Zeek was a small, poor skinny boy who was picked on his whole life.  A lot of people just didn’t seem to understand Zeek.  Zeek was very smart and quite a dreamer.  A lot of kids would make fun of him.  Most kids left him alone, but Darnel didn’t.  Zeek could usually come up with ways to keep Darnel, the middle school bully, away from him, but other times it was just him and Darnel’s fists coming at him.  Zeek knew he could outrun Darnel, but you can only run for so long and after a while he would catch him and beat the smithereens out of him.  Zeek was getting tired and frustrated that Darnel only seemed to pick on him.  Darnel wasn’t the only kid that picked on Zeek.  Zeek just had trouble fitting in.  He had wild orange hair, blue glasses and wore lab coats because he was always working on his latest experiment at home.  One night while he was watching his hologram TV he saw a commercial of a passenger rocket that flew trips to Mars.  Zeek realized this was his chance to get away from his problems by flying to Mars.  There he could start a new life and make new friends and not worry about Darnel ever again. 

Zeek was only 13 years old and his family didn’t have much money, but he was a mechanical genius and very creative.  When Zeek was only 6 years old he built a robot, he named Tinker that was like a little brother to him.  Zeek had trouble getting along with other people, so Tinker, even though he didn’t speak, was his best friend.  He decided with Tinker’s help he would build a spaceship and go to Mars and never come back.  His family owned a junk yard with many cars and airplane parts that he could use.  He had multiple prototypes.  Some would blow up before they left the ground and others would go up 500 feet and then nose dive into the ground.  Zeek had worked long and hard with Tinker on his latest prototype.  After numerous test flights there was one up to his approval which he then finalized and packed up his stuff. Next the launch counted down 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Blast off!  The rickety, old ship started smoking and snapping and boom it shot off!  Zeek and Tinker got seat belted in the old, yellow school bus with airplane wings and booster rockets shuttling it through the night sky.  They reached outer space and never looked back towards Earth which got smaller and smaller and soon out of sight. 
Zeek and Tinker were cruising through the stars when he noticed there was something shiny following him.  The shiny flash got closer and soon and then he could see that it was another space ship.  It was coming up on him fast and it didn’t look friendly and Zeek was concerned it might fire at him.  He knew his best chance was to get away from it as fast as he could.  He hit turbo boost and shot light speeds away from the unknown ship.  Zeek had heard stories his uncle had told about space pirates and how they are dangerous and corrupt and will kill space travelers and steal their ships and money.  Zeek was pretty sure that the other ship was space pirates and hoped to never see them again.  Zeek felt safe after traveling a while and put the rocket ship in auto pilot light speed and went to their bunks and took a nap while their trusty ship kept on its path to Mars. 
Kaboom!  Crash!  Boom!  Zeek was abruptly woken up with crashing noises and an alarm screaming in his ears.  He realized the ship felt like it wasn’t moving anymore.  He looked out the window and saw these weird violet colored vines with orange suction cups all over them.  He couldn’t figure out what had happened.  He finally found Tinker walking around with his hands in the air and looking stressed and confused.  Zeek decided they were stuck in some sort of vine  and his rocket ship was not going to make it anywhere if he didn’t cut themselves free.  He put on his spacesuit and grabbed a machete and opened the door to cut them loose.  The giant violet vine was very hard and sticky so he grabbed his machete and tried cutting at the vine when he started getting whipped around like a rag doll.  He looked up and saw giant yellow eyes and it looked like an enormous purple space octopus.  Tinker saw Zeek being tossed around and grabbed his laser sword and stabbed the space octopus in the eye and blue goo started oozing out of it.  Zeek was able to get back in the ship with Tinker and the octopus fell from the ship and they quickly hopped back into their seats and bolted into light speed to finally get to Mars. 
Zeek was getting really excited and couldn’t wait to get to Mars with Tinker and start a new life.  After traveling for another week, they started seeing a few space ships flying through the air.  These were the passenger planes with people traveling to Mars.  Zeek and Tinker could see the new red planet.  As they flew over the planet they saw flashing lights, like in Las Vegas, and hotels with giant water parks and fancy amusement parks and shiny neon lights were everywhere.  There were these giant bubbles all over the planet and as they got closer they realized they were giant lakes and ponds all over the place with trees and flowers inside.  When they landed their rocket, Zeek saw a big, jumbo hologram screen advertising “Inventors and Scientists, please come to our academy and work with us on creating a better future on Mars.”  Zeek knew that this was his destiny and he would never be pushed around again.  Zeek joined the academy and worked with some of the greatest scientist ever known.  Zeek and Tinker made friends with a bunch of the scientists.  Sometimes you would find Zeek and Tinker just staring at the beautiful auburn sky and Zeek would ask Tinker to pinch him to make sure he was awake and wasn’t dreaming, but then again isn’t is good to be able to dream big and be happy!