AT THE AGE of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways – with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, Wait a second. That means there’s a situation vacant.
Now, many years later, Skagra rested his head, the most important head in the universe, against the padded interior of his alcove and listened to the symphony of agonised screams coming from all around him. He permitted himself two smiles per day, and considered using one of them now. After all, the sounds of wrenching mental anguish and physical distress were a sure sign that his plan was working and that this was going to be a good day, possibly even a 9 out of 10. So he might have even more cause to smile later on and he didn’t want to waste a smile. He decided to save it, just in case.
Instead, as the screams faded slowly into bewildered animal whimpers and the occasional howl of uncomprehending fear, Skagra climbed from his alcove and turned to survey his handiwork. His own alcove was one of six (an even number, of course) set into the sides of a tall grey hexagonal cone at the centre of the main laboratory. At the top of the cone was a grey sphere.
Minutes before, he had watched as the other five members of the Think Tank climbed into their alcoves, laughing and joking in their irritatingly trivial way. They hadn’t even noticed that there were connecting terminals built into the headrests of all of their alcoves but no such terminals built into his own. Why were other people so stupid, Skagra wondered? Even these people, who were so clever, were basically stupid. He had wondered this every few seconds for as long as he could remember. Still, thanks to him – thanks to the plan of which this moment was a significant part – soon other people would no longer be a problem.
The five Thinktankers stood gibbering in their alcoves, their eyes blank, limbs making the occasional spasmodic movement. It was interesting that the bodies of all five had survived the process.
Now to check on their minds.
Skagra entered a command code into one of the many panels of instruments that lined the walls of the laboratory. It was a cursory, automatic gesture. If a lesser, sillier person had conceived this plan – not that anybody else could have this conceived this plan – they would have rigged up a big, melodramatic silly red lever to activate the sphere. Skagra congratulated himself on not doing this.
The command code chirruped and the sphere started to vibrate. A confused babble of thin, inhuman voices issued from its interior. It was the sound of thought. Messy, disorganised, arbitrary, no words distinguishable.
Skagra raised a hand. The sphere’s command program reacted instantly. It detached itself from the top of the cone and zoomed towards him, coming to rest in his palm. Its touch was metallic and ice-cold.
Skagra’s fingertips curved round the surface of the sphere. He looked across the laboratory at the slumped figure of Daphne Caldera, her eyes staring moronically into nothing, her lips issuing bubbly baby noises.
Caldera – whose specialty was six-dimensional wave equations. Skagra had never found the time to explore this particular avenue of research beyond the rudiments. Obviously, zz = [c2]x4, everyone knew that. But Caldera had taken the study of six-dimensional wave equations into an entirely innovative area. ‘A whole new dimension, you might say!’ she had joked yesterday, and Skagra had been forced to sacrifice one of his smiles just to look like one of the herd.
Now, his fingers on the sphere, Skagra applied his own mind to a complex six-dimensional wave equation problem:
Σ is less than †Δ if ∂ is a constant, so β†ΔΔ + ≈ç if expressed as Zag BB Gog = ?
The answer popped into his mind: ((>>>x12!
Of course! It seemed so obvious now. It was obvious.
The process had worked. But Skagra decided on one more check, a deeper probe of the sphere’s potentialities.
In the alcove next to Caldera, C.J. Akrotiri was slumped, his fingers making tiny circling movements, his mouth hanging open, discharging a string of drool. Akrotiri, the legendary neuro-geneticist, whose research into dendritic pathway alteration had led to the cure for Musham’s disease.
Skagra thought of Akrotiri, deciding on a suitable test question.
And suddenly, overwhelmingly, a memory tumbled into his mind –
I’m stood on the beach, a skimboard under my arm, I’m trying to look muscly and confident but you can’t fake confidence or muscliness and I feel like a fool and I’m wondering why I ever thought this was a good idea and suddenly SHE is there and she looks so good and I look so bad and she’s asking me do I want to skim over to the island and does she mean with her and of course she means with her and so we get on the board and I’m dying inside and she puts her arms around my back and I kick off and suddenly we’re skimming over the water under a purple night sky and she rests her head on my shoulder and I think did she mean to do that and she doesn’t take her head away and I can’t believe it and I skim clean on to the island like a pro which I’ve never done before and she falls onto the sand and I go to help her up and she laughs and pulls me down and suddenly she’s kissing me and my head’s spinning and this can’t be happening to me – and then in a flash I can see it, I can see how dendritic decay can be reversed by the early introduction of a fluon particle into Genome A/5667 –
Skagra shook himself. It was to be expected that some traces of personality and experience might, on occasion, corrupt the data during retrieval. He would increase the sphere’s filter capacity to ensure such irrelevant sentimental trash would never again get in the way of the important things in life.
Then he released the sphere, which bobbed in the air, following its master as he crossed to the main communications panel. With another casual cursory movement he activated the message he had prepared earlier. Then he swept out of the laboratory, the sphere accompanying him.
His own voice echoed around the laboratory. ‘This is a recorded message. The Foundation for Advanced Scientific Studies is under strict quarantine. Do not approach, I repeat do not approach. Everything is under our control.’
The message began to repeat itself, transmitting on all frequencies out into space. But not very far out into space. Skagra wanted the message to keep any passing spacecraft away from the Think Tank and the word quarantine had a very definite effect on most beings, Skagra had found. It changed statements such as ‘I wonder if we could help those poor people, Captain?’ into statements such as ‘It’s the plague! Scream! Scream! Let’s get out of here with incredible reluctance and at incredible speed!’
The message rang out loudly in the central laboratory of the Think Tank.
And the people who were supposedly the greatest minds in the universe, flopping and babbling in their alcoves, couldn’t understand a word of it.
Skagra walked calmly – he always walked calmly – down the corridors from the laboratory to the shuttle bay. There were four docking positions built into the hull of the space station. Illuminated signs showed that docks 1, 2 and 3 were occupied by standard shuttlecraft, three-seaters with enough fuel to reach the outskirts of galactic civilisation.
Skagra walked calmly past docks 1, 2 and 3, the sphere following, and pressed his palm onto the locking panel for the unoccupied dock 4.
The airlock swung open into empty space.
Skagra walked calmly and confidently through into what appeared to be absolute nothingness.
He was on his way.