Witness: An Outsider's account

"Yes , Your Honor. Unless I am much mistaken, you are the one called Your Honor, are you not? To be honest, you do not look very honorab... Oh, right - the testimony."

"It happened about three months ago. I was standing outside on my balcony. There was nothing unusual about the human I saw. If you discounted his flailing arms, staring eyes, wide open mouth and hair streaming away from his face, he would just be another human. The human was trying his utmost to keep his acceleration at a constant G*. He was very careful to move no faster nor slower than gravity would allow."

"Falling? I guess that might have been the case, but that hardly explains his flailing arms. If he were indeed falling, he would have been better off to resign himself to his fate. That said, the human was heading straight for me. And strangely, he did seem somewhat averse to proceedings. He kept shouting 'No! No! NO!'. I immediately realized that I was in the way, and politely stepped aside so that he might finish his experiment."

"No! Your Honor, I am not raving mad. Off course he was busy with an experiment! From what I was able to deduce in the short while I have seen him, he seemed to be busy with a dimensional reduction experiment."

"Your Honor, please allow me to explain the experiment. The human was merely trying to change himself from a three-dimensional organism to a two-dimensional one. Unfortunately for him, the experiment was a failure and all he seemed to do was to transfer some vibrations through my balcony. His body apparently rejected the sudden changes forced upon it. The human did not seem to take the failure well. His eyes glazed over and a mysterious red liquid seeped from beneath him. The red liquid was doing a much better job at becoming two-dimensional. In fact, it seemed to cover most of my balcony."

"Yes, Your Honor, I am quite aware that there are women and children present. If I may say so, you are quite a heterologous group. But please allow me to continue my narrative. The human seemed to have a companion who was interested in the same line of work. This human had a black mask on his face, and leaned over the overhead balcony to shout 'That'll show you Rodney'. He then proceeded to say the syllable 'ha' a few times in quick succession. I was fully expecting him to follow in his companion's footsteps and waited to see whether his experiment would be more successful. To my utter disappointment, he disappeared from sight and did not show himself again. I waited for a full ten minutes but nothing happened."

"The next moment I was blinded by flashing blue lights and there was a crowd of people staring at me shouting 'What have you done?'. At first I was rather confused, but when I tried to move from the spot where I had been standing, I became aware that the red liquid was actually a quite powerful adhesive. I immediately realized that the humans around me were trying to attribute the discovery of the red adhesive to me. I knelt down to congratulate the human. I shook his hand, but he seemed quite apathetic. He was probably overcome with emotion."

"Your Honor, that red hue in your face is quite becoming. As I was saying, I congratulated the human. Some of the women in the crowd shouted 'Monster! How could you?' I explained to them that what had transpired was entirely the work of the human, and that as much as I would have liked to, I could take no credit for it. The next thing I knew, two humans in blue clothes came and put metal circlets on my wrists. I was given an honorary escort to my new residence."

"I now live in a wonderful, cozy apartment. I get served three full meals a day which are delivered to my apartment's front door. I am usually able to tell when my meals arrive by the cheering of my neighbors. They are such lively people. This morning a human called Gard told me to get ready. Apparently I needed to confess. Well, I have tried to do so previously, but was ignored. Once again, I say to you humans that I had nothing to do with the discovery of the red adhesive and wish to distance myself from it entirely. I do however thank you for your kindness and for providing me with a new home."

"Your Honor? Your Honor? Purple does not suit your face at all.Ouch! What is it, Gard? Oh, am I going home already? There now. See that was not so bad. I knew they would see reason..."



*G - a unit of acceleration equal to the acceleration of gravity at the earth's surface.