“Alice, how’s my best girl?” he asked, and was immediately answered by bitter sobbing as she attempted to relate to him the tragic news: her father, and his friend of nearly 25 years, had just died an hour ago after collapsing in his office of an apparent heart attack. She was obviously in great need of his presence and without waiting for her request, although he was overcome with shock and sorrow he said, “I’m on my way to the airport. I’ll be boarding a plane for Chicago and will be there in a few hours.” He was still in shock as he dialed the number that allowed him to make a scrambled call to Bob Clark, his director at I&A.
The phone rang only once before Clark responded. “Saxon, are you on your way to catch your flight to Texas?”
“I’m on my way to the airport but I’ve just received some tragic news. My close friend, Peter Newbury, died suddenly in Chicago this evening, and I’ve got to delay my Texas trip to help his daughter with arrangements. She’s taken this very hard, and as her Godfather, I need to be with her for a few days.”
“Do you mean Dr. Peter Newbury, the famous mathematician at Fermilab!?”
“Yes; I’ve lost my best friend. The world has lost a great intellect.”
“Oliver, I’m so sorry for your loss; go to Chicago and let me know as soon as you feel you can break away for a few days. This I&A mission to Waxahachie is extremely important. I’ll need you there on the ground as soon as possible.”
“Thank you. I’m sure I can be ready for my I&A mission in a few days. Right now I’m in shock.”
“His death will be a shock for everyone. The series ‘The Theory of Everything’ that he ran on Public Television was my young son’s favorite for the past year. He watched every episode. Newbury did a brilliant job of describing the new discoveries at CERN, Fermilab, and that radio observatory at the South Pole. In the words of the press, ‘Doctor Newbury was on the threshold of finding the elusive God Particle.’”
As Bob Clark signed off he thought to himself, I’m going to have to open an investigation of Professor Newbury’s death. It happened at the National Laboratory for High Energy Physics run by DOE and all such deaths, regardless of their causes, must be examined by Homeland Security. While Oliver’s in Chicago, I’ll clear Maxine Phillips for Saxon’s project and put her to work researching this communication network between Damascus, Jerusalem, and Waxahachie. The instructors in her small-arms and martial arts sessions say she’s become more focused of late, even though she’s still aggressive. She may not be ready, but I need her now. I’ll staff her into Oliver’s project today and keep an eye on her this week.
Oliver drove out of the parking lot behind his office and into the Washington night as a light rain began to fall. Lost in his thoughts, he was barely aware of the drive through the streets of the Capitol and on to the beltway, but was keenly aware of the heartbeat-like thump-thump of the windshield wipers. He felt this throbbing deep within himself. The suddenness of this tragedy, the loss of his closest friend, brought not only a sense of grief but also an overwhelming feeling of fear, as though something had taken this healthy, active friend well before his time. His mind told him that fear and denial almost always accompany grief after such a loss, but his heart was in no way soothed.
He parked his car in Washington National’s parking garage and removed the carry-on he had packed the night before for his Texas trip. The terminal was alive with men and women, the constant coming and going of human influence that represents the inner being of Washington, D. C. It mattered not the time of day or night, or the day of the week, this human input-output system of the U.S. government flowed as relentlessly as the blood now coursing through Oliver’s veins and causing his head to throb.
At the ticket counter his change of flight was direct and uncomplicated. Standby was almost always possible on Washington National to O’Hare flights, due to the large number of them. He had just enough time to pick up a hot snack in the concourse as he pulled his carry-on to the assigned gate. Presenting his boarding pass, he entered and found a window seat near the rear of the cabin.
The flight lifted off from Washington National, reached cruising altitude, descended, and bumped down on the O’Hare runway before Oliver had had a chance to become aware of the slow traverse of lighted cities and towns across the upper Potomac, the Allegheny Mountains, and the farmland of the Ohio River basin between the East Coast and Chicago. Although he had been watching its relentless passing out his window, his thoughts had been making another journey altogether: a journey that began 25 years earlier when he and Peter had met as undergraduates at Princeton and had become close friends.
Oliver had entered Princeton on an academic scholarship and had settled on a major in Humanities. He had been assigned to a room in Mathey College, Blair Hall. All of the colleges at Princeton, but particularly Mathey, were beautiful stone buildings nestled around their own green quadrangle. These residences were designed to look like any one of a number of colleges at Cambridge or Oxford. Because of this architectural contrast to his home and schooling in Northern California, he felt as though he were attending college overseas, just like some of his more affluent friends who had grown up in Eureka.
The residence rooms were modest but warm, and within each hall were sanctuary-like commons for study or discussions with other students and resident faculty. The library and most of the classrooms to which Oliver would walk for lectures were just a short distance east of this residence. As he was arranging his belongings following his arrival, a friendly voice, accompanied with the thumping of dropped luggage, greeted him.
“You must be Oliver Saxon. I’m Peter Newbury. Looks like we’re roomies,” said this energetic fellow freshman who held out his hand in a greeting.
“I’m Oliver,” was about all Oliver was able to say before Peter continued the greeting. He had a shock of blond hair that tended to stick up like he was electrically charged. This appearance was well matched to his personality which was also electrically charged.
He immediately asked Oliver, “What’s your major?” and then, “Do you like to jog ‘cause I just heard of a great trail down by the lake?”
Oliver could hardly get a word in edgewise. Oliver did manage to learn during this energized “conversation” that Peter was a Math and Physics major who liked to go jogging in the afternoons following class, but mainly liked to join in lively conversation and sometimes debate about any and all subjects.
During the next four years they continued to share the room in the hall, study together, and jog along the lake following class. Oliver would walk down Washington Road from his last class in McCosh to meet Peter in front of Jadwin Hall. The two would then head for the Gym where they would suit up for jogging outside, or around the inside track if the winter weather was too harsh. Peter even liked to carry on in breathless conversation as they jogged, something that Oliver found both physically and intellectually challenging. In the evenings they would share dreams and ideas while they studied together in the Mathey commons room or in the nearby library. They were each working through their respective course loads toward their degrees: one in Math and Physics, the other in Humanities. Despite their different fields, they found they had much in common and freely shared their ideas.
One evening Oliver found Peter in the commons, sitting at a table filled with geometric solid shapes that he immediately recognized.
“Those are Platonic solids. We’ve been discussing them in class as they relate to the philosophical ideas of Plato and Aristotle.”
“You’re right,” replied Peter, “their forms were mathematically defined by a contemporary of Aristotle named Theaetetus, and later by Euclid. I’ve been looking at Euclid’s mathematical proof of Plato’s assertion that there can be no other polyhedra that satisfy the symmetries found in the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and the Icosahedron. But look here: If I take any two sides of one of these forms and stick them together to form a two-sided sandwich with no volume, these new forms also satisfy Euclid’s formula.
It doesn’t matter whether I use a pair of triangles, squares, or pentagons.”
“You mean Plato and Aristotle were wrong about there being only five pure solids!?” replied Oliver with mock alarm.
“Oliver, with Euclid’s help, I just blew your favorite philosophers out of the water,” responded Peter, as the two of them laughed at the idea that an undergraduate could find such a flaw in Euclid’s proof, or Plato’s assertion.
One evening, near the end of their junior year, Peter came into their shared room carrying a stack of reference books. Some were obviously books on mathematics, but three were coffee table sized collections of paintings. “Here Oliver,” said Peter as he dropped the art books on Oliver’s bed, “help me with my math assignment, you know more about art history than I do.”
“What kind of advanced math involves art history!”
“I’ve been assigned to find examples of symmetry breaking in works of art from two or more artists. These three books were recommended by one of the graduate teaching assistants as a good place to start.”
“What’s symmetry breaking, and what does it have to do with art?”
“In mathematics, symmetry breaking’s defined as some event or representation that disrupts or alters an otherwise symmetrical pattern.”
“Can you give me some examples?”
“Well, one simple example is a book standing on edge on a table. It’s unstable but symmetrical until it falls, either face up or face down, thus breaking its symmetry. Another example could be the coloring of one of the daisies in Grandmother’s wallpaper with a red crayon so as to break the repeated pattern covering her dining room wall.”
“I remember doing something like that. I was spanked for it but I thought it was a great improvement.”
They both laughed as Oliver opened the first art book on French Impressionism. “I don’t think I am going to find anything here. The basic theme of these paintings seems to me to be as devoid of symmetry as possible. The artists are experimenting with color and form in order to create a mood. Monet, Renoir, and even Seurat paint the same basic landscapes as do their American counterparts in the Hudson River School, and break only the traditional rules of realism by emphasizing impressions of color or form. I don’t think symmetry is broken in these paintings, just tradition.”
“OK, what about this book of etchings by M.C. Escher?” Peter opened the book and began reviewing the plates, working through the history of the artist’s work. “Escher’s later work, based in the intricate tile patterns at the Alhambra in Spain, is nothing but symmetry, but I don’t see where he colors in any of his own daisies. There is absolutely no symmetry break in any of his highly symmetrical patterns. But his last etchings do break with reality; look here at Escher’s most famous work, ‘Waterfall’.
Oliver looked at the image of a continuously running closed loop of water that defied logic by continuing to drop over a fall and drive a water wheel. Reading the description of this work that Escher completed in 1961 he said, “An Oxford mathematician named Roger Penrose gave Escher the idea for this illusion.”
“Roger Penrose! He’s my professor’s idol. He continuously references Penrose’s work in his lectures. This must be one of the symmetry breaking pictures. Oliver you need to find me at least one more.”
“Well we only have one book left, the illustrations of Norman Rockwell.”
“Please tell me you see something in them; my class meets tomorrow morning!”
Oliver and Peter sat side-by-side examining the various Saturday Evening Post illustrations, some humorous, some patriotic, some sympathetic, but all moving in their depictions of average people.
Oliver opened the book to a picture called “Before the Shot”. “Here’s a typical doctor’s office. The doctor’s preparing a needle with his back turned. Standing on a chair next to him is a little boy with his pants down, ready for the shot. It’s a typical scene, completely symmetrical, except that the little boy is carefully scrutinizing the Doctors diploma hanging on the wall before him. The humor is in the broken symmetry.”
“You’re right; let me see if I can find another one.” Peter flipped pages until he came to a painting called “The Critic”. “Here’s a good one. The young art critic, with art supplies and an art museum guide book, is carefully examining a classical painting: a perfectly normal and symmetric scene. What breaks the symmetry and gives humor to the scene is that the various characters in the paintings are carefully examining the young critic.”
“Maybe I should take up mathematics, Peter; I had no idea it was so easy.”
Peter followed that comment by throwing Oliver’s stuffed mascot at him. “If you think group theory is simple, come sit in on class tomorrow.”
“I would, but then I’d have to tell your professor you had help in your assignment.”
This time Peter threw a bed pillow.
Their friendship strengthened throughout their four years of undergraduate studies. Peter had begun to date a fellow Math major named Jane Sumner, and often Oliver and his date would join them for a movie or an evening on the town. Oliver had a number of girlfriends but never one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Peter, on the other hand, had fallen deeply in love with Jane. They were clearly meant for each other, sharing many common interests besides mathematics. Oliver saw how they each appreciated almost everything they shared: a work of art, an exotic food, the lake-side walk or jog, a sunset.
Upon graduation, Peter and Jane became engaged and Peter asked Oliver to be the best man in their wedding. It was a simple but festive affair attended by many of their fellow students as well as family members. Later that year Oliver entered Harvard Divinity School. He had begun to feel more and more like he had been called to the ministry. Growing up attending a small Methodist Church in a working-class community, aptly named Cutten, on the outskirts of Eureka, he had always admired the ministers who not only knew the scriptures, but ministered to those in need. Meanwhile Peter, with his young wife at his side, began work on a Doctorate in Advanced Mathematics at Princeton. Oliver continued to keep in touch with Peter and Jane during the following year. In that period of time, Oliver distinguished himself at Harvard Divinity School and found himself drawn into the richness of the literature of all the world religions. However, he began to feel pulled away from the ministry, as though the calling he felt two years before was no longer to a church, but to a classroom.
By the time baby Alice was born to Peter and Jane, Oliver had realized his interest in religion was more academic than spiritual and had shifted into a Doctoral program in Philosophy with an emphasis on World Religion. This shift also represented a water-shed in Oliver’s spiritual life. He had gradually become disillusioned by religion because so much of war and strife in the world seemed to have its origins in religious intolerance.
He had begun to feel uncomfortable in church, even when he stood with Peter and Jane at Alice’s christening at the Catholic Church near their home next to the University of Chicago campus, where Peter now worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Despite these feelings, Oliver took his promised responsibilities of Godfather seriously. Little Alice called him Uncle Oliver and drew him even closer to Peter and Jane. His parents had recently moved into a nursing home in northern California, and although he visited them frequently, he knew they were both beginning to lose their ability to remember. On some occasions he found himself a stranger to them. The pain of slowly losing touch with his own family was tempered somewhat by his becoming a closer part of Peter’s
Fifteen years after Alice’s birth, when Jane lost her battle with breast cancer, he was there giving comfort to Peter and Alice even though his soul was filled with bitterness; the prayers of Peter and Alice seemed to have been in vain. Now, suddenly and without warning, Peter was gone. Again, Oliver felt a darkness move between his soul and God, his faith shivering in the shadows of grief. As he walked down the O’Hare concourse to the exit he felt fear and anger as well as grief, and was unable to overco
me this inner darkness and doubt.
Finding his second car, left the week before at the park-and-ride, he drove through the city to Peter’s house near the campus. Oliver was fearful of what the next few days would bring. He had not been in the position of a grief counselor or minister since his few attempts while in divinity school. Now I’m going to be called on to maintain my composure so I can comfort and counsel Alice. The chill of his anxiety was momentarily overcome with warmth as he tearfully embraced Alice and found that she was there in Peter’s living room with Father Patrick Ryan, the priest who had christened her twenty years before, and had clearly been a part of her life ever since.
Now, at age twenty, Alice had become her own person, a distinguished student of architecture who was being approached by the top firms in Chicago. As a young girl she had shown a talent for art and mathematics. She adored her father and the two often interacted in the same enthusiastic manner that Peter and Oliver had shared at Princeton. Alice even displayed some of the same electrically charged bursts of inspiration Oliver had always seen in Peter.
Once in college she decided to major in Architecture and Structural Design. Her professional life was just developing and she had decided she could wait a few more years before she became serious about marriage. She had been dating Chuck, a fellow designer, but had given him no indication of wanting to settle down. He, on the other hand, was in love with her but also intimidated by her talent and intense work ethic. She had shared her feelings with Oliver on a few occasions, and he had tried to be a fatherly listener without giving fatherly advice, something she greatly appreciated. At the present time her relationship with Chuck was on hold while he was spending a year in Paris, studying classical architecture.
Alice continued to weep as Oliver held her, her rosary hanging loosely in her right hand. Father Pat stood and gently touched Alice and Oliver on the shoulder and said, “Let us all pray together.” He then began to pray the Lord’s Prayer. Alice followed weakly but Oliver was unable to pray, his darkness and distrust welling up within him.
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