We were crashing to a fiery death. Our spaceship, crumbling. Breaking apart from the sheer force of entering the Micro World.

  “Try turning that wheel!” shouted Wilx, the Astrospecialist and genius of our group.

  Streaks of multi-colored light flew past the window, which I would have marvelled at but was distracted by the window shattering into a hundred pieces.

  “I already did!” replied Dr. Rip T. Brash, legendary cohort and bizarre alien (descriptions can be found in an Index at the end of the book). “The wheels keep breaking. The levers too.”

  “What about those buttons?” I yelped.

  I, being Krimshaw, a species known as Greeg and also the writer of this book. A Greeg (remember that Index thing?) is one of the most uncivilized, undesirable creatures you could hope to meet anywhere. But not me, I’m a one-of-a-kind reformed Greeg. Civilized, with adequate intelligence and not a bad guy to have on a space adventure. The three of us had already been through countless adventures together. Still, we kept finding something new to occupy our time (with varied results).

  “Forget the buttons, that whole panel is fried,” said Rip as he dodged a wall-sized piece of debris that decided to fly across the room. Alarms were sounding to say the normal alarms were broken. Then finally those alarms broke too. We were flying blind. No alarms at all.

  Rip sat down in his chair in protest, evidently giving up after the wall-dodge.

  “What are you doing?” asked Wilx.

  “I’m going to sit down and relax for a minute. Seems better for the ship, anyway. Everything we touch breaks!”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “You can’t sit down now!” shouted Wilx. “We need someone to go repair the shield before the fuel tanks explode. All the wires have uncoupled. Just got a notification.”

  “How many mechanical notifications did you get?” I asked.

  “194,” replied Wilx. “But that one was automatically ranked #1 in the death-avoidance triage queue.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I think the force of the explosion would knock the ship off course.”

  “The ship’s disintegrating and you’re worried about going off course?!” I balked.

  “If we go off course, we crash through the walls of nothing-ness. We’re currently in a space between tangible dimensions, we have to get through it as quickly as possible because we technically can’t exist here. It’s a flagrant loophole in the laws of physics. If you stay here long enough the universe notices, like the FBI tracing a phone call. The universe will then expel you into a random dimension, hoping it guessed right but not really caring either way.”

  “How often does the universe guess right?” I asked.

  “Considering how many potential dimensions there are, maybe once in a while.”

  “Ok, let’s just keep moving.”

  Rip stayed in the chair. Then the fuel tanks exploded.

  None of us had ever visited the Micro World. No one had ever used a spaceship like this, capable (supposedly) of withstanding the immense chaos associated with travelling between two planes of existence that have nothing in common with each other. At least we thought it was capable until a few screws started coming loose followed by a casual devastation of the hull and failure of the navigation systems. We knew there would be dangers once we got there but we had no idea how dangerous it would be along the way. Despite our immortality status, this was one of the moments I thought we might not make it.

  But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. This scene takes place at the end of the book, by which point you’ll have forgotten all about the Micro World (whatever that is). Actually, it takes place at the beginning of the next book. I need to go way back.