The Science of Discworld Revised Edition

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. H EX says that …’ Ponder hesitated. You had to think hard before trying to explain things to Mustrum Ridcully. ‘… H EX 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. H EX 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.
    H EX wrote: +++ Runium May Or May Not Still Exist. It Was Down