Richard Greene had spent all day working trying to prove that the Malena-Ritten would work the way he intended it in his equations. There was a gap in his reasoning. His theory might be irretrievably flawed. Beside him, Hoskins too, was working with five opened phones line connected to Princeton, Stanford, Buenos Aires, CERN in Switzerland and Cambridge in London. Greene knew that physicists and mathematicians around the world must have now heard about the error and working feverishly to prove the conjecture. History was repeating itself. Greene was reminded of Andrew Wiles’ 1993 failed proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem—a theorem that had baffled great mathematicians for centuries. It had taken Wiles a whole year with help from others to finally prove the theorem and that was enough to forever taint the magnificence of his work. This will not happen to me, Greene thought. I will not sit back to watch someone else complete the proof and steal the glory. Greene knew that the triumph of achievement would go to the person who would deliver the final proof and not to the person who had spent years and years working on it. Greene crumpled the paper in front of him and threw it in the room in frustration. Every time he fixed one part of the calculation, it would cause some other difficulty in another part of the proof.
He turned to his assistant.
– “What’s the news from London?”
Hoskins answered sheepishly without raising his head.
– “Nigel Sterling is working on the gap right now from what I heard.”
Greene shook his head in disgust. Nigel Sterling, ‘The’ English theoretical physicist whose runaway best seller book A Brief Talk On the Universe had made him an overnight academic celebrity and a darling of the media. He was the de facto Greene’s Nobel rival. A recent row between them about whether the Theory Of Everything could be achieved before the end of the 21st century had made headline news around the world. He too, was working on a final theory but based on Alain Connes' Noncommutative Geometry instead of string theory.
– “Is he using God again or is he making another bet?” Greene said sarcastically, referring to Sterling’s penchant for making silly and useless bets on fundamental questions in physics. As for using God’s name in his speeches, Greene thought that was a shameless tentative to emulate Einstein and to be seen as his equal. The difference was that Einstein had used the word ‘God’ once when he declared that God does not play dice when talking about quantum physics, while Sterling was using and abusing it at every occasion.
– “Yeah, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone.”
– “I can’t believe anybody would take this guy seriously. Really. He always makes unfounded theatrical statements like I’m sure of this or Believe it or not only to recant them a few days or weeks later and the press keep praising him. And what about his theory on time travel and its baggage of ad hoc principles? He did not do so with some rigorous mathematical proofs but because he thought so. What a joke. If there were a Nobel prize for Nobel laureate hopeful, he would have been their natural candidate.”
Hoskins remaind silent.
– “It’s so like him. What do you bet that if he found the proof before us, he would go in front of the media, apologize for the fact that he had said that string theory was a mistake and would turn himself immediately into the most ardent and believer of the same theory like he had done so many times before in other instances?”
– “I don’t think we should worry about him but we might try—uh—a different approach.”
– “Like what?”
Hoskins looked up.
– “Richard, I’ve been thinking. Why don’t you spend some time with Charlize de Vries and find out how she was able to discover the gap so fast. Either she’s some kind of mathematical genius and we could use her help or else, someone else told her about the error and—”
– “And that same person could help us complete the proof.”
Hoskins nodded with a smile.
Greene grabbed his assistant by his shoulder.
– “Great thinking Steven. Great thinking.”
Hoskins grinned and wiped the sweat off his forehead.
– “There’s on more thing, Richard.” Hoskins said hesitantly.
– “Well, what is it?”
– “Uh, it did seem that the perturbations registered by LIGO and the Arecibo Observatory might really be gravitational waves—uh—originating from South Africa, right here, nearby Johannesburg. To be exact, I would have to say nearer to Elizabethtown than Johannesburg and we know someone who lives in that town, Charlize de Vries.”
Greene let the information sink in.
Hoskins continued, “And then, there are these series of baffling reports coming from Wits Hospital located in Elizabethtown on medical symptoms that left doctors completely mystified. All of this occurring since last Friday and one of them took place on a farm North of Pretoria which happened to belong to Charlize’s parents. Coincidence?”
– “Let me guess. Last Friday was the last detection of the gravitational waves.”
Hoskins nodded.
Greene was now staring at his assistant in his eyes. “Do you think—”
Hoskins shrugged. “Who knows? According to our own theory, anything is possible, right?”
– “Right. I say it’s time we get better acquainted with Miss de Vries and her entourage.”
– “Look Richard, I know you like her but—”
– “Steven. Do you really I’m that stupid? Do you really think I would put my feelings for a woman before a theory that could assure me eternal recognition? My name would be synonymous with theoretical physics. No one who had ever lived or will live could ever be compared to me.”
Hoskins watched Greene poured himself a drink.
– “Richard, have you thought about what we should do if she doesn’t want to help us for whatever reasons?”
– “Uh, no, Not really.”
Hoskins moved closer to his mentor.
– “What if I tell you that I just happen to know how to contact an ex-kommandant of the defunct Boeremag?”
– “Bouwer—what?”
– “Boeremag, Afrikaans for Boer Force, a South African right-wing activism group with white separatist aims. They were planning to overthrow the ruling black government and to reinstate a new Boer republic reminiscent of the apartheid-era. They were all arrested in 2002 and charged with terrorism, sabotage and treason. One of them escaped from his cell, kommandant Wilhelm Katz. The same Katz who had told the magistrate ‘I have not changed my opinion’ when asked if he still believed that black people were not human.”
Greene stared admiringly at his assistant. “And how do you happen to know this charming character?”
– “During a meeting with a sleazy South African reporter but that’s another story.”
– “And how this ex-kommandant might be able to help us?”
Hoskins laughed out loud.
– “Do you know the joke about prosecutors capable of indicting ham sandwiches?”
– “Yes.”
– “Well, Wilhelm Katz can make the same ham sandwiches talk.”
Greene and Hoskins burst into laughters.
