pHPIIIP In Training A piercing buzzer sounded. Ciciolina let out a squeal and almost fell out of her chair. The Professor looked up and saw that the clock had reached zero. "Ah. Time again." The Professor sprang away from the giant computer and lunged for a device shaped like a large sphere with tendrils of wire escaping it. He grasped it in both hands and came rushing for Ciciolina. The girl held up her hands defensively, looking ever so worried as she did. The Profes sor gave her a few words of comfort. "It's time ." He said. "Oh... yes, that's right. I remember now." With that she leaned forward a bit, closed her eyes and began breathing deeply. The Professor fitted the large metallic sphere over her head and hit a switch. There was a small humming noise and several lights went on. "Are you relaxed?" The Professor asked. Ciciolina nodded her head slightly. "Do you remember where you were yesterday?" There was a pause, and then Ciciolina spoke. "I had gone through the numbers bin. I saw all the logical functions. I couldn't believe there were so few. I crossed the bridge then and got into the abstract realm. It was there that I saw all the crazy ideas I have jumping around like puppies. Then I... I came to the cliff. There was just a large void... a huge gulf like a whiteness --no, more like a gray ness... I don't know, it was just-- empty! There was nothing existing there. I felt so cold. There was no life and I felt trapped like I was on an island." The Professor tweaked a few knobs on the sphere. "Good. You have come a long way. There are many who cannot even pass the bridge. You have done well." "Thank you." The Professors voice became quiet and very intense. "Now, Ciciolina, I want you to jump off the cliff." Her eyelids fluttered. "What?" she said. "You heard me." "But there's nothing there! I'll fall, I... I can't do it." "Nonsense. Of course there's something there. It accounts for ninety-percent of your mind. Now go on." "I'll try." After that, both of them remained silent for a long time. A little vein was bulging out on the Professor's forehead. He was sweating just a little, too. Ciciolina appeared to go catato nic. Then she started breathing in great gulps of air. Her chest was heaving. She began to look very worried. "I... I'm scared , Professor! I don't think I can make it!" "Come on, child." he said under his breath. There were no more knobs for him to turn. She bit her lip. She grabbed the helmet. She started screaming. "Ahhhhh! I can't ! I can't The Professor grabbed the helmet and yanked it off her head. Ciciolina collapsed into the chair underneath her. The Professor hastily put the helmet on the floor and held one of her hands in his. She rolled her head toward him and opened her eyes slightly. The Professor's brow was wrinkled. He held her hand in both of his now. Ciciolina smiled faintly. "I something this time." She smiled broadly now, showing her lovely white teeth. The Professor's face relaxed. "You ?" He returned her smile. "Wonderful. you're making excellent progress." Ciciolina sat up in her seat. She gave a few deep breaths. "I'm fine now." she said, giving his hands back to him. The Professor smiled, stood up, and walked away. Ciciolina sat there feeling drained. Her eyes were panning across the room."Every time I look around this room, it seems like it's changed." Her statement was directed to no one. The lab room was actually rather large, but seemed dwarfed by all of the gargantuan gadgets and quirky machines scattered about. Every size and shape of vial could be seen with fluids of varying color and consistency burbling, dripping, or crawling into them. There was an endless number of screens and scopes, each one with their accompanying side orders of knobs and switches. Some were testing the readings of the planet they orbited; Others were going over plans on revamping the space station they lived in; Others were figuring out ways to build better mousetraps; And others were genetically engineering better mice. In the middle of the room, sitting on a table, was an enormous collecting dish pointed directly at the ceiling. Tubes the size of pythons were streaming out of it, some connecting to outlets in the floor, others to some of the scarier looking machines. The Professor had trekked over to a huge computer terminal. He was intently studying the images on the gargantuan screen which showed all kinds of graphs and designs about the planet Sigmund . There was also a clock displaying a red, digi tal, number zero. The Professor twisted a knob which set it to a thousand. He hit a button, and it started counting down. Ciciolina sat staring at this man with whom she had become strangely fascinated. There he stood in all his glory: He wore a black mat of wiry hair upon his head, and three days growth on his chin. He was also adorned in his typical, light blue jump-suit which zipped up the back. He was already as thin as a worm, and that suit made him look like he was about to die from consumption. At that moment, a huge, green line of text flashed onto the screen. It read: ENERGY EFFICIENCY DESIGN PROCESSING COMPLETE. INITIATING SEQUENCE. "Ah, good." said the Professor. "Come Cicolina, there are some final adjustments to make." With that, he grabbed a few instruments and dashed out of the laboratory. "Hey, wait a minute! Look, would it kill you to wait a minute!" The Professor was sprinting through the twisting jade corridor. He looked over his shoulder and shouted. "Actually, Ciciolina, it would kill a great many people!" His voice trailed off in the distance. Her legs were moving. "Maelstrom, why do I put up with you..." Her panting cut her off. After a good deal of running, they finally stopped, and found themselves blocked by a huge green blast door. The Professor scowled. "Devil! They've put annother lock in this one. Get to it, won't you, Cic?" "Already working on it." she sighed, spotting a security keypad. She ran and squatted down next to it. On the pad were several brightly colored buttons. She began to put together the idea for a lovely color shceme, and touched the keys accordingly. "Come on," she said, gritting her teeth and punching a few more buttons. "Blast, Ciciolina, we haven't got much time." "I'm working on it, I already said I'm working on it." "Cic, I call your attention to the matter because I don't think you understand just how grave--" The green, metallic door slid upward with a hydraulic hiss. By the time she stood up, the Professor was already dashing in. She was on her feet in an instant and running after him. They rounded a bend in the hall. "Oh, life, not another security measure." The Profes sor looked squarely into the eyes of a rather nasty looking troll. The troll was seated inside a booth. The booth was stationed next to a rather nasty looking door. The troll ran a finger under his bulbous nose, itching it. "Sorry, Prof, been gettin' a lot of heat about you." His voice sounded like it was having a really rough time inside his larynx. Ciciolina came round the corner, wanting for breath. "Professor, I..." She too now saw the troll's bluish, wart ridden face as it glared down on the pair of them. Her eyes narrowed. She pointed right at the troll. "What are you stopping this man for, corporal? Didn't you hear about the reactor leak? We've got to get through!" Her voice had suddenly become deeper. The troll lifted his hands up defensively. He shook his head a little bit. "But... but, I..." She took a wallet out of her fatigue pants, flipped it open and revealed a rather official looking badge. " , Mister! We need that door open The troll began sweating. Troll sweat is an ugly thing. The Professor ran up to the security door, held up an instrument which looked something like a stethoscope, and began feeling around the door with it. "Ciciolina, we haven't much time!" The girl narrowed her eyes down to little white slits. She made sharp, deliberate steps toward the booth. The troll began twitching uncontrollably. She stood right before him; only the glass and the steel of the booth separated them. The troll was easily two feet taller than she was. Two feet broader in the shoulders, too. Right now, a little drool was running off his bulging lips. Her voice quieted to a whisper. " You ever do service in the Goaldian mining colony, boy? With a quivering finger, he pushed a button. He gave out a little whimper which was very unbecoming of a troll. The door slid upward with a rush and a hiss. The Professor bolted into the room. Ciciolina was right behind him. At one end of the spacious room was a glass containment cylinder with streams of pulsating light running through it. Lining the rest of the walls were different machines, lights, controls, vid-screens, and people manning all of them. high overhead was an ornate chandelier and an occulus which allowed them a view of the bright planet Sigmund which they orbited. Some of the men saw the two as they ran to the cylinder. Some kept working. A few others began shouting, and that didn't do much for Ciciolina's confidence. The professor squatted down next to a control panel at the base of the huge, glowing cylinder. He pulled out of his lab suit a flat, rectangular unit with a fair sized screen and enough buttons to give most people a complex just by looking at them. He plugged a small wire from the device into the control panel. There were a few suspicious beeps, then at once, streams of ones and zeros began to scroll across the screen. The Professor's eyes darted back and forth like angry rats in a cage. He pursed his lips. His brow was moist with sweat. Ciciolina squatted down next to him. "You still didn't tell me what this was for." There was a hint of annoyance in her voice. Still, the ones and zeros continued to scroll madly across the tiny screen, and still, the Professor continued to scan them. The girl rolled her eyes and blew her yellow bangs out of her face as she gave out a sigh. "Impossible man." As she was squatting there on the floor, a large, frowning man wearing a lab coat which hung on his body like a tarpaulin walked up behind her. Ciciolina noticed a lot of heavy breathing and decided to turn around. "What the devil are you two doing in here. This is strictly a restricted sector." If it wasn't for his improved vocabulary, Ciciolina would've thought he was a relative to the securi ty troll outside. There were a few scraggly wires of gray hair trying to get away from the man's scalp and he had a set of jowls which looked like a couple of pancakes nailed onto his face. Somehow the Professor seemed oblivious to this new development and kept on scanning his miniature screen. "I, ah... Well, you see, we ah..." Ciciolina was a little disoriented by how closely this man resembled a Filosian St. Bernard that she had seen in her biology textbook and for which she had to know the genus and species for next Tuesday's exam. "Sake of Pete, is that Maelstrom you're with?" "Actually, he was just showing me around." Ciciolina had it worked out now. "You see, he's helping me with a report. I have to get some samplings--" "Don't tell me she's your latest recruit." The scientist's fleshy head nodded upward to look at the Professor. "Taking on children now, man?" The Professor did not respond. "I'm not a child!" Ciciolina protested. "I'm almost twenty so don't--" The large scientist looked back down at her and gave her a glare that might have put a supernova into submission. "When you're spoken to." was all he said. The Professor had been silent up to this point. He had now, however, found what he was looking for. "Ah, there," he stated flatly. He entered in a few extra ones and zeros on his keypad and hit enter. There was a sudden gust of noise like an angry rocket engine. The lights inside the glass tube went raving white. "Quickly now!" It was hard for Ciciolina and the scientist to hear the Professor over the din, but when they saw him leap up and flatten his body against the back wall, they got the idea that someth ing big was about to happen and followed suit, lining up next to him against the wall. At that instant, the glass cylinder exploded outward and flooded the room with a stark, palpable light. A whiteness spread like frost on a pond over the entire room. The floor, the men manning their machines by the walls, the walls themselves, the ceiling, yea, every aspect of the room was, within a moment or two, converted into brilliant white energy. The Professor and Ciciolina peeled themselves away from the wall. The frizzle haired scientist looked out over what had happened. His jaw went slack. Every outline of the machin ery was still visible, but the men... The men were nothing more than fluorescent white silhou ettes running about, screaming and pulling their hair which was at this point simply tendrils of energy. "Good heavens, man..." The scientist's voice was faint and thready. "What have you done?" "Haven't you ever read your Physics Through History Journal , Edward? Matter to energy; Energy to matter, that sort of thing?" As he was talking, the Professor was on his little device again, taking readings and making notes. "Well of course I've read the... Wait! What has that got to do with it? You've just electrified all of my lab workers!" The Professor was still typing away on the keypad. "They're hardly in any danger, Edward. When you freeze water, it still is water, isn't it?" "Well... Blast! That's not the point, man!" "Their own bodily regenerative functions will turn them back to normal. You know, like sloughing off dead skin cells and growing new hair and toenails and the like. That's pure energy being absorbed, too. I warrant they'll be back to normal in a little over an hour." "But why didn't you tell them to evacuate? Bugger that, why didn't you get a permit for this experiment?" "Explaining to them why they should evacuate would've taken longer than simply let ting them turn to energy and back." The Professor was still punching keys and reading read outs. "Besides, they'll probably be knocking on my door next week, asking me to do it to them again." Of a sudden the numbers on his screen set into place. "And explaining to the counsel why I want a permit for this experiment would take longer than the formation of a solar sys tem." Then, without so much as a "cheerie-bye," the Professor darted past him and bolted for the door. Ciciolina was right on his heels. The scientist just looked at the pair of them, absolutely flustered. "You know, it's true what they say about you, Maelstrom; You really are amoral." The Professor and his blonde sidekick ran out the security door. About half a dozen of the energy men came with them. The troll was still a little shocky from Ciciolina's reprimand, and didn't ask them anything. "What now?" screamed Ciciolina to the Professor as he sprinted down the eerily lit hall. "Phase two." The Professor shouted back. "We'll have to give this one a little cook time before we go on though. We've some other things to do in the interim." At that the Pro fessor began to make anagrams out of the word "interim." He kept running. And then he came to a dead stop. "Hey, watch it!" Ciciolina exclaimed. She had to swerve to avoid hitting him, nearly loosing her balance. The Professor pulled at a wall panel but couldn't get it to open. "Here, let me try." Ciciolina said in a tone of subtle authority. Once again she entered into a moment of fascination with the colors of the buttons: bright reds, deep purples, pastel yellows. She just started hitting them indiscriminately, watching them get brighter as she did. In seconds she had the right code entered, and the panel popped open. "Good girl, Cic," praised the Professor. He dug through a host of syringes, white tape, bottles and pills and finally pulled out a neat, white attache' case with a large red cross on it. "What do you need medical supplies for?" Ciciolina inquired. The Professor paused. There was more than a little sweat on his forehead. He raised his hands and gently placed them on her cheeks, cradling her face. He looked deeply into her green eyes. Little tendrils of hair had escaped from her French braid and tickled his fingers. Her pink lips opened slightly and she let out a little gasp. "Such a wonderful mind you have. You really have to use it to its extremes. Think of probability. Think of what I've been teach ing you." As the professor stared in her eyes, he sensed that she was cataloging and reviewing all the events of the past week. "You mean... the transplant..?" Her voice was soft. The Professor smiled eerily. Most men who were caught smiling like he was now were fitted for straight jackets. "Good," he said evenly. "Good, you're learning. I call it a trans plant." With that, he removed his hands and began to leave. She gave a small gasp as he did. After some more running and panting, they made it to the downstairs laboratory. At the entrance was yet another door and another security pad. "Wait," said the professor to his cohort, "I'm going to try it this time." And with that he squatted next to the pad and began frantically trying to remember the code. Ciciolina walked around and stretched her legs for a bit. She unzipped her stylish, brown jacket and allowed herself to cool off. "Hey, Cic! Cicolina!" She spun her head about. Rather than coming from the Professor as the calls so often did, it came from down the opposite hall. Moreover, it came from an attractive brunette. Ciciolina's eyes went wide. "Marsha!" she exclaimed in return. They ran toward each other, met halfway, embraced, giggled a bit and exchanged pleasantries: So how have you been?/doing well/What are your classes like?/Oh, do you have him, too?/ I know, isn't he the worst/So are you ready for the test?/Oh, gosh don't even talk to me about the test/et cetera. The formalities ensued for several more moments, whereupon Marsha finally turned to look at the Professor. "So who are you with, anyway?" "Oh, him?" Ciciolina poked a thumb in the Professor's direction. I'm not really with him, this is, like just for a class, you know?" Ciciolina looked at the ceiling, muttered a few 'um's and then came back with "It's sort of like an internship." "More like an apprenticeship, really." Both girls snapped their heads around quickly to acknowledge that it was in fact the Professor who proffered that last statement. Neither of them were aware that he had been listening. Marsha turned her head back around slowly. She had a look on her face which suggest ed that she had just tasted something a little unripe. "I see... Well, uh, have you been hanging out with him for long?" "Oh, just about a month, I guess. Like I said, it works toward my major and it's kind of fun, too." "Yeah, you didn't tell me what your major was." "Oh, well," she was going to try to make this one sound as least dorky as was humanly possible, "I sort of decided on something to do with science." "Science?" "Yes, well, physics actually with a split minor in biology and computer science." "Oh, I see..." Marsha was giving her that look again. Let's face it, Ciciolina was going to sound dorky no matter how hard she tried. "I thought you were really big into drama though." Ciciolina let out a weak laugh, moved her bangs out of her face, and suddenly found the ceiling a very interesting thing to look at. "Yeah, well, you know... Always a kid at heart, I guess. When I was little, my parents couldn't keep me out of the community theaters and school plays. I guess it just stuck. I really do love acting though." Right about now, a pale skinned ork came trudging down the hall turned and walked toward Professor Maelstrom. Both of the girls did their best to ignore it, even when it started conversing with the Professor in somewhat obnoxious tones. Marsha went on. "Oh, well now that's fun. I met a beautiful guy once, said he was into acting as well. Did he like, know you? Did you guys ever go out or anything? Said his name was Derrick." "Hmm... let's see..." Ciciolina was trying to look thoughtful. She knew exactly who Marsha was talking about. Derrick: the stud; Derrick: The man who could do no wrong. He was so stuck on himself that it would require a jar of epoxy solvent to get him to mellow out a bit. "Nope, never heard of him." "Gosh, I thought he was just about as charming as they come." You would, thought Ciciolina. At that instant, the ork suddenly began to wail and convulse. They could no longer disregard either of them. The Professor snapped open the medical kit with a clatter and pulled out several inauspicious devices. One of them sprayed out a film of liquid on the ground which gave of a sharp, disinfectant stench. The other, which looked like some kind of vehicle jack, he threw into the middle of the solution. Then he screamed. Down on the floor! The ork did as he was told. The thing which looked like a jack hit him square on the spine. The ork's eyes rolled back and his limbs went flacid. Professor Maelstrom then pro duced an instrument which appeared to be a large, weighted meat cleaver. Maelstrom planted it right on the ork's sternum. Its ribcage snapped open like a mousetrap. All of it's grey organs were splayed out in view. The Professor's hands were immediately into them, working away like mad. He was in and out of the medkit like a mechanic fumbling for tools. The ork's eyes were glazed over. It's acrid fluid was pooling on the ground underneath and slithering off in different directions. The professor gave one last tweak on one of the ork's major arteries. Leaning over, he pushed the separate hemispheres of ribs back together. He pulled out of the medkit what appeared to be a good sized hydraulic staple gun and punched a few clips into his sternum, fastening his chest back together. Marsha was staring intently at the Professor. Her face was coiled up like a snake. Ciciolina was looking up at the ceiling, and scratching her head a bit. She then realized that it was awfully quiet and began whistling. Marsha opened her mouth and words started stumbling out like blind things. "...I...can't...believe...He..." then, turning to Ciciolina, "and you...I..." Then Marsha took on a very pained look. She clutched at her abdomen, curtly excused herself and dashed down the hall toward the women's lavatory. Ciciolina stood there, trying to think of something to say. After a moment more, the ork was back on its feet. It thanked the Professor affection ately and sauntered off. It was Ciciolina who finally had to unlock the door. The Professor pushed all the medical equipment he had been using inside and left it in a heap next to the doorway. "It amazes me that you're able to crack those codes," the Professor said. "They put them on a randomizer array which prohibits my even using laws of probability to figure them out." Ciciolina shrugged. "I suppose I can just outguess the randomness." Despite the denzies of mechanisms smattered about the lab room, there remained a good deal of free floor space. Ciciolina shed off her jacket, leaving her in her white tank-top. She strode fervently into a patch of empty, metallic floor and made a dazzling ballet pose. Out of it she did a jette' , a grand plie' , and a bunch of other French things. She finished with a few elegant swoops and turns and then froze in a position which required not only a good sense of balance, but usually a zero-gravity setting to boot. "You have excellent control over your motor responses, Ciciolina." The comment came from the Professor who was still stooped over his console. "Motor responses, eh?" Ciciolina dropped her pose. She stepped over to a nearby chair and slouched down into it, breathing heavily. She raised one combat-booted foot up onto a neighboring desk and proceeded to lounge. Several moments passed. Then Ciciolina spoke. "Do you realize that this is the first time we've had a chance to rest in... I don't know how long? Honestly, every day seems to be just endless rushing here and there, fixing this, tending to that. I can't even keep track of what day it is anymore. Was it yesterday that we visited the mining tunnels beneath the station?" The Professor was silent. Ciciolina went on. "No, wait, that was last week . Yesterday we... Oh, life, yesterday the big event was going to the day care to do those tests on that enormous toddler. Yes, I remember now, he was huge ..." At that her face cringed just a bit with the memory of the impossibly flabby tot who wielded a bottle of milk that could feasibly inundate the entire station. "What was that thing you gave him again, some kind of crane or something?" "It was a derrick devised to help him move about more freely in the nursery. It uses a synthesizer which could convert his own body fat into a power source to move around the swing arm." The Professor's eyes were still focused intently on the large screen before him. There were several more long silent moments. Ciciolina was tapping on her lip with one finger. "When did you say it first happened for you, Professor?" she chimed. "When what happened." "That you finally made it into your subconscious mind." "Three years ago." He said. "What did you do at the boundary?" "I simply willed that it not be there; I had it taken down." "You willed that it not be there?" "That's right." "But how can you just up and that, I mean, that was a huge barrier." "Perspective, Cic. You see..." The Professor's eyes glazed over and he began looking off into space. Ciciolina instantly recognized this as marking the beginning of an oncoming epiphany. "The mind is the single most remarkable thing. The only real success we have had in imitating its functions has been the logical functions of a computer. The mind is capable of so much abstract thought that most creatures or machines simply cannot fathom it." Cicionlina interrupted. "You mean we can't teach a computer abstract thought?" "I have tried, believe me, I have tried. On some occasions I have been successful, but there are a number of problems which have always presented themselves. "At first, I programmed a machine to draw upon input from a huge databank on wha tever topic, with the boundaries it chose to define. What ended up happening is that it would go through huge routines wherein it would consider every single option. It simply to contemplate all the various choices available. It could never decide on anything. Invariably, it sat there doing nothing." "What happened to it?" Ciciolina inquired. "Actually, I was under a government subsidy at the time, so they just took it off my hands. Heaven knows what they do with it now." "Hm." "Yes. Hm indeed. Now the next successful prototype I made was also designed with a buffer on the amount of options it would route. That meant it would start at the most logical or efficient and go and actually what it needed to do. There was just one problem with that one." "And it was?" "Well, the little devil began to consider itself superior to humans, decided that it simply wouldn't live amongst such incompetence, so it pulled itself up by its rivets and left. I haven't heard from it since." "That's a shame." "Hm? Shameful nothing! The thing had no shame to speak of! I tried to program it with some form of self pity and embarrassment, but it hardly ever accessed those files. It didn't need to. It didn't make any mistakes." "Wow." "Yes, well, I had learned by the third prototype that I would have to program some other boundaries into it. I didn't want them to sit and spin their wheels, so I gave them very few options to consider. Then I didn't want them to develop a superiority complex, so I de signed them to be satisfied with very little. I also designed them to make mistakes on purpose to prevent any vanity from occurring." The Professor looked about the room worriedly for a moment. Ciciolina just sat there, amazed at how quickly he could speak. "As it turns out, those were my biggest success. None of my projects has ever been as widely received. People buy the machines and put them to do any number of tasks. The only problem came when the machines began complaining about what rotten lives they led and how empty they always felt inside. Several of them got very angry at me for making them the way they were. At that point I tried to put as much distance between them and me as possible." "So those are your success stories." The Professor gave a single, brief chortle. "Yes, I suppose you could call them that. --If for no other reason than the fact that I had to fight through so many "Robot Rights" activist groups to get the machines onto the market. I was receiving all kinds of letters and calls about how the machines have privileges too, and how we shouldn't tell machines what they can and can't do now that we've taught them to think for themselves... Why do you think I dwell here on this tiny little moon in a third-rate space station off in the middle of nowhere? I could be sitting in some cushy, governmentally subsidized military base inventing more efficient ways to blow people up." The Professor stood up and began to meander. "But you know, the reason it sounds so odd to call them 'successes' is because right after I invented them, I willed that the wall come down and I learned how foolish I was in thinking that I could program machines with abstract thought when I didn't even know what it is." "Oh? I thought you were the local authority on that." "Well I blast it, but there's so much that I can't even begin to consider! Think, Ciciolina, humans use one tenth of their brain power --one tenth . That is such a terribly little bit." The Professor made clutching gestures at his head to illustrate this next part. "I have seen the subconscious mind. I have gained a knowledge of why you loose track of words when they're right on the tip of your tongue, or why fingernails scratching on a chalkboard annoys you--" "Ugh, don't even mention that." Ciciolina got the shudders. "--Or how it is that people can mentally do the calculus equations required to catch a ball, or why people remember some dreams and not others... I mean it makes sense . Every bit of it. And you know how in your college classes they teach you a thousand different little rules to account for this or that or to accommodate this fact or the other. --You know how they do that?" Ciciolina was getting a scared look on her face. "Yes, I know. They do it all the time." She sat up, looking a little defensive. The Professor was staring her dead in the face. He was still pausing, leaving her on the edge of her seat. Then he stopped, ran a hand over the stubble on his chin, and gave the punch line. It's all one equation. Ciciolina sat there a little confused. "Not a hundred! Not a thousand! equation! Do you understand?" Ciciolina sat perfectly still. No one spoke for a long time. Then, of a sudden, a huge whistling noise sounded. The dust particles in the room stopped moving. The enormous dish in the center of the room with the nasty tubing coming out of it began to glow an eerie yellow color. A huge line of text scrolled onto the computer screen behind them: BEGINNING SEQUENCE. The Professor's head snapped around. "Great Scott," he said. "It's time." He leapt like a madman for the controls, missing Ciciolina by inches. She stood up from her seat and began worrying with incredible skill. The Professor untangled a few wires, tangled a few more, and hit a few buttons. All the while, the dish began to glow brighter and brighter. He then stopped abruptly and gave everything a quick look. The whistling reached its apogee and held at an ear-splitting pitch. " Now! " screamed the Professor. He turned, grabbed Ciciolina by the waist and dove as far away from the dish as he could, pulling the girl in tow. The ceiling erupted. A seething bolt of raw energy shot down and smattered into the dish. The table it was on groaned under the pressure, but held the dish in place. The Professor and Ciciolina dared to look up. A look of utter glee spread onto Professor Maelstroms' face. "It worked!" he screamed. He got onto his feet and ran over to the giant computer with the enormous screen. His fingers went to work furiously on the keyboard. A map of the floor plan of the station popped up onto the screen. It showed all the rooms and their relative de grees of energy consumption and efficiency. Gradually, the power level of all the various departments went up. A green line of text crossed the screen which read: ENERGY EFFI CIENCY DOUBLED. I've done it! " cried the Professor as he raised his arms triumphantly. The energy was flowing steadily now into the dish. Cicolina got up and looked at it intently. She drew in a breath. "Oh see! That room we were in that you flooded with energy lies directly above us. And the window in the ceiling --the occulus... You used the occulus as a lens . Brilliant! A great gigantic lens!" "Ciciolina, you are truly a cognitive girl. Excellent insight. Now, can you tell me where I'm getting all that residual energy from?" She thought for a moment more about it. "If I remember correctly from the geological readings of this moon, It is less than a billion years old... Meaning, that the planet Sigmund still has lots of residual energy left over from its formation. Energy which you are collecting..." She turned to face the device in the center of the room with the energy streaming into it. "--In this dish!" She looked back at the Professor and smiled a girlish smile. The Professor gazed at her with adornment. "Wonderful." he said. "Wonderful girl." Just at that moment, the whistling noise went crechendoing down in its pitch. The beams of energy changed color from their brilliant white to a dull yellow. The green text on the computer screen was replaced with: WARNING: STATIONWIDE ENERGY DEPLE TION. "What the devil--?" said the Professor, turning his head around to see the computer screen. The schematics of the space station disappeared. Taking its place was the image of a pale-skinned man in his mid-twenties with tousled brown hair, a tweed suit with the sleeves rolled up, and a badly stained and worn red tie. "Cheerie-ho, lovelies. Fabulous weather we're having, what?" The Professor stared into the screen, absolutely flummoxed. "Dayman? What in heav en's name are you doing here?" "Oh, do go on. You ought to know full well that I wouldn't be here in heaven's name. Not to save my soul. But let's not be getting too metaphysical right away." "Nile, you are wanted on denzies of counts! You have no business being here! You are interfering with a very important scientific experiment!" The Professor was taking in great gulps of air and making very tight fists. "Yes, jolly good show. Sounds like great, rudgering, fun. Absolutely love to partici pate, but I'm just knackered. Presently got my ship out of a meteor shower, you see, and I can't do a thing with it. That's where you come into the picture, Elias." Professor Maelstrom said nothing. His entire frame was heaving with rage. Ciciolina was getting very concerned. "You, see, I thought you might be up to some sort of do-gooding, and thought I'd pop in and see if I couldn't pinch a little energy off of you." How is it that you are cutting off all my energy!? "Ah, yes. Well, as it turns out, I'm not truly cutting it off, just rerouting it to my ship. The repair systems ought to be able to use it properly." The Professor composed himself enough to manipulate a few controls on the computer. "Great Scott." he said, almost under his breath now. "Of course. His spacecraft is working like a great magnet, sucking up all the energy." "You mean vacuum." Ciciolina quietly corrected. "You're mixing your metaphors." The Professor started making anagrams out of the phrase 'mixing metaphors'. "There you go!" replied Nile. "You see, there isn't anything you can't figure out if you just put your mind to it." At that the Professor started fuming again. " Dayman! "Yes, well I'd love to go on exchanging pleasantries, but I really must be shoving off. Thanks again, Elias. You really are a lifesaver. Bite my tongue, there I go. --And just after I asked that we not let the conversation get too metaphysical." "Dayman, you wanton, immoral sycophant. How do you live with yourself." "Oh I have people to do that for me. Cheerie-bye, mate." With that the image of Nile Dayman disappeared off the screen, returning the schematics of the space station to view again. Scrolled above the floor plans was a text line which read: ENERGY EFFICIENCY FUNCTIONING AT 41%. Ciciolina looked up, bewildered at the transaction which had occurred in the last few moments. "Do you know him?" The Professor looked up with tired eyes. "I went to school with him. We had several history classes together. He was always searching for substance to the things he learned." The Professor paused for a moment in retrospect. "He determined that he could not find any. He decided that the universe was a great amorphous thing with no rules or consistencies. Always angry." At that the Professor began to look very much in pain. Ciciolina looked hard at the Professor in an attitude of compassion. She wrung her hands. "Is...there...anything... I can do...for you?" The Professor clutched at his temples and let out a few deep breaths. He did this for quite a few moments. "No. I'm fine. I'll be fine. I just had to access a logic node to tell me to put the whole affair out of my head and get on with things." With that, the Professor walked off, tending to his devices, and for a long time, no one made any sound. Then Ciciolina spoke up. "Professor, did you... all those colors?" The Professor stopped what he was doing and gave her a long stare. "Beg your pardon?" "I mean when you had me put on the helmet and look inside my mind." "Yes, I did. Why do you ask?" "It's just that... well, you seem so obsessed with logic and numbers all the time that I thought you might not... catch them." The Professor did the long stare bit again. "I perceive colors, Ciciolina." he said flatly. "Well... I dunno, it's just that... Well, I can't figure you out sometimes. I mean, is my brain the only thing that interests you?" She made a couple of odd shrugging gesticulations. "--I mean, not that I mind terribly, every other guy I've met seems to just be interested in my body, I suppose you're a pleasant change by comparison... But, I mean, don't you beauty the way other people do? Take the ballet movements I did when I walked into the room for instance. All you said to that was something about my 'motor responses' --and that was it! You didn't even comment on how lovely it was, or how artistic it was. I mean, everybody else does! Why can't you perceive it as that?" She stopped, folded her arms, and awaited a re sponse. The Professor was still looking at her. A light began to flash on a control panel next to him so he hit a button underneath. He walked a little closer and squinted his eyes down tightly. "Have you learned nothing in the time we have been together?" He paused again to let that one sink in. Ciciolina sat up a little bit and tried not to look hurt. He began pacing around the room. "I suppose you still have to lose some of your pride. Only after that can the achievement come." Ciciolina shook her head and let out an impatient sigh. "What do you mean, pride? Why are you always talking in circles?" She put her fingers to her temples to ward off a headache. The Professor stopped. He eyed her. Then he dashed to the enormous computer screen again. He hit a button. Instantly an image of Ciciolina popped up. The digital image of her on the screen was doing the exact ballet moves she had done upon entering the room. The Profes sor hit another button which overlaid a dozen graphs and equations on top of her. Trigonomet ric functions defined all her movements with precision. Arcs of circles traced out perfectly all the patterns her limbs and torso had undergone. A three dimensional array defined her position in space. Everything was worked out to the finest detail. The Professor looked at the images and smiled. "All children wonder why they must learn math." He paused, then gave out a chuckle. "Remarkable. In the history I have studied of hundreds of planets, mathematics were developed to great extents in the most ancient of times. They were preserved only by the tradition of teaching them. Then computers came around. Only then did people begin to fathom the applications of mathematics. But only when they left their own planets to begin venturing in space did they begin to imagine their absolute necessi ty." The Professor continued strolling. Ciciolina interrupted. "But I thought that lots of civilizations used math in lots of ways to make new chemicals and bombs and medicine and things." "What I am referring to, Ciciolina, are the most extreme aspects of math. Who could have guessed that the gravity inside a worm hole functions the same way as a fractal design? Moreover, think of what all the scientists must have felt when they encountered other planets and found they had developed the same math? Of course, it wasn't all as cut and dried as that, They all had differently sized home worlds, so naturally they all used different constants for their gravity, mass scales, weight, etc. --Imagine the confusion and difficulty when they had to interpret each others symbols? You think Greek letters are hard to deal with? Try Ferle shen. They structure every thing around the number twenty-seven. It made hexadecimal look like a walk in the park. My favorite was always binary though. You can get by just about anywhere if you know binary. It's accepted as a Universal truth that things will either be on or off. Posi tive or negative. Light or dark. Ones or zeros. Everything is made up of ones and zeros. Everything." "Everything?" "Everything. This planet, the stars, the station, you, me, everything." "Even our feelings?" "Yes, even feelings." She scowled. "I don't believe it. I mean... Well for instance, how could you not get furious with what that guy did to your energy experiment? I mean he ruined it! And after all the hard work you had done! Why didn't you get infuriated? How is it that you can just 'access a logic node' and everything's all better? That's just not possible!" "Of course it's possible. The brain translates feelings into chemicals and electronic stimuli. It's just a matter of so many chemistry equations and a little rerouting of circuit paths." She looked at him with contempt. "Oh, bother." she spat out disgustedly. The Professor then seemed to leap onto a line of thought which he had abandoned only several moments earlier. "And arrogance, you want to talk about arrogance? Would you be lieve that on every planet there is someone who has gone down in history for discovering gravity? Like it didn't exist before they discovered it or something! Makes me want to scream." Ciciolina broke into his monologue timidly, "Is that what you meant by pride?" The Professor stopped and stared at her. "Don't you see?" He turned and pointed at the huge computer screen. The equations were flashing brilliantly. "That, Ciciolina, that is the beauty. Mathematics have been around ages before life forms arrived. All the numbers... all the equations... We brushed them off as being confined and disciplined and logical; said that there was nothing pleasing about them. No, no, no... had to be the authors of beauty. Only once we had applied the mathematics we know to dance and to architecture -- then we could call it beautiful. But to think of the math itself as being beautiful? We find it absurd." He bit his lip. Then he looked at the computer terminal and smiled. He made a broad, sweeping gesture with his arms. "All of those numbers! They the beauty! The formation of a star; the movement of a bird through the air; A top pivoting on it's spindle --all of it is immaterial! It is simply a show of the equations which already exist! " He paused. He took a few heavy breaths. He sat down. Ciciolina gave him that look like it wasn't all sinking in yet, but she was trying to pick up on the gist of it. She was thinking of the cliff again. "But, what I saw when I leapt off the cliff wasn't math, It was colors! lots of them." "No math, eh." Ciciolina shook her head. "It was there. It's always there." The Professor paused and raised a finger. "But I have observed that you seem to function more on the right side of the brain, While the left side has always dominated for me. It could be that you're experience centers more around the vague and the undefined. If that is the case, then you would be the resident authority on abstract thought." "Well, I'm pretty sure that I'm not as logical as you. I mean, I have trouble believing that I'm just made up of ones and zeros." "Yes, well, you see, the left brain and the right brain perceive ones and zeros different ly." "Oh? How so?" "Well, the left brain sees them as being actual 'ones' and 'zeros', whereas the right brain perceives them as being straight lines and round lines." Ciciolina gave out a disgusted sigh. They both stopped talking and got really introspective for a moment. Then, the computer screen started flashing the words INCOMING CALL. The Profes sor looked up to acknowledge it. Onto the screen came a most extraordinary type of creature. It was purple, had one eye located slightly off center of his face, had a black set of leathery wings, and a great horn protruding directly from its forehead. It was sitting in the chair of a spacecraft which was especially built to accommodate its lumpy form. "Greetings, humanoids." it said in a rasping, hissing tone. "What is that?" queried Ciciolina. The Professor dashed to the screen. "I am Professor Elias Maelstrom. Why do you call?" The alien writhed a little in its chair. "We are wayfarers of the galaxy, and are looking for a bite to eat." A derogatory red light lit up on the computer console. It made a disparaging beeping noise that the Professor was trying hard to ignore. "Well, we do have a cafeteria on the station and you are all welcome to dine there." "I don't believe you understand," the alien kept hissing. It began to wriggle a portion of its anatomy which we don't have a name for. In fact, we don't feel all that confident about defining it as a wriggling motion either. More like a warble, really. "Ours is a deeply religious culture, and we derive our customs and belief system from the Gef lnian Bible. If you don't mind, I'd very much like to read you a portion. Ahem: In the beginning, the great, mystical Creator made the Gef lnians. Heartztag and Gemuchletan made he them. Ciciolina spied the flashing button now. A new development was that the words INCOMING METEOR were now displayed above it. "Look!" she screamed out to the Profes sor. "Humanoid, it is very rude to interrupt a reading of the holy writ." the alien hissed in Ciciolina's direction. "Now then, as I was saying: And The Grand Creator made for them Babbitt Galaxy-- "Great Scott." said the Professor under his breath. He pushed a button under the warn ing light to turn it off. It got a little huffy and printed the words COLLISION IMMANENT instead. The alien kept droning, trying to talk above them. " --That they might live and breathe and travel, and partake in the wonders therein. It was about this time that the universe began to have a problem with some of the Professor's wild ideas (like harvesting the residue energy from the formation of a planet) and decided that if a wonky man with wiry black hair and a tasteless blue lab suit could make preposterous things happen, well then by Joe, so could it. The manifestation was that of a large, intangible plane moving through the universe, turning stars back into gas and dust. Still the alien went on. " And he gave them dominion over all of the winged things in the air, "What are you going to do, Professor?" "I'm going to try to reprogram the meteor." "You're going to do what?" and all of the beasts of the planet, "But you can't just reprogram a meteor!" "Can't I?" said the Professor. "They follow the same rules of mathematics with which we are accustomed. It's just a matter of changing some of the variables so that it careens into the planet Sigmund instead." His hands were furiously typing away at the keyboard. Ciciolina just sighed. Right about now, the great cosmic plane got a little miffed about the Professor doing preposterous things (like reprogramming a mateor), so it started cutting through the very moon upon which Professor Maelstrom and Ciciolina were standing. It turned the metallic core of the moon back into molten lava along the way. yea, and every creeping thing which creeps upon the land. There was a mumbling of voices behind the blast door out in the hallway. Ciciolina's turned her head just in time to see the door forcibly wrenched open by a group of "Energy Rights" activists. They started screaming. "Maelstrom! We know of your little experiment to draw in great quantities of energy from Sigmund!" It was the leader of the group. He was bearded and wearing a T-shirt which read: 'I don't turn on the lights when I enter a room, --AND I VOTE!' "See if you can't keep them under control, Ciciolina." the Professor said coolly. His fingers were still moving furiously upon the keyboard. "Do what? " she said. The purple alien took in a deep breath. " And then the Great, Benevolent Creator pro vided spacecrafts for them that they might explore other worlds and establish dominion over them as well. The energy rights activists were getting mean. The leader started shouting again. "What right do you have, Maelstrom, to dictate the collection and dispersion of healthy, free, energy particles? How long will this ruthless exploitation of energy go on!?" The cosmic plane was cutting through the station now, turning walls into slag. It made a gigantic rumbling noise which caught a lot of people off guard. Ciciolina put on a stern face and turned around. She pulled out her wallet and exposed the official looking badge. "All right, punks. This is an illegal demonstration, not to mention illegal intrusion. Put your hands up and we will see that you're not severely beaten." So then the Divine Maker gave them dominion over all the underdeveloped life forms; the frogs and the fishes, Everyone in the group of activists was taken aback by this sudden display of authority. Some of them began to quietly walk out. The leader of the band, however was neither fooled nor impressed. " Down with the fascist scum! " he cried. With that he raced toward Ciciolina. over the spoolifans and the wombats, Ciciolina adroitly kicked one leg into the air, catching the oncoming man in the nose. There was a sharp snapping noise, and the man collapsed to the ground, unconscious. His nose was gushing blood. This got the rest of the crowd really panicked, and they began dashing every which way. over the mitochondrians and the humanoids, At that instant, the Professor completed his program and hit the enter key. There was a great whooshing noise as the cosmic plane cut into the Professor's laboratory and began cutting through the activists turning some into children, and others into embryos. Also, just as they were transformed, they all flattened out and began walking around like flimsy paper dolls. Ciciolina watched it happen and got feeling rather sick. Then she got worried, for the plane was coming in her direction. yea, and over every squirming thing which squirmeth through the galaxy. The Professor looked up at the screen again to behold the alien. "I'm sorry, but right now is a very inconvenient time for us." And with that he dashed to Ciciolina's side. The purple alien hissed out after the Professor. "Oh, no, you see, we truly do require nourishment, and as you can see, your species is definitely on the list. We shall be beaming down right away." The Professor didn't really hear. He was now aware of the great cosmic plane which was cutting through his lab and making a general mess of things. "Great Scott." he muttered under his breath. "What is it?" queried Ciciolina. The Professor observed the plane cutting through the activists and reversing their growth. "Yes, of course," he said, still in a whisper. "What!" howled Ciciolina. "There wasn't any meteor after all. The computer read this thing as being a meteor. What the devil did I reprogram then?" "Will you please make some sense?" "It appears to be a hybrid of a two and a four dimensional plane... Amazing." "Oh this is fabulous, all right. We're about to be turned into embryonic pancakes. What a thrill." Ciciolina was never able to use sarcasm very well. At that instant, several of the grotesque, purple aliens materialized in the lab room. They were wielding some nasty looking silverware constructs, and at first glance, it appeared that they knew how to use them. "Now then," one of the aliens hissed, "I think I'd like a thigh or a breast." Then turning to another, "Would you care for an arm?" Ciciolina and the Professor looked all around them. Before them was a multi-dimen sional, hybrid plane, bent on the age reversal and flattening of everyone in the station. Running all about were the energy rights activists, each one of them in a different stage of growth. At their backs were a pack of hungry aliens. The Professor was sweating profusely. Ciciolina was panicky. "I never thought it would end this way." The tone of voice he used seemed totally inappropriate for the situation. At that instant, a huge hole erupted in the wall of the laboratory. Pieces of metal flew into the room like shrapnel. A swing arm stabbed through the wall with an enormous toddler attached to it. The tot was wearing a very worried look on his face, and a diaper the size of a tent. The swing arm planted him right in the middle of the room in the heart of the confusion. He stuck a finger in his mouth and began to drool. Everyone's eyes were drawn to him. "I... don't know what happened, Mr. Professor, sir. I was just swinging myself around the room like you told me, but then it just got going real fast and I got out of control. I didn't know you were this close to the nursery." The purple aliens froze dead in their tracks. They opened their single eye impossibly wide. Their mouths hung open. Their silverware clattered to the ground, as their hands went numb. The leader spoke. "Oh no... It's the Destroyer! The beast of legend and prophesy which would rise up against us in defense of the humanoids... I never thought--" He was cut off by shrieks from the other plum-colored creatures who threw their appendages up and began running about madly. The Professor and Ciciolina stood there, utterly stunned. The enormous toddler went on. "I'm Percy, sir. You gave me this derrick... I--" Just then the hybrid plane smacked into Percy. Right about here, it started having another problem: As the trans-dimensional plane was originally born of the universes' inability to cope with a series of anomalies, another anomaly like a forty stone toddler bursting through a wall was enough to send it back with it's tail between its legs. "Wha--" Percy uttered as the plane came in contact with him. Then, just as suddenly, it shrunk back and rushed out of the room. It restored all the activists to their normal ages. They were all, however, just as scared as before, and subsequently went racing out of the room like a band of madmen. The Professor and Ciciolina were spinning around in an attempt to keep track of all this. The violet aliens had summoned their ship to transport them back, and they all disap peared in a sparkle of light. The room went quiet. The only noise was that of Percy's saliva dripping harmlessly on the floor. Then the Professor broke the silence. "...Then what was it that I programmed?" Onto the computer screen flashed the image of the alien ship. It began spinning out of control. It was caught by the gravity of Sigmund. It kept moving faster toward the planet. The metal of the ship was being crunched by the tremendous gravity. Eventually just disappeared into the swirling bands of helium. The Professor raised an eyebrow quizzically. "Oh, right then." At that instant, there was a tremendous beep which made Ciciolina squeal and jump back in apprehension. The Professor looked up and noted that the red, digital clock had just reached zero. "Ah!" he said. "Quickly, Ciciolina, it's time!" Ciciolina ran over to her chair. The Professor fetched the great spherical helmet and placed it on her head. She composed herself quickly, closed her eyes and began breathing deeply. The Professor fidgeted with the knobs and wires on the helmet until he was satisfied. "Now then," he said to Ciciolina. "Are you ready?" She took another breath in and nodded faintly. "Good." The Professor paused. "This time, what I want you to do is just put your toes over the edge, can you do that?" She gave another faint nod. "All right," the Professor continued, "now just relax your muscles, let your knees give in, and fall." Ciciolina did it. She expected a rushing of wind. None came. She expected to hit ground. There was none there. She experienced the sensation of falling for so long that after several minutes, she did not even feel it any more. The Professor calculated in his head how long this would take. He waited. Then he spoke. "Now, Ciciolina, I want you to open your eyes." She sat perfectly still. She didn't move a single nerve. Then, gradually, a smile crossed her face. A peaceful, relaxing, smile. She opened her eyes very slowly. Maybe it was that they were glazed over, or maybe they had actually changed color, the Professor thought, but they were certainly not the eyes which the lids had previously covered. She leveled those eyes right at the Professor. "What did you see?" he asked, timidly. "Lights." Ciciolina responded. Then she paused. She could still visualize the lurid hues, crashing and chasing each other inside her head. She mulled over the swirls and tints, marvel ing at the pure, abject wonder of the random designs. "Lights and colors." Her lips peeled back and exposed her healthy, white teeth. "...They're beautiful..." she concluded. "Good." said the Professor, a smile now crossing his own face. "Very good."