Everybody agreed that Victor Klotski was a complete idiot.
Victor Klotski, however, belonged to a rare breed. He was a unique specimen of the genus Homo Sapien Idioticus. Not because he was a non-conformist and a rebel. Not because he hadn’t changed his old job for over fifteen years. But because he had a ridiculous habit of reducing commonplace things to absurdities.
He worked as a waiter in an establishment, which doled out caviar and Champaign more regularly than the Ritz. The one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Known- surprisingly in this age of race equality- as the White House. Successive Presidents tolerated him because they felt that Klotski was a good foil to the serious conversations associated with the problems of running a nation.
Victor Klotski was the official Court Jester to the unofficial King of the World.
"The Earth, of course, is flat!" Thus spake Klotski to a group of astrophysicists who had come to advice the President of the United States on the future of the U.S. Space program, while serving them coffee in the Oval office.
Now, Astrophysicists are no different from the rest of mankind, other than their inevitable baldheads. They looked at Klotski as an erstwhile Pope would look at a peasant committing blasphemy.
"And what makes you say that, my learned friend?" asked Dr. Chandran. Chandran was long on sarcasm and short of temper. A common enough specimen of the ivy tower pundits.
"Because it is so obvious. So simple. And you yourself have said a million times that, all things being equal, the simplest explanation is, most probably, the truth." Klotski fussed over the selection of a cube of sugar and finally deposited one in the First Cup.
Dr. Chandran winced. He had said these very words at his acceptance speech for last year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. For his work in the application of the String theory in Cosmology. After successfully solving a 27 dimensional Minkowsky Vector Matrix for curved space-time. It had taken him almost twelve years to do that.
And now this ignoramus, this… this… Dr. Chandran ran out of epithets.
One of his academic rivals, Dr. Mirazawa, grinned at Chandran’s plight. However, this dumb bastard here, in ill-fitting white livery, was interfering with a multi billion-dollar program that required Presidential approval. This had to be dealt with swiftly.
"No Vicky, it just appears flat to us little people because it is so big. I assure you, the earth is an oblate spheroid. Everybody knows that in this age. Even the Church."
"No. It’s flat. Like a plate. You guys are just making up new stories wrapped in important looking language to get funding," Klotski plunged ahead. The Oval office is reputed to be the most unfair home turf advantage in the world, intimidating its visitors. Klotski had lived here for fifteen years. He was more at home in this place than the President. He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind in any company, and reputations be damned. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. " And we have always lived on top of the plate," he asserted.
Dr. Mirazawa hadn’t been contradicted by a mere mortal in a long time. He stole a glance at the President. But the President was busy lighting one of his interminable cigars.
"Look here, we have irrefutable proof. We have already sent men on the moon and unmanned crafts out of the solar system. You were born six centuries too late for the pre-Copernican view of the Universe. We have films, photographs. If the earth was not round how can our pilots go to Japan across the Pacific and come back to the same place over the Atlantic?"
"Oh, what bullshit. Aristotle was right all along. What is more plausible? That the earth is flat or that a group of men – a small group who calls themselves geographers – perpetrate this fraud on an unsuspecting mankind for five centuries and rake in the dough?"
"A small group, yes. But what about Einstein and Newton? What about Armstrong and Gagarin? How do you explain that?"
"Poster boys! A bigger group who call themselves scientists got on to the scam. They know which side their bread is buttered. What is more probable? Plain human corruption, or the Quantum Mechanical view of a cat alive and dead at the same time?"
The late Dr. Shrodinger’s cat- in- the- box, and its various Copenhagen kittens, would promptly have preferred to collapse their respective wave functions and die at this piece of wisdom.
Now the President looked at the gathering sternly. He didn’t quite get the bit about the cat. But corruption was an animal he knew all too well.
"What about the pictures and films of earth from space?" Mirazawa was getting desperate. The President was beginning to take interest in the conversation, while puffing huge globules of smoke enough to power a small freight train.
"Hollywood. Pure fantasy," said Klotski warming to his pet theory. " You all’ve seen Star Wars, right? Now, how many of you really believe the far away galaxy, with one Luke Skywalker, exists? I’ll show you a picture of Jabba the Hut. You mean to tell me he is a real person? Of course not. Look at the chronology of events. There was no space program when there was no film industry. As it grew in sophistication, so did the supposed space program. You guys started getting better film and visual effects. How many of you have actually seen earth from space? All we know is based on what you feed us through pictures and films. Which are made in Hollywood!" Klotski paused to take a breath. Oblivious of the outrage prevailing in the room, he continued.
"The space program was, and is, pure propaganda. An arm of cold war politics. They make a fake production out of Uri Gagarin, we do one better and convince our people that we have a man on the moon. By the name of Armstrong. My God, man, don’t you get it? What a corny name to counter going ga ga over Gagarin. Armstrong! Up yours! Pure theatre. Pure political propaganda. Meanwhile nobody asks what happened to a few billion dollars of taxpayer’s money. You guys convinced the rest of us fools that it takes billions to put a man on the moon. Free loot. Minus a few million in small change for publicity and production. That you really had to spend."
Dr. Chandran looked like he was in the middle of an apoplectic fit.
"Yeah. Can you guys ‘xplain that bit to me? What I find most interesting, and it is a source of great national pride to us as Americans, is that all our astronauts seem to have gone into space."
Nobody could utter a word for a full minute after this Presidential gem. Not even Klotski.
Eventually, it was Klotski who came to their rescue.
"I’ll tell you what. Let’s take a boat ride in the Pacific. Put your money where your mouth is. I’ll bet 10 dollars you fall off the edge of the earth. Seeing is believing."
Dr. Mirazawa took the bet. Not because he needed the ten dollars to put a small man in his place, but to prove to the President that he should continue to put a few billion dollars in the space program each year. Dr. Chandran hadn’t recovered sufficiently from the Presidential rejoinder to participate in the discussion.
They set off in different boats from San Francisco traveling west. The President, waited upon by Klotski, ordered his ship’s captain to stay one hundred feet aft of the one carrying Dr. Mirazawa and company. He believed in taking no chances.
They crossed Midway and still they kept going west.
"See? We’ll be landing on Okinawa soon." Said Mirazawa to Klotski on his satellite phone.
Famous last words!
Mirazawa’s ship was in the water one moment. The next, he, along with his entire crew and ship, was falling into a bottomless pit. Into nothingness.
His last thoughts were not that he had been had. He hated that an idiot like Klotski was right.
In case you all are feeling sorry for the Dr. Mirazawas of this world, console yourselves by noting that, in his own words, Dr. Mirazawa had proposed that due to quantum fluctuations occurring randomly on a very small scale, the occurrence of events split the universe in multiple parallel universes in which all possible histories of the universe exist side by side. In some sense, parallel to each other. There is a Universe in which the South won the Civil War and there is a Universe in which Hitler won the Second World War. And so on.
The Dr. Mirazawas of this world would have us believe that God doesn’t play dice with the Universe. The dice are playing God!
As all possible Universes exist, there is, of course a Universe out there without a Klotski, in which Dr. Mirazawa doesn’t fall off the edge of the earth. And people are dead sure that the earth is spherical.
"I want to write stories which cram ideas mile- a- minute. The future has its own set of problems ready for us. I want to explore those. I’ve written a book, which explores the future of the latest scientific theories and their philosophical implications. The book is in need of a publisher! (Although I confess that I haven’t sent it to a publisher yet as I feel it needs brushing up)."
Swanand's first publication was "No News is Good News" in the August 2001 issue of Aphelion.
E-mail: swanandarole@hotmail.com
Visit Aphelion's Lettercolumn and voice your opinion of this story.
Return to the Aphelion main page.