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When Number One took over the Universe, he made three important discoveries: (1) the Universe is a big and messy place, (2) the ZapCo Automatic OliveLoafer makes olive loaves ten times as fast as the leading brand of oliveloafer, and (3) to rule the Universe, you need to sort out a whole crapload of paperwork. This became difficult, because the ones who did most of the Universe-conquering were the Penguins, who, while being very effective at doing the big and messy takeover of the big and messy Universe, were hampered from handling the paperwork by the fact that the average Penguin has the attention span of an angry gnat. After deep contemplation and consultation with his most trusted advisors, including but not limited to several drunken Penguins and a lava lamp, Number One decided there was only one solution: maintain the Penguins for controlling the universe, while creating a new and more enlightened race to govern it. Instead of creating a new and enlightened race, Number One created the THEY. The most highly-evolved bureaucrats in the history of History, the THEY were developed entirely within the confines of a vast network of underground offices. THEY have completely adapted themselves to THEIR claustrophobic environment, drawing energy directly from fluorescent lighting in a sickly version of photosynthesis. THEY speak amongst each other in a code of bureaucratic B.S. so thick it requires the average human an entire business school education to even grasp its simplest forms. THEY are utterly ruthless in THEIR execution of office policy, never straying from the laws of red tape which make understanding the mysteries of the universe far too bothersome for any rival to comprehend. Most importantly, THEIR familiarity with the bureaucratic laws of creation is unparalleled, meaning that any attempt to depose the THEY would plunge the entire cosmos into more pointless anarchy than it already finds itself in on a daily basis. Physically speaking, THEY are all of identical height and weight, as well as of identical gender. THEY are both asexual and sterile; in the unlikely event of the loss of a THEY, a new one can be grown from source material stored in any of the water cooler-like repositories scattered throughout THEIR main headquarters. THEY are exactly alike in every way, except for the number on the pin attatched to their "suit jackets" - actually an outer layer of skin grown in the shape of business attire. THEY are the authorities, the string-pullers, the powers-that-be. Whenever you hear anyone say, "THEY say it's going to rain tomorrow" or "THEY'RE raising taxes again" or "THEY say Marcellus Wallace threw Tony Rocky-Horror out of a window for giving his wife a foot massage," the "they" in question is the THEY. How the THEY came to have such an irritatingly unoriginal name is bound up in the fact that, in order to maximize their bureaucratic potential, every last remnant of creativity and originality was siphoned away from THEIR race's collective soul. In fact, so little remains of THEIR collective soul that it manifests itself only as a lump of hardened chewing gum stuck to the underside of a subway seat on the Blue Line of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, and only when THEY'RE feeling perky. Thus, when given the chance to name THEIR species, THEY chose a pronoun over an actual name, and eventually opted to forego individual names entirely and simply number themselves. At present, there are exactly 666 members of the THEY, all working in the memo-infested offices at the heart of the sour planet Vobos, around the great computer known as The Beast (THEY still haven't gotten the joke). Although THEY are a formidable species - perhaps the most resilient and deadly in the cosmos - THEIR astounding lack of originality and creativity has become a potential Achilles' heel in the heart of the conspiracy. This is a problem, because to have any part of a foot growing out of one's heart is a cardiovascular nightmare. The essential difficulty lies in THEIR relationship to THEIR immediate inferiors, the Penguins. While the THEY are officious, bland, and terrifyingly dull, the Penguins are psychotically unstable, spastically Bohemian nutjobs, and neither species can stand living with the other, much less working with them. While the THEY are simply too boring on a genetic level to feel angry about the Penguins, the Penguins loathe working for the drab managerial species. While most Penguins lack the attention span to actually do anything about this frustration other than to invent numerous anti-THEY slurs (examples include "eggmen," "beanpoles," and "fnagibbitzes"), certain irate members of the Penguin community have broken away to form Penguin splinter groups, which vow to liberate the Penguins from servitude to the THEY but which almost invariably end up spending all their time coming up with new anti-THEY ethnic slurs, which usually end up sounding surprisingly similar to the old ethnic slurs (ex: "eggpoles," "beanmen," "fnagibbitzes"). THEY rarely roam the
outdoors of subjugated worlds such as Earth, and do so
only when clad in protective armor which effectively
neutralizes such dangerously unfamiliar forces as
creativity, humor, and sarcasm. Rumors that similar suits
of armor have been issued to various student activist
groups cannot be confirmed at this time. |
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