Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction

108

Hassium

(265)

To Hass and Hass Not

It was a slow day and the geek who walked into my office wasn't making it

any more exciting. Curly hair, beard, glasses, two pens in his shirt

pocket, no fashion sense whatsoever. "You're a writer," I told him.

"W-what?" he stuttered. "How did you know?"

"Never mind." I gestured toward the chair, poured him a shot. "What's the

story?"

"That's the problem. There is no story!"

I leaned forward, took back the drink. "Okay, you're flagged."

"No, seriously. See, I was hired to write a weekly series of short-short

stories for this online zine, one for every element in the periodic

table, in order of atomic number."

"Takes all kinds," I said tolerantly.

"Yeah, I guess so. Only I've gotten up to number 108, hassium, and I'm

drawing a blank. I've got no story ideas whatsoever. Zip. Zilch. Nada."

He looked like was going to cry. "And I was so close to finishing this

thing! You've got to help me out."

"So you want me to research this thing for you?"

He shook his head. "Been there, done that. Hassium was first synthesized

by Peter Armbruster, Gottfried Münzenberg, et al. at the Gessellschaft

für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstatdt, Germany in 1984. Two isotopes

were produced. One had a half-life of 0.080 milliseconds and the other

1.8 milliseconds. You can't make a story out of that."

"You tried the Web?"

"I got bubkes," he said bitterly.

"I'll do the tough-guy talk around here, if you don't mind."

"Sorry."

"How about puns?"

"Hassium is named after the German state of Hesse. Nothing there. It

sounds a little like 'hassle,' but not enough to make something of it.

Everything else is even more of a stretch."

"Why don't you do a little rant about how you can't find out anything

interesting about it, then? About how boring it is?"

"I tried that with vanadium." He shuddered at the memory. "Never again!"

"Well, then, I don't see what I can do for you, Mr.??"

But suddenly the dweeb straightened in his chair. A spark of hope burned

in his eye. "Wait a minute! I could just write down a transcript of this

conversation!"

"You could what?"

"I could let the search for a story be the story! It's the perfect

solution." He leapt to his feet and pumped my hand. "I don't know how to

thank you. You can send me your bill."

Then he slammed out of the office, to write his story presumably, and I

was left alone with his abandoned drink. I picked it up. No sense in

letting it go to waste. I took a long, slow sip, thinking about the

writer, his problem, and the solution he'd come up with.

Personally, I thought it was exactly the sort of pointless exercise in

pretentious self-referential recursion that put the French

existentialists out of business decades ago.

But what do I know? I'm just a dick on a case.

The End