Eradani looked across at her roommate. She was fast asleep, as most people would be at three in the morning. Eradani rolled over under the quilt and pulled it up close to her to try and keep in some extra warmth. She was still cold, despite having four layers of sheets and quilts above her. She wondered how Jo could sleep so peacefully covered by just that one thin sheet. Very strange. Mind you, Jo was quite strange in any number of ways.
Eradani thought back to the day they had first met: their first day at university. Both were freshers and neither had any idea where they were or what they were supposed to do. Eradani had rather tragically been abandoned by her parents at the entrance to her hall, and had to struggle in alone with all her bags. She followed the signs that were conveniently placed at just the wrong height to be instantly visible, and ended up at a small desk.
There was just one person sitting there - a girl, perhaps three or four years older than Eradani. She was wearing a bright red badge with ‘I’m here to help YOU’ written on it in big gold letters.
‘Yes?’ she said curtly.
‘Er, I’m new here,’ Eradani fumbled. ‘I’m in room 237, I think.’
‘Name?’
‘Eradani.’
‘Eradani what?’
‘Just Eradani. That’s my only name.’
‘Okay,’ said the desk attendant, slightly condescendingly. She ran through the pages of the booklet in front of her with a pen that seemed to have been bought at somewhere called Flange World and looked up in surprise when she found the entry. ‘Alright, Eradani. I’ll need to see your Hall Pass before I can give you your key.’
Eradani passed the pass.
‘Okay, here’s your key. I hope you enjoy your time here. There is an introduction session at eight o’clock in that room just over there.’
Eradani thanked her and strolled off towards the lift.
She found Jo already settled in when she got to the room. They introduced themselves and tried to chat naturally while Eradani was unpacking, although both of them were struggling hard to keep a conversation going with a complete stranger.
‘So, what music do you like?’ asked Jo.
‘Oh, I like Eighties pop,’ Eradani replied. ‘You know, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Aha.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Jo. ‘I’m more into metal, myself.’
Well, that explains the hair, thought Eradani, taking a quick peak at Jo’s long black straggly locks. Turning her attention back to the business of unpacking, Eradani pulled her posters out of her bag and began to remove the elastic bands from them all.
‘Hey, let’s see,’ said Jo, parking herself on Eradani’s bed. ‘I haven’t brought any with me.’
‘Okay,’ said Eradani, hoping that Jo wouldn’t think she was hopelessly sad. She unrolled the first one. It was a Salvador Dali dreamscape, full of melting clocks and typical surrealist stuff.
‘Hey, I like that,’ said Jo. ‘What’s next?’
She watched as Eradani unrolled more strange, surreal paintings and pictures, all of which fascinated her completely. ‘These are so cool,’ she said. ‘Open the last one.’
‘Do I have to? There’s not really much room for it, is there, if we put the others up…’
‘Show me,’ said Jo, bouncing up and down on the bed, obviously excited.
Eradani reluctantly opened it out on top of the others. Jo inhaled sharply. ‘I don’t believe it!’ she squeaked. She dashed across the room and opened the bottom drawer of her tiny bedside cabinet. She pulled something out and hid it behind her back. She walked over to Eradani. ‘Eradani,’ she said. ‘Meet Uncle Bulgaria.’ Jo proudly produced a Womble. Eradani looked at her Wombles poster, then back at Uncle Bulgaria.
<=> <=> <=>
She awoke with a start. Thinking about the first day had sent her off to sleep for the first time that night, albeit for only ten minutes. She cursed herself for waking up so soon and punched the pillow in frustration. She looked up at her now well-worn Wombles poster and was filled with remorse. She remembered the time she had accidentally set Uncle Bulgaria on fire, and how Jo had refused to speak to her for nigh on two weeks.
She finally accepted the fact that she was never going to get any sleep that night, and she threw the bedclothes off violently. She was instantly hit by the chill of the night and started to shiver. Summoning up all her courage, she dashed across the room, grabbed Professor Hughes’ mysterious notes, sprinted back to her bed and dived in, pulling the covers back over her as fast as she could. She reached out and flicked on her bedside lamp.
Light flooded across the front cover of the booklet, making the red cover glow disconcertingly in her hands. Was she going crazy or did it seem to be enticing her, beckoning her to open it? No, she was going crazy, it was just paper. So, for the second time that day, she gently peeled open the cover. Her eyes rested on the text of the first page.
‘Dear Eradani,’ it went, ‘thank you for your interest in these notes, and don’t worry, I’m not angry that you stole them. P.S. I’m sorry you didn’t get your job, but you must understand, it is for the best.’
This paragraph alone was the most perplexing thing she’d stumbled across since she saw an episode of The Prisoner. It was impossible, surely? Professor Hughes couldn’t possibly have predicted the day’s events so accurately, could he? Unless it was some sort of trick... maybe the text had somehow been added later in the afternoon, sometime after she had failed to get the job. Was that even feasible? She quickly ran through the events of the day. After visiting the Professor and stealing his notes, she had run straight to the freezer centre and endured that gruelling and uncomfortable interview. Following that she’d returned to her room and had lunch (which mostly consisted of biscuits), after which she’d suffered three torturous hours of statistical physics lectures, and having survived that she’d gone out shopping. After returning home and packing her groceries she’d gone with some friends to have tea, then they’d gone to a pub, and then she’d come home and gone to bed. At no time during the day had she left the bag unattended, which meant that nobody could have had the opportunity to alter the text of the booklet. Which, in turn, meant that it had always opened with those lines. Which was frankly ludicrous.
Concluding that she could spend forever fretting over it and not get any closer to an explanation, she decided it was probably best not to dwell on it. She turned over the page and started on the main body of the work.
<=> <=> <=>
Neither Jo nor Eradani had any lectures the next day. This was not because they were students, and students never do any work, but because it was a Saturday. It wasn’t until Eradani woke up that she was aware she had fallen asleep.
‘Hello, sleepy,’ said Jo.
Eradani poked her head above the covers and squinted at her roommate, who had clearly been up for quite some time. ‘Been up long?’ she asked.
‘Yup. As usual, I’ve been awake for hours,’ replied Jo. ‘Eradani, it’s half past two.’
‘Cripes,’ said Eradani. ‘That really is late. Suppose I’d better get up.’
<=> <=> <=>
Jo was writing an essay at the desk when Eradani returned from the shower room. Eradani sat on the bed and started rubbing her hair dry with a blue towel covered in little penguins.
‘What’re you writing?’ she asked as she flung the damp towel onto the floor.
‘Just an essay,’ replied Jo without looking up.
‘What’s it about?’
‘Sumo wrestling,’ said Jo.
‘Well, I suppose if you will study Japanese...’ said Eradani, struggling to get her brush through her thick, wet hair.
‘Very funny,’ said Jo. ‘I’m getting on top of it though. I think.’
‘Is that right?’ said Eradani. ‘How much have you written?’
‘Half a page.’
‘In two hours?’
‘It’s a very delicate process,’ said Jo. ‘You have to consider which of the four different alphabets to use at any given point. The content of the essay is pretty irrelevant, they’re testing our understanding of the Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji and Latin alphabets and which one to use when.’
‘So,’ said Eradani, throwing the hairbrush casually onto the floor, where it joined an assortment of household flotsam. ‘So you wouldn’t have time to do a little something for me, then?’
‘Okay,’ said Jo quickly, shutting her folder and turning to face her roommate directly. She had an intense look of interest on her face, which was something that unnerved Eradani because she rarely showed much interest in anything.
‘What about your essay?’
‘Sod it. I haven’t got a clue how to do it. Divert me from it please.’
‘Okay then,’ said Eradani, taking full advantage of the situation. She reached over to the bedside cabinet to fetch the natty red booklet that was definitely not, as she had spent the whole night convincing herself, stolen, and held it out almost proudly. ‘I want you to read this.’
‘What is it?’ said Jo as she took hold of it. It didn’t look particularly exciting, although she had to admit that it was a nice colour. She opened it at a random page and read the heading. “On the equivalence of circles and squares.”
‘It’s something Professor Hughes wrote. I want to know what you think of it.’
‘Professor Hughes? This is from him?’ Another page, another heading, this time, “On the benefits of reversing to Jupiter.” Obviously, this was no ordinary book.
‘Well...’
‘Oh, Eradani, I don’t know. It all looks a bit on the mental side.’
‘Look, just read it will you, please?’ said Eradani impatiently. ‘I’ll be gone for an hour or so, and when I get back I want you to have read it.’
‘What’s the rush?’
‘Please, Jo. This is important to me.’ She put on her best ‘sad and worried’ look, knowing that Jo would give in and read it because, although she looked like a psychopathic, drug-abusing, heavy-metal biker girl, she was at heart really very kind and sweet.
‘Alright, but only because you asked so nicely.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Eradani. ‘I’ll be back soon.’
Jo waited until Eradani had left, then she put the television on.
<=> <=> <=>
Lecture excerpt: On the subject of matter transporters
“The humble teleportation machine: now this is a real gem of a science fiction vogue. When it comes to sheer pervasiveness in the genre, no other device or technology comes close. Think of a science fiction show of any merit, and I guarantee it’ll feature teleporters or transporters of some variety.
“I would like to discuss with you the physics behind these devices, which is quite extraordinary and also very relevant to these lectures. The classic originals of the early days of science fiction worked on the principle that matter and energy are interchangeable, i.e. you can happily convert matter into energy and back again without breaking any laws of physics. Therefore, so the logic goes, all you need to do to teleport somebody somewhere is convert them into pure energy, ‘beam’ this energy somewhere else, then recompile it back into a person at the destination.
“The big problem with matter transporters is not their basic principle of operation. It is entirely true that matter and energy are one and the same thing and that they can be transformed from one form to the other and back again. Einstein said so, so it must be true. This matter-energy postulate of his led directly to the development of nuclear power where, if you didn’t already know, matter is turned directly into energy, which we then harness to allow us to use electric toothbrushes and so forth. That’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s great for blowing things up with, as well. The real problem, the fundamental flaw in the whole teleportation phenomenon, is that turning an entire human being into pure energy releases as much power as, what, your average thermonuclear weapon - no, let’s be honest here, it’d actually be quite a lot more. Not the sort of thing you’d want materialising suddenly outside your front door or, more conventionally, three feet in front of you.
“Nevertheless, teleportation has become one of the de facto constituents of a good sci-fi story.”
<=> <=> <=>
Eradani waited in the bar for an hour or so and then, finding that nobody had invented a matter transporter, walked back to her room.
As it turned out, Jo had finished reading the booklet, somewhat surprisingly given her usual tendency to find ways of avoiding doing anything at all.
‘Well, there was nothing on television,’ she explained.
Eradani asked her what she thought of it.
‘On the face of it, I think it’s about as useful as a clock in a time machine,’ said Jo philosophically.
‘So you’re not a fan, then.’
‘Look, I don’t know what this is about. This... stuff is crazy. Obviously. You must know that. But, well, if you want to go along with it, then that’s your choice. I’m not here to tell you what to do.’
Eradani looked at the floor for a bit, disappointed. It was pretty much the verdict she had expected. She didn’t really know what she had wanted Jo to say. She knew that the booklet was, well, complete baloney, yet she had this deep-down hunch that it was somehow very, very important. Maybe Jo just wasn’t the right person to understand that. ‘Fine,’ she said eventually. ‘If that’s your opinion, that’s fine. Thanks for your time.’
She grabbed the notes off Jo and disappeared off to find somebody else to show them to.