At the Archives of Parallel Space-Time (APST) on Betamax Delta, where I've been helping out with the cataloguing lately, we've been receiving a lot of threatening metamail on the Trans-Etha Net (like the Sub-Etha, but designed for communication with our collecting agents in Parallel Space-Time). It seems our modest academic efforts have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment in other space-time continua.

Apparently, the existence of the APST in our space-time continuum has been perceived as a slight on other PST continua, and been interpreted as a snobbish attempt to put forth the claim that our version of events is the definitive one. Or, as one of the (badly misspelled, smudgily photocopied) screeds that came across my desk recently would have it, that 'you're a bunch of temporally provincial, pseudo-causalist, counter-revolutionary blatherskates!'

Ahem.

Apparently, the attempt to counter what is seen as looming transdimensional colonialism has given rise to a movement - the ERPU, or Equal Rights for Parallel Universes - the aim of which is to put us in our places by asserting the equal validity of alternate versions of history.

Much luck to them, say I.

To illustrate the scope of this undertaking, and indicate the calibre of individual with whom we are dealing, I cannot do better than quote from one of the abovementioned publications (and I use the term loosely):

Citizens of the Multiverse Untie! You Have Nuthing to Loose But Your Quanta!

Down with the Oppressive Hegemonists of PST42! Pipple's Rites Must Be Protected!

The evil-minded boogars of PST42 are STUDYING US! This must be stoppit!

All continua are equal!

We demand that we may or may not have gone through an Ice Age!

We demand that we may or may not have had a major Flood.

We demand that we may or may not have had Dinosewers!

We demand that we may or may not have had Sevillization.

We demand carefully demarcated areas of Doubt and Uncertainty!

Well, you get the idea. It goes on in this vein for quite a while, before settling down to the point, which appears to be that all possible universes are equally valid.

Fine, say I. I have no quarrel with this. I, personally, would much prefer to live in a universe in which certain events had never taken place (such as yesterday's overcooked lunch), and, not to put too fine a point on it, in which certain individuals had never graced the historical stage. I mention no names.

But is it actually possible to live in a world in which all of these things both did and did not happen, simultaneously? The mind boggles.

Besides, they are being hypocritical. They claim that all universes are equal, but I notice that every single member of the ERPU comes from a universe in which sentient beings developed opposable thumbs, thus giving rise to the keyboard in some form. Is this equal rites - er, rights - I ask you?

And it is painfully obvious that worlds in which the speech faculty developed, as opposed to, say, telepathy, are egregiously overrepresented in the movement. At least, the obviousness becomes painful when they fly over the Archives in their spaceships, broadcasting on all frequencies some such campaign song as When the Battle's Lost or Won, or Both. This is becoming trying.

While we all look forward to the day when the Best of All Possible Worlds emerges from the chaos of our research, and we get all the bits and bobs of our timeline sorted out, so that we can eliminate the Thirty Years' War on Earth without wiping out half the Horsehead Nebula, with its priceless crystal resources, we have a long way to go yet. And so we have one thing to say to the ERPU movement:

Get over yourselves.

Wake up and smell the coffee. Stop and smell the roses. Get a hobby. Get a life. Take up knitting. Go away.

Better yet, start your own Archive. Help us out. Ars longa, vita brevis (even for a 6,000-year-old dragon). Get out there and collect data!

And learn to spell 'rights'.