FRIDAY MORNING, I drove everyone to Chicago in the Porsche Cayenne, Timothy riding shotgun and Harry in the back seat with one of those file boxes people fill when they’ve been fired from their job. That was all he brought—no luggage, though I guess that made sense since everything he owned had burned in the fire. I wondered if he’d be wearing the same clothes all weekend. If so, I was going to have to get Felipe to detail the car when we got back. I could have driven the Durango—I didn’t really care about it—but I wanted to impress Jennifer, show her how successful I’d become.
Timothy spent the trip checking his phone for updates on his tournament.
“This is bad,” he said, typing into his phone.
“Did you forget your toothbrush or something?” I asked. “Can’t turn back now.”
“It’s the South Korean national team. They’ve been pre-ranked as the top seed. They’ve dominated for the past three years.”
“Where are you guys?”
“We’re ranked sixth. But it’s the second seed that worries me: The Miami Stab Machine. I heard they weren’t going to be there because their captain was grounded for getting a C in US History.”
“Grounded? Are you playing against a bunch of kids?”
“It’s all ages.”
“But mostly kids, right?”
Timothy didn’t say anything. I got the feeling this was a touchy subject for him.
“And you’re worried about this?” I asked. We passed gas stations with prices that kept going up and signs saying there wouldn’t be another one for another fifty miles.
“There are studies showing that kids’ brains respond differently to video games than adults’. Their developing minds have a plasticity that allows them to process the information faster and react to it quicker. Gaming is all these kids do. There’s no way I can compete against these teams. I should have stayed home.”
There was an accident on the other side of the road. Cars were backed up heading into town.
“Sounds to me like you have the upper hand,” I said. “You’re playing a game where it’s not about who’s the best athlete. For you, it’s all about what you know and applying that to the game. Seems to me like you have twenty years’ experience on these kids. That’s what gives you an edge. You’ve played just about every game that’s come out, right?”
“There’s nothing these kids can throw at you that you haven’t seen before. You’ve seen it all. These kids haven’t seen shit.”
That perked him right up. He spent the rest of the trip in a group chat getting his team fired up.
In the back seat, Harry kept writing something, scribbling it out, then writing something else. Around Lafayette he stuck his head into the front seat.
“May I momentarily impose upon you? I have been composing my introductory statement to Dr. Peterson, as well as my statement of intent and a brief description of my work. Would it be agreeable if I were to field test it on you lads?”
“You mean your sales pitch?” I asked.
“That’s a rather crude way of expressing it. I’m not trying to sell anything, but rather enlighten those in the scientific community to a better way of thinking.”
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”
I turned down the arena rock on the stereo.
“Since the dawn of time, mankind has sought to understand the secret mechanisms behind the movements of the universe, to understand how it all fits together. Many great minds have applied themselves to this task: from the first caveman creating fire, to Galileo and his telescope, to Einstein and his theory of general relativity. Now another great thinker is ready to add his name to that distinguished pantheon by introducing his groundbreaking theory of everything: Omnicalcumetry.”
“All right,” I said. “I’m going to stop you right there. Part of my job is to train salespeople and give them the tools they need to sell cars to folks who don’t really want to spend a lot of money. So I’ve heard a lot of sales pitches, and let me tell you, that was really piss-poor.”
“I beg to differ,” Harry said. “It has everything—gravitas, historical context, a sense of the grandiose Omnicalcumetry possesses. Timothy, you concur, don’t you?”
“Working in academia, I’d say you need to revamp your pitch. Professors—even professors of theoretical physics—are evidence-based thinkers. They want to hear facts, information supported by data. The flowery verbiage will just turn them off.”
“Your delivery needs work too,” I said.
“The science community respects knowledge,” Harry said.
“Nobody likes a know-it-all.”
The sign saying it was 120 miles to Chicago had broken and was lying in the ditch.
“Just focus on what’s important,” I said. “What does your theory do?”
“It employs a complex series of mathematical equations to explain everything.”
“So one equation explains how the world works?”
“Of course not. That’s impossible. Only a simpleton would believe one equation could explain everything. Omnicalcumetry takes every possible influencing factor into consideration and provides answers for everyday questions. Will I win the lottery? Will Timothy’s team win his tournament? Will I publish my paper to international recognition? With Omnicalcumetry, we can discover the answers to all these questions and adjust our lives accordingly. It’s more than science. If anything, it’s a new religion.”
“So if I wanted to know what my chances of breathing underwater are, I’d plug numbers into an equation and find out?”
“Absolutely.”
“What about time travel? Is that possible with your theory?”
“Of course. Anything is possible. That’s the power of Omnicalcumetry. Anything you can conceive is available to you. Your only limitations are your imagination and your understanding of the principles of the theory.”
I thought about that day in class sitting next to Jennifer, how I’d like to go back and change it. For a second, I thought maybe Harry’s theory might work, that I might be able to travel back in time and change my own past. But then I remembered who was sitting in the back seat. Harry was someone who didn’t have the best track record when it came to thinking things through. He still thought he could steal Amanda from me.
“What you need to do,” I said, “is talk about all the stuff your theory makes possible, all the time travel, everything. That’s the strength of your theory. Sell that. Forget about all the extra bullshit. You won’t even get through the door talking like that.
“Try something like, ‘So I see you’re checking out physics. Let me show you Omnicalcu—whatever. It’s the latest scientific theory to come along. There’s a variety of levels to it, depending on how deep you want to get into it, but the top-level—now I’m not supposed to say this, but you seem cool—it allows you to do anything. You want to travel in time? Done. You want to shrink down and dance on an atom? Done. You want to turn your desk into a Ferrari? Done. Now, you seem like the type of guy who would want to do all that cool stuff, so what I can do is let you read the first ten pages of my paper—take it for a test drive—then you tell me what you think.’
“After that, you just string them along and make them feel like if they don’t push your paper, they’ll be missing out on something special. You can say something like, ‘You know, I have five other professors waiting to get their hands on this, but I came to you first because I think you’re the right fit.’ And when they start to walk away, you say, ‘All right, I get it. This is a big decision. If you need some time to think it over, that’s fine. But just so you know, I have an appointment this afternoon at Loyola, and we both know how they are.’ You don’t even need to explain it. This professor’s already going to be thinking about some other school jumping on your paper.”
“That seems disingenuous and manipulative,” Harry said.
“Do you want to sell this thing of yours or not?”
Harry scribbled on some notecards, grumbling as he wrote about the integrity of his vision and sacrificing the moral high ground in the name of commerce. Typical Harry.
When we finally pulled into Chicago, with all its tall buildings and traffic, it was a little after 10:30 a.m., and all I could think about was ditching Harry and Timothy and meeting up with Jennifer. I drove straight for the hotel. It was connected to the convention center where Timothy’s video game thing was happening. When I pulled up, there were all these people dressed up like it was Halloween. I saw a guy painted green wearing a bunch of chain mail; other people were wearing what looked like Air Force uniforms, but with laser rifles. There was this woman who had colored herself purple. She had this thing on a chain; it looked like a giant hairless guinea pig. When I parked and got the luggage out of the car, it trotted past us, and I could see it was a man inside a costume. I asked Timothy what was going on.
“It’s Cape Canaveral cosplay.” He didn’t say anything else about it, like he expected me to know what he was talking about.
We checked into the hotel, and Timothy went to register for the tournament and meet up with his teammates. Harry just stood there, looking out the double glass doors at all the people dressed up pretending to be someone else.
“A bus that will transport me to the University of Chicago embarks from yonder corner,” he said.
I expected him to run to the bus stop with the way he’d been carrying on lately, but he just stood there. I’d seen the look before, knew what Harry was going through. When we went to State, I had the pregame jitters so bad I couldn’t move from the bench in the locker room. I tried to remember what my coach had said to me that day, but I’d been doing pretty well with the pep talks so far, so I just winged it.
“I know what you’re going through,” I said. “You got something you’ve been working on for a while now, all with this goal in mind. Now it’s here. But the thing is, you’ve hyped this moment up to the point where it seems like you’ve been waiting for it your whole life, and now that it’s time to do something about it, you’re a little freaked out. That’s natural. But you know what? So what? You’re the only person who can do what you do, the only person who has this crazy idea of yours. And if you don’t put yourself out there, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life. So go get on that bus and sell the shit out of your paper. Because no one else will.”
Harry held the box containing his paper at his waist.
“Dennis, as long as I’ve known you, you’ve treated me with contempt. You’ve behaved despicably and dishonorably, but perhaps I’ve misjudged you.”
“You got to work on your compliments.” I slapped him on the shoulder. Harry jerked forward, almost dropping the box.
He said he’d see me at dinner and walked to the bus stop, almost knocking over someone with a giant lobster head.
I went up to my room and texted Jennifer. We made plans to meet around 1:00 p.m. at a panini restaurant in some open-air mall somewhere. As soon as I set my phone down, my brain started spinning. I must be a walking joke thinking Jennifer would want to be with me. Once she sees my fat ass, she’ll either bust up laughing or just get up and leave. Either way, she’ll run back to her drunk husband. What was I thinking? I leaned forward on the bed, my leg shaking like I was in a beat-up old D-series driving over a rickety old bridge. I thought about texting her back to tell her I forgot my toothbrush and had to go back to Bloomington. Then I considered just staying in the hotel. At least the hotel had a bar.