So what is a Long Thing?

If you’ve read some of my previous articles or seen any of my fediverse posts about my PCB projects, you’ve probably seen this critter hiding somewhere on a board. I use the doodle as a signature on any design that has enough free space for it.

But what is this thing exactly? I’ve had people ask about it thinking it was all manner of things, “slug with a party hat” being one of my favorite (wrong) guesses. “Unicorn slug” was another common one.

So, let’s start with the short answer before digging into the details: It’s a 7-dimensional alien monster called a Long Thing. And the appendage on top of its head is an octopus-like tentacle, not a party hat.

Where did it come from?

I did a thread about this on the bird site years ago but that’s ancient history so I thought it was time to write it down in a more permanent location.

When I was in like 6th or 7th grade, I shared a triple bunk bed (bought at a garage sale) with my two younger brothers. The ladder had been lost or broken years before we got it, so to get up to the top bunk I had to kind of shimmy up the frame.

At the time I was in the middle of a teen growth spurt and my weight hadn’t caught up to my height, so I was super skinny. As I was “oozing” my way up the railing to get into bed, one of my brothers saw me from a shallow angle on the bottom bunk which made me look even more tall and wiry. He commented that I was “so long it made him sick”.

This quote rapidly escalated into complex lore.

So what are Long Things like?

Physically, they’re 7-dimensional, soft-bodied, alien monsters - somewhat like slugs but much larger (maybe not quite as big as Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars, but easily as big as a person).

They have octopus-like tentacles on the sides of their body which they use like arms, plus a smaller tentacle on the top of the head reminiscent of a unicorn’s horn.

Long Things exude a mildly radioactive slime called “long juice” from their skin, which is used much like slug slime to lubricate surfaces the Long Thing is oozing over. It glows green in the darkness and has an appearance very much like stereotypical movie toxic waste. If a surface is contaminated by long juice, it takes a “long time” to clean up.

In addition to the usual four (three spatial + one temporal) dimensions familiar to humans, Long Things have two other dimensions whose properties are not well understood. Finally, their 7th dimension is measured in “gallons” (not to be confused with common 3-dimensional gallons) and determines how long the Long Thing is.

They have “amazing eyelids” that, despite the name, are more like a slug’s eye stalks. The stalks are very flexible and can stretch for significant distances, so that the Long Thing can see around corners or into confined spaces without needing to move its body. When raising the eyelid, it makes a squeaking noise like a rusty door hinge. (Nobody quite knows why, one would assume the long juice would lubricate it and result in no sound, but that’s how the lore goes!)

Since they have few if any solid bones and their body is predominantly soft tissue, they can squeeze through very tiny holes. Some sources claim that a Long Thing can ooze through a hole the size of an American quarter.

I asked my wife (an artist) to draw one based on descriptions given by me and my brothers, and this was the result.

What do Long Things do all day?

The lore changed a bit over time.

Originally, Long Things were more like domestic animals than sentient beings in their own right. In this version, Long Things would be stored in garden hoses when not in use (because there’s no way that a dog crate or similar cage would be sufficient for keeping such a slippery critter contained). If the Long Thing wasn’t fully hose-trained and tried to escape, a sumo wrestler would be called to force them back into the hose. Long Things were available for rent from garden centers or home improvement stores, just like how in some parts of the world you can rent a hungry goat to eat unwanted vegetation.

Any time we visited one of my aunts who lived across the street from a garden center, my brothers would caution me to be on the lookout for sumo wrestlers trying to hunt down the escaped Long Thing.

In later versions, Long Things have human-level intelligence and are often employed as mechanics. They can send their eyelids through tiny holes into complex machines without needing to fully dismantle them or use a borescope camera. Once a stuck part in the guts of the equpment has been identified, the Long Thing can lubricate it with long juice and hopefully bring the machine back into working order much faster than a human mechanic (who would need to take the whole thing apart and put it back together to perform the same repair).

For similar reasons, many Long Things work as plumbers. They can ooze slowly down a pipe until a clog is reached, clear it using a combination of long juice and poking it with their tentacles, then ooze their way out. No snake, no tools.

What if you don’t want Long Things leaving slime trails around?

Easy, just buy a can of Anti-Long Juice, better known by the trade name Al’s Juice.

Many years ago, an Arabian prince named Sheikh Al-Zaiyah (whose name came from some our best interpretation of some gibberish one of my brothers mumbled in his sleep as we tried to wake him up) was sitting in a tent in the desert when a Long Thing oozed in.

He started throwing anything within reach at the Long Thing trying to chase it away but nothing worked. As his tent got more and more covered in long juice he finally became so frustrated he tossed his drink (a mixture of date juice and some secret flavors) at the Long Thing, immediately causing it to ooze away in terror.

Al-Zaiyah quickly recognized the commercial potential of his discovery and began to bottle the beverage as a Long Thing repellent. It was originally known as Al-Zaiyah’s Juice, but as it became more popular with western customers it was rebranded to Al’s Juice.

Contrary to popular belief, neither long juice nor Al’s Juice contain antimatter, nor is there any risk of a violent annihilation reaction if the two come into contact.

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