Duct tape

Duct tape is the strongest known material in the Universe. It has been used variously to repair bicycles, cruise liners, Shrek the Third (although this was not successful), croutons, aneurysms, and the space-time continuum. In fact, the only thing it seems unable to fix is my marriage, amirite fellas??? (canned sitcom laughter)

History

The first roll of duct tape fell from space in the 2nd century AD, utterly decimating the fledgling city of Manchester and creating a dark, lifeless hole in the ground which still exists today, known as Ashton-under-Lyne. For many centuries, this was the only roll of duct tape in existence, now known as "roll zero", although it had no end, so nobody ran out. The Romans in the area who found it believed it was a gift from the gods, though they couldn't agree on which one, so they wound up killing each other before they could share the secret of roll zero with anyone else. Haha, how silly they were, believing in all those gods. How smart we are now. Haha.

Roll zero was rediscovered in 1979 AD by the Canadian Archaeological Community Knitting Club (or CACK Club), and subsequently smaller, finite rolls were drawn off such that the wonders of duct tape could be democratised and shared freely with the world- no, I'm only joking. Birling & Co., a British company, nicked roll zero off the CACK Club in an operation known as "tapegate", and began selling finite rolls at a price, doable via a process known as manufactured scarcity. See? Look how far we've come.

For this misuse of such a wondrous technology and immensely treacherous and dishonest behaviour, the goddess Minerva took her vengeance on Birling & Co. in 1999, sending a plague of ten thousand rats to chew at the wooden foundations of their headquarters, then sending a large bull to stampede outside in order to cause the collapse of the now-destabilised building via its vibrations. She then lobbed a load of venomous snakes onto the rubble, just to make sure. Scholars to this day are baffled as to why she didn't simply ask Neptune to muster up an earthquake in the area, or summon some sort of monster to deal with it, though evidence suggests that they were on strike.

The fact that she had enacted such retribution led to speculation that roll zero was of Minerva's doing, however, in a public statement given at the site of the smiting, she denied all involvement with roll zero, and denied that any god of any pantheon had had anything to do with it. The origin of roll zero, therefore, remains unknown.

Since Minerva enacted her vengeance, developments in quantum physics and wormhole technology have given every household direct access to roll zero, giving rise to a repair revolution.

Scientific research into duct tape

Scientists theorise that roll zero is infinite because it pulls its tape from some sort of pocket universe, which has been dubbed "the tapeverse". Expeditions into the tapeverse via roll zero were planned in 2019, however the possibility of a sticky situation arising was, of course, very high, so they went into the spiderverse instead. Yeah. Great choice if you want to avoid sticky situations.

A vast number of experiments have been run on duct tape, though none have been conclusive as to what the limits of its strength are, nor how this strength originates. Samples have been burnt, submerged in water, submerged in acids, submerged in alkalis, chewed up by a pack of wild dogs, dropped into a volcano, sent a strongly-worded letter, voted off Big Brother, pitted against Mechagodzilla, exposed to the power of the seven Chaos Emeralds, thrown into the Time Vortex, left in a swamp for 100 million years, made illegal, made legal again, launched into space, scientifically disproven, attacked by the gods, attacked by the metaphysical God, and even given a firm talking-to, but nothing could break them. That is, of course, apart from a talk about careers given at an unnamed university in April 2025, during which a sample that was present at the talk appeared to tear itself apart out of boredom. It seems the only thing breakable about duct tape is its patience.

Counterpoint

Nobody has tried to use duct tape to compose a fugue, so it is unknown whether or not it could create counterpoint.