Page 11 - Unlikely Stories 4

The Discontinuator

Steven Killeton, professor of physics at Buffer State Multiversity,
had carried his lunch tray to an unoccupied table in the Student
Union cafeteria and was preparing to tuck into a shrink-wrapped
salad and sandwich when a man approached the chair opposite him.
“May I join you?”
The speaker was nondescript save for a pair of intense blue eyes
overhung by bushy white eyebrows. The professor elevated his own
supercilia interrogatively, but nodded. The other man seated himself
after carefully setting down his briefcase on the floor next to the
chair.
“Excuse me, but aren’t you Dr. Killeton, the man who discovered
the elementary particle, the steverino?”
The professor, in the manually-dexterous act of removing neither
too much nor too little of the corner of a single-serving packet of
Stability Island dressing, smiled.
“I suppose the next thing you will say is that I should have gotten
the Nobel Prize instead of Popoff.”
“The committee works in mysterious ways; the vagaries of politics
are beyond my ken. But let me introduce myself: my name is Glenn
Gregorian.”
Killeton frowned. “Sorry, I’m not familiar with the name,” he said,
between attempts to extrude a blob of fluid unlikely to exhibit
optimal volume, velocity and trajectory. “Are you affiliated with
Buffer State?”
“No, I’m not. Nor do I have an academic position anywhere—or
even a degree in physics. My interest in resolving the vacuum
problem, however, is as intense as yours. You may dismiss me as a
crackpot, but please hear me out.”
The physicist, accustomed to off-the-wall theories expressed in the
undergraduate class he was obliged to teach, sighed.
“All right. But make it brief: I’m not going to stay here longer than
it takes to solve this salad and sandwich.”

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