Conundrum (fragment – possible intro)

by beatvibe

Posted to Stories on 2003-08-05 20:59:00


     On August fifth, something happened. It was a subtle change, most likely occurring overnight when no one would notice. Perhaps the Earth’s axis shifted slightly, by say… Three-hundredths of a degree or so. It was raining today. Or perhaps the Earth’s rotation accelerated slightly, bumped up a fraction of a notch, just enough to put us all out of phase. No… That would have been noticeable, I expect. Some observatory on a tiny, remote island near the equator would have reported astral discrepancies, and laymen educated by CNN would be debating the merits of various theories attempting to rationalize the inexplicable flux. (“They say that last night’s skip in time offset the world’s atomic clocks, which equalized by spontaneously emitting excess particles. Nuclei must stay in synch, you know. It’s Einstein’s Law. On a small scale, this would have been trivial, of course. But when all the clocks hit that threshold simultaneously… Well, the composite effect was just enough.”) Not quite that grand, I expect. But something happened.
     ”The psych ward is crazy tonight.”
     ”You’re tellin’ me?”
     ”We’ve had three CI’s. Code Indigos,” she said. “Even the regulars are out of their heads.”
     The cop nodded thoughtfully, picking at some of the dried blood on his uniform. “Well, that’s something to do with the moon,” he confirmed. “Not a full moon, you understand, but when the phases get displaced. I mean, I don’t know how exactly, but the gravitation… It quavers a bit. Messes with our magnetic equilibrium.”
     ”That’s true.”
     ”Our brains are electric, you know. Tiny micro-volts of neural impulses. So it makes sense that the way we think is affected by the moon. Most people adjust on their own, but others have to do something crazy to jar things back in place. Otherwise, it just builds up and up. After a while, they need shock treatments.”
     ”Yeah, that seems right.” (Curious, that no remote island ever picked up on this. I suppose it takes time for the wavelengths to rebound.)
     ”You see, that’s why lunar eclipses are so therapeutic,” he concluded. “They restore balance. So when the world finally comes to an end, it sure won’t be during a lunar eclipse. Well… I mean, I suppose it could be, but I would be surprised. Wouldn’t you?”
     ”It seems unlikely,” she admitted (while I renewed plausibility in the atomic clock notion).
     ”You bet,” agreed the cop. “This was something the Mercury and Gemini astronauts never considered. I’m not saying they should have, necessarily. It just wasn’t part of NASA culture at that time, you know? Especially among the engineers, what with all their slide rules and logarithmic charts. I suppose this will all be on the cover of Time some day. I’d like to see their faces then.”
     The doctor signed the last two pages and returned the officer’s clipboard.
     ”Well anyway, by the time all that started to change during the Apollo years, most of the original Palovac mainframes were obsolete, even though replacement tubes were readily available.”
     The doctor nodded curtly while absent-mindedly folding her copy of the paperwork. “This is all very interesting,” she conceded. “But I’ve got patients.” She put her hand on my shoulder and directed me towards the elevator.
     I looked back at the officer, who suddenly appeared confused.
     She (the doctor) stabbed at the ninth-floor button several times before it lit, but by then the elevator was already going down. She pursed her lips and inhaled deeply through her nose.
     ”He’s right, you know.” I ventured hoarsely.
     ”Perhaps,” she conceded, her eyes fixed on the stainless steel doors. “But the fundamental paradigm remained intact. Even in 1967, titanium-copper shielding on battery adaptors and control surfaces was still less than 0.03 gT with an RKT coefficient somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to fifteen microphalms. Most of their telemetry was relayed through a tracking station near GrĂ¼undard, Iceland, and the general proximity of the fuses was not discussed.”
     ”Yeah, that makes sense.”
     And she turned to look at me (for the first time). “You think so?”
     ”Well, the syringes were prepared in advance.”
     ”Good point,” she said.

-Marc Weber (beatvibe)



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