One Night I Was Down In The Lab

Reprinted with permission of Reader’s Digest, May 2154. Excerpted from “The True Story Of Before” by Rrose Sélavy , 2152, Straight Arrow Press.


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One Night I Was Down In The Lab



Dr. Bartosz Krawlik is a Staff Professor of physics at Houston Institute of Technology in Texas, USA. He was a graduate student in physics and astronomy at the University of More during the discovery of Before. Professor Krawlik writes, “Now that I am a full professor with tenure they can never fire me so for the first time the secret can be told.”



One cold November 22nd night in 2132 I was down in the University of More physics lab tinkering with some balky equipment when Klaus Veerman said he wanted to show me something. Klaus was the graduate student of Professor Cris Squire, who worked with string theory and had some ideas about other dimensions. Klaus was of Prussian ancestry. Though his family had moved from Prussia long ago when it was lost to the Poles the Veermans kept up the traditions and were possibly as Prussian as anyone can be in this day and age. Klaus actually had a dueling scar on his cheek from his years at Heidelberg. He had been in a Korps that sets up a phony duel then sews up the wound as clumsily as they can to make the scar bigger. Klaus went to Siberia every year for hunting. “There is no law! In the woods you can still dress all in green,“ he said, and he had plenty of stories about the post-hunting festivities that do not bear repeating in a family magazine.



Klaus was not special as a mathematician but there will always be place in physics for the individual who is handy with machines. Klaus almost seemed to be able to talk with the cables and esoteric measurement devices and was rather handy with the Sheilas as well. Klaus Veerman used his charm freely on the female members of the staff, including Dr. Squire who seemed to be, as they say, eating out of his hand like a horse. This seemed to some of us a dangerous strategy: she might delay approval of his thesis in order to keep him around. Klaus did not worry about things like this.



Professor Squire wanted to have Klaus measure the amount of energy in the possible other dimensions about which she had based her theories. Klaus had figured out a plan that might work within a modest budget, got all the equipment, rigged it up and was getting the setup to work properly. It was expected that there would be no pattern in this energy, as we say it would be pure noise. Usually no one wants a monitor for pure noise as while it is always changing and different it always looks the same. If you have seen one moment of pure noise you have seen them all. Klaus had attached a monitor anyway because if any pattern showed up this was almost certainly a problem with the equipment and showed Klaus he had more work to do. So when Klaus took me to the monitor I thought he wanted to check whether I could see a pattern. Klaus using his forefinger to trace some sort of movement he saw on the screen but it looked like the usual “snow” to me, which should be good news because that means there is no obvious problem. He kept saying, “Don’t you see it?” but there was nothing for me. After a while Klaus gave up.



After the Thanksgiving holiday Klaus had a video recorder hooked up to the monitor. It seemed unusual to wish to record diagnostic pure noise but that was his business. Then one night I was working late and got into a conversation with the janitor, an undergraduate on financial assistance. After some pleasantries she asked, “Do you get those broadcasts?” Hmmm? “Mr. Veerman is megax [very excited] about those broadcasts. He says it’s some new physics thing. Like nonx[boring], people in funny clothes doing ordinary stuff. Do you get it?” Now that I am a full professor with tenure they can never fire me so for the first time the secret can be told. I was sure that Klaus was trying to impress girls by showing them recordings and pretending it was a physics breakthrough. It didn’t seem to be working very well, so I decided to give my friend Klaus a little help. I told the young woman that we were working on a breakthrough but no one must know. CERN was closing in on the same thing and if they found out what we were doing could use their big European Union money to beat us. Her eyes got big. I pretended to grow suspicious and challenge her. “How do we know you aren’t a spy for them?” The eyes grew larger and she swore that she would never tell. “How do I know Klaus really showed you the secret broadcasts? You might be pretending to know to get me to talk. Spies do that all the time! ’ I said. While Klaus is a hunter I am a fisherman. The young lady swallowed it all, hook, line, and sinker. With eyes as round as that of a kitten she told all. Klaus had come up to her, very excited, and shown her the monitor. At first all she could see was the “snow,” but Klaus patiently traced out the figures and described what they were doing. It took a while but she began to see what he was pointing at. “How long did it take?” I asked. She couldn’t say. It was slow at first, a glimpse of a shoulder or maybe someone walking and she was not sure, then it grew clearer and after maybe a half an hour she could tell Klaus what she saw and he would smile. The rascal! “They were wearing clothes that looked kind of old fashioned, the women had their hair covered, they were doing stuff like weaving and there were horses in the streets.” I put on my most serious scientific look and told her that we were not certain yet, everything must be checked, but it could be, it seemed, it looked like we were getting broadcasts from -- and I dropped to my most theatrical whisper – the past. Her jaw dropped. There was a sharp intake of air. She had gasped. I had had enough fun with the innocent girl, though surrounded as we were by all of those cables and mysterious equipment in an undoubtedly real laboratory I think many others would also have been taken in. I had given it up but in my own undergraduate days had been a bit of the actor. My Iago especially had gained favorable notices and a small measure of fame.



A few days later I noticed a litter of empty beer and schnapps bottles in the laboratory, more than Klaus could have drunk himself, enough for a dozen earnest party goers. Heh heh. I had felt certain there was not a chance in Hell that the young lady would keep such a juicy secret to herself. Surely she had sworn her best friends to deepest secrecy and let them in on the news. How could anyone doubt her, as she was without guile and completely believed in it? A few weeks later a new fashion appeared on campus, somewhat mediaeval in style with leather and bone and other natural materials, all with an odd twist to it. A few weeks further on there were maybe one hundred students in such clothing. At lunch in the cafeteria one day I complemented a group of such young men and women on their taste and asked if they would mind telling me where they got the idea. The hands over mouths, smiles, giggling and tee-heeing told me all I had to know. “Oh, we saw it on TV,” one lad offered, this setting off smiles and titters all around the table.



A semicircle of motheaten couches appeared arranged about the Local Cosmic Microwave Background (LCMB) monitor and the piles of empty bottles in the trash grew geometrically. One morning I noticed a pair of panties under the nicest divan. Aha. The Hunter And The Maiden In The Forest. We Poles understand such things.



All was in readiness to hook the biggest fish of my life, Mr. Klaus Veerman himself. I asked Klaus what all the couches were for. He smiled as does a man who has a wonderful secret. He went over to the LCMB monitor and turned it on. At first all I could see was the “snow” but Klaus traced figures and described the action and it was not long before I could see the weavers and horses and such too. Once you had gotten the knack it was not difficult. “You learn very quickly,” Klaus said happily, and I just smiled. My fish had taken the bait, time to set the hook and reel the biggest of fish in, as the Americans say a whopper, maybe even a record-size fish, a mothersucker. I calmly reached over and turned the recorder off.



Nothing changed. The horse still trotted by the vendors selling odd hemispherical pies, the juggler in leather vest continued with his juggling. But Klaus was very clever with equipment. I pulled out the plug, still no change. Klaus was looking at me quite puzzled. But all I had to do was find the real equipment that was playing back the scene and I would have him. I didn’t know the details of his setup but it was almost off-the-shelf equipment and none of it was a playback device. He must have gutted a piece of obsolete equipment and hidden the recorder in that. I was impressed. Klaus took his little ruse very seriously and had done his usual thorough and excellent job. I’d hooked a superwhopper! But I couldn’t find the playback machine. “Klaus, where is it? I’ll find it sooner or later, so tell me now and save both our trouble.”



Klaus Veerman looked completely baffled. Not a bad actor, but I wasn’t buying what he had to sell. “The video playback machine, Klaus. I know it’s here. Now where is it?” Understanding dawned on his face, then he looked a bit angry. I had never known Klaus to lose his temper but with that saber scar he did have a formidable look, and with his strength and height of 1.8 meters [6’2”] I began to wonder if things had gone too far and the fish might break the leader. It could be that he was afraid of what would happen if his little trick were uncovered. Then his charm regained its usual control. “Hooo,” he said, exclaimed “Scheissliche Dummkopf!” in a very loud voice, then pulled me down on a couch and began to gently punch my left bicep. “Hoo hoow hoo,” came forth, almost like a rooster crowing. “Ist echt, Dummkopf! Ist ganz echt!” he said. And that was when I first began to realize, maybe this time the fisherman had without knowing hooked himself in the seat of his pants and was pulling with all his might.



And so may I ask you gentle reader, did I truly catch a mothersucker? Please let me know. It is not for me to say.


See more at beforemore.webs.com/
and astralplane.webs.com