An Elegant Theory

by Noah Milligan

  When I think about motive in my case, I find analogies to complementarity pairs. It was a complex situation, and as one course of action made more sense, at that time hiding an accidental murder, disposing of the body, the reasons why I discarded another, turning myself in, accepting my punishment, made even less. I was capable of only one course of action, yet there seemed to be an infinite amount of alternatives. I could’ve fled to Argentina, started a new life as a janitor. There would be a language barrier, and no one would speak to me or offer companionship or judgment or hatred. I would be invisible. I would be marginalized. I would dissolve into the fabrics of people’s everyday lives, like a clock might, bought at a flea market and forgotten on a shelf for years. I could’ve framed my mother. It had been her idea, premeditated. She had fought with Sara. She thought Sara threatened her chance at redemption with her estranged son. I hadn’t even been there when it happened. People may have believed that story. My mother suffered from mental illness. She had been manic depressive and spent time in mental institutions. Her denials wouldn’t be credible. Sara and I, as far as everyone in our lives were concerned, had a healthy relationship. All viable options. All of them discarded.

  The further I got into my denial, the less likely any alternative seemed. After I had disposed of the body, other choices became less likely. After I’d filed the missing persons report, the chances of a confession diminished. After I’d called Sara’s family and told them the news, the truth became a remote possibility. These acted as complementarity pairs: the more I lied, the less I was capable of telling the truth. So, without any lead in the case and at my mother’s prompting, I tried to return to a semblance of normalcy. I returned to classes. I wrote about my discovery. I called the police station for any updates. There were none. I distributed flyers. I prepared my dissertation while the police and my family and Sara’s family searched for my dead wife.

  After a couple weeks without any clues to Sara’s whereabouts, Marissa and Gary’s hope had waned. Their theories of what had happened turned sparse. They no longer hypothesized that she had gotten a hotel room in town just to calm down after our fight. They continued to call home, hoping Sara might answer, but they no longer carried anticipation in their shoulders nor curled their fingers around the cord of our phone. They went to bed later and got up earlier. They’d get takeout once a day, but leftovers of salami sandwiches and clam chowder piled up in the fridge. It was disheartening to see, a family go through the five stages of grief. They started to believe she was dead. They didn’t have to say anything. I could tell by the way their tongues seemed to stick to their teeth when they spoke of her. “She was our little girl,” they would say, now in the past tense.

  When I’d told Dr. Brinkman I’d be returning to the university, he’d argued against it. “This is the time for you to be with your family, Coulter. There’s no need to rush things.”

  “I understand, sir. I’d like to return, though. Staying busy will be good for me.”

  “Why don’t you take another week or two?”

  “It wouldn’t do any good.”

  “It might. Besides, we have everything covered here. Dr. Barbarick has been filling in on your classes. My research is going on fine. Of course, it’s difficult to replace you, but family has to come first. You just take all the time you need.”

  After a while, he relented. It was, after all, my decision.

  We were back in the lecture hall, Dr. Brinkman, Cardoza, Barbarick, and I. I hadn’t told them anything about my discovery, and I had not been sending them updates, new pages, et cetera, and they hadn’t asked for any. Perhaps they hoped I’d decided to change my dissertation after all, or that considering the circumstances of my missing wife, that I’d kept the scheduled meeting in order to tell them I intended to drop out. Whatever their expectations, they acted concerned and more attentive, less critically than before, and with more pity.

  “We’re ready whenever you are, Coulter,” Dr. Brinkman said. “No rush.”

  I had to admit I was nervous. My mind kept wandering back to Detective Landsmen and the search for Sara. It had been a month since I’d filed the missing person’s report. While distributing flyers, I would walk by the dumpster we’d left Sara at. I had no idea how often waste management came to pick up the trash. I tried to smell to see if I could pick up wafts of a decomposing body. I smelled nothing. Just the normal stench of the Dot: the salty aroma of corned beef, the vent of freshly cleaned laundry out of the dryer, the sting of rubber and sweat. I’d scoured the news reports for the reporting of a body found. It never came. It appeared I would get away with it. As Detective Landsmen had said, “sometimes people don’t want to be found.”

  “As you all know,” I began, “my dissertation is focused on determining the shape of the universe in a unified string theory. Namely, I hoped to give the curvature, or Calabi-Yau manifold, that determines the innumerable, measurable characteristics of our universe. The strength of the four forces: gravity, electromagnetic, weak, and strong. The mass of an electron. The duality of light. So on and so forth.

  “As noted in previous meetings, my methodology was imperfect. More a game of chance, really, a proverbial lottery, but without the right amount of numbers in order to play. I faced failure after failure. I had, it seemed, forgotten what it means to be a scientist. I was forcing the issue rather than deducing from observation. I had become a participant rather than remaining objective. My work was derivative of Greene and Kaku, with no new insights, but set out to discover what their math had deduced. You, of course, warned me of this, but, perhaps in arrogance, I didn’t heed your warnings.

  “But then,” I continued, “I got lucky.”

  I clicked on the projector, revealing a computer model of my results. It showed the way a string oscillated within the curled-up dimensions of my Calabi-Yau manifold. The manifold worked like a flute. The strings that made up all the constituents of the universe were the musician’s breath. Just as a musician would blow at different strengths to produce different octaves, the strings vibrated at different energies to produce various elements. Light vibrated at one frequency. Helium another. Magnesium still another. The curvature of the manifold acted as the flute itself, shaping the wind in order to create the notes. I produced for them Planck’s constant and gravity and the weak force. I showed them the creation of water and iron. It all worked. All of it. Every last bit of it.

  “Remarkable,” Dr. Brinkman said. “Just remarkable.” He stood and approached the projector, his glasses used as a pointer. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “How did you do this?” Dr. Cardoza asked, a hint of incredulity laced in her undertones.

  “Like I said, I got lucky. The model returned this manifold, and it worked.”

  “It’s a miracle,” Dr. Brinkman said. “Truly.”

  “How many tests have you put it through?” Dr. Barbarick asked.

  “Thousands.”

  “Results?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Perfect?” Cardoza asked.

  “Not one skewed result. Precision to less than one-hundredth of one percent. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “It’s like peering into the blueprint of the universe,” Dr. Brinkman said. “Jesus, Coulter. Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “Sir?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Cardoza warned. “Nothing has been proven yet. And frankly, we don’t have the resources to prove it. Right now it’s just an unsubstantiated theory, albeit an elegant one.” She stood and joined Dr. Brinkman and Dr. Barbarick. The projector behind them cast aglow their hands as they discussed the manifold, pointing there and then there, identifying little turns and quarks, counting the dimensions. It was like they were making emphatic shadow puppets. “It is quite impressive, though.”

  They wanted to see the model in action, with random variables thrown at it rather than my prescribed ones for my demonstration. I obliged. We went down to the lab and fired up
the mainframe, and they threw at it everything they could think of. The mass of an electron. The duality of light. Photosynthesis. Nuclear fission. Why the hell not? It passed every test they threw at it. No matter the molecular and chemical complexities, the model proved to be successful regardless of the scenario. It was, undeniably, perfect.

  “You have to publish this,” Dr. Barbarick said. “As soon as possible. I could help you write it.”

  “We all could,” Dr. Cardoza said. “Give you some credible backing. That sort of thing.”

  Dr. Brinkman said, “This is going to change the world.”

  They continued to hit enter. Success. Enter. Success. They recreated the artificial elements technetium and neptunium and livermorium and copernicium and bohrium. They acted like giddy children after finding a twenty-dollar bill, excited with what they would do with it, the largest amount of money they’d ever seen. They fantasized about all the things they could buy. Candy and gum and that action figure they didn’t get for Christmas, and I got excited right next to them, reveling in the innumerable possibilities presented to us.

  Things move quickly after such a discovery. First, you write. You write and you write and you write. You write for days. You don’t sleep. You hardly eat. You stay at the office until three or four in the morning. You wake up at 7:00 a.m. and you revisit your model and you revise and revise and revise. You search for a humble tone, a skeptic’s tone. You are not writing a treatise but rather reporting a phenomenon. Your boss will read it and his colleagues, and they will offer suggestions. You will discard them at first, then realize later some weren’t completely crazy. You neglect your family. They will say it’s okay, though. You’ve had a hard couple of weeks. You’re doing something important. It’s good to get your mind off of everything that’s going on. No one blames you for that.

  The search continued for Sara. By this time, it had become nearly a consensus that something bad had happened to her. Foul play, Detective Landsmen had called it. The Dot’s a rough neighborhood, he’d said. “And the people here don’t talk to the police. It’s in their DNA.” They have their own sort of justice. Not vigilantism, really. That’s not what he’d called it. They marginalize the perpetrator. They ignore him. They make him and his family feel like they don’t even exist anymore. On the surface, it doesn’t seem all that bad. But this is a tight-knit community. Their identities are completely wrapped up in being a member of the Dot. Take that away, and the psychological impact can be devastating. Could even make someone go mad. And it makes the police’s job difficult.

  More hastily than normal, I sent out my paper to be published, listing Dr. Brinkman as co-author. A Nobel Laureate on the byline would help move the paper out of the slush pile and into the hands of an editor, but, he’d said, the credit would be all mine. It didn’t take long to hear back. Every single journal I submitted to wanted to publish it: Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, Classical and Quantum Gravity, Progress of Theoretical Physics, Annales de chimie et de physique, Acta Physica Polonica, Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics. Editors personally called me to offer their congratulations. They wanted to do a profile, send out someone to interview me. They would personally come even. Just say the word.

  Word got out. The paper was published. Fellow PhD candidates and faculty members treated me differently. They whispered when I entered a room and they agreed with everything I said and they offered to get me tea or breakfast or anything I wanted really. Universities offered postdoctoral fellowships with generous stipends and benefits. At first, I enjoyed all the attention. It felt good. How could it not? I was the next big thing, and everyone wanted something from me. But they constantly demanded my attention. They offered their sincerest condolences about the loss of my wife and child. It must be devastating, they said. She would be so proud of you now; I am just so sure of it. It stung each time she was mentioned. I grew bored with their attention. I became frustrated. I only wanted privacy. I slept less. I ate less. I started to daydream more. I lost larger and larger blocks of time. I saw Sara giving birth and Isaac as a toddler, as a grown man. These dreams were getting more frequent and more vivid. I relived the moment Sara had died, playing out various scenarios that did not end with her death. I fantasized I had necrotizing fasciitis. I could even smell the infection growing in my arm.

  Worried, I made an appointment with Dr. White. She welcomed me as she had last time, and right away I felt comforted by her. Since my last visit, she’d painted more. Her art now nearly covered the entirety of her walls, a mosaic of cubist representations, profiles of her patients, silhouettes of deformed noses and irregular shaped eyes.

  “They represent the fragmented psyche,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My paintings. There’s a misconception among us that only the mentally ill perceive the world in a fragmented and flawed way, but that’s not true. We all do. Our sensory perceptions are imperfect. Our experiences are amalgamated misrepresentations that we take for granted. Take this for example.” She showed me a miniature carousel of sorts. Dancing bronze figures, reminiscent of Kokepellis, circled the little statue, each in a different though somewhat similar pose. One appeared to be clapping its hands beside its head, another swinging his arms to the left, and another crouched with knees bent like a catcher. A light bulb was stationed in the center. She turned off the overhead lights and switched on her statue. The figures began to twirl, and the bulb flashed like a strobe. As it whizzed, it appeared the men were dancing. There were six of them, and they moved fluidly, up and down, up and down, repetitive but convincing. “It’s off-putting in a way,” Dr. White continued. “You’re fully aware that they’re stationary figures and that they’re twirling and not dancing, but your mind interprets the images as such. You’re aware of what reality truly is, but you’re incapable of experiencing it that way. Instead, there is only illusion.” She switched on the overhead lights again and turned off her machine. The figures slowed and stopped to their original stationary positions. “Have you been taking the medicine I gave you?”

  “I haven’t, no.”

  “But these daydreams are becoming more frequent anyway?”

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I’d say agonizing.”

  “Of course.”

  “I need them to stop.”

  “‘Need’ is an interesting word choice.”

  “As opposed to what?”

  “‘Want’ or ‘wish’ or ‘desire’ even. ‘Need’ seems to pinpoint a practical reason. You have a functional motive.”

  “I just want them to stop.”

  “I see.” Dr. White took a seat and motioned for me to do the same. “When you have these daydreams, tell me, are you aware that you’re daydreaming, or are you convinced that they’re real?”

  “I’m aware that they aren’t real.”

  “Then you have the ability to stop them at any time?”

  “Not really, no. It’s weird. The reality of the daydream isn’t something I question during. It’s not like I’m convinced that that is reality. It’s only after the daydream is over that I become conscious of the necessity to describe it as a daydream. During, the constitution of reality isn’t a concern.”

  “Could you describe one for me? With as much detail as possible.”

  I told her about the one I was having most frequently. Two or three times per day it would happen. Sometimes the daydream seemed to last a few minutes at most. I only would get bits and pieces of it, like photographic stills, the audio running in the background uninterrupted. Other times it would feel like hours as I experienced every single second. In reality, hours did lapse. I would be in my office at 7:00 a.m., writing my dissertation, then I’d look up and it would be 3:00 in the afternoon, my cursor still blinking in the same spot it had that morning. The daydream occurs in the future. Sara and I are at home. I am only to be there a few minutes, though, as I’m collecting materials I need for class. The apartmen
t is a mess, and I’m having difficulty locating my laptop, and I blame Sara for this although it’s doubtful she moved it; she didn’t touch my belongings unless she was absolutely sure I wouldn’t get angry. Are you sure you haven’t seen it? I ask her for the fourth or fifth time. I’m already running late. No, she replies. I told you. Last time I saw it was last night when you were working. To myself I say, but I didn’t move it, though. I swear I didn’t. I check under our bed and only find dirty undershirts and stray, single socks. It isn’t on the dining room table, the last place I saw it, replaced by a half-eaten bowl of cereal. I search underneath the couch cushions and find crumbled Goldfish crackers. I even check the shower and only find a glob of wet hair clinging to the drain. Coulter! Sara yells from the other room. Coulter! In here! She finds me in the bathroom. I have my head stuck into the cabinet as I push aside deodorant sticks and shampoo bottles, knowing well enough my laptop isn’t in there. It shouldn’t be, anyway. I think my water broke, she says. I hit my head on the drainage pipe. What? I ask. I think my water broke. What do you mean you think? Did it or didn’t it? I don’t know, she says. I was looking for your computer and was standing in front of the television and I felt something warm trickle down my leg. Did you pee yourself? I asked. I don’t know, she says. What did it smell like? I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m freaking out here. I lead her to the bed and have her lie down. I can’t believe this is happening, she says. Everything is going to be okay, I tell her. Just lay here for a few minutes, and then stand up. If more liquid runs out, then your water broke. I’m not ready for this, she says. She looks scared. She keeps her knees in the air and has her hands crossed over her belly and she keeps licking her teeth. Every few minutes or so, she flinches. Contractions started. Stand up, I tell her. She does. Liquid soaks her pajama pants. Fuck me, she says. Jesus Fucking Christ. I grab her bag, and we head downstairs.