Hawking's Hallway

by Neal Shusterman

  “Don’t you remember us?” Caitlin said. “We’re friends of your son.”

  “You’re Danny’s friends?”

  Caitlin was about to say “Nick,” but Mitch cut her off. “Yes,” Mitch said, throwing warning eyes at her. “We’re friends of Danny.” Then he held up the picture of Nick. “Tell us everything you know about this kid.”

  Mr. Slate shrugged. “He came into my yard yesterday. He hugged me like he knew me. He was dressed in clothes my great-grandfather might have worn, and he left in a limousine—a really old limousine.”

  Caitlin began to stammer. “But…but…”

  “Thank you for your help,” Mitch said, then he grabbed Caitlin and dragged her out.

  “What are you doing? Are you crazy?” Caitlin yelled at Mitch as they exited the shop.

  “He’s been tweaked by the Accelerati!” Mitch said intensely. “He doesn’t remember us; he doesn’t even remember Nick. He’s like a sleepwalker, and you can’t wake a sleepwalker or his head might explode.”

  “That’s absolutely ridiculous.”

  “Is it? What if they planted a bomb in his brain that will detonate if he remembers Nick?”

  And that shut Caitlin up, because she knew, as absurd as that sounded, the Accelerati were capable of such a thing.

  “They might be watching him,” Caitlin said. “Which means they might be watching us.”

  “Which is why we have to get away from him,” Mitch said. “At least now we know we’re on the right track.” And he marched off.

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  “The math building is this way,” Mitch said. “It’s time to talk to someone about random number algorithms.”

  At Princeton University, there were forty-four full professors of mathematics, but only one of them specialized in the nature of random numbers.

  Her name was Zenobia Thuku, and she was from Kenya.

  Caitlin and Mitch walked down the hallowed halls of the great Ivy League math building, the same halls where Einstein had lectured, Alan Turing had proposed the computer, and J. Robert Oppenheimer had hinted at the atomic bomb.

  Caitlin, having long since done a search on her tablet, had isolated Dr. Thuku as their not-so-random objective. But finding the woman was proving to be more difficult than she and Mitch had anticipated, because the offices of the mathematics department had apparently been laid out according to chaos theory. There was no directory, and no rhyme or reason to who was where. A sign that said THIS WAY TO THE ELEVATOR led to a dead end with vending machines.

  Finally, after forty-five minutes of weaving through the mazelike building, they came upon a door on the top floor with a small brass plaque that read: OFFICE OF DR. HAIKU TUB ZONE.

  It was Mitch who figured it out. “It’s an anagram, see? The letters of her first and last names are all in there, get it?”

  “Must be how mathematicians get their kicks,” Caitlin said.

  Confidently, they pushed open the door, and inside sat a familiar teen, playing what appeared to be solitaire.

  The student looked up when they entered, and his expression, which had been neutral, clouded toward a glare. He quickly gathered his cards protectively. “You? What are you doing here? What do you want?”

  “Oh,” said Caitlin, a bit flustered, “well, we’re here to speak to Dr. Thuku.”

  “My mother isn’t here,” the teen snapped, standing and approaching them. “She went to get more time to deliver her treatise, which she couldn’t get copied, thanks to you. Which means this office is currently closed.”

  He pushed Caitlin and Mitch out of the office and shut the door behind them.

  “Random numbers,” said Mitch. “What are the chances?”

  Caitlin knocked, and knocked again, banking on the fact that the kid would enjoy tormenting them far more than he would enjoy just seeing them leave. She was right.

  The kid opened the door. “Professor Thuku is far too busy for the likes of elementary school students like yourself.”

  “We’re in middle school,” Mitch said.

  The kid shrugged. “Like there’s a difference?”

  Caitlin figured the kid couldn’t be any more than a sophomore in high school, so she struck back with “What are you doing here? Is it bring-your-kid-to-work day?”

  “I’ll have you know I graduated from high school at fourteen and I’m now a junior at Princeton University.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Caitlin said. “Riding mommy’s coattails.”

  For a moment he looked like he would go volcanic, but then he took a deep breath and said, “Who are you, anyway?”

  Thus communication had begun, although they were still trading insults across the threshold when Dr. Thuku arrived.

  “Zakia, why are you making them stand outside the door?” Dr. Thuku said. “Invite them in.”

  And although it was clearly the last thing he wanted to do, his mother was a very commanding woman. He had to obey.

  “Interesting name, Zakia,” said Caitlin.

  “It’s Zak,” he told them, “to everyone but my mother.”

  The mathematician sat behind her desk and gestured for Mitch and Caitlin to sit before her, while Zak stayed by the window, shuffling his deck of cards over and over, with a rhythmic flick-whoosh that was irritating and distracting. She offered them tea, but they both refused—although Caitlin slipped a couple of tea bags into her pocket when the professor was looking the other way.

  “Now, what can I do for you?” asked Dr. Thuku.

  “My name is Mitch Murló,” he announced. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

  Dr. Thuku seemed completely oblivious. “Why? Should it?”

  Caitlin cut Mitch off before he could answer. “I’ve heard about your work in random number algorithms. We wanted to meet you personally for a project we’re doing at school.”

  “A project on me?”

  “Yes, on your work,” Caitlin said. “If we could just spend a few minutes talking with you about the practical applications of random number algorithms…”

  Dr. Thuku smiled warmly. “Applied mathematics is a completely different department. My realm is the theoretical, not the practical.”

  “How about practically stealing seven hundred and fifty million dollars?” Mitch practically shouted.

  Taken aback, Dr. Thuku turned in her chair, regarded them for a moment more, and said, “I do not know what you’re talking about, but it is making me very uncomfortable. If you need information on my work, it is all online. Now I am going to have to ask you to leave.”

  Through all of this, Zak sat shuffling his cards until his mother said, “Zakia, would you please escort them out?”

  “With pleasure, Mom,” he said.

  He herded Mitch and Caitlin to the door, then leaned into the hallway. Caitlin was sure he’d deliver one more parting shot, but instead he whispered, “Meet me at the student center at six tonight.”

  Then he closed the door and locked it.

  Princeton’s student center, like most everything else at the university, was in a beautiful, landmark building several hundred years old, awkwardly retrofitted for twenty-first-century living.

  Zak waited for the two obnoxious kids in an area that was loud enough to mask their conversation, and nondescript enough to avoid drawing anyone’s attention to them. He resisted the urge to pull out the deck of cards that sat in his back pocket like a pack of cigarettes. Shuffling helped to calm him, and playing the hundreds of games he knew focused him. He was endlessly intrigued by the mathematical perfection of a simple, standard deck. But now was not the time for games—not when those two kids held all the cards.

  He still had no idea who they were, and he remained somewhat aggravated that the girl had beat him to the copy-shop counter. Truth be told, she had won fair and square, and even if he had gotten there first, the machine still would have broken down on the tenth page.

  At first he had believed her when she told his mother that they were
doing a report on random number algorithms. So when the boy, Mitch, brought up the stolen money, it made him sit up and take notice. He hoped his mom hadn’t seen his reaction.

  He had been doing his own investigation, because the random number biz seemed to be shrouded in unnecessary secrecy. He knew that academics often had petty squabbles and didn’t like to share information about their works-in-progress. But somehow his mother’s secrecy seemed different.

  At six o’clock sharp he watched the two kids come into the student center, and he said nothing as they sat in front of him. Then Zak spoke in a hushed tone, making them lean forward to hear him. “What makes you think my mom stole seven hundred and fifty million dollars?” he asked.

  “I don’t think she stole it,” Mitch, admitted. “I know who stole it—but I’m pretty sure she had a part in hiding it.”

  “Who stole it, then?” Zak asked.

  With a look, the girl, whose name he still did not know, stopped Mitch from speaking. “That’s not your business,” she said.

  Zak ignored her. “Who stole it?” he asked Mitch again.

  “My father,” Mitch told him.

  The girl exhaled loudly through her nose, irritated at being overruled. Since irritation would get them nowhere, Zak decided to offer her an olive branch.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Caitlin.”

  “Listen, Caitlin, I want your help, and you want mine. If this is going to work, we can’t withhold information from one another.”

  “Why do you need our help?” Caitlin asked.

  “Because,” Zak said, “I think my mom is being blackmailed.”

  In her office, Dr. Thuku sat behind her desk in silence, trying to pull order out of the randomness in her head.

  In mathematics, answers were precise. Proofs might be complicated, but they were always elegant. Her work with randomness, however, had proved otherwise. There were states in which even mathematics broke down, just as physics broke down in the unimaginable gravity of a black hole.

  Try as she might to solve the problem before her, no elegant solution presented itself. And so she did what she knew she must.

  She picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Hello?” said a voice on the other end.

  “This is Z,” Dr. Thuku said. “I need to talk to Edison.”

  “Blackmailed how?” Caitlin asked.

  “I know how,” Mitch said, even before Zak could speak. “Do you have a father? Do you have brothers and sisters?”

  “It’s just me, my mom, and Dad,” said Zak. “Why?”

  “It doesn’t take much to blackmail a good person,” Mitch told him. “All you have to do is tell that person that their family will remain safe as long as they do everything the Accelerati asks.”

  “Technically that’s extortion, not blackmail,” said Caitlin.

  Zak looked at them like they were more nuts than he already thought they were. “The Acceler-who?”

  Then Caitlin produced the tea bags she had taken from Dr. Thuku’s tea tray. “This is very special tea,” she told him. “It’s called Oolongevity. It makes people say things they might not want to say—and the only people who have it belong to a very secret organization.” She looked Zak in the eye, unflinching. “Does your mom have a pin?” she asked. “A little gold pin in the shape of an A?”

  “Yeah,” said Zak. “It’s an earring. She wears it backward, behind her earlobe. She told me the A stood for achievement, and she’d turn it forward once she won the Nobel Prize in mathematics.”

  Mitch and Caitlin looked at each other, and their looks unsettled Zak.

  “The A stands for Accelerati,” Mitch told him. “My dad’s one of them. And your mom is too. Maybe they lured her in with promises of scientific freedom, and hanging out with other great minds. If your mother is the woman you say she is, the only reason she’s still with them is to keep you and your dad safe.”

  Zak let out a shuddering breath. When he was in his darkest places he suspected the truth might be something like this. But he always told himself it was crazy, that he was being paranoid. He had a sudden urge to pull out his cards and shuffle himself calm, but resisted.

  “I know it’s a lot to get used to,” Caitlin told him. “But the Accelerati aren’t invincible. And you might have the key to taking them down.”

  “What is it?” Zak asked.

  “If we can find where they’ve hidden the money, we can strike a blow that might just be deadly.”

  Zak considered it. Like his mother, he had a quick mind that could run variables and simplify the most complex equations. It took him only a few seconds to realize the answer. “Money is digital,” he said. “My mom must have used a random number algorithm to hide that money deep in the Web.”

  “Can you find it?” Caitlin asked.

  Zak ran a few more variables in his mind, and smiled.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Easy as π.”

  Pi was not easy at all, as it had an infinite number of decimal places, and neither were Nick’s emotions after his horrifying visit with his father and brother. He refused to respond to the dinner bell that night. It was the same at breakfast and lunch. He would not sit down to eat with Edison.

  So the inventor went to him.

  “It pains me,” Edison told him, “that you’re in such despair.”

  “Get out,” Nick replied from his bed, feeling annoyingly like a pouting child who wouldn’t come out of his room.

  Edison said nothing for a moment, then finally spoke. “I believe, in my heart, I did the best of all possible things for you.”

  “Make it so my own family no longer knows who I am?”

  “Tell me, Nick, what would you have done in my situation?”

  Nick sat up. The answer was simple. “I would have left me alone.”

  “Really?” Edison asked. “After the electrical incident that destroyed your house, the Accelerati and I should have just backed away? Is that what you would have preferred?”

  “It would have been better than this,” Nick insisted.

  Edison folded his hands. “How?” he asked. “Tell me exactly what would have happened. You’re very smart, so I know that you’ll probably get it right.”

  Nick thought about it, then thought about it some more. For a moment he wished he wasn’t so smart, because then he might have said something like Everything would have gone back to the way things were before, and everyone would be happy with their lives.

  But the truth was far different. “The government would have seized all that stuff instead of you,” Nick allowed.

  “Yes,” agreed Edison. “And?”

  “And they would have done exactly what you’re doing with it. Experimenting. Figuring out how to use it.”

  “Yes,” said Edison again, pleased. “How successful would they have been?”

  Nick shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, they’ve got the Army Corps of Engineers, right?”

  Edison chuckled. “Nick, which engineers and scientists do you think they get?”

  Nick knew the answer but hated to say it. “The ones you leave behind.”

  “So,” said Edison, “as I asked, how successful do you think they would have been?”

  Even though Nick wanted to turn away, he looked the man in his yellow, rheumy eyes. “Not very.”

  “In fact,” Edison suggested, “they might have have created far greater disasters.”

  Nick had to admit he was probably right.

  Edison wheeled himself over to look out the window. “I was faced with a choice. I could take all those objects myself, and put them in the hands of scientists who could figure out not only how they worked but also how to safely discharge that asteroid once every four weeks and save the world…or I could have given them to the government and let them blow up the planet. So I ask you again, what would you have done?”

  Nick didn’t answer him, because he knew he would have done exactly as the old man had.

  “Tha
t doesn’t excuse what you did to my father and brother.”

  “Okay, then,” Edison said agreeably. “Let’s say I let them keep their memories of you. Tell me what would have happened.”

  Nick stood up. “No.”

  “Are you afraid of the truth, Nick?”

  “It’s not about truth.”

  Edison shook his head. “It’s always about truth.”

  “Get out,” Nick told him, pointing to the door. “It might be your house, but this is my room. I want my privacy.”

  “Not until you answer the question.”

  Nick wanted to throw something at him, but he knew that if he did, the fragile man would break. As angry as he was at Edison, as much as he hated everything about the situation he was in, he couldn’t break the man.

  Nick found himself in tears, then he spoke, and told Edison the truth, which he well knew. “My father would have stopped at nothing to find me. And the government, and anyone else who wanted to know what happened to that house, would never have left him or my brother alone.” Finally he looked at Edison again. “Jorgenson said my father would be arrested as a traitor, and my brother would be put into foster care. When he said it, I thought it was a threat from the Accelerati. But it wasn’t, was it? That’s really what would have happened.”

  Edison nodded. “If I, and the Accelerati, hadn’t intervened, yes, that’s what would have happened. But we did intervene.”

  Nick wiped away his tears. “And if my father and Danny didn’t remember any of it, and were far, far away, then they’d be safe.”

  Edison rolled his chair a little closer to Nick and asked, “So if you were me, what would you have done?”

  Nick closed his eyes tightly and said, “Exactly what you did.”

  Nick came out for dinner that night.

  Instead of sitting at the far end of the long table, he forced himself to sit just a chair away from Edison. They took dinner together.

  “Mr. Edison?” Nick asked, halfway through the meal. “You say you’re not evil. Then why have the Accelerati been guilty of so many evil things?”

  Edison pushed his fork through his mashed potatoes, contemplated the peas and carrots for a while, then finally said, “People have souls; organizations do not. But organizations have more power than any one person does. The best we can hope to do is apply our individual humanity to the wielding of an organization’s power. When that fails, we end up with brilliant scientists who would destroy everything in their path to achieve their goal. Men like Alan Jorgenson.”