Not the Snowman
by Bill Kirton
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: One strong one only.
Description: A Christmas story relating the unexpected effects of scientific advances.
____________________________________________________________________
Government funds had been hard to come by. There was no doubting the professionalism and overall expertise of Jamie Munro’s team. Jamie himself had been a visiting professor at Harvard and the theoretical physicists, meteorologists, nano-technicians, molecular biologists and systems engineers he’d gathered around him were all leaders in their respective fields. Even his interns already had their doctorates. But the politicians had their own agendas and, on nearly all of them, research into climate change came well below the need to encourage Donald Trump and others to unload some of their dollars into the Scottish economy.
To be fair to them, it was also difficult for non-scientists to understand exactly what Jamie’s project was supposed to achieve. His team would be building something which would bring together information from discrete sources and integrate it into a single database. At various meetings at Holyrood, Jamie had tried to keep his terminology simple for their benefit. Basically, he said, it was just an integrator, a machine which would be set up on the fundamental principles of relativity. It would collect data transmitted from a series of sources and bring it all together to make it easier to understand. The MSPs tried, with greater but mainly lesser degrees of success, to absorb this information but things were not looking good. Paradoxically, however, it was the anger and frustration of one of the less intellectually gifted committee members that led to the grant that would allow the team to complete the prototype.
‘So what’re you calling the bloody thing?’ he asked as lunchtime approached.
Jamie hesitated but knew there was no point in trying to find a less unwieldy label than the one they’d all been using.
‘It’s a Relativity Orientated Serial Transmission Integrator,’ he said, resigning himself to the inevitable sighs, sniggers and mutters of exasperation it would provoke.
‘A what?’ said the disbelieving questioner.
‘A Relativity Orientated Serial Transmission Integrator,’ said Jamie. ‘We’ve been calling it a ROSTI.’
The MSP looked at the note he’d scribbled and read out the words, pouring scorn into each syllable.
‘A Relativity Orientated Serial Transmission Integrator. A fucking ROSTI?’ he sneered.
As the committee laughed and the chairperson banged on the table for order and to get him to withdraw the comment and apologise for his language, a member from an opposition party called out ‘Aye, that’s it, a FROSTI.’
And that was it. The Relativity Orientated Serial Transmission Integrator had become a FROSTI which, with its associations with ice cream and childhood, was a much more friendly, cheerful prospect. The MSP’s profanity had lightened the mood, it was nearly lunchtime and so, with a few minor qualifications, the committee decided to recommend that the funds be made available.
And now here they were, just before Christmas, with only one final element to be added before preliminary testing could begin. The heads of the various sections of the project were sitting in the main seminar room as Jamie briefed them on the location and linkages of the CPC, the Central Processing Circuit or, to laypersons, the integrator’s brain. The screen behind him showed a huge image of the engineering drawing on his laptop over which the cursor danced as he moved his mouse back and forth.
‘As you know, its optimal position is at the apex of the sub-orbital sensor array,’ said Jamie, sliding the mouse to show how the CPC could be turned to fit between the input nodules and the mediatronic subset transducer.
They all watched, already aware of what was needed but transfixed by the thought that, at last, it was becoming a reality. At one end of the front row, Kirstie, his personal assistant, an intern from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, watched and admired Jamie’s dexterity with the graphical interface. OK, it was limited to computer programs and the bruising on her breast was evidence of his clumsiness in other areas of manipulation, but he was a genius when it came to designing nano-systems.
A Japanese expert on neural transmissions raised his hand and said ‘Have we made sure there’s adequate separation between the output analysers and the mobility capacitators?’
Jamie nodded and smiled. The cursor slid across to a thin blue line on the drawing.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The vector field in this impermeable membrane has stable convergence parameters.’
His tone hid the fact that this was indeed one area in which his confidence wasn’t unshakable. The mobility capacitators were intended to make it easier for the integrator to be mobilised so that, using remote controls in the lab, it could be made to move from one test location to the next under its own power.
As more questions were asked and answered, the excitement in the room began to grow. Kirstie felt it as both a scientist and a lover and, when the session was over, followed Jamie back to the lab. They kissed and went through to where the integrator stood, waiting only for the fitting of the CFC. It was like a shining metallic ghost – a six feet high central cylinder, with a smaller one clamped to each side and, on top of it all, a globe with a sixteen inch internal diameter. There was no doubt that it had a sort of presence. Kirstie leaned against Jamie and his arm went round her shoulder.
‘He’s beautiful,’ she said.
‘Mmmm,’ said Jamie.
The following day was cold and clear. By early afternoon, all the dormant systems had been tested and the robotic arm on the lab’s lifting device had manoeuvred the CFC over the globe at the top of the integrator. It was a shallow dome sparkling with passive neural networks, its input interfaces spaced around its lower rim like mini portholes. Jamie held his breath as the head technician, in slow minute phases, manipulated the CFC into its allotted space. With all the connections fitted and tested, the scientists at the various monitors each gave the thumbs up and the globe was sealed.
After more tests, with all the monitors showing the anticipated levels of connectivity and a coherent set of communications interfaces confirming its structural integrity, the integrator was ready for its outer layer – a white, three phase polymorphic spray. Back in his own lab, Jamie flopped into a chair and checked, for perhaps the twentieth time that day, the forecast for the following morning.
‘Perfect,’ he said, sitting back and opening his arms for Kirstie to sit on his lap.
She kissed him and said ‘So we go ahead then?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Jamie. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’
He began unbuttoning her lab coat.
‘Then those stupid bastards at Holyrood will see. Once we’ve collated the readings in the database, they’ll have to admit we were right. They won’t have any choice.’
Kirstie stood up, perched on the edge of the monitor array and they made quick, clumsy love.
The next day, it took nearly three hours to transport the module through the snow to its observational location. While their impulse was to stand it in an elevated, sterile environment, they were aware that its readings needed to be taken somewhere where the evidence of normal urban activities would be a major factor. They’d therefore decided to set it in a clearing in a park just to the east of the lab complex. It was near the top of a hill and, while a long way from even minor roads, it was still within the city limits and its sampling would provide legitimate measures of the relevant pollutant levels.
With the integrator and the CCTV cameras in place, they went back to the lab. Jamie performed the official switch on and there was a spontaneous round of applause as lights began to flicker, ones and zeros began their binary dances on the monitors and their computers sucked in the millions of streams of code that the integrator’s CFC was filtering from the sharp December air.
It was mid afternoon, Kirstie was on duty and it was she who first heard the noises. Children laughing, shouts, screams. She began to scan the location and saw a group of eight kids running along, throwing snowballs and yelling. They stopped at the foot of the small slope and looked up at the integrator.
‘Shit,’ said Kirstie.
She called Jamie on his cell phone.
‘You’d better get here real quick,’ she said.
The kids had climbed the slope and were looking at the integrator. Then they started dancing and leaping around it. One girl hugged it, another started piling snow around its base. Then, just as Jamie burst into the lab and looked at the screens, a boy climbed onto the shoulders of two of his pals and jammed his baseball cap hard down on top of the integrator’s globe.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ said Jamie, watching the read-outs change, re-form, and begin telling him different things about the integrator’s status. He switched on sub-routines, redirected inputs, recalibrated the remote mobility controller. But it was too late. The CFC had moved, the membrane had been breached. The mobility capacitators had been overlapped by its input relays. The kids stood back to admire the integrator with its new hat.
And Frosti started to dance.
Swearwords: One strong one only.
Description: A Christmas story relating the unexpected effects of scientific advances.
____________________________________________________________________
Government funds had been hard to come by. There was no doubting the professionalism and overall expertise of Jamie Munro’s team. Jamie himself had been a visiting professor at Harvard and the theoretical physicists, meteorologists, nano-technicians, molecular biologists and systems engineers he’d gathered around him were all leaders in their respective fields. Even his interns already had their doctorates. But the politicians had their own agendas and, on nearly all of them, research into climate change came well below the need to encourage Donald Trump and others to unload some of their dollars into the Scottish economy.
To be fair to them, it was also difficult for non-scientists to understand exactly what Jamie’s project was supposed to achieve. His team would be building something which would bring together information from discrete sources and integrate it into a single database. At various meetings at Holyrood, Jamie had tried to keep his terminology simple for their benefit. Basically, he said, it was just an integrator, a machine which would be set up on the fundamental principles of relativity. It would collect data transmitted from a series of sources and bring it all together to make it easier to understand. The MSPs tried, with greater but mainly lesser degrees of success, to absorb this information but things were not looking good. Paradoxically, however, it was the anger and frustration of one of the less intellectually gifted committee members that led to the grant that would allow the team to complete the prototype.
‘So what’re you calling the bloody thing?’ he asked as lunchtime approached.
Jamie hesitated but knew there was no point in trying to find a less unwieldy label than the one they’d all been using.
‘It’s a Relativity Orientated Serial Transmission Integrator,’ he said, resigning himself to the inevitable sighs, sniggers and mutters of exasperation it would provoke.
‘A what?’ said the disbelieving questioner.
‘A Relativity Orientated Serial Transmission Integrator,’ said Jamie. ‘We’ve been calling it a ROSTI.’
The MSP looked at the note he’d scribbled and read out the words, pouring scorn into each syllable.
‘A Relativity Orientated Serial Transmission Integrator. A fucking ROSTI?’ he sneered.
As the committee laughed and the chairperson banged on the table for order and to get him to withdraw the comment and apologise for his language, a member from an opposition party called out ‘Aye, that’s it, a FROSTI.’
And that was it. The Relativity Orientated Serial Transmission Integrator had become a FROSTI which, with its associations with ice cream and childhood, was a much more friendly, cheerful prospect. The MSP’s profanity had lightened the mood, it was nearly lunchtime and so, with a few minor qualifications, the committee decided to recommend that the funds be made available.
And now here they were, just before Christmas, with only one final element to be added before preliminary testing could begin. The heads of the various sections of the project were sitting in the main seminar room as Jamie briefed them on the location and linkages of the CPC, the Central Processing Circuit or, to laypersons, the integrator’s brain. The screen behind him showed a huge image of the engineering drawing on his laptop over which the cursor danced as he moved his mouse back and forth.
‘As you know, its optimal position is at the apex of the sub-orbital sensor array,’ said Jamie, sliding the mouse to show how the CPC could be turned to fit between the input nodules and the mediatronic subset transducer.
They all watched, already aware of what was needed but transfixed by the thought that, at last, it was becoming a reality. At one end of the front row, Kirstie, his personal assistant, an intern from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, watched and admired Jamie’s dexterity with the graphical interface. OK, it was limited to computer programs and the bruising on her breast was evidence of his clumsiness in other areas of manipulation, but he was a genius when it came to designing nano-systems.
A Japanese expert on neural transmissions raised his hand and said ‘Have we made sure there’s adequate separation between the output analysers and the mobility capacitators?’
Jamie nodded and smiled. The cursor slid across to a thin blue line on the drawing.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The vector field in this impermeable membrane has stable convergence parameters.’
His tone hid the fact that this was indeed one area in which his confidence wasn’t unshakable. The mobility capacitators were intended to make it easier for the integrator to be mobilised so that, using remote controls in the lab, it could be made to move from one test location to the next under its own power.
As more questions were asked and answered, the excitement in the room began to grow. Kirstie felt it as both a scientist and a lover and, when the session was over, followed Jamie back to the lab. They kissed and went through to where the integrator stood, waiting only for the fitting of the CFC. It was like a shining metallic ghost – a six feet high central cylinder, with a smaller one clamped to each side and, on top of it all, a globe with a sixteen inch internal diameter. There was no doubt that it had a sort of presence. Kirstie leaned against Jamie and his arm went round her shoulder.
‘He’s beautiful,’ she said.
‘Mmmm,’ said Jamie.
The following day was cold and clear. By early afternoon, all the dormant systems had been tested and the robotic arm on the lab’s lifting device had manoeuvred the CFC over the globe at the top of the integrator. It was a shallow dome sparkling with passive neural networks, its input interfaces spaced around its lower rim like mini portholes. Jamie held his breath as the head technician, in slow minute phases, manipulated the CFC into its allotted space. With all the connections fitted and tested, the scientists at the various monitors each gave the thumbs up and the globe was sealed.
After more tests, with all the monitors showing the anticipated levels of connectivity and a coherent set of communications interfaces confirming its structural integrity, the integrator was ready for its outer layer – a white, three phase polymorphic spray. Back in his own lab, Jamie flopped into a chair and checked, for perhaps the twentieth time that day, the forecast for the following morning.
‘Perfect,’ he said, sitting back and opening his arms for Kirstie to sit on his lap.
She kissed him and said ‘So we go ahead then?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Jamie. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’
He began unbuttoning her lab coat.
‘Then those stupid bastards at Holyrood will see. Once we’ve collated the readings in the database, they’ll have to admit we were right. They won’t have any choice.’
Kirstie stood up, perched on the edge of the monitor array and they made quick, clumsy love.
The next day, it took nearly three hours to transport the module through the snow to its observational location. While their impulse was to stand it in an elevated, sterile environment, they were aware that its readings needed to be taken somewhere where the evidence of normal urban activities would be a major factor. They’d therefore decided to set it in a clearing in a park just to the east of the lab complex. It was near the top of a hill and, while a long way from even minor roads, it was still within the city limits and its sampling would provide legitimate measures of the relevant pollutant levels.
With the integrator and the CCTV cameras in place, they went back to the lab. Jamie performed the official switch on and there was a spontaneous round of applause as lights began to flicker, ones and zeros began their binary dances on the monitors and their computers sucked in the millions of streams of code that the integrator’s CFC was filtering from the sharp December air.
It was mid afternoon, Kirstie was on duty and it was she who first heard the noises. Children laughing, shouts, screams. She began to scan the location and saw a group of eight kids running along, throwing snowballs and yelling. They stopped at the foot of the small slope and looked up at the integrator.
‘Shit,’ said Kirstie.
She called Jamie on his cell phone.
‘You’d better get here real quick,’ she said.
The kids had climbed the slope and were looking at the integrator. Then they started dancing and leaping around it. One girl hugged it, another started piling snow around its base. Then, just as Jamie burst into the lab and looked at the screens, a boy climbed onto the shoulders of two of his pals and jammed his baseball cap hard down on top of the integrator’s globe.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ said Jamie, watching the read-outs change, re-form, and begin telling him different things about the integrator’s status. He switched on sub-routines, redirected inputs, recalibrated the remote mobility controller. But it was too late. The CFC had moved, the membrane had been breached. The mobility capacitators had been overlapped by its input relays. The kids stood back to admire the integrator with its new hat.
And Frosti started to dance.
About the Author
Bill Kirton was born in Plymouth, but has lived in Aberdeen for most of his life. He’s been a university lecturer, presented TV programmes, written and performed songs and sketches at the Edinburgh Festival, and had radio plays broadcast by the BBC. He’s written four books in Pearson’s ‘Brilliant’ series and his crime novels, Material Evidence, Rough Justice, The Darkness, Shadow Selves and the historical novel The Figurehead, set in Aberdeen in 1840, have been published in the UK and USA. His other novel, The Sparrow Conundrum, is a crime spoof set in Aberdeen and Inverness. His short stories have appeared in several anthologies and Love Hurts was chosen for the Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 2010.
His website and blog can be found at http://www.bill-kirton.co.uk.
His website and blog can be found at http://www.bill-kirton.co.uk.