Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction

Sodium

22.9898

Electric Pickles

Try it yourself: in a dim room, impale a kosher dill pickle on two

prongs, each of which is attached to one wire from an electric cord. Then

(observing all possible safety precautions) plug it in.

Briefly, little happens. You hear a hum. You smell a stench. A wisp of

smoke floats upward from the tormented pickle.

And then?what's this? One end of the pickle lights up! It sheds a lovely

flickering yellow glow. In the darkened room, the effect is entrancing.

It's a moment of wonder and magic.

Here's the explanation: the atoms of NaCl salt in the pickle's brine

exist as free-floating sodium and chlorine ions within the watery

interstices of its cells. When electricity is pumped through the system,

the sodium ions rush to one pole of your homemade device to seize an

electron and make themselves complete. The ion rises one quantum level up

and is made temporarily complete.

Like a not-fully-competent juggler, however, the sodium ion can seize the

extra electron but cannot hold it. The ion falls from the higher energy

quantum to the lower, releasing a packet of light in the process. Thus

the lovely yellow glow.

Shakespeare was an electric pickle, and so was Virginia Woolf when she

wrote A Room of One's Own. They were hooked into the psychic electricity

of their times. They took in more energy than one person can hold. They

went up a quantum. They fell back down. They shed light.

Try it yourself: plug into the Zeitgeist. Feel the power. Now create a

work of art. Shed the light.

See how easy it is? I told you so.

The pickle, unfortunately, is not much good for anything after this

exercise. Throw it out.