Roland Michel Tremblay

Sci-Fi Helper

     Recent discoveries about the real nature of the Universe made it possible to understand new mechanics of science and brought a new range of inventions. The most important ones made it possible for a ship and its crew to go far beyond any distance ever imagined and to communicate with Earth instantly wherever they are. Simply because in the Relative Universe distance is relative (as stated by Einstein) and therefore the size and speed of objects as well (as stated by the Shrinking Theory). Universal Relativity brings together the infinities (size is relative and changing), destroy the illusion of distance (objects only shrink when they go away) and breaks the light speed barrier. Now even the speed of light is relative since you use both time and distance to calculate the speed of light, and both are relative and change with acceleration. If you go 20 times faster than the speed of light, though you would still calculate the speed of light to be constant because distance and time are changing proportionally when you accelerate, the real value of your speed of light would be different than mine. You can go faster than the speed of light, and when you accelerate, you are only shrinking. If you go fast enough, you would not only reach the stars, you would reach the atomic world at the edge of the universe, the edge that is very close to us like very far as distance is relative. 

    In less than 2 years funds have been made available by the European Space Agency (ESA) to put this ship online and send her to the confines of the Universe which is essentially here on Earth in the infinitely small. New propulsion system, new communication devices, new equations, virtually a whole new science has appeared to fit the new Universe pictured in a mission drew to test how close to reality this science is and what more we can discover through this adventure. This experience is to redefine the true nature of time and space, of matter and energy in our relative Universe.

    The new universe pictured has a distance that changes depending on the frame of reference. A stick metre is different here on Earth than closer to the Sun, or a stick meter on a ship going at high speed. The very large is the very small, the stars are atoms composing Earth. The experiment is to send a ship in space by shrinking it instead of propelling it in the distance. The ship will reach the confines of the very large, the farthest stars ever seen, by shrinking as small as the Planck length without ever leaving Earth. For Earth to always stay in contact with the crew, new communications devices will be created, considering the time and speed difference between Earth and the crew. The faster the ship goes in space, the more she shrinks and through a telescope it seems like if time has stopped. But this is only in a certain frame of reference. Actually the more the ship shrinks, the more time on the ship goes faster then time on Earth. Millions of year should pass on Earth whilst the ship goes into space reaching almost the speed of light. But in reality, millions of years will pass on the ship whilst time on Earth seems to have stop. All this is only perspectives, and this experiment is to test what kind of time difference we can expect and if contact can be maintained. The mission has been described as a suicide mission. The astronauts sent will never come back, more likely communications will be impossible and either Earth or the ship's time will go much faster than the other.

    The propulsion systems used until now could give the impression that a ship was sent into the distance. Really, what we call speed is in fact the rate at which the ship shrinks. With this in mind, scientists have been able to develop not a propulsion system in order to send a ship very far in the distance, but instead a machine that artificially shrinks the ship in a laboratory by creating a small singularity like the ones we find at the core of a black hole. What happens in a black hole is that gravity is so strong that the fabric of space defined by gravity curves the space to a point where time and distance is really different from ours here on Earth. So we cannot see anything, as light takes forever to get out and reach us. But having a different time and different measure of a stick meter, does not mean that in reality you would get crushed or that you would stop frozen in time (though this is what people on Earth would see). You continue your life as normal and when you do look at the Earth whilst going in the black hole, the Earth appears frozen, or in a black hole. Only if you decide to go back to Earth you will see it suddenly going much faster in time than you. So our crew can come back at the same they left.

    The novel will start with the scientists putting together the mission, the environment of theory coming into practice, ideas becoming reality. All the problems to solve in order to reach the point of launching the ship. Then it will become more concrete and the biggest questions of all time about the universe will be posed and answered as best as they can. Problems of communication, propulsion, shrinking process, the states of the quantum theory. Considering the implications of the laws of motion of Newton and the relativity of Einstein. Beyond this, what is there left to conclude?

    The second part will involved the crew of the ship preparing themselves for the biggest space travel ever proposed. This part will be intertwined with the first part. We will see them in their environment, not a scientific one, but in more general problems of life, trying to conceptualise the new science and theories involved in the project. Skepticism, competition, secrets, relationships, etc.

    The third part will be the launch of the ship and all the initial problems and discoveries. The implications on the new philosophy surrounding the new universe and multiverse. We will be following one ship that will be destroyed. But then we will come back to a ship that has not been destroyed. And discover that the communication system established give the possibility to all the ships on different timelines to communicate with each other.

    The fourth part will be the discovery of an inhabited planet in the very small scale and the discovery that this planet is in fact part of our space in the very large, but very far from earth. Time difference will be studied, speed's rate, etc.

    The fifth part will be the comeback of the ship and the possibility to travel through time since shrinking or expanding very fast has the power of playing with spacetime. Will the ship comeback at the same instant it went, millions of years later or earlier? What is the effects observed on the astronauts?

    The final will be the return of the ship and the conclusion to be drawn from the whole experiment.

    WAS: 2050 (Fifty years from now) Why? Because we need to be able to utilise the energy contain in a small electron and to be able to see beyond the Planck length. Another 50 years should be enough to have achieved that in the actual state of science.

    CHANGED TO: Now. Because the new theories bring the answers to what we are looking for.  

    THIS WILL CHANGE, I HAVE CHANGED MY VIEWS OF THE UNIVERSE: The Infinities converging in one single point in the universe. We are living in a singularity, where everything in the universe converge into one single point. Yet, inside the singularity, there seems to have space, distance, speed. These are only illusions, a perspective. We can create a new singularity, a smaller one, inside the one we are living in. Then we are not travelling anymore in our singularity, our universe, but in the very small scale composing our singularity. We are travelling very far in our own singularity. The universe is not seen anymore as stars very far in the distance, but like a black hole with a singularity at its core. We are shrinking through time and space at the moment. The experiment is to make the process even more successful. It is a way to foresee our future. The universe is like a cone in three dimensions where everything in it just shrinks and shrinks toward the singularity. We are sending a ship right through the singularity, to go where all the stars converge in one single point. But never the ship will reach it, it is always possible to shrink more and more, and always we will see the stars around very large the more we approach them. The atoms being stars as well. When the ship shrinks, is it going smaller in one single little point on the whole universe? Trapped in such a small little point forever? Or is it a more global phenomena and actually the ship shrinks in space and actually reach the singularity of our universe and everything that shrinks in the universe, wherever in the universe, will actually get to the same point which is where our universe, the stars are converging? The experiment will try to answer that. If there is an infinite amount of the same universe, perhaps it can be explained by the fact that where you shrink, you will always reach one particular point of the universe, one specific reality or timeline. If you expand, you go over all the timelines, and can choose which one you would like to be in.

    A group of scientists in a laboratory on Cavendish Square, right in the heart of London. A crew going to experiment the infinities of the Universe by never leaving the laboratory in Central London.

     The energy of the very small, contained in one single little electron. Then you have coils all around the flying saucer, turning and creating a gravity field capable of creating a distortion of space and time, instantly shrinking the ship, or moving, or whatever, changing its location in the universe. Size being relative, an atom can be bigger than our solar system. We only see it small from our relative point of view. Therefore that atom is reachable because distance is relative. We can draw huge amount of energy from it.

    An Energy Field capable of sustaining the ship in a void inside a bubble (the kind of Inertial Dampers in Star Trek). No, I change my mind. This is not necessary since a distortion of space and time prevents you from any particles that could through time damage your ship. Gravity amplifiers kind of shield you from anything (I hope?).

    A shrinking process of the ship, the equivalent of sending her through space and propelling it with liquid hydrogen. The technology involved: how do you shrink something? Well, we already know how. You just have to walk in the distance and you will shrink. To instantly shrink at a much higher rate, you need basically to alter your molecular structure. Create the machine that will get all the information about the atomic structure of the ship and reproduce it at a smaller scale. That is one solution, using the energy contained in one electron alone. The second solution, you do not put the ship in a laboratory, but in space instead. You use this new energy called Quantum Fluctuations to propel the ship at almost the speed of light using the energy contained in the atomic structures in the void of space. But then, it takes forever for the ship to get anywhere near the infinitely small. Third solution, we could use a black hole, the singularity inside. Better, you create a singularity in the laboratory, a small black hole. The ship then reach the single point zero where all the stars and atoms are converging in one single point.

    If there is no distance, wherever the ship is, communications can be instant. Now, the way of achieving this has something to do with the time difference, the shrinking rate and the how shrunk is the ship compare to its original size on earth. If we can create such a device, everything is fine. We can communicate with the ship, even if it is in the past or in the future. Or another solution is the deploy a bunch of satellites (or beacons, relays) shrunk at different degree from the very small up to the very large. Both communications systems will be deployed.

    The ship's location is impossible to pinpoint. Moreover, it seems to exist in a lot of different quantum states. How do you keep track of the ship when it virtually exists in all possible probable states you can imagine? How do you communicate with this… those ships? This experiment will uncover the Schrödinger's Cat problem and the multiverse within our universe.

    We cannot observe the speed (the rate of Shrinking) or the location of the ship, if we do, we destroy the experiment. Communication will be of utmost importance, but how many ships will communicate with us? One or millions?

    OK, let's try to start this novel... it needs to revolutionize the world of Science Fiction. How does one do that? He lights a cigarette, opens a beer, gets comfy on the sofa, gets the book of Rama II of Arthur C. Clarke, he turns on the electric blanket so the three cats go directly there and get their energy drains completely without bothering the author... Hey, that sounds good!

    The old man took his grandson’s hands in his and they both looked at the sky.

          - Is there anybody out there, Granddad?

          - There must be.

          - Are we ever going to find out?

    The old man looked at the sea all around the island.

          - And what about out there? the child said, pointing at the shore in all directions.

          - Maybe.  Probably not.

    Far away, another piece of land, no bigger than England, was ? itself over watch (??)  The trees were starting to grow again on what had been devastation.  Some years ago an advanced technological society grew proudly there.

          - Will you tell me again the story of the other land?

    The old man was pensive.  He put his hand on his grandson’s shoulder and decided to look at the sky instead.  Far away, a ship was just entering their solar system at the outer limits.  They had just encountered the first planet: cold, completely circular, smooth, a unified blue-cream all over.  History was about to change.

          - It is more probable that the first people we will ever see will come from out there, answered the old man, pointing at the sky.

    Meanwhile, somewhere on Level 10 of a parking lot in Cavendish Square, central London, a countdown had started.  At zero an incredible light blinded all the cameras watching a flying saucer, not exactly what NASA had been sending into space since the beginning of the space mission.  The cameras just had the time to register an explosion.  But not harmful for mankind.  The explosion of a shrunken ship.  And that was the end of the journey through the universe.  The last chance for men to go beyond the solar system.  All systems were registering failure.  There was no doubt that the ship would never go anywhere.  A second attempt was not possible in the near future: too much money had been spent.

    But suddenly one of the greatest computerised telescope ever built registered something.  There was not one but a million ships, those that had been sent to the edge of the infinitely small.  At the first adjustment of the microscope all but one ship had disappeared.  The launch was a success after all.  The history of quantum mechanics had just revealed its most weird characteristics.  The mission was a success despite a ship that was never launched.

    Richard just sat on the sofa. How a terrible day that was! Always worried that the bell at the door might ring. He never answers the door usually... afraid that it could be either the government or the police. But today, thinking it was the post man so early in the morning, he opened the door! It was a bailiff. As planned in his destiny, he had to open the door that time. He turns on the electric blanket on the other chair so the three cats will go there and hopefully stay there whilst their energy is somehow getting sucked out of them, he gets comfy on the sofa, opens a beer, gets his computer on his lap, puts an audio CD in it, lights a cigarette... finally, he is breathing. Recuperating from the worries of the day. 

-Are you Richard Wakefield? the bailiff asked.

-No, I do not know him, he answered. What is it?

-Oh, it is private, I can only give that to him in person.

-And what is it?

-It is an order to appear in the court of Richmond. Are you Richard Wakefield?

    Richard looked at the papers... he finally said:

-Hands up, I am Richard Wakefield. Give me that.

    Richard could see the smile in the face of the bailiff. He had won. He would have only come back over and over, there was no reason to not take the papers. Soon it would all be over, only a huge bill would come through the door, perhaps in a year, perhaps next month, Richard thought. But at least it will all be finished. At 26, Richard thought he was very good looking, still capable to go get the best people in town whenever he felt like having a nice night out. Only this new girl at work, Jane, had made him think twice about that. He was getting a little bit flabby, a big slob according to his wife, like all the men past 25 as recorded by the statistics, except the ones on drugs he thought. For the first time, where he works in Cavendish Square, in front of this youthful and gorgeous 26 years blond girl, he felt like a fat pig that people try to void at any given time. He had no reason to think of himself as a fat ugly bloke, still, he could feel he was getting there. All his trousers were getting too small, even his shirts were so tight at the neck, he had to open the top button after the tie was in place. This incredibly stupid idea of wearing these ridiculous outfits to go to work every morning, these ties all more disgusting one compare to the other... all that was just killing him. His job was to produce conferences. A year ago he thought he could not even write one programme since English was not his first language. Now, after eight huge conferences in the marvelous world of Telecommunications and Broadcasting, he could not bare the idea of producing another one. It had become so easy, he was now virtually falling asleep on his desk everyday at about the same time. Sleeping while he could was becoming his whole life. At least 20 minutes in the bath every morning, to make sure he would miss his train at Isleworth Station, then 20 minutes on the Underground starting at Osterley Park on the Piccadilly line, and all the way back in the train from Vauxhall to Isleworth. At least he was not alone, the whole train was falling asleep after Clapham Junction. That is, until the ticket officer comes in and says: Tickets please! Well, tonight is the night. The first in months where he can just sit down and relax. Open his computer and plan what is coming next in his life.

    He was not made to live a life in the world of European Conferences where the stress eat you all alive, until you give up or they get rid of you. He was a poet, a philosopher. Playing with concepts was taking all his time before he decided for god knows what reason to pursue his studies at the University of London two nights a week. That week had been a terrible week for his studies. Never in his life he had suffer such a blow in a class. He had two presentations to do in the same night on Wednesday, he blew them both out. He can still remember how the teacher stopped him after three minutes to say that he was totally out of track about talking after those five books that he obviously did not read, she wanted him to talk about those other books that he did not read as well. For a second he could see again how for 20 years he had been wasting his time producing papers and essays and all these things which never contented any of his teachers. His psychological problems were even more deep than that. After his father, he was supposed to be an engineer. So as life's go, he seems to have done everything else but engineering. He kept out of science as much as he could, only feeling guilty to have failed just about everything else. Law at the University of Ottawa, French Literature at la Sorbonne in Paris, even his re-admission in Electric Engineering all over the place.

    Strange enough, he could not just get rid of the science. As a philosopher, well he thought he was anyway, he only tried to understand what exactly was man and his situation in the universe. What was all that about? Where was he living exactly? These were the only questions that accompanied him through his useless journey in life. All his life he had written the weirdest books ever, considering his huge existential crisis, and never he got anywhere with it. Many nights before he sat down in front of his computer, drinking and smoking until he could feel he was not himself anymore, until, as he was saying, he could finally see the universe as it really was. Something beyond imagination, since imagination is not that great according to him. It had to be true, the essence of the existence had to be something else. In fact, the essence and the existence could not even exist. At least this is what he felt like every time he was too drunk to remember all his courses in philosophy at the University of Ottawa. Already Richard was putting back into questions every single philosopher who came before him. That was all very nice, all his life he had developed the way of saying black every time someone said white, and the most interesting thing, to say white every time someone said black. He could justify any colour, in fact, he could argue that there was as well all the different shades between black and white and that overall, there could be no colour or shade at all. He had to admit that it was a family trait. Never taking anything for granted, always putting back everything into question. Even the reality of life, especially the reality of life.

    After a while, Richard had to read every new scientific theory there was on the market, eating every single little idea still on paper or on the network about the smallest thing. He quickly started to think differently from even Newton and Einstein, that was enough to get him crucified. He was too far from the scientific world to worry too much about talking through his hat, so he spent enormous amount of time reconfiguring, redefining the universe until he came up one day with the worst:

-There is no speed in the universe! There is no distance in the universe!

    That day, he realised he should have just not woke up. To live in his dreams, in his fantastic world should have been enough. Already at work they had found out about his ideas, read his new born shrinking theory of the universe. He had suffer a couple of months of being ridiculed, but most of it was happening behind his back. So he could go back home every night, still thinking and watching the planes getting down at Heathrow Airport over his head. There was something fascinating about it. About the movement, about the perspective. Something was wrong! Somehow he thought he could change all that, all reality. To reduce it to a virtual world, this reality that was making so many people suffer every day. He did not think he could do anything about the suffering, but he thought that if he was capable of living only in his ideas, already he would suffer much less. This is where it all started.

    The mother of Richard always thought her son was different. It was much easier for her to be proud of him whatever his situation, unlike his father who could only be proud if his son had a great social situation, a great high paying job and the respect of his peers. Richard was different, so different that it was like if the father had to pay for the sin of wanting so much that his son could never be. At last he had a daughter who did succeed to be a mechanical engineer, but she was too suffering from a great existential crisis. Like if wanting to be so much to please her parents at one point everything crumbles and one starts to wonder, whatever if we have succeeded or not, if life is really worth it in those conditions. Suddenly searching for another reason to live, something so different, so great, it would prove beyond doubt that everything else was useless, so useless! At that point, happiness can never be found, because never anything would be enough. Something greater and out of reach will always be hanging there on the horizon and the need to achieve the impossible will still be there. At that point, to be Einstein and celebrated for many centuries to come will not bring happiness, will not even bring satisfaction. Only this great emptiness of space becomes attractive. Science fiction for a start brings this evasion where someone could still see light after the failure of a life that could not by definition be successful. 

    So Richard was not looking for appraisal or recognition, he was just living his great existential crisis. Who knows where that would bring him? Well, he had these wildest ideas, beyond any book from Arthur C. Clarke, obsess in finding life somewhere else in the universe. That was not enough for Richard. The mystery could still keep him hanging on to these incredible books, but he thought more discoveries in science in the next following years will wiped out any science fiction book into existence. Like Jules Verne, where every single one of his book finally became real. There was no need to call it science fiction after that. Still, Richard thought his whole life was a fiction. Moreover, he was convinced that the whole universe was just fiction. And that no facts would ever change that. Unlike Arthur Charles Clarke, Richard did not believe in god or a supreme intelligence somewhere creating the universe and the beings in it, whatever how autonomous they were. In fact, Richard could not by principles believe in god, because his principles were to not believe anything, no matter how proven it was by facts or science. Always he could come back years later and find other hypotheses. He had spent a great deal of time thinking about his new universe, still he was convinced he would be proven wrong through time, if even such a concept existed. 

    His mom just lost her lover. Richard had to stop and think twice about death. First it took him a long time to realise that the man he saw once in his life at Christmas time was actually dead, a month after he left Canada to return to London. It was the first time someone had died around him, in 26 years, and even then he was insignificant in the scheme of things. He had seem him once. Nicole, his mother, cried until there was nothing left to cry, that hurt Richard. He lived the death a being through the suffering of another one. He did cry, because his mom cried so much. She was telling him that it was destiny, that god came to get him because he had done everything he had to do. That now Gaetan would help him much more now that he was dead then before when he was reconstructing the whole house filled with pensioners that Nicole was taking care of. She truly believed in god, it helped her so much in accepting the hell of death that Richard could only be pleased to see his mom believing so much. He was trying to think about how his father who never believed in anything except himself as his mom always said would react if he did lose his lover. Would it have destroyed him? Humans can always think they know everything, experimented everything, even death because they suffered so much through it. Richard was realising how little he knew about anything. Having not even experiences death in all that time he was alive made him realised how much more there was that he never truly understood or even start to think about. Worse was the idea that his sister always said that all his life Richard only wrote about death. His own death that is. Surprisingly still alive to write about it. So Richard was turning to the stars, thinking, how many years has it been since we started exploring the space of our little solar system? How much of it have we truly understood? Still, he thought how easy we just forget about the strange fact of these planets, suns and the void of space to live of our daily life. Isn't that bizarre the universe we live in? How come nobody mentions it at work? How come they laugh as soon as someone think a little bit more and tries to see further?

    Richard was only looking at his CD player software on his computer, looking at the number indicating how much time was reaming before the track was over, and already he had to concentrate to understand was all that was about. 1, 2, 3, these are Arab numbers he first thought. Then he realised that he could easily forget what they means, as soon as he drinks a little bit too much. Still, most part of his job in conferences was depending on these numbers. His whole life is based on these numbers. The whole science was just a succession of these numbers and if ever he finally gets into space, it is because of these numbers. Is it not just a convention? His computer screen was pixels with a little number on it telling which colour it should be, all this through a bunch of binary language composed of 0 and 1. Open or close. Then he looks around him, the three cats on the other chair, to think the same thing about reality. His brain is like this computer, it is electric, it learns to interpret pixels with 0 and 1 and distinguish the cats in the background. It is a another level, still, it is the same thing. Beyond that, what is really reality he thinks? Again he is not so sure about anything. And at that point Richard becomes too drunk to even think about the universe. And it is usually where everything finishes.

    Oh what a great thing life can be once one is so drunk that he can barely see life in front of his eyes! Richard was overboard. Not that he was on earth most of the time anyway, lost in space somewhere, as usual. He had so much energy tonight, he could not bare the idea of seeing his portable computer crashing again. Too much he had experienced that lately. Oh, what the heck he thought, having the perfect machine at once, wireless to the bones, with every little piece of equipment there is on the planet, enough to make him think humanity was finally getting somewhere with all this new technology with unlimited space on the worldwide network, was getting to him. Still he was patiently waiting for the day he could work with a computer capable of not crashing every minute like his. He had good reasons to believe it was almost over, after receiving this little e-mail from the British Government. They were to invest the whole next year budget accorded to science on his ideas, the weirdest ever, in the biggest enterprise ever created until then. A space exploration, without leaving earth. An experiment beyond life. They were to put in practice theories almost not proven yet, actually not proven yet. 

    The very next day he was on his way to the most important meeting of his life. To prove he could get this money worth, proving his ideas at the same time... 

     Richard was stuck on the Victoria Line between Victoria and Oxford Circus.  As usual the train just stopped in the middle of nowhere (but hopefully near Green Park) and this time he was getting really worried.  He was getting pushed into the door by a very tall black man who was sweating enormously inside his leather coat and a fat woman was angry that so many people were squeezed into the train.  Richard could smell all the wonderful latest French perfume mixed with sweat.  He sneezed at least five times and couldn’t reach the kleenex in his back pocket.  He was desperately trying to see he time on the watches of other passengers hanging on to the metallic rail, but it was just impossible.  He was in such a panic over just how slow these trains can be that he barely realised he was complaining out loud:

          “For God’s sake!  I’m about to cross the whole galaxy in less than a second and I’m stuck in an Underground incapable of doing one mile per hour!”

          Remembering the secrecy of his mission, he stopped momentarily.  But then:  “This mission has cost billions of pounds.  I’m really beginning to think we should have forgotten about it all and invested in signal failures on the London Underground.”

           The fat woman at the back tried unsuccessfully to turn around.  But she asked,  “Perhaps you should have taken a cab, darling?  We’d all be breathing right now if you had, you lunatic scientist - if you truly are about to cross the galaxy today!”

          Richard realised he had spoken too much.  At the same time he realised that it did not change anything.  These people did not care about anything.  They were only worried about getting from point A to point B within London, and would be happy to reach B today.

          Another man at the back was now questioning Richard: “What’s that story?  That you’re going to cross the whole galaxy in less than a second?”

          Richard answered, “Mind your own business”.

          At which the black man answered, “You haven’t stopped complaining out loud about it for the last twenty minutes.  It is our business now”.

          The man at the back holding an old copy of The Observer asked, “Is this something to do with this huge enterprise between the American, Canadian and European space programmes that the newspapers have been talking about?  

    Before entering the building on Cavendish Square, Richard passed his hand in his hair. My god, they are so greasy, he thought. On the verge of the most important moment in history, Richard could only think of how much wax he had put in his hair two days ago, that made is hair looks so dirty. Again last night at three o'clock in the morning he was still playing on his computer when he realised how important the very next day would be... he had only one shot at this, he had to convinced the whole board that his single new Shrinking Theory was worth spending the whole next year scientific and spatial programme budget on it. No simple task, for someone who has no ideas of how to market an idea. Perhaps he should have hired a PR woman, beautiful, freshly started, ready to do anything to sell one single idea, powerful enough to put to the garbage bin every single scientific idea there is on the market in this day and age. When he was finally accepted in front of the board, again Richard was only worried about insignificant details that would have had no meaning to any real scientist presenting his new theories to the most important board on the planet, the British Spatial Agency one (as America did not want to hear anything about his new theory). His lips were dry, dry blood could be seen on them, he was completely dehydrated from alcohol, trying to finish his last cigarette in a building obviously smoke free. How fat have I become, he thought, at the very moment the main question was asked. What was the question again? Richard was so nervous, he could not hear anything. One of those days where you forget you ever learn English, even forgetting which language you usually think in.

-Mr Wakefield! Did you hear the question? asked the chairman, the president of the committee.

    Richard was at a lost. He could only remember the fat woman in the Underground. He felt the urge to justify himself:

-I am sorry, apparently someone was dead under the track at King's Cross station, the train was stuck! was his answer. I am even surprise they will admit that this was the reason for the train to not go anywhere!

-Mr Wakefield! The board does not care in the slightest if you are forty-five minutes late at this meeting. Can you tell us if what we are proposing is possible? Worth of holding every single project we have in store for the next couple of years?

    Richard did not hear the question, did not know what they were talking about. He could only hear the beat of the only song there was on the new kind of CD there was on the market that he had tried to record last night... but he knew how to bullshit his way through whenever it was the time, and this time looked as good as any other.

-Of course! Go for it! Whatever you want to experiment, I will collaborate. As anyone seen a cup of coffee around? Oh, yes, I know we are in Britain, but I prefer coffee to tea. At least, of course, we are not in France... they have such disgusting coffee, you have to go to McDonald to get something respectable, which is weird don't you think? I mean, I was born in Canada, coffee there is like...