"FWLS10" - читать интересную книгу автора (A Future We'd Like to See)

A Future We'd Like to See 1.10 - 37047734 : The Next Generation
By Twoflower (Copyright 1993)

Planet MURF! Home of the Murfles! Spoken of in hushed
tones, heralded in song, chronicled in a dozen bard's tales
throughout the galaxy.

Hah. As if. Murf's smelly, grimy, polluted, and pretty
much the definition of Urban Hell. However, it's not nearly as
bad as the other worlds, where they build gargantuan buildings
with six-foot high doors and scrape the skies; we Murfles prefer
being close to the ground, which shows why no murfle structure is
more than about three floors.

Planet Murf's my home, my pride, and my joy. I'd rather be
a Murfle on Murf than Murf on a Murfle, the saying goes. It
doesn't mean anything, but it's a comforting thought. It may
smell funny, and my job might be bad, but I love this world.

One thing going for Planet Murf is the fact that we don't
get any tourists. Things move right along when you don't have to
deal with confused, clueless offworlders that frown upon dishes
you consider delicacies and don't bother learning the local
language. The reason for nontourism? Simple. Our buildings are
about 12 feet high, and those are the tall ones. Why bother
raising things to TC standards when we're certainly not raised to
TC standards?

So, you can calmly overlook the grunge and grit, since you
can be 100% sure that you belong here. No modifications have
been made, we don't have multi-species toilets; everything is
purely Murflan in design.

Plus, we don't have a messy government, like that democracy
thing over on Yttia and Terra. We've got a simple monarchy, with
a nice monarch, to boot, that knows what he's doing and can
handle the job with a strict minimum of unpleasantness. Life is
much simpler here; most of our dialogue is based on the artform
of the argument. Humans get all twitchy and shifty when you
argue with them, whereas a decent Murfle can stand their ground
and fight back. It's never personal, though; it's quite hard to
hurt a Murfle's feelings, 'cuz yer average Murfle doesn't have
any to hurt.

'Cept for the Barneyites. Jeez, I can not STAND Barneyites,
which is a pain because my job deals with Barneyites; I'm a
report filer for Barneyite Rights and Justice. By law, all
Murfles can expect to be treated fairly. This wasn't a problem
at first, since we basically acted alike as a species. THEN some
idiot gets it into his head that we should teach our kiddies to