A Happy Ending
Krung adjusted the breathing apparatus, knowing full well that no matter how much he fiddled it would never fit properly. Well, properly enough that he could still breathe but not enough for it to feel a part of him rather than a hindrance. But it wasn’t a surprise that it didn’t and couldn’t fit. After all, this was his father’s space ship, the XR-949. A ship designed specifically for his father and forged in the depths of the Alpha system, a biomechanical confection that seemed to have merged with his very soul.
And it needed to. For Krung’s father was Hachoo, Destroyer of Worlds, Creator of Black Holes and Assassin of Dying Stars. In order to dispatch such mighty targets, the XR-949 was suitably equipped with a rather powerful weapon that could do just that i.e. destroy worlds, create black holes and assassinate (or simply remove) dying stars. The most impressive part of this was that the XR-949 was only the size of a grain of rice. Hachoo, a giant amongst the Pyongee people of outer Alpha Centauri, was miniscule. Entire solar systems containing billions of life forms had perished without ever knowing quite what had hit them. Nor how small it was. Why Hachoo and the Pyongee had to destroy worlds etc etc was never really discussed back home. It was just something that they had always done and always would.
Krung had assumed the whole rigmarole and destruction of worlds etc etc was somehow related to breeding. It appeared that only the largest and most aggressive males were chosen for these missions and thus acquired numerous females to perpetuates their broods. Krung was not large and had a tendency to whimper in the dark. All in all, he was a disappointment to his father who had chosen to shower his affections upon the remaining 27 other males he had sired.
Krung was now an adolescent and keen to prove to Hachoo just how capable he was. For years he had watched his father in XR-949, eavesdropped on the demonstrations given to the other sons before his inevitable discovery and ejection back to the remaining brood nest. How the most powerful weapon in XR-949 worked was unknown to Krung but he was aware that the large red button on the dashboard was some sort of ‘On’ switch. What he also found out was that the designers had assumed no one would be foolhardy enough to cross Hachoo so hadn’t really considered the intricacies of a security system.
Earlier that morning Krung had unscrewed a side panel in the cockpit and hotwired XR-949.
He was now zipping across the universe, shaking slightly with fear. Whether at the prospect of the beating he would receive from Hachoo when he got home or at the inevitability of the death he would bring to billions was unclear. Krung wasn’t quite in the right frame of mind for some critical self-reflection. What he did want to do was try out the weapon before unleashing it upon an entire solar system. A small planet maybe, one that no one would notice was missing. The XR-949’s scanner had picked up just such a planetary body. Rather a new one, it seemed. There was no life on it just yet, just a whole lot of hydrogen and oxygen combined into liquid form. The whole thing looked like a blue marble floating in the darkness.
This was the perfect first target and in a discrete enough corner of the universe that it could be ignored if everything went horribly wrong.
Krung blasted through the atmosphere and the XR-949 made its way down to the surface of the ocean. He cruised above the swell, marvelling at the expanse of… expanse of… well, wateryness, before the breathing apparatus slipped off – AGAIN – bringing him out of his reverie. Focus, focus. That’s what Hachoo would do: focus on the terrible task in hand rather than admiring the scenery.
Krung leant forward and pressed the red button.
The weapon went “Phut”.
Krung went “…”
The XR-949 exploded and went “Pop”.
Poor Krung had been too close to his intended target by a good few light years. Another part of Hachoo’s knowledge he had missed out on.
The microscopic crumbs that remained of the weapon, the XR-949, Krung and his foolhardy ambition fell into the water. Seconds later they were spread around the planet by the explosion’s shockwaves that sent ripples hundreds of metres high across the ocean and back again. It would have been impressive if anything had been around to see it. On the plus side, Krung’s misadventure and the resulting chemical reactions between Krung and the water did bring about life on Earth.
So it wasn’t all a complete disaster. One could even call it a happy ending.
