And so it came to pass that Bob was left unto this Earth. Alone was he, and around him was nothing. No plant, nor animal, nor single celled life form awaited him upon the Earth. Not a sausage.

But as time went by, Bob began to populate the Earth, attempting to make it more and more hospitable to those whom had left him behind. He did not begrudge them. He didn’t even know them. He had, however, smelt them, and it was from whence the stench had come which had cast him out through the airlock and blown him out onto the void of a still volcanic and amorphous Earth.

But why he was here was not an issue any longer. What he was going to do here quickly became problem number one in his book.

And thusly, Bob began to work upon his chosen tasks: building shelter, creating an atmosphere, and inventing the Tulip. Building the shelter was a time consuming and arduous task, especially when compared to the relative mundanity of creating an atmosphere. Bob had eaten a lot of interstellar beef jerky in his previous days as a hitchhiker. In fact, Bob felt vaguely embraced as his flatulence flew forth onto the still burning Earth’s surface. His embarrassment soon waned as he noticed the noxious gasses were merging with the planet’s rising internal gas. It took only a few hours for the lonely little planetoid to grow itself an aerosol shield.

The shelter was indeed a difficult thing to construct. First, there was the constant changing of the Earth’s crust to contend with. The lava and rock flows were a swirling miasma of chaos around Bob’s Zen-like calm. First, he attempted to build a crude teepee out of paper-mache, but it was soon turned to dust by the incessant lava.

Then Bob started constructing a castle out of stone and mortar. It sank into the swamp. He built another castle. That one burnt down fell over and then sank into the swamp. He was beginning to get a sense of extreme deja-vu. And so Bob tucked the idea of a free standing structure away in his vast mind for later recovery. Instead, he decided to tunnel into one of the larger rock formations and ride out the more trvial moments of the planet’s evolution in a deep torpor-like state.

For many an eon, Bob slept, awaiting the day that he would arise and invent the tulip. Years flew by, and the Earth swung ever faster around the bright sun; it’s true master.

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On the surface, life evolved. Possibly from the remains of one of his left-over sandwiches. Or possibly of its own accord. There is no way to be entirely sure, for Bob slept through it all. He slept as cells became clusters, as giant insects became giant lizards; he dozed as large carnivores roamed the Earth, ever searching for their next meal. He snored heartily as the world above became populated with hairy milk drinking creatures, and was entirely unaware that small hairless apes had begun bickering over donkeys, yaks, and why Jews are distasteful. Bob never even fluttered his eyelids as the wobbly creatures fired themselves into space with huge oxygen candles; neither was his slumber disturbed as the monkey-things killed each other in the billions, and slowly vanished from a cold, darkened world.

Verily, Bob slept for nearly an entire Crasnydang (a very long time indeed!) and only decided to rise from his rocky shelter when he awoke with a sharp urge not to have an orgasm for fear of messing his sheets.

And so, as Bob pushed the near-wet dream from his mind, he shakily rose and headed towards the surface of the now smaller, grayer Earth. And it was upon this Earth that he set out to invent the Tulip.

Unfortunately, just above the entrance to his abyssal sleeping chamber, a long dead high-rise stood lonely and black with millennia of neglect. Upon it’s massive top hung precariously: a long yellow automobile with many windows and seats. In some arcane and long dead language, it wore a black name across its long, rivet dotted sides.

As Bob stretched his arms out and emitted a deafening yawn, the teetering high-rise began to buckle, and the yellow vehicle tumbled down upon Bob, killing him instantly.

It was probably just as well. The tulip had been invented many millions of years before, anyway.