The Tale of a Window Salesman

By S. Walker

A story about a man who just wanted to sell windows throughout his home galaxy. Boring? He could only hope...

Inspired by the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy books and the Discworld series. But not entirely completely dissimilar.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S. Walker
• Release date: Dec 28, 2009
• ISBN: 9781452308166

S. Walker

S Walker was born in England and moved to Wales when he was very young. In 2002 he graduated from the University of Wales, College Cardiff with a Bachelor's degree in Astrophysics.A few years later he decided he needed a challenge and started teaching himself Japanese. He Moved to Matsudo in Chiba Prefecture in Japan a few months later. Five years teaching conversational English later, he moved to Calgary in Canada.After almost a decade of working overnights, he graduated from the University of Calgary with one Bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics, and one in Education (specialising in secondary maths). He is currently a high school maths teacher and part-time not-so-evil not-such-a-genius evil genius.

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The Tale of a Window Salesman

S Walker

Published by S Walker at Smashwords.

This is a work of fiction.

Copyright 2009 S Walker

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and pruchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

Since the original writing of this book, I have lost my mother's mother and my father's father. Nana, Grandpop, you will always be in our thoughts. I really hope you wouldn't have hated this book too much.

Prologue

Once upon a time, nothing existed.

Nothing that is, except for a minuscule piece of supermatter known as Derik.

For those of you who don't realise this is the pre-Universe Universe, the bit before the beginning of the beginning, the egg before the chicken (this way around, trust me), the loom before the fabric of space and time was woven, or just simply the start of it all.

Time has no meaning here.

It has been stretched to breaking point. And the reason for this? So we can observe it, of course. We'll be here for a few moments yet, but in so-called Real time this place could never really exist.

At this instant there is only one Universe, no parallels, no duplicates, no alternatives. Just the one.

The entirety of the unestablished Universe is, to be brutally honest, incredibly boring.

One single pinprick of something in an infinite sea of nothing.

As everybody knows there are a certain number of dimensions, which every point in the Universe exists at, or failing that, has. Later on - after they have had time to develop more – some higher class Universes developed more dimensions, even more senseless and bizarre than the ones we have.

Are you sitting comfortably? Good. The Universe shall now begin.

KA—BOOM!

An explosion of such immensity and energy that even the most dynamic adjectives associated with size don't even come close to conveying the power of it. The phrase big bang is probably the greatest understatement ever recorded by History. It is a shame that nobody was there to see it.

After the Reasonably Substantial Derik Detonation that began the cascade of subatomic chaos also known as the Universe, a number of beings came into existence. They were not born, at least not in the traditional sense, and there is only one way of killing them. They will travel from the beginnings of the Universe and meet up again at the end of the Universe. Although two, three, or more of them may meet up on their travels and stop for a cheese sandwich, as they frequently do, they will all meet up only twice.

They are the Riders of the Crunch. They are the ones who sew up tears in the fabric of space, they are the ones who keep the course of history from getting side-tracked, and they are the ones who put the holes in doughnuts.

Chapter One

The vast blackness of space stretched forever in all directions from just about every point. At a few (billion, billion, billion) points in particular a large spaceship ploughed through the blackness along its programmed course.

In the long, and predominantly boring, history of the planet Rantii the market for windows sales had only recently - and much to the surprise of all but one of its inhabitants - developed into an extremely profitable business. The one person who had realised the potential of window sales applied to the planets Government for the sole rights to supply the Galaxy. His name was Netsen Sjon Borsi Habetir. But we'll just call him Netsen, as it saves space.

After he had been awarded the contract he sold off all his properties and used the capital to have a gigantic starcruiser commissioned, in which he could carry nearly enough windows to satisfy half the Galaxy.

So there he was, fifty thousand kilomes from any vaguely sentient lifeforms, bar a number of slightly lost tourists, sat on a black metal chair thoughtfully studying a supply manifest and munching on some SZadian delicacies.

Mmm.

Sugar coated Nolg snails, he thought to himself. Lightly chilled to perfection. He smiled sinfully as he dropped one into his mouth and began to chew. According to a recently published but sadly much unread scientific paper, the greatest number of chews on a SZadian Nolg snail is eleven. Though quite why anyone really wanted to know this has to do with what happens next.

Unfortunately for Netsen and his taste buds, but slightly less unfortunately for the snail, 1.7 seconds before he was going to swallow the ship was rocked by an explosion, which is actually quite handy as nothing particularly interesting has happened in the main story so far.

Boom! said the explosion. Or at least it tried, but instead the shockwave it sent through the ship tried to make a similar sound but its heart just wasn't in it.

Bluurrgh! cried Netsen, half in surprise, and half in serious annoyance.

Splut! said the snail as it met with the plush uncarpeted metal floor. It didn't much mind as it was already, and quite definitely, dead. You would also be dead if you had been boiled alive, roasted in a plasma oven, cooled to minus two hundred degrees, coated with superheated sugar and left to mature, and reduce radiation emissions, for ninety years.

After he had got over the initial shock of losing his snack Netsen set about finding the cause of the explosion. He fed the data into the ship's highly advanced computer system. With shock sensors all over the ship supplying the data for analysis, the source of the shockwave was quickly located. The computer-generated simulation showed the wave started at the front of the ship. Enhancement of the area in question showed that one of the emergency whisky tanks had exploded and taken a not-so-cheap chunk of the ship with it. He also found that some sod had stolen Emergency Evacuation ship 3's landing wheels. Some bastards would steal a blindman's sunglasses.

Thank goodness for blast shielded tanks, thought Netsen, as he pictured his ship, the Limited Cashflow, being ripped apart, bow to stern, from the inside. It was not a pretty picture at all.

Now I know where it happened, thought Netsen to himself, let's find out why it happened.

Computer, said Netsen, review ship's records for any anomalous readings.

Please specify time frame, replied the computer.

One hour previously from now, clarified Netsen, and waited for the results of the search.

A few seconds passed.

Record checking: complete. One anomaly found.

Display that and related records, he requested.

The records scrolled across the screen in front of Netsen. One of the figures displayed grabbed his attention and didn't let go until he realised why it looked so wrong. It was a very surprising number. It told him that shortly before the blast the ship's gravitational field strength increased by one ten-thousandth of a Drem. If he had to guess he would have said that something appeared in the whisky tank which compressed the liquid sufficiently to cause it to explode.

So, an unidentified object appeared in the container, set off an explosion and vanished again. Netsen sighed to himself.

Great. I love mysteries, he added dryly.

Netsen hadn't realised it