by Layton Green
While Ettore would be the first to admit he was hopelessly incompetent in many areas of life, his chosen field was a different story. Once he had truly committed himself to an idea in physics and worked out the numbers, Ettore in fact did not make mistakes.
He simply didn’t.
Yes, it was true his career was ruined, at least for the moment. But the truth was he had never cared much about that anyway. What bothered him was his pride—wounded beyond repair—and the glaring error in his calculations that gnawed at him like an ever-present rat scurrying through his mind, taking little nibbles of his self-worth, scratching at his confidence, twitching its nose in doubt every time Ettore dwelled on his theory.
How had he been so wrong?
What had he missed?
Or had he been wrong at all? This was the idea that he couldn’t let go. It was undeniable that Dirac had been proven correct about the positron and the existence of antimatter. Yet what if Ettore was right too? What if the two theorems were not incompatible, as the world believed, but somehow worked in harmony, at a deeper level than anyone presently understood?
Over the previous year—a time span in which Schrödinger, Dirac, and Heisenberg had all received the Nobel Prize—Ettore had sunk into a great depression, ostracized in the scientific community and barely speaking to his friends or family. The only escape he saw was to prove everyone wrong by building this insane bauble he had conceived of in Leipzig, a device which unlocked his infinite tower of particles and connected to the body’s energy field. If his theorems were correct, then . . . well, he didn’t know exactly what would happen.
Ettore became more and more obsessed with the idea of the Fold, and its analog in science. He knew, deep down, that such a place existed. The place where the building blocks of matter lived, a world of dreams and eternal time and the interconnected fabric of the multiverse.
There was a popular philosopher who had famously pondered whether anything we can imagine is real. Ettore, unlike the vast majority of his peers, gave the idea credence.
And why not? How else to account for the infinite bazaar of the human mind? What was imagination but a piece of reality birthed by neural synapses, as extant as any other thing, whether or not it lived in the physical world as we know it? Perhaps it was more real, an embryo of possibility untethered to corporeality, allowed to gestate and thrive and branch a quadrillion times again in the quantum soup of the subconscious.
He was getting ahead of himself. He didn’t need to uncover the ultimate answers all at once. He just needed to make a simple connection.
And he thought he knew how to do it.
There were just two problems. The first was the Leap Year Society.
Over the course of the next few years, while Ettore toiled in isolation, the Society sent a number of people to remind him of his duty and coax him into making their weapon. Always he put them off, by promising development and showing them theorems they didn’t understand.
It seemed to satisfy them, until he left his house one night for a walk, on a mild December evening, and found Stefan waiting for him on the street outside.
“Stefan! What are you doing in Rome?”
Dressed in his typical double-breasted wool coat, though without his Nazi insignia, the German officer’s arms were folded, and he leveled his hawkish stare at Ettore. “It’s been a while, my friend.”
All of a sudden, Ettore felt much colder than the weather warranted. Though Ettore hadn’t thought it possible, Stefan looked even more intense than ever, and there was a darkness shadowing his eyes that made Ettore want to turn and run in the opposite direction, as fast and as far as he could. These were eyes that had seen too much violence and depravity, too much human evil on display. They were eyes that, even if well-intentioned, had stared into the abyss for too long.
He’s become a fiend. A mad, demonic fiend.
“I hear you’ve been unwell,” Stefan said.
“I’m fine,” Ettore mumbled.
“It’s unhealthy to remove oneself from society, Ettore. No man is an island.”
“Every man is an island.”
“Tsk, tsk. You must take better care of yourself. Walk with me.”
Ettore shuffled along behind Stefan as he stepped into the festive streets of Rome, surrounded by families out for an evening stroll, the shop windows and streetlamps festooned with Christmas decorations.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the Joliot-Curies have discovered artificial radioactivity,” Stefan said. “It’s nothing less than transmutation! Modern-day alchemy!”
“I’ve heard.”
“And this doesn’t excite you?”
Ettore’s lips twisted into a sneer. “Do you have any idea what might happen if other elements are manipulated in such a manner? What sort of power might be unleashed?”
“Which is why we must be the first to unlock the doorway. To ensure the world does not burn.”
“And who’s to say you won’t be the one to burn it?”
Stefan whirled around and grabbed Ettore by the collar, lifting him on his toes. He jerked him closer, face-to-face. “I’ve seen your designs. They’re nowhere close to finished. Don’t toy with me, Ettore. I’m warning you.”
“I would never do that.”
“Do you know who betrayed us in Copenhagen? The night we announced our split?”
Ettore swallowed. “No.”
“I did. I leaked the information and knew our spineless compatriots would stab us in the back. It was the only way to convince some of my associates to take such a drastic step. So you see, my friend, if I could make a decision that led to the deaths of my closest allies for a cause in which I believe . . . then you should have no doubt I won’t hesitate to kill you.”
“I don’t,” Ettore whispered.
With visible effort, Stefan composed himself and released Ettore’s collar. “Our time is short. German scientists are working around the clock. I wish you no harm, but . . . you must come through for us.”
“I’m getting closer. I’ve been exploring antimatter collision as well. I think it shows great potential.”
“Ah, yes. An intriguing avenue. When can I expect a blueprint? One with actual merit.”
“Soon, I promise. Within a year.”
“A year?” Stefan looked as if he might fly into a rage again, but instead he turned his head upward, toward the yellow sickle of the moon. “One year. No more.” He stopped to let his stare bore into Ettore a final time. “I’ll be watching.”
After that ominous proclamation, Stefan walked swiftly away and disappeared into the night. Disturbed, Ettore spent the rest of the evening wandering the streets of Rome in a half-aware state, oblivious to the Christmas cheer, the laughter of friends and families.
Yes, Stefan and the Society were a problem, but they were also a solution. Ettore didn’t have all the materials to make the device he wanted to build. So the Society, he decided, would do it for him. They owned a private lab in Rome dedicated to their own projects and scientists, ready for Ettore’s ideas. Making the device right under their noses would be walking a dangerous tightrope, but no one else would fund his idea. The work was too speculative. Convincing the Society to build his device was his only chance at redemption.
Unfortunately, his second problem was even more serious than trying to fool Stefan.
Ettore couldn’t get the math to work.
He was so close to having a finished theorem, a conceptual idea of how to unlock his tower of infinite particles. Artificial radiation was indeed the key. And the proper application of electricity, channeled through the right medium, should—in theory—allow the mind’s eye to experience the effect. It was all theoretical, of course, and that was okay. Ettore just wanted to give his theorem a chance to succeed.
But that last little tweak in the numbers that would tie it all together . . . the final key . . . maybe Dirac had it right after all, and Ettore was just plain mistaken.
They were calling him mad, he knew.
His family, Fermi and the other scientists, everyone. This caused Ettore to cackle. Mad? Was anyone paying attention to theoretical physics? Because if anyone really thought about what scientists had discovered in the last few decades about the inner workings of nature and voiced their opinion on the street, then they would appear as unbalanced as that megalomaniacal buffoon Mussolini.
Particles in two places at once, their futures uncertain until observed? Communicating somehow across space and time?
Madness. Sheer madness.
And it got worse. According to Ettore’s calculations, if a particle and an antiparticle were indeed two sides of the same coin, it was probable that a quantum superposition like Schrödinger’s famous cat would result, except one moving in all directions of time, all at once. Ettore angrily shook his head. Those putrid scientific materialists. How vulgar to think the gears of the universe were set into motion by mindless chance. It was so . . . impossible. The further he dove into the rabbit hole of his ideas, the more convinced he became he was drawing closer to a deeper reality.
How much easier, he thought, to give in to the world.
How much easier to believe in the illusion.
Over the next year, as fascism gripped the country like a bad fever, Ettore barely left his room. Unable to focus on anything besides his work, he let his hair and beard grow to absurd lengths, shocking those who saw him. Fractals and whispers of inchoate formulas filled his head, the numbers still not aligning. Chaos, madness, perfection, annihilation . . . circling the drain of his skull . . . He couldn’t stop the flow, he couldn’t shut it off, he couldn’t get it right.
And then one night, the stranger appeared in his dream. Freud would have said that Ettore’s own subconscious provided the solution; Jung, the collective wisdom of the universe manifesting in response to his yearning for truth. The mystics of the world would have their own opinions, each as varied as the patchwork cloak of a gypsy.
What Ettore knew was that late one night, gripped by the psychosis of his failure, drunk on wine and despair and contemplating suicide for the first time in his life, his incomplete theorem stomping about in his head like a perverse general who refuses to recognize defeat, Ettore fell asleep without knowing it, his head slumped on his desk as a full moon hovered outside the window. Later, he couldn’t say how the dream started or ended, but he remembered a figure appearing in his bedroom dressed in a gray traveling cloak, a young dark-haired woman, her eyes burning in the depths of the cowl like pinpricks of starlight in a night sky. He had never seen her before, and for some reason in the dream he couldn’t explain, she terrified him. Ettore tried to stand, but she strode to his desk before he could react, placed a gloved hand on the back of his neck, and held him in place. When she put her other hand atop Ettore’s own, he remembered thinking he was going to die. That perhaps she was an incarnation of his own darkness, come to consume his mind and leave his body a withered husk for the world to mock. Yet instead of harming him, she guided Ettore’s hand toward his pen. He picked it up, and together they filled the page with a calculation that Ettore somehow, in the impossible way of dreams, recalled the next morning. He did not remember the stranger leaving or ever speaking to him. He only knew that once he started writing, the numbers aligned at last.
He had discovered the missing piece to the puzzle.
In disbelief, Ettore jumped to his feet and whooped as if he were a small boy. This was it! By some miracle of the subconscious, his mind had taken all of his frenzied work over the last few years and assembled the pieces while he slept. It was not that unusual, he knew. There was evidence for this sort of phenomenon.
What mattered was that he had it. This was the core of his device, whether the theory itself was valid.
Yet he dared not go public with the knowledge. Not until he tried it himself.
This placed Ettore in a perilous situation. After some thought, he conceived of a desperate plan to give the Society’s engineers the blueprint for his silver sphere, tell them it was an essential component to a new weapon, and promise delivery of the final plans once he was sure the core was viable. The engineers wouldn’t understand what it was. No one would. And before they discovered his treachery, Ettore would be gone.
If his hypothesis was correct and his device unlocked a hidden pathway, then he had no idea what would happen.
If it was wrong, or if his betrayal was discovered too soon and his contingency plan failed, he had no doubt Stefan would kill him.
As 1937 drew to a close, Ettore took steps to implement his plan. Out of the blue, he applied for a professorship in Naples, dusting off a paper he had kept in a drawer for years. The paper laid the hypothetical groundwork for the neutrino and shocked the scientific community with its brilliance. He won the professorship with ease.
Ettore thought moving to Naples would relieve some of the pressure from the Society. And he was right. He no longer felt watched at every turn. Yet on the first day of the New Year, a visitor to his home reminded him they were still watching, and that Stefan had not forgotten Ettore’s promise. More than a year had passed since Stefan’s visit, but Ettore had submitted a blueprint for the device and the Society’s engineers were working on it. Stefan was appeased for the moment, but the reprieve would not last.
And then, in March of 1938, he received the news for which he was waiting. The prototype of his device was finished and needed only his approval. Claiming his professorial duties did not allow him to travel, he asked them to deliver it to him in Naples.
Giddy with anticipation, he withdrew a large sum of money from the bank and worked hard to appear busy at his job. Just before the prototype arrived, he bought a ticket to Palermo on a mail boat, and left a note for his superior.
Dear Carrelli,
I made a decision that has become unavoidable. There isn’t a bit of selfishness in it, but I realize what trouble my sudden disappearance will cause you and the students. For this, I beg your forgiveness, but especially for betraying the trust, the sincere friendship, and the sympathy you gave me over the past months. I also ask you to give my regards to all those I learned to know and appreciate in your Institute, especially Sciuti: I will keep a fond memory of them all at least until 11:00 tonight. Possibly later, too.
E. Majorana
According to Ettore’s wishes, someone from the Society hand-delivered the prototype of the device to his house. His request to keep it overnight was granted. The Society was not worried—they had the blueprints.
Ettore’s heart fluttered when he saw his silver bauble for the first time. That very afternoon, as soon as the emissary left, Ettore inserted an initiator he had managed to build himself, which was far ahead of its time and contained the key to his core theorems, into a slender opening atop the device. Next he attached a dozen filament wires with electrodes at the ends. The blueprints he had handed over were a red herring. The technology inside the sphere was already in circulation, albeit more streamlined and using cutting edge materials. Without the wires and the initiator to unlock his infinite tower of particles, the true purpose of the device would be impossible to discern.
With an effort of will, he resisted the urge to try it out right then and there. He reminded himself of the plans he had in place, an atmosphere befitting the gravity of the moment. Yes, he would ignite the device far from prying eyes, alone on the sea, beneath a starry sky.
Shaking with anticipation, he boarded the ship for Palermo that very evening, to cement the final details. On the return journey, when at last he was alone on deck, with only the trillion twinkling eyes of the universe to bear witness, he closed his eyes and pressed his fingers into the trigger points of the device, overcome by the beauty and emotion of the moment, unsure if his eyes would open onto this world or another.
27
Cal thought he was dreaming. Yet when he blinked his eyes to clear his mind, catching a strong whiff of rosemary, the robed figure standing in front of him with the golden face was still there, regarding Cal in impas
sive silence.
“Greetings.”
The voice came from behind the face, which Cal realized was a close-fitting mask or helmet that covered the person’s entire head. The contours of the mask approximated an androgynous human face. The only openings were two eyeholes, behind which Cal saw nothing but darkness.
As with the golden mask, the voice left the gender unclear. It did not sound digitized, though it possessed an oddly neutral inflection.
Cal realized he was sitting in a high-backed wooden chair with no restraints. The floor, walls, and ceiling within his line of vision were all painted a warm shade of blue. No doors or windows he could see. As he started to rise in anger, the eyeholes of the mask shifted to lock on to his gaze. “Remain seated.”
Though he didn’t really want to, Cal followed the suggestion, sinking back into his chair.
Where am I? The last thing he remembered was walking at night along a tiny canal in Dorsoduro, staying out of sight, waiting for Andie to contact him. Right before he crossed a bridge, he heard footsteps approaching from behind. He was sure he had turned and seen someone’s face, but he couldn’t seem to hold on to the details. He frowned and tried to concentrate, but the memory was an eel slithering through his subconscious, slipping away from his grasp.
“Who are you?” Cal said, trying to quell the panic. “How the hell did I get here?”
The masked figure was standing five feet away with hands clasped behind its back. Heavy white robes extended from the bottom of the mask all the way to the floor, leaving no skin exposed. The person behind the disguise was even taller than Cal.
“I am the Archon,” the voice said. “My associates have delivered you to me.”
Cal didn’t like the sound of the word delivered, as if he were a piece of chattel brought here by this person’s servants. “Do you have a real name?”
“Do you mean an arbitrary appellation given to a child at birth, or a grouping of letters that better reflects the true nature of an individual?”