@HugMug

The first alien words ever deciphered by humanity were ‘Fuck, I really need to piss from my arse.’

Linguists were too embarrassed to reveal that the translation - which had won them a nobel prize for their seminal steps towards an intergalactic Rosetta stone- had only been obtainable due to half of their team choking to death on alien diarrhea after misinterpreting the words as ‘We will shortly be offering fine delicacies from our planet. Open wide.’

Talks with the extraterrestrials quickly stagnated. Conversations concerning urgent bathroom trips and the allocation of diarrhea medication flowed smoothly, but any other matter was incommunicable. It became clear that the delegation would have to resort to body language.

To avoid looking like hapless tourists flailing their arms around and speaking in a condescending, slow-motion manner all of the planet’s least worst mime artists were rounded up to act as translators.





After performances consisting of rabid pointings, provocative, smirk-inducing contortions and pretending to climb in and out of an imaginary box half the mimes reported that the visitors demanded an inter-planetary limbo contest involving a rusty needle.

The other half rolled on the floor whilst convulsing in silent laughter at the ludicrousness of such a translation. It was who could jump highest over the rusty needle, not who could go under it. An array of dwarf yogis and giant hurdlers were assembled to cover either outcome.

A stadium was hastily built on the planet Ceres. Its location between Mars and Jupiter rendered it economically viable as well as being a safe enough distance to shield the earth from potential catastrophe should the aliens become enraged and start getting a tad zappy.

After the starting whistle officials from both galaxies stood around looking perplexed, kicking the needle in frustration. The two species were united in their complete cluelessness as to what was supposed to happen. This lack of communication became so infuriating that the galactic guests packed up and stormed off, assaulting a gaggle of mimes with the rusty needle who were blocking their path.

They had formed a guard of honour leading to the guest’s spaceship and were in the midst of performing an overly dramatic swan song just prior to receiving multiple unrequested organ piercings and a dollop of tetanus. It was the only non mind-numbing draw in sports history and practically every human was ecstatic, apart from those who in anticipation of the destruction of the world had gone on last minute murderous pillages. They were very worried.

Being confused and unable to converse had proven to be beneficial. Humanity began to question whether focussing on precise communication had been hindering them. Was the language barrier humans were so desperate to shatter actually something that should be reinforced?

Marriage councillors believed so. They began surgically removing patients’ tongues, theorising that couples who couldn’t talk to each other would never want to divorce. Male citizens rallied behind a procedure that was able to prevent both wars and nagging wives. Married women were also firmly behind the idea of no future war, and well, if their husbands were suddenly unable to talk to then it wouldn’t affect the level of conversation coming from the men much anyway.

The world Government bowed to overwhelming pressure, declaring that it would become mandatory for every citizen to have their tongue severed. The decree was revised not long after members of the pornograhy industy and non-married couples who still actually enjoyed a sex-life reminded everyone of other functions of the tongue besides talking. Instead everyone had their voice boxes removed.

The world lived in complete harmony, especially because now politicians, lawyers and celebrity gossips couldn’t distribute their poison. Of course, people were still capable of communicating via writing, but 10 generations raised on the internet meant that most people’s writing ability consisted of exclamation marks and emotions portrayed by exclamation marks. 100,000 years later humans had evolved to the point that babies were born minus voice boxes. History became very boring because nothing bad happened anymore, but people were happy. That is until a new alien race landed in 200,006 AD to demand a ‘Yo momma so amorphous...’ rap battle, then destroyed Earth when it was unable to comply.