Welcome to the Coinquay web presence -- / -- Welkom by die Coinquay webpraesens (Milliard)

Following a prompt from Heksie Gertenbach, I started the translation of this work by the late P C Haarhoff. The work is HAARHOF, P.C. 1987. Die Miljardplaatjies. From HAARHOF, P.C. 1987. Uit 'n ander wêreld. Cape Town. Human & Rousseau. p.11-15. Often big publishing houses are unaware of the need for their work to be translated and made available for non-Afrikaans speaking speculative fiction (toekomsfiksie) fans.

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... The Milliard Tags

"Otto Eckardt - Optische Instrumente"

The little shop in one of the alley lanes of Berlin's busy Kurfürstendamm immediately grabbed my attention. The old fellow behind the counter greeted me cordially and when I explained that I merely wanted to browse he casually continued with his work, head slightly tilted back in order to peep through the prince-nez on his nose.

Under the glass counter lay a number of prewar cameras and binoculars, from the days when Germany still dominated the market. Die shelves behind the counter contained an assortment of telescopes, eye testing apparatus and the like.

One of the cameras had a highly unusual shape and I asked him to unpack it for me.

"Etwas speziell," I remarked while I turned it in my hands to get a closer view.

"Sehr speziell," he concurred. He told me that only a few of these models even reached the market before production ceased because of the war. Since such cameras were obscure and the price - he mentioned an amount that took my breath away - too high to compete with mass produced products from the East, he would probably be stuck with it.

"Perhaps. But for collector's quality I have always been willing to pay a little more," I answered with a slight smile.

It was as if he relaxed and he showed me how the camera was put together.

At the heart of it was a flat glass tag, perhaps the size of a visiting card. He carefully took it out and held it between thumb and forefinger. The front of the tag had a blueish tint, with the inscription "X10" in the upper right corner. The back was slightly reddish.

He pulled a book closer and held the tag some distance from the print. "And what do you say about this?"

I bent forward. Suddenly I saw that the tag was a strong magnifying glass! While the tips of my fingers and the skin on my head pricked, I tried to figure out how it worked and I cautioned myself not to show my excitement.

For a while I made myself to appear to be deciding whether or not to spend such a large amount on the camera, and then I said that I would take it.

"What would happen if one of the components should break?" I enquired while he put the camera back into its casing.

"I'm sorry, but I would not be able to help you. All I have is a couple of the glass tags, and they are somehow defunct."

He took 'n tin out of the drawer. The tags were of darker colour, with the inscription "X10**9" in the corner.

He held one of them over the book and there was only a blueish haziness. Then he looked at me and shrugged. "The factory in Jena sent them here shortly before the end of the war - in March 1945."

I took the tag from him and looked at it. "Please can I also take these tags?

"Very well. But only three then. I want to keep one myself, as a souvenir."

I paid and we parted.

Back in South Africa, high against the mountain at the Hartbeespoort Dam, at first I don't mention the camera, not even to my family.

One evening I took it apart in the study to examine the tag more. With the blue tint face up it magnified, ten times, and with the red tint face up it reduced, ten times, so that the print became illegible. One could also look through it as the furniture in the room, with the same results.

The other tags remained a mystery. I took one out of the tin and looked at the numbers "X10**9" on it.

Normally this would represent a one with nine zeros, that is 1 000 000, in other words a milliard, or a thousand million. But at first I did not think of the inscription as a milliard, because a milliard is a big number. In a heap one can still visualise it, because a heap of sand may contain one or two milliard grains of sand. But a milliard grains of sand places side by side in a row would cover the 1000 odd miles between Johannesburg and Cape Town.

The next morning on my way to work I contemplated what one may have been able to see if the tags were really be able magnify a milliard times.

The morning air was fresh and I let the sunroof slide down to enjoy it. With my left hand I pulled the cassette cabin closer, chose the first tape of Le noze di Figaro and pushed it into the cassette player. The overture began playing and I adjusted the volume slightly higher while I thought about it.

An atom enlarged a milliard times would be about as large as a grapefruit. The core and electrons it consists of are, however, perhaps ten thousand times smaller than that, and would therefor be invisible, with only space in between. The principle of uncertainty makes the problem even more complex, because it prevents us from determining the exact position of atomic particles. It would cause the electrons to be "smeared" across the atom, like the beating of wings of the sugarbird taken with a slow camera.

But wait - then the microscopic particles would in fact become visible! Could this have explained the haziness on the other tags?

That evening I took the one of the tags with the darker colour out of the tin again. When I held it over the desk with the blueish side face up there was the haziness again - but when I moved the tag away, it was as if the clouds became lighter and darker! One had to stand back - the images was larger than the tag!

I turned around and looked through the tag to the wooden floor boards. It took a moment to focus my eyes and then I saw half a hundred cotton balls, strung together with hazy ropes in long strings, stacked on top of each other in a festival of order and chaos. It truly was a milliard tag!

With amazement I explored the new world. A piece of metal had the regularly pattern of a gigantic honey cake; 'n drop of water boiled and foamed like a fierce storm at sea. For a long while I sat in my arm chair pondering, with my feet on the desk. Then I went to bed.

The next morning it was Saturday. I awoke early and lay thinking about the tags.

What would happen if one reduced things a milliard times? The earth would be a pebble, while the sun would be a hundred and fifty paces off. The nearest star would still be beyond the furthest earth satellites.

The laws governing one's field of view was still unclear to me. Would one


(unfinished...)


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(c) 1999 Samuel Murray
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