SOS Gab & Eti 1.9

"When you think about it we are all cosmic worm holes. Two mouths connected
by a throat."

Limestone Jackson

Gabriel Orgrease, slightly brain-dead from a morning of pounding on gneiss
with maul and carbide pitching tool, had need of a natural call from mending
Simon Brown’s barn foundation. As he slowly walked up the hill, legs stiff
and cantankerous, past the burdock and blooming nightshade, on the shortcut
to the white house, the sun beat down on his brow. He felt like he was being
fried by the intense radiation, crushed to infinite density as he approached
the singularity. Spearmint ice tea. Breathability. Bad brakes. Perpetual
refrigeration. Ice houses. Sore thumb. Barking dog. Silicone versus urethane.
Backache. Red squirrel. Plastic garbage bags. Leather shoe laces. Thought
spasms, he had too many of them slithering across the gulf of his brain over
the last few weeks. Toiling with the problem of preserving an historic toilet
for an infinite duration was melting his sensibilities into corn mush.

He was, probably with good enough reason, irritated that the laws of
thermodynamics were excluding his handiwork from the permanence they
deserved. He wanted to complain. He wondered why he should bother to sign his
work? Infirmities abounded in the field surrounding, slowly buzzing from
pistil to petal.

To keep the throat of a black hole from collapsing in on itself it has to be
jammed with enough exotic matter to sustain an outward tension comparable to
the pressure at the center of a neutron star. Nothing so constipated could
bring him to this quandary, he simply felt unfathomably dense and noted he
should take it easy on his sister’s baking.

When the door swung to a large sign popped up to say, "MISSILE READY."

Negative mass and energy, the tension greater than the total density, with a
gloved hand he stuck his chisel down the center of the hole and waved it
around to clear out the creepy crawlers and black widows. Insulating the
traveler from exotic matter, confined to the walls of the tunnel, ephemeral
particles -- neutrinos, never interacting with his ordinary matter. The
creaking sound of a massive star collapsing under its own weight.

We need a structural engineer to assess the hazardous conditions. Are there
any volunteers in the audience? We can’t pay much but we can send you an
official SOS (Shit Ona Shingle) membership card and a coffee mug with
matching wood spoon. These are hand-crafted collector items that you will be
grateful to pass to your grandchildren. Otherwise I think we are shit out of
luck.

To be continued..... flatulent termites.

Copyright 1997 Ken Follett
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