When the International
Theophysical Year (ITY) started, I pooh-poohed it as just another sink for
Federal funds. But the fellows in charge announced some discoveries which will
influence not only our lives, but our reactor designs as well.

For example, those surprise scrams
and those instrument hiccups have nothing to do with circuit malfunctions.
They're the work of poltergeists. And that extra month of lifetime, or that
added 0.0001 of breeding performance weren't miscalculations. They were boons
from resonant archangels.

Angels, devils, and human souls,
it seems, behave as electromagnetic radiations in four-dimensional space. And
with appropriate boundary conditions, their properties obey the Schroedinger
Wave Equation,

ih0= H0.

Each solution represents a
different kind of spirit, and is characterized by a unique eigenvalue.
Solutions are possible only for certain specific eigenvalues, which have been
identified mathematically and named by correlating the corresponding wave
functions with Biblical data. For example:

7.3206 Archangels

3.7684 Seraphim

1.0097 Cherubim

0.1121 Demons

2.9175 Gremlins

6.4302 Poltergeists

The eigenvalues of
"good" or "free" spirits are positive, while those of "evil"
or "bound" spirits are negative. The so-called "eternal"
spiritsas in the preceding tablehave real eigenvalues, while human souls,
whose lifetimes as such are finite, have complex eigenvalues of the form a +
ib.

For each human soul, there is a
unique, constant value of "a." The imaginary index "b,"
however, is continuously variable. It never vanishes, but it is very small when
the soul is in a state of grace, and it increases as the soul's owner commits
various sins. That is, b = sin(t). (To evaluate this function, ITY scientists
measured their own b variations during field experiments with professional
technicians called b-girls.)

When b is large, the soul's owner
has difficulty receiving power from the Deity, which is broadcast only on real
frequencies. (The phenomenon is akin to the fading of, say, KDKA, when the dial
drifts away from 1020.) There is evidence, however, that the owner can
"tune" his soul periodically to reduce b. Experts disagree on the
best method, but practically all experts advocate tuning at least weekly in
authorized repair shops, and many suggest that the process be aided by
immersing the unit in a chemical solvent early in life.

At end of life, the soul abandons
its complex eigenvalue and assumes a new wave form whose eigenvalue is
realthat is, whose b component vanishes identically. This change is known to
be accomplished by conformal transformation, but again there's disagreement
about the details. Some authorities hold that the change is immediate, while
others believe it's iterative, involving principles of mass balance.

Scientists have proven, however,
that if the soul's end-of-life b component is less than some number, E, the
resulting "eternal" wave function will represent a "good"
spirit, with a positive eigenvalue. Conversely, if b exceeds E, the soul will
become an "evil" spirit.

Attempts to evaluate E have failed
so far. In fact, we can never learn E's exact magnitude, because of the
Uncertainty Principle. Work with sintillation detectors and spectral
interferometers may someday establish a least -upper bound, but the ITY
Safeguards Committee urges us meanwhile to keep our soul's b value as close to
zero as possible.

Human souls were especially useful
in the early ITY studies, because their physical properties were already well
established. Easiest experiments were conducted some 5,000 years ago by Adam,
Moses, Solomon, and their followers, and first recording of the Principle of Tunability
is generally attributed to Matthew et al. (See, however, the Soviet Journal
of Physics for May 1917.)

So ITY scientists used the known
physical properties of souls to establish the mathematical foundations for
spirits in general.

Then they applied their math to
reactors, whose affinity for evil spirits has long been suspected. The chief
findings so far:

1) Reactor
misbehaviorsoscillations, departures from nucleate boiling, and the likeare
indeed caused by spirits. When the affected reactor properties are "in
tune" with components of four-dimensional spirit waves, the spirits enter
the reactor by resonance capture. For example, if the neutron flux distribution
at some energy resembles a projection of gremlin waves onto three-space, the reactor
will tend to harbor gremlins. Hence,

2) The present reactor-behavior
equationsnow proven hopelessly inadequatemust be augmented with spirit-effect
terms, and solved simultaneously with the Schroedinger Equation to insure
against unwanted resonances. ("Good Spirit" resonances are
acceptable, and may be the sole reason why the designed-in-ignorance reactors
of today can even go critical.)

There are many unanswered
questions, of course, particularly in the area of how to minimize the effect of
evil spirits on reactors designed without benefit of the new discoveries.
(Currently accepted theory: exorcise the control rods.)

So work will continue. Meanwhile,
all ANS members are invited to a mass heresy trial of the ITY scientists, a
week from Tuesday at the Cathedral in Florence (Galileo Memorial Chapel).
Coffee and Martyrs FlambŁs will be served.