There once was a very distant galaxy that no one had ever heard of or seen, especially in places where telescopes had not yet been invented. Maybe somebody had dreamed about it, but it was disputable whether it was made up or not. A living organism called Freud said a long time ago or after that what made this life form known as humans dream was the desires they suppressed during the day. But why would anyone want a galaxy and why would they suppress it if they had a subconscious? This was a mystery for the scientists, one of whom had written at the bottom of a notebook, “More data and trials are necessary.”
There were many innovations in this distant galaxy, whether existing or not. It was the year of the giant Krakamonjul, celebrated by half the planets. Or in translation – year of the innovations, technologies, banking and possibly accounting services if the fiscal year coincides with a leap year and Terra HK 17’s right hemisphere is facing its little star. Don’t ask me why. Not everything in this galaxy is completely logical. Still, part of the society in this strange place was worried that these ‘innovations’, instead of improving the living organisms’ lives, actually complicated them by often leading to unforeseen strange situations. Let’s give you an example of one such minor problem: your ship teleports inside a near/distant star due to a ‘problem’ in the coordinates’ calculation, because, as you can imagine, there is more than one method for their calculation and their measurement. Although you may briefly feel a bit warm and be converted into fuel for future planets and beings, you’re unlikely to be very pleased by this fact. The inhabitants of this God-forsaken (of whom they knew nothing) place believed something had to be done to change these ‘random’ phenomena.
This group of countless places, times, black holes and suns contained many forms of life, intelligent or not always. To make it easier to follow the narrative, we will refer to them as people, humans or sometimes programmers.
To make life run more smoothly, changes had to be made, so these creatures decided it was time to create a new branch of science – testing. Until then, that word was unknown to the space cowboys who thought it easier to conduct experiments directly, even if they destroyed entire planets or sectors of galactic space in the process. When they started finding themselves in the heart of a black hole or a star, they realised, through self-reflection (+ 3.14 hours of psychotherapy a week), that something was wrong.
327 tebis ago, it was decided that a new group of engineers had to be invented.
Tebi is derived from the name of the planet, according to whose rotation time is unified throughout the galaxy. This is a very complex subject deserving of its own chapter. But what you need to know is that the famous scientist Tebi Auchoyn lived on the moon of this planet. Pure accident that they are namesakes? I don’t think so! Anyway, we’ll let the reader decide for themselves. But the strangest thing about Tebi right now is that because of a ‘problem’ of this type with my machine, for some strange reason this planet no longer exists. After 100 tebis had passed, it turned out it was quite difficult to synchronise all timers when the reference time no longer existed, and that’s without taking into account that this whole thing had to be synchronized across 54,678.4 tebi zones (for more information, see Page 876, Volume 456 on following the new standard under Directive 912.2 of the Galactic Scientific Association for Psycho-Astronomy and Other Weird Sciences).
Now that we know what a tebi is, 327 such units of the current time ago (Which is actually strange. Current time in reference to what? If the reader lives on a planet at the other end of the galaxy, these tebi units will actually be very different because your current time will be very different from the local one. Anyway, this is one of the many problems this new form of engineers need to solve.), they decided that, instead of everyone discovering the warm substance in which they bathe at their place of birth (except for the little Leoxians who bathe in cold water and a group of programmers who bathe once a tebi), it’d be more efficient to ask someone who might have already faced this problem. Besides, if the collision wasn’t in a neutron star, it’d be quite difficult to live and tell about the experience. The meeting was held every tebi in the same place – at the end of everything in existence, in a new mall built on the edge of the unimaginable, on a series of asteroids orbiting around the closest star circling the great black/light centre of the galaxy. If you’re questioning the logic, it’s simply the most exotic place in which rich new engineers would like to buy a home, according to a handful of scarf-wearing investors at least. The place was so special that it rotated for real and not around the word ‘new’. Somehow, as we have explained illogically and logically about the physics of this strange place, the new was renewed every tebi. This anomaly only happened to asteroids circling near large black/light centres. So, if you had such an apartment, you could always brag to your friends that you have a new home and treat them to drinks at the bar. But after twenty tebis, these young engineers realised that at this rate of constant parties and drinking they would be ruined, so they decided to sell off what they had left. This is how the new mall was born, where everything is always new. This was the place where everyone sent 2nd-, 3rd- and 5th-hand things to make them new. A controversial intergalactic law banned some androids from going there. Many lobbies had to negotiate with interplanetary governments on the basis of a 56,900-page volume proving how detrimental this would be to inflation, the commodity exchange price of avocados (a very expensive fruit used on some planets as a means of payment) and the bottling of gherkins. That’s why, to make things easier, only clothes (but no equipment) over a certain weight were accepted in the mall. There were protests and strikes staged by tailors, furriers and certain forms of moths who only ate old clothes. After many important intergalactic routes had been blocked and dozens of transport and fuel-production companies had gone bust, a decision was finally made to close the mall. However, there was still a large group of young engineers who had money to blow, so events, such as big village weddings, royal receptions, important political negotiations and sometimes technical conferences, started to be held in this trendy place because the coffee was very good.
This was the place where the Symposium on the Science of Testing, Related Technologies and something else (SSTRT) was held every tebi. This abbreviation didn’t exactly roll off the tongue, so everyone said Orion Testing Symposium instead, after the name of the organisation that undertook this bold enterprise – Orion Ketchup and Mayonnaise Catering (you’re probably wondering how complicated can it be to calculate the distribution of a ketchup bottle).
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****Testing in the Galaxy- Chapter 3 – “From a small zombie cow to the perfect gift. Gift Testing Service”
Testing in the Galaxy- Chapter 6: Virus testing, hacking today and more
Testing in the Galaxy- Chapter 7: Testing the Tourism and Consulting Services
