CHAPTER 3

The university campus was dormant, quiet and empty in the early morning hours. The students were away in their dorms or apartments, the lecture hallways vacant. The glistening sheen of a sparkling mist covered the empty manicured lawns that blanketed almost the entire campus. “Almost,” because the lawns that graced the older buildings were conspicuously absent from the new post-modern buildings. A conscious intent of the latest administration, the stark contemporary architectural designs stood in sharp contrast to the traditional ivy-clad tree-lined rolling-lawn structures built a half century earlier and stood facing the Charles River.

The stark metal and red look of the new administrative building had been condoned by the Board of Regents as a testament to the taste and influence of an overbearing dot com billionaire whose son had recently begun his senior year in the School of Architecture. It was rumored that the building, named after the billionaire’s company, had been the exclusive design of the wealthy patron and his son. It was time the billionaire announced to the Board (according to the university grapevine) to bring the world-renowned university “into the twenty first century.” Tenured professors in the liberal arts and other colleges had threatened to stage a revolt over the garish building, but the power of the billionaire’s dollars had been too strong to overcome.

The parking area was vacant as the white Miata convertible flew into view, slipping sideways as it raced around the corner. Shifting down and accelerating with precision, the driver sped through the posted twenty-five-mile-an-hour road. The tires screeched in protest as the Miata did a ninety degree turn into the parking lot. The sports car spun sideways and then straight, completing a perfect four point stop, exactly centered in the reserved parking space.

The convertible top was up. For anyone watching, the identity of the driver would come as a shock. The driver’s door opened and a mature looking female appeared. She removed a pair of dark Ray Ban sunglasses and tossed them into the glove box. A small rearview mirror allowed her to adjust the white beret that crowned her elegant grey hair. Both hands pulled against the windshield frame as she raised herself out of the slim bucket seat. With the push of a button, the rear trunk opened. Dressed in a designer pants suit and top, bound with a colorful wool scarf, the older woman skirted around the vehicle and retrieved her purse and an overstuffed bag from the trunk. Slamming the trunk shut, she slipped both bags over her shoulder and headed for the science center buildings.

An odor of fresh baked goods emanated from the larger bag, stuffed with treats she had baked the night before. Although she was strong and her gate brisk, she struggled with the overloaded bag as she stepped over the curb. A long cement walkway led from the parking area to her office.

As usual, she was the first person on campus. It would be hours before the busy class schedule began in that part of the university. The walkway meandered through the school property and was lined with majestic oak trees, historical markers that dated back to the previous century. It was a reminder of the earlier building designs that were once prevalent on the famous campus.

In fall, dried oak leaves would lift and swirl as her legs swept through the autumn remnants. But it was March and the snow had made its mark on the sweeping landscape. As she continued down the path, the tap of her stilettos was dulled by the thin trace of snow on the sidewalks. She paused for a moment to adjust the weight of the bag on her shoulder. Fifty yards in front of her was the Center for Theoretical Physics. When she reached the front door of the building, she balanced the bag on a lifted knee, removed a set of keys from her purse and unlocked the front door.

Once inside, she walked past the empty security desk to the elevator. Her footsteps were sharp, echoing across the polished granite floor. Overhead, the twenty-foot ceiling buttressed a wall of copper plaques lined with a “who’s who” of wealthy patrons and scientists, familiar to all who entered the facility. It was a wall that impressed upon visitors the world class nature of the Center.

She pushed the second floor button.

Suzy Randolph was an attractive sixty-plus-year-old woman who had managed to retain her vivacious figure. Renowned to have been a serious looker in her younger days, her employment with the university dated back into her forties. There were unfounded stories about her alleged relationships with several professors and an earlier work history as an exotic dancer in New York City, but those rumors were quashed by a legion of those who had been the recipient of the kind woman’s largess. Suzy was loved by all who worked in the science center. Starving overworked interns gladly accepted the occasional basket of chocolate chip cookies or zucchini bread she distributed about the facility, making her as much a known fixture in the world of science as Professor Rodney Blackstone, the internationally renowned physicist that she reported to.

Suzy unlocked the second floor office and was in the process of emptying her bag when she was startled by a slight thud in the inner office. She walked around the desk to investigate.

“Who’s there?”

“Hello?” There was more movement in the adjacent office, but no one responded.

Suzy moved closer to the door.

“Professor Blackstone? Is that you?”

She grasped the doorknob and twisted, carefully opening the door to Professor Blackstone’s study. What she saw shocked her.

Professor Rodney Blackstone, normally a distinguished looking seventy-year-old physicist, wore a wrinkled shirt and his hair stood on end. The collar on his tweed jacket was up and it looked like he had not slept. He absent-mindedly walked around a cluttered desk, poking through a bundle of scientific papers. The room was surrounded by bookshelves, each nook and corner crammed tight with books. Photographs of the Professor with famous dignitaries lined one corner of the room. Behind the Professor, prominently displayed, was a portrait of Albert Einstein.

Suzy knew he had spent the night in his office.

“Professor Blackstone?”

He failed to hear her. He was fixated, examining a freestanding blackboard covered with formulae, one hand holding a piece of chalk, the other rubbing the unshaven stubble on his chin.

“Professor Blackstone? What’s wrong?” said Suzy. “You look like you haven’t slept a wink.”

“Dear God.” Oblivious to his assistant, the scientist examined the blackboard and frantically shuffled through a pile of papers. “I didn’t think it was possible… Can she prove it? It’s not possible. But I can’t find the flaws. It’s amazing.”

He walked closer to the blackboard, and finally noticed Suzy. “Oh,” he said.

Suzy walked behind him and straightened the collar on his jacket, removing several pieces of lint from the disheveled coat. “Look at you,” she said, shaking her head. “You need to get some rest.” He shrugged his indifference, focused on the material in front of him. She pointed at a torn envelope lying on the desk.

“Is that the material Claudia sent you?”

He ignored the question. “This young woman has given us the answer to Einstein’s final question.” He pushed his thin hair off his forehead as he spoke. “She did it as a classical thought experiment, an idea one develops solely in one’s head. Nothing physical, pure thought. It’s how Einstein, in his early twenties, developed his Special Relativity Theory.”

The professor chalked ‘E = MC²’ on the board. Elated, he tossed the chalk into the air. He pointed at the famous equation. “The very definition of energy. And he did it in his spare time… a young man working in Bern as a lowly government patent clerk.” He slowly rubbed his hands across his face. “I have spent my entire life trying to understand relativity, and he wrote his Special Relativity treatise in just six weeks.”

“So what’s wrong?” said Suzy.

“This is what’s wrong.” He pointed at Claudia’s treatise. “A grad school dropout, a ski instructor, has completed Einstein’s final quest. She has defined for us what Einstein spent his entire life looking for - a unified field theory.” He lifted his arms and spun around the room, as if looking for an answer.

“Amazing!”

The Professor took a seat and began separating the pages of formulae. “How could this have happened?” he said aloud. It was not a jealousy for what Claudia had done that Blackstone felt. What bothered him was the fact that she had come up with an idea that was there all along, for him and the rest of his colleagues to see. It was there, right under their noses, and the world’s best theoretical physicists had missed it. He and every other scientist on the planet, men and women like himself who had spent their entire lives searching for the answer to Einstein’s final mystery, had failed in their quest.

Blackstone gazed at his assistant, his eyes moist. “The Committee was right about Claudia. We knew from the time when she was three years old. An iconoclast. Brilliant. Independent. Imaginative. Rebellious…” He nodded with reverence at the portrait of Einstein. “Just like him.” Tears welled up in his eyes. “I never dreamt I would live to see this day. We all thought he was one of a kind.”

The Professor lost his focus as he reexamined the blackboard. Suddenly he stood and rushed at Suzy. He grabbed her arms in a panic.

“Ms. Randolph!”

“What?” she cried.

“Zurich!” he said. “They must know of this immediately. Call them, and get Professor Thomas on the phone. Tell him to notify everyone. We must assemble the group.”

Suzy hesitated. “It’s rather late in Zurich. Shouldn’t we-”

He cut her off. “Professor Thomas would murder both of us if I didn’t wake him. Go.”

Suzy rushed out of Blackstone’s office.

“And book me a flight to Zurich!”

“Yes, Sir!”

Suzy’s heart was racing as she closed the office door behind her. After double checking to see if the door was completely closed, she returned to her desk. The administrative assistant focused on the closed door to Professor Blackstone’s office, amazed at what she had just witnessed.

Nervous and flustered, she reached across the desk and lifted the telephone.