Laura Loomis is a social worker in the San Francisco area, looking for a publisher for her novel. Her fiction has appeared most recently in THE FIRST LINE, ON THE PREMISES, and ELECTRIC DRAGON CAFE. Her crowning achievement was a Dishonorable Mention in the Bulwer-Lytton "It was a dark and stormy night" contest.

On a planet much like ours – well, actually, technically, it was ours – there was once a great writer named Lori Lewis. Nobody knew that she was a great writer. For light-years she’d been sending her manuscript to publishers who were too stupid to see how good it was. All they ever sent her back were snippy little notes saying, "Thank you for your interest, but your story does not meet our needs at this time." One of them was even mean enough to mention that she’d said "their" where she meant to write "there." This made Lori cry so hard that the snot ran down her nose and landed on the letter, blurring its harsh words.

Seriously, what does it take for a writer to catch a break? Lori had reached the point where she was starting her query letters, "Dear idiot, just read it, you’ll see it’s the best thing you ever read!" But even that didn’t work for some reason.

There was only one publisher that Lori hadn’t tried. But he was the richest, most famous, most important publisher in the world, the kind that wears solid gold underwear, and Lori felt that if all the others had turned her down, maybe she wasn’t so good after all. An important man like him would just laugh at her.

"How can this be?" Lori asked one night as she stared at the night sky, where the twinkling stars reminded her of the flying toasters on her Windows screen saver. "My friends and family all love my writing. Are they all wrong? Why won’t a publisher give me a chance?"

A voice from the shadows said softly, "Don’t give up."

Lori gasped as a man stepped out, seemingly from nowhere. He glowed with an unearthly shimmer, like a neon sign on steroids. The kind that looks greenish from a distance, but when you get up close, you can see it’s really purple. He had enormous round eyes, and hair that looked like the felt stuff on a pool table, but if she’d touched it, she would have known that it had the consistency of wet velvet. He had a long, thin, quivering nose that could smell fear or joy, or even more complex emotions like pique and ambivalence.

Strangely, he wasn’t smelling any fear from Lori. She knew somehow that he was there for her higher good.

"I am Simool," the man said. There was much that he could have told her about himself. Simool was a traveler in space and time, from the distant planet of Cloacina, which was fending off an invasion from the evil Empire of Xplughzggwyzzk. Most of the fighting was being done light scimitars, which is totally not derivative of "Star Wars," because light scimitars have a crinkly shape and glow with a multitude of ever-changing colors, and that’s way cooler.

Simool himself was the son of the true ruler of Cloacina, or as they say in Xplughzggwyzzkian, the Qwrggngggch. He had been hidden away at a young age, his true parentage kept secret from everyone, even himself. Years later, a wise mystic named Mrflrchylzq who spoke in riddles would recognize Simool’s true identity, and help him lead a rebellion against the Empire. But he would never succeed until he found the Titanium Key. The Key was, as we shall see, the key to everything, and would lead Simool to make a final stand for the survival of his people.

But right now, it wasn’t about him, it was about her. "You are a very special person, Lori Lewis. When you were very young, you were chosen by my people. We placed a special crystal under your skin, next to the part of the brain that does higher thinking. You are able to perceive things very clearly; that is what makes you such a great writer. The crystal is so powerful that it affects people in your immediate vicinity."

The crystal isn’t the same as the Titanium Key, in case you were wondering. That’s something else. The crystal was found in the mines of Gzumprey, where it shone with the light of a million supernovas. It had also given Lori a superhumanly powerful sense of taste, so she could tell the ingredients in a soup with a single sip. She could have been the world’s greatest chef, but she had given it up for the sake of her Art.

Lori gasped. "That’s why my friends love my writing, but publishers in faraway places don’t."

Simool nodded sagely. "Take your manuscript," he said, "and come with me." He took her hand, and the room around her began to shimmer.

"Wait," Lori said.

He let go, and Lori stopped to brush her luxurious black hair with a silver hairbrush from her senior trip to Paris, and put some Cranberry #7 lipstick on her bee-stung lips. If she was going to have a rendezvous with destiny, she wanted to look her best. "Okay," she said, "I’m ready."

They beamed through the air, or maybe he took her on his spaceship, I haven’t worked that out yet. Before she knew it, she was standing at the home of the famous publisher, beside his giant swimming pool. Simool had disappeared.

"Who are you?" said the publisher, who was wearing solid titanium swim trunks. "How did you get in here?"

The famous publisher’s name was Lyle Byzarium, and he had grown up in an Appalachian orphanage. He had worked hard to become a success, and now he lived in a mechanized geodome with his three sisters and their pet goats. But deep down, he knew he owed it all to the talented writers whose work he published.

Because she was a wordsmith, Lori knew the perfect thing to say. "I’m a writer. I need you to look at my manuscript."

He brushed her away. "I’m much too busy for that. I was about to take a swim." He gestured toward his swimming pool, which had an odd jellyfish-esque shape, just like Simool’s ears. I forgot to mention that about Simool.

Tears sprang to Lori’s eyes. Had she come this far for nothing? "Please, just look at the first page. Please."

And then a strange thing happened. The air around the manuscript began to shimmer, just for a moment. The publisher looked surprised, but he tugged the manuscript from her hand and glanced impatiently at the first page. When he finished, he sat down slowly on a poolside chair, and read the second page. He read and read. When he finished the manuscript, he looked up at Lori and smiled. "Young lady, I am about to make you very rich." Lori was badly sunburned by then.

Lori’s book won all kinds of awards and stuff. All the publishers who’d turned her down before came chasing after her, begging her to let them publish her next book, which was going to be about a planet called Cloacina. She told them no. And they were really, really sorry.

The end....or is it?