| “Fucking fuck!”
I shouted.
“Pardon?” was all
El could manage.
“The arse licking, mother
humping, monkey baiting whore’s.”
I exclaimed, throwing the memo
onto the desk as dramatically
as I could.
El put down the rather interesting
and important report (something
about snooker balls, by some
whiz kid grad Id given her the
other day). “Ah, them
lads.” She knew exactly
what was coming next.
“Yes, them lads. And
if I ever get to meet them I’m
going to give them a very sizeable
piece of my not inconsiderably
angry mind … the bastards.”
I fumed, revelling in my own
predictability.
“Indeed.” She said.
It was time for her to extract
the details. “So what
did they do this time?”
“They’ve turned
my funding request down of course.”
It seemed I wasn’t quite
calm enough to give her the
pleasure of getting it all with
just the one question.
“Well that much I could
have guessed,” she said,
giving me a look. “There
aren’t too many ‘monkey
baiters’ that correspond
with you on a regular basis
after all. What I meant was,
turned down funding for which
particular project?”
I didn’t dignify her
sarcasm with the sardonic look
she was asking for, so I simply
told her “The sub-mesonic
fractal inducer.”
“Ah. That kind of scuppers
things a bit doesn’t it?”
“You bet your milk-bottle
bottomed glasses it does. Without
the fractal inducer there’s
no way were going to be able
to shift the harmonics for the
oscillator beyond the fifth
node point. And I don’t
need to tell you what that means.”
“Nope. I wrote the paper
after all: No sixth node, no
time travel”
I could feel gravity calling
to me, so I slumped into the
big comfy sofa on the other
side of the office to El and
let out the defeated sigh that
had been fighting to get out
of me since Id read the memo.
It wasn’t a very large
office considering it housed
the Universities’ two
most celebrated physicists.
There were a couple of desks
buried under papers and reports,
our workstations which were
just visible amongst the coffee
cups (and the mould that was
breading upon them) and cupboards
and shelves filled with books
and archive disks. And the sofa.
El kept asking me why I wanted
to keep it, tatty and taking
up valuable space as it was,
but she new I could never be
parted from it. It was where
it had all begun after all.
Besides, where else would I
slump after the crushing body
blows?
“I new I should have
gone straight to the military.”
I said, and not for the first
time.
El laughed then, which made
me smile as well. We both new
that the military had never
been an actual option, just
think of all the terrible mistakes
they would have made. It was
so difficult explaining temporal
causality conservation equations
to people who really just wanted
better ways of blowing shit
up. Still, it would definitely
have solved all of our funding
problems; no one has a bigger
purse than the military after
all. And if they thought they’d
be getting a way of winning
wars that they’d just
lost, well, who knows how long
ago El and me would have been
finished? But then think off
all the wars that the fools
would have gotten us all into
before they finally realised
that changing the past in the
big ways wasn’t actually
possible. Still, money was money
…
Hell, who did I think I was
kidding? There wasn’t
even a glimmer of a possibility
that Id go to them, now or back
at the start. Which is why I’d
insisted on keeping the idea
in the public arena and everything
in the academic field. Of course
the problem of proof was where
it all hit the brick wall of
proverb. It was all very well
El and me writing spectacular
thesis on the theory of time
travel, but showing the people
with the money that it could
be made to work and hence to
give us the funds we needed
was giving us no end of grief.
Knowing my raging was over,
El gave me that big smile of
hers. The one that said ‘I
know what’s going on in
there’. The killer one.
The one that got me every time.
The one Id married her for,
in order to keep it to myself.
“Tell you what,”
she said. “Why don’t
you take the car back now and
have those cold beers in the
fridge I know you’ve been
pining for. Ill take your lecture
this afternoon – sub-atomic
decay isn’t it?”
I nodded weary agreement. “Hell,
Ill even call Dave and get him
to start the appeal ball rolling
for you, if you like. He can
give me a lift at the end of
the day as well.”
I got up to leave and was about
to tell her how grateful I was,
but she was already on the phone.
So instead I just kissed her
on the top of her head, savouring
the vanillary smell of her long
auburn hair, got my jacket,
and headed out to the car. |
