Science of Discworld

'But the new post offers you room, board and all your laundry done,' said the Archchancellor.

'But I get that already, sir.'

Ridcully drew leisurely on his pipe and blew out a cloud of blue smoke.

'Up until now,' he said.

'Oh. I see. And you're about to send me somewhere really dangerous, yes?'

Ridcully beamed. 'How did you guess?'

'It wasn't a guess.'

Fortunately the Dean had been forewarned and had grabbed the back of Rincewind's nightshirt, and so he was ready. The wizard's bedroom slippers skidded uselessly on the tiles as he tried to make for the door.

'It's best to let him run for a little while,', said the Senior Wrangler. 'It's a nervous reaction.'

'And the best thing is,' said Ridcully, to Rincewind's back, 'that although we are sending you to a place of immense danger where no living thing could possibly survive, you will not, in so many words, actually be there. Won't that be nice?'

Rincewind hesitated.

'How many words?'

'It'll be like being in a ... story,' said the Archchancellor. 'Or ... or a dream, as far as I can understand it. Mister Stibbons! Come and explain!'

'Oh, hello, Rincewind,' said Ponder, stepping out of the mist and wiping his hands on a rag. 'Twelve spells HEX has amalgamated for this! It's an amazing piece of thaumaturgical engineering! Do come and see!'

There are creatures which have evolved to live in coral reefs and simply could not survive in the rough, tooth-filled wastes of the open sea. They continue to exist by lurking among the dangerous tentacles of the sea anemone or around the lips of the giant clam and other perilous crevices shunned by all sensible fish.

A university is very much like a coral reef. It provides calm waters and food particles for delicate yet marvellously constructed organisms that could not possibly survive in the pounding surf of reality, where people ask questions like 'Is what you do of any use?' and other nonsense.

In fact Rincewind in his association with UU had survived dangers that would have stripped a hero to the bone, but he nevertheless believed, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that he was safe in the university. He would do anything to stay on the roll.

At the moment this involved looking at some sort of skeletal armour made out of smoke while Ponder Stibbons gabbled incomprehensible words in his ear. As far as he could understand it, the thing put all your senses somewhere else when you stayed here. So far, that sounded quite acceptable, since it had always seemed to Rincewind that if you had to go a long way away it'd be nice to stay at home while you did it, but people seemed a little unclear about where pain fitted in.

'We'll send you, that is, your senses, somewhere,' said Ridcully.

'Where?' said Rincewind.

'Somewhere amazing,' said Ponder. 'We just want you to tell us what you see. And then we'll bring you back.'

'At what point will things go wrong?' said Rincewind.

'Nothing can possibly go wrong.'

'Oh,' Rincewind sighed. There was no point in arguing with a statement like that. 'Could I have some breakfast first?'

'Of course, dear fellow,' said Ridcully, patting him on the back. 'Have a hearty meal!'

'Yes, I thought that'd probably be the case,' said Rincewind gloomily.

When he'd been taken away, under escort by the Dean and a couple of college porters, the wizards clustered around the project.

'We've found a suitably large "sun", sir,' said Ponder, taking care to annunciate the inverted commas. 'We're moving the world now,'

'A very suspicious idea, this,' said the Archchancellor. 'Suns go around. We see it happen every day. It's not some kind of optical illusion. This is a bit of a house of cards we're building here.'

'It's the only one available, sir.'

'I mean, things fall down because they're heavy, you see? The thing that causes them to fall down because they're heavy is, in fact, the fact that they're heavy. 'Heavy' means inclined to fall down. And, while you can call me Mr Silly...'

'Oh, I wouldn't do that, sir,' Ponder said, glad that Ridcully couldn't see his face.

‘...I somehow feel that a crust of rock floating around on a ball of red-hot iron should not be thought of as "solid ground".'

'I think, sir, that this universe has a whole parcel of rules that take the place of narrativium,' said Ponder. 'It's ... sort of ... copying us, as you so perspicaciously pointed out the other day. It's making the only kind of suns that can work in it, and the only worlds that can exist if you don't have chelonium.'

'Even so ... going around a sun ,.. that's the sort of thing the Omnian priests used to teach, you know. Mankind is so insignificant that we just float around on some speck, and all that superstitious stuff. You know they used to persecute people for saying the turtle existed? And any fool can see it exists.'

'Yes, sir It certainly does.'

There were problems, of course

'Are you sure it's the right sort of sun?' said Ridcully.

'You told HEX to find one that was "nice and yellow, nice and dull, and not likely to go off bang", sir,' said Ponder. 'It seems to be a pretty average one for this universe.'

'Even so ... tens of millions of miles ... that's a long way away for our world.'

'Yes, sir. But we tried some experimental worlds close to and they fell in, and we tried one a bit further out and that's baked like a biscuit, and there's one ... well, it's a bit of an armpit, really. The students have got quite good at making different sorts. Er ... we're calling them planets.'

'A planet, Stibbons, is a lump of rock a mere few hundred yards across which gives the night sky a little, oh, I don't know, what's the word, a little je ne sais quoi'

'These will work, sir, and we've such a lot of them. As I said, sir, I've come to agree with your theory that, within the Project, matter is trying to do all by itself what in the real world is done by purpose, probably conveyed via narrativium.'

'Was that my theory?' said Ridcully.

'Oh, yes, sir,' said Ponder, who was learning the particular survival skills of the academic reef.

'It sounds rather a parody to me, but I dare say we will understand the joke in time. Ah, here comes our explorer. 'Morning, Professor,' said Ridcully. 'Are you ready?'

'No,' said Rincewind.

'It's very simple,' said Ponder, leading the reluctant traveller across the floor. 'You can think of this assemblage of spells as a suit of very, very good armour. Things will flicker , and then you'll be ... somewhere else. Except you'll really be here, you see? But everything you see will be somewhere else. Absolutely nothing will hurt you because HEX will buffer all extreme sensations and you'll simply received a gentle analogue of them. If it's freezing you'll feel rather chilly, if it's boiling you'll feel a little hot. If a mountain falls on you it'll be a bit of a knock. Time where you're going is moving very fast but HEX can slow it down while you are there, HEX says that he can probably exert small amounts of force within the Project, so you will be able to lift and push things, although it will feel as though you're wearing very large gloves. But this should not be required because all we want you to do to start with ... Professor ... is tell us what you see.'

Rincewind looked at the suit. It was, being largely make up of spells under HEX's control, shimmery and insubstantial. Light reflected off it in odd ways. The helmet was far too large and completely covered the face.

'I have three ... no, four ... no, five questions,' he said.

'Yes?'

'Can I resign?'

'No.'

'Do I have to understand anything you just told me?'

'No.'

'Are there any monsters where I'm being sent?'

'No.'

'Are you sure?' 'Yes.'

'Are you totally positive about that?'

'Yes.'

'I've just thought of another question,' said Rincewind.

'Fire away.'

'Are you really sure?'

'Yes!' snapped Ponder 'And even if there were any monsters, it wouldn't matter.'

'It'd matter to me.'

'No it wouldn't! I have explained! If some huge toothed beast came galloping towards you, it'd have no effect on you at all.'

'Another question?'

'Yes?'

'Is there a toilet in this suit?'

'No.'

'Because there will be if a huge toothed beast comes galloping towards me.'

'In that case, you just say the word and you can come back and use the privy down the hall,' said Ponder. 'Now, stop worrying, please. These gentlemen will help you, er, insert yourself into the thing, and we'll begin ...'

The Archchancellor wandered up as the reluctant professor was enveloped in the glittering, not-quite-there stuff.

'A thought occurs, Ponder,' he said.

'Yes, sir?'

'I suppose there's no chance that there is life anywhere in the Project?'

Ponder looked at him in frank astonishment.

'Absolutely not, sir! It can't happen. Simple matter is obeying a few rather odd rules. That's probably enough to get things ... spinning and exploding and so on, but there's no possibility that they could cause anything so complex as...'

'The Bursar, for example?'

'Not even the Bursar, sir.'

'He's not very complicated, though. If only we could find a parrot that was good at sums, we could pension the old chap off.'

'No, sir. There's nothing like the Bursar. Not even an ant or a blade of grass. You might as well try to tune a piano by throwing rocks at it. Life does not turn up out of nowhere, sir. Life is a lot more than just rocks moving in circles. The one thing we're not going to run into is monsters.'