As the door of the Floating University's science laboratory opened and the future Madame Curie shuffled in, the officer slammed shut the book that he had been studying since the beginning of Police Academy.
- Can I help you?
- I was just checking your health & safety records Panienka Sklodowska.
- My what?
- Your health & safety records, Panienka.
- I heard perfectly what you said. This is Poland 1889. My safety is highly contingent.
- Please excuse my intrusion. The name's Korzeniowki. Detective Jozef Korzeniowski.
- Why should you be so preoccupied with my health & safety?
-All our citizens' safety preoccupies the minds of officers of the Service, Panienka.
- At the service of our Russian oppressors no doubt.
- Do you have isotopes on the premises?
- Radioactivity isn't a criminal offence. It is the great marvel of the age.
- The Service wishes to register an interest in your work. In the interests of protection you understand. It's about our national patrimony. We don't want you running off to France.
- France? Now there's an idea.
- And as for your flights of fantasy...
- Detective, if I were you, I'd be more interested in the two litres of fluid currently making its way towards your head from your ankles. This is the Floating University. As in Zero Gravity.
- I thought it was the Flying University of Warsaw.
- Flying? Don't be ridiculous.
- Flying, floating, what's the difference?
- I thought it was my health that concerned you detective, not our infrastructure.
- I imagined floating to be merely stationary flight. Though I am but an ignorant realist, Panienka Skolowodska.
- Pah! Flying would require so great a release of karmic force as to make the entire project unviable. Only 2% of the energy created actually goes into propulsion. Rocket technology is so over-rated.
- So, how on earth do we float?
- The future is biofuels, Korzeniowski. We have constructed a platform out of valuable chicken stock.
- Chicken?
- Certainly. When the temperature of the broth is greater than absolute zero, inter-atomic collisions cause the thyme and parsley molecules to change... It's a classic recipe. Would you like to sample a bowl?
- I'm vegetarian. I don't eat mammals.
- Pah! the luxury of the bourgeois. I eat meat whenever I can get it. Mainly I survive on buttered bread and polonium.
- And the gamma rays?
- Small exposures shouldn't do much harm. One day, it could even save your life.
- I doubt that very much, Panienka.
- Are you sure you wouldn't like a taste of longevity Detective Korzeniowski?
The policeman's eyes bulged, his cringing lips shied away from a response, but his body screamed gigabytes. Panienka Skolowodska's irradiated chicken stock was most definitely off the menu.
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