He worked hard like that for seven hours straight.
Thalia came up and brought him a sandwich. “Were you sitting in the dark all day?” she asked.
“I can’t see the laser with a ten thousand lumen light source flooding the place”, he said.
She forced a smile, clearly not getting the concept and she told him, “I need you to look after the kids, need to shop a few things.”
“Yeah, coming right down,” said Yanni to her as she closed the door.
She left him downstairs, sitting on the couch, with the baby in his arms and Georgie throwing flour on his toy truck. Cartoons were playing on the TV, loud to near cochleus-bursting levels and the baby was crying for his mother. He picked her up in his arms and gave her a pacifier. Then he grabbed the tablet to message his friends on Facebook. He started tapping then realized the screen was dirty with chocolate, so he wiped it hastily. He added them all to a group chat and told them about party reservations so that Thalia could arrange the whole thing.
Then he needed to text Nikos. His friend was the only one not on Facebook, he was old-fashioned that way. He knew about it of course, but he always insisted about never accepting Facebook addresses from girls, only their phone numbers (if they didn’t hop on his ride right away). He thought of anonymously checking out a girl’s photos as perverted, and they sent him nude pictures by themselves anyway as soon as they found out he was an architect.
Nikos called him back, “Yasou, did you think I would forget man? September the second, the night we burn the house down, every year, fifteen years on now!”
Yanni felt slightly ashamed and said, “Yeah, I’m afraid the party will be a bit calmer this year.”
Nikos said, “Like the one last year and the one before that. Getting married does that to you. Yeah no problem man, I just want to hang out with you guys, I never get to see you anymore.”
“About that, it might help if you bring along a more suitable date. Last time our wives nearly tore our eyes out, man. You fueled the fire for decades of nagging,” said Yanni.
“Haha, yes, that was priceless!” said Nikos laughing. “No, don’t worry, I have no dates now. I’ll come solo.”
Yanni frowned at the unusual statement and asked, “Solo? You? How come?”
“I found my Muse,” Nikos replied. “Let’s go for a drink and I’ll tell you all about her.”
“You sound serious. I need to know more,” said Yanni.
They arranged a meet and then Yanni checked out the tablet, which was now covered in flour and drool. Georgie was sitting on his truck pretending to steer a freight of precious flour. The other married friends had all replied to the group chat, had liked and sent smilies and started talking about bringing that fine bottle of wine everyone liked so much last time.
Yanni sat on the couch, held his baby and waited for his wife to return. All he really wanted was for his Muse to come back.
Chapter i^2
“You are not that old. We are the same age. Are you saying I am old too?” Thalia asked with a mind-your-words look on her face.
Yanni opened his arms in an apologetic gesture and replied, “No, of course not. I’m talking about academic age. About ideas. I just don’t feel that snappy anymore.”
Thalia thought about the situation seriously, cradling the baby who was cutely asleep. “Yanni, just take it as far as you can carry it. Maybe it needs to be passed on to the next torchbearer. Whom you will teach and bring to the finish line. Is that such a bad thing?”
“Ugh. It’s my idea honey. I’ve worked so many years on it, I would hate to see it go to someone else,” Yanni said, not really talking to anyone but himself.
Thalia walked in front of him to pay attention and said, “Yanni. If you establish enough of your proof, they have no other choice but to credit you. Think of your family, do a good job, pass it on and let someone else finish the race.” She passed the baby on to him and started doing house chores.
He tended to the baby and then put her on the cradle. He turned on the jingly tune and she laughed at him, her eyes never really focusing anywhere but watching everything around her.
He spent the day working at his home lab. At least this time he remembered to turn on the laser.
He looked at it. It looked at him back, unflinching.
He wore his protective glasses and turned up the intensity. “All I need is a Eureka moment. A bit of luck,” he thought. He knew of course that the eureka moment was a myth. Real science was slow and steady, or not so steady and full of dead-ends. At most, you would have a Huh-that’s-funny moment that would lead somewhere.
It wouldn’t hurt to try his luck though.
He began inputting random values to the variables he was working with, testing the laser after each one. His apodeixis was dependent on Maxwell’s equations, which, in their simplicity, had infinite permutations. He had a better chance of scoring with Kate Upton than randomly typing the variable that would validate his proof.
Type. Enter. No change.
Type again. Enter. Same.
Then he tried their anniversary, no use holding back on superstition now.
Nada.
Georgie’s birthday?
Then the phone rang. Thankfully.
The text from Nikos said: "A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so. Albert Einstein."
Yanni started texting back something along the lines of, “Gee, thanks for twisting the knife,” but a car honked from the street below and it was obviously Nikos.
He rushed outside, eager for the change of scenery and closed the door on Thalia’s “No drinking” comment. He felt bad and peeked back inside the house and told her, “Ok honey, no drinking. Promise.”
Nikos was waiting in the cabrio, leaned back and with eased hands as if sitting on a sofa. He was smiling at some girls crossing the street and they were smiling back.
“That was your chick maneuver, sending the text and then honking a few seconds later while I reply. Don’t do that again to me,” said Yanni with spite, not getting in the car.
“Hey, you invented it man. I simply raised it to perfection!” said Nikos and they both laughed loudly.
“Yeah, that seems to be the pattern lately,” said Yanni with a sad worry on his face.
Chapter i^3
“What’s done is done,” she replied for the tenth time, while folding the curtains from his office/lab. She had taken out anything untouched by the fire because it would absorb the smell. Then her face showed legitimate worry and she asked quietly, “Will Demokritos replace the laser?”
Yanni sat down and puffed a few long breaths of air, as if the answer was to be found in the molecules around him. “Nai. Yes, they have to. But it will take forever to get the documents and approval. It will never be in time for the funding review.”
Thalia tucked the corners of the curtains as perfectly as she could. This was something she could control and she calmed herself by doing the work flawlessly. I know the laser is expensive, can’t we get that money from somewhere in the meantime? From Nikos, for example?”
Yanni searched for spite in her voice but found none. Her suggestion was cold and logical, not vindictive. And she was right. “We can. Yes. But the problem is not the cost, it’s the availability. The parts are both expensive and not available to the public. It’s not enough having the money, you also need to be a research centre to even obtain something like it. Or a big corporation’s R&D department, something like that.”
“Can’t you explain the setback to the review committee?”
Yanni thought about the call earlier, the associate who warned him about the new administrator who was determined to cut his funding. He decided not to tell that to his wife, to leave a shred of hope. She was calm but she might need nothing more than this new piece of information to tip her over. “Yeah, sure. They are not unapproachable, I’ll call them first thing tomorrow morning.”
He forced a smile, kisse
d her and went upstairs to his office/lab. He sat on his chair as he always did and inspected the damage. It wasn’t much but it could be a lot worse. The laser had a big burn on the top of the case, obviously from overheating. The wiring was burnt and smelling bad, plastic always does that. The edge of the desk was singed, his chair in one corner and the carpet. Mr. Andreas really did try to avoid spraying the laser, he managed to foam a circle around and choked off the flame’s oxygen. Practical man, his thinking might had saved tens of thousands of euro in repairs. The carpet was destroyed though. It’s ok. Yanni even entertained the thought of debating his wife and leaving the room exactly like that.
Scars of a failure.
He thought about turning the laser back on or not. Maybe that was his lucky accident. Maybe this was to be his Eureka moment, the part where an accident in the lab leads to a new world-changing discovery. It was foolish of him, but the temptation to try was too much.
He argued that the laser was already damaged so he couldn’t make it worse. He brought an old blanket just in case, explaining it to Thalia that he was keeping the window open and it was chilly. It was already dark so that wasn’t far from the truth.
He held the blanket in hand in case of another fire and turned on the laser, hoping for the life-altering Eureka moment of his dreams.
Chapter i^4
When the laser arrived, it was like Christmas. His eyes lit up while unraveling the extreme protective packaging.
“Is the effect visible to the naked eye?” asked Ourania.
Yanni blew away some leftover Styrofoam. “No, I have the polarized glasses to see the moire effect. The math predicts that when the equations work, that particular wavelength will produce a moire effect when seen through glasses.”
And then he added with a hint of pride, “I came up with that.”
“That’s brilliant Yanni!” she said. “That way you don’t need a quantum computer chip to actually test the theory.”
“Correct. It’s part of the reason I managed to keep my funding all this time, because the test was relatively cheap.”
He held the laser like a kid would hold a shiny toy train and ran upstairs to hook it up.
Chapter 2i
Yanni paced up and down the empty room and he was furious.
What was Hermes doing with these kids? Were they using them for some sort of human interaction experiment? Was it safe? If it wasn’t safe, would anyone ever know? What morals were they teaching those kids? If one of them hurt the other, what did their adoptive mother do about it?
All reason left him and all he wanted was to yell at the cameras for putting them up to this, for putting Alex up to this, and take the little boy back home, where he would be safe, where he would grow up in a real home with a real mom.
The reasonable part of his brain took over and had him think that they engineered that. The toy was exactly the same as his son’s, the kid could pass off as Georgie’s brother if he had to. They fixed the whole thing for this response, this was a test. Even if he could take the kid and adopt him and give him a loving family, what could he do about the rest of them? And who was to say that they weren’t better off this way? They must have assured colleges and any academic paths they set their minds to when they grow up, as true corporate offspring and loyal to the bone. Who was he to decide to take this away?
He couldn’t save them. Especially not now. Maybe in the future, when he had finished his proof. When he had the same pull with this company like Nikos had. Maybe then he could do something for this. Threaten with telling the media. Anything.
But he had to win this battle. For him, for his family, for science, for everyone. This sadistic battle, built as if it was meant to torment him.
He calmed himself and sat down. He hoped he hadn’t scared off the kid, but if Alex was startled, he didn’t show it.
“Alex,” he said with the sweetest voice he could muster. “I’m here to teach you something, would you like that?”
Alex smiled and bobbed his cute head up and down in acknowledgment.
“Okay. Here it goes. You know about computers, right? They must give you tablets and things like that to play games, right?” he asked with an anticipation matching the one of his marriage proposal.
Alex nodded positively.
“Great. Those computers, have a machine brain inside them. We call that a processor. Are you with me?”
“Yes. Pro-scissor.”
“Let’s call it that, it doesn’t matter. The pro-scissor needs to be fast for the games to play fast. We hate it when the games go slow, right? Great. So we make faster and faster pro-scissors but the stuff we put in there cannot go too fast. They are lazy and say ‘Oh! Don’t push us so hard’ and they sit around not doing the job.”
Alex giggled and nodded yes.
“Great. So, we need to put faster stuff in there, ones that are not lazy. And you know what the fastest thing in the whole world is?”
Alex shook his head and his eyes demanded to know the answer.
“Light. Light from the sun is the fastest thing in the whole world. It’s not lazy at all. But sunlight is so fast that you need something clever to keep it in,” said Yanni and cupped air with both his hands. He shook his palms still closed together as if he was holding a wasp. That seem to entertain Alex a lot.
“When I tell the sunlight to do a job, I need to see if he did it or not, right?”
“Right.”
“So I take a peek,” he said taking a peek in his hands and Alex leaning close to see as well, “but the sunlight finds the hole and spills out!” He opened his hands and let the light leave.
“Heehee! Like. Like the flour.”
“Just like the flour.”
“Then mommy is mad at the mess we made!”
“Yes! So, we need to find a way to make the sunlight roll around in circles. So when we take a peek, most of the sunlight will stay inside. A man named Maxwell, who had a great big bushy beard, thought of tricking the sunlight into knots. Just like my shoelace, here see? I made a knot, so it won’t leave my foot.”
“I can’t tie my shoelaces yet and that’s why I have scratch shoes.”
“I know, I couldn’t tie my shoelaces either when I was little. But now I can, I learned the trick. And I am also trying to learn to tie the sunlight into knots, so it stays there and not spill out. I just need to find the trick.”
“And then you can throw away the scratch shoes for sneakers with shoelaces, who are faster and then you can be faster.”
“And?”
“And then you can be fast enough to do the trick to the sunlight to plup-plup around in little… in little knots like the shoelaces and take a peek fast enough to close your hands again,” said Alex, peeking into his tiny hands.
So this was how a Eureka moment looked like.
“And then?”
“And then the pro-scissor won’t be lazy and do the job fast and I won’t have to wait for the slow game!”
Someone clapped. A slow, full clap. Yanni turned around and saw the smart woman from before. “Excellent Dr. Tsafantakis. Come with me. Don’t worry, they will come pick up the child in a moment.”
Yanni waved goodbye to Alex. The child looked up and asked, “Are you allowed to bring Georgie to play with me?”
“That is the first thing I am going to ask this nice lady. Goodbye Alex,” he said.
“Goodbye Mister,” said Alex and went back to playing with his toy truck.
Yanni followed the smart-dressed woman in the next room. At this point, he was prepared for anything.
Chapter 2i^2
The sun was going down but it was still bright. Yanni enjoyed the wind on his face and the sound of old music on the radio. Nikos drove them along the scenic route, going up to Parnitha Mountain. It got noticeably chilly as they went higher but it was invigorating.
The casino was Nikos’ idea, all of their old haunts have been closed anyway, and all of their new ones were kid-friendly so Yanni wouldn’t even
dare suggest them. Nikos brought the cabrio to the entrance, the valet greeted him by name and parked the car next to the other expensive two-seaters.
Nikos showed him in with open arms as if he was selling the place. “Now, isn’t this more manly? Look at the view”, he said and they sat down on luxurious leather.
Yanni looked at the city below as Nikos ordered whiskey. The northern suburbs were pretty much the same as always, a place of relative safety and costly big houses with gardens or cozy three-bedroom apartment buildings for families. Athens extended in the south but got lost in the horizon, which was seemingly brought closer from the humid air and the gray smog. Peeking through the lowest level of the atmosphere were the new skyscrapers at the city centre, tall beasts of glass and steel getting erected with impossible speed, seemingly forming like crystals out of thin air. He thought of his light crystals, imagined how they looked in reality. Would they seem so beautiful, formed into lattices out of the foundation of a computer chip? Were these skyscrapers as ephemeral as his light crystals, or were they here to stay?
“Which one is yours?” Yanni asked. Nikos burned the tip of a cigar and pointed at the skyscrapers, “The second one from the left. I’m all done with that, nothing more for me to do. It’s up to the contractors now to build it, and damn, do they work fast. Even I can’t believe it’s been only six months and it’s halfway complete. It existed on my mind for so long and now it pops out of the ground and changes the landscape.”
Yanni knew the feeling. The existing on his mind feeling, not the popping out yet, because his work was still in progress. That is why Nikos liked so much coming up here. It must have been thrilling to be able to see the progress on your work from so far away while sitting on a leather chair and smoking a cigar. It certainly took the term front row seat to a whole new scale.
Myth Gods Tech - Omnibus Edition: Science Fiction Meets Greek Mythology In The God Complex Universe Page 9
