a certain type of shop that just loves sticking the letter e on the end of words in the hope it will make said shop appear older and more respectable. Businesses selling candles, sweeties, Christmas decorations, and models of fairies are particularly prone to this, although in reality the only thing that the e adds is 10 percent extra on to the price of everything. Mr. Pennyfarthinge’s fondness for the “Olde E” was so extreme as to qualifye as a forme of mentale illnesse.
8 . Uncle Dabney’s Impossibly Sour Chews were banned in a number of countries after the sheer sourness of them had turned the faces of several small boys inside out. See also: Uncle Dabney’s Dangerously Explosive Spacedust (tooth loss due to explosions), Uncle Dabney’s Glow-in-the-Dark Radiation Gums (hair loss due to radiation poisoning), and Uncle Dabney’s Frog-Shaped Pastilles (mysterious disappearance of entire populations of certain frogs). The late Uncle Dabney was, of course, quite insane, but he made curiously good sweets.
III
In Which We Travel to a Galaxy Far, Far Away, but Since It’s Not a Long Time Ago the Star Wars People Can’t Sue Us
S OME THINGS ARE BETTER left unsaid. Among them are “This situation can’t really get any worse,” which is usually spoken before the loss of a limb, a car going off a cliff, or someone pushing a button marked DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON. EVER. WE’RE NOT JOKING ; “Well, he seems like a nice person,” which will shortly be followed by the arrest of the person in question and the removal of bodies from his basement, possibly including your own; and finally, and most better-left-unsaid of all, “You know, I think everything is going to be just fine,” because that means everything is most assuredly not going to be fine, not by a long shot.
So. Everything is going to be fine. Are we clear on that?
Good.
• • •
In another part of the Multiverse, a couple of dimensions from Biddlecombe, a small green planet orbited a slowly dying star. The news that the star was dying might have proved alarming to the inhabitants of the planet had any of them been sufficiently advanced to be capable of understanding the problem, but so far the planet had not produced any form of life that was equipped to do anything more sophisticated than eat while trying not to be eaten itself. Much of the planet was covered by thick coniferous forests, hence its color from space, although it also boasted some very nice oceans, and a mountain that, at some point in the future, representatives of some species might try to climb because it was there, assuming the star didn’t die long before then.
The creature that moved through the depths of one of the planet’s oceans didn’t have a name since, as we have established, there was nobody around with the required intellectual curiosity to give it one. Also, as the creature was very large, very toothy, and very, very hungry, any contact with it would have gone somewhat along the lines of “Look, a new species! I shall name it—AAARRGHHH! My leg! Help, help! No, AAARRGGHH! My other leg!” etc., which doesn’t tend to look good in serious academic journals.
There was very little in the oceans that the creature had not encountered before, and nothing that it had so far not tried, successfully, to eat. But on this particular occasion its attention was caught by a small bright glowing mass, a clump of atoms that vaguely resembled a cluster of blue fish eggs. The creature, alwayshungry and open to trying new foodstuffs, wolfed the blue mass down and proceeded on its none-too-merry way, already on the lookout for even more tasty and interesting things to eat.
It had been swimming for a mile or so when it began to consider what all of this hunting and eating was about, really. I mean, it swam so it could eat, and it ate so it could keep swimming, and that was the sum of its existence, as far as it could tell. It wasn’t much of a life when you thought about it,
8 . Uncle Dabney’s Impossibly Sour Chews were banned in a number of countries after the sheer sourness of them had turned the faces of several small boys inside out. See also: Uncle Dabney’s Dangerously Explosive Spacedust (tooth loss due to explosions), Uncle Dabney’s Glow-in-the-Dark Radiation Gums (hair loss due to radiation poisoning), and Uncle Dabney’s Frog-Shaped Pastilles (mysterious disappearance of entire populations of certain frogs). The late Uncle Dabney was, of course, quite insane, but he made curiously good sweets.
III
In Which We Travel to a Galaxy Far, Far Away, but Since It’s Not a Long Time Ago the Star Wars People Can’t Sue Us
S OME THINGS ARE BETTER left unsaid. Among them are “This situation can’t really get any worse,” which is usually spoken before the loss of a limb, a car going off a cliff, or someone pushing a button marked DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON. EVER. WE’RE NOT JOKING ; “Well, he seems like a nice person,” which will shortly be followed by the arrest of the person in question and the removal of bodies from his basement, possibly including your own; and finally, and most better-left-unsaid of all, “You know, I think everything is going to be just fine,” because that means everything is most assuredly not going to be fine, not by a long shot.
So. Everything is going to be fine. Are we clear on that?
Good.
• • •
In another part of the Multiverse, a couple of dimensions from Biddlecombe, a small green planet orbited a slowly dying star. The news that the star was dying might have proved alarming to the inhabitants of the planet had any of them been sufficiently advanced to be capable of understanding the problem, but so far the planet had not produced any form of life that was equipped to do anything more sophisticated than eat while trying not to be eaten itself. Much of the planet was covered by thick coniferous forests, hence its color from space, although it also boasted some very nice oceans, and a mountain that, at some point in the future, representatives of some species might try to climb because it was there, assuming the star didn’t die long before then.
The creature that moved through the depths of one of the planet’s oceans didn’t have a name since, as we have established, there was nobody around with the required intellectual curiosity to give it one. Also, as the creature was very large, very toothy, and very, very hungry, any contact with it would have gone somewhat along the lines of “Look, a new species! I shall name it—AAARRGHHH! My leg! Help, help! No, AAARRGGHH! My other leg!” etc., which doesn’t tend to look good in serious academic journals.
There was very little in the oceans that the creature had not encountered before, and nothing that it had so far not tried, successfully, to eat. But on this particular occasion its attention was caught by a small bright glowing mass, a clump of atoms that vaguely resembled a cluster of blue fish eggs. The creature, alwayshungry and open to trying new foodstuffs, wolfed the blue mass down and proceeded on its none-too-merry way, already on the lookout for even more tasty and interesting things to eat.
It had been swimming for a mile or so when it began to consider what all of this hunting and eating was about, really. I mean, it swam so it could eat, and it ate so it could keep swimming, and that was the sum of its existence, as far as it could tell. It wasn’t much of a life when you thought about it,
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