"Quantum molecules taste like hot dogs...

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"Quantum molecules taste like hot dogs...

...and dark matter smells like cheese. Got it!" Kosmo said with a solemn salute, a formality not quite necessary for what he was doing--helping Dexter cook up some time capsules or whatever--but that seemed to add to the gravity of the situation. Gravity, or the calculated defiance of it, being one of his specialties, as Kosmo was a space dog, a true blue graduate of the Pet Astronomical School of Astronauts or PASA.

Dexter was sometimes pre-occupied, sometimes post-occupied, but at the moment it seemed like he was existing in the present as just occupied. He was trying construct a perfect truncated icosahedron, the platonic ideal of the football or soccer ball. But every time he had the icosahedron all set up and he was about to truncate a molecule or two, something happened--a cosmic ray in a far off galaxy, or a raindrop in the Sahara desert, or his neighbors playing a heavy metal concert next door, and he was forced to start again. It wasn't going to work under the normal laws of physics. He was going to need to go quantum.

And that is where Kosmo comes in. Kosmo liked to hang out in the laboratory, sometimes lending a helping hand but more often than not accidentally knocking over beakers or trying to synthesize peanut butter. Today was different. His spacefaring knowledge was needed to create the antigravity that would result in the idoneous football shape.

The precise scientific formula is complex, but the crux involved vigorously shaking a jar full of quantum molecules suspended in dark matter. Kosmo was the percussionist and drummer (PaD) for PASA. So his shaking skills were nonpareil. So he stood there shaking away to a steady beat of 120 BPM like most pop songs. But as any experienced scientist who is also a percussionist knows, quantum molecules are harder to shake than tambourines or cabasas. Whereas a tambourine physically exists in the material world, a quantum molecule simultaneously exists in the material and immaterial world. so you're both in and out of time.

The smell of hot dogs and cheese, the uneasy feeling of existing and not existing, was making Kosmo nervous. When Kosmo got nervous, he licked his lips. When he started licking his lips, the quantum molecules began to practice their eldritch art on the poor canine. For Kosmo himself existed in a world of uncertainty. On the one hand, he was a Space Dog. He had been awarded Chief Sniffer at PASA. He held graduate degrees in arcane sciences where numbers are described with letters and things get so messy and complex that even Einstein (Bob Einstein, not Albert) is left scratching his head. On the other hand, he was a dog. He was very much a dog. He enjoyed sniffing, barking, running, eating, making friends, marking his territory, all of the lovable, essentially canine qualities we appreciate in our dog friends. Appreciate--and sometimes bemoan. For Kosmo's fatal weakness was the same fatal weakness that any dog, from the regal Great Pyrenees to the humble chihuahua, is subject to:

He couldn't resist a big fat juicy molecule that smelled just like a hot dog that was suspended in an antimatter solution that smelled just like cheese.

to be continued