In this satirical farce set in the distant future, the world is divided into innumerable floors, connected by elevators that never work. No one knows much about the mysterious happenings above the thirteenth floor. Then two scientists from the institute of Magin and Wizardry are sent to the 76th floor, The Colony of Unexplained Phenomena (a storehouse of anomalies of nature and society); here the Troika, a ruling triumvirate of four men, has reportedly seized power. The Troika meets to "rationalize" unexplained phenomena—the mad invention of Old Man Edelweiss, the visitor from Outer Space with 77 parents of 7 distinct sexes, and Gabby the Talking Bedbug, who proposes a new era of peaceful coexistence between man and bug. It's a phantasmagoric trip into adminstrative irrationality, where the heroes' theory—that any being with at least an iota of reason can be made into a decent creature—meets the ultimate and wacky test.

Published in English in an omnibus volume with Roadside Picnic