In the days that followed Plaxx, Peter stayed in his dingy apartment, he stopped going outside, and he stopped eating meals. Melinda was with her family and they spoke on the phone. Within a week, he emerged long enough from the darkness to walk to his advisor's office. He was not sure how he would explain the events. Maybe he could simply state that he got into an altercation with the director, making clear the altercation was not violent, but driven by rudeness, ignorance and stupidity on the part of Klaus. But he was ashamed at his summer project. Klaus had left him feeling like an idiot. How would he explain himself? At best, he spent a summer jerking off on a theory that went nowhere. He didn't have enough self-esteem to whether that thought.
Peters advisor was another hard ass German or Austrian or whatever, Professor Mathias Durgen. Peter met him at his office in the Physics department. Peter knew Durgen for having an ego. He was young for a tenured professor, ultra-studious and very serious. His blond curly hair short and cropped. He was skinny, and wore a belted trouser with a JCP Penny shirt.
When Peter met with him, Peter had the familiar feeling then the Mathias somehow already knew about the incident. And he did.
"I have received a letter that is very problematic, Peter." He opened the letter, with a large 'P' on its letterhead. On the bottom, Peter could make out a large letter K -'K' for Klaus. One German brother to another. While Mathias read, part of Peter's mind checked out. Another part, though engaged long enough to wonder why Klaus wrote so badly. Mathias read, "Mr. Felton displayed in immature and threatening demeanor in my office. He displayed a poor ability to take criticism, which admittedly, was very frank. Mr. Felton spent the summer indulging himself on strange theories and speculation. There was no merit to his work whatsoever. He was advised on easy projects that other students, many of only the undergraduate level, easily completed recently in the past. He showed no ability to complete such projects, and he did not work effectively on his pet project, which at best is fanciful." Mathias struggled a little with the grammar and wording, but continued. "I am concerned that such an individual at your University would be a waste for someone more deserving."
Waste…"Can I just tell you what happened?"
Mathias held his hand up. "This letter is … over the top. It's surprising from Klaus, whom I schooled with, I can read it and see something personal and unprofessional." He paused, "which is strange because he does not have much personality to be personal."
"I slapped his cup into the wall."
Mathias shrugged. "An undergraduate called me 'motherfucker' last year, and I still gave him a B+. You didn't hurt Klaus. This internship is not one that requires students to perform at any great level. So I don't know what to say. I don't agree with Klaus, but is it going to make a difference? Your reputation will take a hit. This internship was a nice job. But our professors in this department work with Plaxx. They have grants that need Plaxx. And Klaus, is really upset with you."
"What does that mean?"
"I am speaking as your advisor. PhD programs are political. Students in PhD programs are pawns of politics, vendettas…all this means is that you're probably going to have political problems in our department. Maybe it will take you a couple years longer to get the degree. Maybe you will be the rare student who can't defend his thesis, maybe you won't get a paid research assistant position. Maybe all this will be forgotten. All that I am saying is that it is possible that life has gotten harder for you."
Peter wanted to go back to his room and sleep in his bed. "So what does that mean?"
"I don't know. You go home and think about it."
When Peter went home, he left Melinda a voicemail. "Hey, I just met with Mathias. He thinks I should just give up school. Anyway, I have too many problems. I don't think we should see each other anymore. I am not worth it. Sorry." After he left the voicemail, he realized she would be arriving that night. He had lost track of days. He stayed in his bed, watching the room get dark. At some point, he fell into a trance and there was a knock on his door.
It was Melinda. "You are going to have to do better than that to get rid of me." She let herself in, and looked great. Long brown hair and the smile. But then she looked around the room, and her face frowned-a little disgusted. "Peter, get some clean clothes on and lets go grab a pizza." For the first time, Peter felt something that lifted his gloom. He minded her and they went to pizza. Then he went home with her and stayed in her apartment. She had a roommate who wouldn't come back for another week.
Over the course of the next week, Melinda kept him company as much as she could, while she prepared for her senior year with errands and shopping. Peter spent most of the time in his room, looking over his notes from the summer. He wasn't fired because of his project. He was fired because he knocked over Klaus' pencil cup. He looked over the legal statute, and decided that didn't even constitute assault. He located his employment agreement, which he never signed, and found a specific paragraph which he violated. Conduct that was professional, non-threatening… the last part made him think there had been others who had done things that were threatening. All this assumed they did not know about the memory stick. But how could that be an issue now, when he received the same data the right way?
By the end of the first week, Peter decided he would drop from the PhD program. Mathias had been frank with him, and he needed to listen. He told Melinda that he would sign up with another university the next fall. But inside, he felt he was done with academia. He didn't have what it took. He was filled with fanciful ideas. He was not a scientist.
When he made his decision, he left his apartment and had a beer with Melinda and Matt. Matt was tall and geeky, and he knew how to sidetrack everyone. He was safe, for Melinda anyway. She liked to have him around, because he made her laugh. At least for an hour or so.
The pool hall played the music loud, and Melinda and Matt shot pool. Peter drank appear in the corner, sort of to himself, trying to smile and preserve the image. Him he watched on the pool balls inside the triangle. She moved around and said, "Hey Matt, you are so smart, what do they call this thingy?"
In a dead serious tone, Matt said "the triangle thing."
Peter sat staring at the triangle of the balls inside, slowing the moves the set of balls the center of the pool table. Even with three beers, his mind started the move. He picked up a set of darts and started throwing them on the board. There was a sudden convergence of ideas in his head. A leap in logic, a next step. A theory but an answer too. Peter did a mental check on himself. Even though Peter was in the PhD program, he was not one of the smartest kids in class. Peter always thought what made him talented, may be even exceptional, was that he could put ideas together and take a leap of imagination with them.
So maybe he wasn't full of shit and fancy. Because suddenly, Yoshi's discovery made sense. Peter's solution didn't really matter one way or the other. He thought of the triangle, and the way the ball moved on the table. He threw a set of darts blind listening, over and over, thinking it through. Black holes didn't come and go. That was a fact. But the triangle thing….Peter slapped darts over and over. Matt and Melinda looked over, and he ignored them. "He'll get over it," Matt said.
Over the next couple of days, Peter was online, sending a flurry of emails to the Italians, to school professors, to institutions that had the high power telescopes. He needed more information. He had given up on science and proof, peer review and hypothesis and all that bull shit. He didn't think of academia credit, career objectives, academic glamour. He worked out of fascination and fear. Fascinated because something not natural might be taking place. Scared by what it meant. Peter spent hours in the computer lab, pulling images from both inside and outside of the solar system, working out orbits, putting Newtonian formulas to work on his computer, plotting courses. Hours passed. Days passed. Peter would peel himself off his chair and use the bathroom, drink coke or snack. Peter saw his professors when he walked into the computer lab and he mostly ignored them. He also saw his would-be classmates, some of whom were undergraduates on their fifth year. He ignored all of them. He had his university account and his access card and that was what mattered. When he was home, he told Melinda that he was starting a new project on his own, and that he was helping himself get over his issues. He needed computer time, data and her companionship. Everything else could wait.
Weeks passed, as Peter doubled and tripled his efforts in the computer lab. The quarter had started, courses were in full swing. Peter had not formally withdrawn, he had not even told anyone his intent to do so, so his presence in the computer lab each day was strange to some. Sometimes he remembered he was still enrolled, and he was technically failing class. But he just worked.
And at 11:17 am on a Friday, one fine day in October, he found it. It was amazing and terrifying, or was it. He didn't know. The contradiction he felt became more acute when he noticed he was smiling. A weight had been lifted from his shoulder, he had discovered something significant, something that was not fanciful.
He saved his files on a thumb drive, made a second online backup, then emailed himself a third backup. It was not yet noon, he went home feeling light, relieved and worried. Klaus is an idiot.
In his apartment, Peter put the blinds down and fell into his bed. The comfortable dingy sheets that felt cold to his skin. Within minutes, he was sound asleep. He had a nightmare where he was standing behind someone who was watching him sleep in his own bed. It was real-time. The person he was watching stood motionless, almost invisible. The room was dark, and the small man was just a shadow, his narrow shoulders and head were what Peter could see. Then Peter heard a clicking sound, and he woke because he actually heard the sound. Or at least he thought he did. In an instant, he saw everything red, so much that it overwhelmed everything about him. And then his eyes were open. There was silence and a dark room.
Peter reached for his phone and checked his text message. He had received 4 from Mindy, the last saying "Where r u?" It was after 5 PMand he was hungry and thirsty. He texted her "Pizza? 5:30." And before he had a chance to put the phone down, he received "K".
At dinner, they ordered a large pepperoni and two diet sodas. Peter was on his third piece, and Mindy was still eating her first.
"What happened to you today? I thought we would be spending a little time together before I leave tomorrow."
Shit, Peter thought. He forgot about her trip to Seattle to visit her sister. "Sorry, hon. Today was unreal. I'll give you a short version OK? Long version is too complicated. You know what I was talking about in the summer? The project with Plaxx?"
"I knew you were still working on that. Good for you."
"Not really. I got this idea, from Matt and you really, anyway I went from trying to show this thing existed to trying to think what it could be, then thinking why it was there and what purpose it would serve."
"That's a lot of thinking."
"I kind of thought of that all at once. I actually been spending my time looking for the output, the proof."
"OK. Good job. Hey, guess what, looks like-"
"I am not done yet."
"Yea, I figured. Go ahead Peter. Its all about you!" She smiled, Peter felt bad, but he cracked a smile. "I hate to hear the long version." She let out a couple of snorts.
"OK, the Japanese guy did see a …this thingy. Super dense, spinning fast, very black. He thought it was a black hole. I thought he saw a black hole. He thought he saw a black hole."
"Are you talking about the guy's shower…"
"Shut up. OK, then I thought here is something that if it was there all this time, we would have seen it before. So it was not there until recently. And when we went to look at it, it was gone. But I saw evidence of it. It had been there. So what was it?"
She shrugged. Peter continued, "This is where I give you credit for talking about the 'triangle thingy'-something that carries something else in it and then gets taken away. Out in space, there once was this thing that spins real fast, dense as heck… they call them 'wormholes', which are theoretical-until now."
"What is a wormhole you may ask?"
Melinda paused, "What is a wormhole I ask?"
"Its this thing that lets you travel from one point to the next without going in between."
"You discovered a wormhole? You going to get a Nobel out of this?" She did a silent clap with her hands, sort of sarcastically. Peter hoped she was not sarcastic. He always had a fear, something like one day she would tell him she had been banging a jock behind his back and would listen to him as a joke. He was not entirely sure, but he plowed ahead, telling her more.
"I did discover the wormhole. But there is a problem. A wormhole is not natural. The theory is that it would need to be created artificially."
Melinda chewed on her pizza. Sort of interested. Peter repeated the significant part of his story. "Unnaturally."
"I heard you." More chewing.
"Jesus, ok. In theory you create one with two large spinning masses, The Japanese guy saw one."
"He saw two large spinning masses?
"No that is what you use to create the wormhole. I think he saw-observed the wormhole."
"Where did it go?"
"It served its purpose. To let someone travel through it without losing time."
Melinda swallowed her pizza.
"I found it. I never saw the wormhole. It was closed or whatever. But I been looking for something moving fast, something that came from where the wormhole was."
She scrunched her nose. "Seems like a tough thing to find."
"It was. But I had to put my investigative hat on. Why would someone want to come through that wormhole? What is so interesting about our solar system?"
"I am afraid to ask."
"Us. Here." He spread his arms, then pointed to the table and her plate. "Pizza… earth."
She need more explanation, and Peter gave it. "To come to Earth. I knew where it started and assumed where it was going. I guessed its speed and looked and looked and sure enough, there is something out there. I think its heading this way."
"What does that mean? Alien invasion?" She smiled, almost forcing a giggle, her eyes a little wild. Here it goes, Peter thought.\"That is one explanation." Peter sat for a moment, then said "Its actually my only explanation." There was a long silence. Peter looked at the pizza, while she stared with a blank look. Peter was hungry and took two bites waiting for her to come around.
"Aren't you a little worried?" she asked.
"Yea, but I don't know, its like the scientist of me is out now. I can breath again. But shit, yes, its scary, I guess."
"You sure about this?"
"I got a picture of an alien ship in my room." Peter smiled, but she didn't, so he had the last piece.