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"Sure. Just thought I'd bring it up."
"Anybody got a name suggestion?"
"Well, since the whole thing is so sudden it could all kind of go bang."
"Sounds reasonable. So we call it a 'bang.'"
"You mean, 'The Bang.'"
"Right."
"That's it? Something this big?"
"OK, OK, how about 'The Big Bang'?"
"Very workable. But I don't know if it captures the romance of it all."
"Only a scientist could think of such a clunky name for such a grand event."
"You're the literary person. Give us a little help here."
"Sure, sure. Well, it's really kind of like a birth, right?"
"Yeah. A birth. Go on."
"So that's what we call it. 'The Birth.'"
"Much better than 'The Bang' if you ask me. But can't we give it some appropriate magnitude, like the way we put 'big' into 'The Bang'?"
"How about this? We call it 'The Birth of the Universe.'"
"Wow, that knocks me out."
"OK, it's settled. 'The Birth of the Universe' it is. I'm making an executive decision on that. Now, here we have this matter, flying out in all directions. What happens next?"
"What else has to happen?"
"Are we going to invent creatures or aren't we?"
"Yes, we agreed on that."
"So where are they supposed to walk. On the dust?"
"You've got a point there."
"Don't tell me."
"What?"
"No sooner do we send the dust flying – sorry, I mean the matter – than we have to get it to come back together again."
"No, no, we're past just a redo. We need to work it out so that now the matter agglomerates in a whole lot of disparate places."
"Aggloma – what?"
" – erates, as in clumps up."
"Oh, fancy word for the same thing if you ask me. But go ahead."
"OK, so it agglomerates into really big things that creatures can actually walk on."
"That big, hunh?"
"Only other choice is to make their feet really tiny."
"Right again. You've got an incredible understanding of this."
"Thanks. I've thought about it a lot."
"So now it sits there, and we have what part of the plan in place."
"Space."
"What?"
"In space. Remember, we renamed 'place'?"
"Oh, right."
"Well, it's a very basic part of things. After all, no agglomerations, no places for much of anything else."
"Solid thinking. So these agglomerations are really 'it?'"
"Well, fundamentally speaking. Hey, I have it. Why don't we put the word 'plan' together with the word 'it'? So we call each one of the agglomerations a 'planit.'"
"Way too transparent. We can be more subtle than that, can't we?"
"OK, OK, let me think. What's the most artful way to get the job done?"
"What else? We change only one letter in the name."
"Same old, same old."
"But it works. So let's stay with that. Now, we don't want to mess with the word 'plan,' do we?"
"Too essential to the entire process. After all, what can you do without a plan except make a mishmash?"
"So then we're down to 'it.'"
“'It' it is. And I like the way it ends, with that very definite 't' sound at the end."
"Me, too. So that leaves only the 'i' to work with. What do we know about it?"
"You mean, about the 'i' in 'it'?"
"What else?"
"We decided way back when to call the thing a vowel, right?"
Right."
"So let's just work with the available variations."
"Why don't I write them out on the easel, boss?"
"Good idea. Go for it."
I got up and went to the easel. I picked up a Cosmic Marker and went to work.
"We have, in the usual order of the vowels, 'planat,' 'planet,' 'planit,' which we already nixed, 'planot,' and “'planut,' which sounds a little dicey to me."
"I see two contenders – 'planet' and 'planot.' What do you think?"
"I think it would be really counterproductive to name something that we've worked so hard on with one out of only two syllables being a big fat “not,” staring everybody right in the face for a long, long time."
"You're right. So what if just we go with 'planet'? Everybody in favor of calling the balls of dust – excuse me – the agglomerations of matter 'planets,' raise your hands."
All present except one raised their hands.
"Why the abstention?"
"I don't know, boss, I kind of like the crazy sound of a 'planut.'"
"Well, you always were a bit of a nut. 'Planet' carries by a majority vote."
"OK, so now we have a planet."
"Correction. Planets. Remember, the whole thing, as planned, is going to be huge."
"You're right. We have planets. What else?"
"What does the land look like? Is it bumpy, like an agglomeration often is, or is it smooth in places?"
"Do we want the creatures on it to have to walk around on bumps all the time?"
"Would that make them happy?"
"No way. We can do better for them than that."
"Hey, what if we go all the way and make the whole thing flat as a pancake? Then they could walk for miles and miles."
"Then it wouldn't be an agglomeration."
"Excess. You always become excessive."
"Sorry, boss, it was just a thought."
"OK, then, how about we keep it round but it's smooth as a cue ball?"
"Can you please keep your mind out of the pool hall for a few minutes longer? We'll be done soon enough."
"I think all smooth is really boring myself. I don't care whether you call it a pancake or a cue ball."
"Me, too."
"I think it's time to remember our variety principle."
"Agreed. So this is it. We have bumps and smooth places."
"Excellent. But, as long as we're talking about variety, how about hard and soft?"
"And, hey, what about all kinds of colors?"
"OK! Wow, this planet thing is starting to sound really interesting."
"Do you think your atoms and molecules can manage all those variations?"
"No problem. I worked out the mathematics. The matter is ready to be as perfectly responsive to whatever conditions it winds up in as water tumbling down a hillside."
"Water? Did you say water?"
"Yeah?"
"What's that?"
"Something else we've been working on in the lab."
"Really? What's it do?"
"What? All you want is land? Think about it. Shouldn't there be something else, just to even things out?"
"Interesting but –"
" – I agree."
"Sure, boss."
"I also had this nagging feeling that we might be missing something."
"Hey, you just gave me a flash."
"What?"
"The concept behind it. Duality! Land longs for something else to complete it, like left-right, up-down, boy-girl?"
"Good observation. So let's all think about it. We reconvene tomorrow morning, same time, same place."
So we brought the invention of land to a successful completion. But what else would we need for a planet to be a planet? I mean, something really gorgeous. Hmm, I went home thinking about that. The more I did, the more I became convinced that water had a place.
“Heat.”
“Oh, right. We don't want the team to be cold, at least, not all the time.”
“No way. They'd be miserable.”
“And we don't want that.”
“So we need light and heat.”
“How do we manage that?”
“We're thinking of overheads.”
“Overhead lighting?”
“Yeah. Also, heating.”
“All that, hanging up there? I don't know. This sky is starting to sound kind of busy to me.”
“That's because you're not seeing it the way we are.”
“Go on.”
“Helen has a fantastic idea for her atomic brainstorm.”
“What?”
“Instead of just planets, we create these other agglomerations that produce heat and light.”
“One for heat, another for light?”
“No, no. The way we envision it, one does the work of two.”
“Great, if you can pull it off."
"But how? Just with Helen's ‘H's.'”
“That's the plan.”
“I say, go for it.”
“Will do.”
“How long do you think these agglomerations can do both things?”
“The way we're thinking, for plenty long enough.”
“How so?”
“Helen, who, as you know, is a very outdoorsy type, who just loves to go fly fishing.'“
"I don't understand what that has to do with the longevity of heat and light."
“One day when she was on the stream she had this idea that she calls ‘fishin.'”
“'Fishin?'”
“Yeah. It's a process that makes heat and light with H's for an incredibly long time.”
“I'm fine on the process. But the name? Way too confusing.”
“Why?”
“Because ‘fishin' is done down in the water, and this happens up in the sky.”
“I pointed that out to her. But you know Helen. When she gets an idea, she's really hard to dissuade.”
“May I suggest a compromise?”
“Always.”
“Give her the sound she wants, but spell it differently.”
“Do you think she'll go for that?”
“Give it a shot.”
“OK. I'll let you know.”
“I think we've gotten a little ahead of ourselves with all this discussion of heat and light. Let's get back to the sky. Anything we haven't covered?”
“There is an important detail. It has to move around.”
“Why?”
“So it can take the water from one place and drop it on another place.”
“Makes sense. But how can the sky carry it around? I don't see something that light having arms, legs, and buckets, do you?”
“No way.”
“And it can't swim around with it, can it?”
“No.”
“Then how do you expect it to lug the water around?”
“What do walking and swimming have in common?”
“Go on.”
“It's all about the pressure principle. You press your foot down and the ground pushes you forward. You push the water to the side, and the water pushes you ahead. Action, reaction.”
“I don't understand how that applies to the sky?”
“Simple. We're going to make it so there's pressure up there that will fluctuate from one place to the next.”
“And?”
“It gets high in one place, and low in another place. So what happens? One kind of pressure is always pushing out or sucking in the other kind of pressure.”
“Hmm, what do you call such movement?”
“We're adapting the concept of winding up and winding down.”
“So you get?”
“We're just going with the first syllable.”
“'Wind?'”
“Right. But to avoid confusion with ‘winding,' we thought we'd say it differently.”
“How?”
“Oh, the change is as light as the invention itself. We just moved in a short ‘i' for the long one and came up with ‘wind.'”
“'Wind,' as in the ‘wind flows,' sort of like how we decided water flows?”
“Almost. We thought we'd give it its own word for movement, but we didn't want to go too far afield, so we went for a handy rhyme.”
“What?”
“'Blows.'”
“The wind blows?”
“Right.”
“And the water flows. I like that.”
“Sounds good."
"Thanks. Of course, sometimes the sky can pretty much just sit there. Picture this: movement and stability, perfectly joined?”
“I can see that.”
“I have a concern.”
“Go ahead.”
"Light as it is, the sky is enormous. So it can't move too fast. Or it might blow all the land and water away.”
“We figure that most of the time it will blow gently.”
“Good.”
“But what about at other times?”
“Remember our variety principle – and that you can't appreciate one thing without the other. Gentle wind, hard wind. But don't worry. We set limits.”
“Like what?”
“It won't blow all the land or water away at once. That we know for sure. But we're still calibrating.”
“OK. Work on it. Anymore additions to the sky?”
“I know it's moving. But I still don't see how it's going to carry the water around? It's light, water's heavy. Frankly, I find the whole issue troubling.”
“We considered that apparent contradiction, but we quickly realized it's not really a contradiction. All we had to do is make sure the sky has the right luggage.”
“This I can't wait to hear. Tell me about the luggage in the sky.”
“Remember I said we plan to make the rain out of itty-bitty pieces of H2O, so it can ‘uperate.' Sorry, I keep forgetting, ‘evaporate.'”
“Yeah?”
“We figure once they're up there the itty-bitty pieces can get together and make their own luggage.”
“Neato! How?”
“We went back to agglomeration.”
“You're finding that concept very useful?”
“Yes, we are. You have a problem with that?”
“No, just pointing it out.”
“Trust me, we need all the workable principles we can get. Now, to return to the rain. The itty-bitty particles will agglomerate into luggage we're calling clouds.”
“Clouds?”
“It's just our word for mounds in the sky.”
“Fine. So the itty-bitty water particles agglomerate, like dust, excuse me, atoms and molecules, agglomerate into what we call land? Only now they're clouds.”
“Kind of, but, unlike land, the agglomeration proceeds in a much more diaphanous way."
"'Di-' what?"
"Lighter to you. So the clouds can still stay up there.”
“And move from place to place?”
“Right. Only when they agglomerate a certain amount of water, they let go and down it comes.”
“Neat. But not too much at once.”
“Well, no guarantees there. Remember our variety principle.”
“Just set some limits, OK? I don't want to see the whole thing we're making get washed away.”
“We're in the same boat.”
“Good.”
“Esthetically speaking, got a color for clouds?”
“We think white when they're light; then, as they get more H2O in them, since they're heavier, they'll look darker.”
“Seems right. So when they're darker, the creatures will be able to expect rain?”
“Frequently.”
“Why isn't anything with you ever just one thing or the other?”
“What? You want simplicity, too? Let's just get the universe right, OK?”
“He's right. Anyway we can manage the task. Please, continue.”
“At other times, the dark clouds could just go somewhere else before they dump.”
“Excellent. Got a background color for all this cloud activity?”
“Not yet. It has to wait until we invent the lights.”
“Why?”
“They're kind of tied together.”
“In what way?”
“Oh, with what gets through and what doesn't.”
“I think we're getting into tomorrow's meeting.”
“Let's just stay with the sky a moment longer. Anything else to it?”
“Lots.”
“Like?”
“Well, for one, Nancy has a real contribution.”
“What, ‘N?' I'm not sure about this practice of letting the people in tech name their inventions after themselves.”
“Why? We find it to be a great morale builder. And, given the amount of OT we're putting in, we sure can use it.”
“I'm in complete agreement. What to talk anymore about the ‘N'?"
“Maybe at a later time. Before we call it a wrap, I do want to mention that we have an alternate name for the sky.”
“What?”
“Sometimes we call it the atmosphere.”
“Why that?”
“Well, the “at” part kind of stands for the atoms we put into it, and the ‘sphere' stands for how it kind of wraps around the land and water.”
“Could get a little cumbersome.”
“We thought about that. So for short we also decided to call it ‘air.' It comes from ‘fair.'”
“'Fair?' Why that?”
“When the sky is calm and clear, we decided to call that condition ‘fair weather.'”
“Oh, I see. ‘Fair,' ‘air'?”
“Right. We wanted to go witha name that accents the positive.”
“Excellent! I think that about does it. We're into detail work that's better off left to you people in the lab.”
“I couldn't agree more.”
“So next on the agenda, we need some bright thinking about heat and light. Good work and everybody have a nice evening.”
So now we had the sky pretty much under control. I could see it now, sort of like beautiful wrapping paper for a planet. But bringing heat and light together into one thing. That really gave me something to exercise my noggin about.