by Tim Wheat
“I’m all set Edna. Thank you so much for all of your help. Do you think your boss would mind if I cut through the big hangar rather than walk all the way around it?”
“I’m sure that would be fine Rex. Don’t be in there when the little weasel man gets back, though. I wouldn’t want to speak to him unless I had to,” her words stopped Chase dead in his tracks, but he attempted to question her without drawing suspicions again.
“Half man, half weasel?”
She giggled. “No, silly man. He just reminded me of a weasel. He was short, with black hair, and weasely eyes.”
“I suppose he had a thin little weasel mustache?” he said.
“Oh yes.” she giggled again, “Just like some weasel whiskers. He was the most unpleasant man I’ve ever met.”
“I’ll make sure to steer clear of Mr. Weasel. Thank you for the heads up.” Chase waved as he turned to move out the door.
“Thank you, Mr. Chase,” she exclaimed as he walked away, and then, “You are the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen,” she muttered under her breath, while clutching her chest, leaning back in her chair, and watching him disappear around a corner.
*******************
42.
Bobby Poppen had hung up the phone with his best friend and gone straight to the library. Most of his life people considered him a nerd, and though he was athletic, even his fellow teammates had often ostracized him. He had been wearing glasses since he was four years old, and he blamed his mother for the name calling he had endured.
Upon coming to Harvard, though, he had become quite popular. At first it seemed like things were going to be just like high school, but then he had met Rex Chase. Chase was, without a doubt, the smartest man he had ever met, but was also the easiest to get along with. The first time they had met was on the baseball field, and teammates had warned Poppen of the Rex Chase fastball.
Thinking people were just making fun of him for being little, he hadn’t taken the proper precautions to catch the hard throwing man. When Chase had walked up to him and handed him an extra pad for his mitt, Poppen had thrown it to the side.
“Suit yourself,” he remembered Chase saying.
He had caught that entire bullpen session without the extra padding in his glove, a mistake he would never repeat. The very first pitch had put his entire hand to sleep, and he could feel it being bruised or broken, throughout the rest of the session. Without showing he was in pain, and without removing his glove, he had walked home, and stuck his hand in a bucket of ice. When someone had knocked on the door to his dorm room a few minutes later, he had told them to go away, but they knocked again, so he had opened it.
Chase was standing there, a huge smile on his face, and handed him the extra padding for his mitt. Bobby would never forget what he had said.
“Nice job out there today, Poppen. Don’t let those other morons say anything to you ever again. Most of them won’t even play catch with me. I hope it’s not broken.”
Poppen hadn’t said a word, but ever since Rex Chase had been his best friend. He had no doubts that Chase had more friends than him, and that at least one of them was a better friend. Bobby had once met a man named Chief who Chase had introduced as his best friend, and it had hurt his feelings.
His eyes needed a rest. He had been reading the book about scalar radiation for hours, and at the same time had been day dreaming. If he and Rex Chase had one thing in common, it was that they could see things in their heads that others could not. Something Bobby had never told anyone was that he had memorized the E8 problem when he was in grammar school. A question, which if printed in small font would take up the whole of Manhattan, existed in his mind. He couldn’t remember what year the Civil War began, and couldn’t tell you who wrote “The Scarlet Letter,” but when it came to numbers, Robert Poppen was unmatched.
“Bobby, Bobby, Bobby,” he spoke the words while exhaling. “Gotta read this book, study these papers, and see what Chase was talking about.”
Over the course of the next few hours he studied the material with intense focus, no longer allowing foolish daydreams to cloud his thoughts. In a slow and deliberate fashion, ideas began to float in his head. He could see the numbers moving and sliding into place, but everything he knew about Newtonian and Einsteinian physics suggested that it couldn’t be so. He rubbed his eyes, closed the book, looked up at the ceiling, and spoke out loud.
“Numbers don’t lie. Guess it’s time to call The General.”
***
General John Reagan was behind his desk filing through a large stack of papers as Bobby Poppen walked into his office. When Bobby had called him on the phone, the General had almost dismissed him as a kid making a prank call. Only after Poppen had remembered to mention the name of Rex Chase had he gotten an invitation to the office, and the insistence he get to Washington D.C. by train as soon as possible. He had been under the impression that The General was in the Harvard area, but D.C. wasn’t far, and a ticket had awaited him at the station.
Now, as he stood being ignored by The General, Poppen took notice of his surroundings. The wall behind the General was heavy with commendations and achievements. Next to the picture of himself with Teddy Roosevelt, was his diploma from West Point, and next to that a picture of him with FDR. Both sides of the office held multiple bookshelves, stacked with first editions and signed copies. Since The General still had not acknowledged his presence, Bobby walked over to one of the shelves, picked up a signed copy of H.G. Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’, and thumbed through a few pages.
“You might not have been too far ahead of your time,” he whispered to himself.
“I’m sorry?” The General had heard him, and now looked toward Poppen.
“It was nothing, sir. I was just speaking to myself. I’ve always been a fan of Wells.”
“He is a fine writer, and a fine man. I’ve had the pleasure of his company on many occasions, and have found him to be more than cordial in answering my mundane questions.”
“If it’s all the same to you, sir, would you mind if we discussed the reason I’m here?” Poppen was nervous, and keeping his expertise bottled up inside was starting to make him more so.
“I apologize for not acknowledging you when you first entered the room. Traveling up and down the eastern seaboard at all hours of the day and night puts me behind the eight ball. It seems that I have some catching up to do in order to understand everything that has transpired over the past few days. Patience is a virtue, though, and we will have plenty of time for your brilliance when Alexei arrives. I believe he might have made the same train as you. Perhaps he stopped for a bite to eat, or is stuck in traffic.”
Bobby Poppen had met Alexei Chase on a number of occasions. As a matter of fact, he had found him to be quite intimidating, although he hadn’t had a reason to fear the man. His size and obvious strength aside, the elder Chase had never been anything but kind to him. Poppen started to reply but was interrupted.
“Young Robert Poppen. I hear you are going to be dazzling me today.” Alexei Chase entered the room, advanced straight to Bobby, and picked him up in a giant bear hug. “Still skin and bones, I see. You should accompany Rex to our house for dinner more often.” Alexei released his grip on Poppen, and allowed him to answer.
“Thank you, sir, I’d be happy to.” Bobby didn’t know they were the kind of friends who picked each other up in bear hugs, but it seemed that was the case. “Would you mind if I just showed both of you what I came here to show you? I’m missing a class, and we have a midterm in a couple of days, and…”
“Don’t you worry about all of that my boy,” said The General, “I’m assured by Alexei here that his son wouldn’t send you here if it weren’t important. I can clear up any problems with your Harvard professors.”
“I’d appreciate that, sir,” Poppen said.
“Let’s get to work then, Robert. What do you have for me today?” asked Alexei.
Poppen nodded his head, walked across the expa
nsive office, picked up a piece of chalk, and began writing on a portable chalkboard. He had asked The General to have one brought in he had obliged. As Bobby scribbled a math problem on the board he explained.
“You see, gentlemen. For hundreds of years we have based our math, and how it relates to physics, on the ideas of Newton and Boyle. Faraday expounded upon Newtonian physics, and even Einstein and Oppenheimer fight to fit their models into the mold” Poppen continued to write as he spoke. “When Rex called me and told me he needed me to solve the E8 problem, I thought he was insane. He assured me, however, that after I read the things he told me to read, I would understand. I was a bit skeptical, but, it turns out he was right.”
Poppen continued to write the extended equation on the chalkboard as he paused, allowing The General time to speak.
“So, this means nothing to me. How about you Alexei?”
Alexei Chase sat, his broad shoulders relaxed in a high back chair, studying the younger man’s work.
“Well, General, he is writing down a popular piece of a very difficult math problem. A piece, that if he has solved, could earn him a Nobel prize.”
“I’m going to need you to keep an open mind here Mr. Chase, but I’ve based a lot of what I’ve done on your work. You see, Rex gave me some reading to do by a friend of yours, a Nicholas Sarff, as well as some papers you had published. He also directed me to some papers you didn’t have published, but that he had in his dorm room. I was sitting in the library, beating my head against the wall, when it came to me.”
“What came to you, Robert?” Alexei said as Poppen still scribbled on the board.
“Gravity doesn’t exist. There is no such thing.” Poppen stepped away from the board, revealing his work. Alexei stood, noticing the younger man had sweat through his shirt, and though the room was quite comfortable, had beads of perspiration running down his cheeks. He approached the board; a thoughtful look adorned his face, and said.
“I get it. Nicholas and I theorized this, though we weren’t capable of doing the math. Convince me some more.”
That was all Poppen needed. Over the course of the next forty-five minutes, he continued to write pieces of the E8 equation on the board, and then solved them by eliminating the idea that gravity must exist. Alexei agreed with the arithmetic, but after the session, he was still skeptical.
“I understand that you have done something phenomenal with your computations here, Robert, but the fact is, gravity exists. I can drop my pencil and see it right now. My theories were an attempt to coincide with the current theories, and I don’t believe I’m convinced that they do not.”
An hour before the dissent might have disappointed Poppen but he was rolling now.
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t believe it at first either, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. The math can’t lie. I think your friend, Dr. Sarff, was on his way to these same conclusions. Maybe he didn’t have the math muscles to get it done, but this was the direction he was heading. If you toss Newtonian physics out the window, and don’t even think about Einstein’s relativity theory, it all makes perfect sense. Do you want to know the best part?
“Yes.” Came both men’s reply, and Bobby now held a smile that went from cheek to cheek.
“The best part is, I can prove it.”
Poppen erased the board again, picked up his piece of chalk, and wrote a simple, two line equation. After finishing he turned, took a step back, and couldn’t contain himself. Smiling so hard his face hurt, he burst into laughter.
“We did it. Look. We did it.”
The General, a look of confusion and skepticism dominating his demeanor, stood and came from behind his desk. As he rounded the corner he could see the astonishment apparent in Alexei Chase’s face. The mountain of a man was speechless.
“Well, son, I’d say you showed him something amazing. I can’t say I understand a lick of it though. Mind filling me in? Either of you?”
Alexei Chase stood, his large frame trembling as he walked toward the blackboard. He neared the board, raised his hand, and touched the chalk letters and numbers. A power seemed to be flowing through him, and he felt like a small child on Christmas Eve.
“We didn’t do anything Robert. What you have done here is amazing. You are without a doubt the most talented mathematician in the world” said Alexei.
Poppen took his excitement level down, and put his hand on the elder Chase’s shoulder.
“I wouldn’t have gotten there without you, Sarff, and your son. I’ve had that equation memorized since I was ten. It’s the holy grail of math, and every night when I go to bed I think about it. When I wake up in the morning, I think about it. After I read yours and Dr. Sarff’s books I was just able to see it in a new light. I think that Rex saw it too, otherwise he wouldn’t have put me right where I needed to be to figure it out.”
“Gentlemen, I don’t have a clue what this means. Mind putting it in terms us dummies can understand?” Though he was trying to sound grumpy, The General had a smile on his face.
“Yes, sir,” Poppen said. “In simple terms, what this equation, along with its correspondence to the E8 equation, proves, is that gravity, as we know it, does not exist. Although we can observe what we call gravity in the world around us, it is, in actuality, a secondary reaction to what is happening.” Poppen could see he was making no headway with The General, so he tried a different approach. “Perhaps an even simpler way to understand this would be to think of an atom. An atom, in its most primal form, has a nucleus, a proton, and an electron. Pretend, though, that protons don’t exist, and everything is negatively charged. Just like two negative magnets, they move away from each other. Gravity doesn’t exist, because it is just an observation of the interactions between atoms containing negative charges. Essentially, everything we see, feel, eat, or touch, is flying apart. We are all just doing it at similar speeds.”
“What about actual magnets? They are positive and negative, right?” Poppen smiled. They were starting to understand.
“No, they are just on different speeds away from each other, and themselves, and their electrons affect each other in such a way as we observe them to be attracted. It’s kind of a trick on our brains.”
“Which are also flying apart,” The General added.
“Yup,” said Bobby.
Alexei Chase was still standing, his legs trembling a bit, and staring at the chalkboard.
“Well, what do you say Alexei? Should we keep him?”
With tears in his eyes and a lump in his throat, he replied in a quiet, raspy tone.
“It’s so beautiful.”
*******************
43.
April in the Atlantic Ocean could be dangerous and inhospitable, but her husband’s latest toy was a pleasant surprise for Anelie Hoff. She spoke of it as a toy, but the massive sea going submarine was anything but. Although she had seen many submarines throughout the years, this was like none which had come before.
Stern to keel, the vessel was five-hundred feet long. Instead of the normal sleek profile, it consisted of hundreds and hundreds of angled panels, which gave way to a bridge four hundred feet toward the aft. When the boat was on the surface it resembled an enormous catamaran, but below the icy Atlantic it slipped through the waves causing minimal disturbance to the water. Just behind the bridge was a large flat area, which might have been suitable for deck guns, or other weapons, but none existed there.
Anelie had spent just enough time in the undersea vessel to know that it was nothing like the tin cans her husband had shown her before. Men in the German Navy had never sailed a boat like the one she now resided upon. She marveled at the feat of engineering her husband had created, but found it a bit troubling that she had known very little about it.
Over the course of the last few months Dietrich Hoff had been quiet on a number of matters, and this submarine had been one of them. As she explored the boat, the sheer immensity of it had almost overwhelmed her. Long, wide corridors gave wa
y to massive anterooms and chambers. Her quarters were about as plush as those at her home, in the Rhineland. Dietrich had spared no expense, and Anelie wondered to herself where her husband had built this gargantuan vessel. The dockworkers and sailors who had put her together had to wonder who the boat was for, and where it was going. Perhaps her husband had killed all of them, though.
“My dear,” the sound of her husband’s voice interrupted her thoughts, and she turned to see him standing at the threshold of their room. “Would you care to join me for some breakfast?”
“I would love to, my husband.”
He took her hand as they walked down a long corridor. Steel walls complimented wood floors and the sound of their shoes echoed down the hallway. As they neared the end of the corridor, Dietrich turned to the right, and led his wife into a large room with an authentic German dining table.
This room was decorated in the style she had become accustomed to as the wife of a powerful man. Cherry lined walls adorned with built-in bookshelves shone and wood floors also enhanced the dining area. The ceiling dropped from above with recessed lights placed inside. If a blindfolded person was unmasked in this portion of the submarine, they would be shocked to be on an underwater vehicle. This was more in the style of an oceangoing liner.
“It is quite beautiful, Dietrich. I was wrong to complain about taking our next trip in this manner.” Anelie still felt as if she had upset her husband and had been going out of her way to stroke his ego.
“Thank you, my dear. The people of northern Africa put their blood, sweat, and tears into it. In a quite literal sense, I might add.” Hoff loosed a maniacal laugh when referring to the slaves he had abducted and murdered in Africa. His wife, though she had known nothing about this project, continued to compliment her husband.
“I would like to thank you again for convincing me that this was how we should travel. I’ve never been a big fan of the week long ride to Germany, but in this vessel it will be a delight.”
