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1:00 hours….15th May
Every dawn hides many secrets
only to reveal them later in the day. But men were never good keepers of
secrets. In the eagerness to impress people they believed were important, they
failed to see beyond the mundane. That was most certainly the case with Derek
van Guerin. He could not wait for the first rays of sunshine to penetrate the
thick woods he was traversing on his way to, what he presumed was glory.
Even though he was a man who embraced
the changes the birth of the new millennium brought with it, he loved nature.
That did not prevent him from wanting to manipulate the basic laws of nature.
He not only adored nature, but he wanted to toy with it. After all, despite
having constantly irked Nature and suffered her wrath, humans continued to
exist. In fact, they did more than just exist.
He could not help but wonder what his
professor would tell him should the old man meet his pupil at this hour- on a
rendezvous with the man he had detested till death intervened. But then, van
Guerin was too ambitious to empathize with an old man who was not alive. To say
anything more would be an overstatement which might undermine van Guerin’s
other incredible credentials and that most certainly is not the point. Not at
this juncture.
As he got out of his old Ford Explorer, the
giant oak doors in front of him left him in awe. Such was the wealth of the man
inside. As a matter of fact, van Guerin knew that if this man gave that small
push, the world would forever remember him. Just as he got closer to the door,
the events of the previous day rolled in front of him. What an amazing day it
had been…
Yesterday
Van Guerin was frustrated. He was
staring at the screen which showed a long flat line. That meant his fortunes
had not taken an upswing, yet. He had tried everything possible and still there
were no signs of improvement. Having spent a decade under an old man, who did
nothing but chide, just to learn the nuances of robotics and physics, no man
would relish failure after failure. His device was hypothetically successful
and it should work, unless the laws of science were fallacious theories
conceived by men of undeserved greatness.
His colleague Michael Wellesley had
helped him all the way. They had used every source of energy known to mankind. None
could sustain their invention.
Then it happened. Out of the blue, the
sensitive recorder started showing waves of activity. For the first time, they
were sustained. This excited van Guerin but he wanted to be sure he was alone
at the moment of his success. He saw Mike around the corner, having a burger.
He turned towards van Guerin and
smiled. Instead of returning the smile, van Guerin asked Mike to take the day
off. It would indeed have been strange for Mike as he never was let go, not in
the midst of an ongoing process. But Mike obliged-with obvious suspicion at his
partner who was eyeing at the canisters with avarice.
***
1:10
hours
Van
Guerin knocked the Giant Oak doors. It was opened by a balding man in his mid
fifties. The man seemed to be expecting him. His look suggested that it was not
the first time that a stranger had popped in to meet his master at unearthly
hours.
Unearthly-that
word brought a new dimension to his thought. What if it was indeed an extra
terrestrial force that had manifested itself in his Lab? But he instantly
dismissed the notion as he felt it was more than just ludicrous.
The drawing
room was spacious. It was as large as his apartment. Several neo noire
paintings decorated the walls. One of them, he recognized as a work of Henri de
Toulouse Lautrec. Apparently, this man was a fan of the Moulin Rouge. He was
not certain if they were the originals, but then, he also knew that the Agnew
could afford them. He then saw the man. He was seated in front of the piano.
Evidently, he had been playing the instrument to bide his time. Van Guerin felt
honored. Such a great man had been waiting to see him. No one spoke for quite
some time. The ice was broken by the butler.
“Master,
Mr.van Guerin seeks an audience”
Van Guerin was taken aback. Such
pompousness was not what he had expected. Evidently, he was nothing like van
Guerin’s mentor who personified simplicity. Arrogance stemming from intellect,
van Guerin thought and he was certain he sensed condescension emanating from
every cell of the old man in front of him
The moment Agnew got up, van Guerin was
not sure if he had been right in his assumptions. For a fraction of a second,
the old man gave a friendly smile which disappeared from his face as swiftly as
it had appeared. In the place of his right leg, there was a mechanical aid. He
walked in short steps with an odd noise being produced with every act of
flexion. His face however suggested nothing about him. He asked the butler to
leave the room and asked van Guerin to take a seat.
***
Yesterday
Finally his device showed life. But what caused the sudden surge
in energy was something van Guerin could not understand. For the answer, he had
to meet the person whom his teacher loathed. After fixing an appointment, van
Guerin tried to study the new source of energy in his canister.
It never stopped being active. Its mass was
negligible. If it was what he
thought, then he had done the impossible. He had a few hours before the
rendezvous and he decided to carry out preliminary examinations. It was
difficult, for the source of energy did not follow many rules of atomic
physics. It took him every nanosecond
left in the day to identify what had caused so much excitement.
It was Crystallized
Ectosium-something that existed only in the highly advanced thesis papers.
Besides, it had never been isolated. As a matter of fact, it was merely by matching
its diffraction patterns and a few other procedures which even van Guerin had
never tried before had he come to the conclusion that it was indeed Ectosium.
When
he was done with it, it was well past the time he had been allotted to visit
Dr. Agnew. He made another call to apologize and embarked on the journey of his
life to find out if he had truly solved the issues of proton decay and
unification.
Van Guerin was brought up by a pious
father who attributed everything to God. Such was the impact of his father,
that he even contemplated joining the church. Realizing his remarkable talent
in science, his father wanted him to ‘go to higher places’. That was just what
the young man did. He had no problems getting into MIT and when he came out of
the college, he lost faith in God. Nobody-not even his father knew what brought
about the drastic change.
Avram Glazer was the man who turned the
aspiring yet devout young man into a man who snubbed any claim refuted by
science. Glazer was as ruthless as he was efficient. The nine years van Guerin
spent under Glazer made the young man despise his mentor as much as he revered
him. What the old man did not know was that his pupil’s claim to fame would be
addressed by his fiercest rival.
A Hatred-strengthened over the years,
one similar to the one between two great minds of the previous century, so
similar it was that both the men even refused a Nobel Prize just because they
had to share it. Glazer did not live to see his student rise to prominence as
one of the promising minds in the planet.
Van Guerin did not shed a single drop of tear
for his teacher, who had left every one of his worldly possession for his
apprentice to use. That was how van
Guerin came across the research paper. It was exactly what he had dreamt all
his life. It was obvious that Glazer had failed, for the work was not complete.
Van Guerin worked for several years before realizing he needed help. When Mike
entered the fray, things seemed to fall in place. But the last piece of the
puzzle was not solved.
Until this moment
***
