The Pikers of Egg Beta III
In the constellation of Felix Hash Minor, the Pikers of Egg Beta III whizz through space like divine frisbees—renouncing heaven not out of rebellion, but because it got in the way of their ozone-sniffing joyrides. Their bodies are rational, their diets recursive, and their communication once involved disco bumping. Welcome to a species where clockwise rotation brings enlightenment, and anti-clockwise rotation brings lunch.
The Pikers of Egg Beta III in the constellation of Felix Hash Minor were constrained by space, but not time. These neo-plastic frisbee-shaped creatures [sic] had renounced heaven; not because of some deep theological dispute, but simply because they liked whizzing about in what humans (lacking foresight) had come to refer to as outer space.
They were also very much addicted to the smell of ozone. This is not exactly correct as ozone has no odour unless you add some herbs; the Pikers simply had not realised that the ozone made them smell. No harm done though; they certainly were not the first species to find solace in their own underarms on a hot day.
As with all that have encountered heaven; the ratio of their circumference to their radius was now rational (as all good ratios should be). Each was exactly a metre and a bit in diameter, with both numerator and denominator on speaking terms. A curling antenna at top centre being the only evidence that the mathematical anomaly had been corrected. None objected, as it made communication between them much easier.
The end result of this heavenly endorsement was that when they were rotated clockwise; the some of their parts was considered to be more or less equal to the number they first thought of. However, when they were rotated anti-clockwise they just threw up a lot. This is the price you pay for having the space, but no time.
In the past, they had communicated by rhythmically bumping into other; think Morse code with a disco beat; the practice of which was frowned upon and had since been deprecated. The philosophers had gone out of their way to hide this practice from the history books; but the geeks (in the absence of a decent social life) had kept it alive.
Due to a shortage of ambulances, they were forced to ambulate by more intuitive means. Recycling warm bodily fluids to their pale underbelly gave them lift, slipstreaming the occasional comet gave them momentum; the curly tail did the rest, which included directional coordination, the proper time to instigate mutual flatulence (for dodging hyper space toll booths), and also letting them know when it was time to eat.
The sole diet of the Pikers was Crisps, or to put it less delicately, their own dead skin, although it was not really dead, as it continued to grow after shedding. Crisps themselves, fed off the vomit of pikers which they found to be scrummy and quite unlike tapioca pudding. This was the sole reason why the discomfort of anti-clockwise navigation still persisted. It was a case of “you scratch my back and I’ll have yours for dinner”. This form of self-sustaining recursive cannibalism kept the Pikers out of hot water and the Crisps out of the frying pan.
History speaks of a time when a coup was attempted by all Crispdom. Its goal was to better their position in the taxonomy of light snack life forms. However, they had to give up in disgust when it was realized that their essential weaponry, the tooth, was going to take at least another two million more nano-pedicures to evolve.
Harry is a recovering satirist, part-time philosopher, and full-time tinkerer of tags. He once wrote a poem about recursion that never ended, and a JavaScript confession that crashed three browsers. His archive spans two decades of metaphysical mischief, theological punchlines, and nostalgic detours. He believes in the transformative power of satire, the elegance of well-placed meta tags, and the occasional necessity of poetic nonsense.
