The Ultimate Inferior Beings
Page 26
“Why do you foul my ears with the sound of your vile voice?” yelled Pfnug up the passageway of his lair.
“Oh, what grotesque noise is that I hear?” came the response from outside. “And the stench that emanates from this hole is the most disgusting thing I have ever encountered!”
“Leave my path unfouled, you monstrous creature!” yelled Pfnug back angrily.
The formalities over, Frut came to the point of his visit. “The judging is over, you vile excrescence,” he announced. “You came a pitiful second.”
“How dare you insult me with your presence,” said Pfnug, trying desperately to hide the hurt in his voice. Deep inside, he was bitterly upset at the news. Second! He had lost out again. No doubt about the winner, then.
“That foul, wretched, stench that calls itself Dork won, I presume?” he called.
“Your conclusions are correct, even if your voice, your smell and your domicile disgust me,” confirmed Frut.
Pfnug was in dismay. Lost again. To Dork! But how? How had Dork found something more disgusting than his little worm things? He addressed the question to Frut.
Frut was so deeply offended by the way Pfnug had phrased the question that it took him a little while to compose himself and answer back. “That foul, wretched stench that calls himself Dork discovered an alien so foul that there is surely no equal anywhere in the Universe.”
“How can that be?? What is this monstrous creature?” pleaded Pfnug.
“It has a vile name,” answered Frut, choking on the smell coming from the entrance to Pfnug’s home. “A vile, vile name. A vile name for a vile creature. It called itself a humongbeyng and identified itself as twacks-decar-pintar.”
Pfnug shuddered at the horror of these words. The name was indeed vile. Yet his curiosity got the better of him. However vile it was, he had to see it.
“Where is this monstrosity?” he called.
“Not here, thankfully,” answered Frut. “Dork was instructed to remove it so as not to pollute our land with its foulness. He took it in his spaceship to the place the vile thing wanted to be taken to: a wooded place on a planet called Herth.”
Pfnug shook his head in disappointment. None of this made any sense to him. All he knew was that he had lost again and that life just wasn’t fair.
APPENDIX IV: THE PROOF
Sadly, the Proof of God that fluX discovered in the Periodic Table is lost forever. Many others have tried to rediscover it. No one has succeded. The best we have to date is given below. It uses 59 of the 112 elements of the Periodic Table, and so is some way short of fluX’s discovery. It reads:
Th I S Pa Ge Pr O V Es Al Li Am He No C Ra P Be Ni Ce Fe Ar W In Dy Te Ac H Er Sc Ho Os Eu Se F U La Re As Si Ti N Ba Ds Po Ta Nd Cr Y Ru Np At Hs Ca Tc Hf Ir Mo Ne
which translates as:
‘This page proves All. I am He. No crap. Be nice. Fear windy teachers. Choose useful areas. Sit in bad spot and cry. Run paths. Catch firm. One.’
Clearly this isn’t quite The Message, but it’s got to be close.
Can you do better?
INDEX
a: 3, 7, 53, 61, 146, 157, 159, 233
actually: 236
again: 221
alone: 35
am: 265
an: 12, 81, 173, 179
and: 37, 100, 124, 175, 201, 209, 235, 249, 268
another: 206
anyone: 49
at: 18, 33
back: 20
be: 120
became: 245
because: 38
being: 178
book: 27, 112, 197
bore: 105
boring: 207
bother: 211
bound: 121
but: 65, 141, 222
change: 96
changed: 139, 150
constituent: 98
contained: 114, 232
cry: 239
day: 76
dear: 259
decided: 84
did: 135, 143
didn’t: 210
done: 190
dreadful: 23
dull: 24
entries: 154
even: 126
ever: 31
everyone: 184
few: 29
for: 240, 263
full: 73, 130
gave: 50
general: 254
get: 90
had: 80, 189
happy: 248, 276
hardly: 48
have: 270
highly: 25
however: 182
I: 261, 264
idea: 82
in: 72, 129, 145, 253
index: 9, 16, 43, 52, 71, 79, 134, 170, 180, 188, 200, 208, 219, 231, 244, 267
insignificant: 26
intelligent: 226
is: 181, 257
it: 10, 83, 104, 115, 128, 138, 142, 149, 214
its: 97, 153, 238
itself: 91, 140
just: 136, 271
know: 171, 262
let: 34, 163
life: 177, 252
little: 8, 42, 70, 78, 106, 133, 169, 218, 243
look: 59
looked: 32
made: 155, 216, 272
me: 273
might: 58
moment’s: 54
more: 225
never: 67
no: 108, 204
not: 183, 205
notice: 123
noticed: 93, 185, 228
numbers: 101
occasion: 56
of: 15, 21, 39, 195
oh: 203
once: 1
one: 75
only: 87
or: 63, 107
ordinary: 13
people: 30, 118, 165
perhaps: 125
pleased: 250
read: 36, 68, 127, 167, 213, 237
reader: 260
readers: 194, 227
really: 92, 192
relation: 109
sad: 220
saw: 198
so: 102, 131, 144, 151
some: 22
sort: 14
special: 147
story: 158, 160, 234, 256
stuck: 17
stupid: 193
sympathy: 241
take: 122
that: 28, 85, 103, 113, 116, 137, 152, 161, 229, 266
the: 19, 41, 51, 69, 77, 86, 111, 132, 164, 168, 187, 191, 196, 199, 217, 224, 230, 242
then: 74
there: 5
they: 57, 66
this: 40, 215, 255
thought: 55, 202
time: 4
to: 89, 95, 110, 212
true: 258
two: 64
unhappy: 47, 174
unrewarding: 176
up: 60, 156
upon: 2
very: 45-46, 246-247, 274-275
was: 6, 11, 44, 94
way: 88, 117, 148
what: 172, 186
when: 223
who: 166
with: 251
word: 62
words: 99
would: 119, 162
you: 269
For further information, please visit the TUIB website: http://tuib.webnode.com
Acknowledgements
As I had nothing to do with the writing of this book, I would like to thank Roman Laskowski for kindly putting my name on the front cover. I think it was a great idea as I am much better looking than he is.
Roman, in turn, would like to express his gratitude to Marek Piekarski for the fun collaboration during the early drafts of the book, and for some of his great ideas. Also, thanks to Edith, Veronica and Sam for their patience during the rewriting process. Immense thanks to people who helped, particularly Terry ‘Weekend in Weighton’ Murphy for his meticulous reading of the text and fantastic suggestions, and Gareth Naylor for his help with the cover and trailer, and for his ever-ludicrous but hilarious ideas.
Mark Roman, 2012
About the Author
Mark Roma
n has been working his way through the alphabet in search of a suitable career. He’s sampled architecture, accountancy, auditing and astrophysics. For a while he worked as a computer programmer before realizing he’d skipped over ‘B’. So he took up bioinformatics, which is where he is now. He worries that becoming an author would put him back to ‘A’, with the whole alphabet still stretching out ahead of him.
He lives in London with his wife (also a scientist) and two young children, neither of whom wants to become a scientist. In his work he has published around 80 papers, reviews and book chapters – although, if you want to read them, you’ll need to look under a different name.
As a lifelong soccer fan he is no stranger to the extreme emotions of elation and despair (but mainly despair – in fact, almost entirely despair), particularly from his own performances on the football field. Still, he firmly believes there’s no problem that can’t be solved by a nice cup of tea. Except, perhaps, the global economic crisis.
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