2. A dangerous endeavor involving a second stellation
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… I suddenly saw how the dissections must go:
Immediately I started the paper model. Its parts happened to be easy to make, they didn’t have many planes as it could appear judging by the SPDH itself.
That was the most enjoyable part – the closer you come to an ideal solution the fewer artificial elements your objects would have.
Soon I got a first part done – it was perfect! All its surfaces were indeed extrapolated faces of an imaginary inner platonic dodecahedron.
I made the outer planes green, the inner – orange, so when assembled, only the green will be visible. I’d probably chosen the colors to overpower the early snow gloominess outside. The first snow fell down early.
The green model with orange guts would resemble something like a watermelon or a papaya… When the second part was finished, I put it together with the first one.
They seem to be working fine. Still it wasn’t obvious if the final assembly would function. It could refuse to assemble at all or fail to hold as a whole rendering my efforts useless.
When the third part was added to the bunch, the pentagon faces of the inner dodecahedron started to become visible:
I decided to finish all six parts without trying partial assemblies. Soon the six were completed. They were lying on my desk waiting, and I couldn’t start putting them together… My wife and cousin were present. “What are you waiting for?” – they asked me. Instead of the answer I told them a story. When I was little, I read a short story, which I believe was a translation of an American fiction, about a great and powerful “computation machine”. I even remember its name – EPICAC. The machine was given a humongous task – to produce all possible combinations of all letters in all languages. The machine started cranking and it was assumed that it will work for several years to complete the task. Meanwhile strange things started to happen. I barely remember the details, but at some point a Tibetan monk appeared and suggested that machine should be stopped because there is an ancient manuscript telling that the humankind was created for one and only one reason – to name all possible names of god. Even more than that – the entire universe was created with this plan, and humans were just the summit of the evolution of matter destined to make it happen. The plot made several turns, many different forces intervened (including governments of course). Meanwhile the machine has been cranking letters, and finally finished. “So what?” – asked my wife and cousin. “Well” – said I – “even though the task was far fetched, the idea itself stuck in my head – that we were sent to this world to finish something monumentally important”. “Like what?” asked them. “Like for example creating a functional mechanism using only faces of a foundation solid, like dodecahedron”. “Why dodecahedron?”
“Because it’s the first platonic solid which has stellar forms which can allow for such a machine to appear” – said I – “Tetrahedron doesn’t, So a dodecahedron is the first candidate, otherwise why was The Rusty One sent my way? … Now lets put it together – will you help me?” I can swear they hesitated for a second. Then helped me, but looked scared a little.
We put the green model together – it looked phenomenal…
The stars outside didn’t change much. And the Earth surface didn’t split. I already knew why – the thing wouldn’t hold together. The parts were loose and did not slide against each other. A spectacular failure to function as a machine performed by a green/orange model It was a failure.
“Did you really believe what you said?” – asked my wife and cousin. “I did” – said I – “did you?”,
As a matter of fact I’ve been through this before. Only then I was alone… |
