The Baby Harvest Postcard.

A couple of weeks ago, the Phil Are GO! Garage Sale and Antique Store Assault Force's Bravo Detachment (GSASAF-BD) staggered through the doors of GO! Tower. They had lost only two members this time out, but their sacrifice was totally worth it. In the team's bag of loot was this postcard from 1905, revealing to us a few scraps of priceless information about how the primitive humans of 1905 "lived".

For us living here in the Bright and Shiny Perfect Future, the savage world of 1905 is veiled in mystery. Absolutely no documentation survives from this brutal era, apart from Downton Abbey, and most of PBS's programming schedule after 9pm.

Naturally, the instant that Bravo Detachment handed this postcard to the Phil Are GO! Historical Analysis and Staring at Things Supervisor, it was sealed in five ziploc poly bags (to keep it nice) and whisked off to the Research floor of GO! Tower for some historical analysis and a good hard stare. Bravo Detachment, meanwhile, wobbled back to their paddock to perform limb reattachment surgery on themselves and catch up on the Korean romance dramas they had missed while they were out on mission.

Handling the postcard with specially reinforced Hisorical Research Tongs, it was removed from all of the poly bags and clinically stared at. The entire analysis team were then issued Dramatic Gesture Spectacles, so they could then simultaneously look up form the table, whip off their glasses and mutter "My god, we're through the looking glass here, people."

Humans in 1905 reproduced via some form of bizarre aquatic baby-harvesting ceremony. There, I said it.

Assuming that postcards were an academic record of ordinary life in 1905 (and what else can we assume, if not that?) , the people living at the time had not yet invented the act of "doing it". Yes, they had to get their children from wherever they could, and apparently that involved growing babies like cranberries, floating in a pond, sometimes on lily pads, and often - my god, people - naked.

The woman on the postcard seems to be having a grand day out. The baby-harvesting act apparently was viewed as a charming and pleasant activity, the bastards. She has already chosen three new babies from the season's harvest, carrying them in her Baby Basket.









But what did the babies think?

The babies, for their part, are clearly as astonished and horrified as we are that this was how the denizens of 1905 preferred to create humans. "Why not," the babies seem to wonder, "just use the good old weenus-meets-virginia method of personmaking?" Obviously, there was no "good old" personmakery method at the time, as it hadn't been invented yet. Babies sure are stupid.

Also, if you look at the horizon in the postcard image, the Earth was rotated 1.66 degrees off its axis, as measured below.

Surely this planetary disturbance was playing hell with the tides and water levels on a global scale, making it even more baffling that humans had chosen to adopt a means of reproduction that relied so heavily on localized bodies of water. It's amazing our species made it through such a tenuous period.

Lastly, the reverse side of this postcard seems to feature the text "post card" in eleven different things - possibly languages or something.

Therefore, this postcard will be secured in the PAG! Vault of Words and Languages, as it may serve as a kind of Rosetta stone for the phrase "post card" in coming decades.

There is no way to decipher the hand-written inscription, as of this writing. Our Language Theorist surmises it may be the semi-insane ramblings of a person from Gibberalia, making observations on the annual baby harvest festival, sent to a recipient by the name of "Herrn F. Halle", living at "yer: Alln H. Dickmann, Gn Louftkiker, Lfisffini Noluz". However, even if we could effectively translate the Gibberese, the ravings of someone probably driven mad from witnessing the horrors of a baby harvest must be regarded with a jaundiced eye, at best.