Episode #9 Demonstration Day 1/2

"Roll up, roll up!  Get your antimatter here!  Gravitons, superstrings,
Higgs bosons -- all going cheap.  Every proton has a lifetime guarantee!
Buy caloric, aether and nebulium while theories last.  Special offer on
orgone and vril!  Dried ghosts, astrographs, universal meters.
Superconductors and Bose-Einstein condensates.  Athanors and alembics.  Test
tubes and Bunsen burners, if anyone still uses them."

I switched on Markor's Domestic Star to spotlight the stock.  It had taken
all afternoon to set up the booth, and I didn't want to have to take
everything home again.  As the scientists began walking in, I mentally
assigned a sales target to each experimenter.

Pale from lack of sun, or tanned scary colours from exposure to strange
rays, the early arrivals stared at each other as if they'd forgotten what
other people looked like.  Their expressions told of the despair of failure,
or the voyeuristic exhilaration of uncovering the universe's secrets.  Only
a few remained unmarked, as if they'd discovered an anti-ageing drug, or
been silently replaced by a robot they'd foolishly made in their own image.
I recognised most of the arriving scientists, but one face was missing.

"Any sign of Rankin?" said Audran, who'd been browsing my stock of entangled
photons.

www.iancreasey.com