Chapter 2: Many Thousands of Years Later:

The things on planet Nothania had evolved to the point of being able to dribble and clap their hands at things that brought them a mild amount of amusement, usually another thing falling over, the molecules usually agreed but had no way of outwardly displaying it so they largely went back to partying all the time in the sea.

The things on Nothania had developed needs and knew this, there were not all that many things on Nothania at this point, but that is mostly because none of them knew how to build double glazing and central heating and largely got cold and perished when the lesser star times came, many just dug into the ground with lots of nuts and greenery and hoped for the best. When the hotter times came though the things came back out of the ground and felt very pleased with themselves, but had no way of expressing it, until one day one of the things thought ‘Hey, why don’t we make the English language, that would help the readers and might just pave the way to building a better society’, but all that came out was a grunt, but the other things knew what the thing meant and set about creating the Oxford Concise and memorising it for future reference.

It took a while for the things to get their language together, many less star times came and went and eventually, after a lot of giggling about other things still falling over they decided that the other animal things on Nothania would probably help with their hunger needs better and would taste great barbequed. The things soon got a taste for meat like dishes, this everyone certainly agreed with, they agreed even more when one of the more intelligent things invented mayonnaise, this thing went down in the pages of history as not only being one the greatest things that had ever lived but also for making every other thing on Nothania regrettably fatter than previous things, but no one really cared all that much since it made the less star times easier to deal with.

Some of the things that came across other things found each other tolerable to be around for extended periods of time, so when the less star time came they decided to dig a bigger hole for each other to spend time in. They liked this very much; it was warmer for a start. It wasn’t until a little while later when, after a big hollow tree had fallen over, that one of the clever things decided to climb inside, the thing found it very accommodating and decided, since it was near a source of fresh water, that this hollow fallen over tree would be a great place to spend his time, even sometimes inviting over things to come round and have a look. This is probably the first house any one thing had ever lived in, although not thing-built it was still inside something that wasn’t the ground, it even had carpet made of comfy moss. Other things saw this happy thing and set about copying the idea, but each thing wanted their hollow tree better than the next, until they all realised it was just easier building huts out of wood since hollow fallen over trees were hard to come by. The things had a dilemma, they knew what they wanted but didn’t know how to get it; they needed a cutting tool, but bigger than the ones they had been using with dinner. In exchange for food one of the things, after inventing it one lazy hung-over afternoon, started to sell industrial size saws, this made building huts much easier, well, until they learnt how to tie the logs together, which took another capitalist thing to invent rope first, but after that had happened every thing on Nothania started to live that time on in wooden huts varnished with Ronseal, because it was highly reliable and did exactly what it said on the tin.