Far away from planets, other space stations and, more importantly, far away from any laws. Here, Professor Xanax was free to carry out any experiment he wanted. And the more extreme, the more horrible, the more painful the experiment, the more he loved it. He had never forgotten the joy of his first experiment. When he was a young boy, he had pulled hairs off a mouse. He had started with one hair, then two together, then three and four until he reached the number of hairs you had to pull to make a mouse squeal out loud in pain. It was thirty-seven. Thirty-seven. It was his favourite number. As the little mouse had yelped, Xanax had chuckled with delight and rubbed his hands together, but he didn’t notice that the mouse’s hairs had stuck on his shirt. His mother had seen the shirt, noticed Xanax’s pet mouse was missing and realised he had been up to no good. She punished him by spanking the back of his legs hard with a ruler. The stings from the ruler grew hotter and hotter as his legs turned scarlet.
