The Science of Discworld Revised Edition

tea.
    Eventually he said, ‘Can we
stop
this project, Ponder?’
    ‘Er … are you
sure
, sir?’
    ‘Well, what is it achieving? I mean,
really?
Y’know, I thought, all you had to do is get a world working, and before you could say “creation” there’d be some creature who’d stand up, getting a grip on its surroundings, gaze with a certain amount of intelligence and awe at the infinite sky and say –’
    ‘– that thing’s getting bigger, I wonder if it’s going to hit us,’ said Rincewind.
    ‘Rincewind, that remark was extremely cynical and accurate.’
    ‘Sorry, Archchancellor.’
    Ponder’s lips were moving quietly as he worked things out.
    ‘We
could
start running it down, yes. The thaumic reactor hasn’t been putting so much into it in the last week. We’ve nearly used up the fuel.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘The squash court will have a rather high thaumic index, sir, so whoever goes in to pull the switch will suffer a certain amount of –’
    There was the sound of something spinning. The wizards looked at Rincewind’s chair, which finally fell over on to the flagstones. Of its former occupant there was no sign, although there was the distant sound of a slamming door.
    The Dean sniffed.
    ‘Strange behaviour,’ he said.
    ‘I suggest we give it one more day of our time,’ said Ridcully. ‘I was hoping we might create a world, gentlemen, but instead it’s clear to me that any life in this universe has to get used to living in … in some kind of huge celestial snow globe. Fire and ice, ice and fire . Gentlemen, round worlds are intrinsically flawed. If there’s any hidden gods on ours, they’re pretty damn well hidden.’
    ‘The Omnians say “Don’t play God. He always wins”,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
    ‘I dare say,’ said Ridcully. ‘So … one more day, gentlemen? And then we can get on with something sensible.’
    The red sun rose quickly over the parched veldt. The apes stirred in their cave, which was little more than a rocky overhang, and saw the big black rectangle looming over them.
    The Dean tapped it with his pointer.
    ‘
Do
try to pay attention today, will you?’ He turned and chalked rapidly across the blackboard. ‘Here we have R … O … C … K, rock. Can anyone tell me what you do with it? Anyone? Anyone? Look, stop doing that, will you?’ He tried to hit an ape with his virtual pointer, and then flung it away in disgust. It vanished.
    ‘Filthy little devils,’ he muttered.
    ‘Not getting anywhere, Dean?’ said Ridcully, appearing beside him.
    ‘
No
, Archchancellor. I’ve
tried
to explain to them that they’ve probably got just a few million years, and that’s pretty hard to do in sign language, let me tell you. But the only word they know is S-E-X, and they don’t waste time
spelling
it, oh no! For this I skipped breakfast?’
    ‘Never mind. Let’s see how the Senior Wrangler’s getting on.’
    ‘They’re just bad copies of humans, if you ask me –’
    The wizards vanished.
    One of the apes knuckled over to the blackboard, and watched it disappear from view as H EX completed the spell.
    He hadn’t the faintest idea what had been happening, but he
had
been impressed by the stick that had been waved about. That seemed to have gone now. That didn’t worry the ape, which knew about things vanishing – often, these days, a member of the clan would vanish overnight, with a lot of snarling in the shadows.
    There was probably something you could do with a stick, he thought. Hopefully, it might involve sex.
    He poked around in the debris and found not a stick but a dried-up thighbone, which had a sufficiently stick-like shape.
    He rattled it on the ground a few times. It didn’t do anything much. Then he reluctantly decided it would probably be impossible to mate with at the moment, and hurled it high into the air.
    It rose, turning over and over.
    When it fell, it knocked him unconscious.
    The Senior Wrangler was sitting under a virtually-there beach umbrella when the other wizards arrived. He looked as downcast as the Dean.
    A group of apes was playing in the surf.
    ‘Worse than the lizards,’ he said. ‘
They
had some style, at least. When this lot pick up anything, they try to see if they can eat it. What’s the point of that?’
    ‘Well, I suppose they can find out if it’s edible,’ said Ridcully.
    ‘But they just
mess about
’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘Oh, no … here we go again …’
    There was a raucous shrieking as the