Total Perspective Vortex

There's torture, and then there's torture.

And then there's the Total Perspective Vortex.

It wouldn't be so bad if we were a little less full of ourselves, a little more aware of our true size in such a mind-buggeringly huge universe.

But we aren't, which is what makes the thing so bad in the first place.

The Totel Perspective Vortex is said (not by the survivors, of course; those who come out the other end of the thing don't ever end up saying much of anything) to be the worst torture a sentient being could possibly undergo, ever.

The Total Perspective Vortex works like this: You're taken to a chamber. A small, metal chamber. Then it turns on. And for a moment--just a moment--you're given a glimpse of the Universe, all of it, the Universe in all--and I mean all its infinity. And somewhere, buried deep in this glimpe of infinity, is a tiny, microscopic, almost invisible red dot, and above it a tiny, microscopic, almost invisible label. "You are here", it says

One of the most well-known Total Perspective Vortexes lies on the dead world of Frogstar B, and is reserved for the proccessing of government enemies.

The inventor of the Vortex, Trin Tragula, is said to have done so to "annoy his wife". "Get some"--(so the legend has it)--"perspective.", she would say.

One day he invented the Vortex (extraopolating its image of the Universe from a piece of fairy cake), to demostrate to her exactly that perspective, and it demonstrated it so perfectly that it completely and irrevocably wrecked her mind, but proved his point, which was this:

If anything is going to function coherently in this universe, one thing it can not afford to have is a sense of proportion.