Category Archives: Writing

How the brain produces consciousness in “time slices”

~

Fig3

12.04.16 – EPFL scientists propose a new way of understanding how the brain processes unconscious information into our consciousness. According to the model, consciousness arises only in time intervals of up to 400 milliseconds, with gaps of unconsciousness in between. Read more

Treating colon cancer with vitamin A

~

imtxtScientists at EPFL identify the biological pathway behind the growth of colon cancer, and block it with vitamin A. Read more

“Alien” Chapter 3: The pizza of destiny – part 2

~
There wasn’t much to do in the pizza pod, despite its light speed and black-hole hopping. Normally, that would be okay for Clovenard, who once won an intergalactic staring contest championship by simply falling asleep with his eyes open.
But as this was his first time in this part of the universe, he found that the galactic rays were messing with his natural biorhythm. He tried different napping positions turning this way and that but after he nearly reset the autopilot with his foot, he resorted to just staring out of the window.
The Praxitan Popular Pizza Parlour trains its employees to deliver their pizzas with smiles and flourish, and a tagline that goes “Praxitan Popular Pizza Parlour pizzas put pizzazz in your pizzas every time!”, which, admittedly, can be somewhat of a linguistic challenge. Most Praxitans would have no problem memorising and repeating the line.
Clovenard – well, Clovenard wasn’t most Praxitans.
But he tried. A couple of light-years past Saturn and he began to mumble the restaurant’s tagline.
One time. Two times. Twenty times.
By the time he could see Earth’s tiny blue spec in the distance, Clovenard felt confident enough that he could handle the line just like any other employee. He smiled, giggled, and leaned back in satisfaction.
That’s when he saw it.
The tag line, writ large on the ceiling of the pod.
He’d been saying only half of it. With smiles and flourish, but only half of it.
Earth was coming up fast.
Clovenard panicked. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t accept the pizza if he didn’t say the line – that scientist on Earth would be happy to even get delivery out there.
And yet, Clovenard felt compelled to say the whole thing. To do something properly – for once in his life. As he gazed at Earth, he felt himself swell with a primordial sense of pride, of pioneering, of succeeding. Of transcending his shortcomings.
Studies on Praxitus have long associated stubbornness with stupidity.
Clovenard made what we’d call an executive decision: He took the pod off the autopilot, and slowed its approach to Earth to buy some time. Then he looked up at the looming tagline, took a deep breath, pursed his protolips, and focused all of his limited attention to memorising it.
Of course, when you take a pod – or anything, for that matter – off autopilot, you still need a pilot.
There is a theory on Earth, about how the dinosaurs went extinct. It says that a huge meteor hit the surface of Earth so hard that it caused a global catastrophe, changing the entire planet’s climate.
Well. That’s not entirely wrong.
Clovenard finally said the line, the whole line, and then he looked down from the ceiling.
Blue. So much blue. Growing really fast.
Clovenard screeched in horror and tried to re-engage the autopilot. The autopilot came on, saw what was going on, and just started laughing.
There isn’t an engineer on Praxitus who can explain that.
Clovenard tried to pull the throttles back and slow his descent to Earth, but the pod was already caught into the planet’s gravity.
Alarms went off, and the autopilot began singing an old sad song.
Clovenard was freaking out. He was hitting buttons, pulling levers, and switching lights on and off – mostly off, which quickly turned the pod into a free-falling fireball, careening towards what would be later called the Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico.
Finally, Clovenard must have pressed the EJECT button, because next thing he knew he was looking down at his wiggling feet with the pod falling fast below the clouds.
The pizza floated next to him. Praxitan Popular Pizza Parlour pride themselves on delivery sun or rain or apocalyptic, extinction-level events.
The pod vanished under the clouds, and Clovenard focused on trying to get a hold of the pizza. He would salvage what he could of –
– boom.
That’s what he heard, and his anguished mind recalled some Engineering class where they explained how Praxitus used fusion to power –
-boom!
Clovenard just stared at the world under his feet.
Surely a tiny pod like that wouldn’t –
-BOOM.
It was a solid argument. Even Clovenard could understand it.
He grabbed the pizza, hit his jetpack, and flew towards the customer’s co-ordinates. Behind him followed shockwaves, flames, lights, thunders, and every other word a thesaurus will give you related to “Armageddon”.
Clovenard bit his protolips and kept scooting. He didn’t look back, but he could feel the warmth of the of world-changing explosion behind him.
He scooted faster, pushing the jetpack into the red. The warmth grew into heat, and heat into singeing and singeing into ouch, and ouch into AAAAAAAARGH.
Then he took a sudden left, and the river of fire passed him.
The scientist was standing on a rock, hugging a triceratops. The way he would tell the story later on, the whole world caught fire, the earth began to crack, volcanoes erupted, forests burned to a crisp, the air filled with acrid smoke, and suddenly, a young Praxitan, uniform black with soot, rose out of the ashes, the world ending behind him.
Clovenard walked over to the scientist, handed him a half-burned, squashed pizza box, looked him straight in the eyes, did an awkward little jig, smiled and flourished and cried out with pride: “Praxitan Popular Pizza Parlour pizzas put in pizzazz your time in every pizza!”
Also, the triceratops died.

“Alien” Chapter 3: The pizza of destiny

~

Read Chapter 2

Chapter 3

The Praxitans have been secretly watching Earth for a very long time.

No, it’s not because of the kaleidoscopic variety of lifeforms ensconced in her bosom; nor has it got anything to do with the uniqueness of the human psyche, or the amusing discrepancies of mind and emotion that people are prone to.

For the Praxitans, watching Earth is more like a moral concern. Or better yet, an insurance claim.

Let me explain.

Remember the dinosaurs? Of course you don’t. You weren’t around then.

You know who was around? Exactly.

Clovenard.

It was the late Cretaceous by Earth reckoning. On Praxitus, it was Friday night. And, as is the habit for all Praxitans, Friday night is pizza night.

Now, pizza is fairly accessible when you’re on Praxitus, but when you’re a tired tenure-track researcher doing your obligatory stint on Earth during the late Cretaceous in the hope of proving your hypothesis that a subspecies of T-rexes actually have long arms, then pizza is nowhere to be found. Ferns – sure. Corythosauri – tons. Pizza – not so much.

But still, when you’re sitting there in the prehistoric mud fending off prehistoric mosquitoes and avoiding the amorous advances of prehistoric mammals that really shouldn’t exist yet, you miss home. And if it’s Friday night, you miss home Friday night. And if you miss home Friday night, you miss home Friday night pizza night.

So the researcher picked up his University-issued phone, called the black-hole extension code, reached Praxitus, connected to the Praxitan Popular Pizza Parlour, and ordered an extra-large, quadruple-everything-from-the-menu pizza, with extra everything-on-the-menu toppings.

Getting pizza delivered on time is a matter of national honour for Praxitans, and the Praxitan Popular Pizza Parlour is no exception. Normally, the Praxitan Popular Pizza Parlour would have deployed a Senior Delivery Associate for an off-planet mission like that, but, at the time, they were all busy.

So they decided to take a chance and send a Junior Delivery Associate to Earth. Except, they were all busy too.

Then they tried to find an intern to get the pizza to Earth, but guess what.

Then they tried to tie the pizza on the intern’s dog and send it to Earth, but it turned out that the dog had accidentally been included in an earlier pizza through an unfortunate combination of curiosity, a pastrami machine, and a less-than-watchful cook. But that is a story for another time.

So the Praxitan Popular Pizza Parlour manager closed her eyes for a second, sighed, opened her eyes and, with a heavy heart, dispatched the pizza with the newly-appointed sub-trainee apprentice intern, Clovenard.

Clovenard wasn’t busy. Clovenard was never busy.

Clovenard was actually working the pastrami machine that Friday night.

Friday night pizza night, Clovenard left for Earth.

“Alien” chapter 2: The school years

~

Link to Chapter 1

Chapter 2

As everyone expected, Clovenard barely scraped by in school. I mean, it was so bad they had to put him on advanced quantum physics just to make sure he passed. Of course, advanced quantum physics is complicated for the earthlings, and it probably says a lot about them that the Praxitan who went into his yearbook as “Monolithic Moron” could still dance circles around their Einsteins and Heisenbergs, but this is a story about Clovenard, and any story about Clovenard already contains enough stupid to go around.

When he took Teleportation 101, Clovenard became the only student in the history of Praxitus to teleport himself to the exact same spot where he started.

When Clovenard took Time Travelling 201, he shot straight past the Big Bang, and the school had to call janitorial services to unclog him out of the time-stick.

When Clovenard took Quantum Entanglement 301, he couldn’t get an electron to speak to itself, let alone another electron.

When he tried quantum tunneling, his electrons tunneled out of the lab and left. No-one’s seen them since.

When Clovenard demonstrated Schrodinger’s Cat, his cat was simultaneously dead and dead. Four times.

When he tested energy shields, he ended up shielding the enemy troops.

In tadball, Praxitus’s national pastime, Clovenard’s team tried to kill him by scoring him into the Narrow Post instead of the ball.

In flight school, Clovenard sunk his star cruiser. Yes, sunk it. In Linguistics, he erased an entire ancient dialect from the database. In Basic Cryptography, he broke his own code. In Simulated Economics, he bankrupted Praxitus. In Galactic Studies, he instigated a civil war between two peaceful planets. In Political Science, he tried to legislate genocide to resolve a minor tax issue.

At prom, Clovenard forgot to pick up his date, and then took back the wrong girl.

In the end, the Praxitan government fast-tracked Clovenard’s graduation “for the sake of the planet”.

And then they appointed him to the lofty profession of pizza delivery. That’s really how the story of Clovenard and the earthlings begins: With pizza.

Next chapter