So I'm sitting out on the deck the other day, doing some fruitless job hunting on my laptop, when I get a call from Vector on my cell phone.

"What are you doing?"

"Not too much," I replied. "Looking at my resume on Monster, and noting that if take the total number of potential employers who have viewed my resume since it was posted, and divide that number into any number you might pick out of a hat (6 7/8 for instance), it would generate a familiar error message."

"Divide by zero?" Vector ventured.

"Congratulations, you just won my Visa bill," I told him.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Vector said kindly. "I've built a trebuchet in the field behind the paintball arena. I'm going to fling heavy objects over long distances and watch them smash into bits."

"I'll be there in ten minutes," I said, grabbing my digital camera.

It occurred to me as I walked through the streets of the Binary Nation that, while geeks may make jokes about people who go to monster truck shows and demolition derbies, most of these same geeks find it utterly irresistible to watch replicas of mechanical devices from ancient times smash things into bits. I guess that as long as physics and historical accuracy are involved in the process of smashing things into bits, it becomes scientific pursuit as opposed to slack-jawed, atavistic glee at the sight of destruction.

I crossed the outdoor paintball arena, being careful not to spring the midfield water cannon traps, and made my way to the larger field that runs next to it. It was pretty easy to spot Vector; "inconspicuous trebuchet" would have to qualify as an apt, if somewhat uncommon oxymoron.

I stopped a few feet away, and looked at the collection of 'ammo' that Vector had gathered for his unofficial science project.

"Where the hell did you get all of this stuff?" I asked him.

"Museums, garage sales, and police auctions, mostly," Vector shrugged. "They were just giving some of this stuff away."

(A small side note about creative geniuses and boredom: they are a dangerous combination. Bored geniuses don't think about whether or not they should do something; they just go ahead and do it. Bored geniuses create things like biological and chemical warfare agents, nanotechnology-based weapons, caffeinated beer, and Star Wars fan fiction. If you want to be a social activist without being shot at with rubber bullets, just find a bored genius and give him or her a to-do list of difficult, yet benign chores. Good examples of such tasks include installing a European-manufactured appliance into a North American kitchen, writing a software program that converts Biblical measurements into Metric (how many roods are there in a decameter?), and creating a series of dioramas that illustrate the possible benefits of making a variety of changes to the US Electoral College.)

(Small side note #2: in the interests of fair play, it should be said that building a trebuchet in order to hurl objects great distances and smash them into bits counts as relatively benign as far as Vector is concerned. When Vector was eight years old, he created and nurtured a superflu retro-virus in his sister's Easy-Bake Oven that, if it had been unleashed, would have resulted in the near extinction of the human race.)

"So, what are you going to throw first?" I asked.

Vector scratched his chin. "I don't know, man... I'm torn between the sarcophagus filled with kerosene, and the 1965 Plymouth Valiant with the wax dummy of Yahoo Serious wrapped in Primacord behind the wheel."

I patted him on the shoulder. "Listen to your heart, my friend."

It took us about an hour to hoist the sarcophagus filled with kerosene into the trunk of the Plymouth Valiant.

"So, the museum was just giving this away?" I asked at one point.

"What, the car? No, I got that at a police auction for $45," Vector said proudly.

"I was referring to the sarcophagus," I said.

"Well, the museum had it sitting next to their dumpster, on their loading dock," Vector said carefully, "and I can't stand to see antiquities wasted like that."

"Indeed," I said, making a mental note to start putting a few dollars aside for bail money. "Are you sure that this contraption of yours is going to be able to fling this much mass?"

"Oh please," Vector guffawed, anchoring the trunk lid with bungee cords. "I even wrote a program that calculates the liquid capacity of sarcophagi."

(Bored geniuses. You have all been warned.)

"So this is perfectly safe," I said uneasily.

"Safe as houses," Vector reassured me. "I think we're ready to go. Let's go stand in the reinforced concrete bunker over there. Did you bring any flash cream for your face? Let's do this thing!"


* * * * * * *

The doctors inform me that the goggles saved me from permanent vision loss, and that I can expect the giant dark spot to fade over the next couple of weeks. Fortunately, I'm not expecting to be called for any job interviews any time soon, so it's likely that my eyebrows will have grown back before I have to leave the house. However, Vector and I have been informed that there is nothing that modern medicine can do to counter the Curse of Kheperkheperuba Ay of the 18th Egyptian Dynasty. If you are planning on driving by the Binary Nation in the immediate future, you may want to bring some locust repellant... and don't bother with swim trunks, as we haven't figured out how to get the water in the outdoor pool to stop turning into blood.

A.J. Axline is the owner/author of Closet Universe. He enjoys getting complaints about the "Babies are Made of Meat" line of mens' and ladies' apparel at the Closet Universe Gift Shop.

Posted by nam on 28/03/2006 08:48