The sun can’t get through today. The sky is cloud-paper. A few white scribbles here and there; a black doodle in the distance like a long-legged bird or a heli with a stuntman on a rope. There’s plenty going on though: the air is thick with electromagnetics from mobiles, from radios and from the Poles, North and South. They come from far these waves just to be here above my head: Zagreb, Sebastopol, Luxemburg, you name it. Meanwhile, down low at ground level, woodlice gnaw, Bigman sleeps, and way down in the darkness, at the bottom of the sea, eyeless fish scavenge for carcasses.
Hello?... Lui, are you there?
Further still, thousands of miles below the crust, a big sweltering, raging goulash of energy -
Lui, you're breaking up.
I'm here.
This line is bad. I’m going to call you back.
Click.
...big sweltering, raging goulash of energy -
Ring.
Hello.
It's me again.
Hi.
This is better. Lui, I'm calling about that job.
What job?
The one I told you about, at the plasma-physics lab in Delft.
Tell me.
The head-guy is a Croat. Dr. Antun Dragoslav. He needs an assistant.
I'm not qualified.
You're not going to do any physics. You just run the office. You file stuff, you photocopy, etc. You speak Serbo-whatsit, right?
Croatian. Yes.
Then you're qualified.
What's plasma?
It's like a gas - super hot - but it's not a gas, and they suspend it magnetically in a vacuum -
What!?
