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23

Far out, at the very, very edge of the galaxy, an unassuming main sequence star blazed away in relative solitude. Around this solitary star, many, many light years away from its closest neighbour, a planet orbited. The planet, like many other planets throughout the galaxy, suffered its fair share of natural disasters. The comings and goings of various species were nothing spectacularly different from any other and, when a species came along with enough intelligence and appendages suited to tool-making, it began, as so many others had, to build a civilisation.

That species, the cephalopod-like Trumlings, followed a basic pattern of growth that mirrored that of multitudes of species, though with a little more ease, what with having eight arms of equal dexterity. They built tribes, first. Roving far and wide, clearing their environments of predators, learning to farm, to create ever more complex tools, how to make hats that fitted their rather squishy heads.

Tribes became countries. The nomadic lifestyle gave way to communities. Villages became towns. Towns became cities. For many thousands of years, the Trumlings gazed into the night sky and saw nothing but far distant stars that looked dim and too far away to bother about. One day, they realised they had a moon, but, when technology improved enough to leave the surface of their planet and explore it, they found it barren and rather small.

Yet something bothered the more intelligent Trumlings who looked to the skies wanting more. A tremor in the orbit of their planet. A perturbation that the tiny moon couldn't hope to explain. Many years of calculations followed. Debates were raised. Hypotheses offered, scoffed at and countered, but none within the cosmological community could reason why their planet suffered such a tiny, infinitesimal wobble in their orbit.

After a while, the cosmologists simply gave up trying to work out what the problem was and turned, instead, to proving that the moon was not, in fact, an actual moon, but was possibly an egg for some cosmic chicken. This was, of course, ridiculous and cosmologists lost all funding, which did wonders for their livers as they had used most of that funding for parties.

Eventually, aliens came to the planet of the Trumlings, Lorulunardy, and the Trumlings finally learned how utterly unique and special their planet truly was. They had taken their world for granted, not noticing, for instance, that it was, to anyone with the slightest sense of beauty, a truly stunning world, filled with vibrant life, verdant forests and plains of wild flowers of such incredible colours that Lorulunardy won the 'Galaxy's Most Paradise-Like Planet' four standard Galactic years running.

Other awards followed. 'Best Location For A Holiday'. 'Planet Most Likely To Marry A Prince'. And perhaps the most prestigious award, 'Most Pleasant Venomous Creature'. An award given for the Great Crested Flung Snake, whose bite would cause fits of chuckling to anyone lucky enough to be caught in the swarm. It was safe to say that Great Crested Flung Snake safaris became big business for the Trumlings of Lorulunardy.

And everything went swimmingly, until, one day, a passing cosmologist from off-world happened to mention how odd it was that Trumlings hadn't managed to colonise their solar opposite twin planet.

This was a stunning revelation and Trumling cosmologists came out of their self-imposed exiles to attend morning talk shows to say, yes, they knew about this twin planet all along and that they were saving the announcement of its existence for a particularly slow news day. No-one believed a word of that and the cosmologists soon slinked back to wherever they had hidden their booze and returned to viciously destroying their livers.

This all left the peoples of Lorulunardy in a bit of a quandary. They had found, after many centuries, the reason behind the odd wobble in their orbit but couldn't, for the life of them, decide what to do with the information.

By this time, the Trumlings had purchased basic space-faring technology and decided that it was probably best to put on their best greeting outfits and see what their twin planet was actually like. News of the exploratory adventure swept around Lorulunardy like wildfire. People stopped chasing Great Crested Flung Snakes for an even more wild experience. Their beautiful scenery became forgotten as the day of the launch came ever closer. Many, many sandwiches and barbecues were made to watch the lift-off of their very first interplanetary expedition.

Launch day came. Alien dignitaries had arrived with their large epaulets threatening to poke out the eyes of those sat beside them. Fireworks glittered in the skies and everything looked as though history was about to be made before their cephalopod eyes.

The rockets fired. Umbilical cables detached. Arresting arms fell away. The rocket began to rise, rise high into the air, accompanied by cheers, shouts of glee and the occasional grumble from out-of-work, bitter cosmologists that just wanted to see the entire project fail.

When the rocket exploded, accompanied by the cheers from those self-same bitter cosmologists and the tears and occasional grumble from the crowd about money going to waste and what were they going to do with all these Great Crested Flung Snake sausages now, the Trumlings saw their opportunity to visit another world come to an explosive end. They had put everything into the attempt to expand to another world, taken the entire planet into crippling debt to do so and they had nothing left to try again.

It was at this point, while Trumlings the world over wondered how such a terrible accident could have occurred, that agents of the DWAIt Corporation stepped in to seize the assets of Lorulunardy and declare the entire planet, its solar system and any resources it may contain as the sole property of DWAIt Corp, as outlined in Section 1099, Sub-Section Cormorant B, Paragraph 12 of their loan agreement. It was Clause 42 that really put the icing on the proverbial cake.

Trumlings, by and large, were a trusting people. They had lawyers, but those lawyers were historically predisposed to fairness and not at all ready for the barracuda-like lawyers employed by DWAIt Corporation. Those lawyers were born to the intricacies of galactic law. Literally. From the moment they emerged from their mothers' wombs, they were indoctrinated in the practises of law and, more importantly, how to twist those laws to the advantage of DWAIt Corp and their board.

Clause 42, hidden so deep in the loan agreement, in writing so small, even superior cephalopod eyes had trouble focussing upon it, stated that, upon such unfortunate and unforeseen accidents, that DWAIt Corps accepted no responsibility for, at all, any failure to repay the debt within five Galactic Standard minutes would result in the forfeiture of the planet and the forcible removal of all Trumlings to a relocation facility somewhere on the other side of the galaxy.

At least DWAIt Corp waited for the Trumlings to leave the planet before they began strip-mining it.

It wasn't Lorulunardy that DWAIt Corps had wanted, however. Their eyes had turned to that newly discovered planet that they had known about, surveyed and decided they wanted, decades earlier, but they were patient. Even DWAIt Corps had to follow some rules and, thus, they engineered everything. From infiltrating the planet and the cosmologist community, to hiring just the right person to unscrew just the right bolt in just the right spot for a spectacular fireball to blaze across Lorulunardy's skies.

The twin planet, named Abutuncostlo upon its discovery was just the planet DWAIt Corp needed. Remote, unremarkable upon first glance, Abutuncostlo had two very distinct, very useful properties. The first was a surface so flat that if one turned in a circle, in any location, the chances of seeing anything resembling a mountain, even a hill, or a mound, were as close to zero as not worth calculating. Not that anyone would see anything from the surface, thanks to the second useful property.

A dense fog lingered across the entire surface of Abutuncostlo. A fog that sat a little less than six-feet above the ground and had a depth of another thirty feet, giving the planet a constant shroud that hid anything beneath the surface of that fog. Even from satellites. Because, as DWAIt Corp found out to their delight, the fog had an unusual and unique effect. It stopped all technology. Everything that required energy of any kind suddenly stopped working upon entering the fog.

This discovery led to several teams of DWAIt Corp engineers, scientists and logistics professionals sadly losing their lives to starvation, as no-one could pick them back up from the planet, or inform them of where supplies would drop. This was unfortunate, but not unforeseen. Eventually, DWAIt Corp worked out the kinks of utilising this unique planet's environment, built a facility deep below the ground and populated the planet's surface with the deadliest plants and animals the galaxy had to offer. Mostly from the Tether planet.

Here, DWAIt Corp hid their most precious and sensitive experiments, and salvaged technology, ready for patenting. Far away from practically everyone else in the galaxy, protected by a fog that made technology useless, patrolled by things that ate other things, that ate things, just for the fun of it. A place no-one would even dare to attempt to infiltrate, even if they could find it, because only a very stupid person would even think of trying.

Friss had found it and he very much dared to infiltrate it. He was, after all, very stupid.

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