Music Class (a chemistry story)

(I wrote this as an assignment for Honors Chemistry. Posting because some people asked about my Chemistry stories.)

Music Class

            “Close your eyes,” said the teacher to the student, “and tell me what you hear.” The teacher pressed down a single key on the piano.

—

            It was a clean, crisp day in Wireland. The sky-people flew to and fro above the land with such a straightness and accuracy of flight, that the citizens of Wireland could not help but admire them a little. The sight of these sky-people and their pin-straight flight was no uncommon occurrence, and in fact, Adam Corban often looked forward to conversations with sky-person Molly Q. Loxigyn whenever she should happen to drop in.

On this morning, he stepped out of his house, which was the same as one quarter of the houses in Wireland, into his yard. The other three-quarters of the houses in Wireland looked like Adam’s next-door neighbor’s houses. As the sky-people could easily tell when they flew above Wireland, the whole place was one seemingly endless subdivision. Each yard was exactly the same, and not a single one was fenced. The two types of houses were arranged evenly in perfect grid formations. The people of Wireland were sometimes seen going in and out of their houses, but a citizen rarely, if ever, left his property.

All the citizens of Wireland were very fond of their little dog-like pets, which they called the “Ronelect.” They were similar to small, energetic terriers. The Ronelects ran back and forth as they pleased and were allowed to choose their favorite person to live with. Ronelects mated for life, and during the day, they could often be seen in pairs playing chase around and in-between the houses, and at night, they generally slept together exactly in between two houses, as a dog who loves two masters equally and cannot choose between them.

This morning, Adam Corban stepped out his back door to put out food for the Ronelects. A pair came and greeted him enthusiastically. As Adam petted them, he looked up into the sky to see whether he could spot Molly Q. Loxigyn. He immediately knew that something was wrong.

Every day in Wireland was exactly the same. Nothing ever changed. But today, the sky had indeed changed. The great object that adorned Wireland’s sky by day, known due to its shape as, “The Great Hammer,” had grown larger.

Adam tried to consider what this meant, but trying to imagine something different proved too difficult for him. He had just decided to give up on procuring a meaning, when his neighbor, Humf Hamf Hoomf McIronbottom, stepped out into his own backyard.

“Morning,” called Adam to McIronbottom.

“Humph,” said Humf.

“Look now,” said Adam. “Here is a scene that I cannot make out. Look up at the Great Hammer.”

“Hem,” said McIronbottom, raising a hand to his brow and fixing his gaze on the Great Hammer. “Ha!” he said. “I don’t see nothing.”

“Look closer,” said Adam. “The Great Hammer is larger today, and it is troubling me. I cannot figure out what it could mean.”

Humf Hamf Hoomf McIronbottom squinted. And he tilted his head and squinted again. He humph-ed and he grumph-ed. Adam watched him attentively.

“Ha! I don’t see nothing,” repeated McIronbottm, and he bent down to turn on his hose.

“But it is larger,” said Adam, looking at the sky again. “It has to be.”

McIronbottom was filling a long low trough with water, and the two Ronelects that Adam had been petting ran over to get a drink. “Why don’t ya go lie down awhile?” Humf suggested in a growly voice.

“Perhaps you are right,” replied Adam, but he did not take his eyes off the enlarged Great Hammer.

“Hum,” said McIronbottom.

Adam jumped when he felt someone at his side. It was Molly Q. Loxigyn.

“Oh!” said Adam, “you surprised me!”

“You were looking so intently at the sky,” she replied. “How is it you didn’t see me coming?”

“I was looking at the Great Hammer,” he said. “It looks larger today.”

Molly looked up at it carefully. “You may be right,” she said, “but I couldn’t say for sure. I see what you call the Great Hammer from so many different angles in my flights that I’m not sure how close it ought to be to Wireland.”

“Close?” said Adam, shaking his head. “No, I said it looks larger.”

“Well you see,” said Molly, “the place which you call the Great Hammer is another planet full of other people, rather like yourself. Now planets don’t grow bigger, but the Great Hammer might appear bigger if it came closer to Wireland.”

“Gurmp,” said McIronbottom.

“Oh hello, Humf Hamf Hoomf!” said Molly, smiling and waving.

“That’s McIronbottom to you,” said McIronbottom.

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” said Adam.

“Well you see,” said Molly. “McIronbottm looks smaller to you than I do, even though we’re really the same size. It’s because he is farther away. And you see, when your Ronelects run way over there, they look smaller than when they are in your yard. So you see, the Great Hammer is very far away, but if it comes closer it will look bigger. It is a very big place, you see.”

“I think I do see,” said Adam. “I hope I am wrong and it is not coming closer.”

“Why?”

“I am afraid of what might happen if it did. Molly, would you go there for me, and come back to tell me whether the Great Hammer is growing closer?”

“Hm,” said Molly.

“Humm,” said McIronbottom.

“Yes,” said Molly. “I will do that for you.”

Molly Q. Loxigyn fixed her eyes on the Great Hammer, bent her knees, and pushed off, flying in a direct line toward the Great Hammer.

It was nearly a week before Molly returned. During that time, Adam kept his eye on the Great Hammer by day. He was convinced that it looked larger, or closer, every day. His back door neighbor, Eyornia Steele, agreed that there was no question that something was amiss in the sky.

Molly’s arrival was welcome, as Humf Hamf Hoomf McIronbottom had been growing more grumpy and irritable in the last days because of the whole business. Adam and Eyornia had been conversing when Molly dropped into Adam Corban’s yard.

“Molly!” cried Adam. “What have you found, for we are all growing nervous here in Wireland.”

“My neighbor’s neighbor’s neighbor even knows that the Great Hammer is becoming a huge threat,” Eyornia Steel chimed in.

“A great evil is coming to Wireland,” said Molly in a quiet and serious voice, “such as your fathers and your fathers’s fathers before you suffered through.”

“Not the Humidity!” This was McIronbottom’s voice. Adam did not know he had been listening.

Only the youngest citizens of Wireland did not remember the terrible days of the Humidity. In those days, a drove of flying water-monsters had infiltrated Wireland, flooding the ground. They dug cracks into the earth between every yard and shoved with all their might, pushing the citizens of Wireland away from one another and leaving great moats everywhere so that it was hard for the Ronelects to cross. Nobody wanted the Humidity to return.

“No,” said Molly, shaking her head. “Not the Humidity. Something worse. An unknown force has sprung the Great Hammer from its resting place. The planet is now hurdling toward Wireland.”

“Ho,” said McIronbottom.

“Can it be stopped?” asked Adam.

“It cannot be stopped,” said Molly, “I am afraid that it will be very harmful to Wireland.”

They could only shake their heads in silence. Even McIronbottom could think of no grunt appropriate for the occasion.

Months went by, and the Great Hammer grew ever closer. The people of Wireland grew ever more afraid.

Then one day, when the Great Hammer was large and green and ominous and blocked the light from the sky, it happened. The strange aliens of the Great Hammer fell helplessly from the sky. The citizens of Wireland peered out of their windows and watched the aliens, their homes, and their things, fall from the sky.

The Ronelects barked furiously, trying to defend their people.

Adam trembled inside his home.

Aliens and alien houses shot down to the ground and bounced back up. The ground shook terribly. Adam gripped the faucet of his kitchen sink as his own house was shaken right off the ground and sent flying into the air. He heard a thump on his roof and wondered whether he had hit an alien from the Great Hammer or a sky-person.

The house touched down again, bouncing on its side.

It bounced again, on its face, and a confused Ronelect floated up through the dog door. Adam caught it in his free arm. He held onto the faucet and his Ronelect as the house bounced and bounced and bounced. Sometimes he tucked the Ronelect under his arm between bounces and reached for one of the many jars of food flying about the kitchen, in order to nourish himself and his pet. He found it very difficult to get a drink of water, for the water pipes were not connected to anything in the air. But with some practice, he got his timing right and was able to get small sips when the house bounced on its bottom.

It seemed days, maybe weeks, before his house landed right-side-up again, once for all, with an almighty thud.

He trembled so greatly, he could not stand for the shaking of his knees. The Ronelect whimpered and wagged its tail. When he had caught his breath, Adam stood and stepped into his backyard. His house had landed back in the proper place of his yard (if indeed it was his yard, for all the yards looked alike), and so had all his neighbors’ homes. And what a mess their yards all were! Oh dear, it would take forever to clean this place up! Ah well. At least he was now safe and sound.

He looked up into the sky and saw in the distance sky-people, bumping and crashing into one another, still suffering the aftermath of the crash of the Great Hammer.

Adam Corban glanced over to his left. Humf Hamf Hoomf McIronbottom was watching the trouble of the sky people as well, the collisions growing  farther and farther away from Wireland, and the Great Hammer shrinking away into the sky. “Humph,” he said, and he turned his water trough upright and filled it with water from the hose.

—

The student replied to the teacher, “I hear an A note.”