HYACINTH. No shit.
FRED FINE. I have computed where to place the charges.
CASIMIR. It'd be a very complicated setup, wouldn't it? Lots of timed detonations?
BUD (drunk). So do you think that the decay of the society is actually built into the actual building itself?
SARAH. The reason he likes me is because he knows I carry a gun. He saw it in the Caf.
EPHRAIM. Of course! How else can you explain all this? It's too big and it's too uniform. Every room, every wing is just the same as the others. It's a giant sensory deprivation experiment.
HYACINTH. A lot of those science-fiction types have big sexual hangups. You ever look at a science-fiction magazine? All these women in brass bras with whips and chains and so on-- dominatrices. But the men who read that stuff don't even know it.
EPHRAIM. Did you know that whenever I play anything in the key of C, the entire Wing vibrates?
FRED FINE. This one worked out the details from the blueprints. All you need is to find the load-bearing columns and make some simple calculations.
EPHRAIM. Hey! Casimir!
CASIMIR. Yeah?
SARAH. What's scary is that all of these fucked-up people, who have problems and don't even know it, are going to go out and make thirty thousand dollars a year and be important. Well all be clerk-typists.
EPHRAIM. You're in physics. What's the frequency of a low C? Like in a sixty-four-foot organ pipe?
CASIMIR. Hell, I don't know. That's music theory.
EPHRAIM. Shit. Hey, Bud, you got a tape measure?
CASIMIR. I'd like to take music theory sometime. One of my professors has interesting things to say about the similarity between the way organ pipes are controlled by keys and stops, and the way random-access memory bits are read by computers.
BUD. I've got an eight-footer.
FRED FINE. This one doesn't listen to that much music. It would be pleasant to have time for the luxuries of life. In some D & D scenarios, musicians are given magical abilities. Einstein and Planck used to play violin sonatas together.
EPHRAIM. We have to measure the length of the hallways!
The conversation split up into three parts. Ephraim and I went out to measure the hallway. Hyacinth was struck by a craving for Oreos and repaired to the kitchen with a fierce determination that none dared question. Casimir followed her. Sarah, Fred Fine and Virgil stayed in the living room.
FRED FINE. What's your major?
SARAH. English.
FRED FINE.
Ah, very interesting. This one thought you were in Forestry.
SARAH. Why?
FRED FINE. Didn't host mention your forest?
SARAH. That's different. It's what I painted on my wall.
FRED FINE. Well, well, well. A little illegal room painting, eh? Don't worry, I wouldn't report you. Is this part of an other-world scenario, by any chance? SARAH. Hell, no, it's for the opposite. Look, this place is already an other-world scenario.
FRED FINE. No. That's where you're wrong. This is reality. It is a self-sustaining ecosociosystem powered by inter-universe warp generators.
(There is a long silence.)
VIRGIL. Fred, what did you think of Merriam's Math Physics course?
(There is another long silence.)
FRED FINE. Well. Very good. Fascinating. I would recommend it.
SARAH. Where's the bathroom?
FRED FINE. Ever had to pull that pepper grinder of yours on one of those Terrorist guys?
SARAH. Maybe we can discuss it some other time.
FRED FINE. I'd recommend more in the way of a large-gauge shotgun.
SARAH. I'll be back.
FRED FINE. Of course, in a magical universe it would turn into a two-handed broadsword, which would be difficult for a petite type to wield.
Meanwhile Casimir and Hyacinth talked in the kitchen. They had met once before, when they had stopped by my suite on the same evening; they didn't know each other well, but Casimir had heard enough to suspect that she was not particularly heterosexual. She knew a fair amount about him through Sarah.
HYACINTH. You want some Oreos too?
CASIMIR. No, not really. Thanks.
HYACINTH. Did you want to talk about something?
CASIMIR. How did you know? HYACINTH (scraping Oreo filling with front teeth). Well, sometimes some things are easy to figure out.
CASIMIR. Well, I'm really worried about Sarah. I think there's something wrong with her. It's really strange that she resigned as President when she was doing so well. And ever since then, she's been kind of hard to get along with.
HYACINTH. Kind of bitchy?
CASIMIR. Yeah, that's it.
HYACINTH. I don't think she's bitchy at all. I think she's just got a lot on her mind, and all her good friends have to be patient with her while she works it out.
CASIMIR. Oh, yeah, I agree. What I was thinking-- well, this is none of my business.
HYACINTH. What?
CASIMIR. Oh, last semester I figured out that she was dating some other guy, you know? Though she wouldn't tell me anything about him. Did she have some kind of a breakup that's been painful for her?