If you’ve ever wondered where Nelson came from…

If you look into night sky and search for the stars, you’ll find a small planet located way past Mars. Teebius is the name of a very nice world, where the rivers are straight and the forests are twirled.

All the little Teebius boys and all the little Teebius girls spend their days studying book about foreign space worlds. They watch TV shows about different people, food and sports. They’ve studied plants, examined the trees and watched that game with the funny shorts. But they always ask one question about which they think.

Why is an alien’s skin always so pink?

Every person on Teebius, the skinny, the tall, the fat and the small, has several things in common. They each have violet skin and golden eyes, skinny arms and really strong thighs. They study all night and work all day, and are very very smart. They love the verse with their big purple hearts.  But despite all their smarts they don’t like to roam. The Teebius people don’t even like to leave home.

Nee was not like other people from Teebius.

Nee was a young Teebius boy and he looked like other Teebius people, violet skin and golden eyes, skinny arms and really strong thighs. He acted like the other Teebius people, studied all night and worked all day and he was really, really smart. Nee even loved the ‘verse with his big purple heart.

But Nee really wanted to leave his planet; he thought he could handle it.

He wanted to see the pink skins dancing on their own globe. He wanted to learn more then you could from a space probe. He wanted to see them run with their long gangly legs; he wanted to see them play games with those weird wooden pegs. He wanted to try something called a hotdog. He needed to know for the reader of his blog.

Nee snuck aboard a ship and left his planet forever. He hid in the kitchen, he thought he was clever. The crew found him but took him along; they thought leaving him in space would be kinda wrong. He got to see the stars, he got to see the night, and he got to see space monster that gave him such a fright. After flying in the dark and traveling through space, working on the ship in the cosmic rat race. His excitement was big, it burned like a hearth, the ship had landed on a place called Earth.

It was a silly name. Who calls their home planet soil? Why not just call it dirty rocks or black oil?

Nee was happy and could have cried, but no human would answer him no matter how hard he tried. The Earth was a nice planet, so vast and so green. Except Humans were much bigger then they seemed on screen.

Nee was only as big as a ball, and could never talk to humans, they couldn’t hear him at all. If they couldn’t hear him how could he tell them of his claims? How could he talk to them? How could he join in their games?

Things needed to change, they couldn’t stay the same. The truth of the matter this situation was lame.

So Nee sat alone in a house, a very big home that he shared with a mouse. Nee and the mouse were very best friends, they laughed and played and it brought him odds and ends. The mouse named Zipper brought Nee a gift one day. It was a half empty box of cereal that he found in some hay. It was crunchy and delicious and very good to eat, and at the bottom was a toy for a treat.

On the back of the box was something special and gave him a thrill. It was an ad for a machine that looked like the clock on the hill. He could live in the machine and walk it around town. He could talk to the people without being a clown.

The offer was simple and needed no fuss. It said to “Get ten box tops and send it to us.” So Zipper and Nee stared looking for boxes out on the streets, both of them looking forwards to the eats. It took a long time for people that small, these cereal boxes seeming so very tall.

They ate and ate until they could eat no more, they even spilled some on their house floor. It took a long time to eat that much food, and to gather the tops and to purchase the glue. After a long wait the day finally arrived, the machine showed up, some assembly required. It was built from metal, cardboard and even some wire. Built onto the back was even a spare tire.

It was big and happy and had ped-ways for arms, but despite it weird looks it had its rare charms. Nee could live behind the lens that acted as eyes, it even had an antenna that could pick up wi-fi. Him and Zipper lived the machine, and went to a con. It was great place where people all got along. They talked about aliens, they talked about space, and they chatted about stars with a smile on their face.

After it ended they asked “What is your name?” He used to be Nee but that now sounded lame. He lived a machine with a mouse for a friend he needed a name that didn’t offend. He wanted to call himself the name of the machine but the Liveable Space Operating Node seemed kinda mean. He combined the two names and dropped the second E and came up with a name no one could ever foresee.

He called himself Nelson, the robot of fun, and screamed it out loud and told everyone. They said that they liked him and ask him to come back. When it came to the people he had quite a knack. So Nelson turned to the crowd and said with a cheer, look out Halifax ‘cause I’ll be back next year.

He took the sky with rockets, wings and steel plating. He needed to get home because his forums needed updating.

-Authored by Larry Gent, volunteer with Hal-Con. Gent authors the 42Webs blog.