The Worm of the Ages and Other Tails: Six Short Fantasies (5 page)

‘Smaller.’ The Monad shook its ponderous head, sending ripples through the vast mound of flab that surrounded it.

‘Faster. More aware of the Me. More 
perfect.
’

‘Perfect.’ A look of ghastly desire spread across the hideous face. ‘Perfect Me. Yes. It is… good.’

The Monad squeezed its eyelids tight, shutting out everything but its own self from its awareness. At first, the change was imperceptible. ‘Me,’ it groaned, shaking the building with its 
basso profundo.
‘Me.… Me.… Me.’

The Prussian blue mound had backed me into a corner of the lab. It was beginning to recede now, and I knew that the crisis was past. ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Keep going.’

‘Me. Me. Me. Me, me, me, me me me me.’

‘There you go! The smaller you get, the more often you’ll be able to feel the whole Me. Isn’t it 
good?’

‘Good,’ it said. ‘Me! Me! Me me me me me!’

By now, it was no bigger than I was. The faster it chanted, the faster it shrank.

‘Memememememememe

memememememememememe

memememememememeeeeeeeeeeeee.…’

It would not be quite true to say that the Monad disappeared in a puff of heightened self-awareness. It shrank down to the size of the original capsule, buzzing like a wasp, the pitch rising to a squeal. Then it became too high to hear, too small to see. A little later, a faint red point of light appeared on the floor amidst the wreckage of the lab. In a few seconds it flitted through all the colours of the spectrum to violet. By my estimate, the Great Me was appreciating itself several trillion times per second now. Its vibrations ascended into the ultraviolet, and to all appearances, it winked out. I filled a beaker with water at the sink in the corner and doused the spot where the Monad had disappeared; then, just to be safe, I scooped up the mess with a dustpan and dumped it into a hazmat can.

I then retired to my office to write you this letter. Either the Monad you sent me had a manufacturing defect, or the design itself was defective. In my judgement, this product should never have been approved even for laboratory use. I am therefore requesting a full refund of the purchase price, and instructions on shipping the hazmat container back to you for safe disposal. You may count yourselves lucky, Gentlemen, that the University does not sue you for the damage to our lab; but that, I fear, is unlikely to happen. The head of our legal department is a bit of a Monad himself, and I suspect he will refuse to file suit out of professional courtesy.

Yours sincerely,

Lemuel Pangloss III

Associate Professor of Particle Metaphysics

University of [Redacted]

Interim Report of the Consulting Psychologist

Institute for Advanced Preon Physics

March 21, 21xx

Directors:

As ordered, I have kept the members of Team 5 under close observation for six months. As the Head of the IAPP has wisely observed, cutting-edge research of this type, in which practice can actually outrun theory, can impose great psychological stress on the researchers. Only the most adaptable minds, easily able to free themselves from conventional thinking, are able to achieve the cognitive breakthroughs required to interpret the often bizarre data yielded by the experiments. It has been the position of the IAPP that the attendant risks of employing such minds, with their tendency towards poor socialization, antinomianism, and even dissidence, are justified by the results achieved. It is my contention that this policy has been carried to excessive lengths and should be curtailed.

I was assigned to observe Team 5 shortly after they began to employ the Fleury–Vasilievsky process to generate rogue particles with specified properties. After a number of routine trials, Dr. Xi, the team leader, proposed that the F–V apparatus should be programmed to instantiate the so-called Anand Hypotheticals. That system of equations, as you will no doubt recall, indicated the theoretical possibility of forming quarks with charges not allowed for under the Hyperstandard Model. Dr. Anand, who may have been psychologically unstable himself, died in questionable circumstances before his mathematics could be fully verified, and there was, at this point, some doubt whether the Hypotheticals were valid.

Dr. Xi is well known in the field for his informal style of communication. In his official memorandum ordering the experiments, he broke several protocols by employing the following locution: ‘No bugger can understand old Anny’s maths. Let’s get Mother Nature to check his sums.’

After a number of unsuccessful trials, the F–V device emitted a particle that was positively identified as an Anand rogue. Its observed properties were consistent with a mass slightly greater than an up quark 
and a charge of +
1
/
6
e.
 Various working names were proposed for the new particle, until the question was settled by a chance remark made by Dr. Boudreaux. Upon examining photographs of the particle trail, Boudreaux shook his head and pronounced: ‘I say we call it a 
wrong
quark, because that just ain’t right.’

‘We already have left quarks,’ said Dr. Levko, ‘and
they’re
not right.’

‘Left-
handed
quarks,’ countered Boudreaux. ‘Left-handed up, left-handed down.…’

‘It’s too confusing,’ said Levko. ‘What if there was a right-handed wrong quark?’

‘Then physics teachers would have to start earning their pay. Anyway, I have a hunch—’

At this, Dr. Levko desisted. Dr. Boudreaux’s ‘hunches’ tend to be disconcertingly accurate. It turned out, in fact, that for theoretical reasons beyond the understanding of a mere psychologist, wrong quarks are never right. All wrong quarks react symmetrically to the weak force, for reasons that are as yet poorly understood even within the confines of Team 5. Dr. Khosruparvez has withdrawn from experimental work entirely to pursue this problem mathematically. He has developed a tendency to wander blindly about the complex, scribbling equations and formulae on any available surface; one of the staff lavatories is completely covered in his graffiti and has had to be taken out of service. It is recommended that Dr. Khosruparvez be taken out of service as well.

As Dr. Xi’s official reports make clear, most of the particles containing the wrong quark are highly unstable, and the quark itself readily decays into ordinary quarks and leptons. The new discovery might have remained a harmless footnote in theoretical physics, but for a chance discovery made by Dr. Khosruparvez in the course of a protracted bowel movement. That is, the discovery was recorded on the lavatory wall in his handwriting; but it was Dr. Boudreaux who photographed the formulae and brought them to the attention of the team. It appeared that the combination of one up, one down, and one wrong quark might form a stable particle with a charge of +
1
/
2
. This particle, which Dr. Boudreaux dubbed a 
hemion,
 was duly detected among the emissions of the F–V device, and the decision was taken to produce hemions in quantity and observe their interactions with normal matter.

I thereupon relayed a warning to the Psychological Correction Bureau, and prepared to observe Dr. Boudreaux’s interactions with normal humans.

Because of the extreme security that attends so much of the IAPP’s work, the members of Team 5 live in a compound on the Institute grounds and are seldom permitted contact with the outside world. Necessary as this may be from a security standpoint, it is regrettable, if not downright dangerous, from a psychological standpoint. The tendency of isolated in-groups to develop shared psychotic formations is well attested. It was, in fact, observed in the period of the primitive Internet over a century ago, and was described by one of the first formalisms in my own field of mathematical psychology. In layman’s terms, Team 5 began to go slap-happy; the group contracted a collective infestation of moon ferrets. It would be highly advisable in future, if this line of research is continued, to quarter the non-technical service staff in the compound along with the researchers, so that the latter may be encouraged to have normal social interactions with persons who do not normally speak in mathematical symbols and make jokes about breaking the space-time continuum.

Shortly after the discovery of the new particle, several members of Team 5 coaxed an electron into a stable orbit around a single hemion. Several members of the team suggested names for the new atom before Dr. Boudreaux, with that unorthodox verbal facility which is his hallmark, christened it 
lowdrogen.
 (‘Because it ain’t 
high,
’ he explained.) Lowdrogen was duly entered in the margins of the periodic table on the wall of the team cafeteria: symbol 
Lo,
atomic weight 1.000, atomic number 
one-half.

The entire team then proceeded to dose themselves to unconsciousness on alcohol, cannabis, and at least three varieties of narcotics. Work did not resume for more than 72 hours.

As soon as he was coherent, I interviewed Dr. Xi in my office. ‘Is this appropriate behaviour for an eminent scientist on an official IAPP project?’ I asked him. ‘Is it appropriate behaviour for a team leader to permit in his subordinates?’

‘Pack sand in it, Doctor,’ Dr. Xi replied. ‘We just made the biggest discovery since Chadwick—’

‘Since 
who?’

‘James Chadwick,’ said Dr. Xi, spelling the name whilst I took notes. ‘Discovered the neutron and made sense of the entire atomic zoo. Well, we’ve found a whole new goddamned zoo. Potentially, there could be a whole new set of elements hidden
inside
the periodic table – stuffed between the cracks. We’re having a go at element 1.5 next. If that works out,
anything
could happen.’

‘Nevertheless, your conduct in the past three days—’

‘We were 
celebrating,’
said Dr. Xi. ‘Haven’t you ever celebrated, Doctor?’

‘Not in that fashion,’ I said. ‘The key to psychological health is moderation. Are you aware that Dr. Levko attempted sexual congress with a dummy constructed out of lab equipment?’

Dr. Xi’s expression gave some evidence of discomfort. ‘What people do in the bedroom is their own business.’

‘She didn’t do it in the bedroom.’

‘Still not my business. Anyway, the equipment wasn’t seriously damaged.’

‘Nevertheless, this will not look good in your next evaluation. Tell me, Dr. Xi, do you regard Dr. Levko as psychologically stable?’

‘As stable as anybody in the field. This isn’t the twentieth century, you know. We’re not building mathematical models and then combing through drift chambers for evidence to back them up. What we’re doing is about three steps ahead of the models. Nobody predicted the formation of non-integer elements; not even Anand. And nobody ever worked with such high energies before. At any moment, any one of us could cook up a particle storm and go 
poof,
just like poor old Anny.’

‘The cause of Dr. Anand’s death was never finally determined,’ I reminded him.

‘It was never 
published.
Do you think we haven’t got the brains here to figure it out?’

I refused to be baited into an irrelevant discussion. ‘What about you, Dr. Xi? Are 
you
stable?’

‘If I were not, I wouldn’t confess it to you.’

‘To whom, then, if not a psychologist?’

‘Doctor’ – he pronounced the title in a tone of heavy sarcasm – ‘we both know what your job is. “Psychological correction officer” is a polite way of saying “secret policeman”. To put it bluntly, you’re a spy. The Head of the Institute himself isn’t safe. If he catches cold, he knows not to sneeze in your hearing.’

It seemed advisable at this point to conclude the interview. Since then, our operatives have kept Dr. Xi under continual surveillance. According to their reports, he has developed a delusional belief that he is being watched. This paranoiac tendency should be noted on his file.

Rapid progress resumed once the lab equipment was reconditioned. Shortly after my interview with Dr. Xi, the team successfully isolated element 1.5. Dr. Metharom then rigged the F–V apparatus so as to deliver maximum power to the hylic pump. This allowed hemions to be mass-produced, and within two months, both the new elements had been manufactured in gram quantities. As expected, both were gases under ordinary conditions. Element 1.5 turned out to be, in Dr. Boudreaux’s words, ‘insanely electronegative’; it formed a gaseous compound with physical properties similar to helium, but highly reactive chemically. When Dr. Metharom accidentally inhaled a sample of the gas, his voice became high-pitched and squeaky, as if he had breathed helium. This was the occasion of much hilarity, until it turned out that the effect was not transient and Dr. Metharom had actually damaged his vocal cords. Meanwhile, element 1.5 had been named 
squealium
in his honour.

After this incident, I conducted an interview with Dr. Metharom. He appeared agitated and ill at ease, and continually fumbled at the pockets of his lab coat, as if he expected to find something there.

‘How do you feel?’ I asked him.

‘Ridiculous,’ he answered in a piping voice. I was forced to admit the accuracy of this self-assessment.

‘Once you heal physically, Doctor, do you feel that it will be safe for you to return to work?’

Dr. Metharom looked sour and somewhat angry. 
‘Safe
is a relative term, Doctor. This work was never safe to begin with. Your presence here isn’t making it any safer.’

‘Tell me about that,’ I suggested.

‘Spare me the talk therapy come-ons,’ he squeaked. ‘I am here because this work is important, and with respect to the other members of the team, I’m the only one who can get it done.’

‘Surely there are other hylic engineers who are equally qualified.’

He stabbed an accusing finger in my direction to emphasize his words. ‘No, Doctor. You have no idea. Right at this moment, within twenty metres of this office, there is enough unbound energy to blow the whole Institute to the moon. That is not a figure of speech. Putting that much power through the hylic pumps is extremely dangerous. 
Extremely
dangerous. The energy flow becomes chaotic, and it takes incredible skill to keep the equipment running within safe limits. 
Incredible
skill.’

‘Are you calling yourself incredible?’

‘Don’t laugh. There are only about a dozen F–V engineers in the world. I trained more than half of them myself. None of them could have maintained the volume of particle flow to produce visible quantities of our new elements.’

‘In other words,’ I said – it is a standard clinical technique – ‘they could not have made enough of the gas to injure themselves as you did.’

‘The price of being a discoverer.’

‘How long do you think you can keep paying that price?’

By now, Dr. Metharom’s voice sounded like fingernails on a blackboard. I feared it would give out entirely, but he forced out another squeal: ‘Long enough to complete our experiments. After that I can analyse the hylic flow and write an algorithm to automate the process. I wouldn’t trust anyone else to control it manually.’

‘But why do it manually at all?’

‘Because half the automation in this dump is defective. I’ve been making repair requests for months.’

‘Ah, well. The support staff do the best they can, I’m sure.’

‘In a pig’s eye. They won’t even fix the lights in the supply room. I have to use an emergency torch. Makes me feel like a burglar every time I want a new pencil.’ He swallowed hard and rubbed at his Adam’s apple. ‘Now you must excuse me, Doctor. I have work to do, and all this talking hurts my throat.’