The Einstein canaries
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 9: Up North
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Andrew Belk
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I felt like I should kiss her or hug her, but while I was still thinking she got in her car. I felt like I should thank her or crack a gag or say something profound, but while I was still thinking she said, "Cheer up. This is history in the making." Then the engine started and she was gone.
I like it here. I like the way the red earth pulls the blue sky taut over the horizon and pins it behind the curve. I like it how the clouds live high and the scrub lives low and how there is not much in between except breathing space.
I like the way they bring in the cattle. Erabiddy is flecked with windmills that pump water from a mineral lake at its underbelly. They gradually shut these mills down, starting at the boundaries and working in, and the beasts drift with the receding tide, right into the home paddocks.
I wait until the glow of Smiley's tail-lights set in the distance. Our containers are spaced 10 kilometres apart and arc along a shooters' track. Each morning she picks us up and each evening she drops us back. I kill the generator. The lights and air-conditioning fall and show the dark hot night underneath. With the doors open I can lie on my bunk and look up at the stars.
The first revolution then, was likely waged with hands, feet and teeth. When the Administrators oppressed with arrows, the Revolutionaries fought with arrows. When the Administrators oppressed with gunpowder, the Revolutionaries fought with gunpowder. Today, unlike hands, feet, teeth, arrows or gunpowder, the weapon of the Administrators is well beyond the reach of the Revolutionaries.
The Socialisation of Mutually Assured Destruction –
A Mass Revolution, by Dr Helen Smiley, Pg 9
THE FAMILY WHO RUN ERABIDDY PREFER TO SPEND THEIR SUMMERS SOUTH. Smiley told them we were research students from the University of Western Australia studying goannas and they were happy to be paid rent rather than pay a caretaker. They stayed on a few days to show us how things worked: how to run the generators, how to navigate the tracks and use the GPS, how to shoot and dress kangaroo for the dogs. This was part of the lease agreement, and though I asked nicely for a go, Smiley was adamant only she should use the rifle.
The day they were leaving, one of the teenage boys offered to show me something. He had me change into a set of trail-bike leathers and a put on a helmet wired with a two-way radio. We talked as he doubled me past ticking tin outbuildings and over the soft irrigated house paddock. Its suburban grass ended at the red desert so absolutely it might never have existed and I had to look back.
He told me he enjoyed getting away from the heat each summer but he feared being alone in the big city. I told him I feared being alone in this big sandy desert. He told me that when they were in Perth last year, his little sister was playing in a backyard sandpit when she was bitten by a tiger snake.
He took me to a windmill where a calf had gotten its head stuck under a water trough and died of thirst. He marked a line in the sand with his heel and told me to stand on it. He had me lean forward with one leg in front of the other and my arms raised high beside me, "like a gymnast who has just finished a routine", he told me. Under no circumstances was I to move. He asked me three times if I was sure I was going to be able to do that.
He walked to the base of the windmill and stepped gently up onto the concrete trough. He looked over at me, then down at the soft carcass, then back at me – eyes smiling from inside his helmet as they calculated. He jumped into the air and landed hard on the body below. The calf's insides spilled onto the ground and rushed across the sand toward me. From a metre away they launched themselves into the air and up onto my chest. The leathers bunched forward and pulled down on my neck as the gizzards dug in and locked tight. Inside my helmet I heard the boy swallowing snot to keep from giggling. "Best way to catch a goanna is to act like a tree. Blackfella taught me that. They didn't use to wear leathers but. Go tell 'em that at your university."
That New York and Washington stand 60 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki fell demonstrates how difficult it is to procure uranium 235 or other easily fissionable materials. As the revolution will only begin when the people have access to the same weapons as the Administrators, yet conventional fissionable material is outside our means, we must rethink our concept of the atom bomb. To do this we must go back to Einstein's most famous equation.
Dr Helen Smiley, Pg 21
THE DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES APPOINTED ME Smiley after my suicide attempt. In a junk shop one day I found a bag of polished river stones from China. Inspired by unexpected beauty among shelves of stinking plastic and subnormal biscuits, I accidentally started to think. I thought about how a Chinese man shovelled the stones from a river and barrowed them to a polishing place. I thought about how those stones were polished and put in a bag and put in a box and put on a truck and transported to the docks and packed into a container and stacked on a ship. I thought about how those smooth shiny rocks sailed across the world in a rough dark hull. I thought about how they were unloaded from the ship and put on a truck and driven to a distribution point and unpacked from the container and lifted into a van and driven to the junk shop. I thought about how another Chinese man, the one who owned the junk shop, cut open the cardboard box with a razor blade and gently lifted small mesh bags of his homeland onto a shelf to be sold. I wondered how come I could walk in and walk out with all that for two dollars. A month later, I rowed my little punt out into the bay, tied myself to the middle seat and pulled out the bung.
During one of our sessions, I told Smiley that when I accidentally think about things – like how we all look each other in the eye and smile and nod like there is nothing wrong – I lose my breath. The department's help booklet suggested I take up a hobby and I told Smiley I was thinking of renovating an investment property. That way, if I accidentally thought about things – like pre-emptively bombed children or how slaves make most of our stuff – I could still look people in the eye and smile and nod like there was nothing wrong because I bought at 290, but I sold at 480.
Smiley told me that sometimes when she was about to do something fun, like have a fantastic meal or buy a new pair of shoes, she would accidentally think about things as well. She told she was also having trouble looking people in the eye and smiling and nodding like there was nothing wrong, even though she had renovated three properties. Even though she bought at 420 and even though she sold at 785.
That Energy equals Mass magnified by the speed of light (Celeritas) squared (E=mc2) is proven by every atomic explosion or watt generated by nuclear fission. The key for the revolutionary is found in M for mass. An atomic bomb may have at its heart five kilograms of uranium but it is not some magic of uranium that gives the bomb its power, it is the atomic splitting of its mass. Mass is mass and the same nuclear explosion can be achieved with five kilograms of ANYTHING if it is made unstable enough (critical mass).