Lost Transmissions: Cubons
Created | Updated Nov 6, 2011
Entry: Cubons.
The cubon, the curiously1 regular six-sided sub-atomic particle, was discovered by a Disaster Area roadie2 who accidentally plugged a Hypercaster Megabass into a matter transmitter, de-tuned it by a major fifth and zapped his lunch, the jug it was sloshing around in and most of a continent into two-inch bricks. As a precursor to the main event this was seen as something of a let down.
However, this elegantly stackable particle revolutionised the transportation of fruit and vegetables in some of the poorer regions of the galaxy, with the resultant space savings making some wholly vegetarian societies immensely rich3, allowing them to afford the softer, scented toilet tissue that they’d had their eye on.
The cubon also put a lot of overpaid logistical topologists4 out of a job. This was a profession that had, up to that point, been extremely angry about the inconvenient shapes of organic objects and had spent their professional careers (and not inconsiderable amounts of free time) squashing, mincing and compacting every living thing into convenient boxes. The demise of this discipline seemed assured until one enterprising thinker with shares in a haulage company invented the spherical packing crate5 to level the playing field.
However, Nif Dink6 An ancient, wispy-haired man widely recognised as an innovator, free-thinker and irritating know-it-all, famously commented that "It's always a bad idea to tell clever ideas to complete idiots" and was proved spectacularly right when his machine to make square stars blew his eyebrows off, as well as wiping out the nice little corner of the Magrathean factory floor he had rented to "have a bit of a tinker".
There was even an aborted attempt to sell the technology but the "It might look simple, but you're too stupid to use it." advertising campaign successfully consigned the cubon generator to the cut price junk catalogues and discount bins. This was, of course, until Zaphod Beeblebrox bought one to make ice cubes out of comet trails and make his lemons easier to slice.
Zaphod re-launched it with some fanfare as the next big cocktail accessory, made millions, and spent all of the next year almost terminally drunk at other people's parties.
Afterwards, having nearly choked to death on an ill-advised handful of square painkillers7, Beeblebrox spent the next decade trying, unsuccessfully, to prosecute himself for attempted murder.
As he bankrupted two major law firms in the process (both acting for and against Zaphod), the Cubon generator was immediately awarded "Most useful product ever!" by the Encyclopedia Galactica, an award that was then backdated by two years when the "Nif Dink Incident" was brought to its gleeful attention.
Entry Ends.
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