Chapter 3

Twelve years after the laundromat incident Mark Williams and his former housemates shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. Six months after that his sister Wanda came into his home office where he sat behind his desk, staring at a blank pad of paper. "Mark, you've got to snap out of this. You just sit around,

either here or at the university. You should be on the lecture circuit, or working on a project or something. Anything."

Mark shook his head. "I'm sorry, Wanda. I just feel so guilty, taking credit for someone else's work." He ran his hand through his hair and looked up at her. "I've never told anyone this story."

"What story?"

"I almost got mugged by a guy with a knife in a laundromat when I, we, were undergrads at Cal Tech. There was a girl, woman, who bashed his head into a sink and then used his own knife to cut his throat."

"Oh, Christ."

"Yeah. She didn't leave any evidence behind - no DNA, no fingerprints, not a hair or a fiber. The thing is that she had written the breakthrough equations on a table with a marking pen. I talked the crime lab out of the tabletop later, so I know that it really happened.

"Even then I lied about it. I told the detective on the case that I recognized some of it when I knew exactly what I was looking at: what everybody calls the 'Theory of Everything.' I worked backward from those equations in private while guys and I worked forward in public. When I linked the trails of logic one night I had a moment, uh, I guess you could call it an epiphany so blinding that I thought my head would explode.

"It took us ten years, but we couldn't have done it without what that woman wrote down. I started us off with a first step that I told them came to me in a dream while I was dozing off at the laundromat and I copied it down in a sketchbook. I made sure that I had some parts that looked like they were erased or crossed out to make it look authentic. I used those equations to keep us moving in the right direction."

Wanda said, "That's really..."

Mark offered, "Unbelievable? Incredible? Strange? Weird? I've used up all the words like that over the years. The only thing I really know is that it did happen - there's a police report - a murder case that's probably coldfiled by now - and I have the tabletop in a safety-deposit box." He sighed. "I go look at it every once in a while to remind myself that it really happened."

"I really don't know what to say."

"I'll take you to see if you want me to."

Wanda said hesitantly, "I believe that you believe it."

Mark exploded. "Goddammit, Wanda! I don't need my head

shrunk; I didn't fabricate this evidence to support my delusion. Ask the cops, they'll tell you it really happened."

Wanda raised her hands. "Okay, okay, it really happened. The thing is that you, Brett and Jango spent all those years working out all the details. It's your work, even if you got a push to get started. Look, Mark, you really didn't steal someone else's ideas. I know a couple of people who won't automatically think

you're around the bend." Her voice dropped to an intimate level. "I think you need to talk to someone about this. It takes a special kind of courage for a man in our society to admit it, but asking for help is not a sign of weakness. Will you do that for me?"

Mark's shoulders slumped. "Yeah, I'll do that for you." He looked up at her. "It takes a special kind of courage, or a large amount of desperation. Thanks Wanda."

She touched his arm. "You're welcome."