The Laxian Lock

The Laxian Lock[1]

"Look at what I found!"

cookie the harlequin had dug something out of his playground, and was showing it proudly to Sarkon the Prophet, who was rather annoyed at having been dragged out of his slee – er, his thinking – while in his hammock.

"Very nice, cookie…" Sarkon said, rubbing his eyes. cookie was holding something in front of his nose, almost forcing him to examine it. He sat up and took it.

It was a key.

Sarkon frowned. "Somebody must have lost it," he said. But then he remembered there were no locks in the Welgon Age, so that a key was very out of place where they lived. He looked at it more closely.

It was an intricate key. Its form was very complicated – beautifully so, in a way. On one of the sides, it read "Made in Lax".

"I really wonder where that comes from…" started Sarkon.

"From my playground!" interrupted cookie.

"I mean, where it was before – who made it, you know," Sarkon specified. "And I also wonder what it opens. Let's ask someone who sometimes knows about outlandish things."

"Me?" asked cookie with round eyes.

"Not you, silly. I was thinking of Dr. Qworm," explained Sarkon. "Let's go to his lab."

Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist was busy doing an experiment.

"I'm trying to measure the length of light,[2]" he explained, frowning as seriously as he could.

"You mean its wavelength, surely?" asked Sarkon.

"Its what?" Dr. Qworm asked with an uncertain frown. "No, I just try to measure the maximum length of rays of light. These measures are very important to the theory of relativity!"

"But of what importance is the theory of relativity to us?" cookie asked innocently.

Dr. Qworm opened his mouth, closed it again, and finally grumbled, "To you, of none at all, I guess. You just have no idea about what's relevant, that's the problem," he complained.

"Right now, it's this key that is relevant," said Sarkon, showing cookie's key.

Dr. Qworm examined it closely. "Funny," he said, "I thought we didn't have any locks here in the Welgon Age…"

"That's the mystery," admitted Sarkon. "We have no locks, but we have a key."

"So we have to find…" Dr. Qworm read the writing on the key, "…A Laxian lock."

"Such a lock would be the key to that mystery, indeed," agreed Sarkon.

Dr. Qworm stared at Sarkon in a weird way. He couldn't think of anything to say.

"Where's Lax?" asked cookie.

Dr. Qworm sighed. "As far as I know, Lax is a village in Switzerland…"

"And where's Switzerland?" cookie went on.

"If I remember well, Switzerland is this country that's too small to be shown on any map, so that nobody ever knows where it lies. Rumors say that it's between Norway and Finland, but when you look into an atlas, it's not there."

"Like Atlantis?" cookie's eyes went big like saucers.

"Quite. Maybe Switzerland is Atlantis, when I think of it," reflected Dr. Qworm. "An advanced civilization that disappeared without a trace because they shunned any contact with the outside world… Could fit."

"So this key was made in a village from a country that disappeared without a trace?" asked Sarkon.

"From a country that maybe never existed," specified Dr. Qworm.

"But we have this key!" said Sarkon.

"My knowledge can't help explain its existence," Dr. Qworm sighed. "Science seems powerless to account for it."

"But what can we do with it? Isn't there anything to open –" began Sarkon, but the Mad Scientist interrupted him just as soon.

"I said I can't help you with it, and I have a very important experiment to conduct!" Dr. Qworm snapped. "If you would please let me concentrate now…"

"Let's see General Kwar," Sarkon whispered to a disappointed cookie. "Dr. Qworm sure doesn't seem interested in solving the universe's mysteries today," he said aloud.

"But I am interested in…" Dr. Qworm exclaimed, before going on, "Alright, alright, I'll go with you to General Kwar! But only to see your dismayed faces when he tells you what aberration your key is!" he added, and they all went together to General Kwar's parliament.

* * *

General Kwar's parliament was a strange building. The Dictator had tried to make it look as imposing as possible from the outside with high towers, large ramparts and huge gargoyles, but when one had a closer look, it was no more than a mere hut.

General Kwar was busy revising the constitution, something he did daily.

"…And from now on, only elected people will be allowed vote, and the top official will be referred to as 'Emperor'…" he was muttering the changes to himself as he was scribbling them down.

"Dictator!" Sarkon called while entering the building. "Do you know this key?"

General Kwar raised his eyes from his document. "A key? Maybe now I can lock my door at last," he said, visibly bothered by the group's intrusion into his quarters.

"We're missing the lock," piped cookie.

"So we're wondering what use this key could have," explained Sarkon.

"And these doodle heads believed you could be of any help," shrugged Dr. Qworm. "I told them you wouldn't know squat –"

"I always have the power to help," grunted General Kwar, piqued by the Mad Scientist's remark. "Gimme that key!" He snatched the key from cookie's fingers and examined it closely.

Sarkon, Dr. Qworm and cookie waited anxiously.

General Kwar took quite more time than Dr. Qworm. He turned and turned it between his huge hands, scrutinizing its intricate teeth, pondering before the arcane grip, and finally even sniffing at it.

And just before Dr. Qworm could get the idea that General Kwar was maybe thinking of a story to tell to avoid having to admit that he knew nothing at all about the key, the Dictator rasped his throat and began speaking.

"This key is mythical," he uttered. "As a matter of fact, it was believed not to exist. This key," General Kwar held it high, and it caught a sunbeam that dazzled everyone, "is the fabled key that can stop the making of something from nothing!"

cookie was awed. Sarkon and Dr. Qworm were speechless.

"Let me get this straight," Dr. Qworm finally broke the silence. "What you mean is that this key can stop something that is impossible to do in the first place?!"

"Something that's very hard to do, for the least," General Kwar agreed smugly.

"Of all the nonsense I ever heard since I got stuck in this place, this tops everything!" exploded Dr. Qworm. "A key that stops something that cannot be started! And we're looking for its lock! But this lock can't exist!"

"If the key does, why couldn't its lock exist also?" asked cookie.

Dr. Qworm rolled his eyes. "I give up. Look for this lock forever if you want to – I've more important things to do. Goodbye!" He strode out of General Kwar's castle, and soon he was out of sight.

"We'll have to solve this mystery without the help of science," sighed Sarkon.

"Science can't solve everything anyway," General Kwar said haughtily. "Sometimes, only history can help. So let me tell you now the story of the Laxian Key!"

Sarkon and cookie settled comfortably on one of General Kwar's thrones each, and the Dictator started narrating.

"The story of the Laxian Key itself is very short, actually: nobody ever heard about its whereabouts. The story of what this key could stop, however, went around the universe – and maybe even created one."

"Created a universe?" asked cookie with round eyes.

"Everything started with a machine, a button, and a very short set of instructions," General Kwar went on. "'To start production, press button. To stop production, insert Laxian Key.'"

"The production of what?" asked Sarkon.

"I'll come back to that later," said General Kwar. "What happened is that some hapless dolt got this machine at a flea market and pressed the button."

"And what happened?" asked Sarkon.

"The machine started producing."

"But producing what? And where did that machine come from in the first place?" asked Sarkon, who was visibly getting impatient.

"The machine came from Meldge, a third-rate little planet on the galaxy's periphery which had a very advanced civilization at some point. As for what it produced, it was… Tangreese."

"Tangreese?" asked both Sarkon and cookie.

"Tangreese," confirmed General Kwar with a nod.

Sarkon and cookie looked at each other. "Tangreese," they both said, as if saying the word would help them understand.

"Before you ask, I have no idea what Tangreese is," admitted General Kwar. "What I do know, though, is some of the characteristics it has."

"So what's special about this Tangreese?" asked Sarkon.

General Kwar took a deep breath. "Nothing at all, and that's what makes it special," he explained. "It has the consistence of a fine gray powder, so fine that it would actually disappear when you rubbed it between your fingers –"

"Sugar," said cookie with a smile. He had already tasted such a sweet powder.[3]

"Not exactly," corrected General Kwar. "Theoretically, Tangreese is believed to be a powder that's infinitely fine. Besides, it has no taste at all. As a matter of fact, because it could be produced from nothing, it must have been as close to non-existence as matter can possibly be!"

"Sounds logical," agreed Sarkon. Dr. Qworm, fortunately, wasn't around to have a fit.

"These presumptions are confirmed by the fact that Meldge's inhabitants could eat Tangreese endlessly without getting any nourishment from it," said Kwar. "As a matter of fact, some were dying of hunger even though they were eating Tangreese all day long."

"Why were they eating it, then?" wondered cookie.

"One of these machines that had had its button pressed, thus producing Tangreese forever, had been stranded on their planet, and this was the only way for them to get rid of some of it," explained General Kwar.

"Did they succeed?" asked Sarkon.

"Unfortunately, they didn't. Ultimately, Tangreese swamped them, and they all ended buried under billions and billions of tons of gray powder. All because they didn't have this key," said General Kwar.

"What happened then?" asked Sarkon.

"What do you mean, what happened? It was the end of their civilization! The end of stuff happening! What came after couldn't be perceived anymore!" exclaimed General Kwar.

"So we don't know… We can, however, extrapolate," suggested Sarkon.

"What's your theory?" asked General Kwar.

"Tangreese goes on being produced for eons. It engulfs the planet, then extinguishes its sun – as Tangreese has minimal energy, it shouldn't be able to burn. After that, the rest of the system's planets disappear in the white powder. After that, the neighboring stars. After that, the galaxy. And after that…"

"The universe!" gasped General Kwar.

"Exactly," nodded Sarkon. "Tangreese slowly fills the gaps between the universe's matter, and although its mass is minimal, it finally makes everything collapse into one giant singularity!"

"…Thus starting a new Big Bang!" General Kwar gasped again.

"Indeed," agreed Sarkon.

"That would mean that the legend about this Laxian Key is a pre-Big-Bang story!" exclaimed General Kwar. "And the Laxian Key…" he held it trembling over his head…

"…Is a pre-Big-Bang artifact," finished Sarkon.

An awed (or awkward – it was really difficult to determine) silence followed. Fortunately, Dr. Qworm wasn't around to have a heart attack.

"But how did it get here, then?" asked cookie after a while.

"Must have been a wormhole," suggested Sarkon.

"A wormhole," echoed General Kwar, although he had no idea about what a wormhole could be or do.

"It would also mean that at our universe's very beginnings, it was made of all the Tangreese produced in the previous one," pondered Sarkon.

"At the beginning, there was Tangreese," agreed General Kwar.

"And as soon as such a machine's button is pressed again in our universe, it will all end in Tangreese, too," prophesied Sarkon.

"Ashes to ashes, Tangreese to Tangreese," agreed General Kwar.

A silence followed again.

"But it doesn't have to end this way, as we have this Laxian Key to stop the production," remarked cookie after a while.

Sarkon and Kwar stared at each other. "He's right," agreed General Kwar. "The Laxian Key could be the one way of breaking the cycle of self-collapsing universes!"

"Which would mean that our universe would slowly burn out and fizzle into infinite expansion? That would mean the end of existence!" exclaimed Sarkon. "We can't… We can't let this happen!"

With trembling hands, he took the key from General Kwar's hand, and led the way towards the Welgon Age's tea room. There he opened a drawer, put the key into it, and when he closed it again, he solemnly said, "Let us forget forever that we found this key, so that nobody ever shuts down the self-renewal of the universe through…

…The Laxian lock."

[1] cookie would like to thank Robert Sheckley for his short story The Laxian Key, which is available in a collection of stories entitled The People Trap and other Pitfalls, Snares, Devices And Delusions, as Well as Two Sniggles and a Contrivance.