Glad that’s over. Anything I hate, it’s packing over a holiday weekend. But we’re under way at last, back into the welcoming arms of deep, deep space. GJ 1132b, here we come!
I suppose I should spare you the details of the last week – the rush job of putting this expeditionary gig together, the foibles regarding our interplanetary transportation, etc. (Just try booking a four-engine ion drive spacecraft on the weekend before Thanksgiving. Freaking impossible!) As you may recall from last week’s post (particularly if you have nothing better to do with your life than to read this useless blog), Big Green has decided to pay a call on our newest neighbor in space – the recently discovered dwarf planet GJ 1132b – and see if we can discover some gainful employment there; namely, a one night stand for a terrestrial band.
Okay, so we dubbed this BIG GREEN’S CAPER BEYOND THE KUIPER (BELT), which is literally true, as GJ 1132b is out there, man, really out there. We had to name the gig in order to get some support from our corporate label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc. (whose indie imprint is named Hegephonic), still run by Indonesian military thugs. They’ve got deep pockets, though, and they and our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee go way back, so he was able to connive … I mean, convince them into ponying up some of their ill gotten gains to fund this reckless foray into parts unknown. Mitch is just that good.
The transport was a major problem, though. All of our previous rides were unavailable. Mitch had inadvertently vaporized our last spacecraft during the course of an experiment (one he was conducting on behalf of those same Generals from Jakarta he was conniving this past week). GJ 1132b is 39 light years away, so we needed something with a little heft. It couldn’t be one of those sub-compact crafts you take to Mars and back, right? There was a good deal of head scratching over that issue, until finally Mitch remembered an old colleague who had built an interstellar spacecraft for his own amusement at some point, then just parked it in his garage next to his Land Rover. Hobbyists!
Anywho, Mitch sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) over to pick it up. Big mistake – Marvin got lost on the way home, so we lost a couple of solar days, delaying our launch until Thanksgiving. Let them eat space! See you on GJ 1132b!
Well, space travel has just gotten a lot more confusing, people. Much, much more complicated than even a few weeks ago when we left planet Earth to embark on this ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE tour. It seems that normal (i.e. not mad) scientists back on Earth have discovered the existence of literally millions…. perhaps BILLIONS of Earth-sized planets circling stars throughout our galaxy. As we’re bobbing around out here, trying to find our next destination (Kaztropharius 137b), we’ve been scratching our heads, trying to figure out where all of these freaking planets came from. None of them are on the charts. Lots of them look alike. This is bloody ridiculous.
As you can tell, we weren’t getting a lot of help from him. A little later on, he sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into my quarters (an empty storage bin, actually) with a recorded message. “Use the laser cannon,” Mitch said on the recording. “If a planet splits straight down the middle, it can’t be Kaztopharius 137b. That thing is made of solid quintilium. The best you can get is a clean hole, no split. Just keep shooting til you find it.”