The Science of Discworld Revised Edition

constructed organisms that could not possibly survive in the pounding surf of reality, where people ask questions like ‘Is what you do of any use?’ and other nonsense.
    In fact Rincewind in his association with UU had survived dangers that would have stripped a hero to the bone, but he nevertheless believed, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that he was
safe
in the university. He would do anything to stay on the roll.
    At the moment this involved looking at some sort of skeletal armour made out of smoke while Ponder Stibbons gabbled incomprehensible words in his ear. As far as he could understand it, the thing put all your senses somewhere else when you stayed here. So far, that sounded quite acceptable, since it had always seemed to Rincewind that if you had to go a long way away it’d be nice to stay at home while you did it, but people seemed a little unclear about where
pain
fitted in.
    ‘We’ll send you – that is, your senses – somewhere,’ said Ridcully.
    ‘Where?’ said Rincewind.
    ‘Somewhere amazing,’ said Ponder. ‘We just want you to tell us what you see. And then we’ll bring you back.’
    ‘At what point will things go wrong?’ said Rincewind.
    ‘Nothing can possibly go wrong.’
    ‘Oh,’ Rincewind sighed. There was no point in arguing with a statement like that. ‘Could I have some breakfast first?’
    ‘Of course, dear fellow,’ said Ridcully, patting him on the back. ‘Have a hearty meal!’
    ‘Yes, I thought that’d probably be the case,’ said Rincewind gloomily.
    When he’d been taken away, under escort by the Dean and a couple of college porters, the wizards clustered around the project.
    ‘We’ve found a suitably large “sun”, sir,’ said Ponder, taking care to annunciate the inverted commas. ‘We’re moving the world now.’
    ‘A very suspicious idea, this,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘Suns go
around
. We see it happen every day. It’s not some kind of optical illusion. This is a bit of a house of cards we’re building here.’
    ‘It’s the only one available, sir.’
    ‘I mean, things fall down because they’re heavy, you see? The thing that causes them to fall down because they’re heavy is, in fact, the fact that they’re heavy. ‘Heavy’ means inclined to fall down. And, while you can call me Mr Silly –’
    ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that, sir,’ Ponder said, glad that Ridcully couldn’t see his face.
    ‘– I somehow feel that a crust of rock floating around on a ball of red-hot iron should not be thought of as “solid ground”.’
    ‘I think, sir, that this universe has a whole parcel of rules that take the place of narrativium,’ said Ponder. ‘It’s … sort of … copying us, as you so perspicaciously pointed out the other day. It’s making the only kind of suns that can work in it, and the only worlds that can exist if you don’t have chelonium.’
    ‘Even so … going
around
a sun … that’s the sort of thing the Omnian priests used to teach, you know. Mankind is so insignificant that we just float around on some speck, and all that superstitious stuff. You know they used to persecute people for saying the turtle existed? And any fool can
see
it exists.’
    ‘Yes, sir. It certainly does.’
    There were problems, of course
    ‘Are you sure it’s the right sort of sun?’ said Ridcully.
    ‘You told H EX to find one that was “nice and yellow, nice and dull, and not likely to go off bang”, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘It seems to be a pretty average one for this universe.’
    ‘Even so … tens of millions of miles … that’s a long way away for our world.’
    ‘Yes, sir. But we tried some experimental worlds close to and they fell in, and we tried one a bit further out and that’s baked like a biscuit, and there’s one … well, it’s a bit of an armpit, really. The students have got quite good at making different sorts. Er … we’re calling them planets.’
    ‘A planet, Stibbons, is a lump of rock a mere few hundred yards across which gives the night sky a little, oh, I don’t know, what’s the word, a little
je ne sais quoi
–’
    ‘These will work, sir, and we’ve such a lot of them. As I said, sir, I’ve come to agree with your theory that, within the Project, matter is trying to do all by itself what in the real world is done by purpose, probably conveyed via narrativium.’
    ‘Was that my theory?’ said Ridcully.
    ‘Oh, yes, sir,’ said Ponder, who was learning the particular survival