The Great Phone Directory of the Earth and neighbouring planets: Chapter 12
Chapter 12
- I really hope you are only kidding.
- Not at all, I am writing it down right now.
- What was the exact wording? Could you say it again?
- Sure. It says: "You are a patronizing and agonizingly brazen-faced race".
- And it was written on a small smooth piece of wood with rounded ends?...
- Yes, a simple stick like those used in popsicles.
- ...In blue ink?
- Yes, but how do you know that?
- You have no idea.
- Don't tell me you found it for real.
- No. Not me.
- So why you're telling me "You have no idea"?
- Because you really have no idea of the mess you have made leaving that sentence at the mercy of the future.
- At the mercy of... All right, okay, no, I admit I have no idea.
- Well, your small, pointless, useless piece of wood was what sparked off the terrible and ominous war of the fifteen years between the Jovials and the Hoitytoities.
- Oh.
- You mean you don't know anything about the war between the Jovials and the Hoitytoities?
- No, I really don't know who the Hoitytoities are. And a couple of hours ago I didn't even know who the Jovials were.
- The Hoitytoities are a peaceful but unbearable race that live exactly 3879,69 light years away from you, on planet Superior.
- Superior in what?
- In general, in the way they see things. Let's say they differ from the Jovials in that, at least, they are peaceful.
- I am pleased to notice that the universe is full of incredibly nice people.
- And you think the terrestrials have a much better reputation? At least not since you have invented metered parking and the patting on the back.
- What's wrong with patting on the back?
- You should not hit somebody by surprise, unexpectedly!
- But that's not hitting, that's just an affectionate way to communicate brotherly friendship.
- Exactly: I really cannot understand what has friendship got to do with such a violent gesture.
- I told you it's not a violent gesture: it's like a flick given with a smile, a little unharmful slap.
- Unharmful? That's what you think! On Marmellous Behind, for instance, gravity is about 150 times higher than on the Earth, which, considering that weight is relative and changes according to the gravitational force of the place in which it is measured, entails that a simple pat given by a terrestrial is capable of killing a Marmellind instantly.
- Two things.
- Tell me.
- The first one: what is a Marmellind?
- Someone who lives on Marmellous Behind.
- And someone who lives on Marmellous Ahead is called...
- ...A Marmellead.
- I see. The second thing: now, I'm not here to brag about physics notions that, frankly speaking, I do not have, but I guess that if the Marmellinds live on a planet where gravity is 150 times higher than on the Earth, evolution must have enabled their bodies to adjust to those particular living conditions.
- It's easier said than done.
- Is it...?
- The thing is, all of a sudden, about thirty years ago, Marmellous Behind started rotating more rapidly. In the time it would take before to make one single turn on itself, now it made 150. It happened just like that, suddenly, accelerating from 1 to 150 in just 30 seconds. People who were quietly sitting on their sofas watching TV saw the planet slipping away under their behinds, and ended up in a continent on the opposite side of the planet, in front of a completely different TV show. Some of them, mostly because they refused to drag their 150 times heavier body, remained there, where, by the way, TV shows were much better. Others decided to undertake the long journey back home: I am told that the first ones are already arriving.
- What do you mean ..."already" ? They left thirty years ago!
- Yes, sure, I can really picture this, yes, you, carrying 149 friends on your shoulders, going for a long and relaxing walk...
- All right, I got it. So you say that the Marmellinds didn't have the time to evolve before the acceleration took place, and so they remained too slim.
- I must also say, to be honest, that the Marmellinds have always been a bit on the wispy side by nature: even before the gravity variation, the main cause of natural death on that planet was sneezing.
- There, you are digressing again, can't you see? You were telling me I was the cause of a war between the Jovials and the Honkie-Tonkies.
- Hoitytoities.
- Whatever. What have I got to do with it?
- The Jovials, as I have probably told you, are not really known as the funniest people of the universe. They are touchy, very ticklish and extremely surly: they are quick to take everything as a mortal insult. When what I am about to tell you happened, they had already decided to isolate themselves almost completely from the rest of the galaxy: they drew up their own telephone directory; they withdrew all the ambassadors from foreign planets; and relying on the fact they have always been self-sufficient, they interrupted all import and export activities.
- But why all this?
- Simply because they don't like other people's company. Let me go on: for some time nobody had officially heard from them, but, suddenly, they switched on the plasma transmitters and read live, on all audible frequencies, a statement in which the Magnificent President of the Massive Jupiterian System raved about a vile and unexpected provocation suffered by the Jovial people at the hands of the Hoitytoities.
- What kind of provocation?
- I must make a little digression here.
- Don't tell me!
- Maybe you don't know, but each population communicates and spreads information using different media, according to their preferences and traditions. For instance, we like fruit juice caps. You, the terrestrials, cut down an excessive number of trees you then flatten to write things on them. Well, in this you and the Hoitytoities are very similar: do you know what medium they employ to spread official statements? Small, flat wooden sticks with rounded ends.
- I can see that with extreme difficulty we are getting to the point, and I have the feeling I'm not going to like it.
- I have that same feeling too. The true cause of the war was revealed only at the end of the conflict, when some until then confidential files were disclosed. In brief, a Jovial spy on duty on your quadrant reported to the Jupiterian Government that he had intercepted a belligerent message that was undoubtedly coming from the Hoitytoities: it was a piece of wood on which the sentence you read me before, written in blue ink, was clearly visible.
- Hang on a second: you are telling me that the message I wrote you as a joke a few minutes ago on the stick of a popsicle I had just finished sucking has been intercepted in the future by the government of a planet of bad-tempered lunatics who, for this reason, have declared war on a planet that was minding its own business, causing death and havoc around the universe?
- Exactly.
- But how terrible can that be? And you, why you're not stopping me? Why don't you just tell me to smash that stick into a thousand pieces, to throw it in the garbage crusher, to swallow it so that nobody will ever find it?
- Don't you dare!
- What?
- The future has already happened, simply because I am telling you this story now. Changing it would entail harmful consequences; it is strictly forbidden by the Joint Time Police and, besides, it brings bad luck. So now you calm down and leave that stick where it is. Or, better, no: just do with that stick what you would have done if I hadn't blurted out what will happen.
- You can't ask me to do that. Don't you understand I have caused a war?
- Of course I can, and I will, because I know better than you, so I suggest you to trust me: you have no idea of how many lives and future events are linked to that piece of wood. Changing its destiny would mean that I could vanish instantly together with my three billion one hundred sixty-eight million, four hundred thousand eleven, seven hundred and twenty-nine companions who are here outside the phone booth. It would also mean that this phone call might have never taken place, and considering that you represent at the moment the only chance of survival for my race, you will realize why I am forced to be rather urgent on the issue. Trust me: very calmly and cautiously, pick up that stick with both hands, even using your opposable thumbs, if you like.
- Got it.
- Good. Now, think of what you would have done with it if you hadn't talked with me.
- I would have thrown it in the garbage, I guess.
- This is not the time to be doubtful: you guess, or are you sure? And in which garbage can?
- In the kitchen's one, where I throw away everything.
- You are telling me you don't recycle?
- The future of your species is in my hands, and what you do? You lecture me about the environment, now?
- You are right. No, you're not, but I'll let you off this time. Tell me, are you in the kitchen?
- Yes.
- Throw it away.
- Are you sure?
- Totally sure.
- A war... with people dead, injured...
- Throw it away.
- Done.
- Good: you have no idea of how relieved I feel right now. We have never been closer to extinction than in these few minutes. And I mean myself, you, and all that we know as you will also know it.
- But now I want you to tell me all about that war, to tell me what I was responsible for.
- No problem, I will, right away: I have studied it at school and I know the story by heart. But before I go on, there is something I am really curious about.
- Sure, if I can.
- You lied to me about that sentence. Or maybe you forgot a part of it.
- I can assure you, it's not possible: it happened just a few minutes ago.
- Can you remember it?
- Sure: "You are a patronizing and agonizingly brazen-faced race". Come on, do you really think it's enough to spark off a war?
- For a Jovial? A sentence containing three - and I mean three - zeds? No doubt about it. Not to mention the part you are leaving out: the augmentative you have employed, maybe thinking that the Jovials didn't know Latin. Instead they do study it at school as their third language.
- But I... hang on a second: third language? Just to know, I'm curious, may you tell me what are the first and the second?
- The first one, as you may have guessed, is Jovialese; the second one is Greek, of course.
- Of course, yeah, it seems pretty logical. Anyway, once more I can assure you I haven't left anything out, and that I haven't written anything in Latin. I don't even know Latin, come on!
- Text books give a different version of that story. They say that the Jovials received a piece of wood...
- A popsicle stick...
- ...on which was clearly written: "You are a MAGNUM patronizing and agonizingly brazen-faced race".
- Not at all, I am writing it down right now.
- What was the exact wording? Could you say it again?
- Sure. It says: "You are a patronizing and agonizingly brazen-faced race".
- And it was written on a small smooth piece of wood with rounded ends?...
- Yes, a simple stick like those used in popsicles.
- ...In blue ink?
- Yes, but how do you know that?
- You have no idea.
- Don't tell me you found it for real.
- No. Not me.
- So why you're telling me "You have no idea"?
- Because you really have no idea of the mess you have made leaving that sentence at the mercy of the future.
- At the mercy of... All right, okay, no, I admit I have no idea.
- Well, your small, pointless, useless piece of wood was what sparked off the terrible and ominous war of the fifteen years between the Jovials and the Hoitytoities.
- Oh.
- You mean you don't know anything about the war between the Jovials and the Hoitytoities?
- No, I really don't know who the Hoitytoities are. And a couple of hours ago I didn't even know who the Jovials were.
- The Hoitytoities are a peaceful but unbearable race that live exactly 3879,69 light years away from you, on planet Superior.
- Superior in what?
- In general, in the way they see things. Let's say they differ from the Jovials in that, at least, they are peaceful.
- I am pleased to notice that the universe is full of incredibly nice people.
- And you think the terrestrials have a much better reputation? At least not since you have invented metered parking and the patting on the back.
- What's wrong with patting on the back?
- You should not hit somebody by surprise, unexpectedly!
- But that's not hitting, that's just an affectionate way to communicate brotherly friendship.
- Exactly: I really cannot understand what has friendship got to do with such a violent gesture.
- I told you it's not a violent gesture: it's like a flick given with a smile, a little unharmful slap.
- Unharmful? That's what you think! On Marmellous Behind, for instance, gravity is about 150 times higher than on the Earth, which, considering that weight is relative and changes according to the gravitational force of the place in which it is measured, entails that a simple pat given by a terrestrial is capable of killing a Marmellind instantly.
- Two things.
- Tell me.
- The first one: what is a Marmellind?
- Someone who lives on Marmellous Behind.
- And someone who lives on Marmellous Ahead is called...
- ...A Marmellead.
- I see. The second thing: now, I'm not here to brag about physics notions that, frankly speaking, I do not have, but I guess that if the Marmellinds live on a planet where gravity is 150 times higher than on the Earth, evolution must have enabled their bodies to adjust to those particular living conditions.
- It's easier said than done.
- Is it...?
- The thing is, all of a sudden, about thirty years ago, Marmellous Behind started rotating more rapidly. In the time it would take before to make one single turn on itself, now it made 150. It happened just like that, suddenly, accelerating from 1 to 150 in just 30 seconds. People who were quietly sitting on their sofas watching TV saw the planet slipping away under their behinds, and ended up in a continent on the opposite side of the planet, in front of a completely different TV show. Some of them, mostly because they refused to drag their 150 times heavier body, remained there, where, by the way, TV shows were much better. Others decided to undertake the long journey back home: I am told that the first ones are already arriving.
- What do you mean ..."already" ? They left thirty years ago!
- Yes, sure, I can really picture this, yes, you, carrying 149 friends on your shoulders, going for a long and relaxing walk...
- All right, I got it. So you say that the Marmellinds didn't have the time to evolve before the acceleration took place, and so they remained too slim.
- I must also say, to be honest, that the Marmellinds have always been a bit on the wispy side by nature: even before the gravity variation, the main cause of natural death on that planet was sneezing.
- There, you are digressing again, can't you see? You were telling me I was the cause of a war between the Jovials and the Honkie-Tonkies.
- Hoitytoities.
- Whatever. What have I got to do with it?
- The Jovials, as I have probably told you, are not really known as the funniest people of the universe. They are touchy, very ticklish and extremely surly: they are quick to take everything as a mortal insult. When what I am about to tell you happened, they had already decided to isolate themselves almost completely from the rest of the galaxy: they drew up their own telephone directory; they withdrew all the ambassadors from foreign planets; and relying on the fact they have always been self-sufficient, they interrupted all import and export activities.
- But why all this?
- Simply because they don't like other people's company. Let me go on: for some time nobody had officially heard from them, but, suddenly, they switched on the plasma transmitters and read live, on all audible frequencies, a statement in which the Magnificent President of the Massive Jupiterian System raved about a vile and unexpected provocation suffered by the Jovial people at the hands of the Hoitytoities.
- What kind of provocation?
- I must make a little digression here.
- Don't tell me!
- Maybe you don't know, but each population communicates and spreads information using different media, according to their preferences and traditions. For instance, we like fruit juice caps. You, the terrestrials, cut down an excessive number of trees you then flatten to write things on them. Well, in this you and the Hoitytoities are very similar: do you know what medium they employ to spread official statements? Small, flat wooden sticks with rounded ends.
- I can see that with extreme difficulty we are getting to the point, and I have the feeling I'm not going to like it.
- I have that same feeling too. The true cause of the war was revealed only at the end of the conflict, when some until then confidential files were disclosed. In brief, a Jovial spy on duty on your quadrant reported to the Jupiterian Government that he had intercepted a belligerent message that was undoubtedly coming from the Hoitytoities: it was a piece of wood on which the sentence you read me before, written in blue ink, was clearly visible.
- Hang on a second: you are telling me that the message I wrote you as a joke a few minutes ago on the stick of a popsicle I had just finished sucking has been intercepted in the future by the government of a planet of bad-tempered lunatics who, for this reason, have declared war on a planet that was minding its own business, causing death and havoc around the universe?
- Exactly.
- But how terrible can that be? And you, why you're not stopping me? Why don't you just tell me to smash that stick into a thousand pieces, to throw it in the garbage crusher, to swallow it so that nobody will ever find it?
- Don't you dare!
- What?
- The future has already happened, simply because I am telling you this story now. Changing it would entail harmful consequences; it is strictly forbidden by the Joint Time Police and, besides, it brings bad luck. So now you calm down and leave that stick where it is. Or, better, no: just do with that stick what you would have done if I hadn't blurted out what will happen.
- You can't ask me to do that. Don't you understand I have caused a war?
- Of course I can, and I will, because I know better than you, so I suggest you to trust me: you have no idea of how many lives and future events are linked to that piece of wood. Changing its destiny would mean that I could vanish instantly together with my three billion one hundred sixty-eight million, four hundred thousand eleven, seven hundred and twenty-nine companions who are here outside the phone booth. It would also mean that this phone call might have never taken place, and considering that you represent at the moment the only chance of survival for my race, you will realize why I am forced to be rather urgent on the issue. Trust me: very calmly and cautiously, pick up that stick with both hands, even using your opposable thumbs, if you like.
- Got it.
- Good. Now, think of what you would have done with it if you hadn't talked with me.
- I would have thrown it in the garbage, I guess.
- This is not the time to be doubtful: you guess, or are you sure? And in which garbage can?
- In the kitchen's one, where I throw away everything.
- You are telling me you don't recycle?
- The future of your species is in my hands, and what you do? You lecture me about the environment, now?
- You are right. No, you're not, but I'll let you off this time. Tell me, are you in the kitchen?
- Yes.
- Throw it away.
- Are you sure?
- Totally sure.
- A war... with people dead, injured...
- Throw it away.
- Done.
- Good: you have no idea of how relieved I feel right now. We have never been closer to extinction than in these few minutes. And I mean myself, you, and all that we know as you will also know it.
- But now I want you to tell me all about that war, to tell me what I was responsible for.
- No problem, I will, right away: I have studied it at school and I know the story by heart. But before I go on, there is something I am really curious about.
- Sure, if I can.
- You lied to me about that sentence. Or maybe you forgot a part of it.
- I can assure you, it's not possible: it happened just a few minutes ago.
- Can you remember it?
- Sure: "You are a patronizing and agonizingly brazen-faced race". Come on, do you really think it's enough to spark off a war?
- For a Jovial? A sentence containing three - and I mean three - zeds? No doubt about it. Not to mention the part you are leaving out: the augmentative you have employed, maybe thinking that the Jovials didn't know Latin. Instead they do study it at school as their third language.
- But I... hang on a second: third language? Just to know, I'm curious, may you tell me what are the first and the second?
- The first one, as you may have guessed, is Jovialese; the second one is Greek, of course.
- Of course, yeah, it seems pretty logical. Anyway, once more I can assure you I haven't left anything out, and that I haven't written anything in Latin. I don't even know Latin, come on!
- Text books give a different version of that story. They say that the Jovials received a piece of wood...
- A popsicle stick...
- ...on which was clearly written: "You are a MAGNUM patronizing and agonizingly brazen-faced race".
English translation by Paola Corazza
© 2009 Gianluca Neri - All Rights Reserved