"Hell, yes," she. said, but before his easy grace she felt a little embarrassed by her sourness.
Hiram was still talking. "… not just a stunt. I was born in 1967, during the Summer of Love. Of course some say
the sixties were a cultural revolution that led nowhere. Perhaps that’s true — directly. But it, and its music of
love and hope, played a great part in shaping me, and others of my generation."
Bobby caught Kate’s eye. He mimed vomiting with a splayed hand, and she had to cover her mouth to keep from
laughing.
"… And at the height of that summer, on 25 June 1967, a global television show was mounted to demonstrate the
power of the nascent communications network." Behind Hiram the V-Fab drummer counted out a beat, and the
group started playing, a dirge-like parody of the Marseillaise that gave way to finely sung three part harmony.
"This was Britain’s contribution," Hiram called over the music. "A song about love, sung to two hundred million
people around the world. That show was called Our World. Yes, that’s right. That’s where I got the name from. I
know it’s a little corny. But as soon as I saw the tapes of that event, at ten years old, I knew what I wanted to do
with my life."
Corny, yes, thought Kate, but undeniably effective; the audience was gazing spellbound at Hiram’s giant image
as the music of a summer seven decades gone reverberated around the cafeteria.
"And now," said Hiram with a showman’s nourish, "I believe I have achieved my life’s goal. I’d suggest holding
on to something — even someone else’s hand… "
The floor turned transparent.
•
Suddenly suspended over empty space, Kate felt herself stagger, her eyes deceived despite the solidity of the
floor beneath her feet. There was a gale of nervous laughter, a few screams, the gentle tinkle of dropped glass.
Kate was surprised to find she had grabbed on to Bobby’s arm. She could feel a knot of muscle there. He had
covered her hand with his, apparently without calculation.
She let her hand stay where it was. For now.
She seemed to be hovering over a starry sky, as if this cafeteria had been transported into space. But these
"stars," arrayed against a black sky, were gathered and harnessed into a cubical lattice, linked by a subtle tracery
of multi-coloured light. Looking into the lattice, the images receding with distance, Kate felt as if she were
staring down an infinitely long tunnel.
With the music still playing around him — so artfully, subtly different from the original recording — Hiram
said, "You aren’t looking up into the sky, into space. Instead you are looking down, into the deepest structure of
matter. This is a crystal of diamond. The white points you see are carbon atoms. The links are the valence forces
that join them. I want to emphasize that what you are going to see, though enhanced, is not a simulation. With
modern technology-scanning tunnelling microscopes, for instance — we can build up images of matter even at
this most fundamental of levels. Everything you see is real. Now — come further."
Holographic images rose to fill the room, as if the cafeteria and all its occupants were sinking into the lattice, and
shrinking the while. Carbon atoms swelled over Kate’s head like pale grey balloons; there were tantalizing hints
of structure in their interior. And all around her space sparkled. Points of light winked into existence, only to be
snuffed out immediately. It was quite extraordinarily beautiful, like swimming through a firefly cloud.
"You’re looking at space," said Hiram. "’Empty’ space. This is the stuff that fills the universe. But now we are
seeing space at a resolution far finer than the limits of the human eye, a level at which individual electrons are
visible — and at this level, quantum effects become important. ’Empty’ space is actually full, full of fluctuating
energy fields. And these fields manifest themselves as particles: photons, electron-positron pairs, quarks… They
flash into a brief existence, bankrolled by borrowed mass-energy, then disappear as the law of conservation of
energy reasserts itself. We humans see space and energy and matter from far above, like an astronaut flying over
an ocean. We are too high to see the waves, the flecks of foam they carry. But they are there.
"And we haven’t reached the end of our journey yet. Hang on to your drinks, folks."
The scale exploded again. Kate found herself flying into the glassy onion-shell interior of one of the carbon
atoms. There was a hard, shining lump at its very centre, a cluster of misshapen spheres. Was it the nucleus? —
and were those inner spheres protons and neutrons?
As the nucleus flew at her she heard people cry out. Still clutching Bobby’s arm, she tried not to flinch as she