Curiosity
by Isabel Miles
“Danger. High Entropy Zone!” The notice had been stuck on the lab door years ago, by some previous generation of the Prof’s protégés. It was an apt enough description considering that half a dozen recklessly enthusiastic physicists, all in their early twenties, spent up to sixteen hours a day there. Joe List and his fellow research students had left it up, to keep stray visitors out.
This evening, Joe was alone in the lab. The rest were still in the snug of The Sonsie Quark, which, until the Prof had discovered two new fundamental particles, and labelled them thrawn and sonsie, had been the St Machar Bar. James, only a day or so away from his doctorate, had landed a post at CERN II and Joe, with his other fellow researchers, had been giving him a send-off. The others were probably on their fifteenth round by now but despite half a dozen pints, and a matching number of tequila shots, Joe felt clear headed. When his alarm had blasted out Ode to Joy at full volume, he had responsibly drained his glass and slipped out. Back at his work bench, he’d taken his nine pm readings, then topped up his cold traps with liquid nitrogen. Work done, he was feeling cheerful, sure that James’s success augured well for his own future, and ready for another pint of Black Hole Ale, The Sonsie Quark’s speciality.
As Joe headed out, the dim green lights in the dark matter research area flickered and he glanced across. The padlock on the door to the normally sealed cubicle hung open. Victoria Know-it-all must have missed a beat in her, usually ruthless, efficiency. The newest addition to the Prof’s research group had inherited most of her kit, and all of that ghoulishly lit subsection of the lab, from James three months ago and, since then, the door had always been locked in her absence.
In Joe’s opinion, Victoria was unnecessarily secretive. She might have got a first at the finest university in the United Americas, but the rest of them weren’t stupid. If she hadn’t been so possessive about her precious project, they might actually have been able to help her with it. As it was, all he or anyone else apart from the Prof, knew was that she was building on James’s and the Prof’s groundbreaking research, while taking it in a more practical direction. Apparently she was planning to save the world by isolating a form of matter with no measurable properties except mass, and deploying it to reverse global warming and eliminate pollution. How, Joe had no idea, but he wanted to find out.
He pushed the door open and entered the forbidden domain. Equipment was humming quietly and every minute or so a figure on a dial shifted. Joe tried to fathom what she was measuring. That looked like some kind of atmospheric monitor. He leaned closer and, as his beery breath hit it, the dial jumped up by several digits. He backed off. If he messed up her experiment he'd get endless grief.
Trying to breathe lightly, Joe moved over to the bench. An empty beaker was sitting on what appeared to be a balance. The reading on the dial was 121.14793, obviously the beaker’s weight in grams. As he watched, it changed to 121.14794; the beaker seemed to be gaining weight at a miniscule rate. Joe wondered if she’d set up some kind of field in an attempt to detect dark matter. After all, its invisible particles, if indeed it existed as particles, might be passing through the lab all the time, like neutrinos.
Cautiously, Joe lowered his finger into the beaker. He was not surprised to feel nothing for it was empty. Then, as his finger approached the bottom of the beaker, the feeling changed from nothing to nothingness. Joe had just enough time for this thought to flash through his brain, for his fingertip had become a plughole through which he could feel himself draining. The green light went out.
It was after ten next morning when the first hung over PhD student entered the lab, and nearly noon before Victoria appeared. She got out her keys then noticed the undone padlock. Cursing her own carelessness, she went in and closed the door behind her. Everything seemed as she’d left it. Then she saw the dial, 136.48912 kilos. It should have read between 121.4 and 121.6. Her heart leapt. The intense gravity wave bombardment had worked after all. OK, the effect had been delayed, but her theory must be fundamentally sound. Yay! She did a quick sum in her head. This scale of carbon removal must have cleaned up Old Aberdeen's entire atmosphere. However, the rate of mass gain seemed to have gone back to what it had been before, so the effect was temporary. It was sod’s law that it had happened overnight and she’d missed it, but experiments are repeatable. If she could modify dark matter to absorb carbon at that rate once, she could do so again. An image of a Nobel prize, even if it would have to be shared with the Prof, flitted across her mind, but she pushed it aside. There was still much work to do. And now she had an extra 15 kilos of dark matter to play with. Victoria tried not to show her delight. She didn’t want to attract attention yet.
Everyone was feeling rough that day, and it was hardly remarkable that Joe’s bench remained empty. He was a bit of a light-weight and no one had been surprised when he’d left the bar early. Late afternoon, the Prof stormed in, looking for Joe. He had a paper to submit that required Joe’s data and the slacker hadn’t turned up for their meeting. Victoria’s heart plummeted as she did a rapid mental calculation. Joe would have weighed about 80 kilos, fifteen of which would have been carbon.