Page 13 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Black Pinhole Nanofurnace

machine of this mad genius began to smoke and smolder.
People ran from a widening cone of high temperature
generated by the so-called Fast Freezer. Fortunately the
inventor, after having been knocked down in the panic,
managed to reach the power cord and yank it from the socket.
This was indeed a rousing finale to the Expo, but wouldn’t it
have been more appropriate at a Fourth of July celebration?

Lalo Aitkens was undeterred. He had ignored some basic
quantum-mechanical principle and unwittingly set up an amplification
loop the ultimate end of which would have been the meltdown of
either his equipment or a few cubic miles of real estate and geology,
whichever came first. To him this barely-averted disaster was merely
a temporary setback. But now his basic modus operandi was set: turn
established principle and practice upside-down to produce a hitherto
undreamt-of result. On the heels of this disaster soon followed the
parabolic reverse magnet, the centripetal decelerator and the
blotlight: the first earned him a lawsuit from a stage magician; the
second had a brief but catastrophic trial in an amusement park; the
last, an attempt to project invisibility again by trying to exert control
over photons at a distance, had an unsuccessful if unspectacular test
in a theatre and was abandoned.
By now Aitkens had developed a severe persecution complex. He
found a day job in the wholesale district scheduling produce delivery
trucks and rented a disused industrial loft in Skid Row. He took on
the appearance and mannerisms of an unsuccessful artist, a welder of
metal constructions whose studio’s painted-over windows glowed
with sparks and acetylene flames way past midnight. This was his
manifestation to the world around him, as constituted by homeless
families and immigrant rag pickers. I had no desire to visit him on a
weeknight in that environment. So it was a Sunday morning, when I
presumed his neighbors would either be on best behavior or hung
over, when I donned a modest business suit and climbed the stairs to
the fifth floor of an old brick building. Its tenants half a century
earlier had been dedicated to light manufacture; they had not needed,
nor would have paid for, any amenities like carpeting, modern
plumbing fixtures or effective electric lighting. But they did have the
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