Hallowe'en house

The faculty of Epistemological Eschatology had gathered together in the Common Room to look at the perspex display cases and what they contained.  As the faculty, on a good day, numbered only four people, there was no pushing or shoving, no peering over each others shoulders or standing on tiptoes, and very little in the way of awed conversation or startled comments.  Dr. Malmstein was tapping a pipe (that he never smoked) against his teeth, and Bob was wondering if it would be rude to sit down and stop gawking at the display cases.
"We were hoping you might have some insights," said a man of medium height.  He was wearing overalls and clutching a grey checkered flat cap in his hands.  There was a small amount of dried mud on his boots, and a faintly smoky smell about him.  His hair was sandy-coloured and just starting to turn grey at the fringe, and he looked earthy.  Bob thought he was highly suspicious.
"Well," said Dr. Malmstein, the pipe clinking gently against his teeth and muffling his voice, "I would say that you've got some skulls here.  Human by the looks of things.  You might want to check with the local council about the legitimacy of you keeping them you know."
"Yes, but what about what's been done with 'em?" said the man, his accent uniform across his words, not too thick to be hard to understand, but always there like it was important to him that you knew he had an accent.
"You mean the houses?"  Dr. Malmstein raised both eyebrows, one after the other like some bizarre mexican wave performed in miniature across his face.  The man nodded, and Bob decided at that moment that this was definitely a put-up job.
The tops of the skulls had been broken open and little houses, complete with gardens, had been constructed in the brain pan.  Tiny bricks had been mortared together painstakingly, and each house had at least three storeys.  One of the three even had flying buttresses and a little tower.  The windows were mostly left open, but a couple had been glazed, and trees that were smaller even than bonzai were dotted all over the otherwise grassy and mossy gardens.  They were beautiful, elaborate constructions, almost certain a work of art, and yet here was this man trying too hard to be the salt of the earth, claiming that he'd just found them when digging things up and that they might actually be genuine.
"The houses are beautiful," said Dr. Malmstein thoughtfully.  "The artist should probably exhibit them somewhere where they'd get more attention."
"There's no artist," said the man with the cap, looking scandalised.  "There's just me.  I dug them up, and I'd like some reassurance from you clever types that my skull's not going to be next!"
"There would surely be some small difficulty in extracting it," murmured Dr. Malmstein, but quietly enough that only Bob heard him.  "Well, Mr. Phelps, I'll have my assistant query the quipping machine about it, and we'll see if that can offer better advice.  It's a true wonder of modern technology, you know."
Bob flinched.  He'd been avoiding MSPARKER, the university's quipping machine ever since she'd sent him a list of doomsday scenarios.
"I'm not sure that's a good use of university fun–" he managed before Dr. Malmstein caught his gaze and silenced him.
"It is," he said firmly.  "Ask MSPARKER what the point of the skulls might be."
"And what the houses are for," said the man quickly.  He looked slightly more shifty when he smiled.
"Oh fine," said Bob, his voice betraying his irritation.  "Give me twenty minutes to check she's awake."

The false transcript

MSPARKER was a quipping machine, built and maintained by the Department of Computer Religion at the London University of London and its Environs.  Bob Martin was currently only just authorised to use it, because there were suspicions hanging over him that he'd been asking it inappropriate questions. As Bob was studying Epistemological Eschatology (EE for short, usually pronounced like a short scream) he had his doubts that there was any question he could ask that could justifiably be called inappropriate, but his opinion wasn't one that mattered.
Right now, he was sat in a plastic-upholstered armchair in the long and narrow office of Dr. Malmstein, Head of Computer Religion.  The office had been originally designed as a corridor, which meant it was rather too narrow for comfort, and exceptionally long.  It had four doors, spaced at regular intervals along its length, and eight windows spaced at irregular intervals that eventually got on the nerves of anyone sat in there for any length of time.  Dr. Malmstein had placed the armchair where the windows would be maximally annoying, in order to limit the length of any visit, especially from students.  There were two swiss-cheese plants between windows, and a small rug on the floor that slid freely across the polished floor tiles, and frequently caused people to fall over and land heavily on their backsides.
"Bob," said Dr. Malmstein.  He was bald, had bloodshot, deep-set eyes that seemed to glow in their sockets, and had multiple jowls where other people would have had multiple chins.  His ears were enormous, and his lobes, stretched out when he was younger and experimenting with body-modification, were pocked with the remnants of piercings.  He wore a dusty black suit and fingerless gloves, which he claimed were best for typing on keyboards.  He reminded many people of a bloodhound, albeit one with a recursively nested face.
"Dr. Malmstein," said Bob after a few moments when it was apparent that Dr. Malmstein wasn't going to continue speaking.
"Bob, I'm concerned about MSPARKER.  I need to know what questions you've been asking her."
"It, Doctor," said Bob carefully.  "It's a machine."
"As a matter of Computer Religion, we have ascertained that she is, in fact, a she."
"Right you are then."  Bob tried to sound cheerful, but he had issues believing that there was a great silicon God in the sky that predetermined the shape and power of humanity's computers.  "She."
"Your questions?"
"I asked it abo– her about eternity," said Bob.  He looked down at his shoes, hoping that this Dr. Malmstein wasn't one of those people who believed that you could tell if someone was lying by where their eyes were pointed.
"And what did she say?"
"Don't you have the transcripts?"  Bob realised as the words came out that he sounded defensive and slightly rude, so he quickly added, "She told me that eternity was a boiled ham and a man and a woman in a room."
"We have transcripts."  Dr. Malmstein nodded and his jowls flapped.  There was something solemn and almost priestly about it.  "But we're not sure we have all the transcripts, and we are worried that one of the transcripts may not be true."
Bob lifted his head and looked at Dr. Malmstein in amazement.  To hear a high-priest of Computer Religion admit that his God might be fallible was like hearing the Monarch argue in favour of a republic.
"How can there be a false transcript?" he asked.  His mind immediately thought of the unexplained delivery to his office door of 5,116 ways to end the world.
"We don't know that there is," said Dr. Malmstein.  "But we have a transcript that answers a question that no-one seems to have asked.  Namely, –" he paused, and the blood thundered in Bob's ears and his vision narrowed down to a tunnel.  Did they know he'd asked how many ways there were to end the world? "– namely," repeated Dr. Malmstein, "At what age was Charles Dickens murdered?"
"Was he murdered?" asked Bob weakly, his vision expanding back to normal and his hearing restoring as well.  He felt light-headed and slightly dizzy.
"Does it matter?" Dr. Malmstein folded his hands in his lap.  "Someone asked that question, or they asked a question that was then misrecorded as that question.  The question now is, to what end?"
"That's a lot of questions," said Bob.  "Have you asked MSPARKER about it?"
Dr. Malmstein stared at him as though he'd grown another head and introduced it.
"No," he said slowly.  "And perhaps we should."

Eternity

MSPARKER was a quipping machine, built in a collaborative effort between the Literature department and the Comp.Sci department.  There had been a few too many post-grads involved for comfort for a lot of the backers, but the university had insisted that this was the only way to get the project delivered on time.  And MSPARKER had been delivered three weeks early, with no bugs raised during the QA or UAT periods, which had gone down extremely well with the accountants.  It was installed in the central office, known to insiders as the Grey Tower and unknown to outsiders, and unveiled with much pomp and circumstance.  Charles Ascuigimento and his team of security mavens were employed to ensure the safety of the quipping machine, and after a surprising spate of arrests everything seemed to have calmed down.  MSPARKER was turned on, and people with a suitably high security clearance were allowed access to it.

*

Bob Martin was a junior researcher in Epistomological Eschatology which meant he spent a lot of time theorising about the end of the world and how it might be brought about, and didn't get invited to very many parties (it wasn't completely his fault, but he couldn't look at a creamy dip left out of the fridge without being moved to remark how easy it would be to poison the entire street with it).  When MSPARKER was brought online, he was granted security credentials because his boss, who was entitled to them, didn't want any extra work but was unwilling to give up access to anything potentially important.  One of Bob's Learning Objectives for his year-end review was now to interact with MSPARKER and establish what, if anything, it could contribute to EE.

"MSPARKER," he said, wondering if the speech recognition was better than the version he had on his mobile.  He'd turned that off after it had renamed everyone in his address book as an animal, especially since he couldn't figure out what he might have said that could have caused that.  "MSPARKER, tell me about Eternity."

"Eternity is one room with two people and a ham," said MSPARKER promptly.  Bob wrote that down, his handwriting beautifully calligraphic and astonishingly hard to read from any distance, and then read it back to himself.

"MSPARKER," he said, careful to always ensure that the machine knew it was being addressed.  He suspected that his phone had taken to eavesdropping on him to try and get one step ahead.  "MSPARKER, what kind of ham?"

"Boiled," said the machine, it's voice tinny but slightly female, and slightly upper-class.  Bob wrote that down as well, and pondered it for a few minutes, wondering what was so significant about this ham that eternity could be invoked simply by spending time with it in a room.  Ah, there was a thought.

"MSPARKER, which people?"

"A man and a woman, whose relationship papers over the cracks with a mutual appreciation of food.  A match gourmet'd in heaven."

"MSPARKER, what is if it were two women?"

"That would be the definition of determination: two women in pursuit of a ham."

There was a knock on the door, a subtle indication that his time with the quipping machine was nearly up.

"MSPARKER, how many ways are there to end the world?"  He knew he wasn't supposed to ask this question, but the machine was making him edgy.  He wasn't at all sure he wanted to come back.

"How long have you got?" asked the machine.

*

"What kind of results did you get then, Bob?"  Bob's boss, Malcolm, was poking at a lump of gravy-hidden meat on a plastic plate.  The cafeteria around them was half-empty and they were sat away from any other occupied table, everyone else trying to get close to the ceiling-mounted television and watch the news.

"Eternity is a room with a man, a woman and a boiled ham," said Bob, who was happy to discuss this thought.  He spent a week working with it, and had several ideas now about what it might mean.  He was not at all willing to talk about the last question he'd asked, or the fact that a manila envelope containing 5,116 ways to end the world had been delivered to his door late last night.

"Does that help us with the eschatology at all?" Malcolm poked the meat again, wondering if it had just squealed.

"Yes, I think so.  It's going to depend to some extent on the actual people as to how long it takes, but I think the ham is fundamental.  We might be nearing a breakthrough on food-related ennui and the possibility of designing a farmer's market that actually causes people to commit suicide."

Malcolm had skewered the meat and was watching to see if it wriggled now, but he looked up anyway and met Bob's gaze.  "Do we want that?"

"The war will only be won by subtle action," said Bob.  "You know this, I know this.  How much more subtle can we get?"

"We don't want to immanentize the eschaton though," said Malcolm.  "You haven't forgotten the risks for that, have you?"

Bob shook his head.  He hadn't.  He wished someone had programmed MSPARKER to be aware of that though.