seth crossed the North Field and angled for Berkeley’s Department of Philosophy. His corduroys bunched slightly over worn sandals as he stepped through the grass. To his right, a dance squad performed flips in short skirts. The Faculty Club building stood beyond them, bordered by a manicured glade. He’d been inside on four occasions, each time for an event that required his attendance. Receptions in honor of his awards, mostly.
Like the one scheduled for Thursday evening. The American Physical Society and the American Institute of Physics had named him something or other of the year, and, like it or not, the graduate dean was obligated to acknowledge the award. Thinking about it now, Seth wondered what would happen if he didn’t show. He wasn’t feeling too social after yesterday’s fiasco with Baaron. He envisioned two hundred faculty dressed to the nines with champagne glasses raised and no one to toast.
“Seth!”
He turned to see Phil—a third-year undergraduate and the epitome of a nerd with glasses, pocket protector, and pimples—run up behind him. Phil was among half a dozen down-and-outers that Seth felt truly at home with.
“Hey, Phil.” He slipped his hand into his pocket and rolled the Super Ball between his fingers.
Phil slapped an open crossword magazine in his hand. “You ready?”
“Sure,” Seth said. “Let me see it.”
Phil held the page up, displaying a four-inch-square crossword puzzle. Seth made quick mental notes of the puzzle’s pattern—black squares, white squares, numbers. Category: GOOD MARKS.
“Okay.”
Phil withdrew the puzzle and glanced ahead. “So where you going?”
“Meeting with Dr. Harland. You?”
“To the cafeteria. Okay, ready? Seventeen across, ten letters, clue—expropriate.”
“Commandeer,” Seth said.
Phil flipped a page, checked the answer, and continued. “Good. Twenty-four across, seven letters, clue—horse back in the pack.”
Seth considered the clue for a second. “That would be also-ran, Phil,” he said in his best game-show voice.
“Never heard of it,” the younger student said. “Three down, five letters, clue—subdues.”
“Three down? Tames.”
“Final answer?”
“Tames, Phil. It has to be tames.”
“How do you do that without looking?”
“I did look, remember? The M intersects with commandeer and the S intersects with also-ran,” Seth said.
Phil slapped the magazine closed. “I heard you told Baaron a few things.”
“You heard that?”
“Yeah. True?”
“True.”
Seth saw that Phil was watching the dancers now. Seth decided long ago that women had an inexplicable effect on his mind, minimizing its ability to process thought in logical constructs. Without fail, females turned Seth into someone he really didn’t think he was, someone lost for clear thoughts and words.
Phil, however, would kill to sit alone on a bench with a girl. Any girl. He aggressively denied the desire, of course.
Phil saw Seth had noticed and ducked his head. “See ya.”
“See ya.”
He headed off, hands deep in his pockets, head lowered.
They had named the philosophy building Moses—ironic but appropriate considering its current occupant. Seth had always thought that the chair of philosophy, Samuel Harland, PhD, was the spitting image of Charlton Heston with his dirty blond hair and soft blue eyes. He was the only man in the place worthy of the building’s name.
He knocked on the department head’s office door, heard a muffled “Enter,” and stepped in.
“Good day.”
“Have a seat,” the professor said.
Seth sat. “That bad, huh?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Baaron is seething.”
Seth paused. If there was one person in his life he could confide in, it was this man. “You wouldn’t expect the academic dean of an esteemed institution such as this to let a little folly get under his skin.”
“You wouldn’t,” Harland said. “But for whatever reason, you most definitely do get under his skin.”
“I engaged him with famous quotations—”
“I know what you did. You could have been a little more selective, don’t you think?” Harland couldn’t hide the glint of humor in his eyes.
Seth shook his head. “I don’t know how I get myself in these crazy situations.”
“I think you do. You’re a blatant challenge to his theories of order.”
“For what it’s worth, I did speak the truth,” Seth said. “Isn’t that what you’ve always told me? To doggedly pursue the truth?”
“Pursuing the truth and presenting it are two different disciplines. How do you suppose I would fare around here if I walked around blasting my peers into the next county? This is becoming a habit for you.”
Seth rubbed his hands together and placed them on his knees. “You’re right.”
Baaron was brilliant, deserving of his lofty status at the university. But put him in a room with Seth, and half his chips seemed to go on the blink. He was an easy target, one that Seth couldn’t resist shooting at now and then. It didn’t help that Baaron reminded Seth of his father.
The tension had set in a year earlier, when Seth wrote a paper on the Strong Force that questioned prevailing thought. The paper was picked up by several scientific journals and published to some acclaim. It was hardly Seth’s fault that the prevailing theory, which Seth trashed, was authored by none other than Gregory Baaron, PhD. The world of physics was a small one.
“You’re going to have to learn more tact, yes? You have to learn how to blend in a little.”
Seth’s trust in Harland was in large part due to the man’s humble form of brilliance. If Seth’s formal education had taught him anything, it was that celebrated intelligence had nothing to do with intellectual honesty, with being genuine. People who appreciated both brilliance and frank honesty were in short supply. The system preferred the kind of brilliance that lined up with the flavor of the day.
Samuel Harland was anything but the flavor of the day. He had no interest in kissing the elitists’ beliefs so he could smoke his pipe in the Faculty Club. He simply and methodically pursued every thought to its logical conclusion and put his faith there, in what he saw at the end of the trail.
The smile faded from Seth’s face. “Well, you’ll have to forgive me, but I’m not built for a system like this one. I can’t seem to fit in.”
Harland nodded. “Baaron’s got some of the faculty on his side. They’re talking about official reprimands.”
Seth looked out the window. “I’m thinking about dumping the program. Heading back down to San Diego.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“Maybe I should have done it before. I talked to my mom last night. She lost her job.”
Harland hesitated. “The best thing you can do for your mother is finish your doctorate. What are you going to do for a living—pump gas?”
“We both know of a dozen corporations that would offer me decent money right now.” Seth stared at the window and sighed. “Did you hear about the calculation I drew on the board?”
“I heard something about the Lagrangian field equation.”
“That was part of it. But I came up with an equation that limits possible futures to one.” Seth smiled. “That should be music to your ears.”
“How so?”
“It supports the existence of an all-knowing higher being.”
“Ah, yes, the higher-being theory. You’ve decided to swing that way, is that it?”
“No. I’ll remain comfortably blank on the subject for now, despite my proof to the contrary.”
Harland chuckled. “You’ve actually proven God’s existence now?”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but it does have a ring to it, don’t you think?” Seth leaned forward and took a sheet of paper from Harland’s desk. “May I?”
“Be my guest. You’re going to show me the equation?”
“No. I’m going to translate it into a hypothetical syllogism of sorts.” He spoke his argument as he wrote it out in longhand.
(A) If an all-knowing God exists, then he knows precisely what THE future is. (He knows whether I’m going to cough in ten seconds.)
(B) If God knows what THE future is, then that future WILL occur, unless God is mistaken. (I WILL cough in ten seconds.)
(C) Because God cannot be mistaken, there is NO possibility that any other future, other than the one future that God knows, will happen. (There’s NO possibility I won’t cough in ten seconds.)
(D) THEREFORE, if God exists, there is only ONE future, which is THE future he knows. (I cough in ten seconds.)
Seth set the pencil down. “Basically, if God exists, the probability of there being more than one possible future is zero. And vice versa. To believe God exists also requires you to believe that the future is unalterable. By definition. There can only be one future, and no amount of willing can change it.”
“And the ramifications of this theory?”
“Religion has no purpose.”
“Knowledge of fact doesn’t necessarily prove singularity of future.”
“You’re only splitting hairs between knowledge of fact and probabilities.”
Harland nodded slowly. They’d argued the subject on several occasions, and he didn’t seem eager to dive in again.
Seth looked out the window. “You should reconsider deism—”
A pigeon slammed into the window with a loud thunk.
Seth blinked. “Ouch. You’d think that would break the window.”
“What would?”
Seth looked at him. “The force of the bird slamming into the window.”
Harland looked at the window. “What bird?”
“What do you mean, what bird? You didn’t just see that?”
“No.”
Seth looked at the window. “You didn’t hear a loud thunk just now?”
“No. I didn’t hear—”
A pigeon slammed into the window with a loud thunk. It fell away in a flurry of feathers.
“Like that?” Harland asked.
Seth stared at the clear pane of glass. Yes, exactly like that.
“Huh. I could’ve sworn I just saw that ten seconds ago. Like a déjà vu.” He shook his head.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” Odd. Very odd.
“Another year here and you’ll be out,” Harland said. “Stay with it.”
Seth sat back. “Now you’re sounding like Clive Masters.”
“Anyone with half a brain would say you should finish.”
“So you’re saying . . . ?”
“Play ball at the reception Thursday. Smile, be nice. Try to keep your foot out of your mouth. Maybe even offer some kind of apology to Baaron—”
“Suck up.”
“In the vernacular.”
“Be reasonable and do what’s best for everybody.”
“Yes.”
Seth stood and walked to the window. His fingers slipped into his pocket and toyed with the Super Ball. The pigeon was hobbling along the grass, dazed.
“I wouldn’t dream of anything else, Professor.”