Ethan spent twenty minutes in the shower, letting the hot water and steam sear his body clean of almost everything he’d seen and done in the last seventy-two hours. His father sitting at his desk talking to him merged into his father dead on an ambulance gurney merged into the enraged face of the woman with the shotgun merged into the kid in the trailer park. Why hadn’t he given Ethan away? Why had he insisted on acting in such a way that it assured he’d be murdered? Why hadn’t he tried to save himself? Then the image of the kid was replaced by that of Shanny, who he knew would do the same thing for him given the chance. The weight of it left him unable to breathe. He gasped over and over until he was on his knees, the water beating on his back.
When he finally stood, he was emotionally and physically drained. He wanted nothing more than to get something to eat and to sleep for twelve straight hours. He dried, put on his clean clothes, and combed his hair. When he left the bathroom, steam chased after him.
Shanny and Matt were deep in conversation, each drinking beers.
“You don’t have to believe me,” Matt was saying. “No one has to believe me. Fomenko knew it. He took the works of Morozov and Hardouin because they knew it, too. And as soon as they published their findings they were killed. Just like Heribert Illig. Wiped out. Silenced. Do you see what I’m getting at? People know this. It’s a fact out there that no one wants to talk about. They’re more concerned with NFL football draft picks, who’s running for office, and if some movie star is doing the ugly with another movie star. I mean if they can get to Sir Isaac Newton, they can get to anybody.”
“Did you just say ‘Doing the ugly?’ ” Ethan asked. “What are you talking about?”
Shanny turned to him. “Back when we met Matt at the church, he said that Isaac Newton was killed. He’s trying to convince me that Isaac Newton didn’t die of natural causes, which is the actual official record.”
“Are you telling me that they had competent CSI in 1727?” Matt countered.
Ethan held out his hands to both of them. “Wait, who are we talking about?”
“Sir Isaac Newton,” she said. “You know, the guy who had an apple fall on his head and then declared that he’d discovered gravity? Matt is saying he was murdered.”
Ethan rolled his eyes and growled, “One of the most widely published scientists and mathematicians is reduced to the image of an apple falling on his head.” He sighed. “I blame Disney. Still, gravity was already there. It’s not like he discovered it.”
“It was an axiom,” Matt said, grinning.
Shanny shot him a look. “Of course it was there. So were the moon and the sun. So were molecules. The very aspect of being there isn’t what’s important. It’s the recording and the codifying which becomes important. Newton’s work on the laws of motion and universal gravitation is the foundation for modern physics.”
“And they killed him for that?” Ethan asked. He shook his head. “I’m just not following.”
“Apparently,” she said. Then she gestured at Matt, who was reclining on the couch, balancing a beer on his chest. “Or at least that’s what Matt claims.”
“No, it had nothing to do with gravity. They killed him for The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended. It was the last thing he worked on and was a chronology of the rise and fall of nations. Only when he got to the Middle Ages, he found major discrepancies in time. In fact, he found missing time. It took the world’s greatest mathematician at the time to find it, and when he did, he died for it.”
Ethan sat next to Shanny, grabbed her beer, and took a sip. He made a face. It was warm and flat. Still, this was about math, and his interest was instantly piqued. “What does this chronology say?” he asked.
“It doesn’t say anything, which proves my point. Had they not edited it, had they not redacted the chronology, the information would be on the street.”
Shanny laughed. “Wait, now you’re saying that no proof is actually proof of a conspiracy.”
Matt shook his head. “You’re oversimplifying it, much like Disney did with Sir Isaac Newton. Listen closely. Noah’s ark and the flood was an allegory. It was a time when the giants reasserted themselves, destroying the worst things of man. Remember the Bible? ‘There were giants on the earth in those days.’ They’ve always been here. You know it now just like Fomenko and Illig and Newton knew it.”
“Whoa there,” Ethan said. “Wait a moment. How did you connect Newton with giants?”
“Aren’t you listening?” Matt asked, more than a little drunk. “Sometime between 800 and 1000 AD the giants came back. They had to fix things. You want math, here’s math. There used to be two calendars. We had the astronomical calendar first. Then we had the Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar and introduced in 46 BCE. A known discrepancy in the calendar basically made it so that for every hundred years an extra day was added. In 1582, the Gregorian calendar was created to fix this error. By then there was a fifteen-day error. But when Pope Gregory instituted the new calendar, he only called for the new calendar to be adjusted for thirteen days. What happened to the other two days? And remember, each day represented a hundred years. Where did the missing two hundred years go?”
Ethan narrowed his eyes. “Is that really true?”
“Definitely. Google that shit. It’s hiding in plain sight.”
“So we have giants hanging around, doing their gianty things, until the world needs them, then they swoop in and fix it, then disappear again, hiding their interaction and existence,” Shanny said. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Can’t be proven,” she said.
“Then it’s one of Ethan’s axioms. We take for granted that it’s true until we can ask a giant the question.”
Ethan snorted. “Ask a giant. Right.”
“Wait a minute,” Shanny said. “You’ve heard of M-theory, haven’t you, Ethan?”
He nodded. “We touched on it from a mathematical angle. Not really my area, though.”
“What’s M-theory?” Matt asked.
“We’re acting on an idea that can’t be proven, at least not now. But there’s precedent. You’ve heard of string theory, right? Dark matter?”
Matt nodded.
“The problem with string theory is that there were five different versions, and they all seemed to be correct. The various string theories are attempts to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics. M-theory attempts to do this, with a final result of identifying seven extra dimensions shaped like G2 manifolds.”
Ethan laughed. “I’d forgotten about that. My master’s thesis was on the Hodge conjecture, which purports that a three-dimensional shape can be pierced by a two-dimensional line.”
“Only it’s not proven,” she said.
“Only it’s not proven,” Ethan repeated with a sad note, thinking of his tattoo. “And it might never be.”
“But it doesn’t make it wrong,” she added.
“That’s right. It doesn’t make it wrong.”
“What are you two brainiacs getting at? You’ve put your coneheads together, and I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“What Shanny is saying is that your theory could be right, just like M-theory, and just like the Hodge conjecture.”
“And what Ethan’s saying,” Shanny said, “is that there are multiple dimensions to a problem. We’ve been following only one set of dimensions, but there are many.”
Now it was Ethan’s turn to be confused. “I said that?”
“In so many words. You said it without saying it.”
“Okay,” Ethan chuckled. “Now you’re beginning to sound like Matt.”
Matt spread his arms. “You say it like it’s a bad thing.”
“Think of the basic interrogatives—who, what, when, where, how, and why?” she began. “Now consider each one its own dimension and we have a six-sided object. An answer lies on each of the surfaces to whatever question you ask, you just need to ask the right question.”
“We need to approach this from all angles,” Ethan said, simplifying what she was saying.
She nodded. “To include, why? Why is this information really out there?”
The room was silent for a few moments.
Then Matt said, “Which means old Dick Laymon could be right about the grays, couldn’t he?”
Ethan nodded. “And jackalopes and spider kitties could be real, too.”
“That was gross,” Shanny said. “Gives me the chills.”
“Know what I think?” Matt said, getting up and tossing the beer in the trash. “I think it’s time to get dinner. I’m as hungry as three people, and I need to get some food to soak up this alcohol. So which will it be, greasy burgers from Burger King or greasy burgers from Dairy Queen? You get to choose between a king and a queen.”
Ethan looked at Shanny, who shrugged. “Wouldn’t mind some ice cream, too.”
“Then Dairy Queen it is. Come on. Ethan’s buying.”
Shanny got up.
“Hey, who said I’m buying?” Ethan protested. “I’m not made of money, you know.”
Outside, the day had finally surrendered to night, bringing with it a warm breeze. They headed to the Dairy Queen. On the way, Ethan noted that the RV with the old man and his dog Pooxie was still there. They were probably spending the night. He wondered what kind of people they were and how simple their lives were compared to his right now. Part of him wanted to be them, but another part enjoyed the theoretical aspects of the problem and the possibility of an actual solution.
But the strongest part of him was hungry, so they spent the next twenty minutes consuming several thousand calories beneath the banner of a queen.
Who said there was no royalty in America?