The Faceless Bureaucrat

This story is the introduction to our hapless character who appears in several like-minded stories. This is "well-grounded” comedy science fiction. I got a real kick writing this and I hope you enjoy it.

The 4D Quantum Hall Effect in a 3D Lattice

"I am going to hurt you like how you are hurting my head," I said, rubbing my temples. My head was down. Ordered stacks of paper on the expanse of wood in front of me filled my sight.

"No time for that. This is important."

I looked up to see the source of the pain. Dr. Maletessta. He stared back at me across the no-man's land of my desk, arms akimbo. His lecture had worsened the incipient headache I had from reading and signing off on the quarterly reports.

I particularly dreaded when he came to talk to me, much like when you dread having to go to your violin lessons and you haven't practiced during the week. Admittedly I wasn't very good at it but I would need something new to occupy my time.

In all fairness to the Doctor, I dreaded whenever any of my charges came to me. But Dr. Maletessta occupied a coveted spot, one the other researchers constantly strove to wrest from him.

At this moment I couldn't bring myself to believe what he was telling me. Which was actually pretty easy to do since I didn't understand what he was going on about. I glanced at my retirement clock. Still in the triple digits. I sighed.

"Look, I'm just saying that you may want to work a bit on your delivery. And timing. And, frankly, content," I said.

"What part of hyper-spatial manifold theory didn't you understand?"

"All of it. Maybe smaller words, in English this time? And not so much about Xboxes. And why exactly are you anti sitting?"

Maletessta pursed his lips and drew his eyebrows together as though examining some distasteful end product of a biological process.

"Fine. You realize that the reality you see around you is a sham, right?"

I wasn't ready to agree with him. While lots of things were shams, like my job of administering these people, I knew I still very much had the reality of sitting in front of a wildly gesticulating eccentric scientist while he yelled un-understandable things at me. In the interest of keeping things moving along, I just nodded my head. Best to get all the information out in the open and sort through it later.

"Sure. Everything is really fields. Twenty something, right?" I had picked up all sorts of tidbits in my tenure.

"How you got this job escapes me. Yes, fields. But not just that. There is an imaginary component to all these descriptions. Do you realize what that suggests?"

"That we have an active imagination?" The look on his face left no doubt I had guessed wrong. I tried again.

"Ah, that we don't know everything?"

"No and no. Well, yes, but not the way you meant. Do try to follow along. One interpretation is that there is an axis orthogonal to our perceived reality."

"Right." I started to wonder if the good doctor required a new jacket with overly long sleeves.

"Well, I was running an experiment to characterize some quantum level perturbations, dealing with the Hall Effect. This would enable us to glimpse the greater reality in which we find ourselves embedded. Quite fascinating, actually. You can readily observe this effect using common everyday items. But I digress."

My eyes strayed to the phone on my desk. Perhaps a call to the boys in white was in order.

He continued. "Anyway, as I performed the experiment, I got anomalous results."

"They didn't agree with what you calculated? Big deal. You probably just missed a decimal point or something. There! Problem solved!" I felt pretty smug.

He looked at me with what must have been pity in his eyes. Tiny shakes of his head followed. "Hardly. The results were changing while I observed. It's not supposed to change at all."

"I fail to see the significance of your failed experiment."

"It is amazing the level of idiocy that one encounters. The experiment didn't fail. Something is going on 'outside' of our Universe." His fingers performed air quotes when he said outside.

I was not amused. My job was to act as a check to the unbridled enthusiasm often exhibited by our resident eggheads. I did that by safeguarding the flow of taxpayer money to them. All this talk about outside the Universe had me a worried. This little gem sounded expensive.

"Okay, let's suppose that something is indeed going on 'outside'." My own fingers did the air quotes. "What do you propose to do?"

"We need to investigate several other constants and phenomena that exhibit similar complex formulation. To get a baseline of the higher order effects."

"I assume that you have an approach outlined? With a budget to go with it?" The important question.

"Of course. Here." He reached into his front pants pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. He carefully unfolded it. Placing it on my desk, he attempted to smooth it. At some point he must have been satisfied with the results because he handed it to me.

I held the corner of it between my thumb and index finger and let it dangle. Looking at him, I said, "This needs to be in triplicate. On the right form. You know that."

His eyes scrunched close and his face reddened. You could see his mouth silently forming words. Numbers, I think. Finally, he opened his eyes and looked at me. "This is urgent."

"There's a different form for that."

I thought he would blow his top. Nothing. Instead, he drooped.

"Okay." And he turned to walk away.

This set off all sorts of alarms in me.

"Wait, you're not going to yell and scream and demand to see my superior?"

With his back still to me, he shook his head.

"Do you mind explaining yourself?"

"Because, if my calculations are correct, nothing will matter in 4.87 days."

"Oh? And what will happen in 4.87 days?"

He turned to face me. "The Universe ends."

An involuntary shudder ran through me. Something about his demeanor. He wasn't jumping up and down, demanding money or resources. Very different from the usual. Too different from the normal for him and his fellows.

"Why don't you sit down and we can fill out the forms together?"

He gave a little sigh, pulled a chair over to my desk and fell into the seat.

I riffled through my drawer and got the appropriate form out. "Why don't you explain the problem again to me? In English, please?"

"Where to start? Okay, first you know that as you speed up, time slows down, relative to the things around you? So, to a photon traveling at the speed of light, there is no such thing as time and it sees the entire universe in its journey."

I rummaged in my top drawer, looking for my fancy pen. Having found it, I made a big deal of taking the cap off. Might as well appear to be as serious as possible about this. "Yes, I know. Basic relativity stuff." I felt comfortable saying it. It was another tidbit. "Go on."

He arched an eyebrow at me. "So, anything that goes on inside of the photon is separate from the Universe outside of it."

I offered encouragement by nodding while I filled out the name and department boxes. All the boilerplate stuff. I made sure to press extra hard, to get it to go through all the forms. "So far, so good."

"Well, a particularly high energy photon could, in fact, trigger an incident event. A veritable ylem, if you will."

The scope question on the form was the first real question. Listening to Maletessta, I figured "Universe" was a good answer. I felt rather clever.

"Yelm, right. Got it. So, what does this have to do with why you're here?"

"If a star emitted a particularly high energy photon, it could lead to an entire universe being spawned. At a lower dimensionality than where it was produced, of course. Otherwise it would overlay the original one."

The next question was "Nature of Problem." I wasn't exactly sure what to put down. Maybe something about the good doctor suffering from depression? I didn't think there would be much money for that. Perhaps if I waited, something would come up in the conversation.

"Interesting conjecture, Doctor. The point is?"

"Imagine a four-dimensional hyper star emitting a high-energy hyper photon."

I put the cap back on my pen and placed it on top of the form. I can't say that I cared for the direction his argument was going. He seemed to be implying something. I looked up at him, sitting across from me. His head was slightly tilted down and his lips were a straight line. Not upturned at the corners at all, as in a joke.

"Are you saying that our Universe is careening about in some higher order universe as a light speed particle?"

He gave a few small nods of his head. "It also explains the arrow of time. That is a byproduct of the direction we are traveling in the higher order manifold."

I dreaded asking the next question. Undoubtedly, it would lead to a long, confusing explanation that would leave me scratching my head. "What exactly did your experiment show?"

He visibly brightened. Uh oh. "It showed that the four-dimensional effect was changing. In fact, applying some basic math to it, you can determine that we are interacting with a higher order field. The rate of change will approach the quantum limits in that time."

My face must have exhibited puzzlement. He peered at me for a few seconds. "Something is affecting the space around us and we'll hit it in 4.87 days." He looked as his watch. "4.86."

"And that would be bad?"

"Yes. I think so. We could possibly be absorbed. Or reflected. That would change the arrow of time." He had a grin on his face.

I didn't feel like grinning. Instead, I took out the "Urgent" form.

* * *

We got all the forms filled out, in triplicate, by early afternoon. I wanted to hurry to catch the budget lady before she left for the day. She liked to leave early. We hurried over to her office.

"Now, when we get there, you let me do all the talking, understand?"

"Of course, I will be the soul of discretion." The doctor didn't sound very convincing to me.

"No, I mean it. She is the Over-Director of the Undersecretary of Finance for the Department. We can't give her any reason to turn us down."

"Yes, yes."

We got there just in time. She had already cleared her desk off and sat behind it with her fingers steepled, staring at the clock on the wall.

"Beth, I need you to look at this budget request."

"Can't you see I'm busy?"

"Er, no. You still have thirty minutes before you usually leave."

"I have a routine. I don't like to change it."

"I just need your approval."

"Fine, put it in my inbox and I'll get to it tomorrow." She pointed at a box on the edge of her desk, filled with neatly stacked papers, edges all squared up.

"It's urgent."

"Okay, you may put it on top of the pile."

"I really need to get moving on this post-haste."

She looked at me over her glasses, the kind with little rhinestones on the pointy ends, chain attached to each arm. "I will get to it when I get to it."

I put my stack of forms down in the middle of the empty expanse between us and pushed it closer to her. I was very careful not to remove my hand from it.

"This will only take a moment."

She glared at me. Violent intentions marched behind her eyes.

"Did you fill out the appropriate Urgent request?"

My eyes never left her. "It's on top. Along with the Needs request and Budget Justification. All in triplicate. I made sure that it is all in order. I wouldn't want to keep you any longer than necessary." I forced a smile.

The standoff was tense. Sweat started to form on my brow. I didn't dare blink.

"Fine." It was more an explosion than a word. "I'll approve it right now."

She opened the top right desk drawer and pulled out an inkpad and rubber stamp. She flipped open the pad with practiced ease and mashed the stamp on its surface. The hand with the stamp went high up.

BAM! BAM!

"Oww!" I snatched my hand back.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see your hand there." She smiled at me as she closed the pad and put the tools of torture away.

My hand throbbed, clearly marked as "Approved" now. I held it close to my chest. I swear my hand was the second BAM. She removed the bottom copy from the form.

"Now, do you fine folks need anything else?" A saccharine smile spread from ear to ear under her eyewear.

I retrieved the stamped papers with my working hand. "No, I think..."

"Then get the hell out of my office."

Pressing my lips together made it less likely I would offer some comment. I turned on my heels and marched out of the den of inequity with Maletessta in tow. I was thankful he had kept his word.

Once outside though, he turned to me and said, "That woman is a menace."

"Forget her. We have what we need. Here. Take this down to requisitions." I handed him the precious forms. "You keep the top copy. They get the other copy. They'll take care of you."

He stared at the papers in his hands. "Thank you, you won't regret it."

"I already regret it. Make sure you send me a progress report every day. We have to make sure the taxpayer's money is well spent."

* * *

Maletessta must have put in extra overtime through the weekend. I had reports stacked up in my email from him for every day. They were filled with lists of tasks he was to perform along with the descriptions of the methods and actions. It looked like lots of progress. Interestingly enough, Monday, today's, was missing.

Checking the time on the emails showed they were all delivered early in the morning and here it was almost lunch time. Better go see why. I didn't want him to get in trouble and by extension, get me in trouble.

A knock on his lab's door didn't produce a response. Another knock and still no answer. Irritated, I grasped the door handle and pushed down on it. The door swung open.

I went in. "Dr. Maletessta?"

He was bent over a workbench with one of those visors with magnifying glasses built in, micrometer in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. The screwdriver made almost imperceptible motions. Slowly, he backed away from what was on the table. Straightening up, he said, "There."

His overly large irises and pupils registered surprise when they came upon me.

"What are you doing here?" He pulled the visor off, returning his eyes to the normal, beady look they typically had.

"I didn't get a report from you this morning. You sent them early every day for the last four days. I was wondering what happened."

"My report? Good Gravy! Do you realize what would happen if I don't finish this?"

"Oh yes. There would be an inquiry into your misuse of funds, the oversight committee would call me in front of them and you would have an official reprimand. All very serious stuff, especially in light of last year's resonant cavity research with pilot waves."

He turned red. "The science was above reproach. There was just one tiny thing wrong with it, which if I had had proper funding to begin with, would have been found out right away." Closing his eyes, he gave a little shudder then unclenched his fists and let out a breath. "No matter. That is in the past."

"But not forgotten."

An immediate glare followed.

"NO MATTER! In fact, if I don't finish this, there won't be any matter."

"I thought you were just investigating. If you did something different, that is unsanctioned. What have you been doing?" I sidled up to the workbench and took a good look at his handiwork.

There was a tuning fork sticking up from a wooden box with a couple of blinking light and knob on the face toward me. Around it was a circle with irregularly spaced groups of crystals of various expensive looking minerals. I counted twenty six crystals. One of the facetted shapes was a particularly pretty shade of blue. There were gold traces running between the box, the stones and each other in a dizzying filigree. A wire led from each crystalline mount to a small, brown plastic hemisphere with a number of discrete electronic components in a mesh attached to what looked like a bent wire hanger with small aluminum foil flags hanging from it.

I pointed at the contraption and said, "What is this?"

"Don't touch anything! It's all been carefully calibrated. The slightest misalignment would have unimaginable repercussions. It is a resonator circuit for the universe."

I very much doubted it. "The universe needs a tuning fork?"

"A very special one, made of a beryllium-platinum alloy. I calculated that it will vibrate at 440 Hertz."

I stared at him. "An A? The universe vibrates in A?"

"Well, an overtone of it, most likely. See, you can even adjust it with the knob."

Visions of standing in front of the oversight committee filled my head. How to explain this? I was dumbstruck. Maletessta moved in for the kill.

"It is a thing of beauty, isn't it?" He positively beamed.

"It looks like something you would find at a New Age convention."

"Hmphf, well, to the untrained eye..."

"Please tell me that this isn't where all the money went."

"Of course not. Here." He patted the pockets of his lab coat and produced a reflex mallet. The red, rubber triangle was held in a golden colored loop and handle.

"You had it gold plated?"

"Don't be ridiculous. It's solid gold. Quite expensive."

"I bet."

My hope of retiring on a government pension went out the window.

"How could this happen? The reports I was getting from you didn't indicate this at all."

"Oh those! I trained a neural net to output reasonable sounding reports for you."

At last, a glimmer of hope, a silver lining. That AI could be a goldmine, highly sought after. Maybe I'd be able to salvage part of my career. "So, this neural net..."

He held up his hand. "Not now. It's almost time." A cell phone came out. His finger traced a complicated pattern on it and he set it on the table. I could see a timer counting down to zero.

"What's that for?"

"Shh!" He waved me off with his free hand. The mallet was held close to the tuning fork, poised to strike.

"I'm afraid this has gone on long enough. You are going to have to return these materials, fill out form..."

At that moment, several things happened all at once. I am a little fuzzy about the order of occurrence. But I think I have them in order.

His cell phone timer went off. I'm sure of that one.

The mallet struck the tuning fork. A deep, resonant vibration filled the core of my being. Memories of my recent violin lessons came unbidden to my head. I remembered hearing it. Or rather, I remembered what it should be. It was slightly off. I reached up with the multitude of arms I seemed to have sprouted and grasped the knob with way too many fingers and tweaked it right.

There was a lurch. It's the only way to describe it. Later on, I was told everyone felt it. But everything snapped into sharp, singular focus. No more extra appendages.

The smell of patchouli permeated the air.

I looked all around.

He stared at me with eyes the size of saucers. "What did you do?"

"It was a little flat."

"You saved everything."

I shrugged.

He ran over to another bench with numerous lasers, mirrors and prisms firing beams through a large, transparent block. There were cameras all around the target, hooked up to a top of the line laptop still smelling of electronics. Another recent purchase, I was sure.

He studied the screen. "Good, good. Uh oh."

"Uh oh what?"

"This configuration doesn't seem quite stable. We are still interacting with whatever field held us. We're still on a collision course."

I squinted at him. "How long do we have?"

"Approximately ten to the hundred and twentieth power of years."

I relaxed. "Oh good, that's past my retirement."

* * *

There were, of course, meetings held over what happened. I had to provide a mountain of paperwork and reports.

It all came out favorable in the end, especially when I produced the report generating AI. There were commendations given to everyone involved, including the janitor. Except for Beth. Her name was accidentally left off the final report.

Dr. Maletessta is now being credited for opening up a whole new field of physics. There's talk about some sort of noble prize. I don't understand that. There was nothing particularly noble about what he did, wasting all that money. He fussed about returning the diamond but got to keep the gold hammer.

As for me, I come in late every day and leave early to make up for it. The digits on my retirement clock continue to decrease while I perform my day-to-day duty denying funding to budding researchers. Like this latest one about destroying an electron.