BEYOND THE FIFTH ELEMENT

IN THE QUIET OF THE NIGHT, HEX COMPUTED. Along its myriad glass tubes, the ants scurried. Crude magic sparkled along cobwebs of fine bronze wire, changing colour as it changed logic states. In the special room next door the beehives, long-term storage, buzzed. The thing that went 'parp' did so occasionally. Huge wheels turned, stopped, turned back. And still it wasn't enough.

The light of the Project fell across HEX's keyboard. Things were happening in there, and HEX did not understand them. And that was taxing, because there was something there to understand.

HEX was largely self-designed, which was why it worked better than most things in the University. It generally tried to develop a responsive way of coming to grips with any new task; the bees had been a particularly good idea, because although the memory retrieval was slow, the total memory increased with time and good apiary practice.

Now it reasoned thus:

One day it would find a way of increasing its conceptual capac­ity to understand what was happening in the Project;

If this could ever happen, then, according to Stryme's Directionless Law, there was already a shape in happening-space, where time did not exist, caused by the fact of that happening; all that was required was a virtual collapse of the wave form;

... and, although this was in a very strict sense garbage, it was not complete garbage. Any answer that would exist somewhere in the future must, inevitably, be available in potentia now.

The ants went faster. Magic flashed. HEX could be said to be concentrating.

Then silvery, shimmering lines appeared in the air around it, outlining towers of unimaginable cogitation.

Ah. That was acceptable.

Once-and-future computing was now in operation. Of course, it always had been.

HEX wondered how much he should tell the wizards. He felt it would not be a good idea to burden them with too much input.

HEX always thought of his reports as Lies-to-People.

It was the second day ...

The Project was nudged gently under a glass dome to prevent any more interference. A variety of spells had been installed around it.

'So that's a universe, is it?' said the Archchancellor.

'Yes, sir. HEX says that ...' Ponder hesitated. You had to think hard before trying to explain things to Mustrum Ridcully.'... HEX seems to suggest that complete and utter nothing is automatically a universe waiting to happen.'

'You mean nothing becomes everything?'

'Why, yes, sir. Er ... in a way, it has to, sir.'

'And the Dean here swirled it all around and that started it off?'

'It could have been anything at all, sir. Even a stray thought. Absolute nothing is very unstable. It's so desperate to be something?'

'I thought you had to have creators and gods,' mumbled the Senior Wrangler.

'I should jolly well think so,' said Ridcully, who was examining the Project with a thaumic omniscope. 'It's been here since last night and there's nothing to be seen except elements, if you could call them that. Bloody stupid elements, too. Half of them fall to bits as soon as you look at them.'

'Well, what do you expect?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'They're made out of nothing, right? Even a really bad creator would at least have started with Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Surprise.'

'Proper worlds are out of the question here, too,' said Ridcully, peering into the omniscope again. 'There's no sign of chelonium and elephantigen. What kind of worlds can you build without them?'

Ridcully turned to Ponder.

'Not much of a universe, then,' he said. 'It must have gone wrong, Mister Stibbons. It's a dud. By now the first human should be looking for his trousers.'

'Perhaps we could give him a hand,' said the Senior Wrangler.

'What are you suggesting?'

'Well, it's our universe, isn't it?'

Ponder was shocked. 'We can't own a universe, Senior Wrangler!'

'It's a very small one.'

'Only on the outside, sir. HEX says it's a lot bigger on the inside.'

'And the Dean stirred it up,' the Senior Wrangler went on.

'That's right!' said the Dean. 'That means I'm a sort of god.'

'Waggling your fingers around and saying "oo, it prickles" is not godliness,' said Ridcully severely.

'Well, I'm the next best thing,' said the Dean, reluctant to let go of anything that placed him socially higher than the Archchancellor.

'My grandmother always said that cleanliness was next to godli­ness,' mused the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

'Ah, that's more like it,' said Ridcully cheerfully. 'You're more like a janitor, Dean.'

'I was really just suggesting that we give the thing a few shoves in the right direction,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'We are, after all, learned men. And we know what a proper universe ought to be like, don't we?'

'I imagine we have a better idea than the average god with a dog's head and nineteen arms, certainly,' said Ridcully. 'But this is pretty second-rate material. It just wants to spin all the time. What do you expect us to do, bang on the side and shout "Come on, you lot, stop messing about with stupid gases, they'll never amount to any­thing"?'

They compromised, and selected a small area for experimentation. They were, after all, wizards. That meant that if they saw something, they prodded it. If it wobbled, they prodded it some more. If you built a guillotine, and then put a sign on it saying 'Do Not Put Your Neck On This Block', many wizards would never have to buy a hat again.

Moving the matter was simple. As Ponder said, it almost moved under the pressure of thought.

And spinning it into a disc was easy. The new matter liked to spin. But it was also far too sociable.

'You see?' said Ridcully, around mid-morning. 'It seems to get the idea, and then you just end up with a ball of rubbish.'

'Which gets hot in the middle, have you noticed?' said Ponder.

'Embarrassment, probably,' said the Archchancellor. 'We've lost half the elements since elevenses. There's no more cohenium, explodium went ten minutes ago, and I'm beginning to suspect that the detonium is falling to bits. Temporarium didn't last for any time at all.'

'Any Runium?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

HEX wrote: +++ Runium May Or May Not Still Exist. It Was Down To One Atom Ten Minutes Ago, Which I Do Not Seem to Be Able To Find Any More +++

'How's Wranglium doing?' said the Senior Wrangler hopefully.

'Exploded after breakfast, according to HEX. Sorry,' said Ridcully. 'You can't build a world out of smoke and mirrors. Damn ... there goes Bursarium, too. I mean, I know iron rusts, but these elements collapse for a pastime.'

'My hypothesis, for what it's worth,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, 'is that since it was all started off by the Dean, a certain Dean-like tendency may have imparted itself to the ensuing ... er ... developments.'

'What? You mean we've got a huge windy universe with a ten­dency to sulk?'

'Thank you, Archchancellor,' said the Dean.

'I was referring to the predilection of matter to ... er ... accrete into ... er ... spherical shapes.'

'Like the Dean, you mean,' said Archchancellor.

'I can see I'm among friends here,' said the Dean.

There was a soft chime from the apparatus that had been accu­mulated around the Project.

'That'll be etherium vanishing,' said Ridcully gloomily. 'I knew that'd be the next to go.'

'Actually ... no,' said Ponder Stibbons, peering into the Project. 'Er ... something has caught fire.'

Points of light were appearing.

'I knew something like that would happen,' said the Archchancellor. 'All those discs are heating up, just like damn com­post heaps.'