Through The Wormhole, Literally

by David Winship

  Polkingbeal67 was not too much of a problem to begin with. He was a relatively manageable mixture of bluff, bluster and bravado, but smolin9 was another matter. I swear I will understand the cosmos before I understand the astonishing dynamics and inner workings of smolin9′s mind. His ego, empathy and insecurity competed for dominance like a triple eclipse on Asthenia.

  We had made no progress at all and it was getting late. Reflected light from the twin moons was already shimmering on the pod wall. I was just thinking about how to wrap up the meeting, when, for no accountable reason, smolin9 finally picked up my draft scripts. Well, I suppose an egg will hatch if you give it enough time. As late as it was, perhaps we could now move on and use the scripts as a template for a constructive discussion.

  “The synopsis for this episode mentions an experience involving the White Mouse!” smolin9 exclaimed.

  “Bad idea,” said polkingbeal67. “Even earthlings know you shouldn’t work with children and animals.”

  “It’s a typo,” I said. “Should be House.” Neither of them took any notice of me.

  “I suppose it’s a reference to the time I fitted a foxp2 communication implant to the brain of a mouse when I first visited the planet. It’s important to cover that.”

  “No, no, I don’t think so,” said polkingbeal67. “We should tell the world about the one we abducted for analysis before your trip.”

  “But you confused it with a computer pointing device and tried to plug it into a microwocky.”

  “It was a typo,” I said. Smolin9 and polkingbeal67 paused for a moment, gave me a quizzical look and then carried on squabbling.

  “I wasn’t confused. It would have worked fine if you hadn’t been plying it with vitalmados.”

  “Mm. Should have been cheese.”

  “You crazy bubblehead! The comms port on my microwocky has never worked properly since.”

  “It was a typo,” I repeated, a little wearily. “It refers to the time you met the President of America.”

  They both looked at me with bewildered expressions. “You thought the President of America was a mouse?” said smolin9.

  So much for the draft scripts being a good idea. I really should have thought it through properly. We had achieved precisely nothing. Nothing at all. And I told them so.

  Smolin9 managed to look embarrassed, mischievous and thoughtful, all at the same time. He turned to me and said, “There’s no such thing as nothing.”

  And there it was. I don’t know how and I don’t know why and I sure as hell don’t know if smolin9 intended it, but we had a topic for the first episode. He was right. There is no such thing as nothing. Not in the world of particle physics, anyhow. And earthlings had recently been making laughable assumptions about the relationship between particles of matter and particles of anti-matter. It was all sorted. We would start the series by exploring the earthlings’ feeble and shaky grasp of science.

  Out of all the frustration and confusion, expectancy and excitement emerged blowing trumpets. Now we could get the cameras ready to roll! Certainly smolin9 was pumped up and enthusiastic. He told us he would like to spend what was left of the meeting summarising his dreams and aspirations for the series: "I start quaking from head to foot when I think about this series," he said. "We may not be great people, but there are great challenges that ordinary people may undertake. If we keep our feet on the ground while our minds take a leap in the dark..." Polkingbeal67 and I made it out of there in double-quick time.

  . . .

  The first day of shooting arrived. The set dressers were bustling around with props and furnishings. Over by the camera dolly, a group of engineers gathered to discuss lenses and camera angles, while others assembled the tele-immersion environment. With an air of relaxed authority, the director, onside91, monitored all the activity. I watched for a while as he stared up at the plasma lighting grid, issued occasional instructions and generally ensured that nothing was missed.

  For the most part, everything had been going smoothly. The exposition, mainly comprising clips of earthling scientists attempting to explain what they called the ‘Higgs bosun’, had already been filmed and edited. Following a few routine discussions, all roles and responsibilities had been allocated and communicated. Onside91 was an experienced team-builder and I was confident I could rely upon him to organise and co-ordinate everything relating to the camera crew, the make-up and wardrobe people, the set designers, the art department and the tele-immersion engineers. He and I had already agreed on detailed stuff like montage sequences, special effects, inserts and cutaways. Tele-immersion sets can be insane places to work, but, although there was clearly a buzz about the place, everything felt right. And yet, I knew that even with the best planning and organisation in the world it was possible that the arrival of the presenters could reduce it all to chaos.

  As it happens, it was their non-arrival that caused the problems. According to polkingbeal67, his cruiser had broken down and they had had to walk all the way to the studio pod. Given that they were only staying one muhurta away, I made the mistake of asking why they were three muhurtas late. What happened to them took a long time, but not as long as it took them to explain it! Apparently, they had had to make a detour, because polkingbeal67 thought he had spotted an approaching methane shower and was worried about getting his battle helmet wet. Then smolin9 had had to go back for his t-shirt, not once, but twice. On the first occasion, he had forgotten what he had gone back for. While he was away on the second occasion, polkingbeal67 got caught in the methane shower they had been trying to avoid. Anxious about discolouration of the shergs on his helmet, he took it off to inspect it and inadvertently dropped his universal clavis, without which he could not drive his cruiser or open his domus pod door or, most significantly, gain access to the studio. Unfortunately, he did not realise this until they were just twenty garfs from the studio pod. I realise now I should have cut this long story short, but… they went back for it, couldn’t find it and polkingbeal67 could only get into the studio pod by means of holographic projection. Which didn’t work too well, so, while they were telling us all this, polkingbeal67 was there, and then he wasn’t and then he was…

  Eventually, we sent out some of the crew and they managed to retrieve the clavis. Onside91 and I left the two presenters to compose themselves while they watched the microwocky-generated exposition. We shared a vitalmados lozenge outside the pod and returned to find smolin9 telling an earthling joke about the Higgs bosun: “A Higgs bosun goes into a church,” he was saying, “and the priest says ‘What are you doing here?’ So the Higgs bosun says ‘You can’t have mass without me!’”

  Polkingbeal67 was clearly unimpressed. “If I don’t laugh, is it still a joke?” he growled.

  Smolin9 answered with a question: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

  Polkingbeal67 was twisting his battle helmet in agitation. “If I zap you with a couple of micro beam plasma blasts, will you see stars?”

  Meanwhile, the microwocky feed finished and it was time to start filming. Onside91′s voice echoed around the pod: “Pan to the right and up a little.” Polkingbeal67 peered at the teleprompter. “Standby on the set,” said onside91. “Standby to roll. Action!”

  Polkingbeal67 grinned stiffly and said: “Scientists on the Pale Blue Dot…” Then he started coughing.

  “Cut!” onside91 called out.

  “Sorry,” said polkingbeal67. “I get a tickle in my throat when I talk about earthlings.” He started again: “Scientists on the Pale Blue Dot have claimed the discovery of a new particle consistent with what we know as the treacletron. They believe this represents a significant milestone in their quest to fathom the secrets of the universe. One of their top people has described it as the missing cornerstone of particle physics.”

  A microwocky feed showed footage of the earthlings’ particle accelerator housed in a 55,000-garf circular tunnel underneath the ground. A smirk was already pla
ying its way over smolin9′s features as he took over the narration: “The Large Hadron Collider was 14 Pale Blue Dot years in the making and cost the equivalent of 19 billion shergs. Two beams of atomic particles are fired, ha ha, in opposite directions around the tunnel and smashed together, ha ha ha ha, in an attempt to re-create the conditions from the beginning of the universe. Ha ha ha.” Even polkingbeal67 struggled to keep a straight face as his co-presenter sniggered through the script. He signed off with a couple of his football clichés: “Every experiment is a cup final now, ha ha. They’ve just got to take one particle at a time, ha ha ha!”

  The crew were in uproar. And I knew we had a hit on our hands.

  . . .

  Although MMBC announced record viewing figures for the first episode, we could not claim universal approval. Not even internally. I received wockyspeak messages from senior managers in the organisation criticising the programme for breaching multispecies diversity deference standards. Documentary director, winard59, said: "At a time when we are reaching out to new worlds with a view to colonisation, it strikes me as totally inappropriate to ridicule the inhabitants of the Pale Blue Dot. Although this planet has been deemed unfit for settlement, the principle of tolerance and respect for species diversity should be observed at all times."

  As the end of the 13th baktun drew closer, the prospect of interplanetary migration had raised the issue of preserving Mortian cultural integrity. People generally fell into one of two camps. There were those who advocated total segregation on the host planet. Opposing them were the more accommodating types who preferred a carefully managed process of integration. Then, because mutator technology had advanced to the point where interspecies transformations had become routine and the prospect of total assimilation had become an option, a third camp emerged.

  And then there was polkingbeal67. I discussed colonisation with him once and his response was blunt and unequivocal. "We should wage war on them!" he said. The topic made him as mad as a cut goopmutt. "We should choose a planet we like the look of, and wage war on its inhabitants to decide who keeps it. End of." It was not a long, protracted discussion. As for smolin9, he hopped merrily from one camp to another.

  The bottom line was, we had no bottom line. If we toned things down for the next episode, the ratings would drop, and if we continued to make earthlings the butt of all the jokes, the powers-that-be would pull the plug.

  It was a conundrum that knocked us off kilter during the filming of the second episode. Right from the outset, I could tell smolin9 was uncomfortable talking about earthlings' primitive interpretations of the laws of causality. The idea for the show had been conceived by the director, onside91, who had been browsing through a mountain of media material we had gleaned from the Pale Blue Dot. He had discovered a bizarre video of a highly renowned theoretical physicist known as Stephen Hawking. The translation, which we used at the start of the show, was as follows:

  "I'm throwing a party, a welcome reception for future time travelers. But there's a twist. I'm not letting anyone know about it until after the party has happened. I've drawn up an invitation giving the exact coordinates in time and space. I am hoping copies of it, in one form or another, will be around for many thousands of years."

  Apparently, Hawking had set out to disprove the possibility of time travel by sending out his invitations after the date of the party and then presenting evidence that no one had shown up. The video showed Hawking waiting for his guests. "My time traveler guests should be arriving any moment now," he said. "Five, four, three, two, one. But as I say this, no one has arrived. What a shame."

  It should have been good. We all thought we had struck an especially rich vein of earthling goopiness. The script looked good on paper:

  smolin9: "Earthlings still cling to such primitive interpretations of the laws of causality."

  polkingbeal67: "I know. They don't seem to realise that the law is not absolute.”

  smolin9: "Earthlings observe that things fall to the ground when they release them from their hands..."

  polkingbeal67: "...like Hawking's invitation."

  smolin9: "Good example. So what if a sudden gust of wind snatches it up and carries it up out of reach?"

  polkingbeal67: "Is that what happened to your invitation? Did you know about Hawking's party?"

  smolin9: "Yes, I got the invitation next week!"

  polkingbeal67: "Did you go?"

  smolin9: "No. I didn't see any future in it."

  But, try as they might, the presenters felt constrained and failed to sprinkle proceedings with any of their customary sparkle. Many takes later, we drew a line under it and smolin9 signed off with his football-related quip: "Did he allow for time added on?"

  After filming, I walked outside the studio with smolin9. As we chatted, we passed beyond the pod estate and stood gazing at the purple desert stretching to the horizon. Smolin9 told me he loved to contemplate this wide, open vista because it gave his soul room to stretch. Somehow, he said, the absence of geological features, natural and manufactured, made everything in his life seem more clear and simple and honest. Beyond the methane swamp which bubbled lazily like a fermenting vat of vitalmados, only a few rocks and bits of debris broke the tranquillising uniformity of the sterile landscape. In keeping with the spirit of clarity and honesty that smolin9 described to me, he started to divulge his feelings about the Pale Blue Dot, or Earth, as he preferred to call it. I had misjudged him previously when I had tried to lure him to do the series. Far from being unmoved by my appeal to his conscience concerning his earthling wife, Melinda, it turned out that his reason for hesitation was a fear of stirring up buried emotions. Not only was he missing Melinda, he was missing life on Earth and was desperate to return.

  As the light faded and the sky turned a bruised blue-violet colour to match the desolate wastes of the desert, smolin9 turned his dark melancholy eyes to me. He said nothing. He didn't have to. His mission as special envoy to investigate the planet had been funded at considerable expense by the Mortian government at the behest of our revered leader. How was I going to tell smolin9 that there was absolutely no way the MMBC budget for the series would stretch to a wormhole visit, especially as the Pale Blue Dot was no longer a colonisation target?

  . . .

  I always felt polkingbeal67's lack of a sense of humour was unfortunate. Not just for us, but also for him. I am sure it would have helped him cope better with the rough edges of life, especially in the pressurised environment of broadcasting. Without a sense of humour, working on a series like Earthwatch is like crossing a Daladax rock gully in a jeep without tyres. I was thinking about this when I was preparing the script for the third episode. I usually got smolin9 to deliver the funny lines, especially as he came up with a lot of them himself, but on this occasion I wanted to test everyone's reactions to polkingbeal67 getting the laughs.

  The topic for this episode was a narrative of Mortian trips to the Pale Blue Dot and an analysis of the effect of such visits on the earthlings.

  Our biomimetic mutators offer a range of options in the realm of mimicry, imitation, disguise and camouflage, but several earthlings, including the American President, residents of Roswell in New Mexico and, of course, smolin9's wife, Melinda Hill, had encountered smolin9, polkingbeal67 and others in their natural Mortian form.

  Any study of their media reveals that earthlings consider the likelihood of life on other planets to be very high, but actual contact with visitors from other planets is routinely covered up by the authorities on the planet. Sometimes the approach is outright denial, other times they prefer to airbrush such incidents with alternative explanations. I thought it would be appropriate (and entertaining) to devote some time to an examination of this phenomenon.

  Polkingbeal67 said he could not understand the insular nature of earthlings.

  "The truth is," smolin9 explained to him. "Their leaders are fearful of how populations would react if they knew the truth. And frankly, p,... you'd cause mass hysteria."<
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  When we were poring over our archive of earthling media, we recognised some now-obsolete spacecrafts from Morys. "We can't use this stuff!" polkingbeal67 protested. "We're using wormhole technology now and we must forget those old rust buckets. I don't like what we're doing here. It's totally embarrassing. To present ourselves as bumbling space novices is disgraceful. Have you any idea how offensive this is to me?" He was a proud person, and anxious to show himself and his fellow Mortians in the best possible light. Anyway, I decided to fill the show with footage of the 'rust buckets' in honour of our pioneering predecessors and in testimony of earthling chicanery. Clearly, polkingbeal67 had no concept of sentimentality for the past. Nostalgia was anathema to him. So he cringed and squirmed all the way through the two days of filming. The closing lines of the script were:

  smolin9: "These are great icons of our spacefaring history. Did you ever make a trip in any of these?"

  polkingbeal67: "Oh, yeh. I've made a few trips to the Pale Blue Dot and got mistaken for a hot air balloon, a Chinese lantern and a flying cigar."

  Poor polkingbeal67 glared at me every time he delivered that line. Was it really necessary for me to insist on a dozen takes? No, probably not. Ha ha. Well, obviously I thought it was amusing at the time. Later, I came to realise that polkingbeal67's behaviour was symptomatic of a deep-seated insecurity. His insistence on appearing combative, hawkish and heroic was a mechanism for protecting his fragile self-esteem. Even when I eventually fathomed this out, I was still a long way from getting to the source of the problem. But more of that later.

  . . .

  Up to and including the third episode, everything had been going perfectly. The series was becoming successful beyond my wildest dreams. In fact, if you included piracy figures, Earthwatch was generating the biggest audience for a documentary in MMBC history. You can imagine how I felt then, when smolin9 came up to me with a rather pathetic look on his face and said he was returning to the Pale Blue Dot for a while.