And Us, Too, I Guess by GEO. ALEC EFFINGER
It was certainly a
quiet cataclysm.
I remember very well how I reacted in its early days. Of course, it was by no means my first disaster; I had graduated from a good school where I received the best practical training, and afterward I had found a job with a well-known metropolitan research team. In the following months, during which I worked with some of the sharpest minds on the East Coast, I witnessed a small but decisive catastrophe. It ruined at least three lives, in addition to dissolving the research team and forever discouraging financial support in my own chosen field.
I was not deterred. It was necessary for me at that point to choose another field. No sooner had I reeducated myself and gathered the essential literature and equipment for my first solo experiments than the world at large was struck by a singular and devastating disaster. Again my work had to be postponed. I weathered the disturbance easily, but millions of people in the United States alone were permanently affected. My own assistant, Wagner of the hunched back, disappeared with my only set of keys, and I was forced for the third time to set out afresh.
I sought counsel from one of my former associates, Dr. Johnson. I felt that it would be foolish to continue entirely on my own, especially now that hardly anyone else could be at all useful. So I moved into Dr. Johnson’s spacious apartments, and together we planned a good scientific project with plenty of chemicals and glassware, leaving the matter of goals and hypotheses for later. This partnership required that I leave my own headquarters in New York and take up residence in Cleveland, a city that I had always thought of as primarily for Ukrainians, hoodlums, and other nontechnical types. After a short time I grew more comfortable there, and our work began to lose the ugly dilettante aspects that new laboratories always seem to harbor.
. . .
