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rayasoWheel of Chaos 2025
Week 4
July 20, 2025
"Figure of speech"
One of Professor William Grover’s heroes, Robert F. Kennedy, memorably said that “only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” Of course, he was killed, which was the greatest failure of all. By this standard, Prof. Grover should have experienced the height of success. In the world of science, his failures were legendary and the mere mention of his name was a shortcut to snickers.
There was, of course, the time he announced the discovery of a new subatomic particle, the Grovertron. No one could duplicate his results, and it turned out to be an April Fool’s joke by one of his graduate students. Prof. Grover was a forgiving man, and he turned his attention to creating an AI program that would understand and create humor. The result was so boring that he received his only award: an Ig-Nobel Prize.
And then there was the time he might or might not have killed the family cat trying to solve the Schrödinger’s Cat paradox. This probably scarred his children for life.
His greatest failure was time travel. He thought that “Back to the Future” was a documentary and he tried to create a flux capacitor, which, as everyone knows, is what makes time travel possible.
Hudson University, the befuddled professor’s employer, had finally had enough, and Provost Nicholson summoned him to her office.
“Bill,” she said, “I’m afraid you’ve reached the end of the line here. You’re diluting our brand and we’re hemorrhaging money. You’ve got six months to finish your current research and find something that justifies your position here.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Prof. Grover, “and I appreciate the six months. However, I’m working on something spectacular, the Phoenix Project, and it will change your mind.”
“I certainly hope so,” said Provost Nicholson, who was relieved things had gone so well. The usual response to these meetings was anger, threats of lawyers, and begging. But one thing Prof. Grover was good at was accepting failure. Practice did make perfect.
Of course, there was no Phoenix Project.
Prof. Grover didn’t do what any reasonable person would do. He did not think about whether he should even be a scientist, nor did he go to the lab and get to work on creating a Phoenix Project. Instead, he went home and started streaming episodes of “The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon,” a truly awful space opera which was cancelled after its first season, to the disappointment of no one—not even Prof. Grover, who dragged it out now as an emotional pacifier, because no matter how bad his life was, it was still better than “Sanctuary Moon.”
Prof. Grover became inert for the next several weeks. He ate, slept, and interacted with his family, but little else. Future chroniclers of this part of his life would kindly refer to this as his chrysalis stage.
His main thought during this time was the wish to be something else. Anything else. He spent a lot of time wondering what it would be like to be a lamp. But then it finally happened – the light bulb turned on.
“I’m going to build a transmogrifier!” he told his long-suffering wife. “It will turn me into anything I want.” What his wife wanted is not recorded.
The transmogrifier was not a new idea. It had first been proposed by Prof. Calvin as a thought experiment, but no one had tried to build one. A transmogrifier was simply a box, with lots of dials and wires. You could program it to change yourself into anything. All you had to do was set the output, enter the box, close the hatch, and re-emerge as your idea.
Prof. Grover was not discouraged by all his other failures. He was drawn to failure like a moth to a flame.
He knew he would need two things: space and power. The transmogrifier would be big and need a lot of power, which Hudson University was unlikely to grant. Prof. Grover arranged for his family to spend the summer with relatives at a lake, which freed up the space. While he was a good husband and father, he was on a mission that would require his total concentration. And his chronicler would not have to come up with any dialog, which was critical when facing a looming deadline.
Power was less easily solved. All the power in his house would not be nearly enough. He almost despaired, until he thought of the flux capacitor back in the lab. It might not have propelled him into the future, but it generated more than enough power for the transmogrifier.
Prof. Grover planned to build the transmogrifier in the guest bedroom, with the closet as the transmogrifier chamber. Now he needed all the wires and gauges. This was the critical and most perplexing part – how to make it work.
It took weeks of thinking and rewatching “Sanctuary Moon” before he hit on a solution. He would use the Schrödinger’s box, just on a much bigger scale. And without the death possibility. Relying on the uncertainly principle was certainly daring. He couldn’t know what would come out of the transmogrifier chamber, if anything. Prof. Grover had never been daring before and he had always failed. Maybe now was the time to achieve greatness.
So, he built and he tinkered and he tinkered and he built, and finally it was done. He had a room full of wires, gauges, and lots of what-nots, and at its heart glowed the flux capacitor. There had been problems along the way, but that was to be expected when working at the ridiculous edge of the possible.
All he needed was a test subject. His family had wisely taken Kitty 2.0 with them, fearing another heartbreak. That left the professor himself. As a scientist, he was against the use of humans in experiments, but he had no choice. He would have to risk everything.
But what to become? The machine was set to “temporary” so that after an hour, he would hopefully revert to his human form. There had been a lot of monsters on “Sanctuary Moon.” He had also been watching the documentary “Jurassic Park” and had been impressed with the stegosaurus, so he envisioned a fire-breathing, gigantic stegomonster, complete with a thagomizer tail. And, being human, he would pay a visit to Hudson University for some fun. His greatest triumph would be the university’s greatest failure.
“This is it,” he thought, “ultimate success or ultimate failure.”
He set all the dials and threw all the switched. He turned the flux capacitor up to 11. He put his hand on the transmogrifier’s doorknob. And hesitated.
“What if it doesn’t work?”
He thought of all his humiliating failures and started to back away.
“If I don’t go in, no one will ever know. But I’ll always be a joke.”
That was too much. He stepped in, closed the door, and hit “start.”
The circuitry hummed louder and louder. The chamber began to shake. The lights went out and he felt nothing. When he opened his eyes, he was on his front lawn. He swished his tail and knocked over a lamp post. He looked behind himself, and there it was – a huge thagomizer! It worked! He was a stegomonster!
He stepped on his neighbor’s car and headed for Hudson University, spewing flames as he went. Success felt glorious. He smashed with his thagomizer and roared. It was right out of Episode 4 of “Sanctuary Moon.”
For the next half hour, Hudson University was his playground. Suddenly, things went black again. When he opened his eyes, it was as William Grover, scientist. Everyone was looking for the stegomonster, not a middle-aged professor.
He looked at what he had done and was ashamed. Vengeance was bitter.
“Failed again,” he thought to himself. “I should never have started the Phoenix Project.”
Amidst the ruins, Prof. Grover found a stunned Provost Nicholson and resigned immediately.
By the time his family returned, there was no sign of the transmogrifier. Kitty 2.0 felt safe.
William is still looking for a new job. It is hard to find work when your greatest accomplishments are failures. He took comfort in his family, his one success.
He gave up trying to find success and felt better for it. William knew that in the end, he had achieved greatly, because through it all, he had never given up. And he’d had a thagomizer.
####################################################
"The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon" is a fictional space opera in the "Murderbot" Netflix series. In the Murderbot world, it was not cancelled and had at least 397 episodes.
The original transmogrifier from "Calvin and Hobbes."
The flux capacitor from “Back to the Future.”
The original thagomizer, from Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoons.
Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment where a cat in a box can be both alive and dead at the same time until someone opens the box. It shows how weird quantum physics can be. The idea is that tiny particles can exist in multiple states at once—called "superposition"—until they are observed. This does not give any credit to the cat, who certainly knows if it is alive or not.
Week 4
July 20, 2025
"Figure of speech"
FAILURE
The Life and Times of William Grover
The Life and Times of William Grover
One of Professor William Grover’s heroes, Robert F. Kennedy, memorably said that “only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” Of course, he was killed, which was the greatest failure of all. By this standard, Prof. Grover should have experienced the height of success. In the world of science, his failures were legendary and the mere mention of his name was a shortcut to snickers.
There was, of course, the time he announced the discovery of a new subatomic particle, the Grovertron. No one could duplicate his results, and it turned out to be an April Fool’s joke by one of his graduate students. Prof. Grover was a forgiving man, and he turned his attention to creating an AI program that would understand and create humor. The result was so boring that he received his only award: an Ig-Nobel Prize.
And then there was the time he might or might not have killed the family cat trying to solve the Schrödinger’s Cat paradox. This probably scarred his children for life.
His greatest failure was time travel. He thought that “Back to the Future” was a documentary and he tried to create a flux capacitor, which, as everyone knows, is what makes time travel possible.
Hudson University, the befuddled professor’s employer, had finally had enough, and Provost Nicholson summoned him to her office.
“Bill,” she said, “I’m afraid you’ve reached the end of the line here. You’re diluting our brand and we’re hemorrhaging money. You’ve got six months to finish your current research and find something that justifies your position here.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Prof. Grover, “and I appreciate the six months. However, I’m working on something spectacular, the Phoenix Project, and it will change your mind.”
“I certainly hope so,” said Provost Nicholson, who was relieved things had gone so well. The usual response to these meetings was anger, threats of lawyers, and begging. But one thing Prof. Grover was good at was accepting failure. Practice did make perfect.
Of course, there was no Phoenix Project.
Prof. Grover didn’t do what any reasonable person would do. He did not think about whether he should even be a scientist, nor did he go to the lab and get to work on creating a Phoenix Project. Instead, he went home and started streaming episodes of “The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon,” a truly awful space opera which was cancelled after its first season, to the disappointment of no one—not even Prof. Grover, who dragged it out now as an emotional pacifier, because no matter how bad his life was, it was still better than “Sanctuary Moon.”
Prof. Grover became inert for the next several weeks. He ate, slept, and interacted with his family, but little else. Future chroniclers of this part of his life would kindly refer to this as his chrysalis stage.
His main thought during this time was the wish to be something else. Anything else. He spent a lot of time wondering what it would be like to be a lamp. But then it finally happened – the light bulb turned on.
“I’m going to build a transmogrifier!” he told his long-suffering wife. “It will turn me into anything I want.” What his wife wanted is not recorded.
The transmogrifier was not a new idea. It had first been proposed by Prof. Calvin as a thought experiment, but no one had tried to build one. A transmogrifier was simply a box, with lots of dials and wires. You could program it to change yourself into anything. All you had to do was set the output, enter the box, close the hatch, and re-emerge as your idea.
Prof. Grover was not discouraged by all his other failures. He was drawn to failure like a moth to a flame.
He knew he would need two things: space and power. The transmogrifier would be big and need a lot of power, which Hudson University was unlikely to grant. Prof. Grover arranged for his family to spend the summer with relatives at a lake, which freed up the space. While he was a good husband and father, he was on a mission that would require his total concentration. And his chronicler would not have to come up with any dialog, which was critical when facing a looming deadline.
Power was less easily solved. All the power in his house would not be nearly enough. He almost despaired, until he thought of the flux capacitor back in the lab. It might not have propelled him into the future, but it generated more than enough power for the transmogrifier.
Prof. Grover planned to build the transmogrifier in the guest bedroom, with the closet as the transmogrifier chamber. Now he needed all the wires and gauges. This was the critical and most perplexing part – how to make it work.
It took weeks of thinking and rewatching “Sanctuary Moon” before he hit on a solution. He would use the Schrödinger’s box, just on a much bigger scale. And without the death possibility. Relying on the uncertainly principle was certainly daring. He couldn’t know what would come out of the transmogrifier chamber, if anything. Prof. Grover had never been daring before and he had always failed. Maybe now was the time to achieve greatness.
So, he built and he tinkered and he tinkered and he built, and finally it was done. He had a room full of wires, gauges, and lots of what-nots, and at its heart glowed the flux capacitor. There had been problems along the way, but that was to be expected when working at the ridiculous edge of the possible.
All he needed was a test subject. His family had wisely taken Kitty 2.0 with them, fearing another heartbreak. That left the professor himself. As a scientist, he was against the use of humans in experiments, but he had no choice. He would have to risk everything.
But what to become? The machine was set to “temporary” so that after an hour, he would hopefully revert to his human form. There had been a lot of monsters on “Sanctuary Moon.” He had also been watching the documentary “Jurassic Park” and had been impressed with the stegosaurus, so he envisioned a fire-breathing, gigantic stegomonster, complete with a thagomizer tail. And, being human, he would pay a visit to Hudson University for some fun. His greatest triumph would be the university’s greatest failure.
“This is it,” he thought, “ultimate success or ultimate failure.”
He set all the dials and threw all the switched. He turned the flux capacitor up to 11. He put his hand on the transmogrifier’s doorknob. And hesitated.
“What if it doesn’t work?”
He thought of all his humiliating failures and started to back away.
“If I don’t go in, no one will ever know. But I’ll always be a joke.”
That was too much. He stepped in, closed the door, and hit “start.”
The circuitry hummed louder and louder. The chamber began to shake. The lights went out and he felt nothing. When he opened his eyes, he was on his front lawn. He swished his tail and knocked over a lamp post. He looked behind himself, and there it was – a huge thagomizer! It worked! He was a stegomonster!
He stepped on his neighbor’s car and headed for Hudson University, spewing flames as he went. Success felt glorious. He smashed with his thagomizer and roared. It was right out of Episode 4 of “Sanctuary Moon.”
For the next half hour, Hudson University was his playground. Suddenly, things went black again. When he opened his eyes, it was as William Grover, scientist. Everyone was looking for the stegomonster, not a middle-aged professor.
He looked at what he had done and was ashamed. Vengeance was bitter.
“Failed again,” he thought to himself. “I should never have started the Phoenix Project.”
Amidst the ruins, Prof. Grover found a stunned Provost Nicholson and resigned immediately.
By the time his family returned, there was no sign of the transmogrifier. Kitty 2.0 felt safe.
William is still looking for a new job. It is hard to find work when your greatest accomplishments are failures. He took comfort in his family, his one success.
He gave up trying to find success and felt better for it. William knew that in the end, he had achieved greatly, because through it all, he had never given up. And he’d had a thagomizer.
####################################################
"The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon" is a fictional space opera in the "Murderbot" Netflix series. In the Murderbot world, it was not cancelled and had at least 397 episodes.
The original transmogrifier from "Calvin and Hobbes."
The flux capacitor from “Back to the Future.”
The original thagomizer, from Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoons.
Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment where a cat in a box can be both alive and dead at the same time until someone opens the box. It shows how weird quantum physics can be. The idea is that tiny particles can exist in multiple states at once—called "superposition"—until they are observed. This does not give any credit to the cat, who certainly knows if it is alive or not.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-20 08:54 pm (UTC)I would've kept the transmogrifier though. If nothing else, get together a huge pile of $1.00 bills, and poof you've got a pile of $100.00 bills.
Dan
no subject
Date: 2025-07-20 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-21 04:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-21 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-21 08:25 pm (UTC)We have been doing this contest long enough I can spot (and enjoy) a Rayaso character a mile away.
Very cool.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-22 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-21 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-22 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-22 12:07 am (UTC)What a perfect way to show how hopeless this character is. :D
You’re diluting our brand
Hahahaha--not something you ever expect to hear about a person, but it sure applies here.
He had also been watching the documentary “Jurassic Park”
Seriously, I love these touches. As well as the mention of Sanctuary Moon.
You know, I don't know how anyone could pass up the opportunity to sport their own thagomizer. At least he had his fun. :D
no subject
Date: 2025-07-22 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-22 12:47 am (UTC)If possible, the secret is to learn to be content whether you get ___ or not. My husband tends to say, "Things turn up the volume." Ie, the professor in your story always wanted revenge even more than success, he just finally found himself with the means to get it, etc.
I enjoy how original your writing is. I hope you don't mind if I add you? :)
no subject
Date: 2025-07-22 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-22 05:07 pm (UTC)What a fun, rollicking ride. And I like the "moral" at the end of this fabulous tale. Such a fun read. As always.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 08:56 pm (UTC)And his chronicler would not have to come up with any dialog, which was critical when facing a looming deadline.
I know how that feels!
This was brilliant, and I love how you took no chances but explained the references at the end, for those who might not inhabit the same brain space.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 09:35 pm (UTC)As far as the professor's fate, I considered the possibility that he would become a dinosaur but that no one else would notice and he'd have no way to prove it. But I like your version better, because he learns from it.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-25 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-25 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-25 09:41 pm (UTC)