Quote:
|
Mail-sorting engine, the Post Office, Ankh-Morpork. Originally designed as yet another organ (musical instrument). Acquired by Postmaster General Cowerby. In the centre of this machine is one wheel that Johnson, for the sake of tidiness, had designed to have a pi (circumference to diameter ratio) of exactly 3, not 3.14-mumble-mumble-and-a-bit. In order for pi to be exactly 3, the universe has been changed. The machine therefore taps through many layers of the space-time continuum. Mail came out of the sorting machine that wasn't put into it by the human hands of the postal workers. Mail from next week, mail from 50 years in the future, mail that could have been, mail from alternative universes, mail that people swore they posted but really hadn't, mountains of such mail. Finally, Chief Postal Inspector Rumbelow beat up the machine so that it stopped whirring. No longer sorting any mail, the machine still sports an annoying blue glow, and is capable of Considerably Dis-Organizing objects placed above its centre. This makes one of the rooms in the cellars, originally the mail-sorting room, a dangerous place to be. A banshee assassin exploded when he touched the core of the device.
|
I should have known.
Maybe I should finally start to read Pratchett...