Mr.  Jefferson Hixon, ordinarily a stoic sort of physics teacher who well understood the stresses under which his students operated and therefore gave his pupils a tropic's worth of latitude with their papers, took the very last paper he had intended to read before turning in and crumpled it up with uncharacteristic violence.  He did read it, not once but twice.  He needn't have bothered with the repeat.   The second reading proved more taxing than the first.     Resisting the faint temptation to read it a third time, he threw it away into the nearest bin after, of course, having crumpled it.    He rose gingerly from his desk as though recovering from an assault and while walking to his bedroom mumbled,   "I can't believe what I have just read."

 

There it lay, all mangled in a trash bin.     Around 2:34 a.m, a solitary mouse, searching in earnest for a snack, happened by the bin and pressed its ear against it.       Unbeknownst to humans who are cursed with ears too large to receive the sounds, written documents laying open in waste paper bins are self-recitative.   Like recordings on a loop, they recite themselves over and over.   The mouse heard these sounds and though he only knew a sprinkling of English by virtue of having inhabited a physics teacher's home, tried to listen..

 

 

Hey, Mr. Hixon, 

Ok, look, I needed to talk to you about that fantastic extra credit question you gave us this weekend.  You know, the one that would up our last exam by a letter grade if answered correctly and provided we showed our work....

Well, you won't believe this, Teach, but let me tell you the following TRUE story.     

 

 

FRIDAY EVENING

 

Billy Rutherford sat down at his desk and almost immediately stood up again to fetch a drink from the refrigerator.   He wasn't the least bit thirsty, of course.    But the sight of the folded paper lying there on the table glowering at him menacingly made him antsy.   Well, fine, it almost scared the digestive tract out of him.    Of course, he knew he had to face it :  the grade he earned on the most recent exam, while not abysmal, did cause his parents to ground him for three days and threaten further punishments were he not to work assiduously to improve it.     Well, actually, he just had to improve his grade.  He didn't have to work so hard.  He just needed a wizard's mind, which he lacked, and a few inspired thoughts, which were tucked away in the remote cerebral catacombs: around the same place where memories of the weather conditions of every uneventful day were sent to dissolve.   So, actually, yes, he had to work hard.  He had to unfold the paper and brace himself, which he eventually did -after fetching the water he didn't need- but in reverse order.

 

'Extra credit:

A malevolent alien robot equipped with lethal projectiles is standing on the moon twenty meters away from an Apollo astronaut.  One second after the robot fires a projectile at 35 meters per second and at a 40 degree angle from the horizontal, the utterly brilliant astronaut starts running in the same exact direction as the fired projectile.  How fast does he have to run to be five meters ahead of the projectile when it strikes the lunar surface?  If the projectile explodes two seconds after impact and destroys everything within a 30 meter radius, how fast would he  have to run to be just at the edge of that circle of destruction?   Notes:  the surface gravity on the moon is 1.7 meters per second squared.  Also, there is no air resistance to neglect.'

 

 

To his horror and disgust, Billy saw Yuji Nemoto making faces.   Yuji wasn't there, of course. He lived on the far side of town.   Yet, Yuji's smug face always materialized in Billy's mind when a difficult math or physics problem came up and made him feel like a 112 pound sack of blithering idiocy.  Yuji had likely already solved that problem on the bus earlier that day.  Not that he needed to, of course.  Yuji had finished the most recent exam in record time, no doubt scored 160 out of 100 (you got extra points for writing in Vulcan), and while the rest of the students had been sweating howitzer shells over the test, he looked around with the type of serene smugness that could firebomb the psyches of all but the sternest souls.

 

Billy turned away from the paper and tried to ignore the thermal stresses of his body:  the chill in his gut and the hot, prickly sensation around his neck.     He didn't want to look down at the paper again and wouldn't have, had he not heard a frightening shriek issuing from the table.  To his shock, he heard a male voice screaming, "I can't stand it!  I can't stand it!  I can't do this anymore!  I quit!  I quit! I quit!!!'

 

Billy looked down to see what looked like a small astronaut figure standing on his desk.  He looked like he had just emerged from a smoldering hole from the paper, as though someone had just pushed a fiery arrow through it.        The fear he experienced before was nothing compared to the icy terror that caused him to leap away from the desk.  He saw a small astronaut standing on his desk.   The astronaut’s fists were pressed onto his hips and his countenance was dark and scornful, well, as dark and scornful as a small astronaut's countenance could possibly be.       Billy rubbed his eyes and looked again.   The astronaut remained, rooted firmly to the desk.    

 

"What are you?!"  Billy asked, numb with disbelief that he was actually addressing an action figure.  

"An astronaut, what does it look like?!" the figure responded disdainfully.      

 

"Well, you look like my little sister's action figure."

 

This response, though honest, was ill-advised for the astronaut's tone became all the harsher.  "Little action figu....Do you know who I am?!"

 

Billy gulped. "Um, no.."

 

"I'll give you a hint:  I was the eighth man on the moon!  Now do you know who I am?"

 

Billy looked up and started chewing his fingernails.  "Hmm...I, well, I, ah...let's see...Buz...no, no, he was one the first ones....and well, I guess....give me a minute..."

 

He wasn't given a minute.     The astronaut started jumping up and down with a fury that, considering he was a couple of inches tall and his voice became particularly squeaky when yelling, almost caused Billy to bend over with laughter.    He prevented this cachinnation by recalling that horrid time Mr. Hixon asked Yuji Nemoto to collect and grade everybody's homework.  

 

"Nobody knows who I am," the astronaut shouted with the passion of someone barking imprecations to an indifferent heaven. "Nobody!  Nobody!  Nobody!    Oh, sure, everybody knows the first one, Neil Armstrong!   Oh, sure, everybody knows Buzz Aldrin, the second one...."

 

"Buzz who?"  Billy interrupted disingenuously, trying to help.  The astronaut continued unabated. "Even most people know Michael Collins, Jack Schmidt and Eugene Cernan.  But, nobody, nobody, nobody knows ME!"  

 

Billy looked behind the astronaut to his cluttered desk and saw thereon his smart phone.  If only he could surreptitiously reach over, grab it, and look up the name...

 

"James Irwin!"

 

Billy looked nonplussed.  "What?"

 

"I am James Irwin!   I was the eighth man on the moon!!!"

 

"Oh," Billy said, his face brightening. "I knew that!    Hey, um, tell me, what was it like to be on the moon?"

 

James Irwin didn't hear him.   He started speaking in murmurs, as though he was only addressing himself.  "I was one of only twelve human beings to tread on the lunar surface and I am condemned to posthumous obscurity."   

 

Billy moved a little closer.  "Come again?"

 

James Irwin glared up at Billy.   He raced up onto the top of the closed physics book and shouted "I was one of only twelve people to walk on the moon and nobody knows me!!!'

 

"Please calm down,' Billy begged him with his index finger pressed against his lips.

 

"Well, how would YOU feel?!" 

 

"I know, but, well, I forgot to mention that my parents are out in the living room right now with their monthly bridge club friends.   I am not too hot with my parents right now and I kinda need to have no yelling in here, if that's ok."

 

"Do you know what I do all the time now?" James asked Billy, his volume a bit lower.   Billy cast a furtive and nervous glance at his closed bedroom door.  "No," he said.  "What do you do?"

 

"I spend all my time in physics problems and math problems and astronomy scenarios for children.  Whenever someone needs an Apollo astronaut to be on the moon, riding a seesaw, dropping a hammer or, in this last case, being pursued by a homicidal alien robot, I am the one summoned forth.       Hey, want to write a physics problem about an Apollo astronaut being fired out of a cannon at 30 degrees from the horizontal at 100 meters per second?   James Irwin will do it!   Hey, want to have an Apollo astronaut waving cheerfully out of a paper plate at a moon themed birthday party?   Hey, James Irwin will do it!    Hey, want to craft a math problem about some stupid, clumsy astronaut who plummets down Crater Tycho from rest and accelerates at 1.7 meters per second and how fast will be hit the surface and explain how many bones he'll break?   Don't call Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin or Heaven forbid Alan Shepherd or Pete Conrad.  No!!  The jerk astronaut who nobody has ever heard of will do it!! Over and over and over again!"

 

"Shhh...." Billy pleaded.

 

"Well, I am done!  Absolutely done!      That last problem was the final straw!   I will be damned if I am blown up one more time by some idiotic moon alien or be used as a bob in a moon monster pendulum.   I have left the problem and I will certainly NOT be going back into it!"

 

Billy looked over at the paper on which the extra credit problem had been written.  A sprawling scorch mark, looking curiously like rays along the moon's surface, covered most of the words, rendering them illegible.     

 

"Wait!" Billy said in desperation.  "You have to go back into it!   You have to re-enter it and seal up that metaphysical portal or whatever it is so I can complete the problem.  It is vitally important."

 

"Why?!" 

 

"Well, I need the grade. It's for extra credit and I, well, really need it!"

 

"Oh," James Irwin scoffed. "Terrible at math and physics are you?"

 

"No!" Billy shouted before clamping a hand over his mouth while looking with horror at the door.  He whispered from behind his fingers. "I'm fine at math and physics, but, well, you know how it is."

 

"No, I don't know, actually.  I earned a Master's degree in Aeronautical Engineering, thank you.  Math is a piece of cake!"

 

"Not for everyone!"   Billy seethed.

"So, maybe you should be running around like a chicken in this stupid problem and I should be out here solving it."

 

"Hey," Billy replied hopefully.  "Could you solve this problem?"

 

"Absolutely not!" James snapped.  "I am a person of impeccable credentials who always abides by the strictest code of personal conduct.  NASA is very particular about those they choose to be part of the noble astronaut corps.  Such dishonesty is leagues beneath me!'

 

"You could have just said 'no,'"   Billy sneered as his bedroom door opened.   He stood transfixed as his father's crimson-tinted face protruded through the threshold. 

"What is going on?!"  he demanded.

 

"Nothing, Dad. Why?"

 

"I heard you yelling in here a moment ago. The others told me I should go investigate.   I didn't want to because I feared you might be perfectly fine."

 

"I am perfectly fine, Dad," Billy assured him.  "Just whooping for joy because I love my physics homework."

 

"I'm sure," his father said, sounding dubious.   He then sniffed and looked around. "Is something burning?"

 

Billy looked down sheepishly. His Dad pointed at the scorched paper.  "What is that?!”

 

"Well, it's my physics homework, sort of..."

 

"You love your homework so much you set it on fire?!"

"It's a long story."

"Well, amuse me with it."

 

"Um, well, Mr Hixon is something of a spy novel geek and he sometimes asks us to swallow our homework or set it on fire after reading it so it doesn't fall into enemy hands.  And, well, not being hungry, I decided to..."

 

"Are you serious?"

 

"Well, it's not like me to make something up on the spot..."

"I think I might soon have a nice chat with your Mr. Hixon," he replied while looking sternly at the desk again.

 

"Yeah, Dad, he'd love tha.."

 

"Is that your sister's thing?"  he asked, pointing at the astronaut.

 

"No!" Billy said, stepping forward.  "No, it's mine."

 

"It certainly looks like Dahlia's toy," the father said, grabbing it.  "I'll just give it back to her, thank you.    You know how upset your sister gets over every little thing."

 

"What the hell?!"   James Irwin cried as Billy's Dad carried him through the threshold.     The father pivoted and looked hard at his son.  "Okay, mister.  That's an extra week of grounding for attitude and coarse language."

 

"Damnit," Billy mumbled harshly under his breath.

"Now, it's two weeks."

 

Billy stood purple faced but silent as his father left the room, completely unaware that the astronaut protruding from his fingers was shaking his fist at Billy as the door closed.    

 

Now, Mr. Hixon, you know that most people would have given up at this point.    I couldn't read my homework, the astronaut who was supposed to have been part of the problem was taken by my father, who was in a terrible mood, of course, and once my spoiled rotten sister got a hold of the astronaut, I didn't think I would ever get him back.     Most people would have just said, "oh, never mind" and gone to sleep.   But, no, not me because, as you know, I take my studies very seriously.  So, I quietly opened my bedroom door and...

 

Billy peered down the corridor and saw his father silhouetted against the bright lights issuing from the living room at the end of the hall.     He watched his Dad knock on his sister’s door and in a moment, the door opened.  

 

            “Hi, Dad.”

           

            “Here.  I think this is yours.”

 

            “Oh, great. Where was it?”

           

            “Billy had it.”

 

            “Did you hang him?!”

            “Stop it.”

Billy stood frozen as his sister closed her door and his father returned to the living room. 

 

 

Now, you see, Mr. Hixon, if I had just run into my sister’s room and rescued James Irwin, the whole house would have blown up.   I had to think.  You know, you tell us how physics involves a lot of creative thinking.  Well, after just a minute I came up with an idea.  I snuck into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator quietly because I could hear the chatter and laughter in the living room.  I found the cake that Mom always makes for her bridge friends and well, I cut out a piece and dabbled the powdered sugar topping against the corner of my lip, closed the fridge door and..

 

            “What do you want, jerk?!”
           

            “Dahlia, can I have some of your cake if you’re not going to eat it?”

 

            Dahlia seethed. “What cake?”

            “Mom got me some cake from the fridge. Didn’t you get any?”

            “No!”

            “It’s in the fridge.  Go quick while there is some left.  You know what pigs adults are.”

 

            Billy watched gleefully as his sister rushed to the kitchen.    As she left her bedroom door open, Billy could see James Irwin standing between Ken and Barbie on his sister’s shelf.  As he quickly approached, Billy noticed that the astronaut’s mood hadn’t improved considerably since their last encounter. His fists were clenched at his side, his reddened face was contorted with pain and Billy thought he even saw wisps of smoke issuing from his head.

 

            “But, Barbie, Hon, I didn’t say I didn’t like the purple mascara.”

 

            “You made a face!”

 

            “I just grimaced!”

            “That’s a face!”

 

            “Well, the tangerine mascara was better.”

 

            “FYI, I hate the tangerine mascara because makes me look stupid and WE know that, don’t we, Ken?”

 

            “Nothing could make you look more stupid.”

 

            “Sweet talk is not going to work this…”

 

            Billy grabbed the astronaut and pulled him off the shelf.  Unfortunately, however, his hand knocked Ken and Barbie over and he quite adroitly caught them before they landed on the ground.    Suddenly frightened at what he thought was an approaching adult, Billy took Ken, Barbie and James out of his sister’s room.  He scurried down the corridor and hid the action figures behind him as he passed the kitchen threshold, beyond which he saw Dahlia lifting a large square of cake from the refrigerator.     Billy wasted no time as soon as he entered his room and closed the door. He tossed Ken and Barbie into his top desk drawer and then shut it.   He placed the astronaut next to the scorched piece of paper and spoke firmly.

 

            “Look. I’m really sorry you’re going to suffer post humus obscuration, or whatever it is.  I’m sorry nobody knows you and nobody realizes you walked on the moon.   But, look, I  NEED this extra credit and I can’t get it unless you return to the problem and let me get on with it. So, Mr. James, could you please turn around and do whatever you have to do to insert yourself back into that word problem Universe, or whatever it is!”

           

            James Irwin remained obstinate.  “As I said before, I refuse to participate in any more of these humiliating scenarios.    I’ve done it for years and I have had enough!”

            Gritting his teeth, Billy lifted the astronaut off the desk and held him over the top drawer, which he then opened.

 

            “I didn’t say I didn’t like the sweater with the big blue ‘B’ on it!”

 

            “You rolled your eyes, Ken.”

 

            “I was looking up.”

            “That’s rolling your…”

 

            Billy slammed the drawer shut.  “Menacing alien robot or a week shut up in the drawer. Choose!”

 

            James Irwin looked ruefully up at Billy.  “Not much of a choice..”

 

            “And…”

 

            “I’ll go back into the problem,” the astronaut said sheepishly.

 

            “Good choice,” Billy replied, placing him on the desk next to the paper.  “Now, go back!”

 

            “It’ll take a bit.    I have to sort out the math.”

 

            Billy fumed. “What do you mean?”

 

            “FYI, negotiating between portals requires a bit of advanced matrix calculus, thank you very much.  Oh, G-d, I can’t believe I just said FY…”

 

            “How long will it take?!”

 

            “As long as it takes!”  James Irwin looked slyly up at Billy. “Unless, you’d like to, um, help.”

           

            “No, thanks.  Just get on with it. And, don’t scorch the paper this time!”

 

            “The scorching only happens on the exit side.”

 

            “Why?”

 

            “In order to explain that, I’d have to give you a dissertation about the fundamentals of the 29-dimensional space-time continuum.”

 

            Billy reached over onto the desk and retrieved his phone.  “Oh, never mind. Just do it.”

 

        So, Mr. Hixon, the astronaut needed about five minutes to work out the numbers to get back into the extra credit problem and while he was working on that, I was busy working some little grey cells.

 

            “Hello?”

 

“Hello, Yuji?”

 

            “This is he.”

 

            “Hey, it’s Billy. How are ya?”

            “I would rate this hour an 8.74 so far, but much of the hour still remains. How may I help you, William?”

 

            Billy winced and dug his nails into his palm.  “You know that, ah, extra credit problem Mr. Hixon gave us. You know, the one about the, um, alien robot on the moon.”

 

            “I remember.”

 

            “Well, you probably solved it on the bus going home, right?”

 

            “I did solve it on the bus: in between translating a page of Caesar’s ‘Gallic War’ and completing an essay about Lambert’s Law of Absorption as an extra credit chemistry assignment. As you know I am enrolled in a college chemistry course.  I would have accomplished more, but, of course, the bus trip is only 12 minutes, on average.”

 

            At that moment, Billy noticed James Irwin staring at him with amusement.    “Oh, be quiet!” Billy said, covering the mouthpiece with his hand.

 

            “Well, ah, good for you.  I was wondering if, maybe, you could give me a wee bit of a hint to help me.   Not that I probably need it, of course, but you never know…”

           

            Yuji Nemoto chortled audibly at the same time that Billy heard his father shouting in the kitchen,  “Hey, get out of the cake!  Who told you to eat that?!”

 

            “Why, William, yes, I think I can give you a hint.”

 

            “Great,” Billy said, looking anxiously at the door while feeling his intestines liquefy. “Go ahead.”

 

            “Just remember that the range equals the square of the velocity multiplied by sine two theta and divided by g, which is 0.167 Earth g;   in parabolic form, the projectile height is x times tangent theta minus g over the velocity squared multiplied by the cosine theta squared; quotient multiplied by x squared.  Comprehend?”

 

            Billy was scribbling on his arm and mumbling, “’Just remember…ok, what was the next part?”

 

            Yuji sighed. “Good night, William.”

 

            “No, Yuji, wait!  Hello!  Wait! Hello?”

 

            As Billy was speaking into a dead phone, a perfectly circular portal illuminated by an intense violet light opened up in the extra credit problem.   James Irwin stood at the opening and prepared to leap into it.

 

            “Yuji, hello! Hello! Damn!”

 

            In frustration, Billy threw his phone which struck James Irwin squarely on the head, knocking him cold.      Billy then saw the mini-astronaut lying prostrate in front of the portal which, to his horror, was starting to shrink.       He then jumped at the sound of his father pounding on the door.   “Hey!  Did you tell your sister to help herself to cake?!”

 

            While still staring nervously at the shrinking portal, Billy leaned his head toward the door and made loud snoring noises.

 

            “Oh, gee, my son is fast asleep. Whatever shall I do?!”  He knocked again.  “Open the door!”

 

           

            Well, Mr. Hixon, I have never thought so quickly before in my entire time.   Everything came together in an instant.  The unconscious astronaut, the contents of the drawer, and some garbage bag twist ties I saw at the corner of my desk.

           

'Extra credit:

A malevolent alien robot equipped with lethal projectiles is standing on the moon twenty meters away from an unconscious Apollo astronaut who was twist-tied to a Barbie Doll on one side and a Ken doll on the other.  One second after the robot fires a projectile at 35 meters per second and at a 40 degree angle from the horizontal, the utterly brilliant dolls start running in the same exact direction as the fired projectile.    How fast do they have to run to be five meters ahead of the projectile when it strikes the lunar surface?  If the projectile explodes two seconds after impact and destroys everything within a 30 meter radius, how fast would the dolls have to run to be just at the edge of that circle of destruction?   Notes:  the surface gravity on the moon is 1.7 meters per second squared.  Also, there is no air resistance to neglect.'

 

 

              And, Mr. Hixon, after pushing my desk next to the bedroom door to prevent any infiltration of distracting relatives, I sat down, looked at the problem and then, to my horror, realized that now not only was the astronaut being pursued, but so, too, were Ken and Barbie.  That constituted a three-body problem. And, since you once told us that three-body problems were unsolvable, I suddenly found myself in something of a jam.        After all my work, all my planning and creative thinking and innovation, the extra credit problem was suddenly beyond all human capacity to solve.        And, as it turned out, Mr. Hixon, the complications quadrupled exponentially, if that is even possible.    I am now grounded until my wedding day –whenever that is- so, so much for my bachelor party and, well, I understand that propelling Barbie into an alternate Universe is now an actionable offense according to Mattel’s legal staff and I think all this effort demonstrates my true devotion to physics and so I wondered if you could find it in your big, warm, kind and generous heart to at least, kind of, give me partial credit.