Roughly 2,000 years before some brown-haired farmboy blew up a really big and mean basketball, there was a ship.

Not that special of a ship. It was mostly red, had lots of guns, and its crew wore silly red uniforms and even sillier helmets. It is believed, at least by a few people, that these helmets were just meant to make the enemy wonder, 'What's with the hat?' long enough for the soldiers to shoot them. Obviously, since the Republic keeps having to rely on people like said farmboy to save them, it didn't work very well.

Anyways, 2,000 years... yada yada yada... there was a ship. It wasn't that important of the ship and recieves no mention in history. Or, it is mentioned in history, briefly, just the teacher keeps droning on like a robot most people don't notice. That is, of course, because the teacher really is a robot, and the real teachers are running around in time machines having the time of their lives.

Back to the subject, the ship crashed. Perhaps it was a bad idea to begin with when the Captain decided to head to one of the most unexplored regions of the galaxy because he read it in his alphabet soup. Perhaps it was a bad idea to have three-armed, six-eyed girlfriend fly the ship instead of someone more experienced. Like that can of alphabet soup.

Due to some crazy idea of Nature's, the second worst thing to happen to this planet (aside from the crash), was all the idiots and fools and idiotic fools on the ship were the only survivors. Except for the Captain. He died.

Why? Life's a bitch?

For many years, unsure of what to do since all authority on the ship was killed in the crash, the survivors wandered. They wandered, wandered some more, and finally there was lots of sex thrown in so the survivors multiplied. And multiplied. After a while the generations that followed also had sex and multiplied.

Eventually the planet was filled with a nomadic race of humanity, wandering the planet following the herds of six-legged chickens - also called Sha'Ga'Gu'Lachk by the first scientist of the planet, who kept it for a total of three days before deciding it was too hard to say and stuck with "six-chics" - native to the planet. It was, roughly 300 years after the crash, that this race of humanity did what was reflected as the dumbest idea in history.

They began civilization.

****

And so the people of Ysiss climbed out of their shelters that had protected them for so many years on the planet Grobag. For many years they had dwelt there, after the wars of their ancestors, when the great earthquakes had come. Many had died.

But now, they were free, free from war and earthquake. They would take on whatever came next as a united people.

Of course, by 'anything next', they didn't mean this.

A great pit opened up from the skies of the planet Grobag, and the thousands of Ysiss took up their familier call.

"Ahhh!", they said.

******

Case Lightjumper bit into his sandwich. It wasn't a great sandwich, and was, really, kind of dry. Still, he ate it.

Better than nothing, he thought.

Case was a thief. The world's second greatest thief, in fact. He knew he wasn't the first greatest thief because he was still stuck in the same small apartment with the same damn people he has always been with.

The world's first greatest thief obviously didn't need to do much at all, had a nice, large house, and probably threw parties all the time.

Case couldn't even remember the last party he'd been to.

If you were to look at Case, you would probably wonder why you were looking at him.

You would have a point.

"You figured anything out, yet?" Case asked, for the seventeenth time.

"Sheesh, you've asked me that seventeen times already," Peterson replied, tapping a few buttons on the keyboard.

"It's not everyday that a robot pops out of nowhere and starts shooting at me."

"True," replied Peterson, who then swatted the robots head to see if that would do anything. It didn't.

"I just want to know why it did it, that's all."

If Case had known why the robot did it, then he would know that it was bored, thought it might be fun and a good idea at the time.

The robot hadn't, however, expected Case to throw a brick at him.

The brick had many complex thoughts that would take humanity thousands of years to even begin to understand.

Peterson swatted the robot again. It did something.

But we'll get to that later.

******

During the past few millenia, the people of Barko have made many inventions.

Most of them have to do with blowing other people of Barko up or an easier way to get drunk. Sometimes both.


Now, between building better guns and getting drunk, the scientists of Barko created robots. Which brings something up:

Computers are only as smart as the person who made them.

People, however, are idiots.

So what you then get is many, many stupid robots.

Finally, one scientist said that it didn't apply to robots, and finally made a breakthrough.

He built a robot that gave the impression of being smarter, but really wasn't.

Now, what you have is many robots much smarter than man, but they only seem so.

Of course, the Pepsai Corporation just flipped off the scientific world and built a robot with an IQ of 3000 to run their hyperdrive ship.

This robot went mad.

But we'll come to that much, much later.

*****

Meanwhile, Peterson and Case watched a very shocking hologram play.

God was distressed.

One reason for this was someone had eaten his sandwich.

He had been very happy with that sandwich, especially with the very thing slices of six-chic that He had put on his sandwich. God had been looking very forward to eating that sandwich this morning, if someone had not beaten Him to it.

That ranked right up there with those two idiots eating his apples.

The other, and slightly more important, reason for his distress was the sudden dream He had last night that he was almost, but not entirely, certain meant the world was going to end.

This, of course, put him in a very foul mood.

*****

There are those who wonder, What does God look like?

There are also those who say that this is a blasphemy, but then most of those are too busy pointing out the evils of Harry Potter to really give a damn about what I say.

God is short, with a beak of a nose and wiry brown hair that is clearly beginning to recede*. He also has a pair of small, circular glasses that don't give a divine presence whatsoever.


This isn't that surprising, however, because God was really just a drug addict.

You see, God was addicted to a drug called Messiah. This was a very dangerous drug because you could become addicted to it just by the sight of it, which made things very difficult for the Police Force. One of the effects of Messiah is to make the user believe he was God.

Eventually, just before he was about to give up the drug for good, the results of a few feathers, some Messiah and an animal similar to a rhinoceros gave God a permanent belief that He was the greatest being in the universe.


*This wouldn't have been a problem if not for the TroGrain for Men riot of a 100 years prior, which inadvertently threw medical science back a few dozen decades just when they were on the edge of a breakthrough.

*****

"The world is going to end, and you heathens shall be wiped from universe and sent to eternal damnation!"

"Yes, yes, we know that already," replied Peterson. God was momentarily taken aback by this, but then decided that it was actually His divine will that Peterson and Case already know.

Peterson pressed a few buttons on a keyboard to see if he could get the robot to say something again. Of course, it didn't.

Case meanwhile was spending his time pacing back in forth in the middle of the room. He accidently knocked a pot holding a plastic plant over but didn't seem to notice. And the plant had been having such a nice day, too.

Peterson decided that now was a good time to slap the robot again. There was a buzz and the message began again. Everyone in the room paused as a hologram popped out of the robots chest and floated silently in the room.

The hologram was of another robot, resembling something of a floating gray volleyball with blue lights thrown about it and a large glowing one in the center that blinked whenever it talked.

"Hello," said the hologram. For some reason, Case felt rather calmed by the robot's voice even if he knew its intention. It sounded completely like someone much more intelligent and wise than he was.

"I," it continued, "am Beta 203889 of the Pepsai Corporation, created to head the development, flight, and basically everything to do with the starship Quincy. Though you can just call me 'Malcolm'," the robot paused and hummed slightly to itself, then finally, to prove that floating gray volleyballs could do it, nodded. "I also have an IQ of 3000, but even I don't know why the ship's name is Quincy."

"If you are hearing and probably seeing this message, although hearing is probably more important since seeing my bob around doesn't mean anything, then it seems that you have stumbled upon a little joke of mine. You see, having an IQ of 3000 means you have a hard time finding things to do, so I decided to put a hidden message about my evil plan inside this robot. You may ask why, but then you obviously don't have an IQ of 3000. If you did, you'd understand completely why I would," the robot paused for dramatic effect, "destroy the world!"

"You have two days," the robot giggled and faded away.

Case and Peterson stared in silence. God had gotten bored halfway through and was busy watching something very similar to the HoloNet.

"How," Case eventually said, "is it going to destroy the world?"

At this moment, due to forces unknown to man though familier to birds, the news broadcast increased in volume enough for everyone to hear.

"This just in, the Pepsai Corporation has finished installing the latest Kill-em-Good Destructo Gun, able to destroy an entire planet and takes enough power to keep a well sized country lit up for a thousand years!"

"Now that's what I call power, Pat. Also in news, twenty-five year old pop star Gloria Zales had a third breast surgically added to keep her one step ahead of the competition."

Those same forces decided that this was also important news, and kept the volume up.

Meanwhile, Case tried to think of something.

"Oh."

"Er..."

"Um."

"Why don't we steal the ship?" Peterson said.

Case blinked a few times in surprise, "Steal the ship? What do you mean, steal the ship?"

Peterson shrugged, "We steal it. That way it can't fire on Barko and kill us without us telling it to."

Case thought about this a second and decided that it was a good idea.

"But how are we going to steal it?" He asked.

"Simple. We join the crew."

"We what?"

"We join the crew. They'll take anyone. Already they've reported a few birds as senior officers. The ship's run completely by droids anyway. The crew's just there to try and act important."

Case was about to decide that the plan might work when one of the last people he wanted to see at that moment walked in.

You see, a year ago Case had done the dumbest thing in his life.

He'd fallen completely, hopelessly in love.

Exar choke slammed Silus, and sacrificed him...

A few decades before the few decades before the end of the old Republic, there was a band named P'La'Thor T'Gund'6. It was even harder to pronounce than it looks, which explains why very few people remember it.

The major reason they are remembered, which is the only one and they are not remembered, was the only show they ever performed sometime during those few decades before the few decades.

The performance was actually pretty boring, loud enough to have only killed three people. It was at the end of the show, however, when they crashed a rather flashy ship into a lightly inhabited but primitive planet in the Unknown Regions that made them slightly popular for about a month.

There had been cheering for about several minutes until the crowd finally went home after buying many, many over-priced t-shirts. After that, no one really cared anymore.

Meanwhile, the crash of the ship helped the primitive inhabitants of the planet leap forward technologically in a matter of weeks. Though it should be noted that a week on the planet was something close to a year.

They also worshipped the band as their god.

****

Years after the incident, the primitive inhabitants of the planet built a ship. This ship, which resembles a tour bus with rockets, would be used to send its crew into the divine and recieve a blessing from their gods.

After a long and hard journey, the people of the Tour Bus came upon another, and somewhat shinier ship. From here they learned the truth of what happened, and that the band had actually died in a crash a few months after.

They sulked, if a moving mass of tentacles can be said to sulk, back to the ship, ready to deliver the bad news.

The people had never gotten to hear the bad news, because during the time they were gone people under the religion of P'La'Thor T'Gund'7 had taken control of the planet and spread the correct name of their gods.

The ship was on its way to land when it was suddenly shot down. It crashed and wiped out all life on the planet for centuries.



There really is no point to this story, as it has nothing to do with the people of Barko.

Linda Bywater wasn't a particularly beautiful woman. She didn't have a face to launch a fleet of ships.

A few ships and a yacht, maybe.

That is, until she smiled. Which she did quite a lot.

And when Case had found out that this was attached to an intelligence, that night at the pub, it drove him crazy.

After a night of many drinks, lots of sex, Case was certain it would last forever.


Forever had lasted a total of four weeks, after which Linda informed him that she was going to focus on her career more (which also happened to be the same as Case's, and she was quite good at it, too), and took up a room next to the recovering Messiah addict.

That was more than a year ago.

There wasn't anything special about the robot. It looked to be about the size and shape of a normal human, like most other robots on Barko were. It was a dull bronze in colour, except until you got to the black screen where its eyes were supposed to be. Case remembered the screen showing, in a bright pink, something similar to human eyes and eyebrows. He couldn't think of a reason for this other than the robot's creator had gotten rather drunk that night and decided his creation needed to show a bit more emotion than 'point weapon here'. To look at, you really wouldn't have much trouble picking the robot out of a crowd.

Except for the expensive leather jacket the droid was wearing.

****

Everyone stared (except for God, that is, who was busy throwing a collection of rocks out the window at the sinners on the street below) as the droid began to shake. There was a low whirrr coming from the droids chest. This continued for a few moments before the robot just stopped moving and the whirrring stopped.

Then there was another whirrr and then a rather loud bang and the robot's little screen lit on.

"..." it said.

There was a long silence as everyone stared at the screen. Then, finally, a new message flashed.

"Assessing situation.... complete. Initializing 'Get my ass outta here' protocol."

The robot shot up onto his legs so fast it startled Case, giving the robot enough time to deliver a quick punch to Peterson's chin, flipping him over the chair. In one fluid motion, the droid pulled his blaster from the holster and fired three times into each of the human's chests. That is, he would have fired if there was a blaster in his hand. Instead, he just kind of made twitching motions with his finger.

"What the hell?" said the droid, looking down at his hand. Case pulled the robot's blaster out of his pocket, where he had put it after hitting the machine on the head with a brick.

"You mean this?"

A pair of squinting eyes appeared on the small little screen while the robot examined the blaster. Sure that it was his, the eyes then flashed to ones of shock and then anger.

"Goddammit!" the droid shouted.

"I most certainly will not," said God, who was passing by while He looked for His other collection of rocks. Unable to find any, He decided on a bottle of laundry detergent and went back to the window.

Case, meanwhile, pointed the blaster at the droid while coming up with another plan. The robot grumbled and a pair of eyes rolled on the screen.

"Put your hands up," Case said.

The robot put his hands up. "You know, I don't need my hands to kill you."

"Shut up," Case replied and went on to explain the near end of the world and their plan on how to stop it.

"And," he said after he was finished, "you won't get shot if promise to not to kill us and help us save the world."

The robot stared at him.

"I can't even kill one of you?"

"Nope."

"Just toss one out the window? I wouldn't be killing you then, the ground will."

Case shook his head.

"Not even a broken-"

"No."

The robot seemed to have a painful internal struggle with itself, after which it finally nodded.

"Fine. I'll help you on your stupid mission."

Case handed the blaster back, after which the robot then pointed it at him. After a while his muttered a curse and holstered the weapon, saying something about how he had 'wished the brick had broken that'.

"I'll meet you stupid monkeys in hangar bay seventeen tomorrow, then." The robot said, pulling out his blaster again.

"Wait, where are you going?"

"Have you seen what I'm wearing?" replied the robot as if it made perfect sense. It then raised the gun at the door, fired a few times and blasted a very large hole in it. It then gave a robotic sigh and left through the hole.

"Hangar bay seventeen?" Case thought out loud.

"Probably after hangar bay sixteen," said Linda.

"Oh," replied Case.

"Urgh," agreed Peterson.

"Yar!" shouted God as He threw an empty bottle out the window.

"Surname?"

"Case."

"First name?"

"I told you, it's Case."

"Your name is Case Case?"

"No, Case Lightjumper."

The poor unfortunate soul who, due to an event at a pub a few years back, was damned by god made his fourth correction of the afternoon. While he did this, Case leaned back and read the sign hand on the roof a few feet behind him.

It said, "!YADOT NIOJ .ERUTNEVDA NA SYAWLA :YCNIUQ PIHSRATS EHT .ECIFFO TNEMTIURCER NOITAROPROC IASPEP"

"Date of birth?"

"Unknown."

"What do you mean?"

"I was found."

"Er, found?"

"You know, in a box?"

"Okay... well how old are you?"

"About thirty."

"I'll put down the fourth of Turksden*, then. Qualifications?"

"Erm," Case thought for a second, "a GND."

The man in front of him wrote it in.

"But that doesn't count, does it?"

"Why?"

"Because I failed."

The man sighed and scratched something out again. "Well, if you would just look at this and sign where it's required." He began talking on something similar to a Comlink, but bulkier and required a three-year training program to even understand how to make the damn thing turn on.

Case looked over the form and let out a low whimper. He was signing up for four years. Four very long years. Of course, he could always go AWOL. Case's mood perked up a bit and he signed the form.

The man took the form and switched off the Communicater. "Right, well, there's only one position open for someone of your abilities."

"What are my abilities?"

"You haven't got any. You'll be a technician then."

Case let out a long whistle. Impressive.

"Now that everything is taken care of, you can take your bags and head over to the shuttles. They'll be leaving for the ship soon. Oh, but you'll have to go through a few tests and have your personality recorded."

"Yeah, yeah," replied Case, already on his way.

*Like the month of May, if the Barko system were similar to our own. It isn't, so it's not like the month of May at all. No one knows why it is called Turksden. It's just one of those things.

****

Peterson was already waiting for him. Linda, God and the droid had left already.

"Had any trouble?" Case asked.

"Nope."

"Really? Not even with your name?"

"No. What's wrong with my name?"

"Well, it's just Peterson."

"Oh, right. No trouble."

"What about your, um, condition?" To say Peterson likes to drink isn't just an understatement, it also makes those little creatures that live under statements come out and slap you. He had started when he was twelve, and hasn't really stopped since.

"Not a problem," replied Peterson.

"Oh, okay. So what are you... a technician?"

"First Lieutenant."

"Oh, I see," Case said, nodding.

"Yourself?"

"Captain."

***

"I think I'm going to be sick," Peterson said. He was.

"Yarrghhhhhhh."

"Yuuuuuuuurrghhhhhhh."

There was a pause.

"YAAAAAARRGGGHHHHH!"

"Yurgh," he said and wiped his mouth. "That's better."

Peterson and Case had been stopped by one of the guards, who made Peterson drink the twenty cans of whiskey he had in his bag or pay a tax on it. Peterson had chosen the former, and now Case was busy dragging him along to the different exams. They were poked with needles and gave bodily fluids (Peterson had given rather more body fluids than required, and nobody was pleased); there were hand-to-eye coordination work and genetic fingerprinting. There was also IQ exam, which told Case nothing he didn't already know. Then they were both marched to the computer decks of the station that floated above Barko.

Case watched a couple of people smarter than he was record his every memory and personality trait onto a holodisk for storage on the ship's computer. What little ego Case had dropped when he saw it. It was so small.

Peterson's recording had crashed three times, the computer repeating, "Non-living lifeform" over and over. On the fourth, it had decided what the hell, and recorded everything anyway. If the time ever came where Peterson was dubbed a vital member to the ship's crew, the computer would respawn him as a hologram with the mater and pater of all hangovers.

Mortimer hummed as he looked out of Quincy's main viewport at the planet Barko floating innocently* below him. His optics gazed over the greens of the rainforests (what was left of them, anyway), the orange of the deserts, the glowing lights of the cities like diamonds in, well, something not very shiny.

And every single one of those flickering lights was a person, with probably quite a few cares in the world as they went about their day, working at their silly little jobs while they destroyed their planet and ate their silly little foods and, Mortimer would have shuddered but being a robot there's really no point, mating.

It was only a small comfort that in just a few moments they were going to be dead. It wasn't that Mortimer hated humans. He just couldn't stand them. Being more intelligent than anyone else could do that to you.

"Captain?" He said, opening up her private comm.

"Oh, uh, yes?"

Of all the people he had to see and (again, he can't shudder) talk to, the stout woman that humanity named captain of the ship was one of the worst. She had about as much thinking power of a dead gerbil**.

".." said Mortimer.

"Come to think of it, there really isn't anything I wanted to tell. Goodbye," the robot triggered a switch and stopped the alarms. In seconds, all human life would be instantly vaporized thanks to a gas that grows in the arctic regions of Barko. There is probably some complex scientific reason for that, but there's only two things you need to know:

1. It kills people.

2. It does it quickly, which makes it a favorite for all sorts of evil doers who want a fast and much more efficient way of killing people than a shark tank.

At this point the Captain was going to give a rather intelligent reply that would make this whole story absolutely amazing and the sort of thing people talk about for years. Of course, she was killed.

*Well, not exactly innocently, since innocent and Barko go togethor about as much as a rhinoceros and, say, the moon. More like guilty but you don't know of what, yet.

**A three-headed flying lizard native to the swamps on Barko.



Case and Peterson entered, what they didn't know would be, the last shuttle to leave the station. The current other occupants waved to them.

"Hello."

"Hi."

"Nice to meet you."

There would have been names exchanged, but before the three had said anything they suddenly had a feeling like they were only needed to advance the plot a little bit, and really weren't important enough to bother.

"Hi. I'm Case and this is Peterson," Case said. Peterson waved and then threw up into the escape bay.

A droid, who was currently at the cockpit, turned around in his seat. "And I," it said in a voice that sounded like a chorus of hundreds were joining him, "am just a single part of the droid hive that makes up the ship computer Halley."

"I," it said in a regular voice. Regular voice for a droid, anyway, "can answer any question you have."

There were a few moments of silence before one of the unimportant characters who are only needed to advance the plot a little bit said, "Who holds the all-time record for a pass thrown in a Quatzball game?"

"David Lecter, thirty years ago when he played for the Salis Comets."

"What," said the man again, "colour tie was he wearing during the press conference where he announced he was going to retire?"

"Yellow with red stripes."

At this point everyone began asking questions, 'Who did's and 'When' and a few 'what's thrown in.

"Why," said Peterson, "is the room spinning?"

"Because you're drunk," replied Halley.

"That's riight," said Peterson, clapping excitedly.

Everyone then went to their seats. The rest of the flight after was uneventful. It was the crashing part that had all the excitement.

"We'll soon be arriving on HURGH," said Halley, and slumped forward. Everyone stood up and tried to figure out what was happening when the lights went out and the ship began to shudder. Peterson, of course, remained in his seat humming an old nursery rhyme.



Case's last sight, as he gazed out one of the ships windows, was of another shuttle, flying slightly ahead of him. That one didn't seem to have any light's either.

Then, the shuttles crashed.