51 Planets to See Before the Universe Collapses

Vlochenpu (vlok-ehn-poo)

Scort Muggins, Human year 3251:

So as it turns out, Ertawons can regrow themselves. That biology wouldn’t help the thousands of Eratwons that drowned, but it could resurrect Luskem. I put Luskem’s leg in the passenger seat and buckled it in. (See Figure 9.1) I wasn’t sure how long it would be until I had a copilot and it was a full Ertawon again. Even though I knew Luskem would be okay now, I didn’t know that fact when Luskem blew up, and the trauma of the war was still hanging over me…

I was distraught. I was angry. I was depressed. I felt guilty. I was anxious. I was riddled with anxiety and haunted by nightmares. The PTSD from Ertaw was relentless. The one Plysmorphian food crumb a sol failed to keep it at bay. I shouldn’t have gone to Vlochenpu right after. 

I arrived on Vlochenpu during the daytime. At least, I thought it was daytime. It was very hard to navigate because there was an extremely heavy fog seemingly all across the planet. I saw some powerful, bright lights shining through the mist like the Vlochenputians didn’t know that they should’ve been using low beams in the fog. I slowly inched my way to a landing dock. I was guided in by green creatures with skinny features. Their many hands were large and flat like a paddle and connected to the whole by skinny appendages, as was the same for their several feet paddles. They resembled plant life, but had no problem walking around, seamlessly swapping their hands for feet and vice versa. (See Figure 9.2) These Vlochenputians were like a bunch of tumbling bushes, most of which were larger than me. I was curious how much they weighed, but thought it rude to ask. 

It was so humid there that I struggled to breath, but I was told that I would gradually get used to it. On top of that, real food wasn’t a Vlochenputian specialty. They gathered nutrients from the ground, but they had just started their tourism business so they began making what they thought resembled food. Barely resembled. It tasted like dirt, but I guess that’s what you’d expect from Vlochenpu. I didn’t eat much. I hadn’t had an appetite since Ertaw. I rested up until the evening, when my hunting expedition was scheduled. I met the Vlochenputian that was my personal guide, and we set off on a hovering vehicle that was a half-sphere with an open top. 

My guide began preparing weapons as we got closer to our destination. The Vlochenputian went into detail about the weapons explained all of the safety regulations and blah blah blah. I was ready to hunt. I thought it would help me resolve my PTSD issues. The hover vehicle stopped, and I grabbed one of the weapons. There was nothing to shoot at. We were surrounded by dense forest on all sides and one giant tube coming from the ground right in front of us. It wasn’t exactly just a tube, though. It was living flaurna [Note: Flaurna is a term I use when I’m unable to differentiate between flora or fauna.] that was a purplish pink and it would twitch every so often like it was struggling to hold something back. I told my guide that this was the just the worst - so dumb. I wasn’t going to be shooting at plants for fun. The Vlochenputian made a weird, high-pitched shrieking sound that I assumed to be a scoff.

“Have a little patience, Scort,” my guide scolded.

It had been a long time since I thought patience was a virtue, and I wasn’t about to start thinking it now. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait a second longer for night to arrive. Just when the light of the nearest star fully went away, the purplish pink tube lit up with a neon glow. The neon light moved from the bottom of the tube to the top in a repeated pattern of waves. Buh buh… buh… buh buh. When one of the waves hit the top of the tube, a burst of small balls, varying in bright color, popped out of the tube. It was like a firework of spores. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. I wasn’t able to fully enjoy it before…

“START FIRING SCORT. GO GO GO!!!” yelled the Vlochenputian guide.

I was so confused about what I was supposed to be firing at until all of the floating spores opened their dozens of eyes and began flying toward us. 

My weapon was a rapid-fire, highly-focused proton blaster that exploded on impact. The explosion wasn’t big, but it would take out a group of about ten spores. The rapid fire was what really took out a lot of spores. I was killing about a hundred a second, but that was nothing compared to how many spores were coming out of the tube. My guide was firing a different weapon that had fewer shots per second, but the explosion was much much bigger. The Vlochenputian was aiming for all of the highly concentrated areas. It was clear that my guide had been doing this for a while. We were joined by two other hovering vehicles that began shooting at the onslaught of demon spores.

The noise of the blasts immediately brought me back to the battle on Ertaw. I fell backward and started sweating, paralyzed by fear. My guide was yelling at me but I couldn’t hear him. I could only see the faces of the Ertawons plummeting to their death in the ocean and drowning. I could only see the face of my Ertawon friend, Luskem, as its entire body exploded on impact from an enemy blast. My guide shoved a second gun into my arms and slapped me across the face with one of his paddle leaf hands. I was brought back to reality from my crippling nightmare and got back up to start firing again, now enraged with fury and uncomfortable from soiling myself. I was angry at the universe for what happened to Luskem, my first real friend, but not the first person the universe had stolen from me. I was angry that the universe took my mother from me, lost to an endless river of pills. I was angry that the universe took my father from me… but the universe didn’t take my father. My father left. And his leaving was really the reason my mother got addicted to pills. And his disappearance was really the reason I went on this trip and met Luskem in the first place. I wasn’t angry at the universe. I was angry at my father. 

I began to see my father’s face in the cloud of demon spores rushing toward us. They were about to overtake us; I was sure of it. My Vlochenputian guide handed me a device with a button on it and told me to push it before we were engulfed in the sea of spores. Flirk yeah I wanted to push that button. I wasted no time. As soon as I pushed it, a mushroom cloud of fire, smoke, and glowing shreds of flaurna erupted from the tube and disintegrated my father’s face. It was beautiful. I had never felt such power in the palm of my hands. I had never felt such control. For a moment, I felt free from my PTSD and the weight of my daddy issues, but I still had to find my father so social media would stop blaming my mom and I for his disappearance.   

As we rode back from the forest, my guide explained to me that the tubes had been all over the planet at one point and were close to taking over until the Spore Wars took place. [Note: The Spore Wars lasted two hundred years and took the lives of 1.1 billion Vlochenputians.] The few tubes that were still around were hunted for sport - sport that healed or worsened symptoms of PTSD. It had done a little bit of both for me.

RATINGS

Hospitality — 5/10
Food — 1/10
Sights — 7/10
Activities — 8/10
Family Friendly — 3/10
Explosions — 10/10