Our tale begins on the day before Christmas break at the Battle Creek Area Mathematics and Science Center, everyone’s favorite institution of higher learning. In five minutes, the Biochemistry class will be let out. Come, do let us take a peek inside the classroom.

We observe as the instructor, Mr. Walter Erhardt, writes equations laboriously on the chalkboard. He is an experienced chemistry man, one who has seen everything from the famous "no more finals" sit-in of 1992 to students keeling over in lab chairs due to suffocation in the chemistry lab. As for the students taking notes, well, they seem like typical run-of-the-mill average kids from average typical ordinary families.

"Alrighty now, it’s no news to you that four lab conclusions will be due the day you get back. I also expect the essay on quantum theory. Also, please read pages 465-980 in Zumdahl and do problems 1-100."

"But, Mr. Erhardt, it’s Christmas!" piped little Tim Cratchet, an ambitious student in the front row.

"Christmas?!" Mr. Erhardt rolled his eyes. "That has no meaning to me. As for trying to dissuade me, you can go suck beans as far as I’m concerned. Christmas is just another lame excuse to miss school. If I ran things around here, ya wouldn’t get it. Christmas is nothing but a big humbug. That’s all." With that the students left the room.

Mr. Erhardt sighed. "Kids nowadays," he mumbled as he walked down the dark, dusty, deserted hallway. "The next thing you know they’ll want advance warning before tests and exams!"

As Mr. Erhardt sorted his office area, preparing to leave for home, an old newspaper clipping taped to his file cabinet caught his eye. It was the obituary of his old teaching colleague, Dr. Elmer Burghendeere, pictured working in a lab. Years ago they had team-taught chemistry at the same high school. "Ah, good ol’ Elm," he reflected. "We used to torture so many students together." He remembered Elmer’s motto: "Give students an inch and they won’t give you a nanometer."

As he was leaving the building he was approached by his too-jolly colleague, Mr. Frank. "So, are you coming to my party on Christmas Day? It should be splendid fun!"

"Bah, humbug!" snarled Mr. E. as he brushed past a startled Mr. Frank and stormed out the door to the parking lot.

It was about 10:30 when the poor soul arrived at his home. It was a cold, chilly December night, and there was a hint of water molecules crystallizing together in the air. As he walked up his driveway, the wind whistled through the trees, creating sound waves and strange disturbances in the air. The wind seemed to be calling, "Waaalter… Waaalter!" Mr. Erhardt quickened his pace.

As he fumbled for his house key in the dark, the light of a streetlamp illuminated the brass lion doorknocker in a strange way. Mr. Erhardt started. He could have sworn he saw the face of Elmer Burghendeere on the handle! Mr. Erhardt rushed into the house and slammed the door. His family was asleep upstairs, but rather than disturb them, he decided to correct some lab notebooks before going to bed, to ease his nerves. He slumped down on the living-room couch and emptied the contents of the big cardboard box onto the coffee table. It gave him good cheer to mark big green NY’s all over the pages. Soon he was so wholeheartedly into it that he had forgotten all about the doorknocker incident. At 11:30 he switched on his television to the Science Channel for a rerun of "As the Boiling Chip Turns," but it was so incredibly boring that even a seasoned chemistry buff would be soon be dozing soundly on the couch. (And he was snoring rather loudly.)

The grandfather clock chimed midnight. By this time the snow shower had developed into a near-blizzard. The power went out. All was silent for a few moments. Then the clank and rattle of test tubes and beakers could be heard coming down the street, closer and closer to Mr. Erhardt’s humble dwelling. Indeed, someone or something was nearly at the door! Then whatever it was stepped right through the door and stopped in the living room, right in front of the slumbering chemist!

The spectre dropped his load with a clatter. Mr. Erhardt sprang from the couch to see what was the matter. But what to his wondering eyes should appear, but the ghastly form of Dr. Burghendeere! The spectre had volume, but no mass. He also seemed to be luminescent, almost bluish radiant. Very weird.

"Elmer! Is it really you?" stammered Mr. Erhardt.

The tall, gaunt, bespectacled doctor nodded. He had iron chains attached to his wrists, ankles, neck, waist, and even his tousled white head, dragging various articles that would be used in a chemistry lab: beakers, Bunsen burners, and even a large GC mass spectrometer attached to the chain around his waist.

"How did you become like this?" inquired Mr. E.

"All of my graduating class of 1972 became mentally insane and had to be deported to asylums. Now they are all working at McDonald’s, perpetual hippies, condemned to spend the rest of their lives frying Chicken McNuggets and Big Macs as part of Bill Clinton’s American Dream!"

Mr. Erhardt gasped in horror. "But you were always…a man of the science!"

"Humanity should have been my science! I should have researched goodness and fairness rather than molecular biology! Benevolence should have been my lab coat, not greed and ambition! Now I am condemned by the Big Chemist Up In the Sky to spend the rest of eternity (except for tonight, of course) working at Upjohn’s for the notorious Mr. T!"

Mr. Erhardt recoiled in shock. "Why have you come to haunt me?"

"I have come to inform you of three visitors you will have tonight. Pay heed to them, or you will end up as I am now!" With that, he vanished.

"That’s the last time I watch that horrid show before bed!" Mr. Erhardt nodded off, and was soon asleep again.

At one o’clock a pudgy finger tapped him awake. He looked up from the couch to behold the merry face of Phineus J. Little (Bingo for short), his childhood friend. They used to blow up basements together, but that’s another story. "Bingo!" he cried. "How’s it going, old chap?"

"Greetings, Walter! Oh my goodness, it’s been eons since we’ve seen each other. I wish that there was time to chat, but I’ve been assigned to be here on official business, you could say, ahem ahem. You know, just part of a night’s work. I guess you could call me the Ghost of Chemistry Past. I am here to take you on a journey through time and space. Ahem ahem. Oh! I say! There really is no time to explain. Now if you please, just hold my hand and we’ll off."

Mr. Erhardt grasped the pudgy hand and they jumped out the window! Soon they were defying the laws of physics and flying over the city. (How obscene! Physicists’ discretion advised.) The cumulus and nimbus clouds swirled about them. It got very dizzy and confusing for a few seconds, but soon Mr. Erhardt found himself hand in hand with Bingo outside of a ramshackle one-room schoolhouse out in the middle of nowhere.

"Why – it’s my old school! There’s the lab! And there’s me!"

Sure enough, they could see through a window that the room was deserted except for a scholarly-looking young boy in the back faithfully pipeting H₂SO₄ into a beaker. The roof was cracked and rain puddles from a recent storm leaked through the ceiling into the room.

"I always used to stay after school and work here. There were always endless projects to do, and I was always so busy. I remember how cruel our schoolmaster was. He used to whip us if we slacked off."

"Maybe you could learn a lesson from your past!" said Bingo. Then there was a rush, and Mr. Erhardt found himself back in his living room. Bingo was gone!

"Bingo? Bingo! Where are you? Must have inhaled too much ethane today." Mr. Erhardt yawned.

The clock struck two. "Hey, Walt, wake up!" He recognized the voice.

"Michelle! What are you doing here?" A rather short woman who looked like an elf was standing by the couch.

"I’m the Ghost of Chemistry Present. I’m here to help. Now take my hand, and hang on!"

In no time (well, technically that can’t be true because there has to be some time, even if it is only 1E-10000 seconds, but it seemed like no time to our hero) they were whisked away to the front lawn of a house in the suburbs of the city. They could look through the window into a room – rather a modest one, considering the occupant was a teenage boy. He sat at his desk, busily studying. It was little Tim Cratchet!

"Look at him, Walt! He’s at his desk studying, even though it’s Christmas break. These kids aren’t as bad as you think they are. Many of them are diligent, hard-working kids, not goof-offs. You don’t have to be so hard on them. They have a lot of demands on them, like English, History, Foreign Language, Band, Orchestra, Sports, and Pre-Calculus. They also have family chores, jobs, and obligations they have to take care of. Have a heart! They want to learn, not be treated like slaves!"

Mr. Erhardt looked thoughtfully through the window at Tim. He really seemed to be struggling. "Timmy! Timmy! That’s not how to balance the equation!" he shouted. He knocked on the window…

And zoom, he was back in his living room. "This is really frightfully terrible," he thought. "I must get some acetaminophen to cure this awful malfunction of the cranium." He went to the kitchen – but the doorway was blocked by a bent-over figure in a black hooded cape. The sleepy professor sighed. He should have known better by now! Yea, it was a bearded alchemist of old, one of those unlucky chaps who had tried to turn worthless substances into gold. He looked into Mr. Erhardt’s face and beckoned with a bony finger.

"Are you the Ghost of Chemistry Yet to Come?" our hero asked wearily.

The alchemist did not answer. He only beckoned.

Mr. Erhardt followed the ghostly figure outside into the night. It was a gloomy, foggy, strange night, one that reminded him of copper sulfate ionizing. The phantasm led him onward without a word. Soon they were in a large – almost multipurpose room, bustling with activity. Black and teal decorations streamed across the ceiling and a large sign, "WELCOME BACK CLASS OF ’96," hung on the wall. People were standing around chatting and sipping punch from cups, and eating those disgusting peanut butter cookies! It seemed to be some kind of class reunion. Yes, there was Mr. Falcon, Mr. Hanisco, Miss Beers, Miss Donnelly, Miss Horsman, Mr. Suprenant, Mr. Opalek…everybody from that horrid class!

"Hey, did you hear about old Mr. E.?" asked one student as he sipped a pop.

"Yeah," said another. "I heard that he died insane working at Upjohn’s under the infamous Mr. T."

"Good riddance," muttered somebody.

"He could have been such a good teacher."

"Oh, well. It’s too late now."

"Spirit! Who are they talking about?" Mr. Erhardt tugged nervously on the burlap sleeve. No answer. The alchemist’s eyes were as glazed over as the students’.

A long, long pause ensued. The room grew still, almost frozen in times. Then, time began to warp! (If only Bill Vandervoort were here!) The two beings found themselves in another modern room, though one much unlike the multipurpose room of the reunion. Yes, it was a plush hallway, and they stood in front of an oaken door, which read,

Timothy J. Cratchet

Attorney at Law

Transcendental Meditations/French Horn Performances While You Wait.

Then the heavenly black choir sang out…

The scene melted away to reveal a barren, rocky, rather reddish landscape. "What’s this?" Mr. Erhardt wondered. He picked up some soil, only to find that it dissolved in his hand the moment he touched it. A piece of paper floated to the ground in front of him. It read: "WELCOME TO LAB PRACTICAL NUMERO UNO – Guinea Pig!"

Suddenly it grew very, very hot – so hot that Mr. Erhardt began sweating terribly. Looking around, he noticed that the heat came from a gigantic Bunsen burner, which randomly spewed forth flames a few hundred yards away. Then gravity went way up, and he crumpled to the ground, weighed down like an elephant! Then just as quickly, it went back down! He began floating in the air (or was it water?) like a fish. He tried swimming, but to no avail.

This atmosphere was putrid – it seemed to be a mixture of all 109 elements of the periodic table! Now Mr. Erhardt felt his ears pop. The putridness seemed to be compressing him from all directions! Next he felt the temperature drop below freezing as he was dropped back to the ground, which had turned from a rocky landscape to a marshy field! Splat! If all this wasn’t bad enough, now his arms felt like they were being pulled from their sockets. His body seemed to be exploding, where ten seconds before, it had been imploding! This was a world without constants – not even the temperature and pressure stayed the same here!

Gigantic beakers and cuvettes spun around his head, clinking and clanging together in a dissonant symphony of glassware. A demonic voice sardonically informed him, "Today your mission is to pipet sulfuric acid using coffee stirrers! Please proceed to the Bunsen burner on your right to obtain the abacus that you will use for your calculations. Remember, each mistake will cost you 30 square meters of oxygen! You have twenty minutes! Begin!"

Mr. Erhardt gasped. "Spirit! Spirit! I repent! I’m sorry! I’ll change! I don’t want to die remembered as a cruel old miser! I don’t want to work at Upjohn’s! I’ll change! Really! Spirit! No! No!"

Mr. Erhardt awoke, only to find himself pounding at his marble bust of Friedrich August Kekule. It now seemed to have a half-smile on its face, as if to say: Trust me. I’ve been there too. A note by the bust read, "Not Yet! Try Again!"

It was morning! Christmas morning! He threw open the window. The night’s storm had left a fresh layer of snow on the ground. Mr. Erhardt danced in glee about the living room. He was a changed man! He saw the paperboy walking up the driveway. "Merry Christmas!" he shouted. The paperboy gave him a strange look, then blossomed into a smile.

On his way to Tim Cratchet’s house he stopped at the store to buy him a present. He gave a poor little girl who gazed at the toys in the store a present, too. He also ran into jolly Mr. Frank, and called, "I’m coming to your party tonight!" Mr. Frank smiled at his change of heart.

Mr. Erhardt rang the bell of the Cratchet residence. Even littler Jiminy Cratchet answered the door in his pajamas, holding a beat-up old stocking with a solitary candy cane in it. "Merry Christ – oh, it’s you, Mr. Erhardt." Apparently he had heard of the professor through his older brother. Then Tim Cratchet came to the door to see who it was.

Mr. Erhardt scowled at the boy. "Timothy, I would like to confer with your parents, please."

Frightened, Tim went to get them. Soon a tired-looking Mr. and Mrs. Cratchet appeared. "Timothy has been – uh – a bad boy – chuckle – yes – a very bad boy – um – in – fact – so bad that – chuckle – I – am going to give him – a – ha ha – a – "

"Detention?" asked Mrs. Cratchet groggily.

"Yes! A deten – NO! A present! Merry Christmas, Tim! I’ve brought you a present! And I’ve come to offer my assistance. I’ve had a change of heart. I’ve been too hard on you all. From now on, I’ll treat you as equals!"

Jiminy exclaimed, "God preserve us from entropy, every one!"

THE END

(c) 2001
By Matthew Thomas John Curley-Falcon
All Rights Reserved
Biography