There are three types of people in the world. Early people, punctual people and late people. Early people can always be relied upon to arrive with time to spare because they’re simply so afraid of being late. Punctual people always contrive to arrive precisely on time because they hate being late, but equally can’t stand having huge amounts of time to kill. Late people - well, they often have intentions of being early or punctual, but due to either laziness, faffing or just general malaise, they continually fail to do so.
Eradani fell intensely into the ‘late’ category. She’d never actually been on time for anything, as far as she knew. It wasn’t through lack of trying though. Every evening, she would religiously set her alarm clock to go off at least an hour earlier than needed. And she’d get up with it too. There wasn’t any problem there. Things only started to get desperate when she realised that she’d already used up that spare hour or so quite effortlessly by fiddling about with her hair, having just one more cup of coffee, trimming her nails, listening to that song that had just started playing on the radio, having one more cup of coffee, checking she’d got everything in her bag, doing her hair, having absolutely the last cup of coffee, finding she’d forgotten to stamp the letter she had to post, stormed around the room trying to find a tiny square of paper with the Queen’s head on it, stuck it down firmly, had that very, very last cup of coffee, spotted the time, worked out that she should have left twenty minutes ago and finally flown out of the door like a spider escaping a margarine tub.
Of course, thirty seconds later she’d scream back into the room, scramble about for the letter that she’d forgotten, find it hiding under the bed and then dash back out again.
Or something along those lines anyway.
And this morning was just such a morning. She had a part-time job interview lined up, a meeting with Professor Hughes to contend with and three hours of lectures to struggle through, but this hadn’t prevented a long-winded chat with Jo about the merits of digging underground tunnels between halls from making her late.
Very, very late.
So she ran, ran, ran all the way to her old tutor’s private office, bumping into people, skidding into doors and generally making a nuisance of herself. One poor nuclear physicist was left in a state of complete disarray when the sight of a young student torpedoing towards him caused him to fling a batch of exam papers into the air in alarm. Eradani couldn’t help but smirk to herself about the slightly ‘Carry On’ feel this little incident had.
Anyway, she arrived outside Professor Hughes’ room, having got there in record time, straightened her clothes out a bit, and knocked the door.
‘Enter,’ came a jolly, lilting voice from inside. She opened the door and stepped inside.
Despite the building that encompassed the office being a beautiful old Victorian redbrick design, the office itself was nothing more than a tiny cubic room with an ugly metal-framed window. The walls weren’t lined with panelled wood, it didn’t have any elegant, antique mahogany furnishings and it didn’t have a single valuable oil painting on display.
What it did have was a horrible, scratchy green carpet, whitewashed walls, two well-stuffed M.F.I. bookcases, a battered old desk with a deceptively high-powered computer resting on it and lots and lots of bits of paper piled up on every available surface. There was a stack of those uncomfortable red plastic chairs that you always find at educational establishments against the wall. Normally, Eradani would have grabbed one of these, but she was pleasantly surprised to find a brand new, plush velour armchair sitting in the middle of the room.
‘Ah, Eradani,’ said Professor Hughes, sitting at a slightly awkward angle behind his desk. He’d clearly been busy with his computer. ‘Sit down, please. I’ll be with you in a tick.’ He continued typing at the keyboard.
She eased herself into the new chair. She obviously didn’t ease gently enough, however, as she almost disappeared completely into it, becoming consumed by tidal waves of soft, green cushion. She lost her grip on the small handbag she was carrying and it fell slightly under the Professor’s desk.
The Professor looked up at her. ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry about that,’ he said. ‘A friend of mine offered me that chair as a thank-you. I didn’t realise it was quite so squashy until he’d dropped it off.’
‘Oh, it’s okay,’ said Eradani, pulling herself up to a reasonable height with assistance from the arms. ‘It’s very comfortable, actually.’
‘Yes, it is. You just have to work out how best to balance yourself. I suspect it’s all a question of buoyancy.’
‘Could be,’ said Eradani. The Professor typed a few more words into his computer then turned to her in earnest. He eased his half-round glasses down his nose a bit and looked at her over the top of them.
‘Eradani,’ he said, ‘are you aware how many genuinely innovative theories get developed these days? I mean, really, utterly stunning new ideas that take the scientific establishment by the scruff of its neck and give it a thoroughly good rollicking?’
‘No,’ said Eradani. The thought had never occurred to her before.
‘I’ll tell you, shall I?’ said the Professor, nodding to her as if answering the question himself. ‘None. That’s an average, of course. You see, in the past hundred or so years, there have been perhaps three major advances in physics. There was electricity, of course. Maxwell’s equations and whatever. Then there was Einstein and his Relativity, and finally Schrödinger and Planck and Einstein again with their quantum theories. And that, given the general scope of things, is that.’
‘I don’t quite see what you’re getting at,’ said Eradani, confused. What was this? A history lesson?
The Professor ran his hand through his hair. ‘Eradani, have you heard of such things as Grand Unified Theories?’
‘Yes,’ said Eradani. ‘Of course I have. The joining up of the current theories of natural forces into one big super-theory.’
‘Good. Then you’ll know that they are the Holy Grail to modern physicists, the most sought-after prizes in science. Everybody is trying to be the first past the post.’ He leaned forward across the desk and nudged his glasses up with an index finger. He spoke in a grave voice. ‘Once they are developed, and believe me, it won’t take long, then there will be nothing left to discover. Physics will have completed all it set out to achieve. All human advancement will suddenly pass into the hands of the engineers to implement the physics that has been developed. We, you and me, Eradani, are a dying race. We haven’t got long left.’
Eradani considered this for a moment. It seemed a touch pessimistic to her, and she said so.
‘I’m afraid you can’t really see the whole picture yet,’ said Professor Hughes. ‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe you never will. If you become a professional scientist, the situation may come to bear upon you, but maybe not. Never matter, it’s not really what I wanted to talk to you about anyway.’
‘Oh, okay,’ said Eradani. This was a fairly typical meeting with the Professor - she tended to just let it all wash over her until she could escape.
‘Let me ask you a question,’ he said, brightening his tone a little. ‘How would you describe mathematics?’
‘How would I describe it?’
‘Yes. What do you think it really is? What do you think it’s for?’
She thought about this for a while. Several answers popped instantly into her head, but she decided that in the interest of her future at the university it was best not to reveal them.
‘I suppose,’ she said eventually, ‘it’s just a system we use, or a tool, if you like. We invented it to allow us to solve certain problems. I think.’
To her relief, Professor Hughes seemed pleasantly surprised. ‘Very good,’ he said, impressed. ‘That’s exactly how I view it too. However, what would you say if I believed that there was an alternative?’
‘An alternative? To what?’
‘To mathematics. It is rather limited in its present form, don’t you think? It doesn’t really give a lot of scope for imagination, does it? You can’t really be truly creative with it - there’s no freedom for artistic expression, for aesthetics and glamour and individuality.’
Right, thought Eradani, this is starting to get a bit weird.
‘How do you mean?’ she asked politely.
The Professor swivelled round in his chair and grabbed the computer monitor. He swung it round so Eradani could see it.
‘This is what I mean,’ he said. ‘This is creativity.’
There was no denying this: the picture displayed on the monitor was quite clearly one with a colossal wodge of creativity behind it.
‘Yes, but that’s the roof of the Sistine Chapel,’ she pointed out. ‘Arguably the greatest work of art in the history of mankind.’
‘Precisely!’ beamed the Professor. ‘And, in the traditional fashion, it was created with paint, brushes and a lot of hard work. Do you see what I’m getting at?’
Eradani didn’t.
‘Look at it this way,’ tried the Professor, struggling to get his exact point across. ‘Would it have been the same if it had been done with numbers?’
‘What, you mean like a children’s colouring book?’
‘No,’ said the Professor. ‘Not done by numbers, but with numbers. Suppose, if you can, that Michelangelo had been a mathematician.’
Eradani found it a bit tough, but she just about managed to conjure up a Renaissance pullover-wearing man jumping up and down with excitement in front of a blackboard filled with complex equations. He was excited, she imagined, because he’d just proved a complex theorem in front of several wealthy 16th century Italian algebra dealers.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I can just about see that.’
‘Good. Now imagine he’s just created the greatest, most inspired piece of work of his life.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And imagine it on the roof of the Sistine Chapel.’
Unfortunately, Eradani had a very good imagination. She saw, in dreadful clarity, a vast sprawl of integral signs, multiplicators, fractions, letters, numbers, roots, inequalities and, worst of all, freehand graphs sketched to aid the visualisation of solutions. This was all in place of the vivid colours, the serene angels, the cute cherubs and the dramatic Heavenly scenes that, fortunately, Michelangelo had chosen to decorate the roof with instead.
‘Ugh,’ said Eradani. ‘That’s horrible.’
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ agreed Professor Hughes. ‘Which is why I’ve developed my own, much more interesting replacement for mathematics.’
‘Uh-huh?’ said Eradani.
‘Yes. I thought I’d make something that you could actually be artistic with. Something that you could use to make interesting theories, curious suggestions and unexpected calculations.’
‘I don’t quite follow,’ said Eradani.
‘It’s quite simple,’ said Professor Hughes. ‘All I’ve done is suggest a modification to our idea of ‘number’. Fiddled around with it a bit, you could say. The notion that numbers are somehow fixed entities that can never change and that applying the same mathematical functions to them always gives the same answers seems incredibly inflexible to me, even slightly arrogant. With my theory, things are very different. You never quite know what you’re going to get. Numbers no longer have fixed values, calculations no longer give predictable results. I proved the other day that a circle is the same thing as a straight line. And that’s just the beginning. When I get to grips with it fully, I expect to be able to show that time doesn’t exist, or rather, that it does, but it doesn’t actually make any sense.’
Eradani was thinking that the entire conversation wasn’t making any sense. ‘So this is what you’ve been working on all this time?’
The Professor grinned. ‘Yes. This is the culmination of my life’s work; the pinnacle of my career; Professor Hughes’ magnum opus. I believe it will revolutionise the world.’
‘Okay,’ said Eradani, coming to the conclusion that she would be much better off if she ran away now, ‘this is all very exciting, but unfortunately I’ve got a job interview to go to in, what, well now, actually. So, I’m sorry, but I’ve really got to go. What can you do?’
Professor Hughes didn’t look in the least bit surprised. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I mustn’t keep you here against your will. Me and my theory of Cofomaristics can wait, eh? I do go on sometimes.’
‘No you don’t,’ lied Eradani. ‘It’s just that I am, well, rather late, you see.’
‘Yes, yes. Of course. It’s been nice to see you again, Eradani. It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she said, reaching for her bag but failing to reach it. ‘Several months, in fact.’
‘My, how time flies. You must be in your second year now, correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your tutor this year...?’
‘Dr. Richter.’
‘Ah yes. Of course. A good man and a good scientist. A most agreeable turn of events.’
‘Yes, well, I’m sure he’ll make a... fine tutor. Sorry, I seem to have dropped my bag under your desk.’ She ducked her head underneath to retrieve it. As she grasped it and started to pull it out, she noticed a slim file underneath it. It had obviously fallen onto the floor before she’d arrived. She grabbed it and was about to mention it to the Professor when she noticed the cover. It was a deep, almost totally pure red. It was quite entrancing, almost hypnotic. And very red. And hypnotic. Eradani was entranced. So much so it took her a moment or two to notice the single word etched onto it in neat, gold lettering: ‘Cofomaristics’.
Curiosity overriding her better judgement, she slipped it furtively into her bag and ducked back out from underneath the table.
‘Got it,’ she said, holding up her bag.
‘Right,’ said Professor Hughes. He stood up and showed her out of the room. When he was certain she’d left, he strolled back over to the desk and had a look underneath. He smiled to himself, sat back down in his chair, took an ancient pipe out of the desk drawer and lit it. He relaxed back, smoke curling up from the pipe, and smiled to himself contentedly.
<=> <=> <=>
Back in her room, Eradani opened Professor Hughes’ notes, but was so shocked by the opening line that she couldn’t bring herself to read any further.