The following days had seen a web log war erupted throughout the World Wide Web among academicians, physicists, mathematicians, amateurs and lay persons alike about who was the most likely to find the solution first between Greene and Sterling. A line had been clearly drawn between the supporters of both camps. Smears, snide remarks and personal insults could be read in hundreds of discussion boards and web logs. English media had already declared the Malena-Ritten conjecture obsolete and had proposed a new appellation that would soon reign over theoretical physics: The Sterling-Bose Conjecture.
Greene pushed back his chair away from the computer screen when his assistant walked in the Cupola Suite, a big smile on his face.
Hoskins threw a thick folder on Greene’s desk.
– “What did I tell you about my ex-kommandant? Look at the reports his men have been able to gather in just a few days.”
Greene gazed at the folder on his desk. “Charlize just called. Her ‘friend’ declines our offer.”
Hoskins was still smiling. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I know who she is.”
He quickly leafed through the reports and pulled out photos of documents.
– “Take a look.” he said and handed them to Greene.
Greene read the documents then looked up. “How did they get this?”
Hoskins smiled with obvious satisfaction. “His men are all from the defunct South African BOSS, the Bureau Of State Security, the apartheid-era equivalent of the Nazi Gestapo.”
Greene looked at the documents again. “I’ll be damned. The Jane Smith of the Riemann Hypothesis herself.”
Hoskins sat on the desk. “Miss Amina Sheth.”
– “What is it with Indian people and Mathematics? Anyway, you think she’ll be able to find the solution?”
– “We can find out one way or another.”
– “What do you mean?”
Hoskins grinned. “We can ask her nicely or Wilhelm Katz can ask her.”
Greene shook his head. “I don’t know, isn’t that a little extreme?”
– “Richard, are you willing to throw away 7 years of researches and hard work so that Sterling could collect the laurels in a few weeks?”
– “What if we’re wrong. What if she cannot help us even if she wanted too. She really has to be a genius of the order of—”
– “That’s what I want to talk to you about.” Hoskins cut him off.
Greene paused.
– “Listen, Richard. Amina might be able to help us or not is yet to be seen, but I want to talk to you about the other alternative. I’ve been going over all these claims of LIGO, the Arecibo Observatory and these strange reports from the hospitals in Johannesburg and Elizabethtown from last week.”
– “The gravitational waves?”
– “Yes.” Hoskins grew more agitated. “Richard. Let’s suppose for a moment that there’s really something like a parallel universe in an extra dimension just barely an atomic length away from our universe. Let’s also suppose that a wavefunction from the other side spreads over and tunnels through the barrier. My question to you is this. What kind of event on Earth would make that wavefunction decohere here in our universe?”
Greene did not hesitate. “A cosmic event capable of creating a black hole.”
Hoskins jumped up, his fists in the air. “Yes! I knew you were the smartest guy on Earth.”
Greene looked at his assistant, perplexed. “I don’t understand your question. What’s your point?”
Hoskins walked back to Greene’s desk and leaned over dramatically.
– “Guess what event was happening here on Earth that Friday when the gravitational wave felt by LIGO was the strongest?”
Greene frowned his eyebrows for a moment, then a smile appeared on his face.
– “The LHC!” Greene shouted, referring to the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.
Hoskins had a larger grin on his face.
Greene was walking around the room, talking to himself.
– “Of course, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has created by accident microscopic black holes during an experiment where physicists are hoping to see telltale of extra dimensions.”
Hoskins nodded.
– “That event might have been enough to decohere a tunneling wavefunction from a parallel universe.”
– “So, my question is, what if we reproduce the event?”
Greene answered excitedly, “That same wavefunction will decohere back on the other side according to the same uncertainty principle that rules virtual particles.”
Hoskins could not refrain himself from talking, “A virtual particle is a particle that exists for a limited time and space and whatever came through the barrier exists here on Earth only for a limited time and space also.”
– “And in the cosmic time frame, one second is equivalent to millions and millions of years.”
– “Which allows whatever have come through the barrier to exist and function here in our universe. Whatever it is, it’s not real. It’s a virtual something.”
Greene looked at his assistant. “Steven, you’re a genius.”
– “Richard, all we have to do now is to find out what or who came through that portal.”
– “And?”
– “And he will write down for us the Theory Of Everything or—”
– “Or what?”
– “Or, you call CERN’s director and force him to rerun the black holes experiment. With your reputation, he wouldn’t even hesitate.”
Greene smiled. “Which would send Superman back to where he comes from. A virtual particle popping back up in the void.”
Hoskins sat back down on a couch.
– “Richard, we’ve found Superman’s kryptonite.”
