capabilities would come at least fourth on anyone’s list of totally pointless capabilities!!

Supercilious little irrelevance…….wait till I catch him farting again!!