"Is there any way," I asked, "that we can talk about this subject so that *I* can understand it? without a lot of malarkey?"

"I don't think so," he replied. "You can have incomprehensible or you can have nonsensical. Those are the choices."

---

 

The Superstring Swimsuit

"All bathing suits are made of cosmic strings." — Melanie Ezell
 

This story was written in response to Melanie Ezell's challenge and some of the comments that followed.

 

"The problem," Surinam was telling me, "is that there are only two ways to talk about this subject. The first way is to use mathematics: endless volumes of numbers and symbols and equations. That approach, to put it bluntly, is nothing but an immense quantity of incomprehensible rubbish, leading, with painstaking precision, exactly nowhere."

"It may be incomprehensible to you," Hacksworth grumbled. "But that doesn't mean SOME of us don't understand it."

Surinam ignored the comment and went on: "The second way is to use mystical doubletalk. That approach is loads of fun, but is totally lacking in any scientific — or even philosophical — rigor."

Chatterly protested, "That's hardly fair! At least it gives us a way to discuss it on the macro level."

I groaned and resisted the urge to bang my head on my desk. "Is there any way," I asked, "that we can talk about this subject so that *I* can understand it? without a lot of malarkey?"

Surinam licked his lips and pretended to consider my question. "I don't think so," he replied. "You can have incomprehensible or you can have nonsensical. Those are the choices."

"Then we're in trouble," I told them. "Big, big trouble."

I looked at the four faces before me: Hacksworth, Chatterly, Surinam, and Bean. They smiled at me — smiles of child-like simplicity and absolute trust. I wanted to smack them all silly, but what good would it do?

"Look, boys," I said to them. "We've been spending–" and there I paused. It wouldn't do to tell them a number, any number, because then they'd go off on all sorts of irrelevant mental calculations and completely miss the point I was trying to make. "Well, we've spent a boatload of the government's money, and tomorrow somebody's coming to see what we've been up to."

The four men continued to smile happily at me. The geniuses just didn't get it.

"What am I going to tell them?" I demanded.

"We can show them the swimsuit," Bean suggested.

"I am NOT going to show anyone this silly swimsuit!" I told him, struggling to stay calm. "Look: tomorrow, three representatives of the Government Accounting Office are going to be here. They have the authority to go anywhere, look at anything, ask any question they like — and I have to give them an answer, I might add — an answer that satisfies them. IF — IF — IF I can tell them what we've spent the last year doing, and IF they like what they hear, then we'll be in business for another four years.

"On the other hand, if they DON'T like what I tell them, if they don't think we've done anything worthwhile, they can shut us down and throw us out on our ears."

Surinam opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off. "If you're going ask me how they're going to make sure we land on our ears, I swear to God I'll get out this chair and show you how."

He closed his mouth and kept silent.

"Do you geniuses understand that, come tomorrow, we could ALL be out of work? Do you get that?"

They sure didn't look like they got it.

I made an effort to breathe deeply, slowly, in a regular rythmn. I needed to get a grip on my anger and frustration. "What I need," I told them in the most even tone I could manage, "is a story. I need something I can tell them. And I don't have a goddam idea of what to say."

Bean, the most practical of the four, cleared his throat and said, "Honestly, chief, we think the swimsuit is going to almost literally blow their minds."

I dropped my head in frustration. If I didn't need the four of them so badly, I swear I would have fired them all on the spot.
 

---

 

I'm not a mathematician or a scientist or even an engineer. I'm a glorified project manager. Even that's not the right word for what I do.

Four years ago, the federal government launched a wide-open, blue-sky, pure-research micro-initiative.

What that means in plain English is that they threw piles of money at small groups of scientists, and told them: "Do whatever you feel like doing. Work on whatever you think is important. We'll come back later and see if you've got anything. NO PRESSURE! Okay? Bye!"

Our little group, my four geniuses and I, got a big fat check every month, no questions asked.

I was hired as the administrator, and at first I tried to keep track of what the four were up to, but it didn't take long before I gave it up.

I couldn't understand them. Not a word.

These guys were so far out, they made theoretical physics seem like kindergarten. I've got some basic understanding of modern physics and all its weird particles. I get the uncertainty principle and I could probably explain to you why quantum physics sounds so crazy, but these guys... they left me in the dust.

Like one time, I overheard them talking about "putting a black hole into a pair of underwear," and I laughed. I mean, you would have thought it was a joke, right? But they all looked at me like *I* was nuts.

Surinam chided me, "There could be some practical application!"

Bean jumped in to remind them that the idea "had started out as a joke" and after that, they quit ribbing me.

Sheesh.

Still, I began to get the impression that all their theoretical, cosmological, ontological ideas and all the projects they proposed somehow managed to include a salacious or scatalogical element. They seemed hell-bent on involving their sexual immaturity in everything they did.

Not that it was ever a problem. They *were* doing science at the same time. At least, that's what they told me.

After a while, I realized that Bean, out of the four, was the one who lived closest to the real world, so I began to have lunch with him once a week. With some struggle on both our parts, he managed to help me get some sort of picture of what they were doing.

Unfortunately, the other three scientists got jealous, and *they* wanted to lunch with me as well.

So every week, the understanding Bean built up on Monday was eroded by his colleagues on the days that followed.

It wasn't that they tried to confuse me. They were just talking: making jokes, explaining things, thinking out loud.

The problem was that these guys were world-class geniuses, and my poor brain didn't have the same wiring as theirs. From Tuesday to Thursday, every week, at precisely 1:15, I'd sit down at my desk with my mind fully and properly blown. And by "blown", I mean blown out, empty, devoid of content, circuits fused, relays burnt, wires melted, brain pan fried.

Fridays, when the weather was nice, I'd go the park at lunchtime and feed the ducks. It helped me feel that I had at least some kind of grip on reality... or that there *was* a reality out there to grip.

Even so, with all of that, it was the best job I ever had. Good money, no one over me... honestly, I had nothing to do but show up and make sure my boys showed up.

Until the day of reckoning, when the Government Accounting Office, the GAO, informed us that we were having a review. Tomorrow. No warning, no preparation.

"Nothing formal," they said. "We just want to see what you're up to. And, you know, make determinations for future funding."
 

---

 

"What that means," I told the four clowns seated in front of me, "is that they could shut us down."

"That's not what they said," Chatterly pointed out.

"They will make determinations for future funding," I repeated. It was amazing, the things you had to explain to people, especially to geniuses. "Funding means money. The future is... tomorrow and the days after. Determinations means they will decide something. Add it all together, and it means they are going to decide how much money they're going to give us."

"They could give us more," Surinam offered hopefully.

"Why would they do that?" I asked. "They'd be more likely to give us less."

"They can't give us less," Surinam countered.

"Less would mean any number between what they give us now... and zero," said Hacksworth, thinking aloud. He is, after all, the mathematician of the group.

"Zero?" Chatterly repeated. "If they give us zero, why, that's... that's... nothing!"

I slapped my hands over my face. "God help me," I muttered. "Any day now..."

"Don't worry," Bean told me. "We have the swimsuit."
 

---

 

"So let me get this straight," I said. "You're telling me that this swimsuit is made out of superstrings?"

"Well, no," Hacksworth replied, adjusting his glasses as he tried to suppress a smirk. "That would be impossible. I mean, superstrings don't even exist!"

"Oh, don't go there!" Chatterly cried.

I held up my hands for quiet. They settled down.

"Bean?" I prompted.

"It's like this," he began. "You can call it resonance, or sympathy, or entanglement—"

"None of them being the right word," Hacksworth threw in.

"— or some other thing, but what it comes down to is this: if someone puts that swimsuit on, the wearer will be attuned to, or commune with, or simply BE the same..." he searched for the word "... power —"

"Let's say entity," Surinam put in.

Bean scowled, but accepted the word. "... entity which — for want of a better description — creates, sustains, and perhaps even destroys the entire universe."

The others were silent, for once.

I set the suit carefully on my desk.

"You can touch it all you want, chief," Hacksworth said, grinning. "It's completely inert until someone puts it on."

"What kind of sense does that make?" I asked. "And, look here: you guys said that you made this outfit, but the tag is still on it!" It was a women's Speedo Hydrasuit: one of those slick one-piece outfits that racing swimmers wear.

"And why the hell," I continued, "Why in the name of holy hell did you pick *this* swimsuit?"

"A two-piece swimsuit doesn't have enough material," Hacksworth replied. "By 'material' I mean cloth. And a man's swimsuit has even less."

"Why did it have to be a swimsuit?" I demanded.

The four of them looked at each other. It appeared to be a question that no one had thought to ask.

"Please don't tell me that you knuckleheads thought we'd bring a model in here to try this on for you."

Four sets of eyes blinked at me in the worst imitation of innocence I'd ever seen.

"You can forget that! What do you think the chances are of getting a security clearance for... oh, never mind!"

I looked at the swimsuit for the umpteenth time. "It just looks like lycra or whatever they normally use," I said.

"It is," Bean said. "We've treated it, but it's treated in ways that are undetectable."

"Can we say theoretically undetectable?" Chatterly asked.

"Sure," I said. "So how did you make it?"

"Uh," Bean began, searching for words. He glanced at the others, then told me, "Let's say that we supercooled the beams from several types of lasers in a very particular kind of magnetic field."

Hacksworth scoffed. "That is a ridiculously oversimplified—"

I cut him off, saying, "It's good enough for government work." I wasn't going to tell them, but I finally felt like I had a grasp on what they'd done, or said they'd done.

"So you just blasted it with energy, and that was that?" I asked.

"No, no," Surinam said. "Not 'just like that'. It took months of painstaking adjustments, alignments..."

Chatterly put in, "It was very painstaking work."

"I already said that," Surinam pointed out.

"Could they be mass produced?" I asked, but the chorus of hysterical laughter was answer enough.

Bean told me, "This baby may be one of a kind. We had some lucky accidents—"

"It wasn't luck," Hacksworth contradicted.

"The point is," Bean concluded. "I don't know if we can make another. This may be the one and only... never to be seen again."

"But... we do have this one. We can use it over and over—"

"Oh, no," laughed Surinam. "This suit is strictly single-use!"

"What!?" I shouted. "What the hell kind of sense does that make? So what happens to it when it's done?"

"It reverts to being an ordinary swimsuit," Bean said.

"Hmmph," I said. The whole thing was absurd and unbelievable, but oddly enough, I was beginning to feel a little better. At least now I had a story for the GAO.

Unless...

"You guys aren't pulling my leg are you?"

They all looked offended.

"Okay, sorry. I had to ask. Well, look. There's just one piece missing for me. What happens when somebody puts the suit on?"

"I already told you," Bean said. "It kind of puts you in control... you kind of sit at the, uh, center of creation, and pull the strings."

"Or the superstrings," Hacksworth joked.

"And what could you do? And how would you know how to do it?"

"We think it would be clear in that moment," Surinam replied. "It should be intuitively obvious. It would be a sort of mystical state, you could say, in which you'd be in touch with the universe, the one and the many, the all and the nothing, and you could remake it all in the blink of an eye."

"You're shitting me," I told him.

He shrugged. "That's what we think it does, and we're pretty smart guys."

I thought for a moment. "Okay," I said. "But suppose you want to change something. What could you change?" I looked around my office. "Could I change the color of the walls?"

Bean had a bemused look. "Sure, but it would be kind of a waste. You could do *that* with a bucket of paint."

I thought for a moment, but no other questions came to mind. "Alright," I told them. "I think I have enough to tell the GAO. I think I get it. Enough, anyway." I wanted to stop while I had a clear idea. I knew from experience that if they kept talking, they'd confuse me all over again.

"So, are we done here?" Surinam asked.

"Yeah, sure," I replied. "Meeting over. You can go. Uh, good job, guys."

And then an odd thing happened. All four of them looked at their watches, and THEN Surinam asked, "What time do you have?" The other three responded, "3:24," one after the other. Surinam nodded, and they all trooped out.
 

---

 

Once they left, I did the most managerial thing I know: I stretched my arms, interlaced my fingers, and put my hands on top of my head. I leaned back in my chair and cleared my mind. It didn't take much: the four geniuses had pretty much blown it out earlier. After a minute or two I stood up and walked in front of my desk.

"A man's butt wasn't made to sit that long," I observed, and moved my hips around to get some circulation going.

I looked out the window at the parking lot. It wasn't a pretty sight. Our building was an reconditioned radio assembly plant, and it was just as old and rundown as that sounds. I wished for the umpteenth time that we'd gotten offices in a better location. At the same time I knew we didn't have that luxury. It was an old beef I had with myself, and I didn't feel like arguing it out with myself again. It was the best choice, given the nature of our work.

Our work, I echoed, laughing to myself. Nice work, if you can get it.

I really ought to do something constructive with my life while I'm here, I told myself, but before I could settle on just what that might be, the door flew open, and Surinam burst in, looking all around. When he saw me, he looked disappointed.

"What's the big idea?" I asked. "Don't you know how to knock? What in the world do you want?"

"Oh," he said, obviously at a loss for what to say. "I forget."

"You forget?" He nodded. "Then get the hell out of here! I've got some important work to do!"

He mumbled apologies and left.

Geniuses! These four were supposed to be geniuses, but — excepting Bean — they barely had an ounce of sense between them.

I began thinking about the GAO review. What was the worst-case scenario? Obviously, they could shut us down. That would be the worst case. But would that really be so bad? I'd saved up enough money that at this point I could take a year off, if I wanted to. That's how much money I'd been making. I didn't even try to save; the money saved itself.

At the same time, I wouldn't mind having the whole thing stop. Just stop; come to an end. I could get a new job; a real job. A job where I'd be *doing* something, contributing to society.

I moved a chair into the corner, to a spot where I could look out the window and see mostly sky. It seemed the right place to contemplate my future, to try and figure out what I could do to make the world a better place. I put one of my feet up; I found it was conducive to reflection.

I'd gotten about as far as remembering the first and last names of some girls I knew in high school, when my office door suddenly flew open, and Hacksworth burst into the room. I was so startled that I jumped to my feet with my right foot still resting on the short file cabinet, and I nearly fell to the floor. Nearly, but not quite.

"What the hell is this!?" I bellowed. "Burst-into-my-office day? What is it with you guys?"

"Uh... uh...," Hacksworth hemmed and hawed. "Sorry! I thought it was... uh... the door to the men's room."

"The door to the men's room!? Are you out of your mind? Do I need to tell you that it isn't? Get the hell out of here!"

He mumbled his apologies and left.

What was going on with those nitwits? Were they playing a practical joke on me? I stood on my desk and looked on top of the fluorescent lights. Nope: no time-release cups of water or confetti. I looked under my desk for wires. I stood where I could see behind the books on my bookshelves. Nothing there. I took out all the drawers in my desk and searched behind them. Nothing.

I lifted the pictures on my wall. I rifled through my wastepaper basket. I turned over all the chairs; examined my floor lamp, desk lamp, and pencil sharpener. I gave the room as thorough a going-over as I knew how, and man! did I know how. Years of practical jokes from those... uh, jokers had taught me to expect the unexpected.

"Actually," Bean had pointed out when I made that boast, "You've enlarged the area of what you regard as expected. The unexpected, whatever that is, remains unexpected."

"If you say so," I replied.

I glanced at the clock. It was almost 4:10. Again, the door burst open, and I found myself face to face with Chatterly.

"Now you?" I asked. "What gives?"

Chatterly clearly looked disappointed, and a little confused.

"So?" I asked him. "What's your excuse?"

"I, uh, wanted to see whether I'd left my hat here."

"You don't wear a hat!" I told him.

"Oh," he said, "then I must have left it somewhere else."

"Yeah," I said, "you must have. Like inside your head!"

Chatterly frowned at my (admittedly) lame reply, but "at least he left," as I told myself after the door closed.

Now that I was alone AGAIN, for the fourth time this afternoon, I looked at the swimsuit. Might as well get ready for the GAO, I told myself, and began doing just that by snipping off the price tags. I was surprised to find that the suit had a zipper up its back. Probably it helped keep the suit tight against the swimmer; made less resistance. After all, in racing, seconds count.

What to do, what to do, I mused. Maybe one of the auditors would be a woman. She could try on the suit and... No. It was improbable that an auditor would be a woman and the right size and willing to try on the suit. She'd probably be insulted and leave. And cut off our funding.

What to do? Well, maybe someone else could wear the suit. And then what? They could change something. Maybe they could change something that would wow the GAO. But what could that be?

According to the four wise men in the other room, once the person put the suit on, they'd know what to do. It would be intuitive. The wearer would be in touch with the very heart of the universe, as it were.

I wondered whether there was a woman I knew that I'd trust enough to wear that suit.

And what could I ask her to change?

Then it hit me: there was something that could be changed. I could have the woman change the swimsuit itself! She could change it from the single-use model that the boys had created. She could turn it from a single-use to a multi-use outfit — one that would work every single time that someone put it on!

Now that was something that would wow even the four geniuses themselves.

"Surprised they didn't think of it," I laughed to myself.

Now who could wear it? Who could I trust to do the right thing?

I admit I'm not the smartest man in the universe — or even on earth — and definitely not the smartest man in my building. So I'm sure that most of you have already figured out that *I* was going to wear that swimsuit myself.

After all, it should only take a moment. No one would see. Maybe I didn't even need to zip it up.

I chucked my clothes on the chair in the corner and wiggled my way into the outfit. It was just about my size, if I were a woman. The waist was pretty goddam tight, but I got in there. I slid my arms into the arm-openings, and pulled it on, good and tight. Once I got my arms in, it kinda almost snapped onto me, but that wasn't any kind of super-scientific magic. It was just the way the swimsuit fit. And whoo, let me tell you: it was tight everywhere. Man, it was squeezing me all over.

But as far as changing the universe, nothing happened.

Okay, then: looked like I'd have to zip the zipper. I reached behind and pushed it halfway up. I bent my other arm but found it didn't go any higher. I reached behind my head, and found that with a bit of dancing and pushing on my elbow, I managed to grab the zipper and hoist it all the way up.

As soon as I did, everything changed.

And I mean everything. I've heard people describe hallucinogenic states, but this wasn't anything like that. It wasn't like a mystical experience, either.

It was just like... well... it was just like now. Not "be here now" — it was just plain NOW. I mean "now" — lowercase, without the quotes. Everything was the way everything always is, just more so. I could hear everything, see everything, smell everything, and even though none of it was pretty or good or nice, I loved it because it was perfect. Not "perfect in its own way," either: just perfect. Just plain perfect, with emphasis on the plain.

Plain, I realized. The universe is just PLAIN perfect. And it was. It is. It will be. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. And we are all plain. Very plain.

I stood there, admiring the crappy old linoleum that was coming perfectly to pieces under the perfectly fake veneer of my thrift-store-reject desk. It was a good buy, though. The desk, I mean. No one — no one in the universe! could deny that now. I was sure. I knew, with precise, all-encompassing knowledge, that *that* desk was a good buy. A very good buy. And a good buy it would forever remain.

I spread my arms, and my knowledge grew. It expanded out, embraced the globe, invaded the internet, and soaked up television waves from the ether. And yes, there was an ether. Limitless, undetectable, flowing.

As my consciousness expanded, I realized a simple fact: the earth is not the center of universe. Neither is the sun. So, what is, where is, the universal center? The navel of the universe, if you will? It's a point, a small, empty non-space, off, way off, way way off, down there. At that moment, I could have pointed it out to you, and you would have seen it. I would have caused you to see it, that little empty voidless void, off in the voidness of the void void void...

I began to find that exploring the universe was tiring work. Very tiring work. My legs began to feel the strain of standing and supporting all the connections and flexions and fluxions and formations that filled and filed and flashed through my whole-body consciousness.

And then... I felt the strings, and saw that it was just as Surinam had said. I knew exactly what to do, how to make it work, and what the implications would be. I could change whatever I liked. If I wanted, I could push all the continents of earth back together as one. I could bring Atlantis up from the sea. I could make it so mosquitos had never existed, not even in anyone's memory or imagination. I could grow grass on the moon, or hair on a billiard ball. Whatever I wanted, I could do.

At the same time, I saw the danger of the swimsuit. It was wrong to make it multi-use. The universe couldn't bear to be made, unmade, remade, over and over again. Even now, just by looking, I was putting a enormous strain on the fabric of matter, energy, and some third, nameless thing in all their manifestations and forms. I had to stop — and soon! — or the universe, multiverse, omniverse, would fray and stretch and come apart at the seams.

But first, I had to change something. Something small in order of things, something that wouldn't tax the infinite order of connections and dependencies, something that wouldn't change history, destiny, or free-market economy — yet something that would render the suit inert once I was done.

I remembered my joke to Bean, about changing the color of my office walls. That would do it, but it wouldn't satisfy the GAO.

What if I were to change one of the pictures on my wall? I was sure I could create something so extraordinary that the GAO would be left breathless, and sure to renew our funding indefinitely. An image that amazed and satisified the mind: something never seen or imagined on earth before now.

My memory opened like a huge library, and I scanned image after image of all the things that ever took my breath away.

Suddenly, among all the assorted wonders, I saw a poster... a movie poster... from the distant past of my teenage years. It was a poster for one of the first movies I saw by myself: One Million Years B.C. It was the image of Raquel Welch as Loana the Fair One, in her fur-trimmed bikini and fur boots, her auburn hair falling past her shoulders.

An iconic image, if ever there was one.

Perfection, I thought, Here is perfection. I abandoned the idea of a picture. Now I knew what needed to be done, and in that now I did it.

Once the change was made, the superstrings relaxed and disappeared from view. My senses contracted, retracted, and lost their super-acuity. My consciousness let go of the edges of the universe, lost its grip on the invisible, and fumbled its way back inside my head. I became once more a normal, simple human, and everything around me looked and sounded and smelled just as it had this morning, yesterday, and the day before. My linoleum was no longer perfect: it was just crappy old linoleum.

The desk was still a good buy, though.

As I stood there, looking at the clothes that no longer fit me, shivering in the air-conditioned room, I realized that fur may be warm, but I'd need a lot more than a fur bikini before the GAO arrived. Hell, I'd need a lot more clothes than I was wearing if I wanted to make it home tonight.

Almost as if on schedule, my office door burst open for the fourth time that afternoon. This time Bean came in, and when he saw me, he smiled. He didn't seem surprised, but he certainly looked pleased.

"Wow! That's quite a change, chief."

I shrugged in mute agreement.

"You *are* the chief, aren't you?" Bean asked.

"Yes, I am," I said, trying out my new voice for the first time.

Bean's eyes scanned me, up and down. I cleared my throat so he'd look me in the face.

He clapped his hands together and rubbed them with satisfaction. "Let me say, you made an excellent choice, chief! An excellent choice! Excuse me, but I have to tell the others."

He left my office without closing the door. As he walked away, I heard him shout, "Ha! I won the pool, you losers! Time to pay up!"

© 2008 by Kaleigh Way

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