To serve mankind: The lost tale of the physicist in the poultry barn

To take a walk with the dogs after our holiday feast at my cousin’s place last year in the Missouri countryside was a pleasure of autumn.

His hounds seemed to know where they were going and soon we broke out of the wood onto a field with several long, low poultry barns.

The operation was quiet, no one about, so I ambled over to the closest structure and looked in. A few white turkey feathers stirred in the breeze, a sheltering sparrow spooked for the trees.

How strange. There in the dust of the packed earth floor seemed to be a pattern of deliberate scratches. I peered closer and thought I could make out words.

There were a great many of them, with what I could have sworn was calculus and other markings that seemed more fitting for a physicist’s blackboard than a barn. Some entries were unintelligible, with several gaps and erasures by rodents and weather.

The more I read, the more my holiday meal disagreed with me. I whistled up the dogs and sadly trudged home. I can’t talk about it, now, but I will record here what those scratches said.

20 Bright Glob

As the bright glob has flown high and fallen many times now, I have given much thought to it and decided to record my life, which is not easy — for I am a bird.

First, there is the problem of a medium. While I am creating a rapidly expanding series of symbols to scratch in the dirt to set down my ideas, my comrades often walk aimlessly over them and wipe them out. Sigh. But I must express myself! For why else am I here?

22 BG

While my comrades are remarkably uniform to myself — white, wattled and dignified — there is another, much larger being, with underdeveloped wings and pitifully featherless. He made sounds that I can repeat only as “stu ped tur kaas.” I tried to respond to his greeting, but did not catch his attention.

23 BG

Having thought it over, I conclude our slave was giving us a name in his own tongue. We, of course, have referred to ourselves since ancient times as “the blessed,” short for “those over whom blessings fall.”

In return, I will call him “Pluck.”

25 BG

I try to communicate with Pluck when he presents the food offerings to our caste. Alas, the language barrier is too great, even when I employ the crass lower-form idioms of Gobblese. The gift containers he empties have markings, however. I see these symbols elsewhere and resolve to study them.

26 BG

Just realized that the invisible force that sometimes hits my face also moves those fluffy white things overhead. Some say they are gods, and we are made in their pure image, but I wonder about this. Not aloud, of course, for who needs to pecked by the elders for sacrilege.

27 BG

I believe I had a breakthrough in the strange code. When you put the symbols, C-A-R-G-I-L-L together with F-A-T-T-E-N-E-R, it translates to G-I-F-T-S-T-O-B-L-E-S-S-E-D. I will call it the Rosetta Sack.

Touching, really, how they are so devoted to us.

31 BG

As I contemplate existence, it seems to me that while my personal universe is small and oddly contained by a mesh barrier of sorts, I sense other worlds out there. The force that keeps me on this side, I will call gravy, no, gravity. I will study the glowing specks above tonight for clues.

32 BG

Concocted some pleasing speech patterns today that shall be referred to as poetry.

There once was a tom on the tan bucket...

who haughtily said to Pluck, it …

is wise for your fat head …

when in the temple, you should duck it!

Hmmm. Well, I just invented it, you know.

Oh, also, I’ve come up with something I will call geometry.

48 BG

Came up with a rather good line today, if I do say so myself. “To be or not to be.” I’ve tried it out with my closest circle, but they were unappreciative as usual and went back to eating.

50 BG

I am convinced of it! Whole worlds of new things must lie outside our frustrating confinement. In a quiet corner, I’ve worked out a few calculations.

53 BG

It struck me today. I think, therefore I am … I think …

59 BG

Made good progress today with my calculations. If they are correct, then we actually move around the glob, not vice versa!

62 BG

The gods were angry today, dark and glowering; they sent their usual wet tribulation streaming down upon us. Many of my brothers, most of them high priests, drowned themselves in the ritual sacrifice. “We come from water, we return to it,” they chanted before succumbing. Their bravery in appeasing the gods so as to save the rest of us is humbling; still I am glad I am a philosopher/poet/scientist, not a holy bird.

66 BG

Worked this morning on velocity distribution, in respect to thermodynamic equilibrium in relativity influenced radiation fields. Interesting, but how does the equation of transfer fit in? I will give it more thought after my dust bath.

69 BG

Based on my calculations, our universe began with the Big Hatch.

82 BG

Wrestling with quantum energy. If correct, it seems that a single beetle could pass through two holes simultaneously. Yet, does this not conflict with my earlier thesis? “Nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.” Surely my brain is big enough to get around this. I am, after all, what Pluck so reverentially calls a “Stu Ped Tur Kaa.”

85 BG

All my comrades are gaining weight. Too many carbs and not enough exercise. I am easily the thinnest of the lot. Between the excruciating effort to replicate Pluck’s tongue and the struggle to reconcile what I call Straw Theory with the Big Hatch, who has time to eat?

92 BG

Eureka! The particle accelerator I set up in an unused water tray detected my first unseen element of the universe, which I will call a quack. And as a bonus, the water tray produced a room-temperature fusion energy source.

103 BG

Many of the blessed have departed. Pluck came in and shooed many of my tribe into small litters, which in turn were loaded onto something I think he calls a “truck.” It and they have disappeared. Some of my comrades are concerned at the meaning of this, but I cannot be distracted now. I am getting achingly close to discovering the very root of the space-time continuum and can use the extra room in the temple floor to scratch out some more equations.

105 BG

I have found it! Last night, I put all my efforts together and succeeded in time travel. I went back to 8,000 BGs Before and walked around here long before the temple was constructed. How exciting to meet three of the primitive “blessed” who were strutting by in their outlandish native costumes. No priestly white for them! We were just beginning to succeed in sign language, when one of the charming native hens stroked me with a wing, upsetting the chief greatly. For my own safety, I teleported back to the temple … which is strangely empty.

(An especially large section of writing was obliterated here, it seems by a struggle. I could only make out “the secret of staying young is molecularly simple, just apply …” It picks up here.)

110 BG

I must say, I am rather pleased with myself. I have decided to share my discovery of the interstellar passage with all creaturekind. Perhaps even Pluck’s kind could benefit when they become sophisticated enough.

With the room now vacant, I have spent the last two days translating all of my work into his code, scratched deeply and carefully above.

Ah, here comes Pluck now, heading straight toward me — not so surprising since all my comrades have left. What is he bearing? Not a food offering, but that crude instrument he uses to chop wood.

Gathering myself I enunciate carefully in his tongue: “Greetings Pluck, Have Surprise For You.”

What? No shock at this inter-species communication? But then I see cords running into his ears. He cannot hear me.

I try to scream it louder, “GREETINGS PLUCK!”

But with his hand around my throat now, it only comes out as a weak gobble …

This story was originally published November 16, 2014 at 6:00 AM with the headline "To serve mankind: The lost tale of the physicist in the poultry barn."