The Rhohchian’s have sponsored a motion to accept Earth as a member of the Galactic Council, but the Iridian representative challenges the motion by relating the true story of humankind’s origins … (from Stanislaw Lem, The Star Diaries, “The Eighth Voyage,” 1976 Avon Press paperback, pp. 42-43.)
I shall now put a few final questions to the honorable delegation from Rhohchia! Is it not true that many years ago there landed on the then dead planet of Earth a ship carrying your flag, and that, due to a refrigerator malfunction, a portion of its perishables had gone bad? Is it not true that on this ship there were two spacehands, afterwards stricken from all the registers for unconscionable dealing with duckweed liverworts, and that this pair of arrant knaves, these Milky Way ne’er-do-wells, were named Gorrd and Lod? Is it not true that Gorrd and Lod decided, in their drunkenness, not to content themselves with the usual pollution of a defenseless, uninhabited planet, that their notion was to set off, in a manner vicious and vile, a biological evolution the likes of which the world had never seen before? Is it not true that both these Rhohches, with malice aforethought, devised a way to make of Earth – on a truly galactic scale – a breeding ground for freaks, a cosmic side show, a panopticum, an exhibit of grisly prodigies and curios, a display whose living specimens would one day become the butt of jokes told even in the outermost Nebulae? Is it not true that, bereft of all sense of decency and ethical restraint, both these miscreants then emptied on the rocks of lifeless Earth six barrels of gelatinous glue, rancid, plus two cans of albuminous paste, spoiled, and that to this ooze they added some curdled ribose, pentose, and levulose, and – as though that filth were not enough – they poured upon it three large jugs of a mildewed solution of amino acids, then stirred the seething swill with a coal shovel twisted to the left, and also used a poker, likewise bent in the same direction, as a consequence of which the proteins of all future organisms on Earth were Left-handed?! And finally, is it not true that Lod, suffering at the time from a runny nose and – moreover – egged on by Gorrd, who was reeling from an excessive intake of intoxicants, did willfully and knowingly sneeze into that protoplasmal matter, and, having infected it thereby with the most virulent viruses, guffawed that he had thus breathed ‘the bloody breath of life’ into those miserable evolutionary beginnings?! And is it not true that this leftwardness and virulence were thereafter transmitted and handed down from organism to organism, and now afflict with their continuing presence the innocent representatives of the race Artefactum Abhorrens, who gave themselves the name of “homo sapiens” purely out of simple-minded ignorance? And therefore is it not true that the Rhohches must not only pay the Earthling’s initiation fee, to the tune of a billion tons of platinum, but also compensate the unfortunate victims of their planetary incontinence – in the form of Cosmic Alimony?
