Ice-nine

Ice-nine is a form of water with a melting point of 114.4 F. At room temperature and pressure, it exists as a blue-white solid. It was first produced in secret at the Research Laboratory of the General Forge and Foundry Company at the Ilium Works by Dr. Felix Hoenikker shortly before his death.

Development

The development of ice-nine began when a general in the United States Marines requested a portable system for getting rid of mud on the battlefield. Hoenikker theorized that the same types of atoms can crystallize in different ways. A "seed"—a tiny grain of the crystal pattern—could then induce atoms to structure themselves, much as the first layer of a stack of cannonballs determines how layers above it will be constructed. Water on Earth, for example, may only naturally freeze as a form that can be called "ice-one." Other forms could have higher melting points, greater hardness, or other distinct properties. Such a seed, however, would convert all water with which it came into contact into this new form, so even a single grain in a body of water connected to the Earth's hydrological system would cause mass destruction, up to the point that the oceans would freeze solid.

His nominal superior at the Research Laboratory, Dr. Asa Breed, used this as an example of Hoenikker's scientific imagination. He insisted that ice-nine did not actually exist, but was unaware that Hoenikker had in fact developed it shortly before his death. It was contained it in a bottle he labeled "Danger! Ice-nine! Keep away from moisture!" with a crudely drawn skull and crossbones. Hoenikker had been experimenting with melting and re-freezing ice-nine in the kitchen of his Cape Cod home when he died while taking a rest in his wicker chair. His three children—Angela, Frank, and Newt—returned from a walk on the beach with a black Labrador retriever. An accidental exposure to ice-nine, by licking a dishrag covered in it, froze the dog solid. Discovering that their father had died, the three divided the remaining ice-nine between themselves by chipping it from a saucepan with an ice pick and holding the pieces with tweezers. They first stored them in mason jars and later in red and gray Thermos jugs which Angela and Newt kept as their most important possessions.

Accidental Release

Through the three Hoenikker children, three different nations obtained access to ice-nine. The United States acquired it through Angela's marriage to Harrison Conners, who was involved in secret government work related to warfare. The Soviet Union obtained it through Newt's brief marriage to Zinka, a dancer and presumed spy who stole it. Frank gave it to “Papa” Monzano, the ruler of San Lorenzo, in order to gain his government position. "Papa" kept a splinter of ice-nine in a small canister hung from his neck. When he was dying in bed in great pain, he took the contents of it, which turned him solid in seconds, leaving his body contorted, his lips glazed with a blue-white frost. His body could even be banged to produce a tone. He thus became the first person in history to die of ice-nine through his suicide. Dr. Schlichter von Koenigswald was the second, having touched "Papa"'s lips and then washed his hands, the water becoming a solid hemisphere around them. He touched his tongue to it experimentally, causing him to freeze and the hemisphere to shatter, spreading ice-nine on the bedroom floor. After discovering them, Frank suggested cleaning the mess by sweeping up the larger chunks of the shattered hemisphere and melting them in a bucket on a hot plate, then going over the floor with a blowtorch. Dr. von Koenigswald, "Papa", and the bed in which he died would be burned on a funeral pyre.

However, during an aerial show commemorating the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy, a plane crashed into the Presidential Castle, which caused "Papa"'s body and his deathbed to fall into the Caribbean Sea. The bed was fashioned from the lifeboat that brought Bokonon, the island's religious leader, and Earl McCabe, the previous ruler of San Lorenzo, to shore. Bokonon created a legend that the boat would sail again when the end of the world was near. The planet's water turned into ice-nine, and instantly, the sky darkened and tornadoes formed. The weather only stabilized after a week, inasmuch as tornadoes remained numerous but no longer reached the ground. Afterward, the air remained dry, hot, and still, with no smells, and the ground was covered by ice-nine. Bokonon, who survived the initial disaster, wrote a new calypso about the end of the world:

Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,
And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,
Why go right ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and nod.

Others also survived on San Lorenzo, only to commit group suicide shortly after, when they were told by Bokonon—who was pressed by the people to explain what had happened—that God clearly wanted them dead, perhaps because he was done with them, and they "should have the good manners to die". Bokonon himself did not committee suicide, since he always said he would never take his own advice. The few remaining survivors on the island of San Lorenzo stopped receiving any form of radio broadcasts. Frank was one of these survivors and discovered that ants, the only insect to survive, balled their bodied around grains of ice-nine, killing those in the center but producing a bead of dew.

Background

Vonnegut took the idea for ice-nine from an incident at the General Electric laboratories, where he worked in the late 1940s, about a visit by H. G. Wells in the early 1930s. Irving Langmuir, at that time the only Nobel Prize winner in private industry, was assigned to entertain him. Langmuir made up a science fiction story that he thought might interest Wells about a form of ice stable at room temperature. It didn't and since both are now dead, Vonnegut took it. While writing the book he explained the premise to a crystallographer who, after a half hour of silent thought, determined it to be impossible.