This story as well as most of Steve's stories have been moved to his personal website at stevechallis.net. If it still seems to be on the Betta Trading website it is because of the collective memory of the internet, and you are seeing an old version of the website.
Tiffany
The Story of Tiffany Rat
Based on a true story
There was a good little boy, we will call him Simon to
avoid embarrassing him, but this is not Daniel’s real name. Simon loved
animals. One day Simon bought a pet rat and named her Tiffany. Simon
and Tiffany loved each other (in a completely platonic way).
One day Simon did something he shouldn’t have. Simon
was 17 and was going into the army. He was worried about what would
happen to Tiffany, so he took Tiffany to a very nice piece of bushland
where he thought Tiffany would be happy. Simon let Tiffany go, but
Tiffany loved Simon and walked home with him.
So Simon gave Tiffany to his friend Tom. But Tom was
only a few months younger than Simon, and went into the navy. When Tom
left for the navy he gave Tiffany to his sister Kathy. Tiffany was very
happy with Kathy and had many adventures as related in “The Tales of
Tiffany”. But Rats do not live very long and Tiffany got old and died
and went to Rat Heaven.
In Rat Heaven, Tiffany could watch her friends.
Tiffany was proud of what her Human friends were doing, but one day,
Tiffany saw something that made her very frightened. A group of Human
scientists did something incredibly stupid. They changed the status of
the planet Pluto and called it a dwarf planet.
The plutonians were mortally offended. They built an
armada of very advanced warships, and the entire species set out for
Earth to avenge themselves for the insult. Of course they did not want
to conquer the Earth; from their point of view it is so hot their liquid
Helium based blood would boil. The atmosphere os full of the deadly
poisonous gas Oxygen, and the pressure of the atmosphere is a million
times what they like.
The Plutonians were planning to make an alliance
with the good people of Illinois. For the Plutonians the only issue
that had any importance was the status of Pluto. The People of
Illinois had never accepted the change of status of Pluto and still
referred to it as a Planet. The Plutinians considered the people of
Illinois to be in revolt against the rest of the Humans.
The Plutonians scanned the armed forces of the Earth.
When they saw that Simon was in the Army of Earth they became very
frightened, but when the saw that Tom was on the pride of the Royal
Australian Navy, the mighty warship HMAS Mermaid they
were paralysed with terror and the last thing the did before lapsing
into a totally catatonic state was to order their ships’ computers to
flee a long way from the Earth at full speed. The ships got up to
239834 kilometres a second and went completely past Pluto.
It was nearly 20 years before the Plutonians recovered
from their catatonia. By this time they were about 18 light years away
from Pluto. They saw a closer star system which was uninhabited and
went there, settling on one of the outer planets which was even nicer
than Pluto. But they called it Pluto after their old home.
Revenge
The Plutonians were finally able to get their revenge
on the people of Earth. They named the third planet of their new star
system “Earth”, and then reclassified it as a dwarf planet.
Reconciliation
The Plutonians were completely satisfied with their
revenge and when Captain Jack arrived on the interstellar Exploration
Ship “The Highway to Heaven”, with his motley crew of Humans and Wise
Apes, and his sister Lily who had come for a ride. The Plutonians were
completely friendly to them.
The Highway to Heaven was able to go faster than the
speed of light. The method of doing this was invented by the mad
scientist, Pete of the Apes. Pete of the Apes was a bit like Tarzan of the Apes because
they were both friendly with the apes, and both swung through the trees
with the apes, but Pete of the Apes was different from Tarzan because
he was short and had a long white beard and five Nobel Prizes.
In Human Heaven, Albert Einstein was very annoyed that Pete had ignored the absolute speed limit of the
universe he had set.
Pete was not officially mad, but only officially
emotionally unstable, but he knew that it was impossible to go faster
than the speed of light, and then invented a way of doing it, so he must
have been mad.
Steve Challis
