Zig Zag (20 page)

And
what's more, if time really is the fourth dimension, as relativity
claims, it's a lot different than the other three. Because in space
we can travel up and down, left and right, and back and forth. But in
time, we can travel only forward. Why is that? What keeps us from
being able to go back and live what's already been lived, or see it?
In 1988, David Blanes's sequoia theory tried to answer some of these
questions, but he barely scratched the surface. We still don't know
almost anything about this "indispensable" element of
reality that travels in only one direction, at an unknown speed, and
which we only seem to understand if no one asks what it is.

Very
odd.

With
those words, Reinhard Silberg, professor of the philosophy of science
at Berlin's Technischen Universitat, began his opening remarks at the
UNESCO hall in Madrid's Palacio de Congresos, where the international
symposium "Modern Theories on the Nature of Space-Time" was
being held.

The
modest hall was overflowing with attendees and journalists who were
hanging on his every word, and waiting to hear from Witten, Craig,
Marini, and the two "stars" of the show: Stephen Hawking
and David Blanes.

Elisa
Robledo had other reasons to be there. She wanted to know if her
theory of local variables had any chance of success and, if not, she
wondered what Ric Valente planned to try to make her do.

She
was almost sure of two things: first, that she'd lose the bet, and
second, that she'd refuse to do whatever it was.

THE
whole
week had been a race against time. Which was ironic, given that she'd
spent the whole time
studying
time.

Passion
and intellect went hand in hand in Elisa. After the emotional
upheaval that her encounter with Valente had turned out to be, she
sat down to reason things out and made a very simple decision:
whether or not she was being watched, and regardless of any bet, she
was going to do her homework. She'd already given up all hope of
coming out first in Blanes's course. But she still didn't want to
slack off at the end, especially on her final project.

She
wholeheartedly threw herself into her work. For several nights in a
row, she didn't sleep more than a few hours at a time. She felt sure
she wasn't going to be able to prove anything with her local time
variable hypothesis and became increasingly convinced that Valente
had been right when he questioned her premise, but she didn't care. A
scientist had to fight for her ideas even when no one accepted them,
she thought.

At
first, she didn't think about the bet. In fact, although she thought
for a second that she might faint when she had to face Valente in
class that Monday (they didn't look at each other, they didn't say
hi, and both acted as if nothing had happened), and despite the fact
that she was aware of his slimy presence at every second—like a
persistent odor—at no point did it occur to her to worry about
what might happen (or what she would agree to do in order to keep her
word) if she lost. She'd met few people as arrogant and churlish as
Ricardo Valente Sharpe and she was not impressed with the vile,
juvenile hacking into her computer he'd done or the way he tried to
blackmail her with her own bedroom secrets.

Or
at least that was what she was trying to convince herself of, at all
costs.

She
wasn't even sure she was being watched, as Valente claimed. On
Tuesday afternoon, the police had called. They scared the living
daylights out of her, but it turned out they only wanted to tell her
they'd found her cell phone. An upstanding citizen had found it
Friday night when he threw out the paper cup from his ice cream on a
narrow street in Chueca. Since he had no idea whose it was, he left
it at the downtown police station. After a few inquiries (an
abandoned cell phone was suspicious, even alarming these days, the
police had told her), they had tracked down the owner: Elisa.

That
afternoon, after stopping by the station, Elisa used a tiny
screwdriver to pry it open. She didn't know exactly what the inside
of a cell phone was supposed to look like anyway (pen and paper were
more her style), but she couldn't see anything that seemed
particularly out of place. The man who'd found it could be the same
guy who she'd seen from the back door of that bar; maybe it was just
a coincidence, and Valente had taken advantage of it.

Wednesday,
she went to the registrar's office at Alighieri to get her
certificate of attendance for Blanes's course, and while she was
there she asked a few questions. The girl behind the counter verified
everything she wanted to know: Javier Maldonado
was
a
student there, he
was
studying
information science, and there
was
a
statistics professor named Espalza. Didn't sound like much of a
conspiracy, then.

She
started to think that maybe Valente himself was responsible for the
whole charade. It was clear that he wanted some kind of "special"
relationship with her (given that he found her—what had he
said?—"so interesting"). He was very clever, there
was no doubt about that. So he'd probably taken advantage of certain
coincidences and spun that tale about surveillance just to scare her.
Curiously enough, Elisa wasn't the slightest bit scared of him.

She
handed in her project on Friday. Blanes took it without a word and
then said good-bye to the class, summoning them to the symposium the
following day, where they would talk about "some of the thornier
aspects of the theory, like the paradox of the 'past' end of the
strings." He didn't say anything about the possibility of
resolving the paradox. Elisa turned to look at her rival. He sat
there smiling without looking back at her.

Fuck
Valente Sharpe.

So
there she was, at the symposium, waiting to hear what the Wise Ones
had to say about it all and to find out who'd win the bizarre bet.

Things,
though, were about to take a totally unexpected turn.

SHE'D
been
listening to late twentieth-century physics mumbo jumbo for hours,
and it was all old hash: Branes, parallel universes, black-hole
fusion, Calabi-Yau spaces, tears in reality ... Almost every speaker
at least mentioned the sequoia theory, but no one talked about any
possibility of identifying isolated time strings as a means of
resolving the "past" end paradox with local variables.
Sergio Marini, the experimental physicist and Blanes's collaborator
in Zurich, whom Elisa had been anxiously waiting to hear, declared
that it was essential to accept the theory's contradictions, and as
an example put forward the infinite results of relativistic quantum
theory.

All
of a sudden, amid an expectant, respectful silence, she caught a
glimpse of Stephen Hawking, making his way toward the stage in his
electric wheelchair.

Pressing
himself against the back of his chair, the illustrious Cambridge
physicist (who held the same post Newton had held centuries before
him) looked like little more than a sickly man. But Elisa knew that
he was not only blindingly intelligent and surprisingly witty (his
eyes, hidden behind enormous glasses, radiated personality), but also
that he had an iron will that enabled him to become one of the
world's foremost physicists of all time, and this despite suffering
from a crippling motor neuron disease. Elisa realized that she didn't
admire him nearly enough. Hawking was living proof that you should
never give up on anything in this life.

Using
the controls on his voice synthesizer, Hawking transformed written
text into intelligible speech. The audience was instantly captivated.
People laughed heartily at his scathing, witty commentaries,
pronounced in a mechanically precise English. However, to Elisa's
displeasure, he spoke only about the possibility of recovering
information lost in black holes, barely even mentioning Blanes's
theory in passing at the very end of his talk.

He
concluded, "The branches of Professor Blanes's sequoia stretch
toward the future in the sky, while its roots bury themselves in the
unreachable ground of the past." The electronic voice paused.
"Nevertheless, as long as we're hanging on to one of those
branches, nothing stops us from looking down at the roots."

That
sentence made Elisa think. What was Hawking talking about? Was it
just a poetic closing statement, or was he trying to cast doubt on
the possibility of identifying and opening isolated time strings? At
any rate, it was clear that the sequoia theory had lost a lot of
cachet among the great physicists of the world. All that was left was
to wait for Blanes himself, but it wasn't looking too hopeful.

When
the lunch break was announced, everyone in the auditorium stood as
one to head for the exits, causing an almighty traffic jam. Elisa got
in line just in time to hear a voice whisper in her ear.

"Ready
to lose?"

She'd
been expecting something along those lines and turned her head to
reply. "Are you?"

But
Ric Valente had already slipped into the crowd. Elisa shrugged and
thought about the answer to that question. Was she ready? Maybe not.

But
she hadn't lost yet.

VICTOR
Lopera
asked her to have lunch with him and she gladly accepted, actually
looking forward to his company.

Despite
his obsession with religion, which she felt was a slippery slope (and
one that made him talk too much), Lopera was a good conversationalist
and an all-around likable guy. Getting a ride home from him had
become part of a routine they both enjoyed.

They
bought vegetarian sandwiches at the conference center's self-serve
cafeteria. Victor had ordered his with double mayo. Elisa had a
feeling that mayonnaise was one of the only things that could get her
friend off the topic of Teilhard de Chardin, or when Monsignor
Lemaitre discovered that the universe was expanding and Einstein
didn't believe him. He devoured it with such relish that he ended up
with big globs of the white stuff on his lips and around his mouth,
and then, like a cat, flicked his long tongue to lick them off and
clean himself.

They
couldn't find a free table so they ate standing up, talking about the
speakers' presentations (he'd loved Silberg's) and waving to
professors and classmates (the place was like a catwalk, and Elisa
had to smile at people every five seconds). At one point, without
warning, he complimented her, turning red in the process. "You
look very pretty." She thanked him, though not totally
sincerely. That Saturday she'd decided, for the first time in a week,
to wash her hair and fix herself up a little, putting on a sky-blue
blouse and dark-blue cotton trousers instead of her standard ripped
jeans, which were so dirty they could have stood up and walked by
themselves, as her mother liked to say. But she wished Victor had
complimented her on something besides her looks.

Nevertheless,
on that occasion, she felt like his interest in her was special. She
realized it before he brought it up, catching the sidelong glances he
gave her when he thought she wasn't looking. It was clear he had no
future as a criminal: he was the most obvious guy she'd ever met.

After
taking his last bite of sandwich and licking the remaining bits of
mayo off with his tongue, Victor said in a conspicuously casual tone,
"I talked to Ric the other day." She watched his Adam's
apple bob up and down. "Sounds like you guys have become ...
friends."

"That's
not true," Elisa replied. "Is that what he told you?"

Victor
smiled apologetically, as if he were begging forgiveness for having
misinterpreted her relationship with Valente. But in no time he
became serious again.