Gorp

“Gorp”

By: Jake Roberts

The planet of Gorp is your standard, three-dimensional, life bearing planet. An atmosphere composed primarily of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Water, major landmasses, trees, and all that jazz. In fact, Gorp was very similar to Earth in the fact that the dominant life forms were intelligent, and had active and vivid imaginations.

However, there was one key difference: on the planet of Gorp, the use of one’s imagination was severely restricted by the domineering government. Every dwelling was equipped with a number of devices that monitored the brain activity and patterns of every inhabitant. Anyone caught using their imagination was severely punished, by one of two means - a transorbital lobotomy, or death. The choice of punishment was entirely based on the enforcing officers mood, so needless to say, death was the primary means of enforcement.

Now, the primary reason for this punishment is due to the fact that a great scientist of the planet Gorp, known as Gopter Galazuk, theorized and later proved that all things created within one’s imagination came to be a reality at the center of the universe. Gopter explained that this was the reason for the universe’s exponential rate of expansion. With each new product of someone’s imagination, the added mass made it necessary for the universe to “make room”. Gopter later came to the conclusion, that unless the planet of Gorp put a stop to the use of imagination, the universe would stretch beyond it’s limits and implode. A frightful tragedy indeed…

200 years after this discovery, and 178 years after the Imagination Prevention Acts (IPA) were put in place, the planet of Gorp was a monotonous, but functioning society. People had come to terms with their place in life, and had been taught from an early age how to repress their vivid imaginations.

However, at the household of Gerky and Glema, the planet of Gorp suffered its first major tragedy. The story goes like this:

At the youthful age of 173 and 145 years, Gerky and Glema conceived their first child, and this child was named God. God was an unusual child, bearing only 3 eyes instead of the common 4, and having only two arms and two legs, instead of four. Needless to say, poor God suffered in his formative years. Constant ridicule and snide comments made this boy very withdrawn. And on the planet of Gorp, being withdrawn was practically a mark of death. Without the constant distraction of meaningless gossip, fitful arguments, and childhood love, repressing your imagination was as difficult as pulling a hippopotamus out of your ass.

So needless to say, Gerky and Glema were very concerned about their son. God often ran home crying out of his three eyes ‘Why can’t we use our imaginations? Why are we stuck in these primitive cages of reality?”.

Gerky scolded “repressing your imagination is for the good of all Gorpians! It’s for the good of the entire universe! Stop being so fucking selfish, grow a quad (because male Gorpians had four testicles instead of two) and deal with it!”.

God ran out of the tube (equivalent of a earthling house) and into the woods. Gerky leaned over and kissed Glema’s head, sighing “He better get his head on straight, or we have to spend another two years conceiving a son…”

God sat in the woods, crying away, sitting in the fetal position, and actively struggling to repress his imagination. God finally gave up. After seeing this terrible thing that had happened to his planet, he did the unthinkable. In just two hours, God unleashed his imagination! He thought of a world, very similar to his own, where the dominant creatures had two arms and two legs, just like him. However, he only gave them two eyes, so that God, with his three eyes, would be the “normal” one, and all those creatures would be freaks. God imagined that all these people worshipped him, creating an entire religion that revolved around himself. God wanted to be in control, so he imagined a planet in which it was so. God even created something he called “the Holy Trinity”, which dedicated specifically to the triangular shape of his eyes.

And then God did the one thing that would end his world, and in time the entire universe. God gave his creations unlimited use of “imagination”…

Just as God added that finishing touch to his masterpiece, a narrow spike entered his back and exited through his neck. But, I can tell you one thing dear reader; that poor bastard died with a smile on his face.

God was killed because the sensors at Gerky and Glema’s household caught a whiff of the imagination use, and authorities promptly arrived, killing Gerky and Glema on the spot without hesitation. However, it wasn’t until after the couple was killed that the authorities realized the use of imagination was continuing. Woops. Using two portable sensors, the authorities triangulated the source, found God, and disposed of him just as they did his parents. However, the damage was done…

At Gopter’s Lab, he noticed the universe was expanding faster than ever before. At this alarming rate, the universe would collapse in exactly 2,012 years. Even after the source of the imagination boom was located, efforts to reach and neutralize the planet were fruitless. Because of the unlimited use of imagination that God’s “humans” had, the efforts to traverse the universe were like swimming up a river with a hateful current: slow and tedious, and usually ending in failure. The few ships that did manage to make it were identified by the humans as “UFO’s” and secretly destroyed by the human governments. All efforts to destroy the planet were abandoned after hundreds of attempts, and the Gorpians were resigned to their fate.

The imagination of one young Gorpian, known as God, gave me life, put these words on this page, and in two years, will promptly take them away forever.