The journey across the Omega Quadrant¹ was long and tedious. I'd run out of things to read – I'd even exhausted the back issues of the h2g2 Post – and was staring moodily out the window at an unprepossessing brownish planet which appeared to be completely uninhabited. My thoughts must have wandered because I didn't hear Marlowe coming up behind me until he spoke.

'This, too, has been one of the dark places of the universe.'

I sighed. 'I wish you'd quit saying that. It gets old quickly.' He chuckled drily. 'I suppose you intend to tell me all about it now?'

His eyes glinted. 'Unless you have something better to do….' So here's the tale.

A long time ago, the planet Brythron was a fairly thriving concern. It had some natural resources, which it exploited for export. It also had some manufacturing hubs, and the occasional Good Idea, which sold well, but made the local populace inordinately proud of themselves. In fact, Brythronians were usually convinced that only they had Good Ideas, and tended to reject those 'inferior' ideas that came from the Lesser Breeds on other planets. As the Brythronians actually had a Good Idea about once in a millennium, their culture was fairly stagnant, as you can imagine.

To make up for this, the Brythronians placed a great emphasis on two activities: celebrating Tradition and collecting things. A Tradition, in their view, was anything you'd done twice the same way. After that, the activity had to be repeated at suitable intervals in exactly the same way. Changing any detail would be 'breaking with Tradition', which was a bad thing. Collecting was just as important: collections were regarded as sacred, but only if they were 'complete'. The search for 'completeness' took up a lot of an adult Brythronian's leisure time. He'd tell you all about it, with pride and incredible detail, even when you begged him not to. For this reason alone, Brythronians were shunned by almost every other sentient race in the galaxy. Nobody ever invited them to parties.

Brythronians were convinced, on no evidence at all, that they were the most humorous people in the universe. They told jokes all the time – another reason for the unofficial ban on putting them on invitation lists. The problem was, they hated new jokes: new jokes broke with Tradition. So they collected old ones, which they called 'classic humour'. A Brythronian with a really good memory could recite three or four hours' worth of the Gigglegobble Prankworth Comedy Tree Hour without stopping. Other Brythronians would chime in enthusiastically on the ancient punchlines. This sort of activity was particularly prevalent when intoxicating substances were involved – see comment about parties.

Curiously, though, none of these proclivities was actually the one that brought down the planet Brythron. Instead, it was their Kiddie Lit.

Of all the things in which Brythron was convinced it excelled, the most treasured was its children's literature. Stories like Pyotr Karnickel, about a furry quadruped who routinely lasered the local human's garden patch in illegal harvest, were read and enjoyed by old and young. Tampering with this sacred text was verboten, as one director of a live-action film version discovered to his cost. His green-dyed corpse was found buried, head-down, in a vegetable garden, with a large seed-packet affixed to the stick protruding from his…but I spare you. Suffice it to say, the Brythronians took their children's literature very seriously indeed.

Most of the stories, whether about talking animals, magical people, or imaginary places, had the same themes in common:

• All the best talking animals and magical people were Brythronian, and the best imaginary places were just like home, only with magic. Evil persons and things always had something 'foreign' about them.
• Change was bad. Repeatable events, such as annual festivals and birthdays, appeared prominently, usually accompanied by 'bean feasts'.
• Sporting events were great ways to win popularity. Even if the sporting event involved 'magic' and/or took place in midair, it was still essentially a Brythronian sport – which means that it was very long and unequalled in tedium anywhere in the galaxy.
• Anything worth doing was worth animating – in as garish a colour palette as possible. Preferably with extremely cute songs.
• Most importantly: growing up was a bad thing. The most memorable song of the most popular Chizzelwart play on Brythron began, 'I won't grow up, I don't want to be a microchip designer, or a fooblerock miner, I want to fly a carpet to the Hidden Planet D'Arpeth…' You get the idea.

Brythronian children's literature was even more popular with Brythronian adults than with their children. After all, the children were still experiencing the period which adults regarded as the 'best years of their lives'. They were busy playing, growing, and having fun. Brythronian grownups, on the other hand, were in a continual state of mourning for their lost freedom, nostalgia for the past, and resentment of their current lives of work and responsibility. Which is what made it so easy for the Grunians.

The Grunians were a travelling species. Their own planet, D'Grun, had fallen victim to a supernova many eons ago. Now they travelled the spaceways in fantastically-decorated emporium ships, selling everything from sewing notions to nuclear power stations (some assembly required). They were not always the most honest of trading partners, which was why the Galactic Better Business Bureau had them on their permanent Manure List. As it happened, one day the Grunian Board of Directors decided to add Brythron to its list of vict….er, satisfied customers, and did a marketing survey. Soon, they approached the planet with a offer they couldn't refuse.

But which they definitely should have.

One day this advert appeared on all vidscreen channels throughout Brythron:

Technical Note²

To sum up: A KidUrSelf Kit allowed adults to physically regress to childhood by hugging their favourite toy. The built-in psychotronic circuits activated certain neural pathways which....oh,never mind. To restore adulthood, all the KidUrselfer had to do was to think adult thoughts. The device was cheap, fun, and perfectly safe when used as directed.

Brythronians leapt at the chance. Within minutes of the advert's first airing, telecom lines were lighting up at the local Hippolitan order centres: do-it-yourself KidUrSelf Kits literally flew off the shelves – they were equipped with InstaDrone technology, but still, they were really, really popular. Brythronian adults everywhere began spending first their weekends, then their evenings, and then their lunch hours regressing to their childhoods.

It wasn't too long before the problem of absenteeism become acute at workplaces everywhere. Productivity took a nosedive. At the same time, the number of citations issued to parents for child endangerment skyrocketed, as adults ignored the needs of their own offspring in order to revel in nostalgia.

Even the KidUrSelfers themselves weren't happy. When they were real children, after all, there were adults for them to look to: to beg for ice creams, trips to the zoo, horsey rides… Their own children unobligingly refused to play mother and father to these temporary brats. In fact, it was only the fear of reprisal when the brats became adults again that prevented many a resentful Brythronian pre-teen from thumping these overaged invaders. So the KidUrSelfers were definitely in the market for some way to enhance their experience, while the kids were in the market for some new grownups.

Fortunately, the government came up with a solution. As government solutions usually go, it looked really promising on paper. The idea was to take advantage of the Brythronian love of Tradition. A new holiday would be instituted: KidUrSelf Day. On this day, it would be Traditional for all adults to turn themselves into children for a whole day, sunrise to sunset. But preparations would have been made. Theme parks, Please Touch museums, arcades, cinemas, water parks, safari parks, ice cream parlours, panto theatres, toy stores, and anything else a Brythronian child could want would be made available to both KidUrSelfers and Genuine Kids. It would fun for the whole family, and all free (paid for by a small increase in the income tax, of course). Civilisation would not suffer: it would just take a holiday.

And who, you may ask, would be running the theme parks, Please Touch museums, cinemas, water parks, safari parks, ice cream parlours, panto theatres, toy stores, and such, while the entire population of Brythron was busy indulging their inner children? Why, the Grunians, of course. They generously offered to step in and run the country's entertainment centres for a quite reasonable fee, the government felt. All was agreed, announcements made, flyers sent out, and colours and menus decided on for the new Tradition. Brythronians were very excited.

Came the great day, and all was as wonderful as imagined. Brythronians, having regressed themselves by means of their favourite psychotronically-enhanced toys, took their offspring by the hand. Together, they marched into the theme parks, Please Touch museums, cinemas, water parks, safari parks, ice cream parlours, panto theatres, and toy stores, where they had a wonderful time. Everyone agreed that KidUrSelf Day would be the best Tradition ever. On the way home, they sang all the old favourite songs: 'My Old Man's a Computer Geek,' 'One Day the School Burned Down, But Did I Care?', and the ever-popular '9,999 Bottles of Gaggleberry Juice on the Wall'. They reached their homes, tired but happier than they had been since puberty set in.

That, of course, is when the Grunians sprang their trap. While the clueless Brythronians were playing, the Grunians had been busy working. They'd taken over the infrastructure of the planet and changed all the access codes to everything   – government databases, traffic signals, CCTV cameras, airport ground control, spaceports, communication systems, you name it. All was now in Grunian hands. Plundering Grunian hands. The traders stole everything that wasn't nailed down – and a fair amount that was. (They had a lot of leftover digging equipment.)

As soon as the Brythronians realised their plight, the KidUrSelfers tried to turn back into adults in order to regain control of their planet. That is when they realised how diabolical the Grunian trap really was. They couldn't turn back. No matter how hard they tried. No matter what they thought of: taxes. Medical plans. Home repairs. Washing up to be done. Nothing helped restore them. The Grunians had taken care of that with KidUrself Day. The Brythronians had overdosed so badly on cotton candy and Brighton Rock and childhood thoughts that their brains had overloaded. The state induced by the field generators inside the teddies, intended to be temporary, was now permanent.

The Grunians very kindly went around scooping up regressed Brythronians. They used their police vans and emergency vehicles and school buses. They left the real children behind: after all, they would eventually grow up. The erstwhile adults were taken away in the departing Grunian ships – headed for faraway planets which had no laws against child labour. After all, a work force that was too small to fight back, and would never get any older, was a very attractive commodity in some quarters. The galaxy was wilder and rougher then.

When this was all over, I rolled my eyes. 'I don't believe a word of this, of course,' I began. 'But say I suspend disbelief for a moment. What happened to the Brythronian children who were left behind?'

Marlowe sighed. 'They dragged themselves up, as kids with irresponsible parents have done since the dawn of time,' he said. 'They became sober, serious adults, and excellent parents themselves. They were good to their children, but never fetishised childhood. They outlawed animated films, clowns, and day-glo amusement rides.'

He looked reflectively down at the old, brown planet now passing in our wake. 'And there was the biggest bonfire of kiddie books you've ever experienced. They say you could see the smoke rising from space.'

Dmitri Gheorgheni

25.06.18 Front Page

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