May 15, 1882
New College of London
The Gaul Library of Science
The London Herald and Observer put the headline in the largest, blackest letters that would fit the page: ‘Unnatural Storm Causes Eruption – Thousands Dead.’ Never mind that there wasn’t a single shred of evidence to conclude that a storm, natural or otherwise, had anything to do with the eruption of Mt. Merapi in the Dutch East Indies. And never mind that there were no statistics whatsoever that any more than a couple hundred native villagers had died in an avalanche of pyroclastic ash that was of course terrible and tragic all the same. One? One hundred? One thousand? It was tragic. ‘Thousands’ made for a dramatic headline that would sell papers.
It had been a couple of years since such a headline was printed. Rumors of a strange storm had appeared as far back as ‘76, but had disappeared as quickly as they had been reported. It was a recent enough memory for the journalists to re-energize it for the public.
News flowed in and out of the library through pneumatic tubes connecting all parts of the campus, but most especially the places where the students gathered. No sooner had one of the carriers, a bronze and rubber coated canister, popped into the receiver at the end of one tube then a rush of uniformed youths arrived at the Librarian’s desk to know what it was, where was it from, and did it have to do with the freakish storms? The Librarian barely opened the canister, which he did with annoying, purposeful slowness, when the contents were snatched up. No admonition on his part would stop the practice.
Maybe that odd woman academic should go and study the storm, they commented, reading each report as it came in? It seemed to know more about volcanoes than she did. The laughter that followed was only between two of the young men. The rest of the students glared at them, and someone wondered ungraciously if the loud-mouthed fellows had ever listened to one of her rare lectures? Brilliant. Few in the academic world knew more about the subject. Her modeling of eruptions had successfully predicted and equally failed. Didn’t they know she was held in high esteem by some of the best minds in Europe?
Didn’t they know she was ill regarded by many other scholars, most of them British, the retort offered? Enough about that strange woman who thought she could eclipse her own sex by becoming a scientist. It wasn’t natural. What about the storm? Was it man made? Did it have a consciousness?
Someone daringly suggested that there was a connection between the storms and the appearance of the mysterious flags: black, with its giant sun and numerous stars. He was promptly laughed at.
The students who commented and debated in the confines of the library and residences of New College were matched nearly word for word by the scholars and professors ensconced in the second floor offices. Was it a storm? How did one define a storm? And could it cause a volcano to erupt? Rubbish. Nonsense. Imagination out of control. Yet, the discussions continued until one evening when half the laboratory assigned to the lectures on Physics was nearly obliterated during an experiment to prove such a storm could be created by man. The Dean of the College declared the subject off limits to students and experimentation - though few heeded him.