I have never been more disappointed in a travel brochure.

Sure, everything they said was “true,” about the food and the air and the gravity and the non-predatory environment. But it didn’t account for how ALIEN everything is. And it’s not like I haven’t travelled.

We’re held up in a pension that’s become a haven for other tourists in retreat from the maddening, incompressible experience of life on Primordia 9.

I just tried stepping out on the porch again and within 45 seconds I started sweating and vomiting again. Luckily poor @Celine Oranges was there to pull me back.

As you know, I LOVE travelling. The architecture, the cultures... So I just had to take advantage of the Halloween on Other Planets excursion packages.

I went through the colorful brochures in the cafeteria to plan my trip. I didn't want to wear an environmental suit, so needed a place with an oxygen atmosphere. And I didn't want to wear an exoskeleton, OR go flying up into space every time I took a step, so needed a planet with standard gravity...

Frankly, the pickings were slim.

Ah! And there it was:


VISIT PRIMORDIA 9!

All the interplanetary exoticism you seek, with the familiarity of an Earth-standard environment.

Digestible foods!
Non-threatening radiation levels!
An alpha-predator dominant species who can not consume human flesh!


It was just what I was looking for.

But then I learned Psyhigh was making the buddy system mandatory, and I couldn't travel alone, as is my predilection.

So, not really having any "friends" at Psyhigh, I entered the lottery.

Poor @Celine Oranges. I'm afraid they're my travelling buddy.

Hope they like museums and monuments! So stoked!!!

The Labyrinth of the Sacred Crocodiles afforded endless matter for marvel, as we went through from a court to the chambers beyond it, and from the chambers to colonnades, and from the colonnades to other rooms, and then from the chambers again to other courts. This is the labyrinth, filled with smiling faces eager to refill your cup... costumed staff waving huge fans made of ostrich and peacock feather... still others far beneath in the sub-basements, toiling under heavy chains, crumbling under our weight...

The Crocodile Priests and Priestesses invite you to linger, but there's this way the staff looks at you... petulant, not-quite-dangerous but just letting you know they're looking forward to the next time around, when we all change places... that makes this one of the shorter stops on the Grand Tour.

The whole view of The Temple of Wrath or Justice on Merhj was suggestive of a frightful Inferno, with its rows of demon gods, hideous beyond conception, engaged in torturing writhing and bleeding specimens of humanity. Demon masks of ancient lacquer hung from the pillars, naked swords gleamed in motionless hands, and a somewhat less menacing person in a red fur suit who directed us to the snackbar and arcade in the back. Popcorn, corndogs, dogcorn and popdogs. Skee ball, pinball, ninepin and cornpin.

We ran out of local currency and retired to our hotel, where we were plagued by strange dreams.

Before the entrance to the Psychic Academy of Arts in Merhj is an altar to Love, with an inscription that Dean Hammer was the first dean to dedicate an altar to that god. The altar within the Academy is called the altar of the Love Avenger, complete with cape and mask and spandex tights, which they say was dedicated by extraterrestrial aliens, squirming with love.

The evenings in the Merhj Valley were exquisite. As soon as the sun went behind the higher mountains, peak above peak, red and snow-slashed, flamed against a lemon sky, the strong wind moderated into a pure stiff breeze, bringing up to camp the thunder of the mindless Tumberbuns, smashing their enormous shell-encased craniums together repeatedly as they battled for the dominance in the fields below.

It was like sitting in the world's biggest bowling alley.