This is the story of three proofs: the biggest one, the blue one and the round one.

One of my assistants left them on my table without any identifying labels, and after this made a kerplunky little hole in the water. That’s right, she stepped into the loo bowl and sank out of sight. She never did return. Perhaps this nightmare ordeal had gotten too much. Not that I blame her.

Anyway, I had to work.

The biggest proof had more than a whiff of arsine sulfide about it. I sneezed, and placed it back on the table. Didn’t want to mess with that one.

I decided not to smell the blue proof because it looked like a dead Smurf that’d been put through a blender then snap frozen in the shape of a bow tie. I licked it instead. It tasted like… a dead Smurf that’d been put through a blender then snap frozen in the shape of a bow tie.

The dots were starting to connect.

Oh, the round proof? The less said about that the better, I guess. Let’s just say that when you squeezed it, it sounded like an asthmatic gerbil dying in an iron lung. It gave me such a fright that I nearly dropped the thing.

Did I mention that everything was becoming much clearer now?

I snapped on rubber gloves and protective goggles, took a rack from the storage cupboard, and cautiously placed the proofs upon it. Then I squelched through watery loo muck to my supervisor’s office and put the rack with the proofs on the table in front of him. He looked askance at said proofs, then at me as if I’d played an extremely offensive practical joke.

I shook my head in a helpless ‘no’, and added a shrug in case the head shake wasn’t enough. I was deadly earnest. What were these proofs actually proof of? And how did we know that they were proofs in the first place? Wasn’t the burden of proof upon these proofs to prove that they were proofs?

So, at that point I did what any sane scientist would have done: I made a kerplunky little hole in the water and stepped in. Yes, that’s right, I stepped into the loo bowl and sank out of sight as my supervisor looked helplessly on.

And the proofs? Well, no one knows what’s happened to them since.