On the planet Earth, in a country called Australia, It was the hottest day of summer and an old man was probably out somewhere catching a fish. On the planet Bryan, which didn’t have any countries, instead dividing its land by which university was closest, it was a cool autumn evening at The Hungry Hippo University, central campus.

Planet Bryan was inhabited by a race called the Smarties. They were little green men, about a metre tall on average, with round, smooth, oversized heads and large black eyes that took up most of their faces. They had no visible ears, 2 vertical slits for a nose, and a horizontal slit for their mouth on the bottom of their faces.

They prided themselves on intelligence over everything else. They had mastered space travel, reversed global warming, and even cured the common cold, all while humans were still living in caves.

High intelligence doesn't always equate to good decision making, however. A prime example of this that you may have already noticed is that the entire race’s naming sense was quite terrible.

In his cramped dorm room, Fred was getting ready to call it a night. He had got some good study in, cleaned up, changed into his favourite blue pyjamas with golden polka dots, and even got a little meditation in. He was in the ideal mental state for a restful night's sleep to help him retain all he learned during the day.

Then his space TV turned on by itself.

“Universe's most deadly!” the TV blasted.

“Tonight on ‘Universe's most deadly’ we explore the atrocities committed by the insidious World Fish. Stay tuned as we give you a detailed play-by-play of recently recovered footage of his famous annihilation of Possum Planet, including testimony from survivors!”

Fred shivered, "I thought that there were no survivors." He whispered, sitting up, wrapping his blanket around his body and hugging his knees to his chest.

A CGI rendition of World Fish, a blue and green puffer fish, zoomed onto the screen, “I’m coming for you next!” it spoke to the audience.

That night Fred didn't sleep a wink.

A few hours of fitful tossing and turning was all Fred managed before his door was kicked open by the loudest ten-year-old he’d ever met. Her space karate lessons were really showing results.

In his over-exhausted state, he might have been able to ignore the sound of his door breaking against his wall. However, the pain of the previously mentioned 10-year-old performing a perfectly executed, lung-crushing, somersault, bomb dive onto his guts was unignorable.

“Fred get up! There's no time for sleep! Get up! Get up! Guess what?! We’ve been invited to the invention convention! Get up! It’s only in a month and we don’t have anything prepared!” She shouted into his face.

This little wrecking ball of youthful passion was Fred’s boss, Einstein. You could tell if Smarty was a girl by her long eyelashes and that she was a kid by how much shorter than Fred she was.

Einstein was a genius among Smarties. At age 7 she invented her first fusion engine, at 9 an artificial intelligence that made the perfect sandwich, and now at age 10 she was in charge of the Hungry Hippo University’s most valued team of young scientists: the ‘Little Girl’s Team’. An appropriate name since it was her team and she was a little girl.

Fred replied to her by gasping for breath.

Robotic limbs whirring far too loudly to be unintentional announced the arrival of Edison, the third member of the Little Girl’s Team.

Edison wasn’t a kid like Einstein. He was 18, legally an adult, the same as Fred. It was hard to tell his age, however, due to all the robot parts attached to him altering his height and appearance. He was the Smarty equivalent of an 'otaku'. He loved cyborgs more than anything and was turning himself into one, piece by piece.

His singular focus had pushed the scientific field of cybernetics forward by leaps and bounds since he joined the university. Cybernetics were kind of redundant in modern Smarty society since cloned body parts and strength-enhancing piloted suits already existed. But since his research was technically groundbreaking and he was technically a genius, he earned a spot on the team.

Edison strolled in through Fred’s busted door, “What should we invent? I have a few schematics for a cyborg tongue that I think we can get working in time.” He sat down at Fred’s work chair on the opposite side of the room and rested his feet up on the table, knocking over some stationary.

Einstein fake gagged, “Gross, no tongues. No, we need something big! Something to really make a splash for our team’s debut. Something world-changing!”

“If we make the tongue big enough…”

“NO TONGUES! Anyways, Fred, why are you still in bed?! Did you stay up late last night?” Einstein held his pyjama shirt in both hands and shook him.

“Hehe, at Fred’s age, he probably stayed up all night watching naughty videos about tongues.” laughed Edison, pulling out his smarty phone and playing with it.

Fred’s voice was muffled by his pillow “...same age..”

“Whassat?” asked Edison, staring at his phone, drawing a figure eight with his finger.

“RRAAAAAGGHH!” Einstein shrieked as she was thrown off Fred, onto the floor. Fred sat up, “I said I’m the same age as you, Idiot,” Fred tried to glare at Edison, but his eyes were too unfocused, “I wasn’t watching tongue videos; I was… researching World Fish.”

“World Fish? Why?” Asked Einstein, picking herself up off the floor.

Edison cut in, answering for Fred, “Oh! I saw that too! Awesome stuff. World fish got moved up to number three now on the…” he looked around the room conspiratorially before whispering, “secret danger list,” he resumed speaking at a normal volume, “They found an old satellite from some extinct race with footage of World Fish making them um… extinct. Hold on,” he typed on his phone a bit, then spun it around so that Einstein could see, “check it out!”

As Einstein watched the footage with her mouth open and eyes wide, Fred threw his covers off and got out of bed. He had lied to his team, he hadn't stayed up studying last night. The truth was, Fred suffered from ichthyophobia: an irrational fear of fish. After watching the video that Einstein was now watching, he had simply been too afraid to fall asleep.

It was one thing after another, the lack of sleep, the rude awakening, Edison mentioning tongues, Fred was mad. The fish noises coming from the video on Edison’s phone were the last straw. Fred’s anger activated his supernatural powers.

Fred was a mad scientist, literally. When he became too angry, he received supernatural inspiration for some of the evilest inventions conceivable. These evil inspirations were often accompanied by groundbreaking ideas that could potentially advance Smarty science years forward so long as the evil parts were removed. This is how Fred, despite his otherwise average intelligence, had landed a spot on the prestigious Little Girls Team.

He marched over to Edison and slapped his legs off the table, “Off my chair,” he scowled. Edison relinquished the chair, mechanical eyebrows raised in shock, “You want world-changing?” Fred growled, grabbing a paper and a pencil. He began furiously sketching, his pencil almost ripped the paper as schematics for an invention began to take shape.

Both Einstein and Edison watched over his shoulder in awe. When Einstein realised what Fred was designing she turned to Edison and whispered, “That could actually work!”

As Fred’s anger faded, Einstein took over, filling in the blanks in the design and Edison got to work constructing. Unfortunately, the scientific process would have to be thrown out the window as the creation could never be tested. It was a fantastic device, in theory, but it was too dangerous to ever actually be used.

They named it ‘The Milk-Shaker’.

👽👽👽👽👽

Weeks later, it was the morning of the invention convention and Fred was sleeping peacefully after a long night of putting some finishing touches on the Milk-Shaker.

The invention convention was the greatest annual event in all smarty society. It was a high-profile, extravagant gala, where the brightest Smarty minds would come together to show off their newest and greatest inventions. To be given an opportunity to present was a lifelong dream of most Smarties. So naturally, the Little Girls team was super excited and busy right up until the day of the convention.

His peaceful slumber was disrupted by his door getting kicked in again. Einstein flew furiously into the room. She looked ready to murder, “FRED YOU MORON! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO WAKE EVERYONE UP! WE’RE LATE!”

Fred bolted upright and looked at his clock, “OH MY SCIENCE! WE’RE SO LATE!” he screamed, waving his arms about, “I’m sure I set my alarm properly last night, What happened?! Why didn’t anyone wake me?!” He tried to jump out of bed but tripped on his blankets, slamming face-first into the floor.

“Dammit Fred! You’re the oldest! You're supposed to be the responsible one who wakes us up! We’re late because of you!” Einstein shouted at Fred’s limp form on the floor.

“Wait… You didn’t set an alarm? You were relying entirely on me because I’m older?” Fred lifted his head off the ground and asked in disbelief.

“Of course! I’m team leader, I delegate minor tasks and focus on the big picture!”

“What about Edison? He and I are the same age!” Fred protested.

“Your birthday is 2 months earlier than his! You're still the oldest and so you should be in charge of alarms!” Einstein rebuked stubbornly.

Ideas for an alarm clock that leapt off the table in the morning and stabbed Einstein with needles to wake her up started filling Fred’s mind. He shook his head to clear away the anger. No point in arguing with a 10-year-old.

He took a deep breath to calm himself and fix this problem, “Ok Einstein, I’m sorry. We can still salvage this setback. Let’s go get Edison and try to rush over to the convention while we still can.”

They left Fred’s and hurried over to Edison's room. Einstein didn’t have to kick the door in as it was already wide open, they found Edison sitting on his bed playing with his smarty phone. He looked up, “Oh, hey guys, is it time to get ready?” He greeted them, waving a robotic hand.

“Edison you're awake? How long have you been up?” Fred asked in disbelief.

“Only a few hours, why?” He looked down, tapped at his phone a few times, then frowned, “Oh… damn! We’re late! Fred! Why didn’t you come wake me up?!”

Fred thought of a fantastic little device that could be attached to a smarty phone. It would release a thin carbon thread, invisible to the naked eye, that would wrap around the user’s neck and pull tight, decapitating them. His face began turning yellow in anger.

“We don’t have time for this. We need to get the machine onto the space truck and go to the convention now!” Einstein fumed.

“Oh, speaking of the convention. We probably don’t wanna go downtown right now. I was just watching the news and they said it's super dangerous there right now," Edison turned his phone to show them the screen, "Weather fish is going nuts and killing a bunch of people down near the convention hall.”

Fred swallowed a lump in his throat at the mention of the magic fish. Then he realised something about what Edison had just said. He grit his teeth and asked as calmly as he could, “Edison, am I to understand that you’ve been watching news reports about the invention convention for hours before we walked in and somehow didn't realise we were late?!”

Edison was too engrossed in his phone and missed Fred’s question. He continued reporting the news instead, “It looks like she wants to destroy the whole city, they're saying. Yo, we're in the city, right? Shouldn't we get out of here before she makes it to here?” Edison got up and pressed the button to open his window. His mechanical eyes telescoped out of his head to look into the distance, “Oh na, we’re fine. Can see a bunch of laserjets flying towards the centre now.” he jumped back on his bed and went back to playing with his phone.

Einstein pulled out her smarty phone too and was humming while watching the news. Fred just stood there with his mouth open. He couldn't believe that this is what constituted being a ‘genius’. Everyone had just forgotten about being late and just accepted that an insanely dangerous magic fish was in their city going wild.

Emergency sirens started wailing throughout the city. Several laser jets flew over the university towards the city centre. Fred looked out the window and could see storm clouds billowing out in the distance.

“Haha cool, they got her!” Edison declared, still staring at his phone.

“What do you mean ‘got her’?” asked Fred, “Like scared her off?”

“Na, pretty sure they killed her. Good stuff! Smarty technology rules!” Edison raised his hand and Einstein gave him a high five.

“...Are you serious right now? Oh science! Those fools! What have they done!” Fred said incredulously. He started hyperventilating and paced the room.

“What’s the matter, Fred? We killed the terrorist. Why are you acting like this is the end of the world?” Einstein asked.

Fred stopped pacing and looked at his idiotic teammates, “Because it is! How do you think the other fish are going to react once they find out we killed Weather Fish?”

Both his teammates stopped smiling. Edison even put down his phone, “Oh… yeah that's bad.”