Mad Science Cafe

by Ross, Deborah J.

  o0o

  Wallace left the baby with the nanny to attend the premiere of Evelyn’s movie. He slipped unnoticed into the back of the auditorium filled with two hundred history majors. He wore small filter plugs in his nose—the prototype the FBI had not confiscated—the only way he could tolerate crowds any longer.

  He took them out the moment the projection screen came to life. The camera panned across an ocean that pounded a rocky shore. Wallace smelled salt and fish and seaweed on the cold wind. The ragged coastline became the jutting ramparts of a castle. New scents assailed the audience. Mud in an enclosed courtyard. Mold on damp stone.

  People clad in ancient peasant garb strolled across the scene. Their unwashed bodies, the sweat of hard labor and anxiety over daily trials and tribulations, replaced the sharp clean aroma of the open sea.

  To Wallace’s sensitized nose the combination smelled like fear. He realized that for the average peasant, even in third world countries today, life represented fear.

  Adjunct and un-tenured professors lived the same way.

  No wonder so many less modern societies revolved around their faith. People needed to pray daily for survival and thank the heavens for each day they came through unscathed.

  A different way of life. A different way of thinking.

  He sat forward, fascinated and more interested in history than ever before. This was how his invention needed to be used. His love for Evelyn increased as he began to understand her passion.

  Unfortunately, her students took a different view. The sound of gagging accompanied the movie as the camera followed a woman with a child at her breast into a tiny, dark hut. The students vacated the auditorium in droves. Mud, pigs, disease, rotting food, and open sewers made them ill.

  The smell of vomit, closer and more real than provided by the movie, added its own distinct aroma.

  But they were natural scents, not chemical. Wallace reveled in them.

  Humanity had become so detached from reality, scrubbed it clean, and sterilized it, that they could no longer use their noses as they were designed to work. People didn’t trust their noses like they did their eyes and ears.

  And so they could be manipulated by their noses. Or they felt abused when presented by reality.

  They were embarrassed by the stink of life.

  “I hope total reality does not become a trend in the movies,” he mused when he tried to talk to Evelyn that night about the disaster with her students.

  His mind began working on how to get the filter production back from the government.

  “I don’t care about movies,” she said. “I care about helping my students re-live history, to get an honest feel for life in times past so they can better understand the people and therefore the politics and great historical events.”

  o0o

  While Wallace contemplated the ethics of his invention and the need for it in venues outside of mass manipulation, the Tenure Committee summoned him before their august presence.

  At last!

  He dressed in his best suit, a new custom tailored one in charcoal gray, with a subdued tie and blindingly white shirt with French cuffs and eighteen carat gold cuff links with a tiny diamond set in the center.

  He paused outside the door to the conference room to gather himself and settle his shoulders. Out of habit he sniffed, assessing his surroundings.

  The acrid scent of a predator on the hunt stung his nostrils.

  Where?

  A surge of defensive adrenaline coursed through his system, sharpening all of his senses. His muscles bunched, ready to flee or fight. He sniffed again.

  The scent was strongest at the closed doorway.

  He took three long deep breaths, calming himself, forcing his mind to take over his instincts.

  Yes, inside. The TC had become predatory, a life or death committee. And glad about it. They wanted to take something very precious from him. That’s what predators did.

  If not his life, then what? They’d already denied him tenure.

  Suspicion crowded out his fear. He’d learned a few things about patent law and invention ethics over the past few years.

  He flipped out his cell phone and speed dialed his stock broker. “They can’t take the money if they can’t find it.”

  With a few terse orders he sold all of his stock in Sensaroma and other diversified industries, and laundered the money through the Cayman Islands.

  The dumping of a large amount of the stock might create a slump in the stock market. But soon the numbers would rally as investors rushed to buy a piece of the most amazing innovation to come on the market in decades.

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” He dialed the Homeland Security agent who pestered him most frequently. Time for some interesting facts to go into the background checks of key members of the University Administration and the TC.

  Time for the FBI to pay for confiscating and burying the filtering unit.

  With renewed confidence and armored against his enemies, Wallace entered the conference room as if he owned the university.

  “Our lawyers inform us that since you developed Sensaroma while in our employ as an Assistant Professor of Bio-Physics, the patents belong to the University,” Dr. Pretentious informed Wallace without preamble.

  “We will expect the signed patent transfer documents within twenty-four hours,” Dr. Beta continued. “Along with royalty statements and a check for the entire amount paid to you.”

  “You will of course be rewarded with a small bonus for bringing such a valuable commodity to Vasco Da Gama University,” Dr. Shallow concluded.

  “Does tenure come with that bonus?” Wallace snarled at them. His temper boiled, but he kept it under control. As much as he disliked and distrusted the administration, he genuinely liked teaching, shared his students’ joy in new discoveries, and felt at home on the tree-lined walks and old brick buildings on campus.

  “Of course, you’ll get tenure. Once all of the legalities are completed and there is an opening for a tenured position in your department,” Dr. Pretentious said graciously.

  “If I’d known I could have bought tenure, I’d have taken out a loan years ago. You rejected the invention at its inception, and therefore you have no claim. My lawyers will contact your lawyers.” Wallace stalked out of the conference room. “And I bet my lawyers are smarter and more powerful than yours.”

  At the close of business that day, instead of patent transfer documents, the TC received a counter law suit. Wallace tendered his resignation in a separate envelope, something he should have done when he received the first royalty check for six times his annual salary. But his bond with the college community had prevailed. He couldn’t afford those emotions anymore.

  Homeland Security did their work. The TC exploded in an uproar over a scandal of bribes, sex for favors, and classroom ethics. The University Chancellor himself granted Wallace tenure. A week later, Wallace accepted the position of Dean of Research and Graduate Studies, along with a seat on the newly revised Tenure Committee.

  The next night on the national news, a reporter in the field employed Sensaroma to their coverage of the latest revolution and terrorist massacre in a third world country. Amongst the scenes of horror showing the wounded and dying, their screams of pain and the mourning wails of the survivors, came the full array of vile odors: Blood, excrement, vomit, and the sweat of fear.

  Two hours later, the most popular television series, a forensics drama, brought the reality of violent death and detection into everyone’s living rooms. The actors investigated a homeless man, dead three days, his corpse ravaged by desert scavengers and insects.

  Six minutes into the script, the network went black for nearly two minutes. When they came back, they played a repeat of an innocuous sit com filmed long before Sensaroma became a part of everyday life.

  Wallace set aside his doubts about the use and abuse of his invention. He called the government. “Want a major law suit on your hands from every television and
movie studio in the country?” he asked, using a flippant tone to mask his own panic.

  Much grumbling and mumbling on the other end.

  “Then release the lock on my patent for a filter and allow production to start again. Now.” He didn’t tell the Pentagon he’d already bought a factory and secretly manufactured new and improved swimming nose plugs that didn’t really keep out water but did reduce odors. He’d warehoused a million units with another million in production.

  “No one wants to live through their noses,” Wallace explained patiently to the Intelligence Czar. “All they want is sanitized niceness. Niceness doesn’t inform. It masks, it deceives, it betrays our sensibilities. But it still leaves us open to manipulation.”

  “Like you are manipulating me,” groaned the much maligned man.

  “No more than you do to the public every day. Niceness makes life comfortable.”

  “Comfortable. Reality isn’t comfortable. It never has been.”

  “That’s why we need to pretend it is.”

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll have the papers in your hands by noon.”

  “Make that ten. I have a world to save from the stink of reality.”

  “Value For O”

  Jennifer Stevenson

  “I’m telling you, Schatzi, it could work!”

  “Not tonight, Gerald.”

  “Just posit it, will you? What if we’ve been approaching it all wrong? Open your mind to the idea. Suppose great sex is an absolute value?”

  “Like…like forty-one-point-eight-eight-three?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Please. Can’t you just wrap your head around the concept that you’re a horndog without a clue?”

  “You always descend to ad hominem arguments when you run out of data.”

  “Gerald, I have data. I’m up to here with data. Every time we try this I get the cramp of a lifetime and you get off and I swear never ever again until next time.”

  “If we don’t keep trying we’ll never know. That’s the foundation of research.”

  “If we have a dumb assumption, we’ll never get there. That’s because great sex for men, are you listening, Gerald, is an absolute value. I got a woody, I got off. It’s that simple. For women, it’s different because, news flash, Gerald, we’re not built like you. If you were a biologist instead of a mathematician, you might be able to grasp that. But you’re not interested in icky squishy sciences full of nonabsolutes and infinitely multiplying variables.”

  “I’m interested in squishy. I have infinite interest in squishy.”

  “You don’t even watch when you wash yourself. And you wear those foodservice gloves.”

  “You wash your hands when you get mouse brains on them.”

  “Mouse brains are not the same thing at all.”

  “Duh.”

  “You don’t know where they’ve been.”

  “You know exactly where they’ve been. You sliced ’em out of the mouse’s head yourself.”

  “My body parts are not mouse brains!”

  “Inarguably true.”

  *snf*

  “Don’t you want to know my new methodology?”

  “God, you’re persistent.”

  “It’s a good one. It’s got…sliding values in a fixed yet elastic relationship.”

  “Oo. Talk math to me.”

  “Knew you’d like it. Picture this moon rover model as one primary.”

  “It’s got wheels, Gerald.”

  “This Chewbacca is the other primary.”

  “You like me hairy?”

  “Stay with me, okay? We take up a fixed yet elastic relationship…we move in a direction, any direction you want…but elastically. We can make microadjustments in the value of the space between us at any moment, see, the proximity of Chewy to the moon rover, and we travel together. The value of our two positions relative to our starting positions changes, but the relationship stays the same.”

  “That’s what I’m complaining about.”

  “You just have to trust me.”

  “That too.”

  “You can’t resist a well-designed experiment.”

  “I’m…thinking about it.”

  “Okay. Here we go. Let’s say female orgasm is a fixed value, but the travel, the distance required to move from position one to orgasm, is variable. That’s our first unknown.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “You’re interested. You love this.”

  “Go on.”

  “Our second unknown is the elastic relationship between primary F, that’s you, and primary M, that’s me.”

  “Are you trying to break up with me? Because we can do this faster.”

  “I thought you wanted to go slower, and no, I’m not trying to break up with you. I want to make you come screaming YES YES YES and leave claw marks on my back. Um.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, uh, I’m committed. In theory.”

  “Claw marks?”

  “That’s optional. A hickey would be fine.”

  “Huh.”

  “Where were we?”

  “The elastic relationship between primary F and primary M.”

  “Right, right. See, I figured out that while O is a fixed value, the position we start from is always different. Whether you’re in the mood.”

  “Whether you watched Charlie’s Angels or not.”

  “Hey, it’s not always Charlie’s Angels. If your sister calls, forget it.”

  “Stick with your idea.”

  “And since I’m pretty much always horny, I figured, what if we move the relative position of primary M closer to the relative position of primary F, rather than the other way around. Because that hasn’t worked.”

  “This is really nice of you.”

  “Well, you’re always saying, that’s not where you’re at right now. I thought, why not take that literally.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And we’re not just working in three dimensions here, because if you get a call from that bitc—your sister and you slip into the past about the dork she married—”

  “Stole from me.”

  “—then you’re in the fourth dimension. Who knows? Maybe O isn’t exactly right here either.”

  “Whoa. Wait a minute.”

  “Hey, no offense, I’m not making a judgment—”

  “No, I mean wait a minute, what if that’s true? What if the value of O for me—you did suggest it’s a fixed value—isn’t really in the present? Or it’s far away or something?”

  “Like, you can’t be here with me when you come?”

  “Don’t get mad. I have no idea where I am when I come.”

  “Really? Now you’ve got me curious.”

  “Well, you can stay curious, Gerald. It’s hard for me to talk about it. Sex is so easy for you.”

  “Well, it is.”

  “See? How can I tell you stuff if you’re gonna say, Dory, that’s too complicated.”

  “Schatzi, I’m trying to complicate it. I mean, I’m trying to get used to complicated. How many variables are we talking about, when you get right down to it? Me. You. Our initial positions. The ultimate goal. Phases in between. If you can’t start close to me, I have to move closer to you.”

  “Close is good.”

  “Do you mind if I unsnap your jeans? Because for this next position you may have to fold a little, and that was a big pizza.”

  “You know, sometimes I ask myself is it so cool after all that you’re such a talker.”

  “If I don’t make you laugh, you chicken out on me. Learned that recently. Variable L.”

  “Are you serious? You assigned a variable for wise-cracking?”

  “That would be variable W.”

  “The dork my sister married doesn’t talk at all. Just grunts.”

  “See, we’re already points ahead. That’s better.”

  “You’re just trying to get me naked.”

  “I’m leaving my initial position and approac
hing yours. Now the next phase of calculation toward fixed value O—”

  “There’s a next phase?”

  “—Of course—involves making elastic microadjustments in the distance between us.”

  “It’s a sport bra, elastoboy. It pulls over my head.”

  “Ah, thanks. Now, some theorists suggest that you start with the lowest frequencies—”

  “Eek! Hey!”

  “—And work up, but I’ve been doing some reading in other authorities who advocate a top-down or even side-to-side or lateral microadjustment—kind of like tuning a radio—”

  “That works.”

  “The key being microadjustment, smaller increments of travel.”

  “Oo. Oh. Twist my dials some more.”

  “And watch for indicators that we’ve reached optimal proximity.”

  “Ummm.”

  “Which may shift in value at any moment.”

  “Ow! Watch it with that radio dial.”

  “Where values for variable W start to increase, regroup and ratchet down the adjustment rate.”

  “God, I love it when you talk math.”

  “Good, good. Turn over.”

  “What?”

  “Backrub.”

  “Backrub? But I was just—that was—where did you find these ‘other authorities’ you’ve been reading?”

  “Cosmo. Ah, variable L again. Optimal proximity restored.”

  “Oh god, my neck’s been killing me. How did you know I needed that?”

  “Voicemail from your sister makes you tense.”

  “That’s not my neck. Um. Do that some more.”

  “Like it?”

  “Yeah. I don’t get it. Cosmo said to…tune my radio and then give me a backrub?”

  “That was my idea. Locate an optimal proximity value, then oscillate back and forth across it along different axes.”

  “That’s so annoying.”

  “You told me I’m stuck in a rut. So I’m triangulating. I want to determine if the optimal proximity is a value, a range of values, or a predictable velocity of changing values.”