By Way of Introduction

Time travel.  Norman Gregory, like most of Lutranea, was obsessed with time travel.  And who can really blame him?

What did it mean about the universe if time travel was possible?  First of all, it meant that all time was actually existing simultaneously, and that the flow of time was something of an illusion.  Second, and working off the first, it meant that Norman Gregory had always existed and always would exist.  Norman really hoped, for the good of the universe, that this second proposition was true.

He was a little discouraged that he had never met a time traveler.  If time travel were possible, he believed that someone would have rushed through time to tell him.  He had plastered advertisements in newspapers, on billboards, and on the sides of mountains to let all time travelers know that he was interested in meeting them:

To all time travelers,

In case my legend has slipped to mythical status and you doubt the reality of my heroics, I would like you all to know that I am very real and very interested in meeting you. 

Norman Gregory

But no time travelers had ever shown up.

Norman Gregory was also obsessed with aliens.  Space aliens.  He knew, in part, that his interest in aliens was vain ambition.  If aliens contacted Lutranean B, they could spread word of his many accomplishments and epic good looks to the rest of the universe.  But a visit from space aliens would also open new worlds that he could save and an infinite number of people that he could guide in grace and wisdom.  He knew the aliens would recognize his greatness and give him the love and respect he deserved, even if his own people took him for granted.

He had made some initial attempts to contact the aliens.  First, he put a message in a bottle and tried to throw it into space.  He was shocked to find that gravity would have the emboldened audacity to pull the bottle back to earth. 

Next, he and his engineers tried a giant crossbow which shot the bottle up towards the heavens.  The bottle disappeared in the distance and Norman thought it was only a matter of time until the aliens came to honor him.  A day later, though, a peasant boy found the bottle in a field and brought it to the castle.  The crossbow engineers concluded that the bottle must have traveled around the universe and then come back to Lutranean B unread.  The next day Norman shot off a dozen more bottles, and when 8 of them were not returned he knew it was time to prepare for alien visits.

The first thing he needed to do was rename the planet.  The Lutranea had earned the right to name the planet hundreds of years ago when they were chosen as the planet’s dominant species.  They campaigned for the position on the grounds that they had the world’s most complex sewer system.  No one dared compete with them on those grounds, and the Lutraneas first act as dominant species was to name the planet Lutranean.  They wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of any visiting aliens by the planet’s lesser species.

Norman Gregory liked the name, but could not believe that such a remarkable species with such an inspirational leader and efficient waste disposal system could possibly have originated on such an ordinary planet.  Logically, he concluded that their ancestors had left a more edenic, but doomed, planet and made their way to Lutranean.  Lutranean, by presidential edict of Norman Gregory, thus became Lutranean B.

Norman Gregory died and was quickly forgotten.  Norman Gregory II was followed by Norman Gregory III and so forth.  Norman Gregory XLIII would learn that, despite what the crossbow engineers actually thought about Norman’s plan to shoot bottles into space, one had actually made it.  It was found by a young Ganderling three solar systems over who took it to his parents.  His parents believed it was an awfully funny joke and their son lived a life of luxury, enshrined as a comedic genius.  It was hundreds of years later that a young research assistant accidentally discovered that the note was from another planet.  Approximately 200 years later a note in a bottle was delivered to Norman Gregory XLIII.

To the great universal jokester and author of the Norman Gregory stories,

We regret that we do not have the necessary technology to visit you personally, but if you are capable of performing such a flight across space we would be honored to host you here.  Generations of Ganderlings have been raised with an illustrated version of your “Great Deeds of Norman Gregory.”  We have sent copies of the story to all corners of the universe, so that all may laugh as we have at Norman’s delusional heroics.

We hope that you will have other stories that you can share with us,

(signed)

The Great Council of Yanglepoo 7

And thus, the name Norman Gregory is recognized across the universe.  As personally dictated to his rather sardonic clerk, this is his story.

By Way of Introduction

The tree-dwelling Dinkles of Upper Hippotulamulia may be the most unique of the sentient species on Lutranean B.  The entire known population dwells in a single tree in the Ephulusian Plains. Only a handful will ever leave the tree’s branches.

With an average height of only two inches, the Dinkles are also considered the smallest sentient species in the world and, potentially, the entire universe.  It is a mystery how such a small brain cavity can hold a brain complex enough to conduct intelligent thought, though no one has been sufficiently interested in this mystery to bother traveling all the way up to the Ephulsian Plains of Upper Hippotulamulia to find the answer.  One popular theory was that the Dinkles had been faking it for the last 2000 years, but it has since been discovered that extensive “faking it” is one of the more sophisticated behaviors of sentient beings.

A more alluring mystery, which has drawn effusive speculation but, again, no serious academic study, is how a sentient species has come to live entirely in a single tree.  The debate is fuelled by the fact that the Dinkles live in the sole tree within 100 miles of its location.  Some claim that the Plains were once a forest inhabited by a flourishing population of Dinkles.  Warring Dinkle tribes battled over issues of seemingly important philosophical merit.  A relatively weak and fearful species, war strategy centered on night raids with the intent of burning down the opposing tribe’s tree.  Today the lone tree in the Ephulusian Plains houses the victorious tribe.  This theory has been promoted without much physical evidence, but it is commonly accepted on the basis that it is a fun story and rejecting it would require one to come up with another theory.  The Dinkles have developed the world’s most sophisticated sprinkler system, perhaps evidence of adaptive war technology or, perhaps, just the misallocation of public funds.

In the tree the Dinkles can provide for all their physical needs.  Tree nuts and bird eggs make for a complete diet, and they have chiseled storage tanks out of the tree branches to store water.  The leathery leaves of the hippolucamus tree are sown into clothing and the holes dug in the trunk are shelter enough for the mild winters of the region.

In this environment, the Dinkles have developed strict population controls.  They consider it imperative that they eat all of the tree nuts to prevent new trees from sprouting and hosting rival tribes, but excess population can lead to hunger or even starvation.  Perhaps as part of the effort to control the population, up to a half dozen Dinkles will “parachute” out of the tree branches and wander bewilderedly across the plains in baggy blue pajama pants.  If we knew their destination it may provide us with important insights into Dinkle culture, but those that have attempted to follow these Dinkles have all quickly lost interest.

The Dinkles, though sentient they may pretend to be, do not appear to be planning for the doom that awaits them. Detailed analyses and blind guessing have dated their home at several thousand years old and in its final days. It is, in fact, much older than anyone could have imagined.  Unfortunately for the Dinkles, no one yet cares.

But they will.

This is a story of how a lazy and obstinate young Dinkle called Sneaux nearly caused the premature destruction of his species and his world but managed, in that sequence, to have learned a thing or two about the meaning of life, and had some time left over to save the universe—at least, the worthwhile parts of it.