by Roman, Mark
*
“…And my next invention was a set of hydraulically-powered false teeth,” the youthful-faced twaX was telling the pretty stowaway in the ship’s common room. “For people unable to chew their food properly. Those teeth could produce a crushing force that could crack not one but two Brazil nuts!”
“So, what went wrong with this invention?” asked sylX, stifling a yawn.
twaX gave a look of deep disappointment. “People wearing the teeth kept biting their tongues.”
“Ouch!”
“Yes, apparently quite painful. So they sued me for every penny I had.”
sylX nodded sympathetically, but her mind kept imagining all those bitten tongues. “Seems all your inventions cost you a lot of money.”
twaX nodded. “That’s why I’m concentrating on my carpentry now,” he said, proudly indicating the wonky mahogany window-frame and wonky bookshelf affixed to the common room walls.
sylX stared at the window frame for a long time, but could think of nothing whatsoever to say about it. She turned somewhat desperately to fluX, who was the only other person in the room, the gynaecologist having mysteriously excused herself some time ago.
fluX was sitting bolt upright, his fingers gripping the arms of his armchair, staring straight ahead with bulging eyes as though he had just seen a ghost.
“Is anything the matter?” asked sylX.
“I hov it!!” fluX said excitedly, turning to the stowaway. “I hov just discovered anozzer of God’s puns!” He clapped his hands and grinned in a crazed manner.
“Oh yes?” asked sylX.
“Vy did I not sink of it before? Ze alchemists of days gone by must hov known it. It is so obvious!”
“Go on,” urged sylX, giving a bright smile.
“Vell,” started fluX, leaning forward in his chair. “Vot vould you say all of us are after?”
sylX shrugged. “Money?” she suggested.
“No, no.”
“Fame? Happiness? Friendship? Love? Children?”
“Nein,” said the behavioural chemist, a trifle exasperated. “Heaven on Earth! Zat’s vot ve all vant.”
“Hmm,” said the stowaway, not entirely convinced.
“Ve’d all like Heaven on Earth,” insisted fluX. “Or on Tenalp, or verever,” he added quickly. “Or, to put it anozzer vay: a vorld vizout hell. Vell, that is it! The second of God’s puns, a vorld vizout hell. Or razzer: a vorld wizout ‘l’. Zat’s ze pun. ‘Vorld’ wizout ‘l’ becomes ‘vord’. ‘In ze beginning was ze Vord’, and all zat. It suddenly all makes sense! Do you see?”
sylX was wondering whether the behavioural chemist’s explanation was losing something in translation, but she gave a nod anyway.
“Zat suggests zat God put ze proof of His existence into our language. Into ze very vords ve speak. Zere must be millions of clues to His being in ze very vords I am speaking to you now.” He paused to allow this observation to sink in.
“Also,” he continued, “Vot is Hell vizout ‘l’? It is ‘He’. Pretty spooky stuff, eh?” He grinned insanely and sylX had to look away.
“But zere is more!”
“Oh?”
“Ya. Explain to me vy ze early alchemists put all zat effort into turning ze base metals into gold?”
“Because gold is a precious metal?” suggested sylX. “It is worth more money than the base metals?”
“No, no!” cried the behavioural chemist, throwing his hands into the air. “It vas because ‘gold’ vizout ‘l’ is ‘God’! See?”
“Hmm,” said sylX for want of a better answer.
“Zat’s proof zat zey must have known of zis pun...”
It was at this point that the whole room shuddered and shook as The Night Ripple ‘touched down’ on the planet’s surface.
“We’ve landed!” said sylX as soon as she was able to speak. She checked her body to make sure it was all still in one piece.
“Earth?” said the carpenter, suddenly perking up.
“No. It’s an alien planet with aliens on it,” said the stowaway, getting to her feet. “Coming?”
But twaX just shook his head in response, his eyes clouding over and his right arm starting to twitch slightly. He had a strange smile on his face. “Earth,” he muttered to himself.
“No, it’s an alien planet...,” slyX started, but then gave up. She turned to the behavioural chemist. “Coming?” she said to him.
“No,” he responded, suddenly deep in thought. “I just have anozer idea. Vords. Ya, zat is it. Vords...”
“Okay. I shan’t be long,” said sylX. She turned and left the room.
fluX passed a hand through his dishevelled white hair and got up, deep in thought. He, too, left the common room.
twaX remained sitting in his armchair, his eyes staring blankly ahead of him. “Earth,” he said again. Beads of perspiration formed on his brow. They had landed on Earth. And that could mean one thing, and one thing only.
Trees! Billions upon billions of trees!
*
Back in her cabin, the beautiful, raven-haired anaX reached for her handbag. Out of it she pulled a mobile phone. Sternly she dialled a 45-digit Tenalp number.
“Number One?” she spoke into it. “This is thirteen stroke seventy-three. We’re approaching a planet, in the Pseudogravitic Continuum.”
She bit her lower lip as she listened to the receiver.
“Yes,” she responded.
She nodded.
“Right. You mean … I’m to go ahead with the plan?”
She nodded again. “Okay.”
It was at this point that the whole room shuddered and shook as The Night Ripple ‘touched down’ on the planet’s surface.
The gynaecologist picked herself up off the floor. “We’ve just landed,” she explained into the phone. “I’d better check out what’s going on and then get on with it.”
She flicked the mobile phone off and replaced it in her handbag.
Had anyone been watching her they would have thought her actions very strange, very strange indeed. After all, how the Dickens had she managed to get a mobile phone signal from a planet in the Pseudogravitic Continuum?
Chapter 4
As sylX entered the main control room, her face radiated excitement.
“The aliens,” she said, her voice bright and fresh. “Have we had contact yet?”
jixX swivelled in his command couch to face her. “We have received two messages from them.”
sylX gasped.
“Yes,” said jixX significantly, although he wondered whether he should be divulging such information to a stowaway.
*
twaX, his hair ruffled, his sweaty right hand clutching his favourite axe, his sweaty left hand clutching a large metal toolbox, his left ear sagging under the weight of a hinged, extensible rule, and his mouth bristling with several six-inch nails, blundered into yet another dead-end passage. He swore through the six-inch nails and tried another passage at random. At the very end he found the dioxystable modulo-cystometric airlock.
“At last!” he thought. He turned the handle, but nothing happened. He swore through the six-inch nails again, at which point a small red voice asked, “Beep, beep?”
twaX had no idea what the question was. “No,” he answered.
“Beep, beep, beep,” continued the small red voice.
“Open this flipping door!” said twaX through the six-inch nails.
“Beep!”
The carpenter gave the door-handle a more forceful turn and this time it came off in his hand. He sighed in frustration but, on pushing the door, found that it slowly creaked open. Quickly he stepped into the airlock. The outer door gave way without a struggle and he found himself standing outside the spaceship. He discarded the door-handle and gave a huge grin. He breathed in the air, filling his lungs to the brim, and then coughed vigorously to clear them again; the atmosphere had both an unpleasant smell and an unpleasant taste.
He was standing on solid, black grou
nd, which was flat and featureless as far as the eye could see. twaX looked about for any signs of trees towering magnificently over the landscape, but there were none.
He shrugged. It wouldn’t be long before he found one. Forgetting to close the airlock doors behind him, he chose a direction and set off, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. He broke into a run and, had anyone been watching him at that moment, they would have seen him running off into the distance, waving his axe over his head and muttering wildly to himself.
*
In his cabin, fluX filled in the final figure in the final column of a pageful of numbers. The figure was a ‘-2’. All the other figures in the final column were ‘-2’. He nearly jumped out of his skin with joy, punching the air victoriously.
“I hov done it!” he cried. “I hov jolly-vell done it! Zis is probably ze most important discovery in ze history of Humankind!”
“Really?” said LEP’s presence in the dark cabin.
“Ya. Hold on.” fluX frantically searched through the pile of petromorphic ytterbium cellulose sheets strewn haphazardly over his desk. The sheets were covered with tables of figures, small multi-coloured graphs and rapidly scribbled calculations. On finding the sheet he was after, he neatly copied out an equation from it onto a blank sheet. He underlined the equation twice and ringed it in red. Then, in large lettering, he wrote above it: ‘THE EQUATION OF STATE’. This, too, he underlined several times. He drew a box encircling it in red. He gave the box a thick red border. Then he drew four large arrows pointing to the four corners of the box. He enlarged the arrows and added pillars on either side of the box. Finally, he sat back to admire it.
“Very nice,” said LEP. “But is it Art?”
“Vot?” asked fluX, looking up from the sheet.
“Never mind,” said LEP.
“You vant to know vot zis is?”
“No,” said LEP quickly.
“I hov just come even closer to proving ze existence of God!”
“Oh dear,” said LEP, wondering how to change the subject.
“Some years ago I inwented the new Science of Quantum Semantics,” fluX started explaining. “I derived it by applying ze laws of Quantum Mechanics to ze English language. My ideas vere videly scorned and ridiculed.”
LEP said nothing.
“But now I sink I vill have ze last laugh! I sink zat Quantum Semantics may be ze answer to proving God exists! After all, ze proof is in ze English language; in ze very vords ve speak.”
fluX beamed ecstatically.
“Let me explain,” he said. “Ze Science of Quantum Semantics says zat all ze letters of ze alphabet are related. Indeed, zat zey are all merely different states of ze same basic particle: ze alphabeton. And vot I have just done is to derive ze Equation of State for ze alphabeton. And here it is!”
He indicated an equation written on the sheet of petromorphic ytterbium cellulose. It read:
A - [P + T + E(1 + C)] + (-1)V(L + V - 3) exp(A - L - 2) x 106 + 2 = 0
“And it works!”
“Fascinating,” said LEP, not without a trace of sarcasm.
“You see, all zese wariables stand for ze warious quantum numbers of ze letters: A is ze number of angles in ze letter, P is its number of wertices, V is ze letter’s ‘vowel number’, and so on.”
“Interesting.”
“And all ze letters satisfy zis Equation of State.”
“Intriguing.”
“Zis means zat if you give me any symbol, I can count up ze number of points it has, its curwature number, and so on.”
“Spellbinding,” said LEP, now choosing his words from a thesaurus.
“Substitute ze walues into ze equation and, if ze equation is satisfied, zen ze symbol must be a letter of ze alphabet!”
fluX looked at his equation with the pride of a father viewing his newborn child.
“Beguiling.”
“You agree it is important, ya?”
“Er, what did you say the equation was for again?” asked LEP.
fluX gave a look of exasperation. “It lets you vork out vether a symbol is an alphabeton – a letter of ze alphabet!”
“Can’t you tell this just by looking at it?”
“No, you are missing ze point!”
“Sorry.”
“Zis equation allows me to discover new letters of ze alphabet. Previously unknown letters of ze alphabet. For, any symbol zat satisfies zis equation must also be an alphabeton!” He shook his head in sheer wonder. “Can you imagine vot discoveries I can make vis zis?”
LEP tried, but failed.
Chapter 5
“What did they have to say?” asked sylX breathlessly.
“Who?” asked jixX.
“The aliens,” said the stowaway, her pale blue eyes sparkling with excitement.
“Oh, them.” jixX was still unsure whether to reveal mission details to her. “You’d better ask LEP. I’ve got some tests to run,” he said, pressing buttons at random on the control panel in front of him.
“Well, LEP?” asked sylX, flashing her pretty smile.
“Not really. I feel a bit weak right now. And you?”
sylX laughed. “That wasn’t the question, LEP, and you know it,” she said charmingly. “The aliens. Who are they? What are they? What do they look like? Are they dangerous? What do they eat? What do they believe in? How technologically advanced are they?” Her eyes literally twinkled as she spoke.
“Er,” said LEP a trifle uncertainly. “We’ve thought of a name for them: the Mamm aliens.”
“Go on,” urged the stowaway, bursting with curiosity.
“Er, that’s pretty much it, so far,” admitted LEP. “Except that they can fire bricks through spaceship windows from a great distance.”
“Bricks!” exclaimed the stowaway. “What, you mean like this one?” She picked up the brick from the desk where jixX had left it. ‘Landing permission granted,’ she read and looked up. “Wow, this is fantastic! They can do joined-up writing!” She showed the brick to anaX who had just entered the control room, but the latter seemed preoccupied.
“This is so great,” said sylX. “During all my years of stowing away I’ve been dreaming of this moment. To meet aliens! A first encounter with an extraterrestrial species. I’ve been on so many ships – and nothing. And now, at last the big moment has come!”
jixX gave a slightly embarrassed nod, not quite knowing what to say. He pushed a few more buttons. There followed a long, pregnant pause, which was suddenly broken by the sound of a door swishing open.
jixX heard a gasp of astonishment from anaX, followed shortly by one from sylX. He swivelled his anti-inertial command couch and he, too, let out a gasp.
Slowly entering the control room with a quiet squelching sound was a round, slimy, green blob of about knee height. It slid to the middle of the room leaving a sticky green trail in its wake as drops of slimy gunge exuded from it. Everyone held their breath as it came nearer and nearer.
“Hello,” it said, which made them all gasp again. “My name’s Chris. Welcome to Ground.”
jixX, sylX and anaX looked at each other. Not only was the slimy green blob speaking perfect English, but it had a posh, Oxbridge accent.
“I happened to be passing,” continued Chris, “and saw your front door open; so I thought I’d just pop in to say hello.”
“Hello,” responded three uncertain voices.
“You’re new here, aren’t you,” continued the slimy green blob.
jixX was about to respond when there was a loud click in a corner of the control room. “You’re new here, aren’t you,” repeated an indistinct, crackling metallic voice from a piezzothermal inductance loudspeaker. It made everyone, including the blob Chris, look round, startled.
“I say, an echo,” said Chris.
“I say, an echo,” repeated the indistinct, crackling metallic voice from the piezzothermal inductance loudspeaker.
“No,” explained LEP. “That’s ALI – the Alien Language Interp
reter.”
“No,” repeated the indistinct, crackling metallic voice, but in a slightly more refined accent than before. “That’s ALI – the Alien Language Interpreter.”
“It’s triggered by the presence of an alien life-form,” continued LEP. “It records the alien’s speech and uses cryptographic analysis to learn its language. When it’s learnt enough, it automatically switches on and starts acting as an interpreter.”
“It’s triggered by the...,” started ALI and went on to repeat precisely what LEP had just said, but using the refined accent.
“But this alien life-form speaks English!” said jixX, wondering whether the term ‘alien life-form’ might be slightly insulting to Chris.
“But this alien life-form speaks English!” repeated ALI in more refined tones.
“That’s why ALI switched on so soon,” explained LEP.
ALI translated this for the benefit of the alien life-form.
“Is there any way to turn it off?” asked jixX.
“Is there any way to turn it off?” translated the machine.
“Yes,” said LEP.
“No,” translated the machine.
“Just press the red button on its control panel,” instructed LEP.
The machine said nothing, although its loudspeaker continued to crackle. It became even more silent when jixX had pressed the red button.
“Sorry about all that,” said jixX to Chris. “Technology gone mad.” He gave a sheepish smile.
“That’s alright,” said Chris. “No need to apologize.”
“The name’s jixX,” said jixX. He made to offer the blob a handshake, but then thought better of it, and sort of waved at it instead. “I’m the captain of this ship.” He introduced the slimy green blob to the other two and to LEP.
“Where are you from?” asked Chris, trying to make polite conversation.
“Tenalp,” answered jixX.
“Ah, Tenalp,” said Chris.
“You know it?” asked jixX, surprised.
“No. Never heard of it.”
“Ah.”
The slimy green blob looked about the main control room. “Nice place you have here.”
“Yes, we like it,” said jixX, not realizing what he was saying. He gave the two others a nervous smile as though afraid they might contradict him.