I woke to the sun streaming through the bedroom window and the force of Move-over jumping on my belly. He purred loudly as he worked his paws back and forth. His needle sharp claws penetrated the blankets, just touching the bare skin between my ribs. Move-over was hungry.
I just finished feeding the cat and pouring myself a glass of orange juice when a faded blue Buick pulled up. A large older man lumbered out of the car and to my door. I waited till he knocked before opening it. He was wrinkled with a day's growth of facial hair. His eyes were puffy from lack of sleep. He reached out his hand and in a tired voice said, “Name's Earl Czeminski. Thank you for helping my daughter."
Still half asleep, I hesitantly shook his hand saying, “Your welcome sir.” I flashed back in years to all the times my father formally shook my hands, graduation, grandma's funeral ... I couldn't understand how this man reminded me of my father. My father was a skinny dark man with whipcord speed. This man was large and soft looking with a lumbering movement. By my eighteenth birthday, I could look over my father's head. This man was at least twelve inches taller than me. Then I heard his voice again. My father and this man had grown up here, educated in the local schools, living their lives in this same area. If I closed my eyes, the voice could have been my Dad's.
“Sorry sir. Could you repeat that? I wasn't listening. Yesterday and last night ... well I'm still not awake."
He mumbled a little and tried to start his speech a few times before saying, “You need something you ask. Ahhh. And no charge when you come to the store.” He was my father. Dad would seldom talk. He would leave that to Ma, but when he did it would burst out of him. If something interrupted him, he would stammer and stutter until he got out just enough to understand what he was saying and then he stopped.
He stayed for a while hemming and hawing, not really knowing what to do or say. We shifted back and forth from one foot to another as his confusion and embarrassment transferred to me. I have never been able to remember what we said to each other for those awkward minutes. Finally, we shook hands again and he left.
With Earl gone, I was alone. I sat drinking my juice. In my mind I saw yesterday again. Tabitha standing over those two boys, chest rising and falling in deep breathes, vital, and alive. And then Earl's voice broke in and changed her into my sister!
I had to do something! Ah yes. Last week I received a paper on the Grand Unification Theory. Really tough math should keep me from thinking. It had been the goal of scientists throughout the ages to find one equation or a single set of related algorithms that would summarize all of physical science. The Unification Theory seemed so close in the 1950's. Electromagnetic waves were summarized in a single equation. Einstein had quantified gravity. Nuclear forces were being examined. And then advancement slowed to a crawl as problems with it continued to plague every new attempt at unification. I could barely understand the simplified versions of the equations the physicist had been using. I knew any stray thoughts in my mind would be forced to leave.
To really work through equations, I would need music. My CD player had a tray that would hold five
CD's. I started by putting in something light to get started, Copland. The next three CD's would have to have math music, selections of Mozart, Haydn, Handel, Bach, Pachelbel, and Telemann. The last CD would have to pull me out of the intense math induced trance. Which one to put on? Ah, Bon Jovi.
Fanfare of the Common Man blasted from the stereo speakers as I tried to understand the first set of equations the physicist was using.
One of the problems that any unification theory needed to answer was whether a neutrino had mass and how much. Neutrinos are leftovers. When a nuclear reaction occurs, you have pieces of the atoms and energy released. Some of the energy seemed to disappear. In the 1930's Pauli hypothesized that the missing energy went into a particle. The particle was later called a neutrino by Fermi. It took till 1956 before the first type of neutrino was discovered coming from a nuclear reactor. Neutrinos are so small that they can travel through the earth between atoms never hitting anything. Neutrino detectors are normally put in deep mines just to eliminate the background noise of everyday energy sources. Neutrinos are very very strange.
The problem with neutrinos and mass is that if they have it then all current theories would have to be changed. And the current theories seem to work! If they don't have mass, we don't know where they are going because we seem to be losing them. The detectors are not finding the numbers of certain types of neutrinos we know should be there. If they have mass, we know that the neutrinos are changing to a tau type neutrino, which we can't detect at this time thus explaining the low numbers.
The physicist had taken the current information from both the Super-Kamiokande Experiment and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and refined his equations. He had written two equations that were used for two of the types of neutrinos. The equations were identical except for having different constants. The one constant was just a little more than 4.5 times greater than the first. The equations used imaginary numbers in such a way that the neutrinos would disappear from our plane of existence when they had mass. Imaginary numbers are just a technique of math that mimics how real things sometimes turn themselves on and off.
I looked at those equations. They seemed so familiar. The 4.5 times greater and imaginary numbers. 4.5 and imaginary numbers. 4.5 and imaginary numbers. 4.66 and imaginary numbers! Chaos math and Feigenbaum's constant!
This brought to mind three aspects of chaos math. One, all chaos equations with single hump curves bifurcate or split at intervals that are 4.66 apart. Two, chaos type equations are usually written using imaginary numbers because they are easier to solve on computers. And three, there can be relationships between totally different problems if the underlying patterns are the same. In this case, I remember reading in a molecular biology paper, something about types of proteins that would disappear at one site in the cell and reappear as a partial mirror image.
I hurriedly checked the hard drive on my computer and found the biology paper. There sat nearly identical equations. The proteins were doing the same thing as the neutrinos. In this case though the biologist was able to track what had happened and had found a set of ideal conditions. Some of the conditions were found in cells and some were not.
Bach was now playing in the background. On the computer screen I placed both papers side by side. The equations, the music, a pattern, a rhythm, something was there in those sets of equations. My mind blurred as I tried to grasp what I was looking at. Slowly the pounding sounds of Bon Jovi brought me back to now. My head ached. Five hours of math, I needed a break! Just then Move-over yowled for attention.
* * * *
The Chameleon had a plan. Staking out a small rural highway at night, The Chameleon waited for a lone woman to drive by. A specially made focused flashlight rested in the Chameleon's hands.
The prey sang with her radio as she hurried home through the dark night. She had driven for hours and was nearly home. Her thoughts were of family not seen in months. The trap was sprung. A hundred thousand lumens of light hit her dilated eyes. Hands went up trying to shield her from the blinding light.
The car swerved. The front tires dropped off the edge of the tarred road. She grabbed the wheel and tried to turn it back on the road. The tires caught on the lip of tar at the edge of the road stopping the front end of the car. The momentum from the back flipped the car into the air. Five times the car turned end over end. The prey had her seatbelt on. She survived but barely conscious. Then the Chameleon came.