TO BE PLAYED AS WE BEGIN OUR JOURNEY

https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/4YRjDIG43mCiJtZ1SjSiKr?utm_source=generator

We pan out and see a gigantic spaceship slowly crawling into a black aether, polka dotted with stars. Scrawled in decaying black letters on the side of the ship: Sugar Transit Gloria.

The SS Sugar Transit Gloria is semi-translucent. We can see creatures beyond the gray murkiness of its walls. What… what is that material? What is this ship made of?

Plastic. The gigantic behemoth of a spaceship is made from tons and tons of plastic. Whether it’s the future or the past - no matter - planets have been overtaken by the encumbrance and battle fleets have been created.

Remember as we travel back and forth, that if we remain present, in our version of the present we produce more than 380 million tons of plastic waste worldwide. Every year.

Can we please see that as a number? 760,000,000,000 lbs of plastic waste worldwide. Every year.

Reports filed have claimed that on our current trajectory (in the present, just a friendly reminder) in 50 years plastic will outweigh the fish in the ocean.

There's plenty more we could share, but we're trying to tell a story about a dystopian future, rather than the dystopian present…

And after all, we're an intergalactic hibiscus water brand whose core tenant is fun... so let's get back to the alien spaceship, right?

Indeed, this spaceship was built from the remaining leftovers of the planet Zurth, though it wasn’t plastic that ended that planet. No. It was a much greater evil eating at the fabric of a once mighty universe formerly known as The Rubyverse.

The evil we speak of? Well, it’s right there on the side of the spaceship, and we are not talking about Transit (though for what it’s worth, we are pro-cycling in The Rubyverse, ahem).

Sugar is the vanquisher of planets of which we speak, none too lovingly we might add! Yes the evilest of evil, making good on the anagrammatical: vile evil. Sneaky and seductive.

You might experience sugar in granulated form, unable to see the dodecahedron form of its origin, each of its twelve facings a keyhole for the great vanquisher to peer out from.

• Dare not look closer, for the eye that looks in also looks out of that granulated form. You can be captured by its fiery iris. Doth we sound a bit too Tolkien? Might we be referencing the eye of Sauron? Perhaps. But the masters only master their craft via the masters before them, and as such the wound of Jesus…

But where were we? Ah yes! Zurth. Sigh… look down on this planet folks, judge with mercy for you as well may be in the midst of a Zurthian-like misery...

The planet Zurth was a wonderful place, full of mirth. The Zurthians, a friendly green blue amphibious-like people, enjoyed their days under one of their three suns (and slept for the twenty minutes that their singular moon was in the sky).

They drank of the land. And ate of the land. And there was not a care in the world (their world, of course). When you have all you need, you don’t often wonder “what else?” until that something presents itself.

And then that something else did appear. Or rather it opened up. A window, perhaps one of twelve, but that wasn't clear to the Zurthians.

This window opened from one part of the Rubyverse to another.