Nature Abhors a Procrastinator
by C. Dan Castro
I sit at my office desk, hands sporadically trembling, and return to the question I’ve asked for a week.
Can I live with this?
For days, I thought no. But yesterday, my hands didn’t shake. And I only cried once.
Still, best to turn myself in.
Today.
No excuses.
A shadow looms at my glass door. Feminine. Long legs. My breathing stops. It can’t be her.
And it isn’t. It’s my protégé, Jacinta Powers, back from a week off. A week during which I’d hoped to recover. Before she knocks, I wave her in with one hand, wipe my eyes with the other.
“Welcome back. Go anywhere good?”
She shakes her head. “Staycation.” Her latex gloves say she’s already working, the left glove bulging on her ring finger. “Would you help me run the Kibble meter?”
“The Kibble?”
“I’m throwing everything at the Guimaraes Kronistaags. Even the Kibble.”
Maybe turn myself in tomorrow? So much to teach my people.
“Wondering if it really measures four point oh oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh oh kilograms?”
Kronistaags are manufactured to a precise 4.000000000 kilograms. In a world of hyperinflation, Kronistaags sell fast as they’re forged. Everyone’s buying them. Everyone with a quarter million lying around.
“The Kibble might reveal something.”
Unable to think of a reason to say no, I nod.
#
We walk the lab’s longest aisle, flanked by benches inundated with equipment. Spectrometers wait for my scientists. A few devices softly click, pumps running in self-maintenance mode. In an hour, everyone else will arrive, filling the void of near silence.
At the aisle’s end sits the Kibble. The glass-and-steel cube, eight feet on a side, holds an apparatus with a pair of scales. On one half sits an iron “doughnut,” the counterbalance.
On the other half glints a gold bar--more an elongated rectangle--approximately an inch by an inch by thirteen inches.
A Kronistaag.
A nine-pound club.
To my relief, my hands don’t shake.
We stop at the Kibble’s operating console, our footsteps’ echoes dying in the vast laboratory space.
On the console, a neon green “4.000000035” flashes.
“Oh, you ran it.”
My office door kills sound. Probably a safety risk.
Can’t turn myself in tomorrow. Too many safety risks to eliminate.
Next week. Definitely next week.
“Soon as I saw that result, I knew something was wrong,” Jacinta says, staring at the mass value.
“Right, right. Well, the Kibble’s gravimeter is misaligned, or the Kronistaag absorbed 35 micrograms of contaminants from the air.”
“Contaminants?”
“That’s why Europe stopped measuring the kilogram standard with the Kibble.” I don’t mention such adsorption takes years.
“There’s a third possibility.”
My heart sinks. “Which is...?”
“The extra mass is a fingerprint.”
One purple nitrile glove tore while I gathered Kronistaags from the vault in the Guimaraes house. There’d been no time to get all the bars. The police pulled up outside. Guimaraes ran in with a pistol. Into my hands slid a gold bar.
The gold bar swung.
“W-well, no, it can’t be. Fingerprints, um, fingerprints are about fifty micrograms.”
Later I discovered a glove fragment missing. A small, triangular piece. That little triangle left part of my ring finger exposed.
“Could be a partial,” Jacinta says.
Dammit.
“No, no, Chad used the Watson.” The Watson. A robotics masterpiece. Takes evidence into a chamber, unbags it, scans via laser, then re-bags the evidence. No fingerprint powder, cyanoacrylate fuming, etc.
“But Chad. . .” Jacinta doesn’t say it. Chad is unskilled. Unmotivated. The anti-Jacinta.
“Not to worry. I worked with him to ensure he did it right.” Half true. I did work with him. But the laser setting should have eradicated any prints. “It’s probably the gravimeter. Let’s run a diagnostic.”
I stab buttons. I know the diagnostic will find nothing. I hope the contaminants idea settles in Jacinta’s mind.
The console buzzes.
The gravimeter is misaligned.
“Can you show me how to adjust it?”
“Not enough room behind the machine. I’ll do it.” Can’t turn myself in yet. Too many equipment manuals to revise.
Next month.
Maybe.
I walk to the Kibble’s door.
“Do you need my key?”
“No, no, I’ve got mine.” Near the Kibble’s steel-and-glass door, a green light and a separate pressure gauge reads “RE-EQUILIBRATED” as required by the impenetrable instruction manual.
I lock the heavy door in the proceduralized “open configuration.” LOTO, or Lock Out, Tag Out, is mandatory.
By the operating console, Jacinta waits, tall and lean like Guimaraes. Seems fitting, because behind her stands an Achilleon vault, jutting from the floor like an obsidian tombstone. It’s from a previous case. Once the vault’s locking mechanism was understood, everyone took turns “cracking” it. All good fun.
Except for me, where it was practice.
Although the Kibble cube is large, so’s the apparatus it houses. I crawl, squeezing around the machine. My hands pat floor grates covering steel pipes to the pump under the cube.
The pump’s been loud recently. It works, yes, but I should PM it soon. In fact, multiple instruments need preventative maintenance. I must arrange that in the coming months.
Twisting around one corner, I reach the correct panel. Remove it.
Inside sits the gravimeter. And something else.
Something purple.
I tease it out.
A nitrile glove fragment.
Triangular.
My missing piece.
A thud hits my ears.
I wriggle back to the door, but it’s shut. Locked. Only unlocks from outside.
Another safety risk.
Beyond the door, Jacinta stares, her tears insufficient to wash the malice off her face.
I beat on the airtight door. Pointless. Nearly indestructible.
Where’d she find the glove fragment? The backyard, maybe? A quick Ventner scan would reveal my DNA.
Jacinta Powers continues staring. Powers is also her husband’s name. And I can guess Jacinta’s maiden name. Did her mother mention me during the week before last? How she met a distinguished scientist at her party? Oh, you know him? What, you work for him? Small world.
Jacinta visibly relaxes, exhaling slow and certain. Walks away.
Through the floor grates, a whuf whuf whuf. Loud and growing louder.
The vacuum pump.
Can’t have air in the chamber when measuring an accurate mass.
THE END
C. Dan Castro enjoys writing fantasy, mystery, and crime stories. He’s been published in Sherlock Holmes Magazine (UK), Particular Passages (Volume 4), Thrill Ride the Magazine #1 (“Honor”), and more! Additional works have been accepted by Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine (U.S.), and Mysterical-E. When not composing stories, Dan tweets writing tips (@CDanCastro43), dreams of traveling again, or studies languages to imbue his stories with je ne sais quoi. Whatever that means. He lives in Connecticut, where he’s making a final polish on his first novel, a middle-grade fantasy.
