Jump Starting the Universe

by John David Buchanan

  It was soon after that, while Nigel was contemplating that crack, that he made an absolutely gigantic scene at school. He implored the kids to join him in the field to play soccer; he hated soccer. When they wouldn’t join him he starting yelling at them. He grabbed his friend Hank and literally dragged him away from the gym toward the field while kids nearby watched completely dumbstruck. They started shouting at him to leave them alone. As you might have predicted a shoving match ultimately ensued between a large kid standing with a group of boys near the wall and Nigel. The chant of, “fight, fight, fight” finally caught the attention of a teacher on recess who parted the boys, asked a few questions, and immediately escorted Nigel to the Head Mistress’s office. Nigel’s only explanation was he didn’t want them to get hurt. He was sent home on three days suspension and his parents were told to monitor him for agitation as his behavior at school wasn’t typical; he hated soccer. He thought it was a total waste of energy. It’s not, but you certainly couldn’t have persuaded Nigel of that. His father didn’t say much on the ride home, which was fine with Nigel since he was trying to focus on the sidewalks as they drove by.

  The next morning early there was a crisp rap on Nigel’s front door. His parents, Tom and Betty, weren’t expecting anyone and they were shocked when Mrs. Brewer, the Head Mistress, was found on their stoop under a rather large umbrella. “Do come in Head Mistress,” said Betty beckoning her into the foyer.

  “Thank you, thank you very much,” said Mrs. Brewer as she shook water off the umbrella onto the floor of the stoop, “I’m sorry to make an unannounced visit but in light of yesterday’s events involving Nigel I thought I would come over immediately.”

  “Mrs. Brewer,” began Tom, “we are more than willing to discuss yesterday’s events with Nigel but you said yourself it shouldn’t be blown out of proportion and yet here you are in our house at seven in the morning.”

  “Yes Mr. Toffingten, I certainly did say it was not a big deal, but that was yesterday.”

  Tom cut her off, “Then why on earth are you here at this hour in this dreadful weather?” he finished pointing at the stoop that was now being lashed by heavy rain. “The whole of last week was like an intermittent typhoon,” he said loudly toward the stoop, “and apparently it will continue today.” Tom’s agitation with the prolonged inclement weather was more than apparent.

  There was a brief moment of silence after which the Head Mistress cleared her throat and said, “I am here because the entire western wall of the gymnasium came crashing to the ground yesterday evening after everyone had left school. The rubble is everywhere.” Her voice cracked and she shuddered slightly.”

  “Would you like to sit,” offered Betty who realized Mrs. Brewer was visibly shaken by repeating the news.

  “Yes.”

  “Tea?”

  “Yes, thank you and I need to speak with Nigel,” she said as she sat down in a nice brocaded winged back chair.

  Tom, who had sat on a divan opposite Betty and Mrs. Brewer said, “And you think Nigel had something to do with that wall collapsing?”

  “Oh heavens no,” said the Head Mistress quickly, “but when I spoke with him after the shoving incident with Billie Barton, Nigel said he just didn’t want any of the kids to get hurt.”

  “So you DO think he had something to do with that wall collapsing?”

  “Honestly no,” replied the Head Mistress slightly harsher than before, “I believe..,” she hesitated.

  “Go on then,” said Tom who was preparing to shout down any accusation of Nigel’s involvement in what could have been a horrible disaster.

  “I believe Nigel somehow knew the brick wall was unstable and was just trying to keep his friends from getting crushed when it came crashing down; Nigel knew that wall was going to fail.”

  There was utter silence. Nigel had just gone from villain to hero in a matter of seconds. Although Tom immediately felt better and was prepared to say so it was Betty who spoke first, “How could he have known, how is it possible that Nigel could have sensed the impending collapse of that wall?”

  Tom could only muster, “Impossible.”

  Tom and Betty quit suggesting that Nigel learn to play cricket or soccer. At the Head Mistress’ urging they soon transferred Nigel to a school that could help him develop his unique talents. Much to their surprise he returned home at the beginning of his fourth year sporting a nice new soccer uniform. Betty and Tom were both astounded and keen to know what prompted his sudden interest in what Nigel would previously have described as a total waste of energy. At dinner that evening, which was usually a quiet affair with quiet discussions about subjects that didn’t incite too much emotion, Nigel explained his sudden interest in soccer.

  “It’s really about observation and relationships,” he said. “Late last year one of the players and his mates were discussing a game the night prior, and a particular formation that hadn’t worked as the coach intended. I was sitting at the table listening and no one offered him a solution. They were all soccer players and no one spoke up. So I did. I explained how the problem with the formation was basically the spatial relationship between two of the players and the location of the ball and opposing players. I explained how to fix it given a specific set of player and opposing player spatial relationships. Next week the guys at the table scored using the tweaked formation. The next thing I know Coach was trying to pull me out of physics class to talk about soccer. I told him “not now, we can talk after school,” and we did. He showed me sketches of formations and asked me what I thought about them. Some were really pretty good, others were dreadful and I told him why. He wasn’t offended, in fact asked me to join the team.” Tom and Betty were completely surprised of course since Nigel hadn’t mentioned a word of this before.

  “So I told the coach, I don’t know anything about soccer.”

  He said, “We will see about that.”

  So I practiced some with the team last year and he asked me to be a full time player this year. He says I’m good.” Tom was beside himself as he was a great fan of soccer. Betty was cautiously optimistic, “You will be able to keep up your studies right?”

  “That’s the deal. Coach said my participation was contingent on my grades not falling. That hasn’t been a problem, in fact, I’m helping some of the other players and their grades are improving,” he finished with a smile. For the first time in a long time Nigel felt like he could be himself, a slightly weird nerd. Except now he was a slightly weird nerd soccer player. He could have nerd friends and athletic friends; what a great deal.

  Nigel was more than just good at soccer. So good in fact he was offered a full scholarship to play soccer at Sempertin University. “He’s figured it out,” said his coach to the Sempertin athletic scouts, “but don’t ask him to explain how he does it, he’ll bruise your brain.” Since Sempertin was already on the list of universities Nigel wanted to attend the deal was struck. Nigel played soccer and graduated in three years with highest marks, one soccer championship, and an invitation to study at Seeling University where he intended to complete his doctorate in quantum physics.

  It was at Seeling, in the second semester of his first year that he overheard two professors discussing an odd phenomenon encountered by space cruisers approaching or leaving the planet Nexteminin. Nexteminin is a busy commercial hub for the eastern quadrant of the Prolian System whose economy more or less depends on the import, storage and transportation of goods to other planets in the system. For some reason that had never been explained or investigated, cargo ships visiting Nexteminin constantly had to make course corrections so they wouldn’t miss their assigned entry points. Ship pilots were grousing so much about the problem that the government of Nexteminin realized they had to do something quickly or business would begin to go elsewhere. Using resources in their educational grant program Nexteminin was willing to provide Seeling University with a very large donation in return for its help solving the navigational problem. It was this problem the professors w
ere discussing when one of them noticed Nigel’s poor attempt to listen in on their conversation without being obvious and asked Nigel if he would like to join them for lunch, where they would continue their discussions and proposed theories to explain the phenomenon. Toward the end of lunch, one of the professors asked Nigel what he thought about their theories. Nigel hesitated to join the conversation. But after much prompting and being told he wouldn’t be lambasted for his opinions (after all he was only in the first year of his doctoral program) he offered some comments, after which there were lots of, “well yes of course,” and, “yes, that is certainly a reason why that couldn’t be so,” and several, “it was just a working theory, nothing well thought out.” That last bit seemed painfully obvious to Nigel who had no idea how finely tuned his gift of observation and association had become.

  “Is there any chance I might work on this as my doctoral thesis?” he asked the professors.

  “Nigel, I think you should speak with the department head about that,” responded one of the professors who announced he had to leave and immediately beat a path to the department head’s office where he gave a detailed account of Nigel’s discussions with them at lunch. When Nigel visited Dr. Danteen’s office the next day the decision had already been made, Nigel was offered the investigation of the odd phenomenon at Nextiminin and he accepted. Dr. Danteen had already arranged funding to cover Nigel’s investigation expenses from the very generous grant Seeling had received from Nextiminin’s educational grant program. His investigation began immediately.

  It started with a trip to Nexteminin, on a cargo ship outfitted with a Whittsner Propulsion System, where he observed the ship’s captain making correction after correction to his flight path in order to have any chance of making his assigned entry point and not go skipping off the atmosphere into space. The captain groused the whole time and wasn’t shy about using “colorful” language and pronouncing that when his contract for deliveries to Nexteminin was complete he would gladly accept any other contract for his ship’s services. After his cargo ship observations, Nigel studied a chart of the eastern quadrant of the Prolian System and he researched every planet near Nexteminin. Then he spent three weeks in orbit around Nexteminin observing incoming cargo ships and watching nearby planets through a very powerful telescope. After three weeks Nigel had developed a working hypothesis on what could be the problem, namely the “Twin Planets.” He noticed that when ship captains reported navigational problems two nearby giant planets were always presenting the same side toward Nexteminin. He presented his preliminary findings to Dr. Danteen and spent the next month finalizing his investigation.

  The Twin Planets as they were commonly referred to were actually named Trah and Ahl, with the behemoth Trah being the slightly bigger of the two dimensionally.

  The twin planets were not only massive, they were thought to have once been a single enormous planet that was fractured by a cataclysmic explosion. The planets are unique in that they each had a deposit of actinite, a formation with massive gravitational pull. The deposits were so large that either one by itself would be the largest known deposit of actinite; not just in the Prolian system but anywhere (as you know, that’s a large area, depending on the speed you are traveling when you observe it). It has been postulated that the actinite deposits were originally near the core of the mother planet but after the explosion they were found very near the daughter planets’ surfaces. Trah and Ahl rotate very quickly; four times per hour. Nigel’s observations discovered that the rotations were almost exactly the same speed and that the actinite deposits of each planet were aligned during rotation, meaning they were both pointed directly at Nexteminin at the exact same time and pointed away from Nexteminin at exactly the same time. After finishing a vicious set of calculations, Nigel determined the gravitational pull of such enormous planets coupled with that of the actinite deposits was bending time and space near Nexteminin each time the actinite deposits were aligned in that direction. When the actinite deposits were positioned away from Nexteminin, time and space wobbled back toward their original positions and beyond. A ship trying to navigate through the bending and unbending time and space would momentarily perceive their assigned entry point at Nexteminin being scooped portside to their line of trajectory only to have it bow to the starboard side fifteen minutes later. To name the phenomenon occurring near Nexteminin, and to recognize the history of the sister planets, Nigel Toffingten proposed the name - The Scoops of Trahl - to describe the bending of space and time and to reunite the planets who, together, were responsible for the navigational irregularity.

  Nigel E. Toffingten was granted a PhD a very short time later. Subsequently, Dr. Nigel Toffingten developed a software program in conjunction with Dr. Danteen and two other professors at Seeling University. The program, which was written to make automatic course corrections for cargo ships traveling to and from Nexteminin, was licensed to the Business Development Council of Nexteminin who provided it at a nominal fee to cargo companies whose ships frequented their planet. Nigel is now a very rich man. His father has lifetime tickets for the professional soccer team and Betty spends her time enjoying their mansion in Brookston. When she doesn’t attend the games, Tom invites Coach Shumner. Nigel lives in his parents’ old home. Early in the morning he likes to jog the sidewalks to his old school and practice kicking on the soccer field. Occasionally he makes a new entry in his old log book or marks through one of the previous entries; sidewalks crack, but they sometimes get repaired. Honestly, that actually happens in some communities; it’s called maintenance.

  Nigel wondered about the possible relationship between the severity of a crack and the timing of its repair, or the depth or size a pothole had to achieve before it was finally filled, or the angle of a power pole before it was straightened or replaced… or fell! He wondered if the answer to those relationships could be extrapolated to predict when other things might happen. Things like the imposition of an import tax on goods subsidized by another government, or an embargo due to some political problem, or a declaration of war. Nigel made time for love, marriage, family and became a highly coveted advisor. He eschewed all suggestions that he might have a successful political career. After all, he could only do so much and if he got involved in politics how would that effect his wife, how would it effect his children, and who would monitor those cracks in the sidewalk?

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  LESSONS FROM THE PAST

  “Let me just peek inside before we go in,” said Mr. Livingston as he grabbed the handle to the museum’s front door, opened it, and glanced around. “It looks like its empty,” he said, peering deeper into the mess that was earlier a clean, typically pretentious museum room. He stepped in and held the door for Joules. “What a mess,” he remarked as she entered. They walked to the center of the room, near the exact spot where Livingston had had his earlier conversation with Chief Delwick. “Do you notice anything odd?” said Mr. Livingston, “I mean apart from the rubble and overturned book shelves and tables in what was earlier an award winning rotunda. There is a distinctive odor in here; it’s lingering in the air like cigarette smoke does in a centuries old pub, or like smoky residue from a tremendous fire, but there’s no evidence of a fire, at least not a normal fire,” he finished while watching his daughter for any sign of a reaction to his words.

  Joules was calm but immediately conflicted. She had an incredibly good relationship with her mother and father but she had never been comfortable with the idea of discussing her grandmother’s gift with them. And only now did Joules realize how right her grandmother had been about her own gift and her father seemed to be dangerously close to engaging that very subject. She was afraid it would look like she had been hiding something. Her struggle with what to say must have been obvious to her father who took her uneasy silence as an answer to his unspoken question.

  “Maybe I should discuss something with you Joules, something we probably should have discussed long ago,” said Mr. Livingston. “This sho
uld make our conversation a little easier,” he said as he took two long strides away from his daughter. Joules watched her father step away wondering what he meant and why had he distanced himself from her; she had an uneasy feeling about what would happen next. Mr. Livingston stood quietly for a moment, then looked around the room to make sure no one but he and Joules were there. Then he closed his eyes and let his arms hang limp at his sides. Joules was starting to worry about her father, what was he doing, and why was he acting this way; if this was some kind of joke it wasn’t his normal style. What he was doing became unmistakably apparent in a matter of seconds as Mr. Livingston suddenly became shrouded in brilliant white light so intense it hurt to look at it. The effect was like the glow from a single mercury vapor lamp hanging at the end of a very long, dark pier. Mr. Livingston’s hands began to glow and became brighter and brighter until Joules could barely make them out. He shifted sideways slightly and raised his arms with the palms of his hands facing outward. Immediately the light around him began to swirl like a gyroscope, then a beam of thick white light seared through the air to a point halfway across the room where it stopped, hovered in midair and emitted a sound like millions of angry bees trying to safeguard their hoards of honeycomb. The beam of light hung there blazing in the air like a beam of fire straining against an unseen leash. Livingston glanced at the look of complete shock on his daughter’s face and within seconds he looked completely normal – no extraordinary glow, no beam of light, just a look on his face that seemed to say, “I’m sorry, I wish I had talked to you about this before.”