Planet Zog, The Third Age, year Blurt (April 13 + ~4ish years of magic space time)

A lot can get done in the space of a few hours, especially when each hour is actually a year.

Across the Zog-sphere over the past four Earth hours, an entire planet-wide economy had burst forth, with each and every bipedal miscreant diverting from rubbing sticks together and instead looking for careers.

For to have a career (an entirely new concept for the citizens of Zog) meant that one would have access to a steady paycheque, which meant that they would be better placed to afford the various new conveniences and delicacies now on offer.

For example, more or less as soon as Zog had inherited the minds of certain Britons, they became acutely aware that they were suddenly and unforgivably naked.

The loincloths they had been wearing - which had previously been the look-du jour among the Zog valley elite for the last few thousand years or so - simply weren’t cutting it anymore. They all felt frightfully embarrassed.

So embarrassed, in fact, that for a certain proportion of the inhabitants of the valley, the only real remedy was to stay inside all day or to drape oneself in large leaves, or the oversized ears of an unfortunate native creature that looked like a cross between an elephant and a prairie dog.

Thankfully, soon enough a fledgling Zoggish clothing industry took form, cornered by a particular tribe called the GZogue. They began hawking a variety of dressed up and coutured animal skins fashioned into all manner of interesting outfits, and as long as you had the Chittens, the options for physical expression (and most importantly, body covering) were now myriad, with bell-bottoms, smart slacks, and sleek bodysuits knitted from the hairs of the three-legged monocled goats snatched and domesticated from the vertiginous inclines of the tallest mountain in the Valley.

The elephant-prairie dog creature (locally known as a DZogt, was never going to last long as a species - since its ears were simply perfect for fashioning into all manner of ravishing garments. And in the tradition of slow-moving species with bodily features useful or edible to beings on the cusp of an industrial revolution, they promptly went extinct.

Soon enough, there was even a line of comfortably pouched underwear for men, and shapely bras and bottoms for women, in a soft cotton-like fabric - which were the most treasured innovation of all. Which was vastly unsurprisingly considering the rampant chafing that goes on in stone-age societies.

There were food markets, of course, with items that were once foraged for or hunted individually as a matter of each tribes person’s daily chores, now offered for sale in any way you liked it - as long as you liked it salted, skewered or dried into a rather chewy jerky.

However, inevitably, when a certain amount of currency is being made, there is the tendency to want to protect said source of currency, and so certain groups of tribespeople quickly began to create their own professional associations and industry groups, and discovered that if they hired enough muscle, they could corner a certain market and form a monopoly.

Of course, with there being only a limited number of food types available, including, but not limited to:

1. Whatever bug-eyed squidgy inverterbrates that passed for seafood on planet Zog (the bigger and scarier sea creatures were still, for all their British resourcefulness, liable to eat them before the Zoggites were able to transfer them to a plate)

2. Land animals of the horned, serrated, scaled, hirsute and clean-shaven varieties

3. Flappy elephant eared prairie-dogs of course, and

4. Whatever could be rustled up while foraging

In time, the stratification and success of these industries as they developed into viciously defended monopolies led, in turn, to the development of a rather exclusive group of very powerful families.

In fact, flying in the face of the classic presentation of foragers and gatherers as the decidedly more docile partner of the usual stone age hunter/gatherer setup, the Land Scroungers’ Union swiftly burgeoned into an organisation with the strictest and most ruthless enforcers in the business.

No one messed with the Scroungers. They had spies everywhere in the valley, and with all the Chittens they had accrued, they had begun to amass a personal army of mercenaries willing to protect their livelihood.

This, sadly, contributed more and more to a stark divide between the rich and the poor in Zog valley society, and those slow to find their footing found themselves at the bottom of the totem pole, bereft of Chittens, snacks, and soft cotton briefs.

But those at the bottom of the totem pole didn’t simply accept their lot. For what do upstanding members of society inevitably do when they are shut out of opportunities for upward mobility?

Crime, of course. And flock to it they did, in teeming droves.

Which suited Gloam perfectly, since crime was what Gloam was interested in chiefly to begin with anyway.

Under Gloam’s watch, and without any official watchdog organisations to keep his activities in line (since Gloam outlawed them), the criminal industry flourished like a black dahlia in a pool of crude oil mixed with a pair of nunchucks.

Before long, and with the assistance of Gloam, theft, assassinations and fraud all became legitimate occupations, advocated for by their own unions and afforded the usual four weeks’ annual leave and two weeks sick pay per year.

And to Gloam’s delight, the more desperate the applicant, the more dedicated to their new crafts they inevitably became.

* * *

So entrepreneurship on Zog, while still the most reliable path to riches and a higher standard of life, also became a requisitely dangerous occupation, due to the predatory criminals whose livelihoods depended on being able to rob those with legitimate businesses.

And the higher one rose in society legitimately, unfortunately, the more likely one would be subject to assassinations, theft, fraud, or any other new and exciting categories of crime Gloam could come up with. Unless, of course, one had the muscle to defend themselves.

But Gloam, despite his interest in fuelling (and funding) such illegitimate and violent activities, was in fact all in favour of progress, because ultimately, as the heads of each industry was inevitably replaced by a lackey subordinate to him (and making the required kickbacks, of course), he was enamoured with the products progress provided him, and wanted nothing more than to see it grow. He just wanted a piece of it - all of it.

And so, with Gloam’s Chittens-kitty ever expanding, he began to offer a rather progressive series of entrepreneurship startup fellowships, encouraging the best and brightest minds to take on a painfully high interest rate loan and follow their ambitions to create companies that he could inevitably steal from them after their business model was sufficiently proven.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The mincy architect (who had changed his name from Inghurr to the vastly more marketable Z-Pop), had managed to stay on in his position due to his unique skill set, his remarkable ability to play the deferring courtesan to Gloam and his henchmen, and his unspoken contract with Gloam to offer the very best apartments in each new building he erected to him, before turning the rest out to the free market. Fleurte, therefore, in no time at all, had risen quite meteorically to become a darling of the chi-chi Zog Valley social scene, rubbing shoulders with other successful (and obsequious) entrepreneurs, rival clan leaders, and successful criminals. In turn, Fleurte quickly became one of Gloam’s top advisors, rising far beyond his dominion of the building industry, as is often the way with property developers, to having his slender fingers in almost as many pies as Gloam’s grisly sausage digits.

Z-Pop’s most cunning idea yet was to suggest the construction of something called a ‘ca-si-no,’ which Gloam was immediately receptive towards, seeing as he had recollections (via Munty) of wanting to own one - but only as a distant possibility on the horizon. Munty Spitzen, though rising to a level altogether unheard of in the British underworld, had never gained the funds nor the governmental favour to erect one himself. But Gloam had the opportunity to achieve Munty’s dream, which made him most pleased, and he was heard scoffing rather loudly to himself as he thought about his cosmic luck. He definitely knew the upsides - and it all had to do with something called ‘gam-bling.’ ‘Gam-bling,’ which is a thing that one tends to do at a ‘ca-si-no,’ involves people coming to a building with a large number of their own Chittens, playing games to win each other's Chittens from each other. But, best of all, the house gets to keep a vast proportion of the Chittens themselves, due to the games all being slightly rigged. Plus, Munty had extensive experience in rigging all sorts of games, and hadn’t let not owning a ca-si-no hamper his ability to run vast betting scams across all sorts of sports and games. Gloam had already been seeing monumental returns running a numbers racket, and his eyes boggled at all the new sorts of games he could fix. So Fluerte, emboldened with Gloam’s enthusiasm, began construction of the ‘Zog Valley Centre for Games of Chance,’ promising ‘thrills, 5 star accommodation and an all-you-can-eat flobster lunch.’ There was something, however, in Gloam’s memory that he thought he wanted to use this ‘ca-si-no’ for, and that was to ‘wash his money.’ But Gloam already had a team for that and didn’t really see the point - his piles of Chittens were scrubbed and polished regularly.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the new casino site was conducted with the usual sort of fanfare that Zoggite society had come to expect from Gloam, who was fast developing a leadership style strikingly similar to one of the more ruthless members of the Caesar family. There was even a press event, since Zog now had a burgeoning media industry, with newspapers printed on a new type of paper some industrious types had been making out of the ground up fibres of the only type of plant vaguely similar to an Earth tree. These trees were, as it happens, in extremely short supply, and the news industry was getting perilously close to rendering the species extinct, which allowed them to participate fully in another time-honoured human tradition; being that of carelessly eroding the biosphere that supports their continued survival on the planet.

The press junket interviewed the gloating Gloam, with Z-Pop now by his side as his chief communications adviser, adding to his ever-growing portfolio of responsibilities. There was a ribbon-cutting, and the breaking of a bottle of alcohol against something, which Gloam thought of initially as rather wasteful since he would normally enjoy drinking the contents of said bottle, but in his (or, more accurately, Munty’s) memory, it seemed right to do so for public spectacle, which entertained the public, and meant that they saw him as a man of the people, which made his job of stealing from them, enslaving them, and generally abusing his position of power infinitely easier.

And the spectacles didn’t end there either - nor did the comparisons to the Roman Caesars, for Gloam had announced a week of gladiatorial games (Munty was, in fact, a student of history - or at least of the bits that he liked, usually blood and guts-related stuff), which the public both adored (satisfying their base interest in wanton gratuitous violence) and were made nervous by, in equal measures, since the gladiators were conscripted at random and given the choice of fighting each other for the entertainment of the public, or fighting Gloam himself (for the entertainment of Gloam).

Gloam, as well as enjoying his developing proficiency for ruling with his big green dirty fists, had come to enjoy a good party as well. Parties now were absolutely a step up on the rudimentary hopping about around a campfire while a village elder rhythmically clicked some goat hooves together. Now they had proper lighting, booze of ever expanding varieties, and even music (though it wasn’t really very good and wouldn’t even rate a mention even on the ‘world music’ category on Earth) that they could dance to. Gloam liked to party so much, in fact, that he had decided to party almost every single day since he had remembered the concept existed. In fact, when the people he partied with became too tired or hungover to party when Gloam wanted to continue, he was so steadfast in his enthusiasm that he would force them to carry on by threat of gladiatorial conscription.

The managerial style that Gloam was adopting was also, quite surprisingly, reasonably well thought out. This was owing to Munty’s most guarded secret - being his college education. In fact, Munty was all set up to take a job at a prestigious management consulting firm in the financial district when he, all at once, became thoroughly unemployable, owing to some rather disturbing police allegations that he had threatened several of his professors with the prospect of having one of their fingers removed (it didn’t really matter which - Munty gave them the option to choose - an egalitarian from the start) if he were to receive unsatisfactory grades. Thankfully, the charges were dropped, owing to his accusers suddenly having a ‘change of mind,’ being put into witness protection, and then being found in witness protection and perforated with bullets. With no proof of his malfeasance, Munty avoided a jail cell, but due to the public nature of the allegations, he was disappointingly deemed ‘not the right fit’ for the white-shoe firms that he had been applying for. So, as a result of this knowledge of waterfall and agile management structuring, pie graphs, spreadsheets and what-not, Gloam’s operation was steadfastly becoming what would possibly represent the largest and most well-accounted for corporation on the planet - and if there was anything like a stock market (which there surely would be very soon, and Gloam would steal it from whoever came up with it as sure as apples is apples), a keen investor would be rightly advised to think of Gloam’s business as a very safe place to park their retirement funds, if it weren’t Gloam’s practice to take any money given to him and never give it back.

Meanwhile, deep inside a cave on the other side of the valley, the Zoggite building the planet’s very first interstellar vehicle was making progress. She had already managed to get a small prototype off the ground, with rudimentary rockets fuelled by a sticky type of resin that was known to burn very well and long. The test pilot was a small but hirsute creature not unlike our friend from the first chapter of this book. It was understandably ambivalent about the whole thing, but it came to no harm, aside from a few singed fronds of its matted purple fur.

The prototype was a great deal smaller than the vehicle she dreamt of - an interstellar transporter that could take her to the 17 moons orbiting Zog, and perhaps even beyond that, but it was capable of lifting off the ground, and it was able to be controlled via a rudimentary chipboard she had fashioned out of a bendy conductive metal she was able to find abundantly in certain streams, simply sitting there in smooth, shiny pebbles. No-one had a name for the material yet, and our engineer hadn’t bothered to think of one, but she was pretty sure no one apart from her knew of its value, and she hoped to keep it that way, lest she have her secret discovered and stolen (probably by Gloam).

As the test craft hovered in the air, shuddering slightly, it gave the small hairy monster inside it something akin to a massage (which was something it somehow knew about, and therefore saw the good in it, and consequently rather enjoyed it). Using her chipboard, she pressed a button that then slowly lowered the craft back onto the ground, bringing the engine to a stuttering stop. The test pilot bleeped happily. The engineer was emboldened, and looked over at her blueprints (scrawled in ink drawn painfully from a small squid-like creature found in the same stream the shiny rocks came from) for a slightly larger machine, capable of transporting a larger, Zoggite-sized haul.

It wouldn’t be long now before she could take her inventions public, and to ensure that she wouldn’t have her designs stolen by Gloam and his associates, she had also created another invention unique as yet in the Zog Valley - a gun.