We Bought The Moon.
All of it we could get, from every dealer, collector, museum and university that would sell, at a price this publication is not going to print. It is the finest conductor of quantum tunnelling fields ever measured. It is also pure poison. Both facts are on the label and the label is not going to change.
Every conductor we tried held the field for a few seconds and then let it go. Copper, silver, graphite, every emulsion the Materials Department could stir, the shower curtain vinyl, and on one memorable afternoon a quantity of the commissary’s blancmange. Seconds, all of them. And then a man in Applied Sciences put a chip of meteoritic material on the bench because it was on the bench, and the field held, and it is still holding, and that was 1955.
Meteoritic material is not the moon. But it is the closest thing you can buy in quantity, and when we tested actual lunar substrate against it — and there is lunar substrate in the world, in museum drawers, in university cabinets, in the hands of gentlemen who did not know what they had — the lunar material was better by a factor this company measures in orders of magnitude.
So I bought it. All of it I could get. Forty-one vendors in nine countries, over fourteen months, quietly, through four different agents so nobody worked out what was happening until it had happened. Accounting has asked me to stop describing the price as “a bargain” in print. It was a bargain.
“It is my money. I bought a moon with it. Next question.”
Procurement
Lunar and meteoritic substrate procured, 1955 – Winter 1958
| Period | Principal source | Pounds | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1955 | Bench specimen, origin unrecorded | 0.02 | The chip. Still on the bench. |
| 1956 Q1–Q2 | Private collections, United States | 212 | Nine dealers. No questions asked either way. |
| 1956 Q3 | University cabinets, four institutions | 308 | Three sold. One is still corresponding. |
| 1957 | Museum deaccessions, Europe | 441 | Agents in Vienna and Lisbon |
| 1958 Q1 | Private, undisclosed | 179 | Vendor not named. |
| 1958 Q4 | Final lot | — | Consignment declared complete 28 February |
Total 1,140 pounds. The Substrate Division holds the only working inventory of its kind in private hands, and has declined four requests to confirm that in writing.
- Form supplied
- Ground, 200 mesh, in suspension
- Field retention
- Indefinite. No decay has been measured.
- Preparation
- One-eighth inch minimum. Cures in four hours.
- Coverage
- 41 sq. ft. per gallon
- Price
- Per pound, on application only.
- Substitutes
- None. Nine years of looking.
- Respiratory hazard
- Total. See below, twice.
Handling
The Substrate Division supplies a mask with every gallon, at no charge, and will supply a second one for nothing on request. Masks are checked at the mill door by a man whose entire job is checking masks at the mill door. Since the post was created in January 1958 there has been one recorded refusal.
The recorded refusal was the President, and it has been the President on ninety-one occasions, and Medical has advised him in writing eleven times.
Handling Requirements
- Mask, checked at the door, at every stage from mill to bench. No exceptions are issued.
- Gloves. Substrate in suspension will pass a cotton glove in about nine minutes.
- No eating, drinking or smoking within the substrate rooms or Corridor 6.
- Grinding is done at the mill and nowhere else, by the mill crew and nobody else.
- Sweepings are not swept. Sweepings are wetted, bagged and weighed against the day’s issue.
- Any quantity unaccounted for at the close of a shift stops the shift.
Interoffice Memorandum
Medical writes for the eleventh time regarding a single individual who continues to handle unshielded ground substrate at the bench, without a mask, and who grinds his own material at seven in the morning before the mill crew arrives.
Medical is aware of who the individual is. Medical is aware that this memorandum will be returned. Medical will write a twelfth.
Medical has written eleven. He has read eleven. He returns them the same afternoon and then goes back down to the bench. I have started keeping the carbons. — C.
Form ASI-404. Substrate is supplied to customers as Conversion Gel, Form ASI-205, and is the conductive preparation described in Form ASI-401. Aperture Science Innovators makes no representation as to the origin of any material in the consignment and has declined, on the advice of counsel, to be told.