Bigot Hall

FACE VALUE

In the first three minutes of the universe, a hyperconcentrated dot of matter and energy exploded, space unfurled to accommodate the supercondensing gasses, and Uncle Burst’s ego broke away from the body of creation, expanding at an unimaginable rate. This much has been verified, but after months of gloomy silence at the dinner table, Burst tore off his bib and roared in no uncertain terms that he devoted every ounce of his strength to keeping ‘these features of mine’ on the front of his head. He stated that his face was the first thing to have emerged from Earths primordial soup, and said he would reproduce the event in a giant flask. This comprehensive outburst halted the meal, Snapper’s jaws frozen in the act of closing upon a wren. As we had always predicted, Burst had flipped from his rocker.

Snap surged to his feet. ‘You’re meddling with nature you bloody fool — look what can happen!’ And he pointed at the Verger.

I think Snap was eager to divert attention from himself at this time as everyone had started joking about his spring-loaded ribcage. We all knew he spent whole days laying in the woodland undergrowth, malevolent anticipation flushing his face as he waited for someone to step on him. The sarcasm started when a hedgehog blundered across Snapper’s belly and Snapper returned to the Hall complaining warily of a sudden gallstone. Leap had once had a gallstone like a meteorite and recognised Snap’s reluctance to compare notes for the shame it was. ‘I think you’ll find there’s one less hedgehog snouting through the bracken tonight,’ he announced, looking sharply at Snapper.

So when Burst began building a Urey reaction vessel, Snap was scornful and relieved. The vessel contained hydrogen, ammonia, methane, water and hydrogen sulphide — the stuff of life awaiting a spark of electricity. This spark was arced through the vessel at one-second intervals and Burst set up a time-lapse camera to shoot at the same rate. The atmosphere in the flask reproduced that of pre-biological Earth and when the lightning-wire flashed the entire mistake would be recreated in miniature.

We should have known it would be a turbulent event when Burst started muttering ‘Stand clear’ over and again from dawn till night. The day of the experiment we stood on the landing outside of Burst’s room, our features illuminated by the strobing light. The ticking electrode was the only sound until a blazing explosion blew Burst through the door in a litter of fragments.

‘Is he alright?’ asked Father.

‘Only by the broadest definition,’ frowned Leap.

Burst was in shock, his eyes locked upward in their sockets, eyelids flickering. The room was filled with smoke and the gas flask was utterly annihilated. ‘What did he see?’ gasped Leap, convinced that Burst’s stupor was the result of having witnessed an image which would have stunned a hardy bull. He salvaged the dented camera with a strangled cry.

The next day we gathered to watch the time-lapse footage. Burst was propped among us like a length of timber. Leap portrayed concern and stated that a second viewing of the horrors in the flask would release Burst from his catatonic state. We were all curious, knowing that Burst’s facial claim was a real possibility. He had long since established that the lines on his right palm precisely reproduced the impact patterns on the lunar surface. But why should confirmation of his latest theory blaze him into shock? Was it the first time he had seen his own face?

On the screen we saw a flickering downview of the flask, in which steam appeared to swirl and mass. It soon became dense and brown, streaking the flask walls with nucleic acid tar. A dark protein sludge bloomed at the base of the vessel, changing colour rapidly. The rich mud congealed, heaving, and unfurled from the centre. A face emerged like a plastercast from a vat. It was Snapper’s. The film ended abruptly.

As the lights went up, Snapper was triumphant. ‘Ha, ha, ha — there you go, Burst. It takes a real man to be the first carbon-based life form out of the primal matrix.’

The rest of us were stunned and, to my knowledge, Burst never spoke or moved again.

Unable to leave well enough alone, Leap raided Burst’s notes. The only related items he found were a drawing of the flask setup, a belligerent account of Burst’s emergence from the primordial stew and a scrawled speculation that the carbonised freeze-impression of that event could be found on the crust of a solar satellite. This was years before I saw the Viking Probe photographs of what appeared to be a giant face on the surface of Mars. This face, too, was unmistakably Snapper’s.