Post script

The final collapse of the Disney Empire came fourteen years after the seeding of the planets. Cruella DeVillenueve and the last of her cronies, their Colossal Corporation in wreckage around them, had retreated to a bunker beneath Disney Corp Headquarters where they issued a threat to destroy the Neezian System and the revered planet of Tern unless they were granted sole control of the Terran Solar System. Mudcat Federation soldiers were knocking down the bunker door, when Cruella pushed the button, resulting not in demolition and catastrophe but in a soulful rendering of Carrickfergus by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. The door fell, and Cruella was taken hostage by a platoon of Ice Giants from the Ballonder Brigade. She was tried and sentenced to annotating and reviewing in detail a large body of rythmic poetry from late 20th Century Earth known as "rap" music, for the purpose of submitting examples to the Traditional Archive.

- from The Rise and Fall of Disney ________ _________ ________

If you walk down Boukey Boulevard in Tern City, and head south on Mandey Street past the Farkin Song Archive, you will see a small store with ancient and unique instruments hanging in the windows. Here you can buy a Zamphirian Pan Pipe, a Calliokeh 24 String Guitar, a Mandolan Zither, or a Terran Banjo, and take lessons in playing them. Some are ancient, some are reproductions made in the ancient way. The sign above the door reads WILLIAM TRID MUSIC and INSTRUMENTS, and some very old Ternians still remember the old three-legged fellow who used to lovingly repair his mandolins and ukeleles on a table behind the counter, how he would regale them with his stories of Space Piracy, of smuggling, and of how he once was offered a constellation by the Disney Corp, but refused because of his love of the old songs.He is long dead now, but his shop continues, and is well worth seeking out. It is not so difficult to locate if you realize it is just across the street from the Universe-Famous Cartoosh Gallery of the Arts.

- excerpt from The Michelin Guide to Tern