CHAPTER I

Slade took another look at his fingernail. He was focused on completing the task at hand. He took pride in himself for this reason: that every enjoyable endeavour he had ever undertaken for some time now had been perfect, or, at least, was close to being perfect. He didn't always like to think about the latter case of perfection, but he thought it practical to agree that nothing could be perfect.

He was wrong, of course. None of his works were ever close to being perfect. Also, “Nothing could be perfect?” Of course, a three-dimensional creature would think that way!

He had neither blade nor nail clipper, and yet, he wanted the trimming of his claws to be just as smooth as though e used one. He put his index finger back in his mouth and rubbed the rough edges aggressively against an incisor tooth on his lower jaw. He did that for some minutes and stopped when he was satisfied with the result he could now see.

Trimming the fingernails with the teeth in Sade's country was considered a bad habit. But Slade couldn't care less about that. He couldn't care less about people’s opinions, especially if his actions had no adverse effect on others. Little did he know that habitual nail biting could cause his teeth to wear away, leading to further problems.

The truth was that Slade cared a lot about what people thought about him. He was just really good at pretending that he didn’t.

He now thought of an article he had read some time ago. It was about how fingernails grow at about three millimetres per month. The report also said they grow faster than the toenails and that those on the dominant hand grow faster than those on the non-dominant hand.

He once tried to find out how accurate the statement from the article was; after five weeks of careful monitoring, he decided that either the report was wrong or that the naked eye could not measure the difference in the growth rate of the nails on either finger. He also decided that he couldn't care less about the growth rate of his fingernails.

This was in a bid to console himself. He always said it whenever things didn’t go how he expected.

It was a sunny day, 1:30 pm, and Slade didn’t like that there was little he could do to shield himself from the sun’s rays hitting him. A few hours earlier, he would have been able to console himself that he was receiving a natural vitamin from the sun; This is just punishment, he thought.

He had been on the road for an hour and twenty-five minutes. On average, it took only about two hours to reach his destination from his starting point, but he had yet to complete half the journey. The problem was traffic. It was a prevalent problem in his country due to persistent bad roads and a myopic insight into road design. Both issues could be attributed to the government of his country. They were short-sighted in almost everything they did.

The government of his country couldn't care less about this problem. They couldn't care less about any situation that didn't affect them.

His country and others like it were labelled as “Third World Countries” by more developed nations. This, in simple terms, meant that his country was shit!

The dictionaries in the time he lived in had termed the word "shit" as "vulgar" and "colloquial.” Vulgar was always bad, while colloquial was sometimes bad, depending on when it was used.

Shit sometimes meant faeces; you could derive many other meanings from this. Here is what Slade said to someone who made him angry a day before: "Do you know how worthless faeces is? Well, that's how worthless I think you are!"

Faeces were not worthless. People paid to buy them to make use of them in their crops. This would make those crops grow bigger and better than if they were not used. What I'm simply trying to say here is that FARMERS LOVED SHIT! The process of applying faeces to plants to improve them was called manuring.

The actual truth was that nothing was ever useless. In the 4th century BC, long before Slade existed, Empedocles, a Greek philosopher, made this statement: "For it is impossible for anything to come to be from what is not, and it cannot be brought about or heard of that what is, should be utterly destroyed." Let me put it the way the scientists of Slade's time put it: "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another."

Émilie du Châtelet first proposed this. She was a mathematician and a philosopher. So many people in Slade's world didn't know about Émilie du Châtelet. So many would have problems pronouncing her name.

Back to energy!

Some would argue that energy isn't the same as matter, but the relationship between both was described by a scientist named Albert Einstein with the equation:

The equation means energy and matter are interchangeable.

If the people in Slade's world had applied the above science or philosophy in their everyday lives-that, things described as “worthless” or “useless” could have become useful-they would have lived better lives, and their planet would still exist.

How did they go into extinction, you ask? That's a story I'd love to tell. But some other time.

Slade began to look forward to the next time his vehicle would move in the traffic jam he found himself in. He found it interesting that he wanted the car to move not so he could get to his destination early but to dry off the sweat running through his body with the rush of air coming into the vehicle through the windows. He also yearned to feel the cool that would follow.

He thought it sad that he had never boarded an air-conditioned public transport vehicle.

I suppose that mirrors the country’s state, he thought.