3. EVEN MORE PROLOGUE! IT'S THE PAST-PROLOGUE OF PROLOGUE'S PROLOGUE!
Still recall the small town somewhere in the land of elk, moose, and other exotic animals that wandered so freely and naturally in the local zoo? At the moment, the city's university was the stage of thrilling happenings –well, at least one classroom in the chemistry faculty's premises. This auditorium was at the moment habited by a variety of biochemistry students. A batty old professor roamed hither and thither in front of the blackboard. He murmured something inexplicable with a voice resembling mosquito whirr, and while he wrote the lecture notes up on the blackboard, his wide sleeve brushed over the freshly drawn equations so that they turned to alien gibberish.
It was very lucky that no aliens were present in the classroom. Namely, what currently was on the blackboard, involuntarily and completely randomly done by the professor's cotton-based garment's protruding piece called sleeve, meant such appalling insults in one dying Uolevian dialect that they would have caused a life-long sentence in the T-Rex-guarded penal colony of Deneb 5.
Nonetheless, the major interest on this lesson was aimed at a minuscule girl in the middle row. She was seemingly asleep and teetered dangerously on the edge of her seat. The enthusiastic male students a few rows behind her were gambling at her cost; they had put their month's earnings in the game to guess when and on what particular second the girl would eventually fall from her seat to the floor. She had managed to balance on the very tip of the seat already so long that it was generally against all the odds in the universe. This miracle indeed was caused by a small cluster of improbability matter that had materialized from another dimension just over her and was controlling the situation with all the possible improbability in the universe.
This particular girl was a Swedish blonde called Nana Croft. Her massive height was slightly less than five feet, and she wore a shabby white (it used to be white, but now its original color was a part of the waging males' guessing game) laboratory coat and a set of huge, perfectly circular bottle-bottom glasses. The pockets of this coat were stuffed with the most peculiar chemical substances, including a haphazardly sealed bottle of 99-molar sulfuric acid. Her hair, as said before, was the color of hydrogen peroxide and about waist-length, somewhat unkempt and was constantly drooping over her pale-blue eyes (which under the circumstances were of course closed now).
Hereby we must ask, is such a thing as 99-molar sulfuric acid even possible to exist? It is namely so strong, that after it is exposed to the NTP-conditions or slightly above (temperature 273-323 Kelvins and pressure around one bar), it would corrode itself and evaporate, after first corroding everything else around it, in a certain amount of time.
Yet, inside the bottle that resided in Nana Croft's pocket, reigned special conditions so that the liquid did not harm itself or the environment. However, if the bottle's cork would unwittingly open, the results could be apocalyptic.
Enthusiastic whispers flew here and there in the air behind Nana. She had reached such a pose that it was perhaps a mere nanosecond time to the final collapse. But the improbability cloud over her had not yet dematerialized, so it yet kept her position rather stationary.
Other that that, the circumstances were rather normal in the auditorium. Nana always slept during lessons, because in truth there was no need even to listen to them. This biochemistry student had the IQ of Albert Einstein. But that was rather much the only merit; she was so lazy and nerdy that she sometimes beat even Q Gamma with her flaws. No wonder these two oddbirds were also the best friends.
Let us take a goggle again at the classroom. The professor went on with the monotonic hum, and his long floor-dragging beard collected into itself dead flies and other mess generated by dirty shoebottoms. Two benches distance from Nana, a snobby bushy-haired girl with big front teeth was furiously making notes, phenomenally decoding the teacher's droning. In the seat right beside Nana was a cute little basket owned by this particular swotter. It was lined with flowery frilly canvas, and a big, pink bow decorated winsomely the carrier. Inside the basket was a little puppy. It was almost ludicrously adorable, with big brown begging eyes that were slightly oversized compared with its head, a fluffy wagging tail, and a slobbering little pink tongue that was lolling out of its mouth. Every once in a while, it whimpered and gave little barks, wagging its tail around and around, and making tiny leaps around the basket. Its owner occasionally patted its head and gave a hush to quiet it gently down.
"Tut tut, Fluffy! We must listen to the kind professor who tells us important things!" the girl piped and began with the fuming writing again.
Just at the moment the improbability cloud vanished with a mute sound. But it shocked the puppy so much, that it gave a tad louder mewl than before.
This was the beginning of a catastrophe. For the convenience of the audience, we shall tell it here slowly and detailed, and illustrate it with an elaborate slow motion movie that has no pictures or sound. Just the subtitles.
The Official warning of the Intergalactic Department of Illusionary Experiments: the understanding of the following scene needs the ability to master a Tellurian language called English with an adequate degree. Unfortunately translations to Betelgeusean or any other common languages of the Galactic Coalition are not currently available. If you are unsatisfied by this current situation, please contact the Complaint Division of the Intergalactic Department of Illusionary Experiments via the sigma-channel of the interstellar VOG, code number 6.0221367*10^23. Thank you for your patience.
With a slump, Nana fell down. A shriek came from the back row. A male with a stubble and moth-eaten fleece jacket had just won someone's 12-months student aid. The professor below at the blackboard was posing a question.
"Who can tell me the atomic number of molybdenum?"
Nana was experiencing the most wonderful sensation in her sleep. She was falling, softly, like a feather, towards a sea that glistened in the sunlight like a meadow of jewels. The few cottony clouds drifting across the sky had a brilliant shade of purple. In the zenith, just under the billows, was delineated the Answer. The Answer to Life, Universe and Everything. It was written onto the marble-white sky with silvery letters.
Forty-Two…
She wanted to scream it out loud with the most jingling laugh she owned. She closed her eyes, and let a squeal of ultimate happiness echo out of her mouth…
"FORTY-TWO!"
This was her dream. Under the blaring sky that was covered in the deepest shade of blue…
Nevertheless, this is what happened in reality (of course we could discuss hours about the definition of reality, but let us just go on, shall we?).
Just before Nana hit the floor, her brains processed the question the professor had posed. As she knew the answer, her synapses had tangled up with the dream and illustrated it there. Still half-asleep, she bounced up crashing through her desk with a huge crack. Her both arms were violently waving in the air, her mouth curved into a jubilant smile.
"FORTY-TWO!"
"That is correct, Miss Croft", the dotty old professor croaked. "The atomic number of molybdenum is forty-two."
What Nana did not notice, was that her bottle of 99-molar sulfuric acid had slipped out of her pocket, and was flying in a perfect quarter-circular curve towards the seat where the puppy was… it hit the seat's handrail and the cork fell open…
Every student jerked to hear the loud hiss and shocked awake to smell the terrible ooze of something burning. The seat next to Nana was abruptly gone and instead of it was a craggy hole on the floor. The parquet around it was black with burning corrosion. Chaotic alarms rang around the classroom, there was deadly dangerous acid on the loose! The panicked students rushed towards the entrances, colliding with one another and getting bruises although no acid had even swept past them.
"Out! Out! Everyone out! It's an emergency!"
Meanwhile, the 99-molar sulfuric acid continued its way towards the lower floors of the university. Since this was the 5th floor, the merry acid had so many chances to play around a bit. It jovially melted a few computers, someone's sandwich that this someone was just about to bite (the someone was left unharmed, only the poor sandwich experienced its end slightly before it would have been bitten to gooey mush by the certain someone), the only women's toilet in the 2nd floor that had twenty people queuing outside it merely dancing and cringing with uneasiness, someone's 98% done Ph.D. thesis, and then it dug itself about two miles under the ground before it corroded itself and left no evidence of its sole existence.
Baffled Nana surveyed around the deserted classroom. She was still pinned inside the broken desk. With efforts, she loosened herself from her prison, still not understanding what had happened. Had the lesson ended earlier than usually? It was all dizzy in the head. The girl recalled only the marvelous shade of blue and the silvery outline of her cherished number.
And why was her sulfuric acid bottle lying on the floor beside that big steaming hole?
Shrugging, she picked up the bottle and corked it casually, pushing it back inside her pocket. Instantly, the liquid inside it doubled and the dish was almost full of it again. She did not quite know the reason for this, it just kept happening every time the Swedish blonde used the acid somewhere.
Yet, now Nana had no memento whatsoever of what bizarre had happened. Her mind mused that perhaps a by-passing meteor was responsible for that hole in the floor. But the explanation was quite partial since there was no hole in the ceiling…
"Hmm. So maybe I fell asleep and the sulfuric acid fell out of my pocket…" she yawned absent-mindedly. "Gotta get a better stopper for this stinkin' thing…"
Like a sleepwalker in pea-soup-thick fog, she wandered out of the auditorium. Weird, it was so empty out here. Only a bushy-haired girl wept in the corner, being consoled by a few of her friends.
"And… sniff… I was… going to take… Fluffy… to a dog show today… sniff…"
Croft hardly heard this. Her eyes were lazily lingering in a vision of a big steamy cup of coffee. Ahh, the soft aroma of freshly brewed mocha… she was slurping the mere air bewitched by this dream. What would taste better than a gigantic bowl of aromatic coffee?
Thus she began searching for a coffee automat. As usually, she had no idea where the next lesson was and when. Perhaps her hyperintelligent IQ would lead her there after an academic pause.
"Q would like coffee too…" she talked to herself. "Wonder if she's woken up yet?"
However…
Nobody was aware that a pack of pigeons had just landed on the top of the university's roof. And that they were completely ruining it with their droppings. And some shady, tall figure slinked inside to the very secret study department of the university, situated fifty floors under the ground.
…to be continued…
