Mrs. Hensworthy's Bookcase

A Tale of Science Fiction, Served with Tea and Biscuits

De: Norman Barta

Narrado por: Norman J Barta

Brobding Measelfort was an exceptionally diligent employee of the MITE Corporation.

Whenever a breach was reported in one of the company’s many transdimensional transport tubes, he would conscientiously rush to the scene to repair it. Brobding had a bad feeling about these frequent breaches; while he was relieved that there hadn’t been any interdimensional rifts so far, he thought that it was only a matter of time before something serious happened. Brobding was from the planet Measel.

Just as a matter of proseful housekeeping, we shall use the human pronouns “he” or “she” to refer to various beings, because each planet has a variety of such pronouns, and this would become quite confusing as we refer to one species or another.

Brobding Measelfort was actually a “zhayabenoing,” but, as this has no meaning to humans, we’ll stick with “he.” It was a relatively easy task to identify Measeloots (which is how one refers to those from Measel). Firstly, there were of course the 16 appendages and rather large bedbug-like appearance.

To the untrained eye, all Measeloots might look alike, but Measeloots easily distinguished one from another among themselves; they had excellent vision in the far ultraviolet end of the color spectrum, and displayed a lot of interesting colors in that range upon their appendages. A second manner in which to distinguish a Measeloot was that each of them had the term “measel” somewhere in their names. Brobding Measelfort is an excellent example, as are his rather overbearing aunt on his mother’s side, Measelanna Hooscod, and his favorite first cousin, Willodig Propmeasel.

Measeloots are considered among the most congenial species in the local galactic neighborhood; a slang term has even been coined accordingly in referring to those of a friendly and helpful nature, as in, “He’s quite a measel sort, isn’t he?”

Or, “I’ve always found her to be reasonably measel.” But Brobding Measelfort’s congeniality was about to be seriously tested….

©2024 Norman J Barta & Balinor Books (P)2024 Norman J Barta & Balinor Books