Wake-Up Call. Joaquin De Torres
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Название: Wake-Up Call
Автор: Joaquin De Torres
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Научная фантастика
isbn: 9781456622077
isbn:
The Night Cam captured Patricia, who was curled in her normal fetal position on her left side, extend her legs down, pivot and roll onto her right side. Next to the bed, Ivana had left the drawing pad and box of pencils on a feeding table. Patricia reached over to the table and rolled towards her so that it was positioned directly over the bed. With the materials now in front of her, she sat upright, opened to the first white page and began scribbling on it with a pencil in her right hand.
I watched silently in awe as the video moved into some 20 minutes of footage. She had filled the blank page with images, large and small, using pencil after pencil, until their tips could produce no more marks. The camera couldn’t capture any of the images clearly; all we could see were dark marks on the paper. When all the pencils were finally rendered useless, she put them back into the box, placed the pad back to its original position and pushed the table away to its place. She then assumed her original frozen position until morning when Ivana and an attendee came in to change the IV and change the sheets.
Ivana stopped the video.
“That was just three days ago,” she said.
“My God, that was amazing,” I breathed. “May I see the drawings?” She took a larger folder from within her desk and retrieved the sheet of drawing paper, placing it in front of me. I didn’t know what I was looking at, but it looked very normal and familiar. A page full of stick figures that looked like people; a multitude of stick trees; so many, in fact, that it looked like Patricia was trying to draw a forest. The stick people looked like their arms were in the air. Above the people and trees were obviously stars, the point-to-point stars that children first learn how to draw, but multitudes of them. Then in several spots, clearly separated from the main drawing were other markings.
“This looks like,” I hesitated and swallowed, “math!” Ivana nodded in agreement.
“That’s why I called Zelda.” Zelda moved closer in next to me.
“Believe it or not, they are basic formulas and equations for Quantum Mechanics,” she commented.
“Are we talking Einstein stuff?” I asked.
“Exactly.” She took the drawing and pointed to each of the equations. “Look at this.” My eyes gazed upon the labyrinth of numbers, letters and lines that were so expansive that some of it was written right off the page. “Do you know what all this is?”
I shook my head. “This is part of an equation developed by Werner Karl Heisenberg, known by many of us as the Father of Quantum Physics.” She quickly pointed to another portion of the page, her hands shaking. “And this! It’s barely readable but these are basic Quantum Mechanics equations dealing with momentum, energy, space vectors, and wave functions.”
I didn’t know what the hell Zelda was talking about concerning the math. What I was struggling with was how could a person frozen in a comatose existence for years, suddenly wake up momentarily and write all this down.
“And Javier, look at this.” Zelda’s voice continued to strain with mounting excitement and nervousness. “Do you know what this is?” I could see that an incredulous, almost wild-like expression glazed off her eyes, making them bigger than before. I looked at the equation string which was cleaner and less jumbled, yet no more understandable than the previous two.
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“These are some of the essential components of Higgs particles!” My face and silence only registered my abject ignorance of what she was saying. She looked at me as if my lack of knowledge was somehow life-threatening. “Particle Physics? The God Particle? The symmetry and composition of mass in the universe? Anything?” I shrugged and smirked defenselessly which seemed to annoy her. “Okay!” she continued querulously. “How about these?” I looked and shook my head, completely baffled, and getting annoyed myself at her insistence.
“These are equations from Schrödinger’s theory of Step Potential.” She pointed to another set. “These concern kinetic energy.” She canted the paper to the left. “Look at this one between the people and the stars.” Her finger circled a long equation. “This deals with a quantum harmonic oscillator. It’s classic.” She suddenly pounded her fist on the table, startling me and Ivana. “And it’s fucking accurate! Now, how the fuck-” Zelda held her hands up in resignation, took a deep breath, and shook her head to calm herself down. This was her field. She was completely comfortable with all these strange shapes, numbers and symbols. But when she looked back at Ivana and I, she saw only blank, stupid stares. She struggled a smile and lowered her tone.
“Look, according to her file Patricia dropped out of high school when she was 16.” Her fingertips drummed on one of the equations. “This is the stuff I taught at MIT and UCLA. These equations are perfectly written, considering her hands are, or were, severely atrophied and rigid.” She took a breath, still disbelieving in this enigma. “There’s no way she can know these, much less write them down with such accuracy like a sixth-year Physics grad student.” Ivana looked at me, both of us in sync with the same thought.
“Photographic memory?” I proffered. But Zelda was shaking her head as if she expected this suggestion. She pointed again.
“Look at these sets between these two stars.” Her finger tips tracing a square around the equation.
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“These deal with neutron scattering, phonons, linear chains and harmonics. These are completely separate disciplines than what was written earlier.”
“But if she does have a deeply recessed photographic memory, she could have simply looked at photos of these equations in some discarded physics book, and they’d be stored,” Ivana countered. Zelda bit her lip and shook her head again.
“But where and why would she even look at them?” I could see Zelda’s skepticism and her conflict. While a photographic memory explanation could be accepted, albeit with hard scrutiny by Ivana and I, it just didn’t flow with Zelda’s scientific experience. And the more I thought about it, the more I began to take her side. As we analyzed the drawings and took stock in our theories in silence, I finally came to the realization that, like Doogie’s amazing ability to name stars just by looking at them, there was no way in hell that Patricia Miren understood or knew of Quantum Mechanics. Just like there was no way in hell that Doogie knew about Astronomy. I looked into Zelda’s large eyes, seemingly pleading for reason, and I nodded.
“You’re right, Zelda. I believe you.” She smiled slightly and laid her head momentarily on my shoulder. We both looked at Ivana whose expression was neither relieved nor convinced.
“There’s more,” she said flatly. “Zelda, I didn’t show you this part because I wanted both of you to view it together with absolute objectivity.” Both Zelda and I righted ourselves in our seats, suddenly uncomfortable and anxious.
“After that first night, I had cameras installed throughout the room to film all day and all night. I have hours of footage, but I consolidated them into this segment.”
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