Tralfamadorians
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The Tralfamadorians are a fictional alien race in the book Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut. According to the novel's protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, the Tralfamadorians look like upright toilet plungers. Additionally, the Tralfamadorians have the ability to see in four dimensions, a concept unexplainable to humans. Able to see along the timeline of the universe, they know the exact time and place of its annhilation. Because they know that when a person dies, he is still alive in another time and place, they reply "So it goes" to news of a death.
The Tralfamadorians are a race of machines, originally developed by an intelligent lifeform who built these robots to give meaning to their own lives. Unable to achieve this task, this precursor race used the Tralfamadorians to extinguish themselves. Their brief history is outlined in Kurt Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan."