Going Bovine

Page 106

Schrödinger’s meowing protests are cut short by the closing of the door. Then there’s a hum, and then a flash, and when the door is opened again, Schrödinger is lying inside the chamber, motionless.
“He was a good kitty,” Dr. T says with a sniffle.
The clips jump around in a very disjointed history of Putopia—scientists in their younger days, mapping out equations on a blackboard. A photo of them in a band at a dance, the banner spelling out the name THE MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSONS. A soccer game in full swing. A progression of those weird macaroni toys, each one different from the last.
“What are those things?” I ask.
“Calabi Yau manifold,” Dr. O says, like it’s as basic as toast or socks.
“Right. I knew that,” Gonzo says. He rolls his eyes at me.
Dr. M bounces the model from hand to hand. “They’re geometrical models that represent the many curled-up dimensions of space we’re not even aware of yet.” He shrugs. “It’s a math thing.”
The movie plays for another minute. I notice that there are a lot of scientists in the beginning, not so many in the later shots.
“What happened to everybody else?”
Dr. T’s expression is flat. “We lost our funding. More money for tanks and missiles, less for finding God particles.”
“Ah—there’s eternity in a kiss!”
I whip my head back to the screen. “Wait! Pause it!” I shout. The image freezes on an Asian man with surprised eyes. I point excitedly at the screen. “That’s Dr. X! Do you know him? Is he here?”
The scientists shift uncomfortably.
“He was once,” Dr. O says quietly.
My heart sinks. I’d hoped we’d finally found him. “Well, do you know where he went? Please, it’s superimportant that I find him.”
“No one’s seen or heard from him since …” Dr. A trails off.
“Since?” I prompt.
The scientists exchange glances. Dr. T pulls a worn photo out from a bookshelf—Dr. X beside a smiling, freckle-faced woman. It’s the photo I saw on his desk when I did the Internet search for the fire giants and accidentally found Dr. X instead.
“Dr. X’s wife, Mrs. X,” Dr. T explains. “He loved her very much. She inspired his work. He used to say, ‘There is no meaning but what we assign to life, and she is my meaning.’” Dr. T puts her picture back on the shelf. “Lovely woman.”
The scientists all bow their heads.
“So … what happened?”
“Every year for Christmas, she gifted Dr. X with a new snow globe for his collection. He loved snow globes, said they were like little worlds unto themselves. Anyway, it was the week just before Christmas, the first snow of the season. She’d gone downtown to the shop to make her final payment and collect his gift. But …” Dr. T shakes his head sadly.
Dr. O continues. “A bomb exploded. They never found out who did it or why. A random attack. Meaningless. Mrs. X was killed in the explosion. When they found her body, she was still clutching her husband’s Christmas snow globe in one hand.”
Balder removes his helmet. “That is a sad tale indeed.”
“After his wife’s death, Dr. X was a changed man,” Dr. M says with a heavy sigh. “He said what did it matter if we could find the Theory of Everything Plus a Little Bit More, measure gravitrons, or prove evidence of other worlds if we could not stop such suffering in our own—the plague of the unpredictable, the terrible, the futile.”
“He wanted to use the Infinity Collider not to ask questions, but to search for an answer,” Dr. O says softly. “He wanted to search time and space so that he might find a way to stop death.”
“So.” I swallow hard. “What happened to him?”
“Dr. X had a theory that certain musical frequencies could open up portals in the fabric of time and space. Something about the vibrations. He believed that music was in fact its own dimension,” Dr. T explains in that teacher voice of his.
“My friend Eubie would probably agree,” I say.
“One night, he made a few secret tweaks to the Infinity Collider. Only Ed was with him.” He glances at Ed, who’s watching a bag of microwave popcorn expand in the microwave like it’s every bit as fascinating as the Infinity Collider. “According to Ed, Dr. X reconfigured the Calabi Yau into a sort of superspeaker, which he then attached to his radio to amplify the music—”
“It was the Copenhagen Interpretation!” Ed yells from the kitchen where he’s pouring the freshly popped corn into a bowl.