No Free Lunches

No Free Lunches

  by

  Jeffrey Somogyi

  Copyright 2011 by Jeffrey M. Somogyi

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  No Free Lunches

  The greatest scientific minds of the age were pulled from their respective disciplines to come together at a month-long conference to focus their collective intelligences on one problem: Making the world a safer place.

  AIDS research was put on hold; cancer cures were set on the back burner; pills that made men able to turn back the biological clock (at least for several hours, after which they should consult their physician) were made to wait; space exploration would have to just SHUT UP for a damn second - this was important-er.

  "It's a bit stupid, this, isn't it?" one young scientist shouted. He meant it to be heard by the scientist in the next chair over only, but it arrived unto the conference room during one of those weird "all pauses" that only happen in crowded rooms and only when it will cause discomfort or distress to the person talking. No one knows why this is so, but a woman at the back, sensing easy grant money, jotted down a note to investigate this phenomenon further.

  The shouter didn't register that he was the victim of this embarrassing situation fast enough to stop his mouth, from continuing on at full volume, "What could be so important to halt...."

  Scores of pairs of mostly be-spectacled eyes, intelligence flaring brilliantly behind each orb, turned toward the dissident.

  "Er..." the uncomfortable scientist stammered, "Don't get me wrong! I love the hot lunch we're provided!" he said, lifting up his plate piled-high with antipasto and showing it to those nearest him as if to indicate enjoyment. Then he fell silent, lowered the plate and his head, and resumed eating in silence.

  The lead scientist took this opportunity to grab the reigns of the discussion before the room resumed chatting and eating - but mostly eating. "Well," he said, "If it's all the same to you, I think we should get down to business!"

  "But I've not finished my food...", someone at the back said.

  "What?! Well, you may continue to eat, of course! Harumph! Anyway, I think it's time I revealed why we've been brought here."

  There was a rumble of anticipation from the mouths of the gathered thinkers.

  "We've been brought here..."

  All lab-coated and be-suited attendees leaned forward, as the conference leader milked the moment.

  "...to solve - once and for all - the processed meat diameter in ratio and proportion to the adolescent throat size resulting in asphyxiation issue!" He sat back, smugly folding his hands over his ketchup-stained belly. He let the silence that greeted his statement play out, thinking it lent gravitas to the situation.

  Just as he was decided that he'd doled out enough gravity and had started to open his mouth to speak....

  "Not the fucking hot dog issue, again?!" someone shouted, spraying a few crumbs of croissant into the air.

  This time the pause from the leader was a stunned one. After a few experimentory mouth openings-and-closings, he tried to get back on top of the situation by saying, "Well, when you say it like THAT, it sounds silly, I agree...."

  "Too right, it does! THIS is why I've been called away from my Herpes research?!" a scientist proclaimed, slapping down his hamburger.

  "You're not in Herpes, now, are you Bill?" said another member around a bit of macaroni salad.

  "Not if I'm careful!" Bill said.

  There was a smattering of laughter which made the lead scientist's face slowly turn purple. "LISTEN!" He commanded, gripping the edge of the table in front of him until his knuckles turned white, "It's all fun and games until it's YOUR tot choking on a meat plug..."

  "Sounds like Bill's territory, again", some wag offered, while hoisting a forkful of food to his mouth. It was met with deeper laughter and a deeper purpling of the face and further whitening of the knuckles from the chairman.

  "It might sound silly," a whispery, paper-thin old voice said from the back of the room, off to one side. It was a voice that spoke in such low, even tones that you could not help but fall silent before it. It commanded reverence in a way that the committee leader could never achieve using bluster and volume. "But so many kids are effected, each year. So many..." He used the tones of one who'd lived through the battle and was talking to a kid who'd only played the video game. "I mean, hot dogs are the perfect little stopper for an airway. We've put up with it too long!" For emphasis, he drove the tip of his cane into the floor with a sharp TAP. "Oh, I remember the horrible time in ‘43...." He trailed off, misting up, leaving each scientist to imagine the horrors that hot dogs must have wrought upon the earth, that year.

  One brave soul, wiping a bit of mayo onto her sleeve, pipped up, "Whats wrong with givin' them a knife and cutting the damn thing in half?!"

  The room erupted into shouting.

  "You'd just have twice as many hot dogs!"

  "You'd give a kid a knife?!" one gasped, almost choking on his own hot dog.

  "Inelegant solution!" one spat, spitting mashed potatoes over a few colleagues.

  "Scientific method!" a fourth commenter shouted, just to join in, as all the shouting seemed like fun.

  The knife-suggester realized that somewhere along the way, the climate of the room changed from incredulousness to wholehearted acceptance of this being a real matter to discuss. Silly Scientists! So eager to tackle any problem, no matter how trivial. Then her logical training kicked into high gear: But I'M a scientist! Therefore, I'M supposed to take this seriously! QED, logic wins again! Ergo...

  "Damn FOOL IDEA!" she shouted at herself, "What were you thinking?!"

  Several of those seated nearby eyed her suspiciously, but it quickly became apparent for the look of zealous determination on her face that she was sincere. She really did hate her own argument.

  It was quite scary to see and put several off their food and caused many more to fall silent.

  A brave biologist chimed in with, "Maybe we could grow a new type of hot dog?"

  "Ugh! Tofu dogs are the worst! I'd RATHER choke!"

  "Nah, nah! Not tofu! Meat. Real meat! We can grow it in a Petri dish, these days! We could mold ‘em any we want!"

  "Ladies and gentlemen!" the leading scientist intoned, "We've given society the means to press hot dogs into ANY shape they've wanted for hundreds of years... and yet they still choose a TUBE!"

  "Exactly! That's what happens when you don't have a society run by scientists! Our ideas are warped and twisted by the politicians!" said a scientist who, up until this very moment, had never expressed a political statement stronger than "I prefer chocolate ice cream", but who was getting swept up in the moment.

  "Yeah! The atom bomb SHOULD have worked as a peace-time device! Then the military gets involved...." said a scientist who reads too much speculative fiction.

  "Maybe WE in this room can change things! Us! Right here! The start of something new! A new society!" one of the more rebellious scientists (meaning he groomed his beard into pointy shapes, instead of the generally-accepted "shambles of hair") shouted, frothing at the mouth a bit, carried away by thoughts of a new world order. He saw visions of a society with someone in charge - not necessarily him, mind you - who looked good in a lab coat.

  There was a protracted silence which included many shiftings and avertings of eyes, a lot of staring-at-the-floor, and a little staring-at the ceiling. One scientist was about to cough, because that's what one does in an awkward moment like this, but someone on the other side of the room beat him to it, so he held it in.

  The budding re
volutionary, reading the cool temperature of the room, sat down again, ashamed and wiping the spit from the corners of his mouth with his tie. The common consensus in the room was, clearly, that it's one thing to complain about how things worked and quite another to ask your fellow Fellows to give up their grants for guns.

  "Warning labels?" someone asked, to break the awkwardness. A dozen or so relieved, tension-breaking sighs greeted this suggestion.

  "We tried that on cigarettes, yet I still smoke!" replied a jittery man in a slightly yellowed lab coat.

  "Aw, I thought you'd quit, Jerry?" said one sympathetic scientist.

  "Nah. Can't shake it."

  "Oh, too bad... In that case, could I bum one from you?" the not-so-sympathetic-after-all scientist added.

  There was a murmur of interest in that statement. The gathered minds had been locked inside, eating, for the last couple of hours and many of them were dying for an after-meal smoke. The yellowed scientist quickly scanned the room and counted the number of desperate, nicotine-craving eyes staring at him. Using math to divide by two, he realized that he'd go broke lending that many cigarettes, to that many people, over the course of this convention.

  "Er... Can't. Left ‘em in the hotel room." he lied through his yellow teeth.

  There were multiple groans of disappointment from the gathered scientists.

  "Come ON, people!" The conference leader said, slapping his palm against the conference table, then shaking away the stinging feeling this physical activity caused him. "We've been asked to come up with REAL answers, here! We're smart! We should have the tools to lick this problem!"

  "You're a tool!" the wag at the back exclaimed. Realizing it wasn't his finest quip, he excused himself from the proceedings. (Swinging by the catering table, on his way, to help himself to another quesadilla.)

  "Wait! What if we drill a hole down the center?!"

  "HA! SURELY you're not..." someone began protesting, on principle alone, but then stopped short. The attendees fell silent as they all pondered the notion.

  Then, being scientists, they re-pondered. And then a bit more. Those with beards stroked them. Those with other silly affectations affected themselves.

  No matter how much pondering was done, there was but one conclusion: It would work!

  But there was also so many more weeks of free meals, in-room pay-per-view movies that their wives (or mothers) would never approve of, mini-bar snacks, and pool-side post-conference drinks with those lab assistants who would be cute, if only they would take of their glasses and shake out their hair (a sentiment mirrored by the male scientists, too) - all billed to the government - to think of.

  "It's a ludicrous idea! Now keep thinking, you lot!" the head scientist, with one eye firmly affixed on a catering table said. "And, could someone go ask if they've got any more of that hummus? We seem to be out."

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