After spending a week at Sasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane, Washington, it was somewhat disturbing to find this on my desk:
The obviously empty container claims to contain a tribble, an alien species from the planet Iota Geminorum IV. Tribbles are soft, furry, and purr or coo when petted. They have a calming effect on humans.
But they are also born pregnant, and will reproduce as fast as they can eat. They also eat all the time, which means that their movement and diet should be severely constrained.
Which means this empty tribble container presents an urgent threat to everyone in the building, and especially to kitchen refrigerators, stashes of food squirreled away in employee desks, and other possible sources of food. For more information, consult this synopsis of “The Trouble With Tribbles.”
