THE ACADEMY OF Circling the Square prided itself on a foundation of the semi-legendary variety.
Damnation Mole, in a daze of creativity had tripped over some unseen obstacle, some said it was a cucumber frame, and the water bucket he was carrying flew with impressive velocity before him.
He had been pondering contained fluids and discovered the fascination of uncontained fluids. As he fell he saw something only great minds like his could. The motion of bucket and water seemed somehow to seize his imagination like a fever dream and he began his classic work on gravitation versus the Grid. It was all about dynamics, the greater or lesser forces at work which shaped the Face of the World and quarrelled with hydrodynamic principles in a non-linear field.
It was also really annoying.
Thus he spent a lifetime Circling the Square, as he called it.
The place where legend said that famous trip had occurred was the place where the Academy was founded, built, burnt down and rebuilt in less flammable materials and then flourished with a faculty that was the envy of half the world, if Professor Squark of the Academy of Sure Things were to be believed. Blushingly he would not be drawn on where the other half of envy resided.
The students who attended this prestigious engineering school were selected from those educational establishments in Frangea who identified socially awkward individuals with an aptitude for applied mathematics. Scholarships abounded and the student social scene was a riot of quiet get-togethers.
Stane Mallix accepted his fate, admitted that fun with numbers was to be the only fun he would ever have and gleefully signed up for seven long years. Until Teasal and his opportunistic shoes stepped in to liven things up. Only they did not. Rather they might have indeed sent Stane over the Edge.
The mathematics were right. Only the theory that underpinned the processes Stane Mallix had used was wrong. Very wrong. He broke out in a cold sweat in the lecture hall that very same morning of the cold cereal breakfast. He pondered these matters restlessly and following a violent spasm the lecturer at the head of the class that morning halted in his monologue.
'A problem young Mallix?' the man said, his voice carrying with acoustic effectiveness right into the brain of the troubled student.
Stane paused in his shivering and gave this question considered thought.
'Is it possible professor,' he began and then swallowed with trepidation at what he was about to say. 'Is it possible Mole is wrong?'
There was a gasp from some fellow students and a few derisive laughs.
The professor, clutching his lectern as diagrams flitted across his high forehead and onto the projection wall behind him, blinked slowly as he processed these words. Damnation Mole was the arch priest of Face Theory. Everybody used his conversion tables to calculate flight paths and fluid dynamics across the Face of the World. His being wrong did not equate with reality.
'Perhaps you could elaborate?' the professor said indulgently.
Stane Mallix did better than this. He drew out the latest edition of
Algorithms For A Fun World
from his rucksack after a brief struggle and flipped to the back where the conversion tables were. Placing a certain page on the desk in front of him he allowed it to be projected on the lecture hall wall in super-sized numbers.
'And what am I looking at?' the professor continued in indulgent tones while awaiting enlightenment. There was a certain joy in finding a student challenging the fundamentals. They were always brought down from their flights of fancy eventually but the battle of ideas was invigorating, stimulating debate and teaching valuable lessons to young minds. Some good fights could break out too.
The chief lesson was simply not to question the mastermind that was Damnation Mole, the almost legendary figure from the past who had founded the whole science of fun with numbers.
Stane used a tiny pointer to indicate by projection a series of figures in a particular column.
'Gradations,' he said. 'Should they not be just that?'
The professor followed the pointer as it briefly halted on each set of figures while slowly working down the column.
'Halt,' he said softly. 'Go back five numbers. Stop.'
The professor stared at the printed digits.
'Is that a nine or a zero?' he asked the class. There was a cacophony of answers which made little sense.
'Everyone raise their hand if they think it is a zero?'
There was a show of hands from about half the attendants of the lecture hall, including the professor's assistant and a cleaner waiting for everyone to leave so she could give the carpets a good vacuuming, something which her nature sometimes abhorred.
'And a nine?'
An equal number of different hands, this lot including Stane himself, though there were one or two who had been so undecided they had raised their hands for both options. The human mind always contained this reaction among certain people. It was called hedging your bets, or a survivor's guide in an ideologically dangerous landscape.
'Sir, what should it be?' some brighter spark asked in the puzzled silence.
The man switched off the projector and lowered his head a moment in thought.
'It should be correct,' he eventually said. His voice was low, almost breathy in tone but the acoustics brought it out clear enough and effectively ended the lecture as everyone stood and began discussing matters vociferously.
'To heck with this,' said the cleaning lady and began vacuuming in an effort to clear the aisles so she could get home in time for life. 'Bloody Damnation Mole,' she double-swore.