Three guys were sitting at a table having a late afternoon breakfast in the middle of the main clearing in the intergalactically famous Phrase Gardens of the eccentric, elliptical and quite artificial planetoid Phonohomio Prime. Their names were Richard, Devon and Mr. Alfred Andromedae and all but two of the three of them were Neomen -- and of the two that weren't it could most definitely be said of one of these two that he was once a Neoman too.
Mr. Andromedae was the official representative that the Phonohomonymians sent to meet with Richard that afternoon.
They apparently were very fond of having carbonated soda beverages for breakfast because the entire surface of the eccentric elliptical table before them was covered with cups and glasses and bowls full of various colors and flavors of caffeinated carbonated soda beverage liquids.
They were having a very animated conversation about something that had almost absolutely nothing to do with animation, but probably did have a lot to do with all the carbonated caffeine that they were taking in.
A musical boombox on the ground beneath the table played bebop in the background as they spoke.
They spoke about what they had all came there to speak about, and they really stuck to the topic, and so they were very very productive and they accomplished a great deal in the conversation information-wise ... for about five minutes before Richard succeeded in veering them into much more interesting topics involving Neomen and something called the Suggestions System and even a couple of other random tangents involving Dr. Bumwuggle, the GUST, and a small school of pirannha fish that happened to swim by their table at one point later on in his monologue that was cleverly disguised as a dialogue and occasional poly-logue by his forebrain as it hopped along from moment to moment -- all fueled by caffeine from his Diet Caffeine soda beverage, which was clasped tightly in his cold right hand as he shivered and twitched from hypercaffeination and tried very hard to not drool all over himself in the company of strangers like Mr. Andromedae and Devon Anwa.
Devon, for his part, made a quiet snorting sound and rested his head upon his hands, giving his friend Richard an annoyed look.
Mr. Andromedae had, however, just fallen out of a tree yesterday, and, so, of course, as would be expected, he still remembered in vivid detail what being in the tree was like, and, thus, kept asking Richard more and more questions.
"So it's illegal?" Mr. Andromedae asked either or both of them together.
"Mmmm... No," answered Devon, shaking his head.
"But it's wrong, right?" Mr. Andromedae asked again.
"Nope," said Devon again, quickly jumping in. "Well, ahh, maybe yes. Okay. Sure. You could use the word wrong to describe it, I guess," Devon replied.
"Uh, well, then I don't get it."
Devon started to explain. "It's because it's--"
"It's not really a Law, per se," interrupted Richard, "but, rather, more of a ... suggestion."
Richard stopped and grinned.
"Where I and Devon come from there are no Laws -- they've all been replaced with suggestions! A simple system of basic ethical suggestions called the Suggestions System," he explained.
"But, how the---" Mr. Andromedae started to ask, before being cut off by Richard.
"How the heck could this possibly be, is probably what you are wondering aloud, I'd imagine? Well, you see, this is how it all came about to be, in the land that Devon and I and others like us like to call home regardless of where we hapen to physically be any given day of the week." He stopped for a moment and smiled wide. "Originally, everybody just grunted -- way back when, in a time and place that existed, perhaps, a small fraction of an eon ago."
Silence.
"They grunted suggestions?" asked Mr. Andromedae.
"No, I think they just grunted," Richard replied.
"Oh."
"We haven't gotten to the suggestions yet. We're gonna start first with the grunting. So have patience and pay attention, please."
"Okay, sure."
"So... The grunting. People were good at it. They were each very good at all the grunting that they all did originally. They did it well and very efficiently. So their conversations were incredibly clear and incredibly concise -- which was an incredibly good thing and so everybody was incredibly happy."
Mr. Andromedae nodded, indicating that he understood.
Richard continued.
"But sadly... slowly... they kinda ever so slightly stopped knowing how to speak the language of grunting. And so they started to rely more and more instead on this other thing. This other thing that was a much newer and untested thing that was called talking."
Richard continued. "Then one day the grunting stopped. It stopped completely."
Shock.
Surprise.
Dismay.
Shock, surprise, dismay... and a predominately genetically Norwegian heritage. All of these uncontrollable feelings -- including especially the Norwegian heritage -- tried simultaneously to vie for control of Alfred's face at that moment. But it was his Norwegian heritage that won.
So Richard kept right on with his story, oblivious to everything but his audience's predominately Norwegian heritage.
"And from that point on all their conversations were held only in the language of talking."
"A lot. I mean, there was a lot of talking and they were very enthusiastic about this talking even if it wasn't exactly second nature like the original grunting was. They had had the grunting down pat. It was natural instinct."
"But with this talking thing, it wasn't as good. There was an inherent problem. And conflicts inevitably ensued."
He paused to take a breath.
"The conflicts arose because many of these things called words that they had built their talking with were being used so inaccurately and out-of-sync with what people really wanted to say -- partly because no one cared to spend the time to learn which words did what and partly because many of these words could each mean different things, based on this other awful thing they called the context of things, and since the context of things was so fond of overlapping with lots of other weird ethereal things like the speaker's emotional state or religion or profession -- that, well, this thing called context that they developed soon turned into what was in effect a big red KICK ME sign placed on these otherwise noble inventions called words."
Richard took a moment to take a sip from his cup of Diet Caffeine-brand carbonated beverage drink. Gave it a few moments to take hold, then continued where he left off.
"And another complicating factor, to be perfectly honest, was that almost everybody was hopelessly stupid and didn't know it. But since this is such a unyversally-present complicating factor to anything present in the Unyverse, it should perhaps always be taken into account."
At this point, he stopped temporarily to go get a refill of soda from the soda refill beverage dispenser near their table. Got it, came back, and sat down again with his friends in the garden.
"So, basically, conflicts arose and these conflicts led to fighting. There were violent ninja kicks and nasty slapping, and occasionally even projectile sneezing and biting improvisational satire.
"So they made Law. It cut down on the kicking and slapping and satire, and then even a lot more things, like humor and creativity and intelligence and personal responsibility and individual judgment.
"But no matter -- there was less slapping and satire, and that was the important thing. Years and years went by, and deep down perhaps deep down inside the DNA of each of these previously human beings there slowly grew the realization that perhaps things would be better if Law was gotten rid of in some way so that they could just let people Truly Be.
"So they got rid of all Laws, and only functionally superseded some of them in their new, friendlier paradigm with things they came to call the Suggestions System.
"And this new system of fundamental ethical suggestions -- it was really not much more than a small codified collection of best practice moral-genetic observations -- worked pretty good, it mostly worked completely better than the old system, except in certain cases where it worked much much worse. And they realized that the reason why this new system broke down in these certain specific situations was because the people involved in these imperfect situations -- whatever else might be said about them -- were just plain hopelessly stupid or evil."
"Of course!" contributed Mr. Andromedae.
Richard glared at him.
Mr. Andromedae decided to stop contributing.
"If they could just get rid of all the hopelessly stupid or evil people," continued Richard, "the Suggestions System would work perfectly, and answer once and for all the question of whether it was ever possible to design a method of mass governance that was better than the classic mix of capitalism, socialism and pseudo-representative democracy. Maybe even something that would be present in Paradise.
"So they set about to make a list of all the people and people types or professions that were noted for being evil, or stupid, or some annoying mixture of evil and stupid, and they would take that list and go around finding all the people on that list, and simply exile them from their civilization. Only problem was, was that these people, in exile, would turn out to just go and mess up other people's civilizations, and making these neighboring civilizations quite cranky with them.
"Either that, or sometimes the exiles would sneak back in, and take right back up where they left off mucking up things again. So simply booting them out merely delayed things, or shuffled about the ickiness. A better solution was needed.
Richard grinned at them all of a sudden.
"And that solution came when Dr. Bander Bumwuggle developed a formal Grand Unified Sporkishness Theory, replete with a wonderfully solid and widely-accepted proof, and with lots of neat diagrams and values out to the kinds of decimal places that pocket calculators can only dream about."
"Proof?!?! What proof, Richard?" asked Devon.
"Thus..." Richard continued, ignoring him. "The invention of the GUST perfectly complemented the Suggestions System because it fixed what was otherwise the only thing wrong with it. Which was the existance of all the stupid and evil people."
Devon sighed. He appeared to be unimpressed. As if he had heard it all before.
Mr. Andromedae just stood there, slack-jawed but not slack-minded, quietly attempting to absorb all that he had just heard from the man with a bizarre last name whom he had met only a few hours before.
"You know, Richard, you really ought to write that down one day," said Devon. "It'd make for a pretty good story, especially the part about Bumwuggle."
They grew silent. They were apparently waiting for something.
A school of mutated, liquid-paisley-colored fish swam by in the Phonohomonymic Stream of Consciousness that happened to be meandering by their breakfast table in the Phrase Garden that day.
Richard shrugged. "Yeah, maybe." He looked at the fish. He hoped they weren't pirannha. Phonohomonymic Pirannha were notoriously carnivorous predators and, additionally, they smelled really bad.
He looked at the stream. He hoped it wouldn't get him wet. He didn't like getting wet. Unless he was in the shower or a swimming pool.
He looked at his wristcom, then quickly stood up, gave a short bow to his companions and then hurried off to the exit, saying, "We have to leave by six past six p.m."
Mr. Andromedae waved at his retreating figure. "Goodbye, Mr. Amadeus!" he yelled out after him.
Devon grunted and picked up the pulse rifle that had been sitting on the ground beneath the table by the boombox the whole time. He checked it for charge and mumbled under his breath, frowning, "Oh, joy. Back to the war again."
Mr. Andromedae appeared startled by something Devon had just said.
"What war?" he asked him.
Devon just shrugged and sighed. "Ask Richard." Then he started polishing his weapon, slowly and methodically, until it shined. "I'm sure he'd just love to tell you about it."
