I placed a drop of concentrated acid on the red dot in one of the test tubes. There was smoke; the dot turned gray and disappeared under a coating of dirty foam. This was decomposition. Denaturation. Keep going! I reached for another test tube. When I turned back, the thin glass container almost fell from my hand.
Beneath the layer of scum, at the very bottom of the tube a thin layer of dark red was already re-forming. This was nonsense! This was impossible!
“Kris!” I heard as if from very far away. “Kris, the telephone!”
“What? Oh, right, thanks.”
The phone had been ringing for a long time, but it was only now I heard it. I picked up the receiver.
“Kelvin here.”
“This is Snaut. I hooked it up so the three of us can hear each other at the same time.”
“Greetings, Dr. Kelvin,” came Sartorius’s high-pitched, nasal voice. Its owner sounded like he was walking onto a dangerously sagging platform — suspicious, cautious, while on the outside collected.
“My respects, Dr. Sartorius,” I replied. I felt like laughing, but I wasn’t sure I was clear enough about the reasons for my mirth to be able to give it free rein. When it came down to it, who was I supposed to be laughing at? I was holding something in my hand: the test tube with the blood. I shook it. It had already congealed. Maybe what I’d just seen was merely an illusion? Maybe it had merely seemed that way?
“Gentlemen, I’d like to raise certain issues concerning the…um… ghosts.” I heard and at the same time did not hear Sartorius. It was as if he was trying to enter my consciousness. I fought off his voice, still staring at the test tube with the dried blood.
“Let’s call them G-formations,” suggested Snaut quickly.
“Very good.”
In the middle of the screen there was a black vertical line to show I was receiving two channels at once. There should have been the faces of my interlocutors on either side. But the image was dark, only the narrow border of light around the edge showed that the equipment was working but that the screens had been covered over.
“Each of us has conducted various tests.” The nasal voice once again carried the same tone of caution. There was a moment of silence. “Perhaps we could first share what we have discovered, and then I can explain the conclusions I myself have reached… You first, perhaps, Dr. Kelvin…”
“Me?” I said. I suddenly sensed Harey’s eyes on me. I placed the test tube on the table, where it rolled against a stand, and sat on a tall stool I’d pulled up with my foot. In the first moment I was going to refuse, but I surprised myself by saying:
“Fine. A short colloquium? Fine! I’ve done very little, but I can talk. One histological smear and a few reactions. Microreactions. I have the impression that—”
Up till this moment I’d had no idea what to say. All of a sudden it was as if something opened up inside me.
“—Everything is normal, but it’s camouflage. A mask. In some sense it’s a supercopy — a re-creation more exact than the original. That’s to say, where in humans we encounter the limits of granularity, the limits of divisibility of matter, here the road goes further, thanks to the use of subatomic building matter!”
“Just a moment. What do you mean by that?” inquired Sartorius. Snaut said nothing. Or perhaps it was his quickening breathing that could be heard on the line? Harey looked across at me. I became aware of how excited I was. I’d almost shouted the last words. I calmed down, hunched over on my uncomfortable perch, and closed my eyes. How could I phrase it?
“The ultimate structural element of our bodies is the atom. I suspect that G-formations are built of units smaller than regular atoms. Much smaller.”
“Mesons?” suggested Sartorius. He wasn’t at all surprised.
“No, not mesons… Mesons would be visible. The resolution of my apparatus here downstairs is ten to the minus twentieth ångströms. Right? But nothing can be seen, all the way to the max. So it isn’t mesons. More likely neutrinos.”
“How do you imagine that? After all, neutrino conglomerates are unstable…”
“I don’t know. I’m not a physicist. Maybe they’re stabilized by some kind of force field. It’s not my area. In any case, if it’s like I say, then the building matter consists of particles about ten thousand times smaller than atoms. But that’s not all! If the protein molecules and cells were constructed directly from these “micro-atoms” they’d have to be correspondingly smaller. And the blood corpuscles, the enzymes, everything. But they’re not. That means that all the proteins, cells, cell nuclei — they’re all just a mask! The actual structure responsible for the functioning of the ‘guest’ is hidden deeper.”
“For goodness’ sake, Kelvin!” Snaut almost yelled. I broke off in dismay. Had I said “guest”?! Yes, but Harey hadn’t heard it. Besides, she wouldn’t have understood. She was staring out of the window, her head resting on her hands; her small neat profile stood out against the crimson dawn. There was silence in the receiver. I could only hear distant breathing.
“There’s something in that,” Snaut murmured.
“Yes, it’s possible,” added Sartorius. “The only problem is that the ocean is not composed of these hypothetical particles of Kelvin’s. It’s made of regular ones.”
“Perhaps it’s able to synthesize the other kind too,” I commented. I felt a sudden sense of apathy. The conversation wasn’t even amusing. It was unnecessary.
“That would explain their extraordinary fortitude,” Snaut said, still in a murmur. “And the speed of regeneration. Perhaps even their energy source is there, in the depths; remember they don’t need to eat…”
“I wish to say something,” put in Sartorius. I couldn’t stand him. If he’d only step out of the role he’d imposed upon himself!
“I would like to raise the question of motivation. The motivation for the appearance of the G-formations. I would break it down as follows: What are G-formations? They are not persons, nor are they copies of specific individuals, but rather materialized projections of what our brain contains regarding a particular person.”
The accuracy of this observation struck me. Sartorius may have been unlikeable, but he was far from stupid.
“That’s good,” I put in. “It even explains why these peo… these formations have appeared and not others. What’s been selected are the most enduring memory traces, those most isolated from all the others, though naturally no such trace can be completely separated, and in the course of being ‘copied’ the remains of other traces that happen to be in the vicinity are, or can be, included. As a result, the newcomer sometimes shows more knowledge than could be possessed by the real person whose reproduction they’re supposed to be…”
“Kelvin!” said Snaut once again. I was struck by the fact that only he was irked by my careless words. Sartorius seemed unconcerned by them. Could this mean that his guest was by nature less intelligent than Snaut’s? For a split second I imagined some cretinous dwarf at the side of the learned Dr. Sartorius.
“Indeed, we have observed such a thing,” said the man himself. “Now, as concerns the motivation for the appearance of G-formations… The first and as it were natural thought is that an experiment is being conducted upon us. Yet it would not be a terribly impressive one. When we perform an experiment we learn from the results, in particular from our mistakes, so when we repeat it we introduce corrections… Yet there is no question of that here. The same G-formations reappear… unimproved… with no additional protections against our… attempts to get rid of them…”