“But —” began the assistant professor.
“And what about a sense of achievement?” Punt boomed, popping a few local eardrums, shaking the timbers overhead, and dislodging a pair of portraits from their nooks. “The joy of accomplishing something worthwhile,” he continued. “Simplest thing in the world. Say you’re at your happiest when you’re striving to be the world’s greatest bowler. Fine pursuit. So, you practice day and night, and hey presto, after years spent rolling balls up alleys you’re Utopia’s greatest bowler. All seems well. But mark the sequel — everyone else in this Utopia, every bounder who has a passing interest in bowling, is just a wish away from besting your achievement. If Utopia gives each resident everything they want, and some other blighter wants to be top bowler, you can’t stop him. He’s top bowler. In a Utopia, practice doesn’t make perfect — it’s a blasted waste of time. Huaargh! No competition, no improvement. No way to distinguish yourself from the next bloke down the line. Another fellow wants your talents? Poof, he has them. In your Utopia we’d be watching sports matches in their millionth overtime because everyone on the field was playing a perfect game.”
At this point Punt made a noise that sounded something like an orca clearing a seal from its nasal passage. Then he continued: “Plenty of other problems, too. You love teaching? Too bad! No one in Utopia needs to be taught, because they can wish their way to knowing whatever they like. Enjoy helping people? Fancy a bit of soul-improving charity? Nuts to you! No one needs you. If you want to feel needed, that’s your bad luck. Utopia wipes out any possibility of needing or being needed. You’ll never be necessary, or helpful, or relied on, or able to carry out any meaningful kind of duty. No one’s ever going to need you. No way to do good; no chance to make a mark in the world. In your Utopia,” he added, “you’d be an instantly fulfilled creature without needs, robbed of achievement, lacking any kind of significance or exceptionality, and without the chance for growth or positive change. Pah!” he snorted, “If we took away your desires, your capacity to set yourself apart, to struggle, to overcome — would the poor creature remaining be, in any real sense, you? Of course it wouldn’t! Huaargh! Struggle defines us. We need a dash of inconvenience. If every blighter could have everything he wanted . . . well, I shudder to think. No struggle, no growth, no achievement and no bally fun. Keep your Utopia. I’ll stay here.”
The assailed assistant professor did her best to hide behind herself. Punt had mercy and looked around himself for other targets to devour. And since the largest visible target was Zeus, Punt set his sights Zeusward.
“You there!” he boomed, buttonholing the ex-terrier. “Professor . . . erm . . . ah . . . Smeed!” he added, eyeing Zeus’s stolen name tag. It said, Hi! My name is Smeed. Below this it bore a title: Associate Director — Institute of Applied Mathematics.
“Don’t know if we’ve met,” Punt continued. “We’re just discussing the merits of Ratz’s theory of Utopia. Inane tripe, if you ask me.”
“Huh?” said Zeus.
The man in the yellow trousers drew a datalink from his pocket and started typing.
“Quite!” said Rhinnick, inserting himself between Zeus and Punt. “Utopia, indeed. Ha! Codswallop!”
“And what is it you’re currently working on, Smeed?” Punt boomed. “What’s your specialty? Where’s your current research taking you?”
Zeus grinned happily.
“Smeed?” said Punt, squinting up at Zeus’s big, honest face and cocking his head to one side.
Zeus looked around for Smeed with genuine interest. Tonto poked him in the ribs and subtly tapped him on the name tag.
Zeus looked at it, and gulped.
It was at this point that a stray particle of inspiration hurtled across the cosmos and connected with the speech control centre in Zeus’s brain, since he was the tallest. What it made him say was this: “Oh. Right. Sorry about that. My latest project. Ah. Well, it’s a cross-disciplinary project. We’re ramping up a new curriculum,” he said.
This yielded a row of raised eyebrows from Zeus’s companions, largely because they would have expected his definition of “curriculum” to involve a device designed to measure a curricule.
“It’s a new inter-faculty course,” Zeus continued, contorting his lower jaw in a way that he must have thought made him look professorial. “It summarizes the latest theories on how the world works —”
Ian finally cottoned on.
“That’s right!” said Ian, stepping forward. “I’m helping him. We’re . . . umm . . . assembling all of the . . . ah . . . the . . .”
“Cutting-edge research?” said Zeus, warming to his role.
“That’s right!” said Ian. “Cutting-edge research! The latest theories about the nature of Detroit. Science, philosophy, that sort of thing. Anything about how the world works.”
“Exactly!” said Zeus, beaming.
“So, just out of curiosity,” said Ian, charging toward the coup-de-grâce, “what would you include, Professor Punt? If you were setting up such a course, I mean?”
“Hmmm!” boomed Punt. It really shouldn’t be possible to boom a word like “Hmm,” but Punt managed it without breaking a sweat.
The man in the yellow trousers scratched his chin and nodded.
“For starters,” said Punt, in a voice that could have been heard three counties over, “I’d have something from Bartuckle over there. His work on pre-divided consciousness has promise. Creative man, that.”
Bartuckle smiled and waved.
“And next,” said Punt, still booming, “I’d add a reading or two from Khuufru’s Tome of Truths. Interesting stuff in Khuufru’s book about mathematical models and the city’s rate of expansion. Funny thing about you mathematicians,” Punt added, looking wistful, “always obsessing about models.”
“It’s the waist-to-bosom ratio,” observed Rhinnick.
“I’d also consider adding something about the history of Abe and the other ancients,” Punt continued. “Fascinating stuff. Sort of thing that’ll capture your students’ interest.”
The man in yellow trousers wedged himself directly between Zeus and the buffet table and continued taking notes on his datalink.
“Anything else?” said Zeus, whose attempt to make scholarly faces made him look like an egg-bound hen. “I mean, anything about, say, Rules that make the world tick?”
He waggled his eyebrows meaningfully.
“Well,” harrumphed Punt, “as for Rules, I’d probably add a thing or two about Isaac’s recent work on — Ho! Good lord, what’s that over there?”
The sheer ear-wobbling force of Punt’s “Ho!” was such that every person within his orbit turned to see what had caught his eye. What they saw was a hubbub in progress, taking place in the vicinity of the main door of the Hall.
The source of the hubbub was two angry-looking campus security officers flanked by an honest-to-goodness cop. The latter was in the process of shouting something through cupped hands in an effort to attract everyone’s attention.
The din of scholarly discussion and clanging cutlery was such that he hadn’t yet succeeded. If you strained to listen, though, you could just barely gather the gist of what he was shouting.
Ian strained to listen.
The officer seemed to be shouting something about . . . missing. Yes, he clearly shouted the word “missing.” Then came something about . . . estate? No. A skate? No, escape! Yes, it was definitely escape. Or maybe “escaped.” And then “dangerous” — that one was easy. And finally something along the lines of “dental stations.” Or possibly “patience.” “Dental patience,” whatever that meant.
Something in Ian’s brain went click.
“Oh shi-unghk!”
This wasn’t what Ian had meant to say. The word had been forced from his lungs when Tonto had unexpectedly grabbed him by the collar and heaved him over the buffet. This e
vent was accompanied by a high-pitched whizzing sound as three invisible projectiles zipped directly past Ian’s ear, straight through the space that had been occupied by Tonto’s head a heartbeat earlier. And because the space behind that space remained occupied by something else, the three whizzing bullets slammed straight into it.
Pok, pok, pok.
“Zeus!” cried Rhinnick, dropping a plate.
“Zeus!” screamed Nappy, charging forward.
They weren’t entirely correct. They were nearly correct, in the sense that three patches of blood were presently blooming on the chest of the extra-large Adonis who was Rhinnick’s gendarme and, more recently, something approaching Nappy’s boyfriend. But they were wrong in the assumption that the large side of beef standing in front of them was, in any meaningful way, still Zeus.
The body that had formerly called itself Zeus crumpled like a punctured tire. He dropped to his knees, and then fell flat on his back. He displayed a puzzled expression, as though wondering why his back and chest hurt so badly, and what all of these running, screaming people were up to. He seemed especially curious about the curly-haired blonde woman screaming beside him and kneeling down. She kept screaming the word “Zeus.” She seemed upset.
A full colloquium of scholars screamed a horror-movie scream and parted like the Red Sea, breaking away from the epicentre of the action. Or, if you aren’t inclined to believe that the Red Sea parted, they parted exactly like a terrified group of panicking scholars who’ve just heard several rounds of gunfire in their midst. Either way, they parted quickly, becoming a pair of highly educated stampedes peeling away from a stricken body.
The body that had called itself Zeus lay quietly on the floor in an expanding pool of blood. It closed its eyes and fell asleep.
“It’s Socrates!” shouted Tonto, struggling to make herself heard over the screams. This was remarkable for two reasons. First, it was remarkable that anyone could have spotted the shimmering blur that sped along one of the ancient oak timbers that criss-crossed above the Hall, let alone positively identify that blur as Socrates. And second, it was remarkable that she’d been able to enunciate the words “it’s Socrates” so clearly while drawing a Kirium blaster out of her waistband, emptying several clips of ammunition in the blur’s general direction, and hurtling over the buffet table to land protectively on Ian. She pinned him to the floor.
“Stay down!” she shouted. “I’m getting you out of here.”
Nappy drew two pistols from her jacket and added her hail of bullets to Tonto’s. And because gunfire is notoriously contagious, another bout of it started up in the vicinity of the policeman at the opposite end of the Hall.
It probably goes without saying that, in all 272 of the Existenzias that had preceded Existenzia 273, none had featured this amount of sheer pandemonium. Others had been exciting. At Existenzia 112, for example, the keynote speaker had demonstrated three surprising facts concerning the life cycle of squid. At Existenzia 224, a panel discussing fiscal history had explained the evolution of progressive rates of tax, generating much pleasure and animation. But for sheer adrenaline-charged, nail-biting excitement — for lung-bursting screams and student-crushing stampedes — you really couldn’t beat Existenzia 273. Its delegates had responded to the gunplay in a practical and surprisingly unacademic way. Rather than trying to work out theories concerning firefights and the relative trajectories of criss-crossing bullets, or even pausing to consider what funding opportunities could be generated through an empirical study of armed intruders, the assembled academics panicked and ran.
Think of the running of the bulls at Pamplona, but indoors. And with academic regalia.
Before Ian could gather his wits, or even open his mouth in preparation for one of his sessions of slack-jawed-gaping, he and Tonto were joined behind the overturned buffet table by Rhinnick and the man in the yellow trousers.
Rhinnick appeared to have been struck dumb. He was trembling like a fawn.
“Zeus is down,” said the man in the yellow trousers. “I don’t think that Ms. Napoleon will leave him. He’s been mindwiped.”
How can you tell, or How do you know their names, ought to have shown up as the next line of dialogue, but didn’t.
“We have to save him,” said Rhinnick, still trembling.
“We can’t,” said the man in the yellow trousers. “There isn’t time.”
“I’m not leaving him,” said Rhinnick.
“There’s nothing you can do for him,” said the man in the yellow trousers. “He isn’t Zeus anymore.” He peeped nervously over the upturned buffet table that was currently serving as their shield. “His mind is gone. Socrates shot him. His memory won’t recover. All we can do now is get Ian to safety.”
It would be nice to provide a transcript of the argument that transpired at this juncture, but it was drowned out by the shouts and screams of panicking academics. What Ian saw, though, was a series of wild gesticulations indicating that Rhinnick, Tonto and some man in yellow trousers held intense and incompatible beliefs about the best way to proceed.
Ian took the opportunity to grab an empty warming tray and convert it into a helmet.
If you were somehow able to plot the individual decisions of every human being throughout history on an extremely thorough and complicated graph, the resulting data points would be scattered across the X and Y axes in a wild, dizzying, random-seeming field. But if you were to take the average value of the points on this graph, they’d form a line. A straight line. A line that represented the median decisions of humankind. This median line defines the average value of all decisions and behaviours that have, on the balance, allowed our species to survive in hostile environments, to prosper where other species have floundered, and to invent digital watches while other forms of intelligent life were still obsessing about the smell of their own orifices. To be fair, humans obsess about this too. But in the face of this, as it were, they still managed to invent the digital watch, classical music, video games, and gin martinis.
This imaginary line — the line that represents the average, median score of the almost infinite data points of human decisions — pointed straight in the direction of the progress of our species.
That line, in a manner of speaking, was Ian Brown.
Ian was perfectly average. But on average — as has been pointed out numerous times in diverse places — human beings are one of nature’s crowning achievements.
“We can’t leave Zeus behind,” said Ian, demonstrating — for lack of a better way of putting it — considerable humanity.
That’s what his outside voice said. His inner voice protested that the thing they’d left behind wasn’t Zeus, at least not in a meaningful way. But then again — what really made a person who they were when it came right down to it? Did the sentence “it’s just his body” even make sense? Ian resolved to confront these philosophical issues at a later time — preferably in a place that featured a lower bullet-to-helmet ratio.
“We can’t leave him,” Ian repeated. “And we have to get Nappy, too.” His voice carried undertones of certainty and authority — traits that hadn’t featured prominently in Ian’s prior pronouncements.
Rhinnick, Tonto, and the man in the yellow trousers turned to face him.
“Okay,” said Tonto. “I’ll go get them. If it’s that important to you, I’ll just —”
She was rudely interrupted when a line of bullet holes appeared in the wall directly behind her. Seeing that time was of the essence, Tonto grabbed Ian and ran. Rhinnick and the man in the yellow trousers scrabbled along the floor behind them.
They made their way across the Hall amid a sea of shouting scholars and the not-so-distant sounds of high-powered gunfire. About a million years later — from Ian’s perspective — they found themselves in a brightly lit corridor just outside of Conron Hall.
The gunfire continued. Between Nappy’s high-te
ch weaponry and the bullets being fired by the policemen, it seemed that Socrates had his hands full for the moment.
There was a breath-catching and thought-gathering pause.
Ian looked at Tonto. Tonto looked at Ian. Rhinnick sat on the floor and rocked gently back and forth on his behind.
“Follow me!” said the man in the yellow trousers. “I’ll get you out of here.”
It was at this point, in the temporary safety of the corridor, that Tonto took the time to ask a question that had, for several minutes, been on the tips of several tongues.
“Who are you?” said Tonto.
“A friend,” said the man.
“Whose friend?” said Ian.
“Norm’s friend,” said the man.
“Who’s Norm?” said Ian.
“Ah!” said Rhinnick, hopping to his feet and displaying a wide-eyed look that had “shell shock” written all over it. “I can help you there, Brown. If you’ll cast your mind back a few chapters, focusing on the episode in which yours truly led the escape from Peericks’s clutches, not to mention the clutches of the matron as well as those of assorted lackeys, minions, and associates, we were assisted in our escape by a teleporting chap of unknown provenance. He had an unusual name. He —”
“That was Norm?” said Ian.
“You think Norm’s an unusual name?” said Rhinnick.
“It might be,” said the man in the yellow trousers. “Depends how you spell it.”
“So who’s Norm?” said Ian.
“I mean, it’s pretty odd if you spell it with a g,” continued the man. “But Norm doesn’t, so it isn’t.”
“Even odder if he spells it with a double u and a brace of silent m’s,” suggested Rhinnick.
“Who the hell is Norm?” cried Ian.
“The bloke who sent the teleporting chap,” said Rhinnick. “If you’ll recall,” he continued, “the teleporting chap was —”
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