Intragalactic Olympics
Welcome to the 12D9IN3W9800VKNAth Intragalactic Olympics, under way for the last 10 intergalactic light months. We’re half way through and I’m ready to have the wife beam me home, I’m tellin’ ya. It’s been a long one of magnitudes.
I’m bobzyx costazorx here with mattnaxx laueraxx for a re-cap of some of the most interesting developments in these latest olympics, now featuring over 3.2 million additional beings from nearly as many planets and solar systems.
Vacuum-Chamber Diving
mattnaxx laueraxx: That’s right, bobzyx! We’ll start off with the Galaxy 32V0 Planet 5x999i nanopalameeds in the vacuum-chamber diving competition. Note that, due to the extreme vacuum, no matter whatsoever impedes their gravitational acceleration from the top of the diving platform one light year above the methane pool. Terminal velocity?
What the hell is that? Ha ha.
bobzyx (shrugging): No matter! Ha ha.
mattnaxx: Ha ha. I heard what you did there, bobzyx.
Now, these divers look much, much larger in the chamber than they are in real life, bigger than your face, depending upon what planet and galaxy you’re from, due to the effects of the vacuum on their physiology. Outside the chamber, they’re about the size of an electron, in part because their planet is extremely tiny, as are the atoms in their very weird periodic table of the elements.
In their freefall, these nanopalameeds achieve ultrasuperhyper warp speed by the time they plunge into the methane pool. They’re traveling at what I suppose you could call an inebriated wavelength, not quite the speed of light. The only thing impeding perfect gravitational acceleration is the photons drifting into the chambers from the radiation penetrating the lead-encased chambers.
bobzyx: What the judges are looking for is the degree of heat generated, the magnitude of explosion, shock-wave quotient, and number and color and intensity and duration of sparks.
mattnaxx: That’s right, bobzyx! Keep in mind that each of those judges, all Eyeians from the planet Lens, have over nine-google light receptors in each of their seven eye clusters. These beings can, at a glance, count a billion sparkly flakes of confetti spilled into a pile in less that one one-billionth of a nanogalaticsecond. So these judges are perfectly suited for judging this competition. But as a race, they’re too gooey and sticky to compete in any of the games. Which is perfect, because there’s no favortitism toward their own kind competing in anything they judge.
mattnaxx: That’s right, bobzyx. For these olympics, the judges are strapped into special vertical structures made of a megaslippery platinum-infused guckboard that repels stickiness, so the Olympics have done away with having to pry these folks from their perches at the end of each judging event using chisel-torches. Replacing all those perches several times a day nearly broke the Olympic Committee bank in the past!
Particle-Accelerator Dash
mattnaxx: This next event is everyone’s favorite because it drags out over the course of several galaxies, an intragalactic event, yet it’s over in the blink of a light receptor. The favorite in this race is ZIP!, of no particular galactic or planetary origin. He just shows up out of the wild blue universe at these events, and through time trials he consistently places in the top three.
bobzyx: In this race, ZIP! is expected to break the last intergalactic record, approaching light speed. In the last Olympics, he was just a metastasizing ball of protoplasm, barley visible with a hypermegamagnification unit. His times were restricted to radio-transmission speeds because his microwave frequency was slowing him down. His coaches have trained him in infinitely compressing his frequencies, hoping that he’ll break the barrier into the realm of photons. His detractors claim that he’s been amp-doping, but multimeter tests have always come up negative.
mattnaxx: His primary challenge, as is the case with any particle-accelerator dasher, it that, as he approaches the speed of light, the atoms in his physiology are inclined to begin separating. No one knows what the outcome of such an event might be for a sentient being.
~ ~ ZAP! * *
bobzyx: And there’s the starting spark! They’re off and … they’re done. It’s ZIP! by an indeterminately miniscule measurement of time, somewhere in the minimicronanosecond realm, I think. Man, that was quick.
mattnaxx: Wait, what’s this? It seems ZIP! did manage to separate out completely into a streak of atoms. You can see here in the uberdubersuperslow-motion replay that, just after the starting line, he’s a cloud of dust flying through the intragalactic race course.
bobzyx: It’s worse than that, mattnaxx! The judges are now saying that only two of ZIP!’s neutrinos crossed the finish laser! The entirety of his being must be interconnected or he’s disqualified!
mattnaxx: I can see their point, bobzyx; this problem is akin to one of those terra-firma slogging humans from Earth spitting across one of their foot-race analog finish lines before any part of their actual plasma bag crosses the line. Speaking of which, do you think Earthlings will ever figure out how to get here for the games?
bobzyx: Beats me, mattnaxx. But this latest development in the particle-accelerator dash means that the Uranium 238 medal goes to BIP!, of an indeterminate origin in the universe. The strontium goes to ZEW!, and the barium goes to PIF!, both also of indeterminate origins.
Roboxing
mattnaxx: Roboxing is one of my favorite sports because it pits sentient-being creativities against one another using remote physical force, in the form of robots boxing. Personally, I prefer hydraulic fluid and circuit boards to blood and guts. Those organic gladiator events make my digestive tract incontinent.
mattnaxx: This is a truly intergalactic sport in that any beings from any planet with an abundance of the right elements can compete, assuming that their technologies are advanced enough to assemble remote-controlled robots.
bobzyx: Yeah, hey, remember when the LowBrows from the planet Trog entered their robot, made of granite and sticks? And they operated it using a series of vines?
mattnaxx: I sure do, bobzyx. That ‘bot could really take a beating, but it was slow to deliver punches, and those vines would break, and the limbs would go swing backward and take out the crowds of LowBrows operating the thing… Funny, but tragic! It finally fell like a meteor shower into a black hole; they had to shut down the arena for a billion nanoseconds to get the arena back in shape.
bobzyx: Good thing the Olympic Committee recently re-established the rules to allow only electronic, wireless remote control on these things or we’d be enduring another of those slingshot-launched, rock-constructed, interplanetary Trog transporters crashing into the Olympic grounds again.
mattnaxx: It was a further embarrassment when what remained of the LowBrow team had to hitch a ride back to their planet after the games.
The Clean Jerk
mattnaxx: This event never fails to entertain in large part due to the enormity of those competing in it.
bobzyx: Heh heh, I heard what you did there.
mattnaxx: One of the largest competitors is roughly the size of the Milky Way galaxy.
bobzyx: The Milky Way? That’s the smallest galaxy this corner of the universe!
mattnaxx: But Flab GloQ is that large, and he comes from a big planet – Humongogargantua. His best jerk is a trillion-bajillion-ton planet composed entirely of the element lead. Even then, he’s never likely to do any better that a strontium medal.
bobzyx: That’s right, mattnaxx, because the first competitor on the stage, as usual, is God, who has been magically appearing at these Olympics since just after the post-big-bang universe cooled. His best jerk is that of the largest known planet in the universe.
mattnaxx: Yes, largest known. The question on everyone’s mind is: Did God create a planet so large that even he can’t lift it?
bobzyx: That’s the twenty smajillykajillion-dollar question, mattnaxx. If it’s out there, no one knows where it could be.
Mattnaxx: We’ll skip this event because the same guy wins the uranium 238 every time. Tune in yesterday when we cover the last trillion highlights of the nitrogen-polo event, black-hole wrestling, supernova squelching, and binary-star throwing events.
Mark Forseth is a regulatory technical writer with the Federal Aviation Administration in Seattle, Wash. His career has centered on public-broadcast journalism and technical writing for such industries as GE Medical; ABB Robotics; Harley-Davidson Motorcycles; Allen-Bradley Motion Controls; Johnson Controls; and Imago Scientific instruments, among others.