The Universe Guardians’ Quest to save the Universe
By Todd Hicks
Copyright by Todd Hicks in March 2016
About The Book
This is a science fiction book about scientists who team up to save others from harm around the universe through a specially-powered spaceship and spacesuits. Their biggest threat is the Twinner brothers, who have nuclear powers and are bent on ruining the universe; it’s up to the scientist team to stop them in time.
Some of the places in this book have a name that is made up. The characters in this book are fictional and any relation between them and any actual persons is purely coincidental.
Douglas and Rouglas Twinner were two evil scientists who had their own nuclear power laboratory called Twinner Labs on the planet of Cosmos, about 10 billion miles west of Earth. Cosmos has similar conditions to Earth in regard to having water, livable conditions and human life. Not inhabited by many people, this planet is underdeveloped and much of its surface is covered by blue and red craters and rocks.
Douglas and Rouglas, two twins who were literally black, were working with nuclear power for evil purposes. They were hoping to use it to cause destruction. While they were experimenting with nuclear power, they discovered that their nuclear power could create things out of thin air, transform things into different objects and perform other feats simply by using the atoms and molecules that are in the air. Sure, they could use their machine to cause damage; however, they could only do so much with it distance-wise and they could not easily carry their machine around. This inconvenience pushed them to be more creative.
Douglas: “It’s not feasible to cause mass destruction with this machine kept here in our lab. If we merely tried using Nucleo (their nuclear machine) from our base, we would merely tear up our own planet. If we can somehow transfer this power to ourselves, we can go decimate other planets.”
Rouglas: “Right on, brother. I share your ambition.”
Douglas: “Great! Let’s see if we can make this plan work.”
They soaked themselves in a vat of nuclear radiation and drank a little bit of the stuff. Although they knew that what they were doing was risky, they were willing to go through with it. Fortunately for them, they were not harmed through their exposure. Instead, they gained the ability to naturally use nuclear power – to an extent. They found out all of what they could do through further experimentation.
Rouglas: “We have learned what we can do with our natural nuclear power. Although we can fly very fast on our own without a machine and survive in outer space without oxygen-supplying equipment in addition to being able to shoot nuclear rays, create things and alter things as Nucleo can do, we are limited. We have to occasionally charge up our bodies with Nucleo and our powers will only last anywhere between several hours and a day or two at best. Additionally, we must limit how much we charge ourselves up in order to avoid causing long-lasting harm to our bodies.”
Douglas: “So we have our limits. Oh well. We’ll just make do with what we have. Let’s go tear up some planets that are not too far away.”
Rouglas: “Right on, bro!”
About one light hour east of Cosmos was a tiny planet called Tinio which contained 5,000 people. The size of this planet was about one thousandth of Earth’s size. On this day, people were doing what those on Earth usually do, which includes going to work, going to school or simply having fun by engaging in leisure activities or visiting cool places. Unfortunately for these people, neither their fun nor existence would continue much longer.
Once the Twinners arrived, all life on Tinio ceased to exist. The bad guys chose to wipe out the planet from the sky. Douglas decimated the western half of the world with nuclear rays while Rouglas decimated the eastern half with rays.
Elated, Roug high-fived Doug and roared, “Yee ha! We wiped out this planet just like that! Let’s go cause destruction to another planet then go home.”
“I echo your sentiment,” Doug agreed.
The twins then flew to Quatero, a planet about 500 miles away. Once they got there, they landed on the ground.
Next, Doug said, “Okay, Roug. We are slowly running out of time and nuclear power. Additionally, it would be too impractical to try to wipe out this planet with rays. Let’s quickly find a forest, a swamp and an ocean and turn some of the animals into monsters. The monsters can carry out our dirty work as we go back home then recharge our power several days later.”
“Great idea!” seconded Roug.
As they visited the nearest forest, they turned their attention to the birds, elephants, giraffes, bears, large wild cats and water mammals. Doug and Roug altered the atomic and molecular structures of the food the animals ate, altered the soil they ate out of or slept on and altered the water they swam in to make them extraordinarily huge, strong and fast. The ostriches and land animals became a few dozen feet tall. The villains created dinosaurs and pterodactyls by altering what was inside the skeletons and fossils that belonged to these animals before they became extinct.
Once these monsters were created, Doug and Roug showed them images of human beings tearing up their habitat and hunting some of them down. As expected, this infuriated the monsters.
Next, Doug and Roug turned frogs, lizards, crocodiles, alligators and hippopotamuses from a swamp nearby into monsters by altering the water they swam in. They concluded their work by visiting the closest ocean to turn whales, octopuses and sharks into monsters.
The villains told these animals, “The humans have polluted your waters. Make them pay for it.”
The monsters began their rampage. In addition to being super large, strong and fast, all of them were able to breed and multiply very rapidly – at this time, there were about 40 monsters. Additionally, the water animals could now stay out of water for long periods of time.
To start things off, an elephant lifted a tall heavy tree out of the ground with its trunk and swung it at six people eating at a picnic table, killing all of them. Next, a lion mauled two people nearby to death.
The rampage pleased Douglas and Rouglas.
“We created a masterpiece,” crowed Doug.
“You’re right about that,” concurred Roug as he fist bumped Doug.
Doug then said, “These monsters will eventually wipe out these humans. Our work is done here.”
“Aye, aye!” agreed Roug.
They flew back home. Meanwhile on Earth in Baltimore, Maryland on a Sunday night, there was a team of five scientists eating dinner at Pasta House on their weekend off from work. Their names were Dean Wits, Amanda Dynamo, Jermaine Biome, Phoebe Stormy and Jerome Flashy – Phoebe’s name is pronounced fee-bee.
Dean and Jermaine were African-American, Phoebe was Hispanic, Amanda was white and Jerome was Asian. Amanda and Jermaine were girlfriend and boyfriend. Phoebe and Jerome formed a special couple. The five of them were there in anticipation of a special announcement.
“Guess what?” piped Phoebe.
“What is it?” inquired Amanda.
“Jerome and I just became engaged.”
“Congratulations!” offered Jermaine.
Dean, the leader of this crew as well as the president and founder of the scientists’ organization, put in his own two cents by saying, “Wow! I’m proud of you pulling it off. What really impresses me is that you do not engage in romance at the office or allow your relationship to get in the way of your duties.”
“Thank you,” Jerome replied.
The five colleagues began discussing details of the wedding then talked about other matters.
After they had dinner and dessert, Jermaine said, “We’ve had a great time. Anyway, it’s time to go home and get a good night’s sleep before going into the office tomorrow.”
Dean drove home alone, Jermaine took Amanda home and Phoebe took Jerome home. The following morning, the five colleagues were working in the same lab room at their company which was called Planet Observatory. As they observed what was going on around the universe, they were stunned and disappointed.
“Look at what’s happening. Over the weekend, a small planet called Tinio was wiped out by two people’s nuclear rays. A little later, they created monsters that are tearing up the planet of Quatero,” observed Jermaine.
Dean answered, “We must do something about destruction occurring on other planets as well as Earth. The five of us will work together to save people around the universe from harm once we renovate our spaceship for battle purposes and create special suits in addition to learning self-defense techniques. How about we call ourselves The Universe Guardians?”
The other four agreed.
Elated, Dean said, “Great! We’ll hire thousands of engineers to help us create these suits and our spaceship. Our force will be on the clock 24-7 in order to expedite this process. Time is of the essence here.”