Some of you may remember that, back in 2011, I won the Nobel prize for Poppycock after successfully testing a new type of very hardy, spiky plant which I dubbed the ‘cockpoppy’. You may also be aware that I missed the award ceremony, having been absent at the time during the infamous multi-dimensional game of cat-and-mouse the feds and I played with the pranksters from the Utnepi sector who had constructed an illegal spatial anomaly in the Cotswolds.
In the last entry about this, I mentioned that my award was listed as ‘posthumous’, and that I would correct this error in ‘Huckleberry Finnly fashion’. Well, today, I attempted to do exactly that, with somewhat alarming results. I’ll get to that in a minute.
The Poppycock prize is not part of the human Nobels, of course. It’s awarded by an unofficial secret organisation called the Society for Promotion of Lurking Alien Technologies, or SPLAT, whose business is to improve the lives of humans via technology developed by incognito alien philanthropists. You’re welcome.
As for the cockpoppy itself, it was successfully deployed in many pilot sites, although I was asked to modify it to make it invisible to people. The committee apparently felt that my enthusiasm for drawing attention to it via luminosity didn’t quite conform to GOSAD (the Galactic Official Statute of Alien Discretion). The plant is useful wherever there are cracks between paving slabs, plenty of pedestrians, and the possibility of bears. It took a little experimentation to get the leaves to spread away from the cracks in such a way as to make its presence almost undetectable by feel, while still doing its job.
Another matter came to my attention recently, and I must address it. Some of you, I gather, will be wondering — perhaps not for the first time — whether my brain is firmly rooted in reality. After all, you will protest, this whole thing about bears is from a children’s book, isn’t it? It’s not real! But you’d be wrong, at least in a way. Every year a couple of thousand people disappear without trace in the UK, where I live. There are obviously many reasons for this, including certain visiting aliens who are somewhat less friendly than yours truly, and who like to conduct experiments. However, a few dozen of these incidents are indeed caused by bears.
No, not that sort of bear.
‘Bugbears’ have not been studied in detail yet, but we believe that they are four-dimensional flat creatures that exist in a parallel space, so close to our own reality that they can just about reach out and touch it, although it takes effort. This is what I meant by ‘flat’: they have very little ability to extend themselves along the extra dimension, but in three dimensions they are anything but flat, and are somewhat similar to giant octopuses. Indeed, the recent statements by scientists that the octopus appears to be practically an alien species interested me greatly, and I couldn’t help wondering whether these organisms might be related to bugbears somehow.
What’s baffling about the bears is that they tend to have obssessive intolerance to certain things. Some of them react exclusively to events that hardly ever happen — for example, the bugbears in the space parallel to Grootix get enraged if someone farts into their own ear. We only know they exist because a visiting boonargle performed the trick for a dare, and witnesses saw hundreds of disembodied tentacles intrude into our spatial dimension, grab the unfortunate victim and pull him out of sight. One wonders whether our universe is like some sort of giant vivarium to them, and whether they regard us as pets, and are removing those that displease them.
Unfortunately, the bears that hang around Earth’s space are far more easily provoked, and sometimes, very rarely, one of them will take to sitting in the parallel space beneath paving slabs, admiring the geometry. Should someone be unfortunate enough to step right onto one of the cracks, they are pulled below, in a direction that doesn’t exist and therefore probably rips all their atoms apart.
What the new strain of cockpoppies is actually doing is acting as dynamic camouflage. They focus the light from the sky above, and bend it around themselves, sending it through interdimensional space to the eyes of the bugbear, who accepts the premise that the foot is not crossing the line, even when it is.
But I digress. Today I entered the SPLAT headquarters to tell them that rumours of my death had been greatly exaggerated, and you can imagine my surprise when they stated that they had never heard of me. I demanded to see the Journal of Botanical Engineering, which was where my research had been published, and was outraged to note that the author’s name had been changed to ‘Professor Maria Thessifus’. Subsequent digging also revealed the same name now listed on the Galactic Patent Register. Presumably this imposter moved in and hacked my account while I was away chasing the Utnepi’i, and is now raking in the royalties. I don’t know how it was done, but you can rest assured that the hunt is on. She will be made to regret this: nobody pulls a fast one on Owota Dszira! I’ve sent a hyperwave to the GPR requesting suspension of royalties pending appeal, and I’ll keep you up to date on the progress of my vendetta.
Oh, by the way… to those who care, Happy St. Patrick’s Day from one who knows what it is to have genuinely green blood.
