Split Second

This book is a
work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s
imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual
events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015
by Douglas E. Richards

Published by
Paragon Press, 2015

E-mail the author
at [email protected]

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Visit the
author’s website at www.douglaserichards.com

All rights
reserved. With the exception of excerpts for review purposes, no part of this
book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system.

First Edition

SPLIT

SECOND

Douglas E.
Richards

PART 1

Breakthrough

Split Second
(noun):

1. a fraction of a second.

2. an infinitesimal amount of time.

—Dictionary.com

“The past cannot
remember the past. The future can’t generate the future. The cutting edge of
this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of
everything there is.”

—Robert Pirsig

1

Jenna Morrison kissed her sister,
Amber, goodbye, ignoring the shrieks of tiny Sophia, who was swaddled so completely
in a baby blanket that her actual presence could not be confirmed by eye, as
though she had fallen into a cottony-soft, mint-green black hole. The swaddling
did nothing, however, to lessen Sophia’s eardrum-searing screams, honed by
evolution to be exceedingly irritating and impossible to ignore.

Amber patted Sophia’s back
gently, holding her close, hoping that the need for a burp was causing this
unholy racket and shooting her sister a look of apology and helplessness. The
baby’s timing couldn’t have been worse.

“Thanks for coming, Jen,” said Amber.
“You’re a life saver.”

“Are you kidding?” said Jenna, a
little louder than usual to be heard over her niece’s shrieks. “I wouldn’t have
missed this for the world. I got to see you. Bond with Sophia. Not to mention
getting a baby fix. I should thank
you
.”

“You truly are the best,” said Amber,
unable to keep the sadness at her sister’s departure, and the mounting panic Jenna
knew she was feeling, from her expression.

But who could blame her for
feeling panicked? Becoming a mother at twenty was one thing, but having the father
disappear within two months of the birth was another, and would freak out just
about anyone, regardless of their intestinal fortitude.

Jenna had flown out from San
Diego as soon as possible after Amber had learned she would be raising a baby
on her own, to help with Sophia and give Amber moral support, at least for a
week. The visit had been a good one, and she was convinced her sister was
beginning to regain her emotional stability, although regaining it fully could
well take months or even years.

But it was extremely encouraging
that not only did Amber not show any signs of postpartum depression, she was
one of those moms who seemed to glow from within, basking in motherhood and drowning
in the soothing oxytocin that was released by the infant’s tireless efforts to suck
the nipples right from her body.

Jenna would have liked to stay
longer, but she was in the middle of a relentlessly challenging PhD program in genetics
and needed to get back to her life. And also back to her fiancé, Nathan Wexler.

 
“You take care of yourself,” said Jenna
earnestly. “And remember, don’t let
anything
keep you down. Everyone has bad days. But you have a great life ahead of you. I
know it. Sophia has no idea just how lucky she is.”

Amber nodded as a tear formed in
the corner of one eye. Jenna kissed the mint-green blanket, pressing her lips
into the material so the screaming baby could feel the weight of them on the
back of her head, and then let herself into the back of the waiting cab without
saying another word.

As the cab made its way to
O’Hare, Jenna reflected on life. She wouldn’t wish what had happened to her
sister on anyone, but babies were undeniably adorable, and many women had
thrived as single mothers. And Jenna had been surprised to learn that she had a
strong motherhood instinct as well, just waiting for the sight of a baby to reveal
itself.

When would she and Nathan begin
having a family? she wondered. And how many children would they have?

Nathan Wexler was a brilliant
physicist and mathematician, and while she wasn’t nearly at his level—who was?—she
was considered gifted herself. Both of their lives were sure to be demanding,
and fulfilling, for as far into the future as they could imagine.

They had agreed they wanted to
have kids at some point, but they had only discussed parenthood in the vaguest
of generalities. True, they had plenty of time. After all, Nathan might be twenty-nine,
but she was only twenty-six. But would they
ever
decide the time was right? In between careers and intellectual pursuits that might
change the world—a possibility that was especially likely for Nathan.

After all, they hadn’t even managed
to get around to making their unofficial marriage official. They had been
living together now for eighteen months and already thought of themselves as
husband and wife, but Jenna’s interest in stealing time from other passions to
make this happen was vanishingly small. And a quickie Vegas wedding was out, as
well, since Nathan’s family would never forgive them.

So they needed to find a venue.
Plan out a ceremony. Invite guests.

She shuddered. She would rather sit
on a mound of fire ants.

Jenna wondered how long it would
take for her and Nathan to get around to tying the knot. And if they couldn’t
seem to find the time to plan a wedding, would they
ever
get around to having kids? Maybe not.

Just a year earlier, she and Nathan
had watched an old movie called
Idiocracy
,
which they found quite humorous and often bitingly brilliant, but which had
also struck a nerve. The movie’s premise was that humanity was on course, not
to evolve toward greatness, but to
devolve
into idiocy.

And this point was made quite
effectively. A narrator pointed out that the process of natural selection once
ensured that the strongest, smartest, or fastest reproduced in the greatest numbers.
But now, in the case of human society, with no natural predators to thin the
herd, evolution didn’t reward those with the most intelligence, but simply
those who reproduced the most.

The movie then demonstrated this
premise by showing scenes of illiterate slobs who would screw anything that
moved, including various relatives, and who seemed to think chucking chairs at
each other at the slightest provocation was the height of good sport. The film
showed these people reproducing with total abandon, like rabbits with a sex
addiction.

Why? For lack of anything else
to do with their time. Because they were impulsive and not bright enough to
even understand the importance of birth control. And because the more kids they
had, the bigger the welfare checks and food stamp handouts they received.

This was contrasted with a scene
in which two prissy, high-IQ professionals were discussing having children.
They both agreed that having children was an important decision and that they
needed to wait for the right time, since child bearing wasn’t something that
should be rushed into. Ultimately, they died childless.

The moral: the dimwitted and
impulsive might not be able to hold a job or learn algebra, but they sure knew
how to screw each other—and reproduce like crazy.

The movie took place many
generations in the future, after which this reverse evolution had run its
inevitable course, resulting in a society largely composed of morons.

A comedy, yes, and while the
accuracy of this premise was still being debated in scientific circles, it was
hard for Jenna to fault its logic.

She was brilliant, while her
sister was far less so, and far more impulsive. She wondered how many children Amber
would have. And if she and her super-genius husband would ever have
any
.

Jenna was greeted at Lindbergh Field
in San Diego by a beaming but bleary-eyed Nathan Wexler, who looked the same as
he had looked during their Skype calls all week—as though he were allergic to
sleep.

After a long embrace, and when
her luggage finally arrived at the carousel in an airport known for the
slowness of its luggage retrieval, Wexler began the drive back to their small
rental home in La Jolla, where he was by far the youngest full professor in the
physics department of the University of California, San Diego, having already
produced groundbreaking work in several areas of physics and mathematics.

Wexler peppered Jenna with
questions about her visit with her sister and her view of Amber’s mental health
on the way home, even though they had discussed this during their daily calls. When
they arrived, he produced a bottle of expensive red wine and two elegant,
oversized crystal glass goblets, and filled them up with a sparkle in his eye.

“Welcome back,” he said as he
poured.

Jenna was impressed. It took a
special occasion for them to use anything other than plastic cups. She and Nathan
were both wearing old jeans and T-shirts, of like mind that comfort was more
important than style, and fine wine in a fine crystal goblet seemed too fancy
for their current attire.

It was nearing midnight and she
was exhausted. In just minutes Sunday night would officially change into Monday
morning, although this had occurred hours earlier in Chicago and her body was
still on this time. Nathan appeared to be even more exhausted than she was, but
he also had a triumphant glow about him, like he had recently won a lottery.

They had never been apart for
this long since they had moved in together, so maybe this separation had
affected him more than either had expected. “You know you don’t have to get me
drunk to have your way with me, right?” she said, the corners of her mouth
turning up into a wry smile.

What was he waiting for? They
should be tearing each other’s clothes off by now. Sometimes exhaustion,
especially mental exhaustion, led to epic sex. The more the brain was taken out
of the equation, allowing primitive, primal instinct to run the show, the
better.

 
“Good to know,” he replied, returning her
smile. “But this isn’t about getting you drunk. If it was, I would have poured
the usual. You know. From the giant carton of wine in the fridge.”

“Yeah. Last week was a good year
for wine,” she replied with a grin.

“I trust you noticed that this
came from an actual bottle. With an actual cork, made from, you know, cork.”

“Impressive,” she said. She
raised her eyebrows. “Miss me that much?”

“Of course I missed you,” said Wexler.
“But I have to admit, this is for something else.” He paused. “You’ll never
guess.”

“You got a huge raise?” said
Jenna.

“No, I wasn’t asking you to
guess
. I was saying that,
literally
, you could live to be a thousand
and would never guess.”

Jenna laughed. He was a bit
quirky, but given his intellect, far less than one might expect. And he was
funny and loving and so fast on the uptake that it was dizzying.

She had always hated dumb guys.
When she met Nathan, despite having been the valedictorian of her high school
and earning a near perfect SAT score, she had suddenly become the slow one. Discussions
with him were exhilarating.

But it had to be difficult for
him. To be so far ahead of everyone else. Even the best brains in the physics
department couldn’t measure up. And if brilliant people were slow by
comparison, how much patience did he need to bear people who were average?

Jenna had no doubt that having
the chance to be stimulated intellectually by a mental giant was worth putting
up with some quirks. And this was, after all, par for the course. She had seen
a movie about Stephen Hawking and how his wife had not only put up with the
quirks of the super intelligent, but with a man whose entire body was paralyzed.
Well, all except for his penis, which enabled them to have three children,
although the thought picture of how this was accomplished wasn’t something on
which she liked to dwell.

The Hawking situation had been a
thousand times more difficult than anything
she
had to deal with. Nathan was just fashion-impaired, absentminded, and too
literal sometimes. He talked to himself under his breath fairly frequently, and
often couldn’t remember where he had left stuff, as though his mind was too
powerful to dwell on the mundane. All traits she now found endearing.

“Okay, so if I’ll never guess,
how about you telling me,” she said, raising her glass.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he
replied with a grin. “I had an epiphany the day you left and have been working
on it around the clock. Astonishing really. I stumbled across some esoteric mathematics
that had never been found to have any real-world applications, and suddenly I
had an insight that allowed me to come up with something truly remarkable.”

“How remarkable?”

“You’re about to drink wine that
didn’t come out of a box, remarkable. Possible
Nobel Prize
remarkable. I haven’t begun to determine if there are
any real-world applications, but on theoretical grounds this could be a huge
breakthrough. Immense. I’m not saying it’s on the level of general relativity,
but once it’s fleshed out, you never know. And even if it doesn’t quite reach
the level of importance of relativity, I think it will be just as surprising to
the world as this was when Einstein first presented it. And maybe as
revolutionary.”

“And you’ve been working on this
the entire week?”

He nodded.

This explained his lack of
sleep, she realized. When he was in the throes of a major idea, he would work
on it around the clock until he collapsed from exhaustion. “How is it that you
never said a word about this when we Skyped?”

“Well, you were dealing with a
crisis, and I wanted to make this week about you and your sister. Besides, I
was never sure I wasn’t hallucinating the entire thing. I’m still not.”

“You’re killing me. Are you
going to tell me what you’ve found?”

Wexler smiled.
“I don’t know,” he said, teasing her. “Maybe I should wait until I’m absolutely
certain. I still need to finish triple checking the calculations and logic, and
have this vetted by the best minds I know, just to be sure I don’t embarrass
myself. It’s possible that I’ve missed something big.”

“We both know
that’s
unlikely.”

“I appreciate your faith,” said
Wexler sheepishly. “But in this case, the complexities of the math and logic dwarf
anything I’ve ever done. This makes string theory look as simple as addition. I’ve
already written Dan Walsh, telling him what I think I’ve discovered, and asking
him to clear the decks for a bit so he can be a second set of eyes on it, to
check for accuracy.”