THE GARDEN WALL
Featuring excerpts from Professor Hughes’ acclaimed series of public science lectures, “Physics, Cosmology and Why There Is No Cat.”
by Lichfield Dean
Copyright 2011 Lichfield Dean
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IGNITION
‘Would you say power precludes the pursuit of pleasure?’ said the elegant woman relaxing in the luxurious armchair.
Ken looked up from his flickering red-and-blue computer display. ‘I think I’d struggle to,’ he said.
‘It’s just this ultimate power business. I’m not convinced it’s everything I had hoped for. I feel that true happiness has somehow evaded me.’
Ken thought about this for a moment. ‘On the other hand,’ he said eventually, ‘it has given us lots of money. And fame. And we do get to live forever.’
‘Well, yes, they’re all good things, I’ll grant you that. But is that all there truly is? Power and money and immortality?’
‘I would have thought so,’ said Ken. ‘Why do you ask anyway?’
‘Oh, just contemplating things.’ She sighed wistfully. ‘The problem is, I don’t have anything to do. I’m bored. Ruler of all the Galaxy they call me. And I’m bored. Comical isn’t it?’
Ken frowned, then returned to his computer.
Stefan sat in the corner of the room in silence. He contemplated the situation for a moment, then stood, crossed to his desk and motioned at his holographic display. He watched the reaction of his colleagues carefully as the intelligence report scrolled across.
Penelope bolted to her feet, stunned. ‘Quick, get someone in there! Get them in now! He must not be allowed to continue!’
And so ended Penelope’s boredom.
STAGE 1
Professor Hughes stood on top of the School of Metallurgy and Materials Science and gazed up at the starry heavens. It was a perfect night. The moon was full, the winds were still and the night sky was clear.
A long time he’d been waiting for this night.
A very, very long time indeed.
His disciples gathered around him. Fellow Whirlpool pulled his cowl as far over his head as it would go and let the sleeves of his robes fall down over his hands to keep the cold out. He stood absolutely still, absolutely silent. A large silver pentagram sprawled in front of him, the shastic scriptures around its edge glinting in the moonlight. His fellow Fellows, with their identical black robes, were all but invisible in the gloom of the night.
They watched the Professor step respectfully into the centre of the pentagram and wait. He let the moment wash over him; he felt the calm of the surroundings; he felt the tension amongst his followers; he felt the restlessness in the other dimensions. Finally, when the moment was over, he raised his head and took two deep breaths.
Prepared, he was.
He held his hands aloft and uttered an ancient homily to the powers of darkness.
As he spoke, a gentle wind whipped up, scattering particles of dust and small bits of paper across the roof of the building. The all black minions of the Professor looked around, apprehensive. A primal chill penetrated their robes.
‘It’s cold,’ whispered Fellow Whirlpool.
Fellow Milky Way stared at him. ‘Well it is winter,’ he pointed out. ‘And you’re wearing what’s basically a dress.’
‘I know, but it’s… extra cold. If you get me.’
‘Whirly, I will never get you.’
Fellow M42 glared at them. ‘Shush, you two! He demanded silence!’
The Fellows of the House of the Galaxies in Perpetui resumed their respectful silence as their leader stood silhouetted against the vastness of the Universe. The beautiful swirling structures of space enveloped the Professor’s form like the habit of a celestial priest. He continued his speech; strange ancient syllables echoing around the rooftop arena; words of provenance and heritage and power. And with these words the weather began to change - hazy clouds drawing a faint veil across the glory of the starry night.
Fellow Whirlpool gulped. He suddenly wasn’t sure he wanted to be part of this any more. He saw out of the corner of his eye Fellow Andromeda begin to back away from the pentagram. He started to do likewise, and as he did so he glanced up towards the sky…
…and saw, second by second, the bright stars dimming ever further, their light struggling to penetrate the rapidly intensifying weather above. Professor Hughes continued praying, oblivious to the turbulence in the sky, staring vacantly ahead with absolute concentration. He took no notice of the storm relentlessly accumulating far over him; ignored the probing winds that had reared their heads; failed to spot the splashes of rain that began to patter rhythmically on the roof below.
‘This can’t be good,’ said Fellow Andromeda to himself.
The clouds grew thicker and darker still with each passing moment. The spitting rain became a downpour; the worshippers drenched; the roof flooded. A gale whipped up out of nowhere. Spits of lightning skirted the top of the building generating sparks that flashed through the oppressive air like miniature firecrackers.
The Fellows edged further away from the pentagram as the Professor ended his speech. He slowly swivelled round and glared at them, a devilish smile on his face, a faint aura of triumph about his body, a billowing cloak sweeping out behind.
‘It begins!’ he announced.
With this, the lightning exploded in intensity, the bolts searing downwards like scythes of blue fire ripping through the black velour of the night. They struck the roof of the building with violence; small explosions besieged the Fellows, who ran around in panic, but in reality had nowhere to run. One or two contemplated leaping over the edge, but weren’t that brave, so they backed as far away from the Professor as they physically could.
‘What’s happening?’ shouted Fellow M42. ‘What is this?’ But he could barely be heard above the howling of the storm.
Professor Hughes suddenly turned his attention away from them and raised his arms up high. The clouds to which he beckoned had begun to accrete into a vast tumultuous maelstrom, spinning round and round in a theatrical display of concentric supernatural fury.
And then, far, far above, the Professor witnessed a number of small lightning forks converge. He saw with glinting eyes the product of this merger. And he watched it hurtle towards them - terrawatts of absolute power with nowhere to go but down.
The Fellows watched in terror as Professor Hughes lowered his arms in submission. More and more electric-blue tributaries combined with the leviathan trunk of lightning, until the entire unimaginable power of the storm focused itself with pin-point accuracy on the exact centre of the building and vaporised the whole lot immediately and with rather a loud bang.
STAGE 2
Lecture excerpt: Introduction
“Thank you, thank you, and welcome to the first of this series of science lectures. As you know, I am embarking upon an ambitious tour of the country, hoping to educate and entertain all and sundry with some serious (and some not-so-serious) tales of the latest in scientific thinking. Obviously, not everybody is a scientist, so I hope to keep things as simple and as interesting as I possibly can, and yes, before you question that, science can be both simple and interesting. I can see some of you are skeptical - all I can say to you is please give me the benefit of the doubt before judging. You may be surprised.
“So what will I be discussing? A good question I ask myself. At first I struggled to define clearly the content of these lectures. I considered discussing over the course of them the nature of life, and of death, and of time. Why is it that we are alive now? Why weren’t we alive back in the past? Or in the future? Is being dead the same thing as not yet being born? The nature of time is a great mystery, and its relationship with the span of our lifetimes and our consciousness is a profound mystery. However, ultimately, I decided that such matters are really the reserve of philosophy, and I prefer to deal with the real, the observable, so I shall stick to discussing my chosen professional field, that of physics and the natural sciences.
“And so, having formulated these talks, I present them to you under the umbrella title of Physics, Cosmology and Why There Is No Cat. If you are curious about the cat, you can either come along to my final lecture or you can search for it on the internet.”
<=> <=> <=>
The morning after the great metallurgy department calamity, the students of the University of Birmingham awoke to a blissfully clear, warm blue sky. Well, those who needed to wake up in the morning anyway, which was really not a very large percentage. And of those that needed to wake up, only a small percentage of those actually managed to. Such is the way of student life.
Of this small percentage of a small percentage who had convinced themselves it was worth emerging from their slumber, two were heading from the student accomodation in the Vale to the main uni campus. One wore a mismatching outfit of bright happy colours, the other wore black matched carefully with black.
‘Did you get caught in that storm last night?’ asked the brightly dressed one.
‘Nope,’ replied the monochromatic one. ‘I was out at Exocide all night.’
‘Ah, your rock club. Was it good?’
‘It was alright. They had some glam band on, all spandex and poodle hair. Not really my cup of tea.’
‘Fair enough. Maybe I should come along with you some time?’
‘Yeah, because they play a lot of Spandau Ballet there actually.’
‘No need for sarcasm Jo. I was just saying perhaps I might enjoy it. You never know.’
Jo smiled. ‘Eradani, you will not enjoy it. I can tell you that now. You really really won’t enjoy it.’
‘But I don’t enjoy anything I’m supposed to. I hate those techno-dancey-rave places that everyone else insists on going to. There’s got to be something I like to do.’
Jo didn’t respond. They kept walking. They had both been students at the University of Birmingham for some seven months now. They were roommates but studied different subjects - Eradani had randomly chosen to read astrophysics because it sounded like an impressive subject and had lots of exotic-sounding courses like Cosmology, the Big Bang, Black Holes & Singularities, Quantum Physics and so on. Jo, for inexplicable reasons, was studying Japanese.
Over the course of the previous semester-and-a-bit they had become firm buddies. They didn’t do everything together - Jo had a habit of disappearing off at all hours of the day and night to various rock clubs and live gigs without any warning while Eradani tended to hover around the library and disappear into peculiar novels written by commercially unsuccessful authors.
They differed greatly, yet they complemented each other. And that made for a great friendship.
The walk from the halls of residence to the main campus took about twenty minutes. Rather than follow Edgbaston Park Road road down the side of the Vale and enter the university by its side entrance, the students would cut sideways along a path that ran behind the northernmost buildings of the campus and then turn by the side of the School of Metallurgy and Materials Science towards Chancellor’s Court, the focal point and historical hub of the university.
This particular morning, however, their progress was unexpectedly hampered.
‘What’s going on here then?’ said Eradani. The path was cordoned off ahead of them and a large group of people were milling around.
‘Dunno,’ said Jo. ‘Looks exciting though.’ She powered ahead leaving Eradani playing catchup.
As she neared the cordon, Eradani reached the point where she should have been able to see the metallurgy department. Only it wasn’t there. Where there had once been a state-of-the-art materials facility there was now a large, smoking crater filled with bits of charred girder, brick and concrete. The sight was surreal and Eradani could barely believe what she was seeing. She grabbed Jo’s shoulder.
‘My God - do you think anybody was hurt?’
‘Nah,’ said Jo. ‘This must have happened overnight. Nobody would have been around.’
Eradani hoped she was right. Looking at the scene around her she couldn’t imagine anybody in or near the building surviving. Yet the damage, although severe, was remarkably confined - surrounding buildings and trees were barely touched. It didn’t seem to make any sense. How could an entire building have been so precisely and thoroughly destroyed? Was it an explosion? A meteorite hit? Was it an accident or was it deliberate?
As if to answer none of these questions, an astrophysics lecturer of Eradani’s chose that moment to arrive on the scene and interfere.
‘My God - do you think anybody was hurt?’
Eradani sighed. ‘Hello, Dr. Richter. No, we don’t think anybody was hurt.’
‘Well, let’s hope not.’ He brushed his open, full-length coat backwards and put his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘Do we think it was a meteorite strike?’ he asked, attempting to appear knowledgeable in such matters. ‘Maybe twenty, thirty metres across? I reckon a rock about that size could have done this. Good job it didn’t hit the physics department.’
‘Nobody seems to know what happened,’ said Eradani. ‘We only just got here ourselves.’
‘We?’
‘Me and Jo... oh, well, she was here a second ago.’ Eradani looked around, but Jo had vanished. ‘Honestly, she needs to be on a leash that one.’
‘Maybe she went to lectures?’
Eradani snorted. ‘Not likely. She’ll be up to no good, she always is. I’d better mount a rescue mission - she’s bound to have gotten herself into some sort of predicament.’
‘Well, I’m not sure you should...’
Ignoring her lecturer, Eradani set off towards the crater, pretty sure that Jo would be found nosing around where she shouldn’t be. She ‘excuse-me’d her way through the bemused masses and arrived at the cordon. The full scale of the devastation knocked her senseless for a moment, but she kept her head and scanned the vicinity. As expected, Jo was clambering down the sides of the crater. Eradani grimaced, then ducked under the cordon and set off in pursuit of her roommate.
The going wasn’t easy. The ground was crumbly and ashen and bits of twisted metal and masonry were determinedly trying to turn her ankle. She slipped and skidded the last few feet to the bottom of the crater, coughing and spluttering with the dust. She rubbed her eyes and surveyed the scene - there was little that was recognisable amongst the debris. Whatever had happened, it had happened thoroughly. This was no half-hearted disaster, this was the real thing.
‘Eradani, over here!’
She saw Jo waving animatedly beyond a large pile of fused brickwork and clambered over to her. She tried to dust herself down but only smudged more blackness into her dress and her hands.
‘Help me clear this,’ said Jo, her choice of black clothing suddenly seeming entirely prudent. ‘There’s something under here.’
‘Shouldn’t we head back? We might get into trouble.’
Jo ignored her and continued removing rubble from whatever she was hoping to unearth. Eradani looked around, sighed, then joined in with the excavation.
‘There’s definitely something here. Part of the roof I think. Looks like there’s some sort of marking or diagram on it.’
They continued removing rubble until, exhausted and grubby, they had finally uncovered their discovery. Eradani stepped back to get a wider view. What she saw was rather disturbing.
‘It’s a... it’s a pentagram,’ she said. ‘Why is there a pentagram here?’
‘That’s not the worst of it,’ said Jo, ‘look at that.’ She pointed to the centre of the pentagram. Burnt into the design was the unmistakable outline of a human being.
‘Oh no,’ said Eradani. ‘You don’t think...’
Jo remained silent. She simply shook her head.
At that moment, Dr. Richter chose to turn up again, this time announcing himself by tripping over some debris and landing in a heap in the centre of the pentagram.
‘Ouch. Hurt my elbow.’
Eradani helped him up. He dusted himself down, with much the same level of success as his student, then he took a deep breath and grabbed her firmly by the shoulders.
‘Eradani,’ he said. ‘I just spoke to a couple of eyewitnesses. They said it was a lightning strike. Quite how it destroyed the entire building I have no idea, but they were pretty adamant.’
Eradani nodded. Seemed unlikely, but there had been a big storm the previous night, so at least it fitted the available facts.
‘And there’s something else,’ he added gravely. ‘Professor Hughes, he is your tutor, correct? It appears he was seen entering the building yesterday evening. A few hours before this... catastrophe. It seems there has been no sign of him since.’
Eradani just about suppressed a squeal of horror. With her hand over her mouth she sank to the ground.
‘Look, it may be that he left the building before the event and just hasn’t come into work yet. There’s no evidence that he was caught up in this at all, so don’t lose hope just yet.’
Eradani sobbed and pointed at the pentagram. Dr. Richter frowned, then turned to look. He saw the scorched professor-shaped shadow and he froze.
Jo jumped up, moved across to Eradani and gave her a hug. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But it’ll be alright. I promise. It’ll be alright.’
STAGE 3
Exactly two months and seventeen and a half days later, Eradani was sitting at the desk in her bedroom staring at a sheet of printed paper. Maths homework. Arguably the lowest point of any physics degree. And to make matters worse, it was the worst type of maths homework. Sorting out differential equations was something you were either in the mood for or you weren’t, and if you weren’t, then you didn’t stand a chance.
Eradani was definitely not in a differential equation mood, and she could feel her temper beginning to flare up inside her.
She finally gave in to her frustration, slammed her folder shut and jumped onto her bed in defeat. It was during moments such as these that she most wished she’d never chosen to study physics. She was beginning to suspect that she wasn’t really cut out for it, even though she’d done quite well in her exams so far. The trouble was that she was perfectly capable of sticking numbers into equations and getting answers out at the other end. What she didn’t have, and she was starting to find she really could do with, was an instinctive feel for the material. Real physicists, proper physicists who build spacecraft and explode atomic bombs, now they have a natural feel for the subject. They only have to look once at a problem to see how to go about solving it. Eradani looked at a problem, came up with eighteen possible different solutions that all seemed perfectly reasonable to her, picked completely the wrong one and then executed the face/palm gesture when she later found out that the first solution she devised was actually the right one.
And that, as far as she could see, was her problem.
She would most likely never make it as a physicist.
She would pass her exams, of course. That wasn’t an issue, but what she would do afterwards was. It was something that worried her rather a lot.
Finally deciding that moping about wasn’t going to get her anywhere, she sat upright and flicked on the television. She surfed from channel to channel, but there was nothing on. Wasn’t that just typical? She plipped it off and put the remote control down, while picking up a book to read.
She got halfway through the first paragraph, realised that she hadn’t taken in any of what she’d read, skipped back up to the top of the page to re-read it, got half of it that time, so then read through it a third time, finally realised she wasn’t going to be able to put herself fully into it, slammed it down on her bedside cabinet and went to bed.
It was days like these that really got her down.
<=> <=> <=>
The next day, however, started out as the kind of day that really cheered her up.
Eradani sat with a group of friends on the grassy open space between the library building and Chancellor’s Court. It was a warm April day and lazing around outside was the popular thing to do. Guys were lying in their shorts and girls were wearing summery skirts. There were picnics and salads and refreshing drinks, and fresh fruit salads a-plenty.
Eradani had been an astrophysics student for nearly a year now. She’d been doing quite well. Reasonably good marks so far, made a lot of good friends, and pretty much was enjoying the course. Exams were looming however; she’d been revising fairly diligently whenever she had a few minutes but was a little concerned that she was relying too much on her good memory to get her through. Still, the weather had taken a huge turn for the better and she was certainly not going to let exam fever ruin a nice relaxing laze like this. Sunny days were rare at the university, and she was happy to let the wonderfully light and carefree mood make all the stresses of the world melt away and be replaced instead with ice-cream and lemonade.
Propping herself up with her palms, Eradani sat and giggled merrily and chatted excitedly with her pals. She wore a jolly white dress adorned with random red splashes that was cool and comfortable, although she worried it made her look very slightly like a raspberry ripple. She brushed her hair behind her ear and delved further into the conversation.
‘So what you’re saying is that they ripped you off,’ her friend Kate was saying.
‘No,’ said Theodora indignantly. ‘Not ripped me off. They just... got the orders mixed up.’
Eradani sipped at her lemonade. ‘Seems to me,’ she said, ‘that you need to speak to trading standards. I mean the shop has an obligation to you as a consumer.’
‘Yes, I know that. But they refuse to accept that there was a mixup because the other party says everything was fine.’
‘Well they would,’ said Kate. ‘They got your expensive party shoes, you got a pair of second hand safety boots.’
Eradani chuckled slightly. She wasn’t one for enjoying the misfortune of others, but Theodora managed to attract more than her fair share; and this particular fiasco was, she had to admit, quite amusing.
‘Look,’ said Theodora with exasperation oozing out of her ears, ‘it’s not my fault that there’s now a Birmingham City University as well as a University of Birmingham, and I can’t help the fact that there’s a Thea Dorason studying there either. I just can’t convince the store that they screwed up.’
‘Theodora Ssan, University of Birmingham and Thea Dorason, Birmingham City University,’ muttered Eradani. ‘I can understand the confusion.’
Theodora took a bite of her ice cream. ‘It gets worse. Apparently a Theodore Rasson ordered a pair of wellington boots at the same time. And he is at the University of Central Birmingham, and he’s convinced that Thea Dorason has his wellies. Which isn’t true, because I know for a fact that Thee Addorason at the City University of North Birmingham has got them. This university rebranding fad has really got to stop.’
Eradani agreed thoroughly, smiled at the thought that this was the worst thing they had to worry about, rolled over onto her front and kicked her feet contentedly in the air a couple of times. The grass felt lush and warm and soft. She sighed at the dreamlike perfection of the day, squinted up at a flock of seagulls crossing the face of the toasty-red sun and relaxed. Somebody somewhere was playing ‘Here Comes The Sun’ by the Beatles through a tinny little mobile phone speaker, but it fitted the mood perfectly so she didn’t mind. Closing her eyes she could almost imagine she was lying on a golden sand dune near a beautiful cove, listening to the gentle, rhythmic swell of the sea.
Then absolutely everything changed:
- a deep drop in temperature
- a gust of icy wind
- a violent, uncontrollable shiver
- a sudden stillness and silence
‘What the... what was that?’ she spluttered.
The breeze had been unnaturally cold and bitter, and the reaction of Kate and Theodora confirmed that she hadn’t in any way imagined it. She sat upright, shivered and paused for a moment. An eerie calm had imposed itself upon the scene; the warm sunshine of just seconds before was deeply, achingly absent. Eradani delved into her bag for a cardigan and eased it over her shoulders. It didn’t warm her up much. She began to wish she'd brought a proper coat.
She turned to Kate and Theodora and asked if they were alright. They barely noticed her - they were too wrapped up in their own discomfiting thoughts.
All around them the gentle chatter and happy laughter had given way to a choking, oppressive silence.
Eradani sat and contemplated. What had happened? What had changed? It was chillier certainly, and the air was stony still, but there was something else. Something not tangible. Something didn’t feel quite right. She looked at her friends and could tell they were thinking much the same thing.
‘Guys, is everything...’ she started, but was cut short by an intense blinding blue flash and bang. An irresistable force lifted her off the ground and threw her a good two or three metres backwards. She found herself lying on her back on the now uncomfortably chilled grass, stunned momentarily into paralysis. Her whole body jittered and jiggled slightly, and her hair tingled and fizzed with residual charge. She had been temporarily blinded by the magnitude of the blast, and as her vision returned she could see that everybody else around had also been tossed forcefully to the floor.
The effects slowly wore off. Gingerly she sat upright and checked everything was okay. She didn’t seem to be injured at all, so she ventured to try and stand. As those around her also began slowly to drag themselves to their feet Eradani noticed a hubbub erupt underneath the giant redbrick clock tower that lay in the central square. Apparently everybody else noticed it too and began to wander in that general direction. Unable to think of anything better to do, and feeling instinctively that she should join in, she went with the flow. Kate and Theodora followed but were soon separated in the throng.
Eradani passed under the arches of the law building and emerged in Chancellor’s Court. The clock tower, officially called the Joseph Chamberlain Clock Tower but more generally referred to as Old Joe, dominated the crescent-shaped open space. It was some one hundred metres tall, making it the tallest free-standing clock tower in the world. Built from the same red brick as the main university buildings, and styled after the Torre del Mangia in Siena, it was a spectacular sight at the worst of times, but now a sizeable crowd had accumulated around it, staring blankly, giving the impression that it was a colossus of dark intelligence exerting some kind of hypnotic force over its subjects. She tried to push her way further into the melee but met with little luck.
‘Eradani!’ She turned. It was Frank, a fellow astrophysics student. He addressed her, but he was transfixed by the clock tower. ‘Did you see that?’
‘Hi Frank. Yes, I saw. And felt. It was... odd.’
‘Odd? It was more than odd, Eradani. It was incredible. You probably won’t have seen this, but it was... it was like... I can’t explain it easily, but imagine everything was hit by lightning simultaneously, except for the clock tower.’
‘Except the clock tower?’
‘Yes. I guess I was just looking in the right direction when we all got zapped. I saw a, well, this is going to sound crazy, but I saw what I can only describe as a streak of non-lightning striking the tower. It was black, Eradani, like a void. A streak of black nothingness. Terrifying. I just can’t believe it actually happened.’
Eradani looked up at Old Joe. The clock seemed to be running still. There was no obvious sign of damage. And although clearly something mighty strange had happened, all this grandiose talk of voids and nothingness and non-lightning was a bit hard to swallow. She did, however, find it very difficult to peel her eyes from the tower.
‘But that’s nothing,’ continued Frank. ‘You should see what’s turned up under the clock tower.’
‘Turned up?’
‘Yes, just... appeared. Materialised.’
Eradani blinked several times as she tried to process this information. Something had materialised under the clock tower? During the second unnaturally violent electrical storm to hit the area in three months? That couldn’t be a coincidence surely. It just couldn’t.
She had to find out. She had to get through the crowd. Surging forwards, she elbowed and barged her way through, relying on her stubbornness and her determination to get to where she wanted. ‘Move, please!’ she shouted. ‘Out of the way! It’s important!’ There must have been hundreds of people there by now, and none of them were especially keen to let her through. It was a forest of elbows, knees and satchels. Eventually, though, she emerged at the head of the crowd and saw the impossible.
Standing under the clock tower, the crowd keeping a safe distance away just in case, was a confused and weary-looking Professor Hughes, still in his dark ceremonial robes. He was just waiting there, swaying slightly, his gaze sometimes falling on a student without any flicker of recognition. He didn’t appear to have any physical injuries and there was nothing to suggest that he’d ever been caught up in the explosive destruction of an entire building.
For some time the crowd gaped at the Professor. He showed little sign of comprehension and continued to look confused and nervous, turning slowly round and round. Eventually his befuddled eyes settled upon Eradani. It was as if somebody had suddenly switched him on.
‘Ah, Eradani,’ he announced brightly, his expression softening and a jumbo smile spreading across his face. ‘Good. Glad you’re here. Would you mind assisting me? I seem to have become a bit... disoriented.’
In an instant, the hypnotic spell of Old Joe broke. The crowd began to come to their senses and tear their attention away from the tower. The tense, oppressive atmosphere returned to normal, albeit a highly confused version of normal, and people began to slowly drift away.
Eradani grinned a big happy grin and ran forwards to help her tutor towards his room in the School of Physics and Astronomy.
<=> <=> <=>
‘So,’ said the head of the school, closing the serious-looking file that lay on his desk, ‘this is a fairly unique problem you’ve created for me.’
Professor Hughes blinked slowly in acknowledgement. He had been summoned, not unexpectedly, to explain himself to the management. He had half expected to see higher authorities present, but the head of school had evidently decided to handle it himself.
‘You destroy an entire building, and a very modern and expensive one at that, you vanish for nigh on three months, there has been no sign of your band of followers, and you make your return amidst the single largest mass electrocution in recorded history. This, on the face of it, seems fairly reasonable grounds for dismissal.’
‘Indeed,’ said Professor Hughes. ‘But I ask for leniency.’
‘Leniency? Professor, I... I hardly know where to begin! You have broken every rule in the book, and several more that we’ve had to invent as a result of all this! You... this... all of it, it’s utter mayhem! And you want me to be lenient?’
‘I appeal to your better nature.’
‘Well, I don’t have one. I’m afraid there is no option other than to terminate your right to teach.’
Professor Hughes put his hands together. ‘Perhaps there is an opportunity here. It may be possible to manipulate this situation to our mutual advantage.’
The head of school raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. ‘I don’t see how.’
‘You no longer believe that I am fit to teach. I myself would thoroughly agree with you. It would irretrievably tarnish the university’s otherwise glittering public image if I were to resume my tutoring. On the other hand I do happen to be your most celebrated and recognised scientist. And I believe that in the long run I am of great value to you and your department.’
The head of school sighed. ‘Yes, but there are responsibilities to bear in a post such as yours, and no matter how highly I value your work, we have to face the facts.’
‘Indubitably. However if I were to suggest my retirement from teaching and lecturing, but not from theoretical research, surely that would solve your problem? I would have no direct contact with students and no opportunity to lure them into any “evil” or dangerous schemes, yet my name and my work would still be affiliated with your school.’
The head of school fiddled with a pencil for a few seconds as he contemplated. ‘Well, your proposal seems on the face of it to have certain... advantages. But I would need your guarantee that you will not interfere with the education of the students.’
‘But of course. You may draw up a new contract if you so wish stating these terms clearly.’
‘And you are certain this is what you want?’
‘Yes. I have various new ideas that require time, dedication and solitude to fully investigate. This arrangement would suit my needs perfectly.’
‘With all due respect, Professor, nobody needs to work alone. It isn’t good for the community.’
‘These are my terms. Take them or leave them.’
The head of school contemplated some more. Hughes could see he was going to give in. ‘Alright, I accept your proposal. However, I have two stipulations: one, we need you back on the departmental Scrabble team, we’ve been doing terribly since you left; and two, you absolutely must retain some form of professional contact with the school. You cannot disappear off into some desolate cave somewhere working completely incommunicado. We need to be able to keep an eye on your progress, if only to ensure you are keeping to your side of the contract.’
‘Very well,’ agreed Professor Hughes. ‘Then I shall continue my research in an office of your designation and I shall remain in contact with the school through an emissary of my choosing. I nominate the first year student known as Eradani for this role.’
‘A student? Eradani?’
‘Yes. A tutee of mine. You might know her; longish, wavy chestnut hair, average height, doesn’t seem to care much for fashion. Very level-headed and a most promising student. She is the only person I trust enough to take on this responsibility.’
The head of school shook his head. Make a student the sole point of contact with the Professor? Wasn’t the aim of this meeting to try to prevent such interactions? Still, the man had a point. The school could little afford to lose someone of his international stature. He guaranteed the school both high profile exposure and valuable funding. If this was the only way to keep him here... well, it did have the benefit of removing him from teaching. Which was the primary goal. And Eradani was only one student after all - there couldn’t be much harm in that, surely?
STAGE 4
About 6 light years away, not so very far at all in galactic terms, there was (and still is) a star.
This star was not in any way special. It wasn’t particularly bright, or particularly large. It wasn’t in a binary system with a black hole, it didn’t have seven companions and it wasn’t about to explode.
But it did have a planet.
Not that that is in any way unusual either. Planets are all over the place. There are so many planets that astronomers occasionally have to call them something else to avoid having too many. Most stars have planets. But most stars don’t have planets that are quite as pleasant as this one.
The planet, known as Pressian, was much like the Earth, consisting of several rocky landmasses that poked above a surface mostly covered in water. These landmasses sported a diverse array of favourable climatic conditions and the majority of them were thought of as nice places to live: they were warm, fertile and generally free of disease and pestilence. Yes, there were a handful of deserts and a few inhospitable climes dotted here and there, but you would have to look pretty hard to find them. Overall it really was quite the idyllic world with its general niceness and its fantastic scenery and its glorious sunsets. It even boasted a small handful of delicately pastel-shaded moons to add decoration to its already stunning night sky.
Pressian didn’t just mirror the Earth geologically however - it also sported a biosphere every bit as rich and remarkable as our own. Its indigenous lifeforms came in a variety of styles and shapes, most of which would seem comfortably familiar to us. It had trees and flowers. It had fungi and animals. It had reptiles and mammals and birds. It had crustaceans and cetaceans and fish.
It also had, to top it all off, people.
And the people that populated the planet looked identical in every way to the people of the Earth - two arms, two legs, a head, no antennae, pinkish to brown skin; they were absolutely indistinguishable. Culturally they were strikingly similar as well, although even their most advanced civilisations were somewhat primitive compared to our own. They were at a stage in their development roughly comparable with that of our own world at the time of the ancient civilisations of Greece and Persia. Not as ancient as the Druids though; they had passed through that stage quite quickly once it had turned out it was all a bit silly.
So the leading nations on Pressian were beginning to form crude understandings of maths and science, they had begun to implement basic legal structures and they were slowly building the kind of frameworks that underpin the majority of mature civilisations. As a result there were many educated men within their masses. There were doctors, alchemists, astronomers; there were mathematicians, historians, philosophers; there were priests and architects and chemists and biologists and chiropractors and osteopaths and builders. A trade for every man and a job for every woman. And if there wasn’t a suitable line of work for you, well, you could just invent one.
Now, this might all sound very impressive and very civilised, but there was a problem. The most learned of men, the ones who were attempting to define and build the foundations of their youthful society, they were working almost entirely from first principles, making up the rules as they went. They had very little groundwork upon which to build because the good work of generations of predecessors was, for one reason or another, conspicuously absent. People had existed on the planet for at least as long as on Earth, yet they consistently struggled to achieve and maintain any significant advances either socially or technologically. They weren’t stupid, far from it - they just couldn’t seem to make their discoveries ‘stick’. To their credit they never gave up - they were continually striving to address this problem and make some form of progress, they just didn’t seem to be getting very far very quickly. Information kept disappearing, libraries kept getting destroyed, people kept vanishing mysteriously just as they were about to announce a major breakthrough... to a conspiracy theorist it could seem like somebody was deliberately interfering with the whole planet’s development.
But aside from this frustrating annoyance, the people of Pressian were pretty happy with their lot. After all, they had much to be thankful for: the climate was nice, the landscapes were stunning, food was plentiful, and life was generally enjoyable. It was, for the most part, happy times all round.
Well, almost. As with most things, there was an exception to the rule. A small volcanic island (now dormant) known as the Isle of Thercoup was a thoroughly miserable little island with a deeply grim climate and an unhappy populace. It was pretty isolated from the major landmasses that housed the great civilisations of Pressian and as such it was generally ignored by the rest of the world, although it did have a small scattering of similarly-sized neighbours with which it had the occasional run-in. It was just about large enough to count as a fully recognised country but only large enough to support one properly-sized town, called Pyright, which was famous for not very much and had an economy that didn’t really work.
The population of Pyright was fairly mixed, with individuals representing trades and races of all descriptions - which was pretty typical for a large Pressian township. Where it differed, however, it did so with the utmost eccentricity, for Pyright was blessed with a remarkably high proportion of mad inventors. The Thercoup government often bragged about this curious demographic trait, repeatedly boasting that it had arisen because of their superior education programme and commitment to advances in technology. The other nations thought this was crazy, and secretly joked that it had something to do with the water supply - which wasn’t actually as implausible as it sounds because the water situation on the island was indeed unusual, and well worth documenting here.
It rained almost continually year in, year out on Thercoup. It was a standing joke that the people of the island were born with built-in raincoats. But it wasn’t really as bad as all that - it was much much worse, for the rain wasn’t made of water. A single freak of nature gave the island its reputation for inhospitality: on Thercoup, it rained methylated spirit. Most places would find this a rather major disadvantage, but the islanders had long come to terms with it. They found it had a number of very useful benefits. For instance, it meant the island was never short of fuel, and that they did not need to cut down their trees for firewood (it should be noted, however, that because of the nature of the rainfall, very few trees actually grew on the island anyway). The meths was also used in the brewing of a local drink. It had to be treated first, of course, because in its pure form it is quite a dangerous poison, but once made safe it was the basis of one of the finest ales on the whole planet.
As you might expect, there was the odd accident from time to time. If anybody happened to light a fire outside, they ran the risk of setting their entire town alight, and although as much had been done to prevent this as possible (new laws, severe penalties, buildings made of stone etc.) it still posed a bit of a risk. There was probably a major fire twice a year on average; the locals were used to it though, and were skilled at keeping damage and injury to a minimum.
The rainstorms on Thercoup could be extremely severe. Meths was not as kind on skin and clothes as water, so the traditional material from which Thercoupian coats were made was one that could withstand such punishing precipitation. Unfortunately, with their limited technology, the only material that cut the mustard had to be spun from a form of tobacco plant. This led inevitably to a recreational activity unique to Thercoup: the smoking of raincoats. And when combined with the rainfall this made a pretty volatile combination. In fact, entire cities had been known to vanish in vast fireballs because someone couldn’t resist a quick puff on their coat during a storm.
The other drawback of Thercoup rain was the great lack of fresh, natural water. The inhabitants of the island had no choice other than to import the stuff from abroad. By a remarkable stroke of fortune, Backarnabooth, a nearby island much the same size as Thercoup, just happened to have plenty of fresh water. It also had a severe lack of mad inventors.
And so, as legend has it, the first Emperor of Thercoup instigated a trading deal with the Crown Duke of Backarnabooth. From that day forth, fresh spring water from the Backarnaboothian highlands would be exchanged for a regular shipment of mad inventors from the garden sheds of Thercoup.
Unsurprisingly, once the trading had gotten underway, mad inventors became ever more important to the island’s economy, and parents encouraged their children to follow in their fathers’ footsteps and become mad inventors as well. It became a national tradition that the first born son of a mad inventor would also become a mad inventor, thus ensuring a constant flow of water onto the island.
<=> <=> <=>
Sepwise wanted to be a scientist. His father, the world famous Giekeeboll, inventor of the Saxolin (a brass instrument that was played by scraping a taut bow across the front of it) was furious. He saw his son’s disregard of tradition as tantamount to treason. If every mad inventor’s son became a man of science, he would say, Thercoup would no longer have any water, and everyone on the island would die. But Sepwise would have none of it. He knew that there were plenty of mad inventors to go round, and that he was one of only a few who chose a different career path. He told his dad that he knew what he wanted to do, and he knew he could do it. He demonstrated this by mixing together three household ingredients and blowing up the kitchen.
Sepwise was going to the School of Natural Science to become a master of the ancient arts of alchemy and natural philosophy. And nobody was going to stop him!
First, though, he had to raise the money.
He managed to get a job working at the Pyright docks, hanging destination cards around the necks of mad inventors. It was a boring job, but it paid well, and over time he built a network of connections with the hardened seamen and audacious adventurers that regularly dropped by. He always took the time to listen to the latest gossip, the stories of bravery and discovery, the tales of epic struggles with mythical creatures and powerful sorcerers, and he prized above all else any artefacts that were brought back in testimony to these fables.
Slowly, Sepwise began to grow an appetite for adventure as well as science. He decided that when he graduated from Science School, he was going to launch an expedition. He was going to cross uncharted waters, visit strange new lands, meet new people and new creatures. He was going to travel to places where nobody had travelled to before - or at least look harder at places that people hadn’t looked very hard at before.
Before all that, though, he had to continue his work at the docks for two more years until he had saved enough money to study natural philosophy, and then he faced another four years of hard, fast education that only the most gifted and determined could stick. The hours were long, the people were rude and rough, the weather was always miserable and Sepwise kept getting dodgy propositions that he didn’t feel were appropriate for a future explorer, although one or two...
Later on, when Sepwise had earned enough and was finally attending the Science School itself, it transpired that many couldn’t stand the pace. Only twenty percent of the initial intake had the ability and the determination to stick it out. As it happened, though, Sepwise was a natural and sailed through the course. He was constantly top of the class and outperformed all other students in eight out of ten categories. His abilities were such that he was singled out in his first year as a rising star of the future.
His desire to go adventuring only increased during his studies. Much natural science was written in the tongues of foreign lands, as not all scientists came from Thercoup. For instance, most of the theories governing the properties of water were in the native tongue of the island (Ackabalaralaback), due to its obvious need, while Backarnabooth had a very poor knowledge of such matters in its language (Pel). (It is worth noting here that both of these languages were in fact very similar, as were most of the languages on the planet. Even more importantly, they all bore more than a passing resemblance to English.)
During a lesson about the nature of fire (mostly devised by wise men from the burnt savannah lands of Eck), Sepwise finally decided that if he only did one thing in his life, that thing would be to travel to a distant, uncharted land and explore every tree, every rock, every grain of sand, every thing and every place he could possibly find. Vast reserves of gold? He’d find them. New sources of fresh water? Without a question. Herbs and spices and treasures and bountiful riches? Bring it on! He would return to Thercoup a hero, and have to live in exile in order to avoid the rampaging fans that would do anything to catch sight of the daring adventurer they had heard so much about.
His goal? Fame, fortune and everything that goes with it.
<=> <=> <=>
And so it was that, a few years after gaining his Graduation Scroll, Sepwise found himself sitting in a small, dark, unpleasant Inne called the Book and Whistle, located at the end of a dark, miserable little street in the depressing, dingy town of Pyright on the less desirable side of Thercoup interviewing a tall blond man with a jutting jaw who claimed to be a geographer.
Stage 5
There are three types of people in the world. Early people, punctual people and late people. Early people can always be relied upon to arrive with time to spare because they’re simply so afraid of being late. Punctual people always contrive to arrive precisely on time because they hate being late, but equally can’t stand having huge amounts of time to kill. Late people - well, they often have intentions of being early or punctual, but due to either laziness, faffing or just general malaise, they continually fail to do so.
Eradani fell intensely into the ‘late’ category. She’d never actually been on time for anything, as far as she knew. It wasn’t through lack of trying though. Every evening, she would religiously set her alarm clock to go off at least an hour earlier than needed. And she’d get up with it too. There wasn’t any problem there. Things only started to get desperate when she realised that she’d already used up that spare hour or so quite effortlessly by fiddling about with her hair, having just one more cup of coffee, trimming her nails, listening to that song that had just started playing on the radio, having one more cup of coffee, checking she’d got everything in her bag, doing her hair, having absolutely the last cup of coffee, finding she’d forgotten to stamp the letter she had to post, stormed around the room trying to find a tiny square of paper with the Queen’s head on it, stuck it down firmly, had that very, very last cup of coffee, spotted the time, worked out that she should have left twenty minutes ago and finally flown out of the door like a spider escaping a margarine tub.
Of course, thirty seconds later she’d scream back into the room, scramble about for the letter that she’d forgotten, find it hiding under the bed and then dash back out again.
Or something along those lines anyway.
And this morning was just such a morning. She had a part-time job interview lined up, a meeting with Professor Hughes to contend with and three hours of lectures to struggle through, but this hadn’t prevented a long-winded chat with Jo about the merits of digging underground tunnels between halls from making her late.
Very, very late.
So she ran, ran, ran all the way to her old tutor’s private office, bumping into people, skidding into doors and generally making a nuisance of herself. One poor nuclear physicist was left in a state of complete disarray when the sight of a young student torpedoing towards him caused him to fling a batch of exam papers into the air in alarm. Eradani couldn’t help but smirk to herself about the slightly ‘Carry On’ feel this little incident had.
Anyway, she arrived outside Professor Hughes’ room, having got there in record time, straightened her clothes out a bit, and knocked the door.
‘Enter,’ came a jolly, lilting voice from inside. She opened the door and stepped inside.
Despite the building that encompassed the office being a beautiful old Victorian redbrick design, the office itself was nothing more than a tiny cubic room with an ugly metal-framed window. The walls weren’t lined with panelled wood, it didn’t have any elegant, antique mahogany furnishings and it didn’t have a single valuable oil painting on display.
What it did have was a horrible, scratchy green carpet, whitewashed walls, two well-stuffed M.F.I. bookcases, a battered old desk with a deceptively high-powered computer resting on it and lots and lots of bits of paper piled up on every available surface. There was a stack of those uncomfortable red plastic chairs that you always find at educational establishments against the wall. Normally, Eradani would have grabbed one of these, but she was pleasantly surprised to find a brand new, plush velour armchair sitting in the middle of the room.
‘Ah, Eradani,’ said Professor Hughes, sitting at a slightly awkward angle behind his desk. He’d clearly been busy with his computer. ‘Sit down, please. I’ll be with you in a tick.’ He continued typing at the keyboard.
She eased herself into the new chair. She obviously didn’t ease gently enough, however, as she almost disappeared completely into it, becoming consumed by tidal waves of soft, green cushion. She lost her grip on the small handbag she was carrying and it fell slightly under the Professor’s desk.
The Professor looked up at her. ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry about that,’ he said. ‘A friend of mine offered me that chair as a thank-you. I didn’t realise it was quite so squashy until he’d dropped it off.’
‘Oh, it’s okay,’ said Eradani, pulling herself up to a reasonable height with assistance from the arms. ‘It’s very comfortable, actually.’
‘Yes, it is. You just have to work out how best to balance yourself. I suspect it’s all a question of buoyancy.’
‘Could be,’ said Eradani. The Professor typed a few more words into his computer then turned to her in earnest. He eased his half-round glasses down his nose a bit and looked at her over the top of them.
‘Eradani,’ he said, ‘are you aware how many genuinely innovative theories get developed these days? I mean, really, utterly stunning new ideas that take the scientific establishment by the scruff of its neck and give it a thoroughly good rollicking?’
‘No,’ said Eradani. The thought had never occurred to her before.
‘I’ll tell you, shall I?’ said the Professor, nodding to her as if answering the question himself. ‘None. That’s an average, of course. You see, in the past hundred or so years, there have been perhaps three major advances in physics. There was electricity, of course. Maxwell’s equations and whatever. Then there was Einstein and his Relativity, and finally Schrödinger and Planck and Einstein again with their quantum theories. And that, given the general scope of things, is that.’
‘I don’t quite see what you’re getting at,’ said Eradani, confused. What was this? A history lesson?
The Professor ran his hand through his hair. ‘Eradani, have you heard of such things as Grand Unified Theories?’
‘Yes,’ said Eradani. ‘Of course I have. The joining up of the current theories of natural forces into one big super-theory.’
‘Good. Then you’ll know that they are the Holy Grail to modern physicists, the most sought-after prizes in science. Everybody is trying to be the first past the post.’ He leaned forward across the desk and nudged his glasses up with an index finger. He spoke in a grave voice. ‘Once they are developed, and believe me, it won’t take long, then there will be nothing left to discover. Physics will have completed all it set out to achieve. All human advancement will suddenly pass into the hands of the engineers to implement the physics that has been developed. We, you and me, Eradani, are a dying race. We haven’t got long left.’
Eradani considered this for a moment. It seemed a touch pessimistic to her, and she said so.
‘I’m afraid you can’t really see the whole picture yet,’ said Professor Hughes. ‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe you never will. If you become a professional scientist, the situation may come to bear upon you, but maybe not. Never matter, it’s not really what I wanted to talk to you about anyway.’
‘Oh, okay,’ said Eradani. This was a fairly typical meeting with the Professor - she tended to just let it all wash over her until she could escape.
‘Let me ask you a question,’ he said, brightening his tone a little. ‘How would you describe mathematics?’
‘How would I describe it?’
‘Yes. What do you think it really is? What do you think it’s for?’
She thought about this for a while. Several answers popped instantly into her head, but she decided that in the interest of her future at the university it was best not to reveal them.
‘I suppose,’ she said eventually, ‘it’s just a system we use, or a tool, if you like. We invented it to allow us to solve certain problems. I think.’