“I READ THIS TALE ON CRACK AND THEN MADE SOME REAL WHACK ART.” Andy Warthole.

"Reading this was almost like being whipped with a leather strap... but not quite as fun."
Francis Baconeater

"I tried to read it but there were too many words- So I beat my assistant instead."
Naomi Campbelt.

Heck, anybody that read the article would have realized how unlikely it is that someone named 'Cereal Blaze' should just happen to be working on a breakfast cereal that explodes when you pour milk on it but eh, I go along with that name as it's good for business.

You see, my business is all about unusual weapons- I create them and sell them to the highest bidder. That inaccurate article written some thirteen years ago back on earth by an idiot journalist has brought customers from across the galaxy in search of Cereal. I've designed unexpected weapons of mass destruction, disruption, chaos and it seems, the legend that has grown up around me has generated much discussion.

Oh, anyone can sell particle separators, old rail guns, solar cannons and the like but weapons scanning devices pick them up because they have ferrous or metal internal coils and bits and pieces in them. That weapons era passed long ago.

Nowadays, you only pack a particle separator if you can convince a portal company to deposit you well away from law enforcement and customs agencies. And that's expensive.

No, today's clients need solutions that go way beyond traditional brutish methods.

 I derive a certain joy in concocting something truly unexpected for the client's particular circumstances and unique problems. My products range from thought viruses through to oxygen cylinder parasites, to sunglasses that blind, toy watches that will slice through the wearers wrist at a certain time right on up to the truly exotic- and it's those exotic weapons that bring in the fat creds.

Yeah, if it hurts, maims, injures, kills or even worse- something that changes a victim's mind, then I'll sell the product to whoever is willing to pay.

Screw the U.P. The bloody United Planets and their bloody bureaucratic charter I say. The “order” they bring to the galaxy is every bit as worthless as the disorder the old U.N. and W.T.O. brought about back on earth. Heck, what did the U.N. do to prevent the fundamentalist war of the twenty first century eh? What did bloody talking and watching do eh? I'm all for adaptation and the survival of the dominant species... but now that she's going to...

Oh, I'm getting myself a bit worked up here. I've just got to stop and breathe for a moment.

 In, badness out, in, badness out, in... ah that's better.

I had an extended break on New Bedlam a few years back as I was hiding from a corporation. Anyway, the stratosphere on that planet is essentially nitrous oxide and when inhabitants felt a bit down they'd climb a mountain and just breathe. Well, all that hiding made me a bit depressed so I moved to the Smiling Buddha Monastery up in the mountains on New Bedlam. Yeah, made you laugh alright but now I have to take a prescribed eye mist to repair my bone marrow and the mist has some side effects- when I get all worked up, well, it's not the healthiest state of being for me.

Heck, I'm only thirty six and I sound like a geriatric already. No, I'm in okay condition I s'pose, though I do lose the plot when retelling my stories sometimes.

I'm sorry, I'm lying here on my bed relating the toilet-tale of my life into this recorder just as the Portal Lord said I should. What a day- I find love, get attacked twice, meet what I suspect is a visitor from another galaxy that even the portal masters fear, then become entangled in a war I cannot win and now... yeah, I've just seen something that's given me a bit of a shock.

But anyway, getting back to telling my story, well, recording the events of the last day as I said I would. I'd better read the emails that are relevant to this tale as well. The Portal Lord said I needed to 'record a detailed account of my actions and explain my reasoning.'

I'll just say here that I believe success in life comes from trying to learn from the mistakes of others and not making those mistakes yourself. When the old U.N. failed to deal with terrorism, the smart players faced up to the truth. Those with brains eradicated and neutered the trouble-makers, saving mankind in the process. Good on some of our ancestors for making the tough choices I say.

It's just like I tell my clients: “You want results? Then you gotta pay the price.” Yeah, The price for problem solving can be quite lucrative so it might as well be me that reaps the rewards.

Like my favorite philosopher Nappyman says “Christ was a capitalist. He cracked it at one of the disciples for burying a coin instead of trying to make more. Before that, back in the Old Testament, humans were trading in eyeballs.” Yeah, that was taken from his unauthorized biography 'Nappyman: Effluence Becomes Influence' and it was written by his former schoolteacher turned lithium junkie. Love that book; I even have some of Nappyman's quotes taped to the cockpit of my bouncer on Negev.

I call planet Negev home cause it's such a desolate hole and yet it's pure. No developers will ever bother to settle and list it with the U.P. I've had beautiful pads before; even had a palace right on the beach on Haven real close to the equator but wouldn't you know it, evil developers moved in and created a local council and then a planetary government and then they applied for membership in the U.P..

Dirty bastards- I had to sell up for whatever I could get before they took control as the U.P.'s Stellar Constabulary have a few warrants out for my arrest.

 Hmm, okay, it's more than a few warrants. They have a Shoot On Confirmed Sight order on me.

 What did I do eh? I'm just an inventive middle man.

 Look, I simply sold a couple of z-crates of fresh bananas laced with undetectable elements to the hippies on New Galapagos after a group of conservationists paid me to remove those hairy degenerates. Why, I helped adaptation along on that planet by preventing any offspring from those hairy freaks from ever being born. I got fat credits for that gig- even got paid for the bananas by the hippies! HA-HA.  Wish more gigs like that would come along.

Yeah, that's the trouble in my business. It's not like a convenience store or a portal company you know. You gotta take the gig when it comes along and don't ask too many questions.

It's just like my mother's experience with a sales assistant in a hardware store. The store clerk didn't ask why a young woman required a pair of scissors, a razor and ten kilograms of industrial strength drain cleaner at three in the morning on earth. Obviously she was trying to get rid of a body.

Heck, Cain slew Abel. He probably did that with a blow from a rock over the head or a whack with a tree branch over the head- you can't stop people from buying rocks or trees though. I reckon just about anything can become a weapon and I kind of enjoy creating chemical concoctions and applying laws of science to killing. I'm not a qualified chemist though... I'm more of a creative thinker.

So, that's where this story starts; with my lack of creative thought. I'm no good at story-telling: I excel at creating and selling the means of death.

 Where to begin exactly? My old mate Billy-Joe 'The Interplanetary Ho' reckons that every good retelling of a story should start with 'It was a dark and stormy night' but what does he know eh? He's into mongoloid porn.

Heck, he's even got his own harem of sex slaves that he's had surgically altered to look like they've got Downs Syndrome. Pfffft, the guy's from a different reality altogether I reckon but anyway, he's an old mate so I'll take his example here and alter it a bit.