The Start of Eternity/10

Stan was in an exalted mood and had gone down to the sea wall for a run along the shore, turning his joy and energy into sweat and tired muscles. He had been awarded the prestigious Milsensir Scholarship, full financial support for the study of mathematics. The Milsensir was given to one student each year who was judged by the faculty to have the best prospects for success as a theoretical mathematician. The scholarship would support Stan's education for as far as he cared to go and most students of the past who benefited from the award went on to get their terminal mathematics degree.

Returning to campus and his room in the dormitory, Stan pealed off his shirt and threw it into his room. Grabbing a towel he turned, planning to head for a shower, but then his brain caught up with his eyes. He turned back and stared at the woman who was sitting in his chair in front of the desk by the window. He stammered, "Who are you...and what are you doing in my room?"

The intruder pulled her legs off of the desk and stood up, stretching. "So, you finally return. Where have you been all afternoon?"

Stan now noticed that she was wearing one of his readies. She took off the goggle-like computer interface and tossed it on the desk. Stan felt that there was something familiar about her, then it clicked. He had noticed her seated in the audience at the awards ceremony that morning, her large eyes had captured his attention for a few seconds when he looked out into the auditorium after receiving the Milsensir Scholarship on stage and shaking the hands of the assembled dignitaries, including the Chair Emeritus of Mathematics, the famous Sheryl Klind. The girl was again locking her eyes on Stan's. For a while he stood there, trying to stare her down and growing increasingly upset that she seemed unwilling to answer his perfectly reasonable questions. Finally she replied, "My name is Nora."

Stan could see that Nora was a big girl, tall and wearing a Masterial Robe, but it failed to completely hide her figure. Stan guessed that she could stand to loose a some weight and he imagined that she was a mathematics instructor for one of the applied mathematics divisions. "Well, I assume you know who I am. I saw you at the ceremony today, but I do not remember seeing you previously."

She went to the closet and pulled out a clean shirt. Handing the shirt to Stan she said, "Come on, I'll explain everything on the way."

For a moment Stan stood there confused, looking at the towel in one hand and shirt in the other hand. Then he noticed Nora moving off down the hallway. He was outraged by her impudent manner, but he tossed the towel on his bed and went after her, only catching up to her fast stride as they stepped out of the dorm through an emergency exit, out the back and into the alley. Stan demanded, "On the way to where?"

She was already getting into her ground car, an expensive recent model of the Correlian hydrogen powered sports car. She turned the car on and put on a pair of sun glasses. "Let's go to my place. It's much nicer than your dorm room."

Stan had noticed how she got in the car. Without opening the door she had swung her long legs into the driver's seat. There was no steering wheel. She would drive using a computer interface in her glasses and the driving gloves that she was pulling on. Stan, feeling slightly foolish, asked, "Who are you? What do you want with me?" He was now suspecting that she was some kind of corporate head hunter.

She explained, "I want to discuss some mathematics problems with you...problems that involve teserant functions."

Stan slid into the passenger seat, only smashing one knee into the dashboard. Blinking back the pain from his knee he dared not speak and for a while he just gripped the arm rests and held on, hoping that she would not crash the car. By the time she entered onto the blitzway he was convinced that she was an excellent driver who knew just how fast she could push the little car without crashing it into anything else on the road. He asked, "Where do you live?"

She put the car on autopilot and took off the driving gloves. "I'm a resident of Uvadekoto." She pulled off the university robe and pushed it into the storage compartment behind her seat. Stan could now better see her large abdomen. He was rather appalled to see such a blatant sign of privilege and excess, but the Uvadekoto was world famous as a kind of walled community for wealthy capitalists. She started discussing the mathematical problems she was concerned with. Stan quickly realized that she was a trained mathematician or possibly an engineer. While she talked about teserant functions and their practical applications Stan watched her face. She seemed quite young and he wondered when she had found the time to learn so much mathematics.

Before he had a chance to contribute much of significance to the deep mathematical conversation she had initiated, Nora had pulled her gloves back on and pulled them off the blitzway. He could see the Uvadekoto dome on the ridgeline to the west. He's never previously seen it in person, but it was a familiar sight because of the frequent news coverage that the Uvadekoto community attracted. It was known as an "archology", what aimed to be an ecologically and economically self-contained habitat. Most of the world resented the archology movement and the fact that global warming and sea level rise had never been prevented. Those who were rich enough protected themselves inside their fortress archologies while the rest of the world's population sunk further into poverty and struggled at the mercy of the planet's disrupted climate system.

Stan barely noticed the streets leading from the blitzway to Uvadekoto. He was thinking deeply about the mathematical landscape she had sketched. Nora had outlined a constellation of mathematical puzzles that Stan now understood to be natural extension of the famous Third Paradox of Klind. As a student in Klind's department, Stan was very familiar with Klind's work, but he had never heard of anyone thinking beyond the Third Paradox in the way Nora had. For most mathematicians the Third Paradox itself was enough of a puzzle. However, guided by Nora, Stan could now see that there was a set of even more baffling mathematical challenges that lay beyond the Third Paradox. The little car zoomed into a tunnel and screeched to a stop at a security gate.

An armed guard called out from his bunker, "Who is that with you Ms. Winsou?"

Stan suddenly realized that he had left his identre back in his room. But Nora had it in her pocket. She tossed the small device into the bunker. A moment latter it came sailing back into the car and Stan grabbed it. Nora smiled and drove through the gate as it opened. Stan complained, "It's a felony to take someone's identre."

Nora shrugged, "You'll find it difficult to press charges against me here. This community does not recognize any laws not of our own making." She pulled the car into a parking spot. They were somewhere down in the dark underbelly of the dome. A robotic arm swung out and plugged into the car, recharging its hydrogen fuel cell.

Stan put his identre into his shirt pocket and tried to clear his mind of the fascinating mathematics that Nora had distracted him with. There was too much to look at now. Everything was odd and ultramodern and automated. They rode a scary elevator up from the parking garage to Nora's residential level. Stan had no sky or horizon for orientation and felt some claustophobia. The elevator seemed to be just a set of small plexiglass platforms, endlessly rising, but Stan imagined that there must be unseen safety features that would prevent falls.

Nora led him into a suite of rooms that had no access to the outside, but it did have a large balcony that opened onto a cavernous court yard. For a moment Stan peered down into the dark well of the court yard that was arrayed with lights from other apartment balconies.

Nora was already moving off down a short set of steps to a hallway the twisted away from her well furnished living room. Stan followed and soon found himself in an entirely different kind of room, what looked like an industrial workshop. Nora pulled open a furnace and Stan felt a blast of heat. She closed the shielding and adjusted the controls of the smelting furnace. She pointed to a glowing red numerical display. "There it is."

Stan carefully counted the number of glowing digits. The number kept increasing slowly, counting upwards from about three quadrillion. While cruising down the blitzway Nora had claimed that her only interest in mathematics was practical, that she was looking for a way to produce a newly discovered type of elementary particle: the sedron. Stan asked, "So where are these sedrons?"

Nora shrugged, "Safe in here." She patted solid steel side of the robotic smelter. "After three years of work I only have a few micrograms of sedronic matter."