by Matthew Boxer
Dr Wilbur R. Hilliard studied the stars, and Dr Arlen Menlo explored subatomic particles and, in particular, the tiniest of such particles, neutrinos, while Dr Wayne Q. Ellington, an ambitious man, concerned himself with everything else in between.
Dr Hilliard investigated red giants, blue giants, New York Giants, variable stars (intrinsic and extrinsic), and other stars that huff and puff in dimly understood ways. He studied neutron stars, some of which rotate hundreds of times per second and are as big as Manhattan. He studied red dwarfs, white dwarfs, brown dwarfs, binary stars, novae, and supernovae. But he could never find the courage to take on black holes, and he rationalized this by saying that they are not really stars.
Dr Menlo concentrated on all three flavors of the subatomic neutrinos—electron, muon, and tau. Neutrinos are zipping all over the place and passing through just about everything; and because they do, they are hard to catch, and thus Dr. Menlo can be forgiven for not discovering very much about them. In addition, since quantum theory has taught us that one subatomic particle can be in two places at the same time, and scientists have further determined that neutrinos flip from flavor to flavor, how could he have even been expected to grab one by the tail?
Dr Wayne Q. Ellington’s contributions span the firmament of knowledge. He made significant advances in the fields of dippin’ dots, doughnut holes, doughnuts, cupcakes, pretzels, pebbles, small rocks, boulders, knives, forks, spoons, and other less-well-known eating utensils. Chairs, folding chairs, tables, folding tables, beds, foldaway beds, cabinets, cabinets with built-in TV sets, house plants, weeds of all kinds, evergreens (Douglas firs in particular), compact cars, subcompacts, recreational vehicles, motor homes, 18-wheelers, biplanes, helicopters, unicycles, micrometeorites, asteroids, comets, the outer planets of our solar system, and interstellar gas and dust. At the time of his death, he was beginning to look into the mysteries of solar wind and why, at times, it smelled bad.
Dr Riley McDorfman, a professor of organic chemistry, focused much of his attention on organometallic compounds and the corn flakes he ate each morning at breakfast.
Dr Herbert A. Langley taught botany at Oxford and, for a time, collaborated with Sir Alphonse Clarke. But when Clarke became too deeply immersed in poison mushrooms and other fungi, he and Langley parted ways. In time Clarke, too, became a professor at Oxford and then a professor emeritus. He remained emeritus long enough to die with that distinction. He died at his desk. His cleaning lady had come and gone several times without noticing anything unusual, for he often slept at his desk, slept soundly and without snoring, and she had been instructed and was accustomed to cleaning around him.
Dr Claude Swillswell was a professor of tourism whose advice on all destinations was much sought after. He was, in fact, one of the great experts on travel to the northern half of the western hemisphere, fully one quarter of the oblate spheroid we call Earth. Still, he was a modest man. He kept within certain bounds. For example, he refrained from discussing journeys to the moon, even while many of his colleagues were describing such trips and further excursions to Mars and the planets beyond. Moreover, Dr Swillswell never made much mention of our own South Pole even though he knew a lot about it. And he was always willing to admit that dark matter and dark energy, approximately 94% of all that is in our universe, was stuff that was far, far beyond his understanding. And finally, the most he would ever say about the great cosmic voids was that they were largely empty.
Dr Miles J. Schwinborne was a professor of film, as was Dr Wayne Sensenbrunner. While Schwinborne specialized in films that got jammed in movie projectors and melted, Sensenbrunner concentrated on early film noir and the occasional Disney cartoon. But then he made the bold and difficult decision to take on all black and white movies except for those produced after the technology for color had become available. We are, of course, grateful for his courage and thankful for his many seminal discoveries. And even though he was ten years younger than Schwinborne and a student of his for a time, in fact, he was more his teacher than his student. Indeed, when we are being candid, we recognize that we are all, in a very real sense, students of Dr Sensenbrunner, even those of us who don’t care much about movies and never go.
Initially Dr Ernest A. Gainwell was a professor of tic-tac-toe, and his radical and sometimes alarming theories and conjectures in that field enraged other academicians and even some well-informed laymen. Later, when he had turned away from tic-tac-toe and taken on, instead, the meaning of meaning, his conclusions in that arena stunned many of his intellectually less venturesome colleagues, ruptured the fabric of scholarly society, and brought about a brief but frightening period of civil unrest. It was only many years later, after Sir Fred Thorpemutter published his own thoughts on the meaning of meaning, that it began to be understood that Dr Gainwell’s earlier work in that field and in the related field of tic-tac-toe had been foundational. Still, there is so much left to be learned. Only recently mathematicians working with AI and supercomputers have demonstrated that the solutions to Gainwell’s equations, even when calculated out to a billion digits, can give us only an approximation of what might, at best, be characterized as a simplistic and even naive model of physical reality. And the recognition of this is more than humbling, especially when we note that there is still so much work to be done on tic-tac-toe. And finally, we remember with solemnity and admiration how Dr Gainwell would repeatedly insist that:
“The meaning of meaning cannot be meaningless, at least not all of the time.”
Sadly, those giants of the past are gone. But last year many of our top scientists toiling in these same fields gathered at the Waldorf Astoria in an attempt to advance the theory underlying tic-tac-toe. Unfortunately, as we all know, the resulting concentration of brain power blew away much of the roof of the Waldorf before the conference and its formal discussions could begin. Nevertheless, in the impromptu talks that preceded that catastrophe, inroads were made into how best to open shrink wrapped packages.
Of course, important questions remain and even multiply, and yet as long as there are scientists and scholars who are spirited, stouthearted, and resolute, the hope for answers to those questions will be justified.
Category: Featured, Short Story