Terry Pratchett: Science of Discworld

When you live in a complex world, you have to simplify it in order to understand it. Indeed, that's what 'understand' means. At different stages of education, different levels of simplification are appropriate. Liar-to-children is an honourable and vital profession, otherwise known as 'teacher'. But what teaching does not do -although many politicians think it does, which is one of the prob­lems, is erect a timeless edifice of 'facts'. Every so often, you have to unlearn what you thought you already knew, and replace it by something more subtle. This process is what science is all about, and it never stops. It means that you shouldn't take everything we say as gospel, either, for we belong to another, equally honourable profes­sion: Liar-to-readers.

On Discworld, one of Ponder Stibbons's lies-to-wizards is about to come seriously unstuck.

ARCHCHANCELLOR RIDCULLY AWOKE FROM AN AFTERNOON NAP in which he had been crawling through a baking desert under a flamethrower sky, and found that this was more or less true.

Superheated steam whistled from the joints of the radiator in the corner. Ridcully walked over through the stifling air and touched it gently.

'Ouch! Damnation!'

Sucking his right hand and using his left hand to unwrap the scarf from his neck, he strode out into the corridor and what looked like Hell with the heat turned up. Steam rolled along the corridors, and from somewhere overhead came the once-heard-never-forgot-ten thwack of a high-energy magical discharge. Violet light filled the windows for a moment.

'Will someone tell me what the heck is going on?' Ridcully demanded of the air in general.

Something like an iceberg loomed out of the steam. It was the Dean.

'I would like to make it absolutely clear, Archchancellor, that this is nothing to do with me!'

Ridcully wiped away the sweat that was beginning to trickle down his forehead.

'Why are you standin' there in just your drawers, Dean?'

'I…well, my room is absolutely boiling hot...'

'I demand you put something on, man, you look thoroughly unhygienic!'

There was another crack of discharged magic. Sparks flew off the end of Ridcully's fingers.

'I felt that one!' he said, running back into his room.

Beyond the window, on the other side of the gardens, the air wavered over the High Energy Magic building. As the Archchancellor watched, the two huge bronze globes on its roof became covered in crawling, zig-zagging purple lines.

He hit the floor rolling, as wizards are wont to do, just before the shock of the discharge blew the windows in.

Melted snow was pouring off the rooftops. Every icicle was a streaming finger of water.

A large door bumped and scraped its way across the steaming lawns.

Tor goodness' sake, Dean, handle your end, can't you?'

The door skidded a little further.

'It's no good, Ridcully, it's solid oak!'

'And I'm very glad of it!'

Behind Ridcully and the Dean, who were inching the door for­ward largely by arguing with each other, the rest of the faculty crept forward.

The bronze globes were humming now, in the rapidly decreas­ing intervals between discharges. They had been installed, to general scoffing, as a crude method of releasing the occasional erratic build-up of disorganized magic in the building. Now they were outlined in unhealthy-looking light.

'And we know what that means, don't we, Mister Stibbons?' said Ridcully, as they reached the entrance to the High Energy Magic building.

'The fabric of reality being unravelled and leaving us prey to creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions, sir?' mumbled Stibbons, who was trailing behind.

'That's right, Mister Stibbons! And we don't want that, do we, Stibbons?'

'No, sir.'

'No, sir! We don't, sir!' Ridcully roared. 'It'll be tentacles all over the place again. And none of us wants tentacles all over the place, do we?'

'No, sir.'

'No, sir! So switch the damned thing off t sir!'

'But it'd be certain death to go into...' Ponder stopped, swallowed and restarted. 'In fact it would be uncertain death to go into the squash court at the moment, Archchancellor. There must be million of thaums of random magic in there! Anything could happen!'

Inside the HEM the ceiling was vibrating. The whole building seemed to be dancing.

'They certainly knew how to build, didn't they, when they built the old squash court,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, in an admiring tone of voice. 'Of course, it was built to contain large amounts of magic ...'

'Even if we could switch it off, I don't think that'd be such a good idea,' said Ponder.

'Sounds a lot better than what's happening now,' said the Dean.

'But is falling through the air better than hitting the ground?' said Ponder.

Ridcully sucked in his breath between his teeth.

'That's a point,' he said. 'Could be something of an implosion, I suppose. You can't just stop something like this. Something bad would happen.'

'The end of the world?' quavered the Senior Wrangler.

'Probably just this part of it,' said Ponder.

'Are we talking here about a sort of huge valley about twenty miles across with mountains all round it?' said Ridcully, staring at the ceiling. Cracks were zig-zagging across it.

'Yes, sir, I'm wondering if whoever tried this at Loko actually did manage to switch it off ...'

The walls groaned. There was a rattling noise behind Ponder. He recognized it, even above the din. It was the sound of HEX reset­ting its writing device. Ponder always thought of it as a kind of mechanical throat-clearing.

The pen jerked in its complex network of threads and springs, and then wrote:

+++ This May Be Time For The Roundworld Project +++

'What are you talking about, man?' snapped Ridcully, who'd never quite understood what HEX was.

'Oh, that ? That's been around for ages,' said the Dean. 'No one's ever taken it seriously. It's just a thought experiment. You couldn't do it. It's completely absurd. It needs far too much magic.'

'Well, we've got far too much magic,' said Ridcully. 'Right now we need to use it up.'

There was a moment's silence. That is, the wizards were silent. Overhead, magic flared into the sky with a sound like roaring gas.

'Can't let it build up here,' Ridcully went on. 'What's the Roundworld project then?'

'It was, er ... there was once some suggestion that it might be possible to create a ... an area where the laws of magic don't apply,' said Ponder. 'We could use it to learn more about magic.'

'Magic's everywhere? said Ridcully. 'It's part of what everywhere is'

'Yes, sir,' said Ponder, watching the Archchancellor carefully.

The ceiling creaked.

'What use would it be, anyway?' said Ridcully, still thinking aloud.

'Well, sir, you could ask what use is a new-born child ...'

'No, that's not the sort of question I ask,' said Ridcully. 'And it's a highly suspicious one, too.'

The wizards ducked as the latest discharge crackled overhead. It was followed by a louder explosion.

'I think the balls have just exploded, sir,' said Ponder.

'All right, then, how long would the project take to set up?' said Ridcully.

'Months,' said the Dean firmly.

'We've got about ten seconds to the next discharge, sir,' said Ponder. 'Only ... now the balls have gone it will simply earth itself...'

'Ah. Oh. Really? Well, then ...' Ridcully looked around at his fel­low wizards as the wall began to shake again. 'It's been nice knowing you. Some of you. One or two of you, anyway ...'

The whine of increasing magic rose in pitch.