Planet Eve: The Tale of a Sprout Read online

Planet Eve: The Tale of a Sprout

  Helen Rusinoff

  Copyright 2012 Helen Rusinoff

  https://zombiecompany.wordpress.com/

  Table of Contents

  Planet Eve

  Oslo

  Oslo's Brilliant Idea

  Flying

  The Floating Army of Ubrik

  Evol

  Morning

  Night

  The Rebel

  Land

  Sundown

  The End

  Planet Eve

  Long, long ago, when Oslo was still a very young Sprout and was incapable of complex calculations, critical thinking, or any other kind of harm, there was a beautiful planet called simply, Planet Eve. It was mostly covered by ice, as it was orbiting a bit too far away from the Big Star.

  Oh, the Sprouts still lived there, but, as you can imagine, it was always winter on Eve, and so it was always very cold. The Sprouts made good use of Planet Eve by setting up various ski resorts and attracting travelers to visit Eve with bold advertisements that were suspended in space just above the planet.

  You could see the shiny Northern Lights from anywhere on Eve and didn't even have to go to either of the Poles: they'd play beautifully like multi-colored cold flames across the sky, reflecting off the glistening, ice-covered surface of the planet.

  But that was really, really long ago. All the Sprouts that gave rise to Oslo hadn't even sprouted yet back then.

  Alas, Planet Eve wasn't meant to remain cold and frozen forever. One day, Eve was hit by a big, icy Comet, which brought her closer to the Big Star.

  The Sprouts felt the big jolt and had prepared themselves for the melting of the oceans by building various boats and floating resorts and hotels. They also changed their advertisement billboards from "Excellent Ski Slopes" to "Aquatic Hotel and Spa."

  Soon all of Eve's ice melted and turned into a humongous ocean. Among all the vast stretches of sparkling, warm ocean there floated a multitude of islands and vast continents. They formed what we came to know as the different countries of Planet Eve: Maritania, Malaria, Ubrik, Canadia and Asbestos, among a few others that we shall not mention here for the sake of brevity.

  The different lands were settled by the Sprouts over the next several hundred years. There were wars over the new territory, in which some Sprouts defeated other Sprouts and took over their countries. When all the Sprouts had finished their fighting, they settled down and sprouted, and here, right then and there, here, is when the Sprouts that sprouted Oslo were first sprouted.

  The Sprouts who lived in all the different countries discovered that their lands contained large deposits of Magnet and other important metals, and they began mining them. Sometimes they'd go to war with their neighbors to claim territories which had more Magnet in them.

  Life for the Sprouts was overall and generally good on Planet Eve: there was peace, war, then peace, then again war, and so on and so forth.

  One day, however, Eve's neighbor, Planet Adam, went off course for unknown reasons and crashed into Eve. Possibly, it was a comet or a very big asteroid that caused Adam to fly off like a giant billiard ball, veering away from his usual path around the Big Star, but, regardless of the cause, the result was that Adam headed straight for Eve.

  Adam was small, dense and rocky, and crashed into Eve's ocean at very high speed. There was a big splash and a rattle as he hit the ocean's surface, sending up a giant water jet into space. (This event was subsequently recorded by the Sprouts as The Big Splash.)

  Eve wobbled, but remained in her orbit.

  Unfortunately for the inhabitants of Eve, Adam was made primarily of Magnet. He was pretty solid and the impact did not shatter him at all. He was just stuck like a giant golf ball in Eve's crust.

  All the land masses on Planet Eve began to drift toward Adam as a result of his magnetic quality, so that within a single night all the different countries and islands had drifted to one point and formed one giant landmass.

  The Sprouts, who had just survived one catastrophe, woke up that morning to find themselves in the middle of quite another: all of them could see the bits and pieces of their neighbors' countries drifting next to them.

  Fragments of Canadia drifted right next to Maritania, next to which drifted Asbestos and Malaria. A few smaller islands, which had less iron in them, arrived later that afternoon. They were greeted with some bitterness by all the inhabitants of the larger land mass.

  The new land that formed around the remains of Adam was, technically speaking, now one big continent. The new landmass was fairly round in shape, and Sprout geologists hastily renamed it Pancakegea.

  Now came the difficult task of dividing up the landmass into countries. Maritania, which was the smallest country in its day but had won the most magnet and iron, claimed most of the land for itself, but that was quickly disputed. Besides, everyone was also catching everyone else's colds, and the meetings were frequently interrupted by obnoxiously loud sneezing and profuse nose blowing.

  It was a rather tedious process, as you can imagine. No one could think straight for days, or even go to war, which would be natural enough, but the rampant influenza epidemic, and the lack of territorial divisions which could be fought over, were major obstacles for the Sprouts.

  Finally, the continent of Pancakegea was divided into equal sized slices, like a giant pizza or apple pie, one equal slice for each country. It seemed fair enough. Some wanted to divide up Pancakegea into square pieces, but measuring out a circle into equal-sized squares proved to be an extremely difficult task. After a lot of arguing and sneezing, the decision was finally made.

  For a while, it was really, really peaceful, even disturbingly so. Not a single gunshot or explosion rang out over the next few weeks. It was so quiet… it was even scary.

  All the prime ministers, dictators, presidents, generals, and other leaders of the free world gathered at the Center to discuss the new situation. (The conference was scheduled to meet at the Center because being at the Center meant that everyone was in everyone else's country at the same time, so starting a war right then and there was a really, really bad idea.)

  At last, Fidel Cassavettes, the ruler of Asbestos, sighed sadly and said: "All this peace is just terrible!"

  "I know," replied Jackie LeSaint, who was the president of what remained of Canadia. "It's like there's nothing to do anymore!"

  Alas, peace was not to last long on Eve. One day, Maritania declared war on Canadia, whose slice of Pancakegea had a good deal of iron in it, and to war they went. Maritania conquered Canadia pretty fast and took over its precious metal deposits. From there, Maritania went on to conquer Canadia's neighboring country, Asbestos, and then Malaria and Trafalgarden, and Connectipolia, and then Ubrik.

  Ubrik turned out to be the toughest country to conquer because it had an excellent navy, which operated under its main hotel chain. The army boarded floating hotels and just sailed off. When Maritanian soldiers arrived in Ubrik, there was no one left there to defend it, or to conquer. Maritania then proceeded to peacefully take over Ubrik and subsequently mine out its scanty deposits of Magnetium.

  The greedy Maritania liked to keep its stockpile of iron and other metals in one place, which is reasonable enough, but it was a major mistake: one day, the weight of all the iron that was piled up in warehouses around Maritania and its nearest neighboring countries took its toll, and sank slowly into the sea, simultaneously sinking the land with it. Thus, a good half of the apple pie that was Pancakegea became submerged beneath the ocean, with only a few tall mountain peaks sticking out above the surface of the water.

  The Maritanians and their conquered subjects fled the sinking land and ended up on what remain
ed of Pancakegea: and it was not a lot. The last few slices were now severely overcrowded. The Floating Army of Ubrik returned just in time and took some of the extra Sprouts onboard, but even with their big capacity and excellent hotel accommodations, the ships could carry and sustain only so many.

  The others were stuck, for the time being, with their former enemies. Maritanians were still very much disliked and their presence was unwelcome. Frequent fights broke out between them and their unwilling hosts.

  Oslo

  Meanwhile, Oslo had already began to sprout. In fact, he sprouted rather unexpectedly in the middle of the summer. His parents were far away at the time. The Sprouts do not hatch their children as some mammals and humans do, for example. Sprouts pick a safe place to leave their seeds until they sprout, and then off they go on their own way.

  Oslo's parents were both Asbesto-Maritanian, and, quite logically, so was Oslo. As soon as