Planet Og, 20160 B.C.E. (two weeks after the Great Enlightening)

Plaarcqke(1) is the leader of the tribe of Smogue, a powerful and gratuitously violent(2) group who enjoy a certain dominance amongst the other tribes. They also enjoy an array of assorted benefits that accrue from their dominance, such as the privilege to mate with females of other tribes whenever they felt an inclination to do so, and selecting the choicest cuts of those sort of Googly-eyed nostril mammoth-type things whenever another tribe managed to off one and bring it back for tea. But Plaarcqke wasn’t your typical brutish pugilist like his fellow tribesmen (and a good number of the women as well, for that matter), he was a thinker - and it was his greatest secret. Because while thinking deeply was partly how he managed to rise through the ranks of said vengeful troupe of violent marauders (and at an unusually young age), it was also something that could get you killed rather as quickly as the Iknewit tribe’s first and last astronomer, Galiflayo ‘world not flat’ Pomony. So he kept his thinkings to himself, and sadly when thinkings are kept to oneself, it leads to a certain kind of isolation and a sort of moroseness (which he also needed to hide expertly, since depression and other mental maladies among the Smogue were traditionally treated with a heavy blunt object).

Since the unexplained event when every second inhabitant of the planet gained a very specific understanding of a world far away in the galaxy, the reams of information that every second person, animal and semi-conscious moss species now possessed - initially thought useless and overwhelming - were now becoming useful and enjoyable, particularly to Plaarcqke. Though it was frustrating to have a deep craving for bland and unimaginative foods that were unavailable on his home planet, the thoughts did give him ideas about other things that could benefit their society, and most importantly, himself. Since, unbeknownst to him, his mind had been swapped with the elderly conservative (and ruthlessly machiavellian) Tory party whip Sir Edmund Chatterton III, who at this moment back on planet Earth was currently enjoying a raw but nutritious meal of the family beagle in front of his wife, who, as it happened, was not mind-swapped and was observing this wanton display of consummate barbarism while considering whether the end of days was finally upon them, or worse, a Labor government. Thanks to Edmund’s battle-worn years of political wisdom, Plaarcqke’s brain had now been furnished with the means to consolidate control among the factions, and all sorts of ideas about how to enrich himself (and his tribe of course, if there was time) by using breathtakingly new concepts like mining the earth for minerals and gas (which presumably could be sold to someone who knew what to do with them), and creating a taskforce to quash unionisation of the workers who he would enlist and underpay to do it for him.

The first order of business - one which he implemented three days ago - was to form a national committee of all the warring tribes of Og, stacked, of course, with representatives that were made amenable to his ambitions with bribes or threats of violence. Next, it was to locate, among his people, someone whose mind had been blessed with the ability to locate and mine the earth for the minerals, oil and gas that he so wanted to get his grabby green hands on. Once this science boffin had been located, they would set about locating anything valuable, whether it be shiny and look good on a necklace, bendy so that it could be turned into useful objects (like kitchen utensils, tyre rims and such) or capable of creating energy to power spaceships and cars, which were other exciting things that Plaarcqke now knew about, which came with intriguing new possibilities like invading other planets and stealing their natural resources, which seemed a damn sight more efficient than having to dig it up yourself.

Elsewhere on Og, there was a veritable explosion of new ideas. Members of the various tribes were abuzz with the new thoughts that had been planted in them, and were busy at bringing many of their more joyous and exciting thinkerings into existence, so as to make their lives more entertaining, comfortable, and interesting. A motley group consisting of a long slender male, a bent-over geriatric female and two muscled warriors had all inherited the minds of Britains’ premier barbershop quartet, and had begun singing a very raspy rendition of ‘Mr Sandman’ in the village square about twenty miles north of Smogue territory, which went rather nicely with the brandy that a few others had suddenly gained the inspiration and knowhow to make. There were even anti-alcohol campaigners tut-tutting the more drunken tribespeople, handing out flyers for their newly-established sober-living facility, which consisted of a cave in which patients were repeatedly lashed with stinging palm fronds until cured.

Suddenly the huts they all lived in were simply far too small, far too muddy and all-over decidedly gauche, and a mincy young male who had inherited the mind of a renowned architect and television renovations personality had began scrawling plans for a tasteful apartment complex in the mud with the beak of an unsuspecting bird not entirely dissimilar to an Ibis. This was, unfortunately, rather uncomfortable for the Ibis attached to the beak, but his day hadn’t been particularly interesting thus far, so he resigned to just roll with it. In fact, as his beak was scraped this way and that in the dirt, he was able to get an odd look sideways here and there at the various wonderful and complex new foodstuffs being boiled, fried, brined and salted, which looked far more interesting than the usual rancid meat offcuts that it could normally procure at the edges of these settlements. It reasoned that if it were to survive whatever was happening to it at that instant, it would probably go on to live a very fat and happy life off the thrown-out bits resulting from this new elaborately prepared cuisine. Though its beak was wearing a little thin by this stage - the mincy man had a surprisingly strong grip.

The newly-minted Chief Geologist to Plaarcqke The Great (a self-appointed title) and the person with the skills needed to get His various mining projects off the ground was a rather strange individual from one of the poorer scavenging tribes of the lower valley, named Bickly Urgh. Bickly, who was formerly a social outcast and a child-eating sociopath (the latter presumably necessitating the former), had now been bestowed with the mind of a prominent Yorkshire mineral geologist and amateur poet named Ernst Baumgartner, and he was really rather enjoying his new-found usefulness. He now occupied a position of prestige, had the favour of a number of females (an entirely foreign and wonderful perk of senior leadership), and he was particularly happy that his pathological taste for newly-born infants had been replaced by a benign preference for pork knuckle and sauerkraut, which made him confident he would be much more likely to keep his position longer than the next meal time. Certainly, after discovering the vast underground river of Helium3, under the Spindly Ridge, his star was rising faster than he could have ever anticipated. He was certain that his position was secure, and that it was all roses and honey (and of course, pork knuckle and sauerkraut) from then on. Sadly, this wasn’t exactly how things turned out.

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For across the valley, the equally war-like and pugilist Fawkin’ell tribe had heard all about this mining thing, and they were rather interested in stealing it for themselves, and so on the night of the 17th of March 2160 BCE Earth time, Plaarcqke the Great was unseated in the traditional manner of separating his head from above his shoulders in his sleep, and Bickly was kidnapped at knifepoint, suddenly regretting ever having let old Baumgartner enter his mind in the first place.

His captor was a barrel-chested ape type named Gloam, who had been graced with the mind of notorious underworld crime boss Munty Spitzen of the Spitzen crime family, currently locked up in the HM Belmarsh Prison in London for class-A offenders. And if there was a lesson to be learned here, it would be that for all the cunning machiavellian charm and mastery of the steel fist in velvet glove approach that Plaarcqke The Great had in spades, on a planet with no existing social structures (nor constitutionally enforced police force), there really isn’t much one can do to stop a power-hungry murderous brute from sneaking into your camp and stealing one's head of an evening if said monstrous brute had an interest in doing so. So with minimal fuss and a great deal of mess, the reign of the brilliant, ruthless, politically minded Plaarcqke the Great came to a rather unceremonious end, and forever will be known instead as Plaarcqke The Brief. The new self-proclaimed lord of the lands was now simply Gloam until an appropriate suffix could be thought of, but in any case, Gloam seemed to suit Gloam just fine, and if pressed, he would say that he didn’t really go in for any of that over the top fancypants type stuff, and would rather just get on with the job at hand, namely robbing people of their stuff and keeping it, and murdering them brutally if they had the hide to put up a fight.

But Gloam/Munty, despite being a fan of uncomplicated violence and a snatch-and-grab style of politics, was surprisingly canny as a leader. One wouldn’t normally rise through the greased and bloody rungs of the London crime scene without having a keen ability to read people, an eye for business, and a cutthroat ability for cutting throats. Munty Spitzen was, in fact, known as a philosopher type among Britain’s underworld, often quoting Sun Tzu, or Confucius as he tortured snitches for information, or sprung an unexpected double-double-cross on a business associate during a previously-discussed and expected double-cross. He even had a rather quirky dress sense, being quite fond of tapered velvet suits, spats and pork pie hats. He was more than a three-dimensional criminal, and in fact much more suited to the role of leadership in a society as unregulated and murderous as this one, and, with time, the inhabitants of the Valley of Og came to appreciate this to be the case (and even if they didn’t, they did, since Gloam knew where they lived).

When Gloam took over control of the mining plans, he did so with gusto, not because he knew anything about how to trade in rare gases, or to whom, or for what purpose - but because he knew that as long as he yelled loud enough while shaking a big stick, people would figure out the details for him. What he did know for certain was that if Plaarcqke thought there was Chittins(3) to be made, then that’s all the information the Gloam needed. Because Chittins meant more food, more bones to adorn his beard with, and if he were pressed on the matter, he had been eyeing a penthouse condominium in the now partially complete walk-up apartment complex being built by the mincy architect and his builders. Since Munty knew about the good life - the sheer wonder of pleasures and fineries that Munty had enjoyed in his brief time outside of HM Belmarsh (between getting nicked for running numbers in Shoreditch and having an associate roll over on him during a multiple murder investigation - all of which he maintains his innocence of to this day), Gloam now knew about them too. Gloam craved fineries, he wanted comfort, he wanted brandy, and jammy dodgers, and a cup of tea would be nice as well. And he wanted it all yesterday.

So while Gloam barked orders, Bickly the geologist worked double hours and triple on Sundays to coordinate the galaxy's most unstable Helium mining rig (Ernst was more on the finding the digging site side rather than the digging it up side). Though he wasn’t short on indentured workers (he had Gloam’s big stick to thank for that), he was rather concerned about the fact that once they had extracted enough of the gas from the ground he would be utterly loath to be the one to inform Gloam that without an actual spaceship or automobile industry to speak of, there wasn’t really a market for Helium3. But he needn’t have worried, because over on the other side of the valley, a charismatic young member of the Handeeman tribe had secretly began construction of a 337 Cruiser (a common model for Galactic travel in the solar system in 2160 BCE) with found materials (mostly a unique, lightweight, super-strong and inflammable wood found only on planet Og, as well as rocks, twigs, and twine). And while we’re at it, in another distant part of the jungle, another bright young thing with the mind of an automaker was having a cracking good go at building an MG 3 (the hovercraft edition).

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Footnotes:

(1) Strictly, this is not how the name is pronounced, but it’s about as close as the English language can get, since what could be considered ‘language’ by the tribe of bipedal simian-like creatures living on planet Og to an average Briton comes across as more of a sort of ominous chittering sound quite similar to the sound a stool makes when it’s dragged across a freshly polished concrete floor.

(2) Though this isn’t saying much, as gratuitous violence is a quality that is almost ubiquitous amongst the bipedal races of Og. That is, unless - unless you are counting the smug and brainy Iknewit tribe of the Banchti Mountain Springs area. But of course you couldn’t have counted them really, since they were wiped out very quickly. This is because the other tribes had a tendency to batter in the heads of the weak or the uppity as a general rule. Which meant that the period of relative intellectual and creative renaissance on Og, ushered in by the Iknewit tribe was quickly bashed on the head with a spiky implement. The inciting incident leading to their swift extinction was when a certain astronomer suggested that ‘Moon goes round planet, therefore planet is round, which obviously was a bit too hard to understand and a bit nosey on the whole.’

(3) “Chittens” or “Chits” is the very first iteration of a form of currency in Og society, which were crudely marked shells of a commonly-found crustacean on the shores of Og’s oceans, invented shortly after the Great Enlightening of Og. However, they were so crudely marked, in fact, that Gloam had already begun Og’s very first money counterfeiting operation as a rather lucrative side business.