I never really liked the sadistic bonding that I shared with the neutron; a charge less moron, disinterested and boring type. He abducted me when I was young and since then locked me up in this dingy house nucleus. I raise my eyes every now and then to sneak a peek at the excited electrons; with negligible mass, they spread their phantom like bodies around the house in layers. The electrons form an impenetrable fortress around the house; they are highly unpredictable and omnipresent. These electrons are a fascinating lot; around every house with an abducted proton like me, these ladies spread their angelic wings and dance in the moonlight of electromagnetic nights. Wave-like, they exist everywhere around the house; with a fogged vision, all my life, I have looked up to the messengers. But I wish to reserve the bit about messengers for later. First a brief about the colony
The insipid colony that I live in has but one mysterious house. Legend has it that the master of this house, the abductor was brutally poisoned in his sleep and burnt alive by the single proton who lives there. As if this was not enough, the house has a lady guarding it. One wonders what one earth is he up to. Why have an electron stretch her phantom wings and guard your house, if you have already killed your abductor?
Our houses although unappealing to the common eye reveal basic arithmetic at the city planning level. For example, the street lined up before me has houses with one abductor adding up to each house as we move along the line of houses. At one end of the street is the mysterious house with no abductor, the house is registered under the name hydrogen. My house is tagged carbon; we are bout six of us living under the clutches of unruly monsters inside. Number of phantom ladies sitting on the compound wall varies from time to time. Most of the time, 12 of them sit guarding the house; but on occasions such as on heavy rains like it happened last week, more than the usual number sit guard. On this particular occasion there were 14 of them. And in a case of misapprehension (also called the radioactive decay), the police busted a thief called gamma ray from our house and left us with a nitrogen tag. Over time, I have gotten used to these odd incidents.
Yes! I have heard of the bizarre incidents such as the abductees outnumbering the abductors in some of the houses. In a case like this, again the local police is summoned and the unrest is suitably dealt with. Then there are the houses of large combined families; families of houses like ours share their phantom ladies with the ones from other houses and an agreement is drawn. Also, a combined family agreement has to be signed by at least one noble family. These are a curious lot, sacred and astute; their houses stand incongruously among the hustle bustle of combined families. Whatever coaxing and cajoling has been done in the past has not deterred the noble lot from the stand they have taken. It is rumoured that the phantom ladies guarding the houses of noble families have become rather old and are therefore disinterested in being shared across other families for the sake of a combined family. Whatever the merits of a noble family, the other houses of the colony have rarely been seen alone.
These days, it is rather an addiction (an ‘in’ thing) I must say, to couple your house with the neighbours and live a combined life. We have ourselves combined with the eighth house in the line ‘oxygen’ and are registered under the name carbon dioxide. The city planners had designed our houses in such a way that closer to the house, only 2 phantom ladies can spread their wings; the second concentric row can accommodate exactly 8 phantom ladies; 18 in the third row and so on. When we initially proposed our plan to combine families with oxygen at the municipal office, a thorough analysis was carried out and the planners pointed us to an area of relocation. The area of relocation was inundated with other combined families called molecules.
As a rule, sharing of ladies between houses was not permitted unless there was a deficit in the outer circle. None of our families were perfect like the noble families - they had the exact number of phantom ladies guarding them. For instance, helium had 2; neon had 2, 8 and argon 2, 8, 8. An imperfection as was the case with our family (2,4), led to obsequious requests from the other families to share the phantom ladies in the outer ring (also called as valence electrons).
Valence phantom ladies were the privileged few; they could choose to cease guarding if they wish to. But this required assistance from a messenger. Once in a while, a messenger called photon arrived at our doorsteps; the letters he brought with him excited our phantom ladies.
You must be wondering how the combining of families happened; who initiates and who responds? Well, any phantom lady can send a message (photon) by descending into the concentric circle closer to the house if she wishes to. This message once received by the phantom lady of any house, allowed her to shift into an adjacent concentric circle away from the house; and if it happened that the receiver was a valence phantom lady, she could choose to leave the guarding position altogether.
Coming back to our case, we, carbon, had 2, 4 phantom ladies around our house; oxygen with whom the proposal was made, had 2, 6 ladies. So the town planner found us a home that worked out like this. We and two oxygen houses stepped into the new house; we gave them, oxygen, each 2 ladies so they can become perfect with 8 ladies on the outer circle. We were perfect too, with 2 ladies.
Now, to conclude my story, I will draw your attention to an experiment that was carried out about 60 years prior to now. The experiment tried to liberate us; I must add that the act of liberation was one of catharsis. The family that volunteered for the experiment was plutonium; there were over 200 abducted in this family. In what was called as nuclear fission experiment, the abductors and abductees were disunited which led to pent up emotions that flared up into the sky and a certain gloom overtook the whole colony post the experiment. Years later, the experiment spawned several other experiments. However, measures were taken to keep a check on the pent up emotions; they called it the ‘controlled environment’. This time, the family that volunteered was uranium with 237 phantom ladies.
As for me, I like it here. I don’t want to be liberated.
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