Terry Pratchett: The Science of Discworld III - Darwin's Watch

DISCWORLD IS REAL. It's the way worlds should work. Admittedly, it is flat and goes through space on the backs of four elephants which stand on the shell of a giant turtle, but consider the alternatives. Consider, for example, a globular world, a mere crust upon an inferno of molten rock and iron. An accidental world, made of the wreckage of old stars, the home of life which, nevertheless, in a most unhomely fashion, is regularly scythed from its surface by ice, gas, inundation or falling rocks travelling at 20,000 miles an hour.

Such an improbable world, and the entire cosmos that surrounds it, was in fact accidentally created by the wizards of Unseen University [1] The greatest school of magic on the Discworld. But surely you know this? . It was the Dean of Unseen University who in fact destabilised the raw firmament by fiddling with it, possibly leading to the belief, if folk memory extends to sub-sub-sub-sub-atomic particle level, that it was indeed all done by somebody with a beard.

Infinite in size on the inside, but about a foot across on the outside, the universe of Roundworld is now kept in a glass globe in UU, where it has been the source of much interest and concern.

Mostly, it's the source of concern. Alarmingly, it contains no narrativium.

Narrativium is not an element in the accepted sense. It is an attribute of every other element, thus turning them into, in an occult sense, molecules. Iron contains not just iron, but also the story of iron, the history of iron, the part of iron that ensures that it will continue to be iron and has an iron-like job to do and is not, for example, cheese. Without narrativium, the cosmos has no story, no purpose, no destination.

Nevertheless, under the ancient magical rule of As Above, So Below, the crippled universe of Roundworld strives at some level to create its own narrativium. Iron seeks out other iron. Things spin. In the absence of any gods to do the creating of life, life has managed, against the odds, to create itself. Yet the humans who have evolved on the planet believe in their hearts that there are such things as gods, magic, cosmic purpose and million-to-one chances that crop up nine times out of ten. They seek stories in the world which the world, regrettably, is not equipped to tell.

The wizards, feeling somewhat guilty about this, have intervened several times in the history of Roundworld when it seemed to them to be on the wrong track. They encouraged fish (or fish-like creatures) to leave the seas, they visited the proto-civilisations of dinosaur-descendants and crabs, they despaired at the way ice and falling comets wiped out higher life forms so often - and they found some monkeys who were obsessed with sex and were quick learners, especially if sex was involved or could, by considerable ingenuity, be made to be involved.

Again the wizards intervened, teaching them that fire was not for having sex with and in general encouraging them to get off the planet before the next big extinction.

In this they have all been guided by Hex, UU's magical thinking engine, which is immensely powerful in any case, and with Roundworld, which from Hex's point of view is a mere sub-routine of Discworld and is practically godlike, although more patient.

The wizards think 'they have sorted it all out. The monkeys have learned about their permanently threatened world via a type of technomancy called Science and may yet escape frozen doom.

And yet...

The thing about best laid plans is that they don't often go wrong. They sometimes go wrong, but not often, because of having been, as aforesaid, the best laid. The kind of plans laid by wizards, who barge in, shout a lot, try to sort it all out by lunchtime and hope for the best, on the other hand ... well, they go wrong almost instantly.

There is a kind of narrativium on Roundworld, if you really look.

On Discworld, the narrativium of a fish tells it that it is a fish, was a fish, and will continue to be a fish. On Roundworld, something inside a fish tells it that it is a fish, was a fish ... and might eventually be something else ...

... perhaps.

IT WAS RAINING. THIS WOULD, of course, be good for the worms.

Through the trickles that coursed down the window Charles Darwin stared at the garden.

Worms, thousands of them, out there under the soft rain, turning the detritus of winter into loam, building the soil. How... convenient.

The ploughs of God, he thought, and winced. It was the harrows of God that plagued him now.

Strange how the rustle of the rain sounds very much like people whispering ...

At which point, he became aware of the beetle. It was climbing up the inside of the window, a green and blue tropical jewel.

There was another one, higher up, banging fruitlessly against the pane.

One landed on his head.

The air filled up with the rattle and slither of wings. Entranced, Darwin turned to look at the glowing cloud in the corner of the room. It was forming a shape ... It is always useful for a university to have a Very Big Thing. It occupies the younger members, to the relief of their elders (especially if the VBT is based at some distance from the seat of learning itself) and it uses up a lot of money which would otherwise only lie around causing trouble or be spent by the sociology department or, probably, both. It also helps in pushing back boundaries, and it doesn't much matter what boundaries these are, since as any researcher will tell you it's the pushing that matters, not the boundary.

It's a good idea, too, if it's a bigger VBT than anyone else's and, in particular, since this was Unseen University, the greatest magical university in the world, if it's a bigger one than the one those bastards are building at Braseneck College.

`In fact,' said Ponder Stibbons, Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic, `theirs is really only a QBT, or Quite Big Thing. Actually, they've had so many problems with it, it's probably only a BT!'

The senior wizards nodded happily.

`And ours is certainly bigger, is it?' said the Senior Wrangler.

`Oh, yes,' said Stibbons. `Based on what I can determine from chatting to the people at Braseneck, ours will be capable of pushing boundaries twice as big up to three times as far.'

'I hope you haven't told them that,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. `We don't want them building a ... a ... an EBT!'

`A what, sir?' said Ponder politely, his tone saying, `I know about this sort of special thing and I'd rather you did not pretend that you do too.'

`Um ... an Even Bigger Thing?' said Runes, aware that he was edging into unknown territory.

`No, sir,' said Ponder, kindly. `The next one up would be a Great Big Thing, Sir. It's been postulated that if we could ever build a GBT, we would know the mind of the Creator.'

The wizards fell silent. For a moment, a fly buzzed against the high, stone-mullioned window, with its stained-glass image of Archchancellor Sloman Discovering the Special Theory of Slood, and then, after depositing a small flyspeck on Archchancellor Sloman's nose, exited with precision though a tiny hole in one pane which had been caused two centuries ago when a stone had been thrown up by a passing cart. Originally the hole had stayed there because no one could be bothered to have it fixed, but now it stayed there because it was traditional.

The fly had been born in Unseen University and because of the high, permanent magical field, was far more intelligent than the average fly. Strangely, the field never had this effect on wizards, perhaps because most of them were more intelligent than flies in any case.