Read the first chapter of Brian Boone’s ‘Great Men of Science’
To think that scientists used to just throw away their leftover tungsten bits. Now, of course, they collect that scrap-and-waste tungsten and store it in beaker-shaped duffel bags. Then, on December 25th — yes, Enrico Fermi’s birthday — they gather in major science towns, climb to the roofs of research facilities, and at the stroke of midnight, toss the contents of those beaker-shaped duffel bags up into the sky. Truly there is no more beautiful or uniting a moment for the scientific community than this definitive tradition of Science Day.
It’s quite a sight: A billion tungsten flakes drift slowly to the ground, glimmering like tiny diamonds as they do. Scientists gaze upon this, “The Great Tungsten Cascade,” as they reflect on the year, their work, and the ceaseless amazingness of science. They also sing songs about science and sip drinks which glow, because bits of tungsten fell into them.
Those fortunate enough to make good on the previous year’s Science Day toast of “next year in San Verguenza!” congregate for the world’s biggest Science Day celebration in San Verguenza, California, home to Gray Labs, the most aggressive force in science since Thomas Edison smashed a bunch of light bulbs in Nikola Tesla’s face at the latter’s wedding to his beloved pigeon. Fun fact about Gray Labs: Every cutting-edge scientific breakthrough of the past 40 years happened at Gray Labs. (All except for crack, because it bid too high on the government contract.)
Under the direction of its enigmatic founder Eli Gray, Gray Labs put on one hell of a Gray Labs Presents Science Day. Holographic and robotic vendors sold scientists’ favorite refreshments: popping candy rocks, freeze-dried astronaut-style ice cream, and 1990s throwback transparent cola. Street performers entertained revelers with large-scale versions of junior high science class tricks, like freezing a thousand tomatoes in liquid nitrogen and shattering them, writing messages on the side of a building in disappearing lemon juice ink, and the “Human Newton’s Cradle.” The more exhibitionistic celebrationgoers would dress as iconic scientific figures of the past, their costumes growing more provocative with each passing year. A “Sexy Edmund Halley,” which consisted of little more than fishnet stockings and a comet bra, became a titillating if trite standard.
Despite being a scientist by blood and choice and growing up in San Verguenza, Albert Malfort had never properly attended the local Science Day festivities. There was always a reason; he’d been too young, or he wasn’t allowed to, or because he worked at Gray Labs, and his job included cleaning up the campus the morning after Science Day. This year, however, was different. He was finally able to observe The Great Tungsten Cascade, albeit from above and from the interior of a prison cell — one of those hovering, two-dimensional ones that had become very popular with local authorities for its space-saving properties.
As he floated about in complete flatness, Albert contemplated how, if he could do it all over again, he’d play a few situations just a hint differently. He also agonized over how he could possibly escape his jail cell, or get the message out that the cell had a design flaw. If struck by a laser at precisely 35 degrees, the dimensional compression would fail, and restore the third dimension for Albert, freeing him from this literal prison and also make him fall out of the sky at a tremendous velocity.
Albert’s thoughts were interrupted when quite suddenly he was a third-dimensional being again, and one who was falling out of the sky at a tremendous velocity, and into the path of a young woman holding a laser cannon.
ABOUT TEN YEARS EARLIER
The Western Scientific Institute ranks among the most prestigious and expensive establishments devoted to the most marketable of scientific disciplines. As the Da Vinci quote etched into a gigantic, fiber-optic needlepoint sampler in the dining hall read, “Produrre scienza, acquisire denaro,” or “Make science, get money.”
It was at the Institute on the night before graduation where Albert Malfort tried to make science and, subsequently, if things went according to plan, get money. But before Albert could get on with his glorious future, he first had to weather the odious present, particularly the final rounds of the end-of-year pomp and circumstance.
Instead of a reading of names and the playing of “Pomp and Circumstance,” WSI held a Presentation Presentation. Graduates prepared a project to demonstrate the total of their four years (give or take) of study in a public setting and to show off to administrators, professors, other students, and, most importantly, representatives of major research-and-development corporations. Sure, it was a science fair, but it came with much higher stakes. And, usually, a shit ton of lasers.
With the Presentation Presentation just hours away, Albert furiously worked on his project in his lab space, one of the rent-by-the-semester rooms (“Marked for Demolition,” as they were officially called by the Facilities Department) used by students who couldn’t afford well-appointed off-campus lab spaces. Consequently, the lab was also Albert’s living space; he didn’t think it was all that bad. The previous tenant’s synthetic sheep had spontaneously combusted, leaving behind a queen size mattress’s worth of odor-and-moisture-resistant wool. And with the abundance of open microwave technology bouncing around campus, Albert could place a frozen dinner in the room’s southwestern corner, and it would cook in seconds.
Albert predicted that he would one day look back on the ignominy of his college years with wistful nostalgia and gratitude for helping him stay hungry, metaphorically and literally. This notion sprang forth — fully developed in its entirety — on this, Albert’s last night of college, the night Albert figured out time travel.
Well, not “figured out.” He was about to conduct a time travel experiment that he knew would work. He was equally confident that the success of this experiment would directly lead to his being offered a research fellowship at Gray Labs, allowing him to get so rich and famous that he would never again have to live secretly in an abandoned building.
Although there are many schools of thought on how time travel may work, Albert was of the mind that time and space were wrapped up with one another because they’re the same thing — that time was an element of the physical plane, akin to the weather or the mineral makeup of the soil. “Time is wallpaper” was how Albert would describe it if anyone ever were to ask. (No one had.) “Time is wallpaper” was also what he had written at the top of his Presentation Presentation poster board in glitter.
As of 3:30 a.m., Albert had been awake for 20 hours, and he looked it, although he always looked like that, what with his greasy, bromine-colored hair beset by both dandruff and bald patches, and eyes that were so red from strain that it overwhelmed their natural color, which was probably blue. On top of a tall lab bench, his centrifuge spun somewhere in the vicinity of 3,600 revolutions per second, which is very fast, and also how many seconds there are in an hour. This was not a coincidence. The centrifuge whirred and screeched and threw off tiny, triangular blue and purple sparks. Albert had wired in two digital clocks, and he used some conductive wire to connect them to a small mound of russet potatoes.
The clocks, the potatoes, the centrifuge — all sat at an arm’s length from Albert, flanking the evening’s real stars: two single-use tungsten abysses, each about the size of the single eating plate that Albert owned. They were infinitely black, darker than the dark in the absolute darkness of an underground cave that the senses aren’t comfortable with, so the brain starts imagining or inventing little flecks of light to prevent itself from going mad. The little flecks of light in the abysses, however, were real, and they appeared, Albert noticed, exactly once every 1,700 centrifugal rotations. Albert was proud of his ability to count very quickly, and rightfully so.
Albert placed each clock in front of an abyss and noted the time displayed on both. He took a deep breath, then a giddy sigh, and reached under his workbench for a very scientific-looking cardboard box. He tossed back a flap and, from inside, removed an adorable miniature pig. While monkeys and rats had long been favored by commercial science as test subjects, in academia, tiny pigs the size of chipmunks were the sacrificial lamb of choice because their flesh was most like that of humans.
“Carl,” Albert said to the tiny pig, “I’m going to be wealthy beyond my wildest expectations. But you know what? Even if I weren’t, it’s still all about the science, you know?”
Carl had little opinion on the matter, choosing instead to sniff around the table for crumbs. He wouldn’t find any; Albert couldn’t afford to waste food. At least both got to eat plenty of truffles, which Carl would find underneath the fir trees on campus during his morning root.
“When they see what I’ve accomplished, Carl. When they see…”
Carl snorted in a cute, piggly kind of way.
“Who? The people from Gray, and Orange East, and all the others! When they see what I’ve done, I’ll be beholden to no man! I’ll chart my own path. I won’t even have to change my last name. The scientist named Malfort that people think of will be me! And it will be in a good light!”
Carl snorted again, this time with a palpable note of judgment.
“What, you think I should call him ‘Dad’? No way.”
Carl, wisely, said nothing.
“I won’t just be famous in the scientific world,” Albert said, continuing to fantasize aloud for the benefit of a pig, “I’ll be famous in the regular world, too. My name will be the name normal people associate with science, the way that Frank Lloyd Wright is the only architect that anyone has ever heard of!” Albert fully believed that once his achievements in time travel became known, he’d outrank and render forgotten the greats of science, the big-time luminaries like Thomas Edison, Linus Pauling, and even his namesake, the most popular and recognizable scientist in history, the great cytologist Albert Claude.
Albert picked up Carl, and the animal squealed with delight, or possibly in panic or desperation — who can really tell with miniature pigs — as Albert strapped him into a tiny-pig-sized helmet covered in blinking diodes and topped with a vibrating antenna.
“That’s a good little piggy,” Albert said as he carefully threw Carl into an abyss, the one on the left. Carl’s squeal echoed ominously, from both nowhere in particular and also everywhere. Albert lunged for the shelf below the table and grabbed the large circuit box with inch-thick red wires that connected everything — the potatoes, the clocks, the centrifuge, even the abysses, at their crispy and gelatinous edges. Albert flipped a switch, not without some difficulty, as it was controlling a lot of electricity, which is surprisingly heavy.
A pulse, or rather a wave, blew through all those items. The world went blindingly white for a few seconds, then black, then white again, then back to the usual grey that characterized Albert’s existence. Quickly, Albert replaced the circuit box and took the goggles hanging around his neck and put them on his face, where they should’ve been already. He peered into the left-side hole, and, getting no response at all, stuck his ear up to the expanse, but immediately reared back by its strong, sucking force. He was just about to examine it in a highly clinical manner — by sticking his finger in there, or at the very least, a pencil — when from the right-most abyss, out came Carl, shooting upward at high speed.
Carl, covered in a thin layer of bluish-purple goo, landed at Albert’s feet, walked around in a little circle, and rolled around on his back. Then his own corkscrew tail distracted him and he gave chase. Albert looked at the clock on the left, corresponding to where he’d thrown in the pig: 3:47 a.m. The one by the abyss from which Carl had emerged read 3:42 a.m.
In a controlled laboratory environment, Albert had time traveled a pig five whole minutes into the past.
Albert hooted, hollered, then hooted again, and hollered once more, throwing his hands up in the air near his head to form a crude “H,” the traditional scientific gesture of celebration, spontaneously devised by Edward Teller immediately after he invented the H-bomb.
“Hello! You are friend!”
Albert naturally looked at Carl, assuming for a fraction of a second that an excursion through time gave his pig the power of human speech. But Carl could not have talked, as he was eagerly slurping up as much water as he could from the petri dish that had “CARL” written on it. The matter required more scientific inquiry. Albert looked around the room and hypothesized that the human voice came from the other human who was in the room.
Check out Great Men of Science by Brian Boone, available where books are sold, or order it now on Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.
Originally published at https://medium.com on March 28, 2020.
