Dreams are one of the major bugs in the universe, however many patches and fixes are released they still remain there, they just happen. Dreams are essentially (in a metaphorical sense) electrical noise. They are leakage from other probabilities that has found its way into the mind of an unoccupied 'being'. This knowledge can save lives, It is a well known folk tale (in dimension XG56H564.67J anyway) that the great King Aloc Acoca was not driven mad by a weird dream for the plain reason he knew that somewhere was a human being who had just had a knighmare about him. (it should be noted that King Aloc Acoca was in fact green and had eighteen different pairs of limbs)
It should also be noted that the electrical noise theory can be applied to soap operas, they are also true and have leaked into the mind of some unfortunate script writer who finds himself with a sudden desire to write about Jimmys third cousin appearing out of the blue to marry Freds girlfriend, attack Ethel, commit suicide, reappear from the dead and go down the pub and drink himself silly.
Anyway talking of dreams, at this moment somewhere on Earth (version 5.94.2 with Active Z plugin) in a house one of the strange sub program thingies was in bed dreaming. He was dreaming about the greatest scientific discovery of the century, the discovery of the 'Plutobulan effect'. For any of you who don't know what the Plutobulan effect is (which included the author when he started to write this sentence) it is the reaction of a seemingly innocent document holding device balanced on a precision sharp nutrient preparation utensil which reacts to the Plutobulan waves of the future. Translated into plain English this means a paper clip can predict the future by the way in moves when lying balanced on a perfectly normal kitchen knife, presently however it could only predict thirty seven seconds into the future and the machine that could decipher its predictions took four hours and sixteen minutes fifty three seconds to do so. However this person was still dreaming about it. His name was George. (You may or may not be interested to hear that the dream george was having was coming from three hours into the future when he was to attend a meeting about the phenomena.)
Somewhere in the far reaches of probability someone was watching George. Or at least a television drama about someone very like George. Someone got bored and changed the channel.
The alarm clock went, George leapt out of bed and in a complex movement involving getting his right leg tangled in the sheets and his other leg half way across the room, fell over. After untangling himself and putting a plaster on his elbow, George went and washed and prepared his breakfast. Breakfast was the usual orange juice and cornflakes, but George thought this was the last time he'd be eating in a small rented apartment, soon he would be living in a mansion with servants everywhere. He'd show them. All those people who said it wasn't possible, well he had proof. The Plutobulan effect did exist and he was going to prove it. And when the universities got to hear of this, oh, they'd pay highly for it all right, they'd pay highly.
Maybe at this point some background information about George should be given. George, now aged twenty-four, was, six foot two, slim and had an absolute lack of dress sense. He was, a scientist, but he was one of those scientists that can succeed in getting every possible experiment wrong, the only thing which George had succeeded in doing to date was to demolish three science labs, two council houses and numerous garden sheds, it was for this reason he was currently living in a drafty flat with a leaky roof(described by the estate agent as 'Well ventilated with integrated shower'). George had never been good at schooling, usually he blew up the science lab and got thrown out he even got thrown out of university in three days. However against all odds (and possibly a few evens) George had developed an amazing technology that, although he didn't know it at the time, would help to save his life. To be nice to George we must note that when he was three he acidentaly blew up his father in an experiment to find out whether cemtex and gelignite would neutralize each other, we should also note that when he was eight his mother ran away leaving a note saying she could not stand having her fridge full of multi-coloured drawing pins (Gorges first major break through in Plotobulanology), after living on his own for eight years George found his mother and met up with her, however on meeting him his mother, in a fit of sensibility she went and leapt of the nearest bridge. After going to college and managing to not blow anything up for two years George final developed the paperclip theory and then blew up the computer on which the data about it was stored. Other than that, George was just your regular sort of guy.
One hour later George was in the main hall of the small conference venue he had managed to rent, there was only room for about one hundred people but people would be clamoring to get in, he'd sent invitations to all the top scientists, they were bound to come, they had to.
It wasn't that the caretaker didn't appreciate his theory, just George would have liked an audience who knew the meaning of the word quantum, even an audience who knew how to count above twenty would have been nice. The caretaker had been interested though, and there was the tea lady, she had almost grasped the concept, but she didn't stay in for the whole thing. It must have been a misunderstanding anyway. Maybe he had put the wrong address on the invites or the wrong date. Probably the scientists would all turn up next week. 'That was it' George thought, 'I put the wrong date on the invites, they'll all be here next week.'
That evening George re-wrote the invitations and placed then in envelopes, he carefully addressed then and put them in the post box just as the postman was coming to empty it. Had George been listening he would have heard a loud bang as the postman opened the letter box. Had he been observant enough he would also have noticed that his latest potion (which he later found to be highly explosive) was spread all over the surface where the letters had been.
There is in fact a department of infinity that manages coincidences, it is, coincidentally, called the department of coincidences. The main job of its employees is to ensure that each planet has the correct number of coincidences per-year and that all coincidences that happened purely by coincidence, and were not organized by the department were dealt with. Coincidentally the department was currently working in the area of the planet earth where George lived.
By un-coincedental coincidence the next week all the scientists George had sent invitations too were in fact in the conference room he had planed to use for his demonstration. The scientists, however were not there because of George but because of Dr Fredrich Archibald, an acclaimed doctor of origami. Fredrich, also had made a break through in the Plutobulan effect although he called it the Oriongarminety effect (which was in fact the first letter of the names of everyone in his family arranged into a readable word) Dr Archibalds theory worked by showing how the way a cod wrinkles the chip paper around it if you hit it with a hammer. He had been really pleased with the headline in the sun which read 'Dr Archibald Talks Paper Folding Cods Wallop' Anyway the famous scientists were not at the conference venue for the science but instead for the slap up (battered) fish and chips afterwards.
When George walked into the conference venue he was amazed to see the scientist sitting there as he was beginning to suspect that the bang he had heard had been his invites blowing the post box up, but that must have been paranoia, they were all here. In a confident way he walked up onto the stage, pulled a lap-top from his bag and proceeded to fix probes to it and a selection of specially chosen paper clips. It was however at this point that Fredrich Archibald came onto the stage and started to shout at George in the way absent minded professors do (Dr Archibald was, of course absent minded). Suddenly as if mind had just emptied itself and started again, Fredrich Archibalds face went blank and then after a pause of a few seconds he started to speak in a voice only just above a whisper as if he had forgotten George all together.
"Your attention please, eh hem! Quiet please. Please would you stop talking." At this point realizing that this was his chance, George gathered his thoughts, coughed nervously and bellowed
"Shut up, you rude insolent people!!"
Hush descended. (This is not entirely true as hush does not descend, it may rise up on you or in extreme circumstances come from the sides, but hush never depends, she's afraid of heights.) All eyes were now on the stage, where, with a seemingly blank look Dr Archibald launched into a speech on Martyn's theory of toast, before faltering, giving a look of complete absent minded embarrassment and launching straight on onto the correct speech about Oriongarminity. In all this George had managed to say very little and was concentrating so hard on waiting for an opportunity to but in that he didn't notice the message on his laptop saying that the presence of fresh fish helped cut the time of equation to twenty seconds, he also didn't notice the prediction for the next 13 seconds. If he had he would have not started talking at all.
"..and so subsequently the cod amplifies the Oriononic waves much better than any haddock. This means that, um, er," Dr Archibald faltered and George leapt in.
"Of course fish produce interesting results but the economic complications are too high, paperclips however are much more accurate and are much, much cheaper." This is it, thought George, the scientists are really listening to me, this is my moment of glory. Unknown to George these thoughts were exactly the same as those going through the mind of Dr Fredrich Archibald, who, in a very carless manner had failed to notice he had been interrupted and was continuing to lecture on the benefits of using the Sun rather than the The Telegraph to wrap the cod in, there were the pictures for a start. Just as George leant down to read the display of his laptop, at the very same time Dr Archibald calculated his prediction for the future. This was it thought George, when he proved himself. Braced himself and read the prediction.
It should at this point be explained that as people are essentially programmed they all contain some similar components, in fact some of the components used to make humans, are, for instance shared by apes and visa-versa. It is for the afore mentioned reasons that the look of horror that crossed Georges face as he read the prediction was related to the look that a Ape has when it is suffering from constipation.
Both George and Dr Archibald looked at one another, both their faces aghast, turned to face the assembled scientists (asebled using X ++ for Universes, a text based language) They leapt for cover, however it was to late. They Crashed.
To perhaps be continued if I can be bothered.....
By Code Penguin