Hipness exists at the pinnacle of human evolution. To be hip, one must predict which things will become popular and develop an affinity for them before they do. With every great development in human society, the hipness refractory period decreases. Being hip in the year 0 was not substantially different from being hip in 1000, but being hip in 1800 was tremendously different from being hip in 1850. The refractory period moved from massive societal shifts to generation divisions, to five year periods, to months or weeks. By 2300, hipsters could fully develop and populate a new planet before lunch and evacuate by dinner.

When Sherlock Holmes stepped out of his ship onto one such planet, he knew immediately that something was awry. But what was it? This planet seemed plain and uninteresting. There was no evidence whatsoever to suggest that it wasn’t. But, Sherlock reasoned, that would be no fun. He would have to use his deductive skills to figure this one out. Watson would be of assistance. He called for Watson. Jenkins emerged from the ship.

“No, you’re not supposed to be Jenkins, you’re Watson,” said Mr. Holmes.

Jenkins continued to be Jenkins, presumably to spite the World’s Greatest Detective after Batman.

On a cold, desolate planet, one man seeks the truth, or perhaps something a little more interesting. His name?

Spacecop

No, wait, that’s not his name. Go back. Come on, fix it.

“Aha! Did you see that, Watson? Do you know what that means?”

Jenkins hadn’t seen anything, and he didn’t know what that could possibly mean, and he wasn’t Watson. Somehow, against tremendous odds, he took off in the correct direction anyway.

At the beginning of time, before anything existed, it were pretty boring. The trouble back then was you didn’t have anything to do. Over a period of time, things started to exist for complicated reasons. There still wasn’t really anything to do, though. Things that exist tend to want to, otherwise they wouldn’t bother, and the desire to exist carries with it the assumption that existence is worthwhile and therefore not boring. The trouble that these things run into is that believing that existence is interesting is not enough to make it so. At the very least, you have to believe really hard.

Detective Holmes took off after Watson, while Jenkins charged into the office building of InterFrute, a multinational fruit company. The company had serviced four continents during it’s 12-hour lifetime, and had served as an early warning sign that the planet was becoming corporate. Perhaps, thought many, it would be wise to move to a place where it is not so easy to buy an avocado. And they were right. The 11th hour of Interfrute’s operation saw chaos and destruction. Stock options that had seemed so promising at lunch suddenly lost all value, and the days work was wasted. The CEO stepped down and an interim CEO was put in his place for a few minutes. Then, a second CEO was appointed to conclude business. Employees leapt off the building by the dozen, and found themselves in a bouncy castle at the tower’s base. There, a job fair took applications for the up-and-coming TransFrutria, a multinational fruit company on a new planet, headed by the former CEO of Interfrute. It showed promise.

The consulting detective knew none of this. Yet. Quickly he rushed to a computer and started reading.

“See here, Watson, these words may not seem like anything on their own. But add them together and they begin to tell a story.” He deduced that each word had some association with adjacent words, and that the complete series of words carried some meaning. Someone had written this for a reason. But why? Perhaps he would find out if he could deduce the meaning. “It says here,” he deduced, “that this was a fruit company named InterFrute.” Quickly, he deduced what he should say next. “I’ve deduced that this company no longer exists because this planet has been abandoned. I have also deduced that there is likely fruit around.” Sherlock deduced himself into the chair and deduced his surroundings. “The fruit is stored in the basement,” he deduced from a sign, “We’ll go there.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” said Jenkins.

“What?” asked former detective Harls Slarly.

“What?” repeated Jenkins.

“Well to be completely honest, Jenkins, I thought you were a rat.”

“You know, I thought that too. Probably because I do all that scurrying and I don’t talk, right? Maybe I am a rat. It’s compelling, isn’t it?”

And with that, Jenkins resumed being a rat.