Wurmy

Brob "Wurmy" Bronson, otherwise known simply by his nickname "Wurmy," is a human originally from Earth who now calls Wurmapalooza his home. Having lived on Wurmapalooza for the majority of his life, Wurmy is considered by most Wurms as an honorary member of the Wurm species.

Background
The baby Brob was born in Pavlova of Moscow, Russia, Australia, inside the now nonexistent Australian embassy. On December 26th of 1947 Brob was greeted to the world by his two parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bronson. Growing up, Brob mostly grew in height, but quite little in width. In high school, Brob was nicknamed by his peers as "wurmy," and the name has stuck ever since. Brob graduated at the top of his cohort a year early, achieving an average of 96% across all subjects, and went on to study science in university. After simply one year, Brob graduated with 3 degrees and went to the Australian Space Association (ASA) to be the first man to land on the moon.

At this time, it was 1965. Incredibly, Australia's space technology was five years ahead of both Russia and America, the two countries previously leading in the space race only the year previous.

On the day that Wurmy was to be sent to the moon, all the staff of ASA had a barbie to (rather prematurely) celebrate the soon to be success and completion of the space race. As the day wore on, Wurmy was prepared for his flight, and set into the rocket. The countdown began. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Liftoff, mate. As the last syllable of the word was uttered, the rocket "Sheila" blasted to life and began to rise. All was going well, nothing detonated or caught fire, and the craft continued on, higher and higher into the sky. Soon, the vessel broke free of the atmosphere, and was headed directly for the pathway of the moon.

The day wore on into the night, and the barbie neared its end too. At this point, most of the staff of ASA were heavily intoxicated, and their slurred words could barely be understood by someone who wasn't in a similar state as the speaker. This, topped with many stomachs full of snags and steak, led to a number of successive accidents.

Dave, who was dancing with Heidi, accidentally elbowed a main control terminals lever, slightly adjusting the rockets current course by half a degree. Next, Heidi slipped slightly on some spilled bourbon, and switched on manual control for Sheila, meaning that the only way to control Sheila would be from that very space station. Finally, Carl, the senior authority at ASA, the man known to have had 30 degrees across many fields of science and an IQ of 341 knocked over a glass of beer onto the main communication terminal for contact with Sheila, frying all the communications systems, and disabling the ability for messages to be transmitted to or from Sheila, leaving it as nothing more than a hunk of metal doomed to drift through the emptiness of space.

It took three days for the members of ASA to overcome their hangovers and realise the situation that both Wurmy and Sheila were in. By this time, however, Sheila had drifted too far off into space, and all attempts to re-establish communication of any kind with Wurmy proved futile. For everything that the citizens of Australia knew, Wurmy would eventually perish in space, and there was nothing they could do to save him.

For a whole year, Wurmy survived on the meagre rations of freeze dried snags, steaks, and other general Australian cuisine. He saved every drop of water he could, from his tears, to the sweat off his back and even his urine. No drop of water was wasted. For this year, Wurmy wrote in a journal, a desperate attempt to cling onto sanity and any hope of survival. It didn't help for long.

On his 389th day in space, Wurmy felt a force acting on his body, quite similar to when he had first lifted off from Earth all those days ago. It didn't take Wurmy too long to realise what was happening. His craft was accelerating, but for what reason he did not know. Whatever it was, Wormy wanted to remain as safe as possible, and so for the first time put on his space suit and strapped himself into his chair at the nose of the ship, hoping his death wouldn't be too painful. Quite suddenly, Wurmy's whole body was forced back into his seat with G's greater than he had ever endured before. Then, it was over... well, after Wurmy was flung forward in his seat, ripping one of the belts across his chest in two after the intense de-celaration.

Opening his eyes, Wurmy couldn't believe what it was that he was seeing. A planet, covering everything Wurmy could see through his window. And now, once more, Wurmy found his craft accelerating at ever increasing speeds towards the planet in front of him. Wurmy knew that soon he would crash into this planet, eliminating all possible chances of survival. Therefore, he did the only rational thing available to him. He pulled on the emergency escape lever. Suddenly, the window was ejected, and his chair soon followed, rocketing straight through the new hole he had created. After 5 seconds, a parachute emerged from the cushioning of his seat, and his descent began to slow to a halt. Soon after, his rocket shot straight past him, bursting into flames as it entered the atmosphere. This was then followed by the complete annihilation of Sheila, as a ray of destruction came into contact with it. Wurmy was now, understandably, on edge. His descent continued at a seemingly ever slower pace, his landing not able to come soon enough.

It took half an hour, but eventually Wurmy's seat touched down on the surface of this strange new planet, and as he looked up, his eyes met the end of a sword. Behind the sword was a very large creature, grey in colour and cylindrical in shape. He was yelled at, in a seemingly guttural language he could not comprehend. Then he felt his suit cut open by the blade the creature held, revealing the back of his neck to the open air. His head now pushed down, he felt something cold and metallic pushed directly to the base of his skull. There was a bang, a sharp pain, and then silence.

Realising he wasn't dying, Wurmy looked up, surprise on his face when he saw the creature in front of him smiling. Once more, the grey creature spoke to him, but this time his voice was high pitched, and in english. Wurmy stood, questions pouring forth from his mouth like an endless stream. He was soon hushed, and led away from his landing site.

After some time of walking, they came to a large city. Wurmy was led through the gates, and taken to a small gazebo like area inside the sprawling complex. Here, Wurmy had his questions answered. Where was he? Wurmapalooza. What were the creatures species? Worms. What was this Wurm's name? Jairy. Why did they resemble worms? That, wasn't known. Why did they blow up Sheila? To analyse it's composition, seeing if it was a threat, and protecting the below landscape from the inevitably landing debris. All these questions and more, answered by the grey Wurm Jairy, who Wurmy initially met. Now, however, Wurmy was required to answer questions. Where did he come from? Earth. What is the name of his species? Humans. How did he come to find Wurmapalooza, with technology as primitive as his own? To this, Wurmy scratched his head, unsure himself for how this situation came about. So, he relayed his journey up till this point, missing the moon and his year long journey, all the way up till two hours ago, when everything occurred. Jairy listened intently, and came to a possible conclusion that Sheila, by pure luck, had come into contact with a worm-hole, one which would have been open for only mere seconds at best. Wormy answered more of Jairy's questions before the day was deemed over, and Wurmy was taken to a house, seemingly only just finished being constructed to suit his physiology. Here, Wurmy rested in a bed for the first time in well over a year, though this rest did not come entirely easily, given the shocking day he had just experienced.

For weeks after, Wurmy was met with suspicion and distrust by the people of Wurmapalooza, his only companion coming from Jairy. One day, a Wurm with a miniature microscope over his eye approached him, holding a small bound booklet in his hand. The Wurm revealed that the book's contents were an exact replica of a similar document found in the pocket of the chair which Wurmy had landed on Wurmapalooza on. Leafing through it, Wurmy discovered that what was in the chair was actually Wurmy's own journal he had kept through his year long spiral into insanity. Apparently, the Wurm in front of him had read through the whole thing from start to finish, and actually enjoyed the read quite thoroughly, finding it incredibly funny. In fact, he enjoyed it so much, that he wished to distribute similar copies of Wurmy's journal to the whole of Wurmapalooza, with Wurmy's permission of course. For everything that it was worth, Wurmy couldn't see how his status among the people could drop much lower aside from if he killed someone, so he gave it the all clear.

Blowing everything that Wurmy had expected out of the water, his journal turned out to be a massive hit, its success attributed to the subplot of 'his slowly degrading sanity.' He was invited to attend countless numbers of gatherings, parties, and events soon after the release, and his status through the community went from untrustworthy and suspicious to likeable and 'a great guy' overnight. A small newspaper approached him, asking if he'd like to create an article for them, and this too turned out to be a great success with the Wurms. Success after success came to Wurmy with his writing, and he was soon known as a major journalist for the 'Paloozian Cycle' and a highly published author.

Now, in 2016, fifty years after Wurmy first came to Wurmapalooza, he is still a regular writer for the 'Paloozian Cycle,' often writing about the going ons of the world in the unique style he was known for, and sometimes recounting interesting events which had occurred in his youth. At 68, Wurmy has published over 100 novels and novellas. He lives by himself, in a small home set in the city he first found himself in when arriving here, and is a regular at events held by Jairy.

Appearance
Back in his youth, Wurmy stood at a proud 6'1", and had short, clean-cut, sandy brown hair. Weighing in at 65kg, Wurmy has always been incredibly slender in both width and girth, attributing to his nickname "Wurmy." Now, at the age of 69 years old, Wurmy stands at 5'3" thanks in part to the slightly stronger gravity of Wurmapalooza. His hair has greyed and he wears custom made spectacles to aid his ever worsening eyesight, attributed to many long nights of writing.