Equifinality

You may have noticed that a dead fish floats on its back? Well a wooden fish can have this same peculiarity, as you will see if you make this toy. -E.M. Goodrick, Fun for One'... for the R-A-E... you know - like I was telling you about - Research Assessment Exercise. Well, apparently I need guidance. Then, just as I was about to leave, he asked me if I'd sponsor him - something to do with his kid's school. And I stood there and got this picture in my head of him falling out the plane and pulling on the chord and nothing coming out except his stupid little offprints...' Why does my mum talk about her boss like that? Imagine if Mrs Gradinsky, my headteacher, was doing a parachute jump and it was for charity. I'd get Mum to give me a pound so I could sponsor her.'Mu-um.''Yes, Kiran, I'm on the phone to Shaun. What darling?''Mum, what are offprints?''Doesn't matter, Ki. Are you on the computer again? Can you make sure I'm logged off this time, please.'xxxxxxxxxxxMum's password is obvious - Borneo. Sometimes I read her emails to Shaun without her knowing. Look - this is one she sent to him whilst doing fieldwork in the rainforest just over three weeks ago. ...and what's more is that James O'Callaghan has got himself shacked up at the field station - full board, probably with a room to himself, whereas I'm sleeping under a plastic sheet out in the sticks. No privacy. It gets really wet out here. So far the infra red gas analyser has got soaked - I've had to put it away. So making photosynthesis measurements has become an unbelievable chore. Then there are the leeches and black cobras - they provide the only excitement. I don't know what it is. Never been an issue really before. All I've ever needed is my research question - my focus, my goal. It's what's kept me going. Same with James O, I guess, but now to the nth degree. James has had it so easy in recent years - climate scientists, I can't tell you. Take his research project - fully funded, 5-year NERC project for which he is Principal Investigator. It's the kind that gets your Head of Department's attention. I kid you not - the day before I left for the field I was talking to the HoD about my forthcoming sabbatical and all he could do was stare at my chest. That's all the attention I get these days...xxxxxxxxxxxMy mum Carla is a scientist. But when I got my Chem C2000 Chemistry Set recently for my tenth birthday, Mum was no use at all. My father was much more helpful and interested, even though he isn't a scientist. He's a laboratory technician. Mum says that's different. xxxxxxxxxxxI don't think it matters who was born first, even though she was born four minutes before me. It doesn't matter. She's not older than me. The egg inside cracked at exactly the same time. We started growing at exactly the same time. So no one's older. When we were tiny, you couldn't tell us apart. The best thing about being an identical twin is that there's always someone there for you, even if you don't expect them to be. They're always there. I really need Anita, but then Anita needs me the same - as much as I need her. She's probably got the same feelings as me. Definitely the same taste. We hate tomatoes and mushrooms. I don't like crunchy peanut butter and neither does Anita. If I had three wishes I'd wish that nothing could force me and Anita apart. It's hard enough with her being in a different class at school. And then there are two other wishes that are boring like - you know - I could fly or do magic. But not become invisible. As you can see in this photograph, this is me and my sister at our seventh birthday party. That's my dad with his grey and black and white hair, which is why I call him Badgerhead. He's got a wonky eye that looks the wrong way when you talk to him. Anita says that he got it because he was jeering someone else with the same thing when he was a boy and someone hit him on the back of the head. That's Granny and Grandad Bedi, who dad now lives with, and Auntie Siddhi who is a mid-wife. It's quite cool because she delivered me and Anita and Ben, my baby brother, too. Even some of my friends. She also says long words like post-natal depression. That's when my sister made me a little wigwam out of two boxes and some sticks in the garden. That's why I'm smiling. We tried to make it again this year, except that I couldn't fit in it. xxxxxxxxxxxTwo years ago, Mum started seeing Shaun. Shaun is a writer, but he used to be a greengrocer and deliver vegetables to people at night. That's the thing; they both work with people that they never get to meet. When she's not abroad, my mum does most of her work in a room on her own in front of a flat screen. Shaun also, and he just works with the people in his head.The second that my dad was out the house, Shaun would be in and it didn't feel right and I didn't like it. I don't know if my dad knew or not. And I was having a hard time at school. I allowed it to happen. xxxxxxxxxxx Last night my mum had to work late and I was watching the news on Channel Four with Dad, whilst Anita practised her scales with Granny. A soldier was walking through a field full of poppies in Afghanistan. I loved it. It was really beautiful. I asked my dad why the soldier was guarding the flowers. He smiled and picked me up and gave me a big squeeze. He said that I've got a hard outside and a chewy centre, 'like a Trebor Softmint'. And I said, 'No, like a Cadbury Creme Egg, Badgerhead.'xxxxxxxxxxxWhen my mum told us, I was tidying my room. Anita said, 'Mum wants to talk with us for a bit.' 'This probably isn't going to come as a surprise to you girls but your father and I have decided that we want to live apart.' For a long time I didn't believe it. Then one afternoon I saw the pillows on their bed. They would usually be stacked on top of each other, but they were only just over-lapping. xxxxxxxxxxxWhat I think is important is trust. I think in my family we probably have about two thirds of that. Four months ago, Mum told Anita and I a family secret. We don't have the same dad as Ben. My brother's got a different colour skin and I thought oh, wow, why has he got a different colour skin? And then a couple of months later I kind of realised without being told. I think it will be difficult for Ben to have a different dad, but I still love him. He's still my family. In the future I think I'd like to be told stuff when it happens and to be more included. xxxxxxxxxxxAt weekends I stay at my dad's house with Anita and I work at an animal sanctuary, just outside Birmingham. I trust animals more than people because with people they're more likely to walk away from you because they've had enough of you. Rosie is one of my favourites, a beautiful girl horse, you can see she's been neglected - she's really thin and not very trusting. xxxxxxxxxxxWhen Mum and Dad were separating, they always had meetings, but I was... Anita and I were always left out. I remember after one of their meetings, I asked my mum in the lounge if she would play Monopoly with me.'Not now, Ki, get Anita to tell you about her swimming lesson today.' Then I asked Dad to play with me. 'Dad, Dad, will you play Paper, Scissors, Stone with me?''It's gone nine o'clock. It's your bedtime.' When I got to my room, I looked out the window and saw Dad in his car outside, howling at the windshield and trying to peel his West Brom sticker off.xxxxxxxxxxxDad has always teased me, but I've stopped liking it. Like when I was at his house for the weekend a couple of months back and he started doing it again. Saying things about it being better before Anita and I came along.'What do you mean when you say things were better before I was here?' I asked.'I've never said it was better before you were here.''Yes you have. You say - a joke - it was better.' 'Not better - quieter, Ki. And that's exactly what it was - a joke.' 'Well, what do you mean by it?''Well, you know what a joke is, I just -''Yes - but - why do you say it?''Well, why do you tell any sort of joke?'Then Granny said, 'Why do you say it to her? Well, perhaps you should say I'm only teasing you when I say that and people only get teased when you like somebody. It's a sort of - a kind of like a... in a way it's a strange form of affection that when you tease somebody its normally because you like them and you say things like that even though they can be... um -''Offensive,' I said.xxxxxxxxxxxI think there are like two worlds - a child's world and an adult's world. Before I was kind of in the child's world, but then I was suddenly plunged into a more adultish world. Suddenly it's an adult's world, not a kid's world. This is the wrong world. The other world. And I want to go back to the child's world. It's a bit like there's a bridge and I want to go back, but I can't. I don't like the adult world. I'd rather clean up Rosie's mess.xxxxxxxxxxxIn the summer we go to Granny Taylor's house in Reno in Nevada in America for the holidays. Granny Taylor's house is wonderful. We play in the garden, swing on the swings, and feed the fish. And I make rotten sheep's eyeballs with maggots coming out to scare Anita. That's what a cherry looks like if you squeeze it hard. What I love about being in Granny's house is that it is very big, but I don't like it at night because I get really scared. People who don't have a twin are much braver than twins because twins always have someone to go upstairs or downstairs, or wherever they're scared to go, with them. But as you just go on your own into that room or place wherever you're scared, you become less scared of it because you get used to going into it on your own. xxxxxxxxxxx'Hey.''What?''Shaun, you're smoking.''I know. It's a very bad thing to do isn't it.''Guess what can happen to you if you smoke.''What, Kiran?''Well, if you smoke too much your lungs will get full of tar, and then one day your lungs will get so full of tar that you can't breathe and then you'll die.''Really?''Yeah.''And what else can happen to you if you smoke?''Well, they could chop your leg off and give you a plastic one.''Really?''Give you a gold tooth maybe. Take one of your old ones out. Chop your nose off.''What do you mean give you a gold tooth? Chop your what?''Nose off.''Maybe you could help me to give up smoking?'xxxxxxxxxxxDad plays harmonium and is teaching Anita. It is called a Bina Harmonium 15 and the family who makes them is called the Bina family and they live in a music shop in London. Anita and I went there with Dad. It is in a place called Southall, where my dad grew up. Grandad came too. He plays flute. Dad said that Gramps was a famous musician before he became an engineer and played in a film called Help! and it was about a famous band called the Beatles. But I told Ross, Rhona, Milly and Ishi at school that it was McFly. Rhona wouldn't believe me so I threw a chair at her and she hurt her head. She dirtied her pants too - the smell of it rushed at me like the blast of heat when a tumble dryer door is opened. Dad wrote a poem about his harmonium and gave it to Anita. It's on our bedroom wall.The Bina Harmonium #15 of India By Sukhdev BediI'd guessed you were a hitter: raised by the Bina family on the lean streets of Bombay, along with their fattened prize cows. I'd studied your form for hours: pamphlets, live footage and spoke with seasoned professionals in folk business towers. I felt prepared, face to face in the basement studio, with my screwdriver in chase of the classic drone combination of C, G, D and A: a standard of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra for their duration. There you stood wheezing with your reeds and reach, your stage presence, dynastic plumage and perfect record. It began. I opened you up immediately: came in deft, scratched the Eb plate; right, after left. Again, I came, but from the back; instructions bellowed out from the corner man that I took as flack. A rabbit punch to the Bb plate, but you didn't slide a demi-tone too late. I had lost in clumps of knuckle: my tactics were more wooden and my movements less supple. Failing to re-tune what I could not understand signalled an abrupt end to my career in an Anglo-Indo folk-country band. .xxxxxxxxxxx After watching Animal Farm last week on television about genetic engineering and animals, I decided that what I really want is a fish. Mum said I couldn't have one. But Dad said we could make a fish if I wanted. And I said, 'Yeah, but how do we make one?' And then I thought about it and said, 'Wood, because wood floats.' And Dad said, 'Great idea, Kiran.' He even went on the Internet and found out the dimensions of a salmon because I like them best. And he printed off lots of information about it and gave it to me, but I wasn't that interested. Now I think I know what my mum means when she talks about offprints. So I asked him why he'd given all this information to me, when all I wanted was a fish?Dad said, 'Knowing more about how the robin sings, I enjoy the song of the robin more.' And I said, 'What are you talking about?' 'Knowing more about how the salmon swims, will make you like the salmon more.' I walked off and told Granny that I just wanted to paint it pink with Anita's oil paints.xxxxxxxxxxxAt teatime on Monday, Mum was talking to Shaun about work and she said that she has found out that logging in Borneo is creating more species, not less. I got upset and told her that she couldn't say that. Logging is bad. She had to change her results. Make them right. Mum didn't reply. I don't know why she has to do a stupid project like that. She used to say things like, 'In Borneo you can find three hundred and sixty tree species in one hectare of rainforest.' Why can't she find a new leopard or something? Last week they found one. Why can't she change the findings? Like when I found out about Gramps and changed it to McFly. It made Ross and Milly and Ishi smile and they let me ring the bell at lunchtime. That's what matters.xxxxxxxxxxxMum sent an email to Dad this morning. Sukhdev,I saw the psychologist, Dr Hughes, on Wednesday at St James's and she wasn't any clearer on the way forward at this time, except that we may have no option but to start medication. Things are definitely getting worse. On Tuesday she launched herself at two girls, grabbed them both by the hair and batted their heads together like conkers (Mrs Gradinsky's words). Blood everywhere and I had to leave Governing Body and pick her up. Sorry - I should have let you know about it sooner, but I've been so tied up with work and dealing with the school. Obviously it's all escalated since the divorce, but the problem Dr Hughes said was a matter of what they call equifinality...xxxxxxxxxxxI can't wait until Saturday. Dad's nearly finished my fish already and is sanding it at work to make it look really smooth, but still scaly. He said that it should be ready by then and that I can paint it and take it into the bath with me. But only if it's dry. N.E.A. Carter mail@the-scientist.comAcknowledgementsMany thanks to Ann Lackie, Scitalk and The Scientist for providing the opportunity to meet four distinguished scientists and to discuss their working lives with them, which stimulated the idea for this short story. Particular thanks to Dr Nick Brown of the Department of Plant Sciences, Oxford University for discussions.Click here to read the other runner-up, Bedrock, and the winner, Tenderness.N.E.A. Carter mail@the-scientist.comLinks within this article:Subtle Science competition http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/53375

Equifinality

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