Percy and his troubles sleeping

The stars were shining bright that night, as Percy looked up at them, counting one by one; millions of them.

Percy was having a hard time sleeping. He had many reasons. One was that he was a space otter, and in space one would have to float around and he kept bumping onto other sleeping space creatures.

Another reason was his sleeping area was so close to the stars and they were shining extra bright that night. Counting stars was something that put Percy to sleep very easily.

However the stars were shining too bright that day and he kept miscounting them and had to start all over again; and having counted as high as a million, it was frustrating to start from zero all over again.

Percy thought of many things he could try to put himself to sleep besides counting stars. But being a space otter, there was nothing else that was in abundance to count. If he tried counting the other creatures that were sleeping around him, he would surely get very annoyed as there were only a few hundred of them around, and Percy loved counting by the millions.

Percy floated on and on and thought hard about something to count. He had one idea...no, that would not do! He had another idea...why, that simply would not do as well!

This went on for hours until he had been thinking of millions of ideas of things to count and all of them were uncountable to the million. It was then that he realised that counting ideas was exactly what he needed, as his eyes lids were feeling heavy and he was starting to doze off and fall asleep.

He was only halfway through this realisation, that Percy finally fell asleep, snoring away that the other creatures were awoken and he did not bump onto any of them, and with millions of brightly shining stars surrounding him.

Percy faces the long and arduous lecture

Percy let out a space-sigh. He looked out the omni-window of the space otter classroom and gazed longingly at the school's astroturf field. At that moment, he wanted more than anything to be playing around of space-ball with his space otter buddies. But first, he had to face Mister Krabnimbus.

Mister Krabnimbus was their practical astrophilosophy lecturer, and his lectures were known to be damaging to a young, keen space otter's spirits. Quite often you could see space otter students leaving his classroom completely reduced to tears. Not that Mister Krabnimbus was mean or spiteful or anything like that; he was just unforgivingly, unashamedly boring.

Mister Krabnimbus was probably the most boring otter on this side of the solar system. There was only one known way to survive the Krabnimbus effect, and that was to tough it out. Percy would have to tough it out, and wait for his chance to leave.

Mister Krabnimbus was especially boring this day. He had gone off a tangent from galacti-platos theories about the ideal space civilization to talk about his daughter recent trip to the plastic spoon factory. From what Percy could tell, Mister Krabnimbus was using the countours of the plastic spoon as an analogy for marriage.

It was worse than Percy could have imagined. Already Percy had an incredible urge to drop out of space otter school and get a job flipping galacti-burgers at space-Wendy's. Percy tried his best to fight it, but the Krabnimbus effect was not a force to be trifled with. Already many of Percy's classmates were lost forever every spark of creativity and individuality gone from their eyes. It was all Percy could do to hold on.

Suddenly the moment that Percy had been waiting an hoping for arrived. It wasn't obvious at first, but Percy began to notice Mister Krabnimbus's eyes droop slightly. Gradually, the most boring otter in all the galaxy began to slur his words. Finally he came to a complete stop, his eyes closed, and the occasional snore escaping his lips. It had happened. Mister Krabnimbus had bored himself to sleep.

Percy let out a great sigh of relief. The storm had passed. He stood up, walked out the class, walked out of the school and enjoyed the rest of his day.