The Successfully Succeeding Seminar was described on Friendbook as the greatest event in the history of mankind. At first I thought this might have been an exaggeration, but for the fact Zork Muckleberg would be attending. Which is why I found myself in the Collooney roundabout car park at half past eleven on a December morning.
‘It is my pleasure to be standing here beside the Collooney roundabout‘, he announced by way of an introduction.
It was clear he was enjoying the chance to speak to the dozen assembled shoppers and local journalists.
What he said next would change the world forever.
He touched the smallest finger on his right hand to his thumb, and placed the three open fingers on his right temple -he then stared into the foreground and announced:
‘fall diddle dee, a science pledge for me, fall diddle die, I’m reaching for the sky, fall diddle dee, I’ll reach and scratch my knee, fall diddle die, I’ll never tell a lie.’
The car park was briefly silent afterwards; most people, including myself, knew they had witnessed history.
I asked him about this afterwards, and he explained that he had drawn inspiration from the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart.
‘I have been told on several occasions that my website is fermenting hatred between and among humans‘, he told me.
‘It is completely untrue‘, he explained.
He described that the allegations came to a head when his offices were raided by the department for the promotion of virtue earlier this year. For the three days, between Tue 11th to Thu 13th August, he was forced to watch as six men and two women carried boxes of papers and four laptops from the regional headquarters of Menta (formerly the Friendbook corporation). It was the talk of Crossmolina for a Wednesday afternoon and Zork, in typical Zork fashion, decided to do something about it. Which is when he said the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association came to his mind.
‘I’d been observing how hundreds of thousands of Irish young people had been taking a pledge of total abstinence for decades; and how the country became effectively teetotal as a result -and I decided to apply the same technique to Friendbook.’
It was clear he was enjoying being able to share his source of inspiration (he spoke loud enough for anybody within earshot to hear). Unfortunately for his louder than necessary announcement a rumour had gone round that a lorry load of Mills and Boon books had overturned on the bypass. This meant that the mind of the crowd had gone elsewhere.
I decided to use the opportunity ask him about the Third Prophecy of Hybobolus Clune.
‘Load of fuckin shite’, he explained.
He indulged in a quick look around to make sure nobody was listening before continuing.
‘I often defeated far worse extraterrestrial invasions, and I’ve never needed superluminal travel to do it either. In fact, I saved the planet long before Kevin and the gang got to Corran Hill that night. It’s just the way it was for me back then, I saved humanity whenever I needed to.’
When I pointed out that he would have been six years old at the time, and living thousands of miles away, he just smiled.
‘You can use facts to prove anything, but, as Sherlock Holmes said, when you eliminate the probable what you are left with, however improbable, is the truth …I saved the human race’, he said.
The true story of how six crusties and a Ford Transit saved planet Earth.
An Roinn Ultra - Irish Science Fiction 