The Legend of the Emperor's Space Suit (A Tale of Consensus Reality) The Emperor of Greater Bluvia, thinking to impress his favorite concubine, the exquisite (but innocent) provincial Justina, bought a ride on EOS, the Earth to Orbit Shuttle. And to be doubly impressive (for Emperors can be both egotistical and insecure), the Emperor conducted a contest for the very best space suit design in which to do his princely space walk, which Justina would observe through a powerful telescope constructed for her and her alone to observe this majestic EVA (which stands for Extra Vehicular Activity). (My darlings, if you disdain Three Letter Acronyms best read some other legend.) The space suit engineers from MIT and RIT and NASA and the ESA and other acronymic bodies put out their very best, constructed of fabrics and plates and flexible joints almost magical in their resilience, suits designed to withstand hard vacuum and cold and heat and even solar flares and cosmic rays, also with advanced flexibility and added radios and on-board bathrooms and showers and snack tubes and sun-lamps and a fur codpiece in one, a soothing Thai massage in another and flexible motorized motion augmentation to allow skateboarding and ballroom dancing and even hula-hooping. He rejected each space suit in turn. Two lowly engineering undergrads stood at the end of the contest lineup with nothing, it seemed, but air between them. "Do you mock my magnificence?" roared the Emperor in his most imperious voice. "No," said the first, a shy bespectacled sophomore with a dirty blonde ponytail and acne scars. Her partner, who had a way of letting his gaze slide away asserted in a squeaky voice, "Your Magnificence, this suit is designed with the most advanced optical camouflage ever developed. Our advisor holds the patent, but allowed us to use it, just this once, for your suit. "Try it. Do, try it." They helped the Emperor into their suit and toggled each toggle and zipped each zipper and clamped down the helmet and checked the gauges and hoses and asked, "How does it feel?" "It fits like a glove! Why, I feel as if I am wearing nothing at all! So light! So transparent! My hands flex, my knees bend-- You, my children, get the prize." And his minions wrote the prize check for three million Euros. "For hark!" said the undergrad's advisor "only the best and brightest understand and can sense this wonderful space suit. To the uneducated it will seem invisible." And the scientists and engineers and astronauts and cosmonauts and taikonauts seeing that their own designs had no chance, began to murmur that it was indeed a fine design, yes, the lines were a bit blurry the color faded into the background, but that was a good thing and they took no exception to the undergrads' design. Came the day when the Emperor arrived at the Orbiting Star Station having overcome his unseemly space-sickness, and determined to step through an airlock into the bright/dark of space to crown his Imperial feat as the first Imperial astronaut. And so he took off all his clothes even his majestic jockey shorts and his Imperial tube socks. The two undergraduates came forward. They toggled the toggles and zipped the zippers and clamped the helmet and checked the gauges and hoses and declared him safe to go Outside. And he entered the airlock. He knew that Justina exotic, naive, candid, authentically womanly would be watching. He had commissioned a special telescope, just for her, and that telescope would be trained on him. He would wave, and she would wave back. (Although he wouldn't see her. One of the losing designs had had a special video receiver so he could see Justina at the moment of his triumph and for a moment he regretted not choosing that one, except it was ugly and clunky and an unstylish shade of puce and the helmet made him look like a popcorn machine.) He approached the airlock and the engineers and scientists and astronauts and cosmonauts and taikonauts all murmured their admiration of the brilliant design. And the Emperor stepped into the air lock and the air was voided into space and the Emperor showed no discomfort for this was a most cunningly designed space suit and he gloried in the image he must cut to his beautiful Justina who he almost married once except that he couldn't get permission from his first wife whose father ran the biggest bank in Greater Bluvia. And the Emperor floated to the door of the airlock and pushed himself out onto the hull of the Orbiting Star Station. The invisible magnetic boots held him to the metal hull. The invisible helmet surrounded his head with the sweetest and most breathable air. The invisible renewing oxygen tanks sent deliciously perfumed oxygen to his Imperial nostrils. And he said, this is what it is to be Imperious! Now I, Emperor of Greater Bluvia, am truly famous in history as the first space-faring Emperor! And the scientists and engineers and astronauts and cosmonauts and taikonauts held their breath, for it was true! The invisible space suit was the best space suit ever designed. And the Emperor began to do jigs and skips, and pirouettes and cartwheels on the surface of the Orbiting Star Station. For he was now the greatest, and his lovely Justina would be impressed and would love him for himself and not just for the ten million Euros he spent on her villa in Lorentz. And then Justina, trembling with admiration, set her gaze to the eyepiece of her special telescope. And she drew back. For nobody had prepared her. Nobody had told her what to see. And she said, "But he is naked!" She said this on satellite TV. Now the Emperor, because he had taken his smart phone with him, heard this exclamation and his skin began to freeze and boil and his eyes began to blur and his body felt that it might explode and the Emperor poor Emperor very shortly knew no more. And the scientists and engineers and astronauts and cosmonauts and taikonauts and the viewing public and everybody in heaven and earth saw the Emperor effervesce like a headache tablet in water. And they said, yes, I knew it, but I didn't want to say, and well, the design was innovative, but really-- and I'm glad he was brave enough to be the first to try it. And this only proves, my darlings, that the truth is a dangerous thing, and that neither money nor love nor the acclamation of experts can save you from hard vacuum. |