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Chapter 9: ZZ-74

"Did you ever plug in with a girl, Mick?" Vernor asked Turner. They were dragging a heavy crate of synthequartz across Professor Kurtowski's laboratory floor. They had been living there for two weeks, helping to beef up and outfit the VFG for a trip through the place where zero equals infinity. Vernor couldn't decide if he wanted the machine to be ready for him or not. He liked this in-between time; for now he'd abandoned his dreams of Alice and had put normal life on hold.

"Sure," Turner drawled, "plenty of times. You get a piece of co-ax and run it from your socket to her socket and then you do it."

"Yeah, yeah," Vernor interrupted, "I know. But what's it feel like?"

"You never done that?" Turner asked in amazement.

"No, well, you know. I just never did. And now I may never get a chance."

Mick laughed and shook his head. "If you get into it it's kind of hard to get sorted out after you come. One time I wanted to say something afterwards and it came out of her mouth. The words." He grunted with effort as they rocked the box over a thick cable in its path. "Once I met a chick who had a dual amplifier. You both plugged into the amp and it mixed the signals and sent 'em back triple intensity. Actually there was four of us plugged into the amp. It had these long coil-spring co-axes. You get so merged—it's a drag coming down. Just being in one body again."

Kurtowski looked up as they approached him. "Tomorrow is the day, boys." Indeed the machine looked ready. They had constructed a tensegrity sphere of molybdenum tubing and nyxon cables. The two VFG cones had been rebuilt and attached to the inside of the sphere at its North and South poles, with the cone points almost touching at the sphere's center. There was a band of power units along the equator of the sphere, with a space left for a seat and a control panel. All that remained was to encase the sphere in a film of the strong, transparent synthequartz and it would be a functioning scale-ship.

The idea was that the virtual field would fill the sphere, causing the whole thing to shrink—sphere, VFG cones, passenger and all. The passenger, Vernor in this case, would be able to control the rate and the direction of the size change.

They set to work putting the coating of synthequartz on the framework of molybdenum and nyxon. The sphere was constructed to have a certain natural elasticity so that it would not crack under possible irregular pressures. The purpose of sealing Vernor off from the space around him was so that he could continue to breath when the sphere and its contents had shrunk to a size smaller than an oxygen molecule. Without the containing skin of synthequartz, the air which shrank along with Vernor might drift out of the field and expand to a non-usable size—after all, you can't breathe basketballs.

The Professor was in a talkative mood. "I'm very proud of you Vernor," he said. "This is the kind of thing I wanted to use my VFG for—not miniaturizing factories or shrinking doctors to clean out rich Users' arteries. Daring scientific research by a fellow initiate, this is worthy of my machine. And if you never return, if you never return, Mick and I will tell the world of your bold attempt to travel around Circular Scale."

"'At's right, man, you're right on," chimed in Turner.

"How long do you think it will take for me to complete the trip?" Vernor asked, hoping to change the subject.

"This is an extremely difficult question. We have the problem that we do not know how many scale levels there are. We do not know if you will move from one level to the next at a uniform rate. And, last, we have the difficulty that your time will run faster than ours when you are very small, and slower than ours when you, it is hoped, become very big. So I cannot tell you. Maybe ten minutes, maybe ten days, maybe ten billion years."

"Ten billion years," Vernor echoed. "Well. Look, if it feels like I'm not getting anywhere, I can always reverse the polarity and just expand back the way I came, can't I?"

"This can be done," Kurtowski agreed. "But you should not do it prematurely. Such a reversal, if carried out abruptly, could well produce a radiation field of a perhaps too great intensity."

"Perhaps too great," Vernor murmured. They were just about through attaching the panels of synthequartz. Tomorrow was the day. Maybe he should sneak out during the night. He was ashamed to have such a thought about the greatest adventure in history. But maybe? One thing, though, the loach was probably looking for him by now. The prison monitor must have noticed that there was no life in his old cell. They had probably sent up a robot doctor and found Vernor missing. How hard would they look for him? Pretty hard, he guessed. They would be looking for him in many ways: Simple surveillance by cameras and detectives; theoretical modeling of his projected behavior by Phizwhiz; and, most insidious of all, careful analysis of the data from the Dreamers' sleeping brains. If enough of them knew where he was, it would show up.

"Mick, did you tell anyone that we were coming out to the lab?"

"I don't know, man, that was weeks ago." Mick lit a stick of seeweed. The last panel was in place. "Look at that thing. You're really lucky to be the one in it tomorrow, Vernor." Turner laughed with just the faintest hint of a jeer. "Seriously, if you don't make it back, I'll get the Professor to send me after you." He passed the reefer to Kurtowski.

"I was just worrying about the police coming after me was all," Vernor said. "Cause if they're not I got a good mind to leave while you guys are sleeping tonight." They didn't answer and Vernor thought about it some more. It seemed certain that the loach would be after him. "Let's test the fucking thing a little bit at least." He drummed on the hull nervously. "Give me that reefer, Prof, I thought you didn't smoke anymore, anyway."

Kurtowski exhaled a lungful and handed the stick to Vernor, with a chuckle. "Smoke, no smoke, what's the difference. We exist. Once you're born the worst has already happened to you. You've been so worried about dying, but have you thought about what you'll do if your trip is . . . successful?"

"I don't know. Smash the government, I guess. Like that's the thing to do, isn't it?"

The others nodded. Sure. Smash the government. "That's what Andy wanted," Kurtowski said.

"Yeah," Mick put in. "Remember? He said 'Just tell them I was a martyr for the Revolution.' You think he's still alive inside Phizwhiz?"

Nobody knew. They smoked in silence for a few minutes. Finally the Professor spoke up. "Did I ever tell you the way I discovered ZZ-74?" he said, turning to Mick.

"I been waiting for you to bring it up. You got any?" Turner was lolling against a panel of instruments, looking through the remaining drugs in his pockets. "I haven't had any in six months," he lied.

"Do I have any? Ja, that's the question. Do you know what it looks like?" Kurtowski asked Vernor. This was good seeweed. The air seemed to be made of a transparent substance more rigid and more clear than air. ZZ-74?

"Well, the stuff we were taking was usually a clear gelatin capsule. It was like there was either some gas or a very small pinch of powder inside."

Kurtowski smiled and shook his head. "No gas, no powder. Didn't you take it on the street once?"

"Yeah," Vernor said, remembering, "Sure. My first time. Andy gave it to me. It was a little white pill like an aspirin."

"Perhaps it said aspirin on it, no?" Kurtowski's smile broadened. What was he getting at? He continued the dialogue. "Why doesn't everyone take ZZ-74?"

"Because the Us can't get the formula to legalize it and go into production," Mick said. "God knows they'd like to."

Professor Kurtowski held out a closed hand and opened it. "This is ZZ-74" The hand was empty. As the truth hit him, Vernor felt the room around him recede. They were sitting in the light of a single lamp, magicians three, null and void. The wind of Eternity swept through him.

Mick reached out and took a pinch of air from the Professor's hand and snorted it. "A righteous hit, old man," he said, stretching out on his back.

Vernor popped a pinch of the air into his mouth. "The perfect drug cannot exist, lest it be dragged through the dirt by the infidel?" he questioned.

Kurtowski nodded. "Ja, I had this idea after watching what happened to LSD. You had squares taking it to improve their sex-life, even ad-men eating it for inspiration to sell cars—it was too accessible. These people would take it, but they would not see the sublime mystery, the white light, the All in Nothing . . . and then they would say that I lied when I said that LSD had showed these things to me. I began to doubt, and acid no longer worked for me. I went into the laboratory to create a better drug—I was a materialistic fool like the others. But one day, deeply absorbed in a synthesis, I dropped a beaker on the floor. As it shattered, so did my delusions and I saw the All in Nothing again. I was there and I had never left. To remember this moment I named it  . . . ZZ-74. Later Andy had the idea of giving it to the people. Since there was nothing there, they could not destroy it."

Professor Kurtowski's voice seemed to come from somewhere inside Vernor's head. Immortality and freedom were man's birthright. ZZ-74. He lay down to enjoy the trip.

 

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