Minerva’s Odyssey

Chapter 1


     Chapter One: The Mysterious Crash Landing Among the distant traces of geostationary orbit around the Jovian world of Jupiter, there certainly was much activity that spelled out complete hazard. For there was a war being fought against two separate groups, the first being self-proclaimed sentinels of the entire galaxy and the second being a country – a universe-wide country – whose government had become extraordinarily corrupt through many respects. The reason for fighting around Jupiter was quite obvious, it was there in which the sentinels kept a fueling depot for their five kilometer long wonder, Big Bang 1. Their fueling depot contained antimatter fuel necessary to power Big Bang 1 and had been sought by the politically corrupt country to destroy it, for the corrupt country had feared antimatter usage as a fuel, but mostly as a warhead fuel.

     While not in Jupiter’s geostationary orbit, the antimatter refueling depot was located deep in the Jovian system at Lagrange Point One between Jupiter and its volcanic satellite Io. Though envisioned by many who’ve never seen Big Bang 1 before to be a structure larger than it’s only occupying customer, the antimatter refueling depot was roughly only two sevenths as long as its customer. Along the entire exterior, thousands of pipelines covered the minute fueling depot, most labeled for either conveying matter or antimatter to two separate pumps that spanned several hundreds of meters wide.

     Now why the fighting was occurring within Jupiter’s geostationary orbit rather than the Lagrange Point One between Jupiter and Io, it was completely uncertain, though predictable. As it could possibly be predictable, it was most likely a place where both groups met unplanned. Their meeting, however, was quite a violent one, for within seconds of visually discovering each other, both groups couldn’t resist using overpowering force against their vessels. And thus, nuclear war had settled within Jupiter’s geostationary orbit as it was the only reasonable warfare to conduct within an environment that contained no atmosphere whatsoever – or perhaps within a magnetosphere.

     As their nuclear war relocated from being in a high altitude geostationary orbit into a lower geostationary orbit, it became too apparent that Big Bang’s survival was very bleak indeed as it suffered greatly along its entire four kilometer long spine. While the spine had no living quarters, it was a completely important component of the ship, for it provided propulsion by thrusting all annihilated particles from its particle-antiparticle annihilation unit into space. In many respects, it had a similar appearance to an entire block of Swiss cheese as there were numerous holes that leaked plasma particles.

     Whether Big Bang was doomed towards destruction or to triumphantly obtain victory, its physical condition proved it highly random. Random survival chances were quite enough for Admiral Quasar – commander of Big Bang 1 – to risk losing two occupants of his vessel while attempting to preserve the theories behind matter and antimatter annihilation power. And thus, as he knew too well that his vessel was doomed to an undesired end he called for two men – the Nelson brothers – to undergo suspended animation and to be launched on a long trek to Earth, where it was hoped that the advanced races there were able to defend themselves against a corrupt Universe-wide nation.

     Launched in a pod, no larger than a conventional self-propelled camper, both Tom and Lincoln Nelson remained in suspended animation on their long trek to Earth. As they were in hibernation, neither could dream nor notice any exterior forces acting with or against their pod.

     Earth, Seventeen Years Later… While most people could argue over swimming space among a public pool during the dead-summer heat of southern California, it was fairly obvious that Minerva Mink had all the swimming space she could ever possibly desire, all because of the huge pond just some thirty feet from her house. As it was summer and weather channels predicted temperature surges as high as 112 degrees, it was without a doubt an excellent moment for some swimming or even tanning, especially as there were no signs of cloud cover.

     After slipping into her favorite bikini, Minerva slowly came stepping out of her house with a towel and sunscreen at hand. Stepping no further than perhaps one foot away from her front door, she had already felt unbearable heat bombard against her with merciless force. Indeed, such heat was quite enough for Minerva – or anyone for that matter – to instantly acclaim that it was simply too much, even for summer days. 112 degrees was truly something to easily be frustrated by, unless if swimming was on one’s agenda.

     Minerva slowly walked towards the pond with a little smile, though on a hot summer day it wasn’t at all easy to even make a simple smile without effort. There wasn’t much to be happy for on such a day as each step crept with painful burning sensations. Perhaps it wasn’t a wise choice to step upon each and every stepping stone, for each stone kept burning the mink’s feet. How she was able to handle such burning along her feet, many from developed cultures could understand the logic.

     Reaching the pond while sweat started to slowly shimmer down her neck, Minerva set her towel down along the edge. She knelt down to straighten out her towel with superb care, though she didn’t even notice the negative attention that was brewing up just several feet from her location. Yes, every moment the mink left her log house, there would be at least a dozen or more men of different species around, giving out either long cat calls or perhaps stretching their tongues across the forest floor. No matter what situation they were in, every male animal would completely loose their minds and become completely love struck, even if they already had a girl friend to love….

     As every male animal would show off complete interest in her, Minerva didn’t even care, for it was part of her everyday life, dealing with men whose hormones were highly uncontrollable. It wasn’t a very pleasing life; it was rather a completely difficult life, though somewhat enjoyable to obtain such attention….

     Lying on her towel which had been straightened horizontally with her pond, she started lathering herself with some sunscreen. One could only conceive the attention she was going to get from every male animal of the forest. She slowly applied some of her sunscreen across her legs while closing her eyes in grief. Although she hated most of the male animals that lived within the same forest, she often wished she had someone special to love for all eternity, though it had to be someone warm, kind and with a wallet filled with a never-ending river of wealth. Though Wilford was one possible answer, he rarely showed up after that one date they had during the night of the full moon (refer to episode ‘Moon over Minerva’) and saw that Minerva was only interested in his werewolf appearance with large muscles and body-builder looks.

     Yet, since that one night, Minerva could only hope and dream that Wilford would one day return and ask for another date, or perhaps marriage under more extreme cases. She would watch the never-failing horizon from dawn to dusk, but never was able to find her man. Often, she would find Newt from time-to-time, who still was trying – even after the cartoon show Animaniacs had been canceled – to capture her for his master’s desire. Every attempt too wound up with never-ending failures, too obvious to call for. Just the same, it was more to her amusement rather than something to become angered over.

     As she was finishing applying sunscreen on her legs, she soon started lathering some on her arms, and completely failed to notice that Newt – of all random males that traversed around her territory – was slowly approaching her with rivers of sweat coming down along his spine. He just wasn’t adjusted to extreme heat waves that brought along scorching temperatures of over one hundred ten degrees or even just one hundred degrees for that matter. With fur that had a dark tone of gray and with extreme heat, it was certain that this hunting dog was soon to boil over.

     Whether he was perspiring heavily – enough to consider him an artificial storm give-or-take – or not, nothing was going to stand in his way to capture Minerva once and for all for old time’s sake. Reverse physiology, those words never escaped from the hunting dog’s mind, for he was scheming to use such physiological tricks to outwit the mink into thinking that something was terribly wrong with him in the summer heat.

     Amongst it all, it would have been a good scheme too if he didn’t react to the female mink who had finished up lathering her arms with sunscreen. “Oh poo…,” Minerva complained, “I forgot my back.”

     With that statement being made by Minerva, Newt couldn’t handle it any more, thus he started acting as though he had a seizure. After his long period of pain (refer to ‘Natural Chemistry’ for what he has undergone…) and agony, he could only lay down flat and stare blankly at the mink while thinking of romantic thoughts about both of them.

     Though he wished to continue day dreaming about his ‘reason for living’ for hours-upon-hours, something large, bright and loud distracted him from his fantasies. It appeared to be a meteorite of great size, only its size was quite large enough to consider it an asteroid that had been greatly eroded within the upper atmosphere. Regardless of what it was, it was coming straight for both him and Minerva, and appeared to have a direct hit path with Minerva completely….

     Realizing that such a dangerous object was about to hit the gorgeous mink, Newt couldn’t let her die because of an asteroid – or whatever it was. Running without any intention of stopping for a split second, Newt quickly grabbed Minerva off her towel and simply said, “I don’t have any time of explaining, but the impact will tell the story later on….”

     “What are you talking about you…,” Minerva started just before she shot a glance at the speeding object. “Never mind, just safe me!!!”

     Making a mad dash toward Minerva’s home, Newt managed to bring the mink to safety, just as the speeding object collided nearly seven and three quarter feet away from where Minerva was sitting before. It skid through the pond while trenching an impact trail through it, and collided directly with a boulder. Clearly, a speeding object that collided with the pond and trenched a trail also brought more damages to the area, for trees had been knocked over, some in flames, some in proper condition for lumber mill demands. Yet, it was even more shocking to both Minerva and Newt that whatever the object was, it had quickly radiated its glowing fires to flammable objects and changed from a glowing red tone to a grayish-white tone similar to spacecraft paint.

     “Well, whatever that was, I thank you for saving me. And I thought you once told me that you didn’t like me,” Minerva said to Newt. She then gave him a tight hug and a kiss on the nose to reward him for his service.

     Completely embarrassed, he could only say, “Shucks, I’m speechless.” Soon afterward, he fell over, completely struck by love….