Pancakes was the first story posted on Pork Pony in its debut December 24, 2001 issue. Weaver, a friend of mine from high school, quickly became an integral part of Pork Pony, writing many of the site's best stories. He's since penned numerous movie scripts, the kind of stuff that makes Hollywood quiver. -CL
Processing vast amounts of information in a fractionated second's time is what the brain does, baby. Optically speaking, every visual aspect of the reflected light (photons) passing through the cornea, iris, and pupil, slamming against the retina and optic nerve is analyzed upon the precise stimulation of the rods and cones. Its all about rhodopsin and 11-cis-retinal, chief. Through smell, olfactory receptors will decipher any and all odors polite enough to volunteer their services. The other three senses are equally as important and impressive as the first two, the sound, the feel and perhaps, even the taste of what is before someone. A person sits before a plate of pancakes resting upon a typical wooden table. The round shape and its golden color are obvious characteristics. But the pancake's thickness, its breadth and imagined texture are also processed, but not consciously recorded. Staring deeper at the pancakes invokes other thoughts, involuntary and meaningless, but nonetheless processed in the mind. What do the pancakes look like at the molecular level? Do I break a carbon to oxygen bond when I cut the pancake with a fork? Do I create other substances during this action? Am I actually eating other chemicals that are not pancake? If I choose to cut the pancake a few angstroms to the left, will I be eating a carcinogenic molecule, or will I consume a small quantity of a medicine that will make me immune to herpes? Will it cause me to fear public speaking? The good Lord only knows what will happen when I start chewing the pancake.
Even faster and deeper thoughts whiz through the mind, their genesis from the moment of visual confirmation of the pancakes on the wooden table. What do electrons taste like, and could I somehow get them into a bowl and eat them before they react? If I cut myself, will I become a pancake? Are these pancakes molybdenum-free?
Roughly 460 trillion femtoseconds pass, then the mind involuntarily stimulates the eyelid to blink. Then the person before the pancakes begins the meal, unaware of the gymnastics of the synapses that occurred underneath the dominant thought of grabbing the fork.
Going way back, I now find who dropped the original science 'round these parts.
Every time I drop science, I hope that someone steps in it and has to hose it off of their shoes (preferably Birkenstocks) in the yard before going inside. That is why I never drop science in the ghetto...no yards/hoses - but hoes o'plenty.
The irony being that the ghetto is one of the places on this Earth where they most need having some science dropped. Not just because of struggling schools, but also because they really need the emotional boost that fusion-powered hover bikes would bring.