ACHILLES' HEELS

The Achilles' heel of Professor Indigo Doodash of the University of North Dakota was weak ankles. It meant he no longer went running of a morning. Instead he expended excess dark energy stalking the corridor spleen venting and bile spouting. His focus: the sundry theoretical failings of competing particle physicists and ascending cosmologists as they came up from the department and into the cafeteria mezzanine.

- Ah! Professor Lilidona Marishta-Hughes...

He stressed the second barrel of the surname as if the 7,000 physicists lined up against the controversial Macedonian dynamical theorist had been leering over his shoulder at the outright audacity of her multi-versal interactivity proposition. In actuality, the origin of the spite was located between the smooth, bronzed thighs of a Uruguayan sex worker of indeterminate gender whom Grahame Hughes had inadvertently observed arm-in-arm with the shiny-buttoned, blue-blazed don in the wee hours during a conference in Montevideo last semester, as Hughes popped out for a Pepto-Bismol at the all-night farmacia.

- ...and her giant cosmic hole. The saviour of string theory no less. Good day madam.

- Buenos dias marica, assistant professor Marishta-Hughes riposted.

The standard model of physiology easily explained the momentary flush of Doodash's cheeks signalling a breech of decorum (expertly alluded to). The tension created by the subsequent vacuum of the Professor's non-response had the effect of repulsive gravity. The social transgressor was sucked into his own void, as Lilidona smiled the smile of long brown coat-wearing, chain-smoking angels, and headed for the balcony of the Black Hole Bistro for her penultimate quadropole of nicotine, glucose, carbohydrate and caffeine prior to that morning's conference: A Debate On Cosmology - The Multiverse.

Sitting with his back to the balcony railing, his arm draped around Albert Einstein's left shoulder, reading a physics forum thread debating Marishta-Hughes' latest paper on his laptop, was Osvaldo Botelho of Lisbon's Instituto Superior Tecnico. Lilidona's smile relaxed into an exhalation of calm, as the first cigarette drag for two minutes 47 seconds made its way down her nostrils and coalesced with the light September breeze. The likelihood of her finding one of her staunchest academic allies at this juncture were very low. Yet considering, as the assistant professor was wont to do, that the chances of the Big Bang having created one unique and discrete universe were 1:10 billion followed by another 123 noughts, she was rarely disturbed by coincidence. In fact, Marishta-Hughes didn't believe in coincidence, she put her faith in dumb luck. In a cosmos where time is largely an illusory construct of human perception, when it came to synchronicity she was as superstitious as the average Balkan sheep-herder's wife .

The mystery of Khronos was as nothing compared to how Osvaldo Botelho had gotten his life-size cardboard cut-out of Albert Einstein through customs and onto the balcony. In a country whose fear of aliens (human and extra-terrestrial) was meglomaniacal and whose popular culture held Einsteinist conceptions of God in near total contempt, it was no mean feat.

- Bom dia, Osvaldo.

- Hi Lilidona. Como é você? Hey, I see they wanna shoot your latest paper on the arrow of time.

- What's new?

- The bad news about the high energy physics budget...

- Devastating. One of the worse moments in science funding history. What does Alberto think?

- He's of the opinion that theoretical science has always been at the mercy of the military-industrial complex.

- Ah the Chomskyian line...

- He's got a point Lili.

- And you? What do you think Ossie? pushed Marishta-Hughes, volleying aside the return like a seasoned pro.

- You know I never disagree with Alberto, he replied, turning his face askance to avoid the oncoming clouds of Marlboro red.

- Except when he's wrong.

- Sure, but on matters of religion and economics, he rarely is. The model of American power has remained a quite consistent one since the ending of World War Two.

- The upcoming energy crisis demands that we find solutions. Long term fundamentals...

- I thought you would embrace the dissident Jewish intellectual tendency since...

- He has a bad face.

- Who? Noam Chomsky? Or Alberto?

- Chomsky. And the silly cult surrounding him is anti-progressive. His view of human nature is deeply flawed. Our whole existence...

Marishta-Hughes intuited his presence on the balcony even before her interlocutor signalled it with a slight tilt of his head, even before...

Waking consciousness DISCONTINUED due to state department budget cuts.

When she opened her eyes, Lilidona was standing in front of her drunken mother in Osogovo six years after the Skopje earthquake, for which Lilidona was blamed. A fortune teller had forecast that Violeta Marishta's illegitimate pregnancy would bring about the death of hundreds of people in a catastrophic event in the capital.

Seconds later, the usual happened. The usual involved Lilidona being hoisted into the air by her ankles and swung around the single room like a shot-put. Luckily for Lilidona, her mother tired of this quickly. Unfortunately for the six-year-old her cranium had crashed against what little furniture there was. The young Lilidona blotted out the pain by doing differential equations in her head.

When she came to, she found herself staring at a pair of glossy scarlet high heels inhabited by Indigo Doodash. Marishta-Hughes had had an illumination. String theory was on the right track. The estimate of the energy scale of supersymmetry would definitely have to be revised upwards. About 100,000 times. It was hard to say exactly.

Less difficult to forecast was the predictable consequences of weak ankles, high heels, a much higher balcony, dark energy and attractive gravity. As Lilidona got to her feet again, the sight of a bemused Albert Einstein provided the catalyst. It was Indigo Doodash's penultimate moment of consciousness. His final recollection was Guillermo Esteban Gonzalez's pre-operative catheter which he'd always known would haunt him until his dying day.