SWOON STORIES

Forget what you think you know about
Aliens how they are suppose to look and act.
Forget about all those movies and comic books
Characters you read about as a child or seen
in the movies lately. Swoon is none of those things.
Swoon is a female whose planet was destroyed
By a rogue comet - a planet sized killer
Asteroid.

For all intents and purposes
Swoon looks human and can pass for a
real person. Even though it took her 8 months
To morph her body into that of a human woman.
Without the proper medical history she was
Only able to create a beautiful outer shell
No functioning female parts.

Swoon is not dangerous by nature but if
Confronted or attacked. She can be as deadly
as a tornado hitting a small mid-western town.
During Swoon's travels to understand and get
To known how people act and treat one another,
she may find herself in the middle of things
That don’t concern her. But she was not born
To our ways of thinking. She comes from a culture
That treasures life and peace.

Being from another planet is something she had no
Control over. So love or hate swoon dear readers
It’s your choice. But please never make mistake of
Thinking that because she is only one, she is easily
Defeated. Wroooooooong...

“Hi my name is Swoon Darvonne. Perhaps you have heard of me and that I’m not from this planet.
Well you're right.

I come from a planet not too far from your solar system. My planet was destroyed by a rogue comet.

I came to your planet Because it is a place of nice warmth and ancient beauty.

My path is one of survival and freedom so please don’t mistake me for some long-headed, glowing-finger, little alien running around screaming 'ET PHONE HOME,' and pointing to the stars.

This is my home now and I will not go quietly into the night. If you want to destroy one another, then sadly there’s nothing I can do about that.

So if there’s any problem with that then I’m sorry. But I’m here to stay."

- Swoon Darvonne

ERIDANI IV

Swoon's home planet is the fourth planet from the star Epsilon Eridani. Up until about 4,000 Earth years ago, Eridani IV was actually Eridani III. It had no moon, and orbited it's sun just at the outter edge of the habitable band.

Approximately 4,000 years ago, a wandering planet with it's moon crossed the Epsilon Eridani solar system. As it crossed the orbit of the third planet, it gravitationally interacted with Eridani III, resulting in a mutual capture. The new orbit of the three bodies turned out to be stable. The two planets and moon then described highly elliptical orbits about a common center of gravity ever since.

This interaction caused massive ecological upheavals on Swoon's home planet, which essentially destroyed her people's civilization. Within a very few generations, they were knocked back to the primitive hunter-gatherer stage of development.

Because the two planets' orbits around each other are highly elliptical, the other planet seemed to the primitives of that time to grow and shrink. As the other planet grew in the skies, tides became increasingly catastrophic. Weather also became more violent.

Since the ecological upheavals were coincident with the sudden appearance of 2 new moons, and a drastic warming of the planet caused by the new orbit being much closer to the primary, these primitive people looked upon the other planet as a "Bad Omen" - they call it "The Forbidden Planet."

Environmental Upheavals

As the new double-planet system, Eridani III & IV, complete their orbits about their common center of gravity, they are constantly moving closer together and futher away from each other. At all times, Eridani IV now experiences much higher tides than before the wanderer was captured.

This is especially true when the two planets are at their closest conjunction. Tides can be in excess of 1000 feet! This is a government photograph of an area covered by the ocean at the highest tide on record for Swoon's people.

This shot, of the same spot about 18 days later, shows the difference when the two planets are near their maximum distance from each other. Notice the light color of the soil where the water was in the previous image. This is dried salt from the ocean water. The land has been salt-poisoned, and is no longer usable for anything. Even if they could remove the salt from the soil, the tide cycle is only 36 days long!

Sociological Development

As time went on, Swoon's people adapted to the new conditions they were confronted with. They developed along lines similar to that of Earth's people - they banded together into tribes, then city-states and eventually nations.

As is all too common with our society, these separate groups found occasions to fight. Warfare became increasingly sophisticated until well after the development of gunpowder. It was around this time that the naturally high empathy of Swoon's people developed to the point of their being able to feel another person's pain. Of course, this made it increasingly difficult to wage war.

All of the nations of Swoon's home planet got together for peace talks, and set up an organization not unlike our United Nations, except that their organization actually worked for the good of the people. They called this organization the United Government (UG). Strategic disarmament became a reality. All of the arms that had been stockpiled were "mothballed" pending recycling for peaceful use. The governments then used the resources that were previously engaged in waging war to further the sciences.

One area that benefitted greatly from this redirection of resources was Astronomy and space exploration. Once orbital space flight was achieved, the UG started planning to explore other planets, starting with the moon that arrived with the Forbidden Planet.

All went well with the space program. The UG established a number of bases on the moon after it was found that the moon contained many rich deposits of metallic ores that were in short supply on the home planet. Regular traffic was established between the home planet and the moon, and all space stations and vehicles were constructed on the moon as there was less energy required to lift them into space from there since it's gravity is only 1/8 that of the home planet.

Drool

Once Swoon's people were firmly established in space, they started to think about exploring the Forbidden Planet. Probes were sent to sample the atmosphere, which showed that the planet would be habitable for them. They then commenced working on overcoming the unique problems associated with landing on a planet with slightly higher gravity than their own. Eventually, these problems were overcome, and a manned ship was sent.

It never returned.

Radio traffic indicated no problems - the astronauts went out to explore and were never heard from again.

Eventually, a second heavily armoured ship was sent with specially trained troops. The ship landed in sight of the first ship. Some of the troops went out to explore while others remained on the ship. The troops on the ship witnessed the destruction of the exploration party. Large winged lizards converged on the landing party and tore them to pieces in a matter of seconds. The troops remaining on the ship fired on the lizards with little effect. The lizards ate all of the exploration party, then converged on the ship while the remaining troops scrambled for the airlock, firing on the salivating lizards. All but two of the remaining troops made it back into the ship. Some of the lizards sprayed the troops, the ship and the inside of the airlock with a grayish-green liquid, which dried to a gray powder in a matter of seconds.

The ship took off and returned to Swoon's home planet. The entire populace was horrified at the destruction wrought by the drooling lizards. The returning troops told of feeling the hatred and vicious emotions of the drools, as they came to be known. However, Swoon's people felt that they were safe from the drools as there was no indication of intelligence, so they would not be able to bridge the space gap to Swoon's planet. How wrong they were...

Spores

The drool life-form is much different from our form of life. They are more akin to a fungus than to mammals - at least as far as their reproduction goes. They reproduce asexually. Drools produce millions of microscopic spores, which can survive in extreme environments. When the spores find themselves in favorable conditions, they begin to grow - each spore has the potential to produce a new adult, indistinguishable from the parent.

The spores are sprayed as a grayish-green liquid, which dries to a gray powder in a matter of seconds under normal conditions.

When the second ship returned from the Forbidden Planet, it unwittingly released millions of drool spores into the atmosphere. The vast majority of the young drools were killed by Swoon's people before they grew large enough to do any appreciable damage. However, many of the spores ended up in forests and other thinly populated areas. The young drools lived off of the native wild life and grew quite large. It was then that they became a menace to Swoon's people, who then found themselves in the position of having to develop weapons capable of destroying adult drools.

Drool Physiology

Although drools are similar to us in many respects - they possess an internal skeleton, binocular vision, a brain encased in a skull, etc., - they differ in some important aspects. One aspect is their method of reproduction, as discussed above. Another difference is their response to physical damage. If a drool is damaged but is still alive, healing begins immediately. Severed limbs are regrown - given enough time. They do not possess a heart, rather their veins do all of the pumping of their blood. In addition, their lungs are multi-chambered. That is, if one chamber is punctured, it won't affect them to any great extent.

A note on drool reproduction: it seems that drools possess some form of innate intelligence as regards the spreading of their spores. They have spread their spores over most of Swoon's home planet, but they don't all start growing immediately. Apparently, they have some way of controlling when the spores start to grow. Once the drools have infected a planet, it is virtually impossible to wipe them out completely. Their spores will continue to germinate in waves.

Swoon's people learned early on that in order to stop a drool, you must completely destroy it. If it is merely disabled, it will come back and attack again. One way that they found to destroy the drools was to spray them with concentrated Potassium Nitrate. There are other chemicals that will also do the trick, but Potassium Nitrate has a number of factors in it's favor: it dissolves the drools tissues, it dissolves the drools spores and it doesn't harm the environment as much as other chemicals - in dilute form, it is a fertilizer.

Click Here for images.

This is especially true when the two planets are at their closest conjunction. Tides can be in excess of 1000 feet! This is a government photograph of an area covered by the ocean at the highest tide on record for Swoon's people.
		This shot, of the same spot about 18 days later, shows the difference when the two planets are near their maximum distance from each other. Notice the light color of the soil where the water was in the previous image. This is dried salt from the ocean water. The land has been salt-poisoned, and is no longer usable for anything. Even if they could remove the salt from the soil, the tide cycle is only 36 days long!