Honest John was long an exhibit at the University museum, and
livened many a football game as mascot of the University's Blue
Crushers. The bounds of taste were overstepped, however, when a
pledge to Sigma Delta Chi was ordered in '03 to "kidnap" Honest
John from his loosely guarded glass museum case and introduce him
into the Rachel Swanson Memorial Girls' Gymnasium shower room.
On May 22nd, 2003, the University Board of Regents issued the
following order: "By unanimous vote, it is directed that the remains
of Honest John Barlow be removed from the University museum and
conveyed to the University's Lieutenant James Scott III Memorial
Biological Laboratories and there be securely locked in a specially
prepared vault. It is further directed that all possible measures
for the preservation of these remains be taken by the Laboratory
administration and that access to these remains be denied to all
persons except qualified scholars authorized in writing by the
Board. The Board reluctantly takes this action in view of recent
notices and photographs in the nation's press which, to say the
least, reflect but small credit upon the University."
* * * * *
It was far from his field, but Hawkins understood what had happened--an
early and accidental blundering onto the bare bones of the Levantman
shock anesthesia, which had since been replaced by other methods. To
bring subjects out of Levantman shock, you let them have a squirt of
simple saline in the trigeminal nerve. Interesting. And now about that
bronze--
He heaved the pick into the rotting green salts, expecting no
resistence and almost fractured his wrist. _Something_ down there was
_solid_. He began to flake off the oxides.
A half hour of work brought him down to phosphor bronze, a huge casting
of the almost incorruptible metal. It had weakened structurally over
the centuries; he could fit the point of his pick under a corroded boss
and pry off great creaking and grumbling striae of the stuff.
Hawkins wished he had an archeologist with him, but didn't dream of
returning to his shop and calling one to take over the find. He was an
all-around man: by choice and in his free time, an artist in clay and
glaze; by necessity, an automotive, electronics and atomic engineer
who could also swing a project in traffic control, individual and
group psychology, architecture or tool design. He didn't yell for a
specialist every time something out of his line came up; there were so
few with so much to do....
He trenched around his find, discovering that it was a great
brick-shaped bronze mass with an excitingly hollow sound. A long strip
of moldering metal from one of the long vertical faces pulled away,
exposing red rust that went _whoosh_ and was sucked into the interior
of the mass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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