Chapter 9

Eitan was having trouble coming to grips with the culture of Yale, especially in his assigned college. Everyone was so serious and yet, only a minority were serious about their studies. His roommate was serious about his place on campus as a legacy among legacies with their secret societies. The young woman he sat down with for coffee yesterday was serious about post-modern feminist critique in a deaf-to-irony age. The frat boy next door was serious about his alcohol, not the quantity so much as the quality of his IPA or his single malt. The frat boy’s roommate was serious about his minority status in a clearly white privilege environment. Eitan was serious about being bored by all of it.

Yale was a yawn, holding no surprises thus far for an overly prepared freshman. There was plenty of work, every professor made sure that little item was checked off on the list. Yet, he had already been through most of the material.

He kept his complaints to himself, nodding with sympathy as his new acquaintances expressed their anxieties over their boutique drinks and artisan treats. Not all of them were pretentious; truly, most of them were not, yet there were enough pompousai, the plural noun of pompous, to remind Eitan that not all his classmates earned their slot at the university in the same manner.

One of the graduate assistants assigned to his bio lab took a few moments to have a private conversation with Eitan. The man told Eitan that he should be grateful that the great professors of Yale did not teach the freshman classes or the sophomore classes. Such novice level academics were understood as being beneath their rarified status. The graduate assistant suggested Eitan choose his next semester classes by seeking out the adjunct professors, the starving bastards of the academic world whose next contract depended on good class ratings. They were the most likely to listen, guide and teach rather than just lecture.

Eitan arrived with a plan not to stand out academically or in any other way. He craved being just another young student, another inquiring mind asking to be molded into the successful Yale graduate that the world has come to know. His one elective class was linguistics, which captivated him. Linguistics were about as far from biochemistry and nanotechnology as one could get as well. Yale boasted one of the best nano research institutes on the east coast, and Eitan avoided even mentioning it in casual conversation.

His fellow students bragged about the nano series their parents had secured for them. Eitan congratulated them on their good choices of brand names and appropriate series, while saying little about himself. When one woman, really a girl, declared that she would never date a man who did not have at least series xx-1 and series xx-2, Eitan just shrugged. “It’s a brave new world,” was his usual reply.

Dr. H sent Camille to his dorm the day he moved to New Haven. He was mortified when she appeared with a square-jawed man pushing a cart. Within an hour, they had sunk bolts into the floor and secured a small safe in his closet. Camille kissed him on the cheek, handing him a small envelope on her way out. The note ordered Eitan to lock up his valuables before he jumped, and that was all it said. At least his roommate had not arrived yet.

Having just closed the safe and spun the dial, Eitan jumped to Sten, who was slumming in a Carnegie Mellon University apartment in Santiago. Sten had stayed on as an intern after his first professor left, picking up another slot. Sten bragged to his siblings he was an academic whore, chasing after professors who had received reserved timeslots at the twin Magellan telescopes. He did not adjust well to the high altitudes in the Andes though, forcing him to come down to Santiago to let his body recoup often.

“You wanna drink?” Sten asked as he held up a bottle of club soda. “No alcohol, but they always leave behind the mixers.”

Eitan asked for water. He looked Sten up and down, realizing that his brother was now taller and broader than him. Combined with his intense composure, Sten could make himself the central focus of a room without any outward effort. He was a far cry from the kid who huddled under the covers reading comic books.

“Still reading manga?” Eitan asked as sat down on the couch.

“There is no time and no need,” Sten said, placing two glasses on the coffee table before sitting down in the stuffed chair opposite. “Lonely grad and post-grad students far from home and eager to protect their reputations are a new custom-built vehicle for my needs. Love them long enough just to get a tiny bit bored, and boom, they’re gone and someone else has taken their place.”

“You’re not even out of high school,” Eitan said.

“Shh,” Sten said, holding his index finger to lips. “No one has to know. Stanford already interviewed me by video feed, practically begging me to come to their campus. As far as I’m concerned, I’m in college or close enough.”

“Don’t be in a rush,” Eitan said. “Two nano-humans ahead of you and both are not enamored with the college experience, at least not as much as the no-no-nano humans.”

“Are you saying that Dr. H giveth and taketh in more and varied ways than we realized?” Sten said. “I see the conundrum this way: Einstein said that God does not play with dice. So, is Dr. H playing God or is he playing dice? The jury is still out.”

“The same old question asked a different way,” Eitan said. “The question has dogged us since I was 11 years old. There was no answer then, which we thought was because we were kids. We aren’t kids and we still don’t know. We’re not covering new territory so, what’s really on your mind that you asked for me?”

“Remember when you told Dr. H over teacakes that jumping is not a matter of geography,” Sten said, to which Eitan nodded, “and then he said theories on a galactic scale were beyond his expertise?”

Eitan nodded again and watched as Sten opened his tablet on the coffee table, bringing up a stargazing program. Sten tapped the screen a few times. “Okay, here goes. The moon is in that direction just above the horizon. Is there life on the moon?”

Eitan cast out in the direction Sten pointed. “No.”

“Okay, then,” Sten said. “Mars is near the closest point to earth again and right now, Mars is in that direction. Is there life there?”

Eitan took a moment to understand what he was sensing. “Possibly, but it’s too faint to be of any consequence.”

“Sonofabitch,” Sten said. “You just solved one of the riddles of the solar system. Was your casting a strain?”

“No,” Eitan said, “It is not a matter of geography or distance. You called it ‘a thread’ and there are a pajillion threads running everywhere. I just run the thread.”

“I assume ‘pajillion’ is a technical term specific to Yale,” Sten said, rolling his eyes. “You could have gone to no name State U. and spent four years drinking, drugging and sexing; at least it would have been worthwhile.”

“Really?” Eitan said. “You must have a terrific case of blue balls, if that is where your thoughts are heading.”