Draft Servant
draft–The Servant (long version)
© Copyright 2011, John Inshaw.36a
Charlize and Amina were having snacks and tea with Maggie between them. Kwanele and Hennie toasted their drinks with Ma Gugu and Mbali while Stephen was fixing the front door.
It was late.
Maggie turned to Charlize, “Lizzie, can we watch TV?”
– “Of course, sweetie.”
Maggie grabbed the remote and turned the TV on.
The image of the beautiful anchor, an ex Miss South Africa, appeared on the screen. Behind her was the emergency entrance of Wits Hospital.
– “… Doctors are not sure yet. A specialist who spoke on condition of anonymity, offered that the infamous gang leader of Soweto, known as Tsotsi, may have contracted a fatal human form of mad cow disease, an allegedly virulent variant of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. He urged the public not to be alarmed. The human form of the disease can only be transmitted if—umh—one eats the brain of the affected individual. The police in Johannesburg have also found Tsotsi’s lieutenants alive but in such an appalling state that they refuse to make any comments about what had happened to them. All the policemen and detectives had been seen vomitting outside the shack where the men were found. ”
– “And in another unrelated news, Sello Zuma, the most feared politician in South Africa, was involved in a bizarre car accident. His driver and bodyguard said that he heard a loud and painful noise just seconds before he lost control of the vehicle. The SUV hit a tree before tumbling 200 feet down along the hillside. The driver and another bodyguard are in critical conditions. Doctors said they would have to amputate their arms and legs. As to Zuma, it is feared by his doctors that the man could never speak or move again. His vocal chords have been crushed and he seems to have lost the ability to initiate or control any voluntary movements. Sello Zuma shows all the signs of a patient affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, also referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease. ALS is a form of motor neuron disease, a progressive and fatal disease caused by the degeneration of the nerve cells in the central nervous system that control voluntary muscle movement. It is unclear how any kinds of traumas could have any links to ALS which is mostly a genetic disease.”
Charlize turned down the volume and looked at Amina and Hennie who said almost at the same, “Mad cow disease?”
– “Liz. About Zuma. Isn’t he real big on taking white farmers’ land and give it to blacks?” Hennie asked pensively.
– “Yes, that’s what made him so popular. Why?”
Hennie shook his head, “No, I was just wondering. What are the odds?”
– “Clark!” Maggie squealed and ran up to meet him at the door.
– “Where have you been?” Charlize asked.
– “At the farm, helping Sixpence.”
– “How did you get back here?” Amina asked.
– “I walked.”
– “You walked 40 miles?” Hennie said.
– “Yes, it’s not that far. Everybody’s alright?”
– “We are now.” said Maggie.
37
Richard Greene had spent all day working trying to prove that the Malena-Ritten conjecture would work the way he intended it in his equations. There was a gap in his reasoning. His theory might be irretrievably flawed. Beside him, Hoskins too, was working with five opened phones line connected to Princeton, Stanford, Buenos Aires, CERN in Switzerland and Cambridge in London. Greene knew that physicists and mathematicians around the world must have now heard about the error and working feverishly to prove the conjecture. History was repeating itself. Greene was reminded of Andrew Wiles’ 1993 failed proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem—a theorem that had baffled great mathematicians for centuries. It had taken Wiles a whole year with help from others to finally prove the theorem and that was enough to forever taint the magnificence of his work. This will not happen to me, Greene thought. I will not sit back to watch someone else complete the proof and steal the glory. Greene knew that the triumph of achievement would go to the person who would deliver the final proof and not to the person who had spent years and years working on it. Greene crumpled the paper in front of him and threw it in the room in frustration. Every time he fixed one part of the calculation, it would cause some other difficulty in another part of the proof.
He turned to his assistant.
– “What’s the news from London?”
Hoskins answered sheepishly without raising his head.
– “Nigel Sterling is working on the gap right now from what I heard.”
Greene shook his head in disgust. Nigel Sterling, ‘The’ English theoretical physicist whose runaway best seller book A Brief Talk On the Universe had made him an overnight academic celebrity and a darling of the media. He was the de facto Greene’s Nobel rival. A recent row between them about whether the Theory Of Everything could be achieved before the end of the 21st century had made headline news around the world. He too, was working on a final theory but based on Alain Connes’ Noncommutative Geometry instead of string theory.
– “Is he using God again or is he making another bet?” Greene said sarcastically, referring to Sterling’s penchant for making silly and useless bets on fundamental questions in physics. As for using God’s name in his speeches, Greene thought that was a shameless tentative to emulate Einstein and to be seen as his equal. The difference was that Einstein had used the word ‘God’ once when he declared that God does not play dice when talking about quantum physics, while Sterling was using and abusing it at every occasion.
– “Yeah, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone.”
– “I can’t believe anybody would take this guy seriously. Really. He always makes unfounded theatrical statements like I’m sure of this or Believe it or not only to recant them a few days or weeks later and the press keep praising him. And what about his theory on time travel and its baggage of ad hoc principles? He did not do so with some rigorous mathematical proofs but because he thought so. What a joke. If there were a Nobel prize for Nobel laureate hopeful, he would have been their natural candidate.”
Hoskins remaind silent.
– “It’s so like him. What do you bet that if he found the proof before us, he would go in front of the media, apologize for the fact that he had said that string theory was a mistake and would turn himself immediately into the most ardent and believer of the same theory like he had done so many times before in other instances?”
– “I don’t think we should worry about him but we might try—uh—a different approach.”
– “Like what?”
Hoskins looked up.
– “Richard, I’ve been thinking. Why don’t you spend some time with Charlize de Vries and find out how she was able to discover the gap so fast. Either she’s some kind of mathematical genius and we could use her help or else, someone else told her about the error and—”
– “And that same person could help us complete the proof!”
Hoskins nodded with a smile.
Greene grabbed his assistant by his shoulder.
– “Great thinking Steven. Great thinking.”
Hoskins grinned and wiped the sweat off his forehead.
– “There’s one more thing, Richard.” Hoskins said hesitantly.
– “Well, what is it?”
– “Uh, it did seem that the perturbations registered by LIGO and the Arecibo Observatory might really be gravitational waves—uh—originating from South Africa, right here, nearby Johannesburg. To be exact, I would have to say nearer to Elizabethtown than Johannesburg and we know someone who lives in that town, Charlize de Vries.”
Greene let the information sink in.
Hoskins continued, “And then, there are these series of baffling reports coming from Wits Hospital located in Elizabethtown on medical symptoms that left doctors completely mystified. All of this occurring since last Friday and one of them took place on a farm North of Pretoria which happened to belong to Charlize’s parents. Coincidence?”
– “Let me guess. Last Friday was the last detection of the gravitational waves.”
Hoskins nodded.
Greene was now staring at his assistant in his eyes. “Do you think—”
Hoskins shrugged. “Who knows? According to our own theory, anything is possible, right?”
– “Right. I say it’s time we get better acquainted with Miss de Vries and her entourage.”
– “Look Richard, I know you like her but—”
– “Steven. Do you really I’m that stupid? Do you really think I would put my feelings for a woman before a theory that could assure me eternal recognition? My name would be synonymous with theoretical physics. No one who had ever lived or will live could ever be compared to me.”
Hoskins watched Greene poured himself a drink.
– “Richard, have you thought about what we should do if she doesn’t want to help us for whatever reasons?”
– “Uh, no, Not really.”
Hoskins moved closer to his mentor.
– “What if I tell you that I just happen to know how to contact an ex-kommandant of the defunct Boeremag?”
– “Bouwer—what?”
– “Boeremag, Afrikaans for Boer Force, a South African right-wing activism group with white separatist aims. They were planning to overthrow the ruling black government and to reinstate a new Boer republic reminiscent of the apartheid-era. They were all arrested in 2002 and charged with terrorism, sabotage and treason. One of them escaped from his cell, kommandant Wilhelm Katz. The same Katz who had told the magistrate ‘I have not changed my opinion’ when asked if he still believed that black people were not human.”
Greene stared admiringly at his assistant. “And how do you happen to know this charming character?”
– “During a meeting with a sleazy South African reporter but that’s another story.”
– “And how this ex-kommandant might be able to help us?”
Hoskins laughed out loud.
– “Do you know the joke about prosecutors capable of indicting ham sandwiches?”
– “Yes.”
– “Well, Wilhelm Katz can make the same ham sandwiches talk.”
Greene and Hoskins burst into laughters.
38
The memorial services for Mara Smit and Jakobus Van de Merwe had been sad and solemn. It had been held in the farm’s main residence. Knowing Jakobus and his love for the Zulu people, Charlize had agreed that he received a burial according to the Zulu tradition. His remains were removed from the main residence and placed in the central Krall in the workers’ quarters. It was then removed, feet symbolically pointing away from the former place of residence, through a hole in the wall of a house and not through the door. The reason for this seemed to be that this will make it difficult or even impossible for the dead person to remember the way back to the living, as the hole in the wall was immediately closed. Sixpence lead the procession through a zigzag path to the burial site with thorns strewn along the way and a barrier erected at the grave. Jakobus was buried along with his personal belongings under the shadow of his favorite limpopo baobab tree while Charlize played the Adagio Sostenuto of Beethoven’s piano sonata in C-sharp minor on an old upright piano transported there for the occasion. A cenotaph—an empty tomb—had been erected for Maggie’s mother, Mara Smit, next to Jakobus’s grave.
They then returned to the workers’ quarters where everyone followed the cleansing ritual by washing off the dust of the graveyard with water containing pieces of cut aloe.
Charlize looked at the more than 60 families that depended on the farm for their livelihood and promised herself that she would never abandoned them no matter what the adversities.
After the funeral, they had all driven back to Elizabethtown except for Clark who had remained on the farm to help out the farmworkers. Ma Gugu had taken Maggie to her room and remained there at her protégée’s side. Mbali was serving tea to Amina and Hennie while Kwanele and Stephen had gone back to the servants’ quarters to drown their sorrows.
Hennie and Amina came to sit by Charlize’s side on the Chesterfield.
– “Liz, the Beethoven’s sonata had really moved me, you know?” said Hennie, “I knew you play piano but I never knew you were this good.”
– “Yeah, I was really impressed.” said Amina.
– “Thank you, both.” said Charlize with a smile.
– “What about you Amina? Do you have a secret passion we don’t know about?” Hennie asked.
– “I—no.”
– “C’mon, tell us. We’re friends.” Hennie insisted.
Amina lowered her gaze then sighed loudly.
– “I’m Jane Smith.” she announced.
Hennie and Charlize looked at her, not understanding.
Amina turned to them. “Jane Smith. Of the Riemann Hypothesis.” she said slowly.
Hennie jumped out of the sofa. “What? No! It can’t be. You’re lying just to make fun of me. Tell me you’ve just made that up.”
Charlize took Amina’s hands. “You’re the Jane Smith?”
Amina nodded shyly.
– “No way, nooo way!” Hennie was still up and screaming.
Mbali who was standing behind the sofa couldn’t take it anymore. “Hennie, what’s wrong with you? Why are you insulting Amina?”
Hennie laughed. “Me? Insulting Amina? No, Mbali. You don’t understand. Come here, let me explain something to you.”
When Mbali did not move, Hennie walked up to her and led her around the sofa to face Amina.
“Mbali. Let me introduce you to the most mysterious mathematician of our time.”
Amina shook her head. “Mbali, don’t listen to him. He’s exaggerating way, wayyy too much.”
Hennie looked at Charlize, imploring. “Liz, can I tell Mbali the Jane Smith’s story? Please?”
Charlize smiled and looked at Amina who nodded.
– “Alright, Mbali.” said Hennie in an academic tone that made Charlize and Amina laughed out loud.
– Alright, Mbali. Listen and don’t interrupt me. In 2000, The Clay Mathematics Institute in Boston named seven great unsolved mathematical problems and promised a million dollars to anyone who could solve any of them. It is called the Millennium Prize Problems. As of today, six of the problems remain unsolved. Only the Poincaré conjecture has been solved by an eccentric Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman who, because he’s nuts, declined the award and the million dollar. He’s now staying with his mother on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, living off his meager government retirement checks.”
Mbali looked at Charlize and Amina who nodded.
– “In 2007, a woman named Jame Smith published a paper stating that she might have solved the Riemann Hypothesis and Mbali, believe me when I tell you that it is the most difficult problem. David Hilbert, a German mathematician recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians had this to say about the problem: ‘If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: has the Riemann hypothesis been proven?’ So, Mbali. You can imagine the storm that Jane Smith’s paper had created around the world. All the mathematicians in the world went through her paper and only after two years, had they declared that the proof was flawed. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that to arrive at that point in her paper, Jane Smith had to be a mathematical prodigy on the par with Grigori Perelman himself. But nobody knew who she was. There was not one single Jane Smith listed as a mathematician anywhere in the world. All calls and pleas from the mathematicians community for her to come out had been in vain. And she is sitting right here! Miss Amina Sheth. Wow!”
Amina dropped a mock curtsy.
– “Amina, why haven’t you continued in mathematics?” Charlize asked.
Amina lowered her head. “I was too embarrassed and I—I didn’t take it well when the error was found. I was so sure of myself. I’ve spent years carefully pouring over my works, telling myself each time, do not hurry, check everything before you publish the results and I couldn’t find any errors. So I sent my results to arXiv. After the disaster, I went into depression, quit my job and went back to help out with my parents’ business. I haven’t opened a single mathematical treatise in more than three years. It was only recently that I got the job at the library and that I have the courage to look at books that have mathematical symbols in it.”
– “Jeez, Amina. The institute can really use someone like you, you know?” Hennie said.
– “He’s right.” Charlize said, “Would you like me to—”
– “No, no. Thanks.” Amina cut her off and smiled timidly, “Maybe in a few years but not now. I don’t think I’m ready to face that kind of pressure again.”
– “Hey, could you look at something for me? Just a quick look. The Malena-Ritten conjecture as used in Greene’s theory.” Hennie said.
Amina laughed. “Hennie, even if I were at my best, I couldn’t still help you. It would me take me months, if not years, to pull myself up to Richard Greene’s level of mathematics.”
Then as if he remembered something. “Liz, what about Clark? When do we get to ask him questions that all of us are dying to ask?”
– “I don’t know,” Amina said, “we might be wrong. There might be some other explanations that do not require a—uh—supranatural explanations, don’t you think so?”
– “So how do you explain the flipping coin?” Hennie asked.
– “He might have given that to me as a talisman, you know? A good-luck charm, who knows?”
Hennie shook his head and turned to Charlize. “Okay, what about the gap in Greene’s theory? Liz, how do you explain that?”
Charlize looked at Amina. “He told me he read a lot of physics books for layman. Maybe in one those books, some authors jealous of Greene had made an accusation without any proofs and Clark had read it and it just happened that the author was right. Maybe.”
Hennie didn’t give up. “What about the people who attacked us? What happened to them?”
– “They’re gangsters,” Amina said, “who knows what they’d been sniffing or smoking or drinking for how long? They might have been victims of some kind of side effects.”
Hennie was beyond himself. “So none of you believe that Clark is from—”
– “From where, Hennie? Tell us. Where did Clark come from?” Amina asked, “You know, I would already have a hard time believing he’s from another planet or from the future, but from another universe? Please. That’s stretching human imagination to its limit.”
– “I have to agree with Amina on this, Hennie.” Charlize said.
Hennie looked defeated. “Alright, but I’m not letting this go, I’m telling you. I’ll find out the truth with or without your help.”
Charlize and Amina looked at each other and shook their heads.
39
When Charlize walked into her office the following day, she was surprised to see her director sitting in her chair talking to Richard Greene and his assistant. Coetzee, rapidly uncrossed his legs and stood up.
– “Ah, Charlize, good morning.”
Charlize put down her laptop case on a table by the door. “Good morning, Pieter. Prof. Greene, Mr. Hoskins.”
– “Good morning, Charlize.” Greene said, “I’m sorry to hear about your lost.”
Charlize looked at the men. “Thank you.”
Coetzee had rounded her desk and was now standing by her side.
– “Charlize,” said Coetzee beaming, “I have great news for you and the Institute.”
Charlize willed a smile and looked at her director wearily.
– “Prof. Greene had decided to stay in Johannesburg and enlisted our help to prove the special case of the Malena-Ritten conjecture. The whole world would know that South African physicists have played a role, a small one maybe, but nevertheless a role in the progress of the search for the final theory. What do you say? Isn’t that marvelous for us?”
Charlize struggled to find an answer. “Uh, well, that is certainly a great news for our Institute and I’m very happy for our colleagues physicists who would be participating in Prof. Greene’s—”
Greene shook his head, “Charlize, you’re too modest. In fact, I am here to ask Dr. Coetzee for your help.”
Charlize was completely taken aback. “My help?”
Coetzee could barely hold back his enthusiasm. “Isn’t that wonderful, Charlize? You would be representing our Institute.”
– “But Pieter, I am not qualified. The mathematics involved are far beyond my abilities—”
– “Miss de Vries,” said Hoskins, “you were the one who pointed to us, rightly, the error that none of the thousand of string theorists from around the world had seen. I would say that there’s no better candidate than yourself for the task.”
Charlize turned to a smiling Greene, “With all due respect, Prof. Greene, I have never done any work on string theory and you are the one with the Fields Medal and Abel Prize. What kind of contributions do you expect from me?”
Coetzee was no longer smiling. Greene and Hoskins glanced at each other. Charlize knew that no one would believe the truth. She could not possibly tell the greatest living mathematician that her domestic was the one who had found an error in his works.
There were an uncomfortable long silence inside the room before Hoskins, his eyes still lowered towards the floor, said, “Then… maybe… perhaps, you know of someone who can help us? Maybe?”
Charlize thought right away of Amina.
– “Uh maybe, but I have to ask her first.”
– “Her?” said Hoskins, tilting his head up.
Charlize nodded.
– “Someone here from the Institute?” Coetzee asked.
– “No, Pieter. A personal friend.”
– “May we have her name?”
Hoskins’ question sounded just a tad too interested for Charlize’s taste.
– “I’d rather ask her first if you don’t mind. She has not done any works in mathematics in a long time.”
Greene walked to Charlize and took her hand, “Charlize, please let me know as soon as you have your friend’s answer. I’m sure I will find the solution but hey, what do you know, we might find it sooner with your friend's help.”
Coetzee led Greene and his assistant out of the room but not before letting her know with his look how disappointed he was of her.
– “So, what do you think of her reaction?” Greene asked Hoskins once they were back inside their SUV.
– “I think it’s genuine. I don’t think she found the error by herself.”
– “The friend, then.”
– “Apparently.”
– “And why does she have to be so mysterious about her name? Wouldn’t any mathematicians jump at the first opportunities to work with me?”
– “That’s what bothers me too.”
Hoskins’ blueberry phone went off. Greene watched his assistant took the call then folded it back with a dejected look.
– “Who was it?” Greene asked.
– “It was London. Sterling is working with Najad Bose.”
– “Shit!” Greene hit the dashboard with his palm in frustration.
Najad Bose was an Indian mathematician and autodidact with no formal training. While struggling to survive from day to day in the slum of Bombay, he sent his notebook—with stamps bought from money earned by selling his blood—containing his results to Greene imploring him to take a look at his works and to have the kindness to write back any critics, comments or suggestions as a letter of encouragement from a man of Greene’s stature would help him get a decent job as a mathematician. Greene wrote back, “Please do not bother me anymore. I’m sending you back your notebook in case you are out of toilet paper. Sincerely, Richard Greene.”
Bose went into depression shortly after. It was a friend of his who took upon himself to send Bose’s notebooks to Nigel Sterling who took the time to look at them. Later, after he had facilitated Bose’s trip to England and secured for him an academic post, Sterling declared to the world that Bose’s theorems must be true, because, if they were not true, no one would have the imagination to invent them. Najad Bose’s talent was later recognized to be in the same league as legendary mathematicians such as Euler, Gauss, Newton and Archimedes.
– “Damn!” Greene was out of himself.
– “I think it’s time to go pro-active.” Hoskins said.
– “What do you recommend?”
– “Have a talk with Wilhelm Katz, for a start.”
40
The following days had seen a web log war erupted throughout the Internet among academicians, physicists, mathematicians, amateurs and lay persons alike about who was the most likely to find the solution first between Greene and Sterling. A line had been clearly drawn between the supporters of both camps. Smears, snide remarks and personal insults could be read in hundreds of discussion boards and web logs. English media had already declared the Malena-Ritten conjecture obsolete and had proposed a new appellation that would soon reign over theoretical physics: The Sterling-Bose Conjecture.
Greene pushed back his chair away from the computer screen when his assistant walked in the Cupola Suite, a big smile on his face.
Hoskins threw a thick folder on Greene’s desk.
– “What did I tell you about my ex-kommandant? Look at the reports his men have been able to gather in just a few days.”
Greene gazed at the folder on his desk. “Charlize just called. Her ‘friend’ declines our offer.”
Hoskins was still smiling. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I know who she is.”
He quickly leafed through the reports and pulled out photos of documents.
– “Take a look.” he said and handed them to Greene.
Greene read the documents then looked up. “How did they get this?”
Hoskins smiled with obvious satisfaction. “His men are all from the defunct South African BOSS, the Bureau Of State Security, the apartheid-era equivalent of the Nazi Gestapo.”
Greene looked at the documents again. “I’ll be damned. The Jane Smith of the Riemann Hypothesis herself.”
Hoskins sat on the desk. “Miss Amina Sheth.”
– “What is it with Indian people and Mathematics? Anyway, you think she’ll be able to find the solution?”
– “We can find out one way or another.”
– “What do you mean?”
Hoskins grinned. “We can ask her nicely or Wilhelm Katz can ask her.”
Greene shook his head. “I don’t know, isn’t that a little extreme?”
– “Richard, are you willing to throw away 7 years of researches and hard work so that Sterling could collect the laurels in a few weeks?”
– “What if we’re wrong. What if she cannot help us even if she wanted too. She really has to be a genius of the order of—”
– “That’s what I want to talk to you about.” Hoskins cut him off.
Greene paused.
– “Listen, Richard. Amina might be able to help us or not is yet to be seen, but I want to talk to you about the other alternative. I’ve been going over all these claims of LIGO, the Arecibo Observatory and these strange reports from the hospitals in Johannesburg and Elizabethtown from last week.”
– “The gravitational waves?”
– “Yes.” Hoskins grew more agitated. “Richard. Let’s suppose for a moment that there’s really something like a parallel universe in an extra dimension just barely an atomic length away from our universe. Let’s also suppose that a wavefunction from the other side spreads over and tunnels through the barrier. My question to you is this. What kind of event on Earth would make that wavefunction decohere here in our universe?”
Greene did not hesitate. “A cosmic event capable of creating a black hole.”
Hoskins jumped up, his fists in the air. “Yes! I knew you were the smartest guy on Earth.”
Greene looked at his assistant, perplexed. “I don’t understand your question. What’s your point?”
Hoskins walked back to Greene’s desk and leaned over dramatically.
– “Guess what event was happening here on Earth that Friday when the gravitational wave felt by LIGO was the strongest?”
Greene frowned his eyebrows for a moment, then a smile appeared on his face.
– “The LHC!” Greene shouted, referring to the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.
Hoskins had a larger grin on his face.
Greene was walking around the room, talking to himself.
– “Of course, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has created by accident microscopic black holes during an experiment where physicists are hoping to see telltale of extra dimensions.”
Hoskins nodded.
– “That event might have been enough to decohere a tunneling wavefunction from a parallel universe.”
– “So, my question is, what if we reproduce the event?”
Greene answered excitedly, “That same wavefunction will decohere back on the other side according to the same uncertainty principle that rules virtual particles.”
Hoskins could not refrain himself from talking, “A virtual particle is a particle that exists for a limited time and space and whatever came through the barrier exists here on Earth only for a limited time and space also.”
– “And in the cosmic time frame, one second is equivalent to millions and millions of years.”
– “Which allows whatever have come through the barrier to exist and function here in our universe. Whatever it is, it’s not real. It’s a virtual something.”
Greene looked at his assistant. “Steven, you’re a genius.”
– “Richard, all we have to do now is to find out what or who came through that portal.”
– “And?”
– “And he will write down for us the Theory Of Everything or—”
– “Or what?”
– “Or, you call CERN’s director and force him to rerun the black holes experiment. With your reputation, he wouldn’t even hesitate.”
Greene smiled. “Which would send Superman back to where he comes from. A virtual particle popping back up in the void.”
Hoskins sat back down on a couch.
– “Richard, we’ve found Superman’s kryptonite.”
41
Masaru Katsu stared at his computer screen and frowned. Here was an incredible controversy on the Internet on String Theory. How did that happen? How did he miss what was going on in South Africa? He knew about Greene’s discovery of the error in his equations before his appearance at PBS and all the late shows in New-York but he thought that it would not take more than a day or two to clarify the matter. And he had completely missed the chance to take the lead on the story! He should have never trusted Richard Greene. The man believed himself to belong among the few possessors of the truth in theoretical physics.
Katsu, a Japanese American physicist, Professor of Theoretical Physics in the City College of Los Angeles was another media star in the category of science popularizer. Theoretical Physics was creating stars overnight. Books on theories or speculations about the universe and its laws have always fascinated readers. From Aristotle’s Physics, On the Heavens, On the Universe to Plato’s Timaeus, to Lucretius’s On The Nature Of Things, to Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, to Copernicus’s On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, to Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, these books and treatises have always been widely read and their authors widely acclaimed. The trend has been continued ever since. It was only recently that authors of modern popular science books had been elevated to the status of stars.
It had all started with Nigel Sterling’s phenomenal success of his small book, A Brief Talk On The Universe, notwithstanding the claim made in the book that when the universe will start contracting again, time will reverse itself and human will become younger and younger. That claim was, of course, later retracted by its author but by that time, Nigel Sterling, had already become the face of Physics throughout the world. A slew of other physicists and scientists had followed suit with varied degrees of success. Since then, Sterling had written books after books on the same theme, making more and more extravagant speculations presented as true statements just to remain in the limelight. A famous case among others was about black holes. Sterling had made a bet of $ 1.99 that according to his theory, black holes should destroy everything that falls inside. When works from other renowned scientists and observations seemed to disagree with his theory, Sterling had made a complete U-Turn and announced to the world that he had changed his mind after having solved a long-standing difficulty in physics and did not understand why he has not been given a Nobel Prize for his work yet.
Then came Richard Greene’s The Universe Of Strings, a book that purported to explain string theory to the layman and also presented the speculative hypotheses as factual certainties. The fact that string theory could not make—not to say could never make—one single verifiable prediction did not bother Greene a bit. Whenever he needed to defend his scientifically unfalsifiable claims, Greene would resort to an attitude known as the Bertrand Russell’s Teapot analogy. Russell wrote:
‘If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes.’
Greene’s book had made him the theoretical physicist of the century.
Katsu had gone them one better. He was a natural ‘communicator’ in the sense that his best subject was himself. The topics of his books alone should have been enough to scare off any publishers, even those who were specialized in extreme science-fiction novels. But Katsu, being a string theorist, had profited from the powerful hold of the string community on publishers. All of his books, without exceptions, would start with the first chapters—some would say, half the book—about himself and recounted over and over anecdotes that tell readers how smart he was when he was a kid. Once his books hit the market, like Sterling and Greene before him, Katsu was endowed with a ‘star’ status overnight and was invited again and again to appear or give talks in scientific shows and journals.
Katsu was interrupted in his thoughts when his desk phone went off.
He straightened himself up and picked up the receiver. “Katsu.”
His secretary’s voice announced, “A call from Johannesburg for you, Dr. Katsu.”
– “Patch him through.”
Katsu listened to the report. “So, Hoskins checked with LIGO and Arecibo?… Good, that’s what I thought… Come again?… A series of inexplicable events? Okay, what else?… They said what?… A South African woman physicist found the error?… He contacted the director of CERN? About what?… The black holes experiment?… Wait, slow down, what’s a black township?… What? Well, say slum then… The man broke a boxer’s fist with his chin?… Someone who can hurt them just by looking at them? You’re sure?… Are you certain?… And those guys were there that Friday night?… No, no. Stay there, I might need you.”
Katsu replaced the receiver and pressed on a button.
– “Brigitte, book me a flight to Johannesburg and a room at the Michelangelo Tower. Yes, tonight or tomorrow.”
He was right. They were not false positive signals. They were really gravitational waves and from what he had just learned, Katsu cursed himself for not having followed his instincts. He knew he had more clouts that Greene in South Africa. He was revered over there. After all, wasn’t Japan the only major business partner of South Africa before, during and after the apartheid-era? And the director of CERN was a personal friend.
Katsu laughed out loud thinking about the expression ‘throw enough mud at the wall and some of it will stick’. Among all the fabrications he’d piled in his books, maybe, just maybe, the parallel universe’s one will stick. String Theory might be the real deal after all, unbelievable, he thought. Maybe all the monkeys hitting randomly at the typewriters have finally ended up writing a grammatically correct sentence.
42
Wilhelm Katz was driving slowly past the de Vrieses’ estate for the 5th time in an hour. The young black maid was still tending to the flowers out front. Two of his men, ex-agents from the defunct South African BOSS, had the three kaffirs under tight guard in the back of the van. They did not mind spending the whole day cruising around the neighborhood as the black men’s fears reminded them of the old times, the apartheid-era.
One of the guards slapped a prisoner. “So kaffir, you’re sure it’s not her?”
The prisoner cringed and moved back. “No baas, I’m sure. It’s not her.”
The other guard slapped hard another one. “What about you? Is it her or not?”
– “No baas. Please baas, it’s not her.”
The guard hit the last of their prisoners. “And you? You’re sure that the white man we saw earlier wasn’t the one who was with the woman?”
The man lowered his head under the blow. “No baas, I don’t know baas. We were not looking at him. We were looking at the woman, baas.”
The guards turned to Katz. “What you want to do now, Wil?”
Katz tried to control his frustration. “Fuckin’ cheeky kaffirs. You can’t blery count of them. I’m pretty sure it’s her but these dumb kaffirs were certainly too stoned that night to recognize her now.”
– “I can force them to say it’s her Wil, just leave them with me in a basement for half an hour.” said one of the guards which caused his friend to laugh out loud.
– “No,” said Katz, “We’re going back. Tomorrow we’ll cruise around the Indian store. Maybe she was Indian and these kaffirs thought she was black.”
– “You’re the boss, Wil.”
Katz made a U-turn at the end of the road and drove back past the house. Mbali was still outside cutting flowers and put them in a basket. A little girl had come out to help her.
Just before they arrived at the intersection, one of the prisoners started screaming and pointing at a black maid by a trash bin on the other side of the street.
– “There! It’s her! That’s her, baas!”
Katz almost jammed on the breaks but then slowed down the van and pulled it over by the sidewalk two houses down.
– “Are you sure, Kaffir?”
– “Yes baas, I’m sure. It’s her.”
The two guards looked at the other prisoners and they too, nodded their heads.
Katz stared at the woman. Yeah, she was cute alright. He turned to the prisoners.
– “Kaffir, you know what I’m gonna do to you if you lied to me?”
– “No baas, I’m not lying. It’s her. I swear.”
Katz nodded to his men. The guards slid the side door open.
– “Okay, you can go now but remember, we can find you again.”
The three skollies jumped out of the van and started running without turning back.
One of the guards moved to the passenger seat. “We can take her now, Wil.”
– “No, not yet. I have to report to our client first and we need to find out who live there. Koos, in case she doesn’t speak English well, you can speak native, ain’t that right?”
– “Yep.”
– “You’re gonna be the one questioning her then.”
Koos smiled viciously. “With pleasure Wil and oh, she will talk alright.”
Katz started the van and pulled away.
43
– “My God, Richard, how much are you paying for this per night?”
Katsu was standing in the middle of the Cupola Suite, his arms spread out wide. Greene looked at him from across his desk. Hoskins watched from behind his mentor speechless.
– “Vic, I didn’t know you were in Johannesburg. Another book tour?”
Katsu smiled. Everyone in America called him Victor, from his Japanese name Masaru meaning Victory.
– “No, no, Richard. I came here to give you a hand.”
Greene chuckled. “Vic, don’t think I don’t appreciate your offer but I really don’t see how you can help me. The mathematics involved are not from your level.”
Katsu looked at Hoskins with a big smile. “Ah, this is what I love from the big man. Always insulting you without even appearing to do it.”
– “I’m just stating a fact.”
Katsu approached the desk and pulled out a chair.
– “Richard, you misunderstood me. I’m not here to help you solve that error of yours. I’m here to help you solve a bigger problem than that.”
Greene waited for what might be coming next silently.
Katsu looked into Greene’s eyes. “Richard, I’m gonna tell you what have been bugging me for the last 10 days or so. Just listen to me first and we can talk after, alright?”
Greene did not move, neither Hoskins.
Katsu smiled. “Okay. When I first heard about LIGO’s detection of the waves from South Africa, my reaction was the same as yours. I said to myself ‘No way’, that must be a mistake. I know, I know. I’m the fiercest proponent of parallel universes and I denied it when an exceptional event here on Earth may help me confirm their existences. So I tossed the notion aside until I remembered something that I’m sure have not gone unnoticed by you and Hoskins. The LHC experiment that same night. The one that had created microscopic black holes by accident.”
Katsu saw the uneasiness in Greene and Hoskins’ expressions and knew he was on the right track. Katsu leaned back against his chair and crossed his fingers on his chest.
– “Alright then. Now that you know that I know, let me give you the short version. I know about the three losers who had been attacked by an inaudible sound between here and Elizabethtown. I know that it was a mediocre woman physicist who just happens to live in that town who had first found the gap in your equations. I know there are bizarre reports of medical cases from that same town and I’ve heard stories about the ‘white sorcerer’ from the black slums. Do you want me to continue or do we understand each other?”
Greene looked defeated. “What do you want Vic?”
Katsu let out a laugh of satisfaction.
– “Richard, whatever came through the barrier looks human and can control electromagnetic radiation. It might even be able to see the electromagnetic radiation. It is impervious to the law of physics in our universe—”
Hoskins could not resisted. “Wait, Victor. If it is impervious to the law of physics in our universe, how comes it doesn’t float in the air or make a dent in the concrete every time it walks?”
Katsu looked at Hoskins with a disappointed air then turned to Greene. “Is he this stupid all the time?”
Hoskins was ready to say something when Katsu held up his hand. “Steven, what I meant was that it has more energetic potential than us. If you scream with all your might, I might be able to hear you from two blocks away but not farther than that. If it screams with all its might, who’s to say it can’t cause a sound twice or ten times the volume of the sound generated by a sonic boom? Who’s to say that its scream won’t cause buildings to collapse and puncture all the inner eardrums of everyone from ten miles around?”
– “The same can be true for its strength and its sight,” added Greene, “it can hold an egg or crack something with its fingers that no human is capable of even with iron tools, or it can see whenever it wants particles as small as quarks.”
– “Wait, wait!” Hoskins got more and more excited, “If it can see electromagnetic radation then it means that it can see what the particles or waves are doing, am I right?”
Greene and Katsu nodded.
– “Wow! So it can tell us why quantum objects behave the way they do and why macroscopic objects also behave they way they do?”
Katsu smiled while nodding his head appreciatively.
Hoskins could no longer speak, “So basically, it… it can see the quarks, the superpartners, the Higgs boson… it… it can tell us if the elementary particles are strings or not… it can tell us how many dimensions exist in our universe… it basically knows the ultimate laws that govern our universe!”
Katsu felt the need to interrupt Hoskins here. “With its knowledge, we will be able to write down at last the final theory. We will be able to explain any phenomena happening here on Earth and in the farthest galaxy. We will be God.”
– “We?” Greene asked.
Katsu stopped. He looked shocked. The two men stared at each other in silence for a long moment.
Slowly, very slowly, Katsu recovered his smile.
– “Richard, it is ‘we’ or tomorrow, the whole world will know about the freak and every government on this planet will start hunting it down and your name will remain in the annals of physics as the man who had searched for the final theory, in vain.”
Hoskins looked at his mentor who finally nodded.
– “Great!” Katsu said, “Hoskins, why don’t you call room service and order us a somptuous dinner while Richard and myself talk about a few details?”
Hoskins had barely lifted the receiver from its hook when the door of the suite opened and Katz walked in. He stopped when he saw the Japanese man.
– “Katz, go ahead. You can talk. He’s with us.” said Hoskins.
Katz nodded. “We’ve found the woman who was with the man you’re looking for. She’ll be able to tell us who he is.”
Katsu looked admiringly at Greene and Hoskins. “My God, I’ve under estimated you people. Hoskins, tell room service to add another cover for our friend here.”
44
Maggie, a cotton candy stick in her hand, stared with wonderment at the Ferris wheel rotating slowly. It took Charlize all her strength to not let Maggie escape like a bullet through the crowd of Elizabethtown Fair. Amina and Hennie were walking behind them gulping down boerewors roll, a South African hotdog with Dutch sausage, tomato and onion relish.
– “Lizzie! Can we go on a ride, please? Can we go on a ride, please?” Maggie was pleading.
– “Yes, honey. We’ll go on all the rides that you want but you have to go with Hennie or Clark.”
Maggie ran back to Hennie and pulled one of his arm. “Hennie, Hennie, can we go on the big wheel now, please?”
Hennie, his mouth full of boerewors, nodded. “Give me a minute sweetie.”
– “When Clark’s supposed to join us?” Amina asked Charlize.
– “Soon. He’d promised Maggie the grand tour of the fair.”
Koos was following the group from a few yards. He knew that two men he did not know were filming the group’s every action since they’d set foot at the fair. The hired hands from the black township were also there but on the other side of the trail. The client had been very specific. Koos was to hire skollies and explained to them what was required of them two days before the attack while Katz would hire two cameramen from outside his group. After that, all of them were to go into different public places and have as many physical contacts as possible with strangers. On the day of the attack, the skollies were to follow Koos and waited for his signal. A thumbs up from Koos. The attack would be filmed by the two men hired by Katz. After the attack, everyone would go their own way no matter what happened. Koos looked at Charlize and Amina chatting in front of the big wheel while the geek and the little girl were lining up for the ride. He knew that the skollies were only waiting for his signal. Not yet, he thought. Another ten minutes.
Charlize and Amina watched Hennie and an excited Maggie got inside a passenger car. Maggie was waving at them and screaming ‘Lizzie, Amina, Clark’s here!’.
They turned at the same time to watch Clark approaching them from a stand. Not far from them, a man lifted his right thumb.
One of the skollies approached the group still waving at the little girl on the ride. He saw that the Indian woman had her bag’s strap slung over her shoulder. The man slowed down pretending to wait for a friend right by Amina and then, with one swift movement snatched her bag and started running towards the nearest exit.
– “Hey, my bag!” Amina screamed and started running after the thief but was held back by Clark.
– “Clark! He stole my—”
Before she could finish her sentence, the thief let out a horrifying scream and dropped on the ground like a rock apparently victim of hamstring injury in both of his legs. People gathered curiously around the thief incapable of the slighest movement from his waist down.
Clark went to pick up Amina’s bag and was on his way back when two other skollies quickly approached Charlize and Amina. Both wore brass knuckles. Charlize immediately saw the threat and pulled Amina against her. The closest skollie hurried his steps when suddenly everything around him went upside-down. The world he saw was turning itself upside-down. No longer able to coordinate his hands and legs, the man staggered and fell on the ground like a drunkard. The second skollie let out a scream of terror before following his friend to the ground in the same manner. Both were seen moving their heads around, back and forth, up and down, screaming in terror.
– “The ride’s over. Let’s go get Maggie.” Clark said while handing Amina her bag.
Charlize and Amina followed Clark through the crowd with a single question on their mind. Could Hennie be right?
45
The large flat TV screen in the Michelangelo Cupola Suite showed a still scene of the Elizabethtown Fair zoomed on Clark’s face.
– “There, look! He’s concentrating!” Katsu said, pointing at the screen.
Greene, Hoskins and Katz moved closer to the screen.
Katsu forwarded the tape and then paused again. “And here, look how he stared directly into the other two’s eyes before they went down.”
– “What happened to them?” Katz asked. “How’s possible they’re seeing everything upside down?”
Katsu shook his head as if disgusted by the stupidity of the question. “Wil, the images formed in our retinas are upside-down. We’re all see things upside-down. It’s the optic part of our brain that make them right-side-up.”
– “What does that mean?” Hoskins asked, “He can manipulated the atoms and molecules? How?”
– “No, more likely, he can manipulate electromagnetic waves. That and a complete knowledge of human parts and their function could allow him to manipulate the body cells.” Greene said.
– “Using electromagnetic waves, he can shifted the cells inside your body, interrupt your synapses or damage them and cause their dysfunction.” Katsu said.
Greene nodded. “Vic, you were right. The ‘virtual thing’ from wherever must be that domestic. He appeared in Elizabethtown approximately after the LHC experiment.”
– “A parallel universe?” Hoskins said.
– “A what?” Katz was now less confident about himself and his crew. If that freak can do what those scientists were saying, he didn’t want any part of it no matter what amount of money were offered.
Katsu detected fear in Katz’s voice. “Relax Wil. We can deal with him. My theory was right. The more you interact with someone else, the more your waves get blurred. You and the cameramen are still here, right? Had he been able to connect those gangsters’ waves with any of you, you would be in a hospital right now with God knows what symptoms.”
– “You forgot his possible speed and strength, Vic. How do you plan to force him to do anything for us?” Greene said.
Katsu sat down on the couch and smiled. “Richard, think about it. We know the girl who found him when he tunneled through the brane and mostly, we know his weakness.”
Hoskins’ eyebrows narrowed. “We do? I mean what’s his weakness?”
Katsu picked up the remote, forwarded the tape to a point and paused. The flat screen showed Clark holding Maggie in his arm.
Hoskins looked at Greene. “You’re not thinking—”
Katsu interrupted him. “Richard, Steve. We’re talking about the Theory Of Everything here and not about what might happen to a few persons among six billion.”
There was a long pause in the room.
– “Wil, you got a problem with any of this?” Katsu asked.
Katz shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me as long as you’re sure you know how to deal with that thing.”
– “I’ve already called Pierre, CERN’s director. He’s a good friend of mine and we’ve already arranged for another LHC experiment next Friday. A call from Richard or myself and Pierre would press the button.”
– “So what’s the plan?” Greene said.
Katsu leaned forward and opened the folder containing Katz’s reports. “Okay. We take them all. Charlize, Amina, Lindiwe and Maggie and keep them at four different locations. Each of us will be at each location. No matter where we hide them, he will be able to follow their waves but he had to chose who he wants to save. The person who saves you or the person you love the most?
[Chapter to be finished…]