A Case of Slow

Bob Casey had his job cut out for him.

In the year 3001, the one species, which was very definitely extinct, was that of the science fiction writer.

Somebody had said a thousand years ago that an infinite number of monkeys banging away on an infinite number of typewriters would, eventually, come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. By 3001 AD, an infinite number of monkeys had heard of the word processor and they had a thousand years to bang away at the keys.

There was nothing fictional about anything one ever wrote about science. You could write about ray guns and star wars, but mankind had already had five centuries of strife with an assorted array of aliens since the first contact in the twenty fifth century. Extra terrestrials came in all shapes and sizes. From the cute ET types to the idiotic Jar Jar Binks type. From to ridiculous to the arcane. All varieties of aliens, from beings made of pure energy to creatures who could change form to the legendary little green men were already fact. Everybody knew all about them in the daily news.

All types of travel from the faster than light to time travel to teleportation were already passé. We had had our share or robots - both with Hitlerian ambitions to the Terminator cyborgs - trying to rule our destinies and having failed. Nothing imaginable in the beginning of the third millennium was fictitious.

And Casey, in a fit of madness, had taken the ridiculous career decision of becoming a Sci-fi writer. God help him!

Except, in 3001 AD, nobody believed in God. Which was funny, since they still retained the AD!

"This is gorkshit Bob, ya gotta do better'n this."

Octavio Jabal was frowning. You could tell by the way his antennae went rigid and pointed straight at you. All communication was translated via a chip embedded in the heads of all sentient beings. For those who had heads. In 3001 AD, translators were a species even more extinct than the Sci-fi writers.

"C'mon Mr. Jabal, this is a good story. You know it's a good story. Just pay me less, OK?"

This was a long shot, but Bob didn't want to give up without a fight.

"Pay you! Grraff, Grrraaaaaaff!" You could tell when Jabal was in one of his laughing fits. The entire room vibrated with his mirthful bouts. The antennae went flat against his forehead. "You're full of gorkshit today Bob." Obviously there were no bulls on Epsilon 7, Jabal's home colony.

"C'mon Mr. Jabal, what's wrong with this story?"

"What's wrong? Graff, what's right, you tell me!" Jabal put two huge talons on the heavy granite table between them. He squinted through blood red eyes at Bob and said, "No characterization, no emotions, no sentient drama. This piece of shit neither makes you cry nor laugh. Its gorkshit!"

Jabal flipped some pages of the manuscript in front of him with a flick of a sharp claw. Even in this day and age, the publishing companies accepted submissions typed on paper only. No electronic submissions if you want to get paid for it. And to hell with the Save the Trees movement, which was in its thousandth year. Bob winced. He hated to see what the claw was doing to his sensitive love story.

"Aaha! Graff! Page three line nine," Jabal said reading from the manuscript, "'Romeo, oh Romeo, I love you from the dorsal side of my pituitary.' What gorkshit!" Jabal's claw flicked the bunch of papers in the shredder. The shredder was the busiest piece of equipment in that office. Bob's work had fed the shredder more often than he cared to count.

"But it is a scientifically proven fact that the sentiment of love originates not at the bottom of the heart, but in the dorsal side of the pituitary gland in humans. Shakespeare was scientifically misinformed. I'm just trying to write in a more modern context."

"Get outta here, you idiot. And come back when you learn characterization. If you ever do."

"But what's characters got to do with a sci fi story? With a soap opera, fine. But with a SCIENCE fiction? Science is supposed to be an objective pursuit. Its postulates are independent of the practitioner. Newton's Law of Gravity holds good for a human as well as an Epsilo like you. Therefore a good science fiction story should work independent of the characters and characterization therein. What does it matter if the protagonist is a male or a female, a human or a cyborg, tall or short, blue or green, loving or evil?"

Jabal's eyes went wild. His thick hide turned a darker shade of green.

"Get outta here you...you pompous little mork." Obviously, there were no donkeys on Epsilon 7 either. "Just be gone and never show your pasty little face in my office again, or I swear I'll eat you alive."

Jabal's forked tongue shot out a foot in front of his face and Bob could fell the stink in his nostrils.

Obviously, they hadn't got to inventing mouthwash on Epsilon 7.

* * *

"It's the same old story all over again. Maybe I should give up."

Bob was nursing his third Sirius Sling and the barman, a Vegan named Zato, was listening to his sob story - as usual, with his head resting on his arm - while serving the other customers expertly with his 25 remaining limbs.

"Maybe you should try to write for a movie, or a soap opera. It'll keep you in bread. You won't need to rake your brains for ideas either. Just have ten characters, five male and five female, and by simple permutation and combination, show them all having affairs with each other, at various locations. Would keep you in work for at least a decade, without reruns."

"Doesn't work for me Zato. Just isn't my cup of umm.. ammonia." They didn't have tea on Vega.

The bar was doing slow business at this hour, and resembled Jabba the Hut's joint on an off day. Except the denizens of this particular bar were a bit more exotic than the legendary fictitious bar of the late 20^th century fable.

"This, exactly this, is the problem with science fiction," Bob said, looking around at the weird denizens of this watering hole, a million light years from any water whatsoever. "Fact is always weirder than fiction!"

Zato nodded all three heads in agreement. At the same time, with expertise born out of years of such work, one of his arms grabbed a Centuro on the other side of the bar by what passed for its neck. Centuros came from Alpha Centauri. The unfortunate Centuro, a four-foot slug-like creature weighing 30 earth pounds, made the mistake of reaching for his light saber. Maybe this Centuro was brought up on a diet of Star Wars. Now, Zato had never cared much for Star Wars. He was a John Wayne fan. So he just naturally pulled an ancient sawed off shotgun from under the bar with one of his arms and let the Centuro have both barrels in his face. It must be his face, thought Bob, because that was where he was pouring his drink a few moments ago. The Centuro, fell on the floor as if shot.

"A case of slow," said Zato putting the Colt back under the bar.

"Is he dead?" asked Bob.

"Naw, more's the pity. But it'll take the bugger a month to digest the lead. A centuro can eat anything and live. More's the pity." Zato said examining his bar mirror for any tell tale stains. Simultaneously, he filled a special lead glass with a sparkling blue liquid and presented it to a Corinian as if gifting him the Crown Jewels. Corinians drank liquid Uranium. Neat. It gave a kick to their nuclear metabolism.

The Corinian, an avid western fan himself, boomed "Sure was a case of slow if I ever saw one Zato. Tell the sheriff I said so!"

Zato folded two of his arms gratefully in acceptance. Nobody was going to argue with a guy who had barium rods in place of guts. And graphite balls. Retractable, of course.

"A case of slow. A case of...slow. Hmm. I wonder." Bob felt through the haze of the fourth Sling that he just might have an idea.

* * *

"There are only two stories ever told," Bob said by way of introduction. "Somebody goes on a voyage, or a stranger comes to town. This one is the long unwritten third story." He was, once again, standing in front of Octavio Jabal trying to make a case. Jabal looked impatient. He was a busy publisher with over a thousand scripts on the floor. He had no time for this little upstart human. Damn, but the bugger was different. And funny in a quirky way. Jabal enjoyed his meetings with Bob as a funny interlude in an otherwise busy day. But he was not going to be caught dead admitting that to Bob.

"Cut the gorkshit, Bob. It's a busy day," Jabal growled. And here on Epsilon 7, the day was fifty-one earth days long! His antennae shot up in annoyance.

"How does an Epsilo ever happen to run the largest Publishing firm in the galaxy?" Bob wondered for the millionth time. "Because," he consoled himself, "all Epsilos are past masters of producing sob stories, that's why. It's their genetic trait. Under all that tough rhino skin and pointed antennae, they are all suckers for a sob story. Nothing sells as well as a sob story. It hits the galactic raw nerve of all the sentients. Everybody loves to cry."

Bob decided to plunge in.

"Like I said, this is the unwritten third type of story. The title of the story is "A Case of Slow."In this story, no stranger comes to town. In fact, there is no town at all in the story. And nobody goes on a voyage, nobody travels and inch. Absolutely not even an angstrom."

"Just give me a synopsis ok? And cut it short. "Jabal didn't sound very encouraging.

"Well, all through the history of sentient civilization, there are stories of faster and faster travelers. Travelers at light speed, thought speed, warp speed and what not. But there is not one single instance in the annals of story- telling when a protagonist travels at ZERO speed!" Bob exclaimed triumphantly.

"Don't be a mork, Bob. Anybody who just sits on his Jark and does nothing travels at zero speed." Although hey hadn't heard of an ass on Epsilon 7, they had Jarks. Three of them.

"That's where you all are wrong! That's why it is a science fiction story. Traveling at perfect zero speed is not sitting on your ass on a planet, because the planet is moving around its star. It is not being stationary in space in a star system, because the star system itself is moving around the center of some galaxy. It is not being stationary in a galaxy because all the galaxies themselves are moving around the super-clusters in a gravitational embrace. And so on and so forth. Being perfectly stationary- traveling at zero velocity - is the most difficult thing to achieve in the entire universe. Maybe it can't be done at all. Certainly hasn't been done till today in 3001 AD."

"So?"

"So you get a science fiction story that hasn't been told yet."

"Tell me, as a case of curiosity, what happens to your protagonist traveling at zero speed?"

"He becomes God!"

"Eh? How's that?"

"C'mon, Mister Jabal. Simple twentieth century Relativity. When a traveler increases his or her speed and approaches the speed of light in vacuum, distance for him diminishes- Lorenz's transformation - and time dilates. At the speed of light in vacuum all spatial distances for such a traveler are zero. Exactly zero. Which means that all the dimensions in the Universe - be it three, four or twenty-seven dimensions - are closed for such a traveler, they being infinitely curved. This is fact, as all our space ships' crew knows by now. Also time stops for such travelers. That means that they see the universe around them evolving in a speeded up fashion, as if seen on a film in fast forward mode. These are established facts today and all of us take them as passé."

"So?"

"Imagine, just imagine, what will happen to the traveler if he slows down instead of speeding up. The opposite! Space between any two points will appear to be increasing for such an observer. His time clock will speed up so that he will observe the surrounding universe in slow motion. Till at exactly zero speed, the entire universe will come to a standstill as observed by him. All the possible dimensions will be open to him. Not just three or four, but an infinite number of dimensions, which are just theoretical at normal speed, shall be open to him. He will be present in all dimensions at all times - there being just the single frozen frame of time. He'll never age. He will be the perfect observer. He will see all. He has all the time in the Universe to do it- infinite time. He will be God!"

"And just how does your protagonist travel at zero speed?"

"Oh! That's mumbo jumbo. Similar to the light speed and warp speed mumbo jumbo of sci fi writers of the twentieth century, when these were not fact. It doesn't matter. Any plausible bull, er...gorkshit, will do."

"Hmmm.." Jabal looked pensive. His antennae curled around each other.

"Well?" Bob said hopefully.

"OK! I'll forward this story to our editors. We'll let you know soon." That was an improvement on an outright rejection.

For once, Bob Casey left Octavio Jabal's office a happy man. On his way to Zato's, he even had visions of being famous as the new Adam among future science fiction writers. Visions of reviving an extinct breed.

"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

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