Elixir

ISBN: 978-0-9898507-7-3

Copyright 2014 Ted Galdi

All rights reserved

To Mom and Dad
.

That Kid From
Jeopardy!

College Boy

Derailed

Shreds of Doubt

Hearing Things

Strike Three

Strike Four

Return Policy

Photo Finish

Things on My Chest

Hacked

Shot

Killing Sean

Finding a View

Face It

Making a Mark

Mixed Messages

Memory Pool

Firsts and Seconds

The Next Step

In the Caves All Cats Are Grey

True North

Full Circle

Impossible Things

Come to Me Scared Princess

Housemates

Scientific Reactions

Blown Safe

Listen

Outs and Ins

Left

Dislodged

Flushed

Window of Opportunity

Head Up

Socked

No Rite

In the Head

The Edge of the World

Well Then

ID

Under Control

That Kid Who Cured All Those Diseases

“This mythical hero stole Hippolyta’s girdle as one of his labors.”

“Who is Hercules.”

“Correct.”

Sean is sandwiched between Melinda, “a mechanical engineer originally from Roanoke, Virginia,” and David, “a tax attorney originally from Spokane, Washington,” on the
Jeopardy!
stage. Melinda, forty-one, and David, forty-seven, have scores of $600 and $200 on their podiums toward the end of the second round. Sean, eleven, stands behind a $42,500. “H Names for two thousand please,” the kid says, head slumped to the left.

“In Genesis Sixteen this handmaid of Sarah flees the household.”

“Who is Hagar.”

“Right.”

Glancing at his opponents, he thinks about all the faces in their spots over the last eight weeks, then says, “Country Time for four hundred please.”

“Nepal’s western, eastern, and southern boundaries are with this country.”

“What is India.”

“Right.”

“Country Time for eight hundred please.”

“What was long ago called Cush, part of Nubia, is considered to be this African country today.”

“What is Ethiopia.”

“Correct.”

He peers at the studio audience through the glare of the hot lights. He notices a few people pointing at him, whispering to their neighbors. One person waves a sign saying “Sean Malone Is a Mutant.” Another laughs in amazement. Listening to the applause, he wonders why he hasn’t met an intellectual equal during the last eight weeks. He figures something must be wrong with him.

Three years later Sean is jogging across the Southern California Technology Institute’s palm-tree-lined campus with a Pittsburgh Pirates cap pulled low. He’s fourteen now, a few inches taller than he was on the game show. Sliding his phone from his pocket, he checks the time. 2:17 PM. He picks up his pace.

He goes down a flight of stairs and trots to the Computer Science Building, a stone structure with a red door. Pushing the handle, he wanders inside, then climbs to the second floor, flooded with undergrads. Shoulder on the wall, he walks to the side of the foot traffic. He crosses the hall, bumping into a bulky student, losing balance for a moment. “Sorry kid,” the guy says strolling off. Sean steps to an office labeled “Dr. Steven Merzberg – Dean of Computer Science” and knocks.

“Come in,” a cheery voice says.

He twists the knob and enters, the room blanketed with plaques and trophies for academic achievements, including a framed Fields Medal, the world’s highest honor for mathematics. “Sorry I’m late,” Sean says to the professor, a pudgy, bald man in his sixties with dimples.

The instructor is sitting behind his desk with tweezers, poking at the inside of a transistor radio. “I like your shoes,” he says, nodding at the boy’s neon-green skateboarding sneakers.

“Thanks. They’re new.”

“How do you think I’d look in a pair of those?” he asks with a touch of sarcasm.

“Slick,” Sean says, matching his joking tone. “I’d have to teach you how to skateboard though.”

He chuckles. “So what do you have for me?”

He hasn’t even started the independent study he’s doing with the professor and decides to tell the same small lie he’s been babbling since the semester began. “It’s a tricky one. It’s taking me a while to decide how to approach it.”

“Have a seat.” He sinks into a thick-cushioned chair opposite the desk. “The Traveling Salesman Problem has caused many sleepless nights for many brilliant people.” With a sigh he sets down his tweezers. “There’s a reason it’s the biggest enigma in computer science. Quite the undertaking. Even for you.”

“I’ll have something next Wednesday. Promise.”

“I certainly don’t expect you to solve it in the formal sense. But if you can document a strategy we can review, it would be a useful exercise. I was hoping by today you would’ve at least gone through those papers I sent you that my colleagues wrote on the topic, and commented on their techniques.” The professor appears disappointed. He admires the fourteen-year-old’s towering intellect and was hoping they’d spend the session yakking about math formulas and algorithms and the like.

“I’ll email you. Soon.”

“All right. We’re already three weeks into the semester. I’ll be waiting.” He starts toying with the radio again. “How was that new burrito place you were telling me about last time? Did you wind up going with your aunt?”

“It was awesome.” Sean’s expression brightens, the subject of burritos much more exciting to him than computer-science problems. “They have this sauce called El Widow Maker. It was as hot as the ad said it was. I couldn’t get down a bite without coughing.”

“You’re absurd with that spicy food of yours. How can you even enjoy the meal when it’s that hot?”

“I love it. Kind of a challenge.”

“I prefer keeping my challenges confined to number theory and combinatorics,” he says, aware of how nerdy he sounds. “No coughing required.”

Sean grins. He likes the professor, beneath all his talk of theorems and proofs and his Fields Medal is a family man not all that serious in the way he takes himself. Each week, Sean glances at a photo on the desk of him and his wife on a boat at Niagara Falls in blue ponchos, water soaking them while they laugh.

Tapping his thighs with his palms, Sean says, “I’ve got another class on the other end of campus, and I need to stop at the library for a book I forgot, so—”

“Yes, yes. You can go. Just make sure you email me that outline.”

He gets up and adjusts his Pirates cap. “Cross my heart.”

“You better,” he says, doing a bad job trying to seem stern. “If you don’t, next Wednesday I’m keeping you the full hour.” He stabs the air a couple times with the tweezers, then smiles and gestures toward the door. “Get the hell out of here. You can’t be late for two courses in a row.”

He snickers. “See ya Dr. M.”

The next morning Sean scurries down the stairs of his house in Pasadena, a suburb of Los Angeles, nothing on except pajama pants, eyes still sleepy. He turns into the kitchen, his Aunt Mary at the counter sipping coffee and reading the
Los Angeles Times
. “Morning bud,” she says, attention on the paper.

“Morning.” Running a hand through his messy hair, he walks to the refrigerator, grabs a gallon of orange juice, and chugs from the bottle.

She realizes what he’s doing just from the noise. “What did I tell you about that? Get a glass you animal.” She holds a stony look on him, but he can sense she doesn’t mind deep down. Living with her the last ten years, he’s accustomed to every line and curl in her expressions and their meanings. He decides to have some fun and test her. He swigs again. She rolls her eyes, then says, “Me and my friend from book club are going bowling a little later. Want to come?”

He feels a hint of accomplishment knowing she wasn’t going to question him again about drinking from the bottle. “I’ve been putting off that independent study. The Traveling Salesman thing I told you about.” He takes another gulp. “I want to get it out of the way. I feel bad for the professor. He thinks I’ve been working on it.”

“Oh yeah, I kind of remember. You need to find the shortest distance between all the cities a salesman has to visit on a business trip?”

“That’s the one.” He puts the jug away and knees the refrigerator shut. “Nobody’s been able to come up with a formula to automatically do it.”

“Ever?”

“Not one that would work in any case.”

“Jeez. My head would explode trying to figure that out.” She folds the paper to the Opinion section. “Chicken on the barbecue okay for dinner later?” she asks, skimming a column about violence in videogames.

“I’m gonna eat at Kyle’s. His parents invited me over.” He opens a cabinet and snatches a bag of M&Ms.

She hears the crumple of the package and asks with disappointment, “That’s your breakfast?” With a smirk he scampers out. She groans and returns to the videogame article.

He goes up the steps and into his room, passing an unmade bed with a
Die Hard
poster above, scattered clothing on the rug, and a brown dresser with half the drawers open, half shut. He scoops his laptop from the floor and sits at his desk.

He closes Netflix,
Family Guy
episode paused on the screen, then creates a new Microsoft Word document, titling it “Solving the Traveling Salesman Problem: Computing the Least Cost Cyclic Route Through All Nodes of a Weighted Graph in Polynomial Runtime.”

He grabs his phone and scrolls through its music library, selecting the album
Siamese Dream
by The Smashing Pumpkins. He fishes his headphones from a drawer and plugs them in. Wrapping them around his ears with one hand, he hits play with the other.

As the first song starts he tears the candy pack with his teeth and pours some in his mouth. Chewing, he empties fifteen or so pieces on the carpet by the chair, situating them a few inches from each other.