In Tom\u2019s upside-down Vault of Forbidden Things, there are many things that are forbidden.<\/p>\n
There is the shrine to New Kids on the Block. You shouldn\u2019t have one. There is the goat that he\u2019s been sharpening. You definitely shouldn\u2019t have one of those!<\/p>\n
There is the cage with his buttered vulture.<\/p>\n
There is a machine in Tom\u2019s Vault that is Forbidden; it takes candy from strangers and it swallows its gum.<\/p>\n
Tom\u2019s infinitive splitter rises \u2014 it is forbidden, in Latin. It slams down. It cuts, to improperly power his lab.<\/p>\n
You shouldn\u2019t have things like that, Tom.<\/p>\n
That vulture. It\u2019s too slippery!<\/p>\n
In the corner is a faux button that cannot be pressed.<\/p>\n
Harold had argued with Tom over this, extensively. He\u2019d told him that a button that can\u2019t<\/em> be pressed represents the very antithesis of reason. Tom had answered, \u201cBut if someone were<\/em> to press it, wouldn\u2019t the consequences be pretty bad?\u201d<\/p>\n He tries to press it anyway, sometimes, in pursuit of one theory or another.<\/p>\n The button is really more of a bit of abstract art, a kind of subtle joie de vivre <\/em>in a Vault otherwise entirely concerned with wrong things, and so he fails. It isn\u2019t really a button, as buttons are understood, at all.<\/p>\n In the very center of his vault there is a vacuum environment.<\/p>\n In that vacuum a pair of scissors drifts.<\/p>\n They are not alive but they are not dead. Not all the way. They came at Earth but they never quite reached it. He caught them from the sky, held them in magnetic grip, because he had a plan.<\/p>\n \u201cExperiment 58,\u201d says Tom. \u201cMaking all that is lost and purposeless, something good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Tom\u2019s upside-down Vault of Forbidden Things, there are many things that are forbidden. There is the shrine to New Kids on the Block. You shouldn\u2019t have one. There is the goat that he\u2019s been sharpening. You definitely shouldn\u2019t have one of those! There is the cage with his buttered vulture. There is a machine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-5663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-5-33-experiment-58","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Scissors-Large.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6055,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5663\/revisions\/6055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5663"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}