Author:
Christopher Antony Meade (Laughing a lot)
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Date Posted: 04:47:58 09/04/14 Thu
The first thing I noticed, when my spaceship came in to land, was the smell. It was coming from all the tanning factories that were producing the reams of parchment and vellum for the inhabitants of Verulia, (a planet where the invention of paper had never been made). The awful odour was a by-product of the production process, whereby the skins of specially bred animals were used to make everything from books to toilet tissue. Half the entire land area of the benighted world was devoted to rearing beasts for the parchment industry. The whole of society on Verulia was governed by the culture of animal husbandry. Not alone were the skins used for writing, but animal meat and fat was the basis of all the food eaten there. Even the houses were built from bone bricks, held together by glue made from the boiled down remains of those not considered suitable for any other purpose.
The result of all this was that there was no possibility of a tourist industry ever starting on Verulia. No outsider could abide more than a few minutes on the smelliest planet in the galaxy without special airtight space suits. Nobody was going to enjoy lounging on the beach wearing one of those. Another thing was that the inhabitants were perhaps the touchiest people in the entire universe. They didn’t notice the smell and were likely to take great offence if a stranger, so much as, alluded to it. Pinching the nose was likely to get the unfortunate visitor a six month stretch in prison and believe me that is no place to be, as space suits were not allowed to prisoners. No form of paper was allowed on the world either. The entire animal husbandry/parchment thing had developed into a religion and it was considered the absolute height of blasphemy to even mention the word paper, let alone be in possession of some. Diplomatic relations were broken off with the Galactic Federation when rolls of toilet paper were found by customs in the luggage of the ambassador’s wife. She ought to have used the diplomatic bag but an inexperienced servant had put the incriminating material in the wrong suitcase.
So here I was, about to land on the most nauseating and unfriendly planet in the galaxy. I just prayed that the sheets of toilet paper, sewn into the lining of my spacesuit, didn’t rustle as I was going through customs. Wiping my posterior with unabsorbent sheepskin was not my thing, but then, neither was a six month stretch in a Verulian jail.
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