Excerpt from the What's New Magazine Database

Subject: Spammers

The history of Spammers is long and convoluted. For example, the history faculty at the Grand Robloxian University has given up on teaching the subject of Spammer History altogether, and are instead teaching Culinary History, starting with the Great Era of Drive-by Taco Stands.

It all started, way back in the mists of ancient time, when an anonymous letter was sent to every single individual in the Universe through telepathy. It told of the consequences of creating shelters by hand, creating fire, and creating a food industry, most of it dire and grim. But when it arrived the message was so unpopular and so widely spread that soon civilization started in earnest all across creation, and the sender of the chain letters soon died of shame.

Over the years however, Spamming has evolved into a more refined profession. It's not chain letters anymore; it's more... physical.

Spammers themselves don't really live on one planet in particular, but choose to spend their lives in space stations or the cabins of ships, hanging over different planets every varying period of time.

One such station is Station Zephyr, although it has been rejected many times as a mining station. Its whereabouts in the Universe are unclear, but it's probably hanging over some major sun somewhere, biding its time. Until it is found, people only speculate at its whereabouts.

(The article goes way way farther from there, explaining the intricacies of Spamming through time, cross-dimensional Spamming, and the first major Spammer Civil war, in which all the Spammer stations were established.)

Drago Farrior woke up in one of the sealed sleeping pods of the Scorpion and sighed. He felt the heat of something large and bright on his face, and knew they must have arrived. He was so happy he could have melted right there. Instead of melting, which was deemed unhelpful, he set out for the bridge to commandeer matters from there.

"Okay," he said into the comlink, "we have arrived back at Space Station Zephyr. Please, everyone unbuckle your seatbelts and prepare all your carry-ons for landing procedures."

Overseer 2 was sitting bored at the control desk, fiddling with some switches.

"When we get to the Zephyr Cafe," he said, "order me a double latte. I'm going to need it."

Sylia came into the control room. She had some red marks on her neck, the results of an attack by Deleters, in which their leader tried to strangle her.

"What's going on," she asked. "Where are we?"

"Space Station Zephyr," Overseer 2 said. "I think Haiakii may have mentioned it in passing." He laughed. "If he said it was amazing he'd be right. This thing's perched a couple miles above a blazing sun and it doesn't get hot or burn up the air! Wow, one mother of an achievement! If I were the builder, I'd pat myself on the back."

Sylia looked at the sun, sitting in front of them like a pouting child and refusing to budge. Above it she could see a station that looked like an upside-down cone, except one with more of a curved taper. The bottom of the taper was actually inside the sun itself.

"Wow," she exclaimed.

"Told you," Overseer 2 muttered.

As the Scorpion got closer, the station was proved to be much bigger than any station near Venezia or Robloxia. It branched out from the central cone into quite a lot of corridors, each with their own room at the ends. There were many individual launch pads sticking out of the sides, and on one there were some flashing lights, apparently the landing crew asking Scorpion to land.

"It's the landing crew asking Scorpion to land," explained Haiakii, a scientist working for Overseer 2.

The Scorpion slowed as it neared the pad, and when it had reached the pad itself it was slowed so much that its engines were hardly making any noise at all. It touched down. Sylia felt a bump, then a vibration of the landing legs on the surface of the pad.

Landing crew members entered and helped unload the ship of its copyblock storage, so they wouldn't overheat the ship. Sylia and the rest disembarked, and walked into the warmth of the sun's rays.

"Welcome to Zephyr," Overseer 2 said.

OOO

After the grand tour of the inside portion of Space Station Zephyr, Sylia was refreshed and eager to continue work. She had seen many new things, such as the teleporters, the farm area (which covered, according to the farmhands, about twenty square miles of the station), and the cabins. She had been assigned Cabin #42, a number held in great reverence for no readily apparent reason, other than the fact that it was 42 and was greatly revered.

The most interesting thing she had seen was the holographic Universe Map. It wasn't really universal; rather its reach spread out over a radius of twenty thousand light-blox, encompassing planets around the central area, where Space Station Zephyr was mapped. The thing was on a large circular table, and controls built into the table allowed space to rotate. If a certain star or planet was touched (the planets were solid images), an infobox would pop up displaying stats and the number of missions made to that particular celestial body, as well as general trivia.

So far Sylia had only gotten to the planets around Zephyr's star (called Hornswoggle Beta). There were quite a few, truth be told, most of which were inhabited, if merely rudimenterally so. The one closest to Hornswoggle Beta was called Grunhim, and it was a militaristic planet whose conflicts were luckily concentrated on its surface of volcanoes and arid wastes, as the native Gruns hadn't established space travel yet. The one after Grunhim was Sertavraxil, and it was a peaceful agriworld controlled by a benevolent clan. The next was Sertavraxil II, a colony of the original Sertavraxil used for growing the Plox plant.

Then some of the others around those became rather worrysome. The one after Sertavraxil II was Rassr, a gigantic magma world which had long ago become spacefaring and now had a barbaric fleet averaging out at about three million battleships. This planet was home to what were called by the rest of the star system as Random-Killers, or people who killed randomly, hence the name. The huge gas giant a billion miles from Rassr was called simply Nether, and was about to erupt in seven trillion years, or so the Universe Map had said, into a galaxy-gobbling super black hole, since its core was already incredibly massive.

She'd only been halted from discovering more about the dark planets beyond by the arrival of the sweeper, who had forced her to escape with its massive tank treads. In such a difficult part of the universe, even the sweepers were programmed to kill.

OOO

"Okay," Drago said to Sylia. "Can you handle a rifle, sniper, pistol, et-cetera?"

"No." Sylia shook her head.

Drago and some of the new recruits that had just been picked a couple weeks or so ago were on an exposed stretch of the station, about a quarter mile lone, practicing their firing skills. They were shooting cloth dummies that had been dressed in suits of armor that were common around the civilized world.

"Well, this is obviously your first time," Drago continued. "So, first thing's first, look down the sight to where you're aiming." He lined up his eye with the sight on his own rifle and squeezed out points of blazing energy.

Sylia tried to look down the pistol's sight, but there wasn't a sight, simply a ridge at the end of the barrel.

"There's no sight," she commented.

"Yeah," Drago sighed. "On most weapons there aren't sights. The key is to align the ridge with your target, then fire. That's the poor man's scope." He stood back. Sylia looked down the barrel to the ridge, and when it had covered her view of the dummy in front of her squeezed the trigger.

The bolt sailed out at amazing speed and missed by a mere blox.

"Nice," Drago applauded. "Newbies usually miss by a hell of a lot more than you just did. Our record was when a newbie accidentally shot down a cargo frigate one light-blox away by mistake, when he meant to shoot at the dummy." He paused. "That was me. They hired me for my amazing ability to miss at the right time."

Sylia tried again to shoot the dummy, but she missed again, this time by an inch. The bolt did fry part of the dummy's sleeve, but otherwise it was unscathed.

"Right," Drago said. "You're getting much better at controlling the gun. Now try a third time."

Sylia hoped that the bullet would hit exactly where she wanted it to as she lowered the gun to eye-level and aimed at the dummy's head. She slowly pressed the trigger-

WHOOM!

As she was about to fire, a scout ship sailed into view with a loud report and threw her off the scent. Drago flashed her a sympathetic look before hailing the scout ship with his flashlight. The ship thudded down on one of the firing dummies and smashed it to bits, before skidding to a halt. A hatchway opened, and a figure dashed out and pelted towards Drago.

When the figure at last reached its destination, it took off its helmet. The scout was revealed as a bald, gray-faced member of the Bluebelly Noob subspecies. It gasped for breath.

"Sir?" it panted. Drago put an arm around its shoulder.

"There, there," he reassured. "Come on in. You can tell us all about your news."