Book of Beginnings

The Book of Beginnings is a hitherto unknown, historically remarkable manuscript accidentally found by some unknown archeologists in 1978. The reason the find has remained unpublished until today is manifold and ambiguous. It has something to do with the almost accidental quality of the manuscript itself, and the anonymity of the discovering architects. There simply hasn't been anyone to publish it, since it was not known who they were. Neither does anyone know much about the authors of the manuscript or its age. Since 1985, it has allegedly been in possession of Dr. Thorkild von Jensen, a self-studied professor of dead and undead languages. He describes the happenstances leading to his becoming the possessor of the manuscript as "dumb, degrading, not worth going over". In a New World Magazine interview he claimed:

"The bastards asked way too much for it but I cheated them - and then it turned out they had cheated me, since the manuscript is total trash spiced up with idiotic rubbish".

An unknown artist's rendition titled "Thorkild von Jensen in his study". The picture was probably photographed by the artist.

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Problems deciphering the cryptic language of the Book of Beginnings

The manuscript was written with ink on vellum and discarded newspaper, and on some old floppy disks with gold ink. At least parts of it are believed to be from the latter part of the 20th century, while some may even be from the Pre-atomic Era. The financial means for having the age of the manuscript determined are sadly lacking. To quote Dr. von Jensen, in his soon-to-be-published paper titled 'The Beginning of the Book of Beginnings':

"Everything else is so cheap: running shoes, plastic bags, porn, more porn - yet a study of a historical document has to be so fucking expensive. I'm sorry if I'm whining about it but it's just so idiotic to have this priceless manuscript in my hands - and me without the money."

Later in his paper von Jensen lays a claim to be author of some of the manuscript:

"I didn't mean to start griping about the money. But everything else is so difficult as well. The language, if you can call that, is nothing short of incomprehensible. On top of that, it has been crypted. I wasted at least two miserable weeks of my time to translate the smudgy symbols into something that remotely resembles a human language. After that, I had to guess half of the content since there were so many glaring omissions, spelling mistakes, stupidly messed and torn pages and so forth. The project was one vast missing link for Christ's sake! But I finally made it, leastwise I think so. Some of my colleagues have tried to denounce my efforts, but they apparently lack the brain capacity. Being smart is not easy, nor does it come easy. I demand a compensation from somebody. I'm going to sue somebody if I'll not get some money for my efforts pretty fucking soon."

The language itself

Here's a caption from The Book of Beginnings, written in western alphabet, pronouncable in english. This is not a translation (although parts of it seem to be), just a try to show the student what the language might have sounded like.

Nitwits if you could pleeeze fuckof f

Sadly, these few words are all that is now left of the (possibly dead) mysterious language. Von Jensen again:

"I'm sorry but the rest of the manuscript just flew out of the window as I was copying it here on my computer. Only the text written on the floppy disks remained, and they just say 'Disk 1', 'Disk 2', and so forth."

According to von Jensen, there is a lot to be said about the language, though. It seems to have been a product of an intelligent, tight and light-avoiding human community. As far as he can deduce from the stains and dirt gathered on the pages, they have been smoking and drinking a lot of coffee. There have been only two persons in the community. This appears to have been revealed to von Jensen in a vision.

Contradictory claims

Professor Austin of Lower Nevada University recently took up the subject of von Jensen's studies. Austin seems to think little of von Jensen's scientific credibility. He describes von Jensen as "a creep, an imbecile, a lunatic and an utter jerk, not worth slaying, a despicable character and a cheat, with a manic streak and bad breath". While there is no actual reason to believe Austin's testimony on von Jensen without further proof, we cannot leave it without attention now that it has been recorded in Uncyclopedia. Austin says nothing much about The Book of Beginnings itself. He seems to be myopically interested in slandering von Jensen - it is to be assumed there might be some personal reasons. Austin claims, however, that there can be no book if von Jensen claims there is one.

Conclusion: the book exists since we have samples!

There have been several attempts to locate a third specialist on The Book of Beginnings, but to no avail. Most scientists have bluntly denied its existence, which is a bit suspicious. While it's to be admitted everything about the book is vague and shy of proof, we nevertheless have received the introductory chapter along with a few dozen others of the work itself. Apparently von Jensen has sent them to us (whoever we are), and some of those chapters are now published worldwide for the first time.

The only known photo of the original pages of The Book of Beginnings.

Chapter one

"It was a sunny evening. My wife and I were bored out of our minds. We had absolutely nothing to talk about, nothing to do, nowhere to go, no alcohol in the house, no drugs. All of our friendly dealers were in jail or hiding - it was one of those summers. I told her we should try writing a bestseller. She immediately agreed - she shared my view that bored people had the best chances of writing one. We got into thinking. Plot was not our main concern - there are plots everywhere. Page count! All reasonable bestsellers seemed to have at least five hundred pages. What to fill them with?"

"I got a brilliant idea: we could write only beginnings! That way we would seem to be full of ideas, while we didn't need one single idea good enough to fill a whole book. My wife slapped me in the face, hard. She told me I was an idiot, just like my father had been. After I had slapped her back, sending her across the room and dropping on her arse, she decided there might be something in my idea. Violence always does it for us: we agreed. The journey could begin! We set out on the spot, wasting no time, and got right into it, enthusiastically and without delay."

Chapter two: Beginnings 1 to 3

Beginning number 1

The Punic War - which had lasted at least the better part of a century, as far as was known at the time, had left Augustus Pompeius' house, already derelict before the war, in a sad state of disrepair. His wife didn't like the way the kitchen looked after the raping, pillaging Vandals had broken a large part of the wall. "You really should do something about the wall, Augustus my dear! There will be a terrible draught in the wintertime!" "I would, Flavia my dear, but you see - I really don't have the time! The Emperor is asking for (to becontinued)

Beginning number 2

The man knocking on our door was a mess, I could tell even looking out of the second floor window. He had a wooden leg, a glass eye without an iris, two of his teeth were missing. He was apparently snarling to himself. I realized there was no way I could let him in, even though there was a vicious hailstorm. I was practically alone in the house: all the servants had drunk themselves to stupor, and my husband lay dead in the basement after receiving a bullet or two from my Ingram.

What to do? I could not well call the police - they would pose some really inconvenient questions about the stench that lay all about. They would strongly advice me to pry loose the dead cow that was still stuck in the basement window - remains of last week's party, I'm afraid.

The man started pounding the door harder. You naturally wonder if I couldn't shoot him too. I couldn't. "Why?" you ask. It's a long story, really. It started one fateful evening twenty years ago, when I was still a young lass with not a worry in the world.

Beginning number 3

In the beginning there was a, let's see, there were two actually. Two Universes. Yeah right. As if one infinite Universe wouldn't be enough. I'm telling you right now, mister: One infinite Universe has no chance of containing ANOTHER infinity!! Is this clear now or do I have to smash your teeth in? GOOD. Let's continue then.

Chapter twenty-seven: Beginnings 127 to 128

Beginning number 127

When I first came to London there was snow everywhere. It covered the earth like a greyed-out bedsheet, dirty from the sin of ages. I felt miserable because of the snow. Someone had tried to remove some of it, dumping it into the Thames, but there was still so much around the Big Ben and the London Bridge you couldn't even see Piccadilly Circus.

My summons had come unexpectedly. M. wanted to see me as soon as possible, so I really had absolutely no time to lose. My outfit was not designed for meeting my superior in a formal setting, so I sent my faithful stool pigeon to him with a note saying: "Same place, same time. No tricks." Then I went to a street restaurant and ordered some fish.

"Do you want some chips with it?" asked the waitress. She didn't look bad at all, and I kept staring at her breasts until some other customers started coughing around me. "Yes", I replied, "chips will be fine! What's fish without chips?" "Mister, that is so inane I'll puke. If you don't like it here why don't you go and cook your own dinner?" "I would, but it's only lunchtime, and I-" My sentence was cut short by a sharp feeling of danger. Here was a waitress you didn't mess with. I would have to be more careful in the future.

Beginning number 128

"Please be seated and have a nice journey!" blared the loudspeakers with the voice of a fifty-year-old chipmunk. Doctor Yermusov felt ill at ease, sitting down beside a gorgeous blonde, so beautiful and intelligent that she could have passed for the Empress herself. Doctor Yermusov - we can call him Doc for short to save time - stood up abruptly right after sitting down and dashed to the rear of the spaceship. He grasped a stewardess by the arm and started pleading.

Chapter two hundred one: Beginnings 485 to 487

Beginning number 485

The house was old. It had been built on the crystal shores of Darkysea by the most cunning builders the Common Folk had ever produced. The builders had worked on the project for at least seven hundred Earth years, which to them had felt like a microsecond. It was a really quick building job by their standard, and so their salaries (by the local hour) grew to astronomical proportions.

In the house there lived a mighty wizard, whose name sounded so evil that even thinking about it caused gonorrhea. The wizard had a project. He wanted to destroy all the Common People. He didn't have a door in his house. That had posed problems for him since time imm

Beginning number 486

Ordinary people are often interested in other ordinary people's comings and goings. That's why I decided to devote a newspaper on the topic. That was last summer, when my ankle hadn't been broken yet. You wonder what happened? It's a long story.

Beginning number 487

It's a beutiful sunny afternoon some time in the late summer of our Saviour's year 19__. The birds are singing, there's a faint smell of glycerine in the air, and the dingbats are zooming about the place. It's harmony, in a word. Suddenly the peace is broken by an angry man's scream from a nearby dump: "The factory is mine, and I don't care what you say!" "Of course it is yours! We merely wanted to discuss a possible price - we aren't threatening you or anything," replies a soothing voice of another man - a much larger than the first one, judging by the depth of his voice. The first voice starts to protest. A vicious crunching sound is heard, and the voice falls silent.

The future of the project: The end to the beginning of The Book?

The Book of Beginnings is apparently a project forever left unfinished, by its very nature as well as for various other reasons, too numerous to go into. Doctor von Jensen's efforts have given us only a glimpse of the truth. His claim that the original text is "of homeric proportions, monumental, an absolute masterpiece in its own right" can be neither attested nor retisculated. There is a consensus in the science community - and scientological community as well - that such works are best left unstudied further until such times that there is nothing else to do. However, quoting Peter van Dirjkheim, New Amsterdam:

"We cannot emphasize enough the import of the task ahead of us. If ever we finish it, we can rest assured people will not need to compose any opening chapters for their own books. They can just dip in The Book of Beginnings and copy, since the authors are unknown! It's a miracle, the saviour of literature!"

A sordid book - the author hasn't had the brains to find out about The Book of Beginnings, and consequently his work has nothing on the first pages.

It remains to be seen if Doctor von Jensen will ever resume his work or give his notes for others to study. He hasn't been heard of since the 10th of January, 2008.