Here's something a little different, a short story which I hope will be thought provoking. I'd love to hear your thoughts, interpretations, etc.

Ontology 101

Martin Eagle

Norman was a dweeb. Every class needs one; someone to let the rest feel better about themselves, to affirm that the rancid personal hygiene, the awful style sense, the feral socialization, all wrapped in a physiognomy devoid of tone or aesthetic appeal, were not them. No, not for them the role of outcast, of no-account, of otherness beyond pathos or pity. All that belonged to Norman, and Norman alone.

And, like so many of his ilk, fermenting within that lumpish frame and desperate mind, was a growing psychopathy, a seething cauldron of twisted emotions, too cowardly to allow itself definition, a maelstrom of unfocused anger and fear.

Norman sat in the class, perched on a stool inscribed with the names and sentiments of those already escaped, knees jammed against the old lab counter, inhaling the aromas of mold and permanganate and substances as yet unknown to science. Around him voices buzzed and hummed, dates were made, games scheduled, a world of experience of which he had no part.

Awaiting the entrance of The Instructor, all, even Norman, ignored the room’s lurking paraphernalia, their textbooks, their notes but, despite the studied indifference, a subtle anxiety filled the air.

The semester was just begun. Last year they’d completed the prerequisite course, Introduction to Ontology. Today was to be their first lab session, their first “hands on” experience. Most of them awaited this with disinterest, science being of no import compared to sports or dating. Others were more frankly frightened, feeling that science was for the “brains,” which they well knew they were not. A few were agog with anticipation, thirsting for wisdom and the possibility of dangerous experiments.

For Norman, it was yet another thing to be endured, another chance for failure and humiliation.

And The Instructor was rumored to be a bear.

When he appeared before them there was no premonitory bell or crash of opening door. One minute he was just, there, robes swishing, a faint and undefinable odor seeping off them like swamp gas off a bog.

“Open your texts to Unit I, The Ontarium.”

Books flew open, not with anticipation, save for the “brains,” but for fear of The Instructor’s wrath.

“The remainder of the term will devote itself to the creation, nurture and growth of the Ontarium. You will divide into teams and each member will be equally responsible for the result. Make sure to choose your lab partner carefully as your final grade depends on production of a thriving ontosphere. Failure to pass this course will result in…, well, there’s no need to go into that now as I expect you will all succeed brilliantly.”

Irony dripped from his voice and each of the students shuddered. They’d heard the rumors about the consequences of failure. No one seemed to know for sure, but all speculations were accompanied by fearful backward glances and more than a few noticeable tremors.

Quickly, friends paired up until all the lab tables sported groups of two, except for Norman. No one, it seemed, was interested in being his partner and, through some oversight of the registrar, an odd number of students had been admitted to this class section.

The Instructor frowned. “This will not do,” he muttered to himself. “Can’t have a solo Ontologist, not at this stage of his education. Can’t imagine what sort of abomination he’ll come up with.” He sighed, theatrically. “Well, nothing to be done about it, I suppose.”

“You,” he pointed to Norman, “Come here.”

It was almost unbearable – to walk towards The Instructor, everyone’s eyes upon him, his feet bumping into each other and sweat erupting all over his body. The short distance became infinitely long and his vision tunneled so that The Instructor seemed to recede, even as Norman drew closer.

“You’re Norman, right?” The Instructor looked at him, measuring him and finding him wanting. “Well…”

“Yes, sir,” Norman responded, eyes cast down, armpits stinging, his own smell offending him.

“Think you can build one of these on your own?” The Instructor regarded him dubiously.

“Uh, I don’t know, Sir,” Norman mumbled.

“Speak up, speak up. Yes or no?”

“I, … I can try, Sir.”

“There’s no trying in this class. Either you do it or you don’t. I suppose you could wait ‘till next semester. Find a partner in the next class…”

Norman felt panic building inside him; the thought of having to go through this again, another bunch of classmates to adapt to, another semester of school.

“No, no, Sir. I can do it. I can.” He was almost hopping with anxiety. Behind him he heard laughter and the murmur of what he imagined were snide and belittling remarks.

“Well, it’s against my better judgment, but, the class is already in session. Just see that you pay attention. I’d hate to have to deal with a ruined Ontarium. Such a mess, not to mention the waste of resources. I’ll be keeping my eye on you, Norman.”

The instructor waved Norman back to his seat, the return a gauntlet of stares and Snickers.

“No way he’ll pull it off.”

“Fat chance. He’ll blow it, for sure.”

“Hey, look, it’s Igor, the mad scientist.”

Someone stuck a foot into the isle, but Norman, eyes riveted to the floor, merely stepped over it and sagged back into his seat. As The Instructor resumed his lesson, attention gradually turned away from Norman and he was able to sink back into his usual reverie, a fantasy containing equal parts of revenge and self-aggrandizement. Bits and pieces of the lecture penetrated. Most were ignored.

While all his classmates figured in this waking dream, special venom was reserved for a chosen few. Prominent among them were Joe and Mary, the prototypical Prom King and Queen. Handsome, beautiful, popular, the pinnacle of the school’s caste system, they were further distinguished by the lack of malice they showed Norman, treating him, instead, with a casual amiability which overlooked his deficits and rendered them invisible. Despite, or, perhaps, because of this, he nursed towards them a fulminating hatred, which he cloaked in a servile deference whenever they spoke to him.

As passionate as was this feeling for Joe and Mary, it paled compared to what he felt for Abe, a small, slight, gnomish youth who might have challenged Norman’s place at the bottom of the food chain were it not for his enormous intellect, which seemed too large to fit within the confines of his ugly head, coupled with an equally huge ego, which defied anyone to treat him with the disdain his appearance might otherwise have elicited.

Had he the courage, Norman would have assaulted Abe physically, even killed him. Lacking it, he satisfied himself with endless imaginary scenarios, filled with violence and perversion, which even Norman knew skirted a narrow border between hate and love. This ambivalence made the fire burn even brighter, a white heat of incandescent rage and desire.

“… and pick up your materials from the supply closet. I’ll expect to see the basic ontogenesis well under way by the end of class tomorrow.” The Instructor’s words penetrated Norman’s mind and it was with renewed panic that he realized he’d missed most of the instructions. Well, he’d just copy what everyone else was doing. They’d all be starting from scratch tomorrow. It was just an Ontarium, anyway.

How hard could that be.

---------- . ----------


The word “ontarium” is used interchangeably for both, but technically refers to the combination of a n-dimension ontoidal container seeded with the appropriate materials required to propagate an ontosphere.

Despite containing an infinite amount of such materials, there was a considerable crush at the supply closet as class began the next morning. Students jostled and squirmed, albeit with reasonable good humor, as they sought to secure their favorite ontarium container along with their preferred seed ingredients.

Norman waited at the rear of the pack, trying to take note of the various bottles, tins, canisters and other items, which his classmates carried away by the armful. When his turn arrived, he entered the closet alone, eyes roving along the endless shelves, trepidation gnawing at his belly.

The supply of ontoidal containers alone was daunting, their shapes and sizes ranging from point sources to super-strings and beyond. Propagation gametes included every phylum, including anti-material, biological, crystalline, and so on through the ontological alphabet. On one shelf, behind a locked screen, were several containers marked with a brightly colored unfamiliar graphic and clearly labeled “Anthro-hazzard.”

From behind him, he could already hear the others discussing the shapes, colors, sizes and peculiarities of their choices, accompanied by friendly teasing and cries of “Oh, what a cute idea,” and “Yuck, that’s gross,” and the like.

With little to guide his choice, he selected a relatively small container, a few terra-parsecs in diameter, its shell somewhat cloudy and lumpish. Trying to keep in mind what he’d seen his classmates carrying, he gathered an armful of basic seed materials along with a few decorative items of similar style and quality to those which would adorn a set of model trains. With these supplies making a precariously balanced mound in his arms, he made his way carefully back to his lab table.

The Instructor appeared as usual and began moving among them, offering the occasional comment or bit of pedagogy to the teams. Hoping to avoid his scrutiny, Norman began to scribble in his notebook, as if making plans for his project. In this device he was unsuccessful as the shadow of The Instructor shortly fell across the page.

“Well,” he said, eyeing the assortment of items spread across the counter, “just what sort of Ontosphere do you expect to make out of that?”

“Oh,” Norman began, “I thought I’d just…”

“Hold on, hold on,” The Instructor interrupted. “Yes,… I see. Quite novel in its own way. Hmmm. Uh huh.” He moved a few of the containers on the counter, arranging them in varied juxtaposition. “Well,” he continued, “I see where you’re going with this. It’s quite ambitious for a class at this level.”

He looked at Norman quizzically. “You know, Norman, I didn’t think you had it in you to pull off something like this. But, perhaps you’ll surprise me. Nothing could make me happier. After all, it is a teacher’s greatest hope that a student will exceed his expectations.

Now, look here,” he pointed to a few of the ingredients, “you know you’ll need to be careful with these. And that container … are you sure you’ll be able to see what you’re doing?” He paused for a moment. “Oh, well, it’s your project after all.”

He clapped Norman on his shoulder. “Go to it, lad. Make me proud.” With that, he was gone.

Norman could feel the eyes of his classmates on him. “I’ll show them,” he thought. “Now it’s my turn. Just watch them eat my dust. My Ontarium will make theirs look like goldfish bowls.”

These grandiose thoughts suffused Norman with a warm, erotic glow, until the crushing reality of his own ignorance fell upon him. Just how the hell did he build this thing, anyway? And now The Instructor had an eye on him. Just what he needed.

At the next table, Mary looked away from her weights and measures. “Sounds like you have quite a project going there, Norman,” she called. “What’s it going to be?”

“Yeah, Norm,” Joe jumped in, “got a color scheme, or anything?”

Before he could think of an answer, Norman heard Abe’s piercing voice from over his shoulder. “He tries putting those ingredients together, we all better look out.”

“What do you mean?” Mary said.

“Well, just look at that stuff.” Abe came up beside Norman and pointed at a few of the bottles and one dented and dingy tin in particular. “No one’s used any of that for eons, and with good reason.”

Neither Abe, nor any of the others noticed the frayed insignia on the bottom of the tin, or the fragmentary letter “A.”

“Well, The Instructor seemed to think it was ok,” Norman blurted, for once, his anger overpowering his timidity.

Joe spoke up quickly, “Aw, everyone knows Abe thinks he’s smarter than The Instructor, right Abe?” He punched him lightly in the arm.

“You don’t have to be so smart to see that that crap’s going to get you in a lot of trouble. But, you think you can handle it, go for it.” Abe turned away and walked back to his desk. Joe gave Norman a goofy grin and a thumbs-up while Mary offered a cute smile. She and Joe turned back to their own work and Norman regarded his array of supplies with a new set of concerns.

“Fine,” he thought, “not only do I have to figure out how to get this thing up and running, but now I’ve got to worry about making something horrible happen. Why the hell do they make us take this Ontology course in the first place? They should know I’m just not cut out for it.”

Norman indulged himself with thoughts of alternate professions, picturing himself, perhaps, in some sort of uniform, wielding incredible power over cowering multitudes. Then, feeling The Instructor’s eyes upon him, he began to move the various supplies around on his desk, surreptitiously looking at his classmates to see what they were doing.

All around the room, students were passing substances into the ontaria. Already, some had started to produce signs of growth: coherent shapes and oddly alluring gaseous swirls. One rather amiable fool with the improbable name of Job Heisenburger called out to the Instructor, “Sir, I can’t seem to get these bouncy doohickies into the ontoid. Every time I try and grab one, its not there. If I see where it is, when I grab it, it’s somewhere else, and if I figure out how it’s moving, then it’s not where it should be.”

The Instructor looked up at him and groaned. “This is not kindergarten. By the time you get to this class you’re supposed to know that two plus two equals…”

“Yes, Sir,” the boy interjected, and returned to his work, a flush spreading across his cheeks as the rest of the class tittered.

From behind him, Norman heard a smug, self-satisfied satisfied hum. Turning, he could see Abe’s construction begin to emit a softly glowing aura.

His breath constricted by fear, Norman chose a vial at random and inserted a pinch of granular stuff, which seemed to have no effect at all. Feeling somewhat emboldened, he poured a slightly syrupy glob from one bottle and added a pipette worth of glittery stuff from another. Still nothing.

With mounting frustration Norman began tossing in random amounts of material from each of his supplies, his efforts eventually producing a slight condensation of something, but nothing like the elaborate results he could see emerging on his classmates’ lab tables.

Across the aisle, Joe and Mary had created a gaily colored, pulsating sphere, which seemed to have properties similar to that of Mary’s smile. Behind him, Abe’s Ontarium now contained a crystalline lattice of infinite variety, which seemed to be reproducing itself exponentially while, oddly, never escaping the confines of the ontoidal boundary.

From each table, surprised and satisfied cries arose.

“Ooh! Look at that.”

“Come look at mine.”

“Yours is so pretty, and it’s singing.”

Norman hated them all.

He hated his classmates. He hated The Instructor. He hated this laboratory and, most of all, he hated his Ontarium; this inert, lumpy, foggy container of nothingness. He picked it up and shook it. Nothing. He held it up to the light. Nothing. He felt like hurling it through the window, but thought better of it as he caught sight of The Instructor, apparently doodling on the blackboard at the front of the room.

From behind him, he could feel Abe’s patronizing gaze like a lance between his shoulder blades.

Hunching down in his seat, he surveyed the remaining items on his desk. One, in particular, stood out – the oddly beat up container about which Abe had issued his dire warning.

“How’d I miss that?” he wondered. He reached out his hand for it, then pulled back. “I wonder if it’s really dangerous? Naw, Abe’s just messing with me, trying to freak me out. If it could make real trouble The Instructor wouldn’t let me touch it, would he?” He mused.

The lab clock inched along. “Not much time left,” Norman thought. “I’ve got to get this thing cooking.”

He grabbed the tin and peeled back its cover like a sardine can. “What the,…?” The can appeared to be empty. Peering more closely, he could see a faint, milky film and the can gave off a nasty aroma, something like bleach.

“Well,” he thought, “here goes nothing.”

With that he thrust the contents of the tin into his Ontarium.

A colossal BANG echoed through the room, accompanied by a brilliant, actinic light. Everyone, even The Instructor grabbed for their ears and squinted their eyes tight shut. A moment passed, that seemed to last forever.

When Norman opened his eyes, everyone was staring – not at him, but at the apparition on his desk.

---------- . ----------


For ages, The Instructor had been getting by on his reputation. Students and colleagues alike deferred to him through mingled respect and fear. In the entire academy, only the janitor, who’s tenure predated his own, treated him with a disregard bordering on insubordination, a situation The Instructor, who understood its origin, ignored.

Regarding, now, the abomination on Norman’s lab table, he wondered if it was all over. Of course, there had been other disasters – the subject matter all but guaranteed that – but this may have become the one that crossed the line, that forced him from his position and into early retirement.

Well, he and the janitor had dealt with these problems before. Perhaps they could prevail again. Assuming his most intimidating glower, he appeared at Norman’s lab bench, drenched in a glow of righteous fury.

“So,” he began, “bit off more than you can chew, eh?”

“Oh, Sir,” Norman mewled, “I didn’t mean…”

“Quiet.” He silenced Norman with a word. Around them, the other students looked on. To a man, or woman, they shared the thought, “Better him than me.”

Holding the ontoid in one hand, he regarded it balefully, while idly stirring the containers of ingredients littering the desk. The ontoid’s surface appeared to have gained a few more lumps and what little symmetry had existed to begin with was now gone. On the bright side, the containment was not breached and none of the toxic contents was leaking.

And those contents…

Amorphous globs of light swirled and coalesced, expanded and contracted. As luminous and occasionally attractive as they were, they were overwhelmed by the huge masses of pulsating blackness, which surrounded and infiltrated them. At various points throughout the ontosphere, things seemed to be erupting or disappearing, exploding or collapsing, seemingly at random.

The Instructor began mumbling to himself, anxiety stripping his usual veneer of scholarly oratory. “Let’s see, you’ve got some proto-galaxies here, some gravi-wave fronts propagating over there. Man, that’s a shitload of dark matter you stuck in…” he turned to Norman, “jeez, didn’t you notice you were putting in way too much dark matter, This thing’s going to oscillate all over to hell and back. It’ll never settle down.”

“But, Sir…” Norman began.

“Oh, can it,” The Instructor cut him off. “I don’t know, maybe you can stick in some more neutri…., oh, shit!” In an insignificant pocket, far off the gravitational core of the Ontarium, The Instructor had just caught sight of a bit of solidifying proto-matter, squirming obscenely and giving off a faint, liverish glow.

“Where’d you get the….” Without finishing his sentence, he dropped the Ontarium roughly onto the lab counter where it landed with a damp, squishy noise, almost, but not quite bouncing. He poked among the containers of ingredients, seizing upon the discolored tin, the final element.

“Who gave you this stuff? Don’t you know it’s….?

“But, Sir, it was out there on the shelf with the other stuff. I was just picking my supplies like everyone else. It was right out there with everything else.” Norman’s whine was becoming ever faster and more high pitched.

The Instructor flipped the tin in his hand, confirming to himself the remains of the warning insignia on its back. With apparently casual disdain, he stuck the thing in the pocket of his robe.

“Abe,” he said, assuming a calm and beneficent tone, “would you be so kind as to go and get the janitor?”

“Now, Norman,” he turned to the cowering student, “we’ll have to see what we can do to correct this. I know you don’t want to fail the course and there’s a chance, a slim one, to be sure, that you can repair this … thing. It won’t be easy, of course, and I’m afraid we can’t have you work on it here in the lab. Oh, no. Far too unstable, and too distracting for the other students.

We’ll just set you up in a little private lab and I’ll stop by now and then and check on your progress.

The rest of you, back to work. You’ve got a nice start on your projects, but we’ve got a long way to go. Why, ontological reproduction alone is going to occupy us for quite some time.”

Within moments, the janitor arrived. The students all turned away from his disreputable look and the miasma of garbage, rot and decay which engulfed him. Leaving Norman in dejected solitude for the time being, The Instructor took the janitor aside.

“You see what we’ve got to deal with?” He said, waving at Norman’s Ontarium wobbling on the counter top, its interior now pulsing with alternating periods of light and dark, its surface squirming and altering shape with each change of phase.

“Oh, yeah,” the janitor replied, “screwed it up right good, didn’t he?” He took another long look. “Is that… how the hell did he get … what am I supposed to do with that?”

The Instructor reached into his pocket and produced the telltale tin. “I, … I think I forgot to put away all the Anthro-hazzard containers last time I took inventory. You know, there’s so damn much of it, it just goes on forever.” There was a curious similarity between Norman’s whine and The Instructor’s desperate excuses.

“And now you expect me to clean up the mess again, …like always.”

The instructor gave him a cheesy smile. “If you could, that would be…”

“Well, you know, I can’t just toss the lot into the incinerator. Not with that Anthro crap in there. It’d contaminate everything.”

“I know you can do it,” said The Instructor. “We’ve dealt with these situations before, and…”

“And I told you the last time, no more. This is definitely not in my job description.”

“Don’t start giving me any of that bureaucratic crap. It’s both of our asses on the line here. Come on. It’s the last time, I promise.”

“You’re damn right it’s the last time. I won’t do this again. You know, you’ve been screwing up a lot, lately. You better just put in for your retirement after this semester and be done with it.”

The Instructor sat down at his desk, head in his hands. “Well,” he thought, “it’s been a good job while it lasted. Maybe it is time to just lay back and relax. Let someone else train these lummoxes for a while.”

The janitor moved down the isle to Norman’s desk.

“Come along then, son,” he said. “Grab that Ontarium and let’s see what we can do to fix you up.”

Arm across Norman’s shoulder, the janitor glared at The Instructor, then turned away with a resigned sigh as the door closed behind them.

---------- . ----------


“Where are we going?” Norman asked as the janitor led him to an un-marked door.
“We’re just going down to my place for a minute. Got to pick up a few things, then we’ll get you all set up in a private lab and, whoopsy daisy, before you know it, everything will be right as rain again.”

He opened the door with one of the innumerable keys hanging from a chain on his belt. A steep and dimly lit stairway led downward. Norman could smell cleaning fluids and something else, slightly sweet and unpleasantly thick, as if the air was coating the back of his throat. Their footsteps rang on the metal treads and the temperature grew progressively warmer.

Norman tucked the Ontarium under one arm, clutching it tightly as his other hand felt for a rail. He finally let it trail along the wall as they descended. The stairs ended at a closed, metal door, painted a bright red. A single bulb in an iron safety sconce illuminated the “Caution” sign and the “Incinerator Room” label on the door itself.

“Let’s see, now, which is it?” The janitor fumbled for a moment before selecting a key, tarnished and ancient, from his collection. “Come on in, boy. Nothing to be afraid of,” he said, ushering Norman inside.

The space was huge, hot and incredibly noisy. The incinerator, which took up a vast space itself, roared and spat. Enormous panes of heavy, tempered glass revealed the flames within, as well as a myriad of ill-defined forms, which seemed to flutter and dance as they burned.

“Well, we’ve got to get rid of the trash, don’t we?” The janitor yelled above the din. He put his mouth close to Norman’s ear. “That way,” he pointed and, holding Norman’s arm, led him around to the far side of the burner.

Rows of industrial shelving receded into the darkness. Norman could not make out their contents, nor the room’s perimeter. It just seemed to go on forever, disappearing into a stygian gloom.

“What are we looking for?” he shouted, his voice echoing as the incinerator’s roar became suddenly muted.

“Just this way,” the janitor replied, still holding his arm and tugging him into an aisle among the racks.

It took a moment for Norman’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. As they moved down the rack, the shelves slowly revealed their contents: row upon row of Ontaria, some clearly lifeless and inert, others showing signs of activity.

“What’s this?” cried Norman, “some kind of museum of screwed up school projects?”

The janitor didn’t reply directly. Instead, “right here,” he said, pointing to a gap on the shelf they were facing. “Just stick yours right there, for now.”
With a dubious, backwards look, Norman reached over and put his Ontarium on the shelf.

“Now, what?” He started to say. But, before the words were out of his mouth, he felt a mighty push on his back and an incredible pressure seemed to squeeze him into nothingness.

“Well, that’s that,” said the janitor, brushing a bit of dust off his coveralls. He pulled over a beat-up leather roll-away chair, rescued from a classroom, and sat down, regarding Norman’s Ontarium with a look of infinite sadness and infinite compassion.

Eons passed within. Galaxies formed and dissolved. Stars gave birth to themselves and devoured themselves. In the far sector, the Anthro-contaminant predictably reproduced. Such order as had been intrinsic to the ingredients used in its formation attempted to stabilize the ontosphere. But, always, there was Norman, raging, fulminating, creating, destroying, warping the ontological dynamics with arbitrary chaos, venting his madness and fear on his creation.

The janitor scooted his chair closer to the murmuring incinerator, warming himself with its emanations. Behind him, the endless aisles and endless racks and endless ontaria faded into the infinite distance.

---------- . ----------

The Instructor paced among the lab tables, inspecting the students’ creations. By and large they were workmanlike; unimaginative but stable and self-regenerative. As was to be expected, Abe’s was something else entirely. The crystal matrix had, via a clever manipulation of consciousness quanta, produced a new form of sentience, which seemed likely to provide a rich source of future students for the academy. It would not, however, be in the Instructor’s best interests to be too lavish with his praise.

“Interesting,” he said to Abe, “a bit derivative, but, with a little maturity I think you’ll produce some nice work.”

As he passed Joe and Mary’s desk, he paused to lean over her shoulder. “Very pretty,” he said in her ear, giving her shoulder a little squeeze.

Abe glared at The Instructor’s receding back.

“Dweeb,” he said.



- posted by Martin Eagle @ 11:16 AM