The PCC Experience

Myself and XL pals Sameer and Aseem want to do something out of the ordinary, and so decide to offer ourselves as guinea pigs for an experimental system that can change anything's phase from solid to liquid, and back.

The only hitch is - this system has a rather high chance of information loss during the transitions. But this element of risk is why we opted in, in the first place, so this isn't that big an issue for us intrepid go-getters.

So there we are, sitting in the Phase Change Chamber (PCC) and making lame jokes to hide our nervousness, when the mad scientist (can it be any other type?) announces that the process is about to begin.

In just about a minute's time, we feel ourselves sort of 'melting', and start feeling curiously high. Just as suspicion starts to creep in about the crazy scientist simply gassing us with dope, we realize that we cannot see anything around us any more, limbs are non-existent, and indeed we are completely unable to comprehend our own forms.

We're only just beginning to get panicky, but soon a funny sensation of total awareness of our surroundings envelopes us. So this is what liquids must feel like, we think, as we hear the scientist cackling maniacally.

But barely have a few minutes passed with us in our new forms, when, to our horror, we sense Aseem evaporating. Sameer and myself just stay put, dumbstruck with fear at this totally unexpected turn of events. I SHOULDN'T HAVE HAD THAT CHEESE-STUFFED VADA PAV FOR BREAKFAST, we can feel Aseem scream.

We are terrified by now, and start wailing for the scientist to turn us solid once again, which he does with eerie promptness.

That shouldn't have happened, he says, looking scared.

What do you mean?!?, we yell back.

Just what I said - my system is no tuned to handle gases, so I'm afraid your friend's irrecoverable now. Please accept my apologies. You may go now, is the rather disturbing response.

Resigned to the fact, we ask him (purely out of scientific interest) if any one of us had experienced any information loss during the phase transitions.

Mad scientist guy informs us that there was a minor issue when we became liquid, so we'll have pointy pixie-ears for the rest of our lives, but the liquid-to-solid change had absolutely no problems at all.

You see, he says, it was Aseem-less transition.