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  As soon as the door behind him closed the ambient noise of the corridor vanished. The room he was in could would a Spartan envious. There was only a man sitting in a chair, with a small plain drawer-case next to him. The man didn’t look like the person to oversee a theoretical physics committee. He looked like a… concierge.

  “Hello, I am the commissionaire,” the man said with a forced pleasantness.

  A doorman, then.

  “Please, leave all your belongings with me and step inside the next room. Hermes assures you of the safety of your belongings. They will be placed inside this hermetically sealed container,” the doorman said.

  Whatever, it was not theft Yanni was worried about. “Ok, here you go. My phone too, I assume. Here. What? This is my presentation. How am I to present my work withou-”

  “Please. It’s company policy. You are free to decline, of course, but that would mean an immediate cancellation of your appointment. Do you want me to inform the front desk?” asked the doorman a bit louder than he really needed to inside this echoing room.

  “Ohi. No. It’s ok, fine, take it. I accept. Now what?” Yanni said and emptied even the lint from his pockets.

  “Excellent. Please pass though these doors for your appointment,” said the doorman and put his stuff in the drawer-case. The air flooped as it closed.

  Huh. The damn thing really was hermetically sealed.

  Yanni passed through a small plain corridor and stepped inside another room. There was a woman waiting there for him, dressed with a smart outfit that was equally feminine and serious. He rushed a bit too fast to get near her and shake her hand, she was obviously more suited to deal with his presentation. But she couldn’t have been the one Nikos said was drooling over his proof.

  “Hello Doctor, pleased to meet you,” she said with a serious business smile.

  He made to reply, the nervousness starting to take over again when a splash of colour in his peripheral vision made him turn his head. In the big empty room with them was a small child, couldn’t have been more than five years old. The child was playing with a toy truck and if Yanni squinted a bit, he could swear that he could see his own Georgie in his place.

  “Um. I… Yes. Can we start, do you want me to…” Yanni said, but the smartly-dressed woman touched him on the shoulder and interrupted him.

  “Dr. Tsafantakis, I will not be the one to see your presentation. The Ellipsis project needs to remain minimal in all of its aspects and all of its phases. Even early ones such as this one. You do not need a board to explain your apodeixis to, just as you do not need the renders nor the slideshow presentation you so thoughtfully sent ahead,” she said with authority and a glimmer of pride.

  “Ok. Then what do I need to do?” asked Yanni.

  “You need to explain your hypothesis to this child. Should the child understand, then you will be granted all you need to make it happen. Everything will be explained to you in the next phase, but you must focus on this one for now,” she said with the same tone in her voice.

  “You are kidding. You are kidding me about presenting my life’s work to a kid,” said Yanni matter-of-factly.

  The smartly-dressed woman tightened her dossier on her chest and leaned forward to make her point. “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Then she added with a factual tone, “Albert Einstein.”

  Yanni dashed a bit back and forth and then chose his words carefully. “You want me to explain a theoretical application of Maxwell’s light bending equations to quantum computing, to a five-year old boy?”

  She replied, “Yes.” The period was audible.

  “Very well, then!” said Yanni, succumbing to the madness around him.

  The smartly-dressed woman left the room. Yanni looked around for a chair but there was none. The floor it was, then. He squatted next to the child. His fatherly instincts kicked in and he started thinking about this whole deal, as he established rapport with the child. That poor kid could be scared. What if he wasn’t a father, would they still let him alone in here, a stranger alone with a kid? Was the mother nearby, watching? The corporation was certainly watching him, there were cameras in the room. What sort of people do such a thing?

  “Hey, my son has a truck exactly like that! His name is George, but we call him Georgie. What is your name?”

  “Alex.”

  “Well, Alex, we can get you two to play with your trucks together. Georgie carries around flour with his truck. But it spills everywhere and his mommy gets mad at him sometimes for making a mess.”

  “Mine doesn’t. But she never gets mad at anything. But. But I don’t have flour to carry around, so I don’t really know.”

  Thank god, the kid is clever. Yanni thought about what Alex said. “Does your mommy teach you stuff? I know it’s still early for you to go to school, but does she teach you mathematics? Adding apples in the cart?”

  “Yes! I know that one plus one equals two!” Alex said triumphantly.

  Skata. Yanni could work with that foundation, but he was pretty sure he didn’t have a decade available to impart some formal education.

  “What does mommy teach you?”

  “Not much, she has to take care of my brothers and sisters as well. She doesn’t have time for all of us. But she reads us fairytales and has us draw the pictures in our heads.”

  “Does mommy work?”

  “Her work is being our mommy. She is good at it.”

  Oh man. Was this one of the orphans he had heard about on the news? The ones adopted by corporations?

  “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

  Alex raised his shoulders. “The whole room.”

  Yanni had a chilling thought at that point.

  “Alex. What do the other grown-ups call your mommy?”

  Alex looked up from his toy with his joyous little eyes and answered, “Muse.”

  Chapter 3i^3

  Yanni’s mind raced on about keeping the light contained. Much like the spilled milk on the table, the spilled milk on the floor and the spilled milk on his son’s clothes, the damn light got spilt every time you tried to do something useful with it.

  Thalia dropped the plate in the sink and grabbed a towel. “Oh Yanni, don’t just sit there! Clean up this mess. I can’t do everything around here,” she said and cleaned up after Georgie.

  Georgie ran his fingers through the spilt milk on the floor and licked them. “No don’t lick that,” his mom said and slapped his hand lightly.

  Yanni snapped out of it and started cleaning up with some napkins and said, “Yes, sorry, here. Not from the floor Georgie, we don’t eat stuff from the floor.”

  But his mind raced on again. Tuning out the background noise (his wife cleaning up after the kids, Georgie crying because he was scolded, the baby crying because she needed changing, the neighbor banging on his damn DIY kitchen, the cat on her oistros calling out the males and the gardener with his electric hedge trimmers) he thought of equations that would make reality his bitch.

  The light you see, could be crystallized. But the sneaky bastard kept leaking out.

  Yanni had a thought about that.

  And then his wife banged the table and he lost that thought.

  “I need you to tell me how many people are coming for your birthday next month,” said Thalia while taking off Georgie’s dirty t-shirt.

  “This early? I don’t know yet, I haven’t called anyone,” Yanni said and scratched his head. He went through the contacts on his cellphone. He said, “Antonis will surely come, Spyros maybe with Ntina, Niko will probably show up…”

  Thalia interrupted him, “Plus their wives. And whichever half-naked poutana Nikos will be sleeping with that week.”

  Yanni defended his friend, “He is a bachelor honey. Just because the rest of us are happily married doesn’t mean that he should get married as well. We are still young, you know.”

  Thalia went to the next room, returned with the baby in her arms, and said, “Y
ou are all close to thirty. I could hook him up with some nice girls I know, but Nikos just wants to drive his convertible and go to nightclubs. He doesn’t want to settle down.”

  “What do you want me to do, not invite my friend because he is the only one still single?” asked Yanni.

  She explained, “We will all get together for your birthday, the pals and their wives and their kids, Ntina is happily expecting, but Nikos will be the bachelor that gets you all thinking that he is better that way. And the rest of you guys will stare at his poutana’s boobs and compare her body to what we look like after giving birth twice.”

  Yanni stood up and hugged his wife with his baby and said, “Your boobs are nice. More importantly, they are the only boobs I want.”

  Georgie said, “Boobs!” and giggled.

  Yanni said, “See, we all like them.”

  Thalia looked at Yanni and said, “You were staring at her last time.”

  “No…”

  “You were. You all were, actually.”

  “OK, I did stare. I am sorry. They were huge and they were squeezing to get out,” said Yanni, mimicking their effort with his hands.

  She smiled and said, “You know they weren’t real right? What was her name, Angela? Or was Angela the one before?”

  Yanni hugged her tighter and said, “Yeah, I don’t remember. Who cares? Nikos will learn someday. It’s just a birthday party, we can manage one afternoon of temptation.”

  Chapter 3i^4

  “Is this a celibacy thing, like Agio Oros?” Yanni asked over the fifth round of drinks.

  “No, you are still not getting it. She helps me remove all distractions from my life, and helps me with my inspiration,” said Nikos.

  “But she is an android?” asked Yanni with a hiccup.

  “Yes. For example, today, you texted me. She was holding onto my cellphone. She deemed the text important and told me about it when she was certain that she wasn’t interrupting my flow. That’s all. If it had been some chick I dated, she wouldn’t tell me and I wouldn’t be distracted with my phone ringing and all that,” Nikos said.

  “So she is an answering machine? Or a softh-sophisticated personal assistant?” asked Yanni again.

  “No, she is more than that. She brings me my protein shake, cooks for me foods that will not make me feel bloated or interfere with my sleep, keeps the house clean and at an optimum temperature…” Nikos explained.

  “So like a wife then,” said Yanni exhaling and feeling a little tipsy.

  “Noooo. Yes. Maybe. All the good stuff, without the nagging and the needs. She needs nothing from me. Also, she understands my work. I can explain stuff to her and she gets it and asks back with excitement. And then as I talk something will light up in my mind and I’m off to the drawing board,” said Nikos and clicked his fingers.

  “And they pay for that?” Yanni asked.

  “Yes, the whole thing. I have no idea how much she costs but I’m sure it’s a boatload,” said Nikos and poured another whiskey.

  “You really like that word, boatload,” Yanni said.

  “Well, boats are big,” Nikos said and they both giggled, snorting out whiskey.

  Night came and they called a taxi. “I’ll come up here tomorrow anyway for the car, no point in risking it,” Nikos had said.

  Back at Yanni’s house Nikos bumped him on the shoulder with his fist. “Get that presentation ready and I’ll make sure it gets delivered”.

  Yanni looked back at his house. The reality of his life slowly came back to kick away the positive feeling he had the last few hours. “Yeah, I’ll think about it. Kalinixta,” he said and woozied back to the house.

  A pissed-off wife was expecting him.

  She nagged at him for drinking, for leaving her to take care of the kids by herself, for coming back late, for allowing bad influences into their life, for not growing up, for smelling bad, for making a bad impression to the neighbours, for the good fortune of their kid being too young to see his father come home in this situation, for not calling hours ago to say he would be late, for not calling on the way home to ask if he should pick something up from the supermarket, for smoking, for not thinking about her, for maybe she wanted to go out with them as well, for the implied accusation that they had female company and finally for the hangover he would have the next day and him not being able to concentrate.

  On that last thing she was absolutely correct. Yanni took a bath and slept like a bear past its hibernation time.

  The next morning she opened the window and searing beams of sunlight scalded his eyes, while his skull felt as heavy and large as if he was wearing a bike helmet. Thalia gave him ground coffee and lemon in water. It was her special hangover recipe, but it always made him wanna throw up. He forced it down and suffered in silence.

  She pulled the sheets off him and pointed at the door. “Go on, get up, wash your face and go upstairs to work, mister. The proof isn’t gonna write itself,” she said with a mean tone.

  He pulled the bed sheets back on but she took them away. Yanni obeyed and got up. He washed his face and went upstairs to think about spilt milk and photons.

  Chapter 4i

  The doorbell rang.

  “Well, go on! Let’s not keep her waiting,” said Thalia.

  Yanni stood up reluctantly and walked towards the entrace. He felt anxious, as if waiting for a date. He bit his lips and opened the door to his house.

  On the porch stood a lady in a blue dress. Hands shyly clasped in front of her body, black hair in a simple ponytail, plain shoes matching her dress. Tiny in figure. She was neither too pretty nor too sexy, but certainly had an appealing face.

  Yanni thought that would fit right in the Ellipsis ideology. After all, too pretty a face and too hot a body and you are talking about a serious distraction, not a source of inspiration. No, she was exactly right, a pretty girl when smiling, but ordinary enough to let you concentrate on work while having her around.

  She smiled at him. She was carrying a tiny purse, more like a blue soft rectangular container than a fashion accessory. It reminded Yanni of the zippered case that his car’s keys came in when he bought it.

  She looked young, somewhere around 25, but that was a number without meaning since it was something immutable.

  He stared.

  It was hard to believe that this woman was not real. Her manners, her stance, her skin, everything was lifelike. Yet, he had a weird feeling that she was the one, the muse he was expecting to come back.

  “Um - I’m staring. Sorry,” he said.

  “It’s OK, Yanni,” she said, swinging her body playfully left and right. She seemed excited to meet him, if that was at all possible. “I’m staring too.”

  “Come on in…”

  She came up next to him and casually, almost sensually brushed his neck with her delicate finger, while smiling at him. A gentle gesture, one seriously inappropriate for first impressions but which made Yanni feel relaxed.

  She walked inside gracefully.

  Until she met the stare of Yanni’s wife.

  The two women scanned one another, one with squishy eyes, the other with remarkably similar but surprisingly inferior artificial ones.

  Yanni thought of that staring contest and how technology could not compare to the results of natural evolution yet.

  The lady in blue smiled at Thalia and softly said to Yanni, “I thought you had started the Ellipsis method. I didn’t expect your wife to still be here.”

  Thalia stood up. “It would be rude not to welcome you myself. This is my house after all.”

  Yanni stepped in between them. He couldn’t blame his wife for being defensive, but he couldn’t let anything jeopardize this. He was out of options.

  “Okay, let me explain. Yes, Thalia is here because I could never convince her to follow through otherwise. And to be honest, seeing how life-like you are I’m glad we are all together right now,” Yanni said. “Oh, by the way, this is Thalia, my wife. Thalia, this is…”
/>   Yanni turned to the muse and realized he had no clue.

  “Ourania,” the muse said, smiling and walking towards Thalia to shake her hand.

  Yanni’s wife seemed to tone down her defensiveness and greeted her properly. “Well, please, sit down. Should I get you anything? Water? I have no idea what to offer you.”

  Ourania said, “I don’t need anything, thanks. But I’d rather use a chair than sit on the couch.”

  Yanni pulled up a chair from the dining table and offered it to her like a gentleman. She sat down, her knees too tight, gripping her little purse, almost looking shy. Yanni thought she looked like a teenage nanny auditioning for a married couple. Only, this time, the baby to be taken care of was him.

  The couple sat on the couch. Yanni said, “So, yes, we will start the Ellipsis method tomorrow. The gen-two laser is expected to arrive, my wife is packed and she will leave with the kids first thing in the morning.”

  Ourania turned her glance towards Thalia and said, “That’s fine. I was merely concerned about the method. But it’s OK, we can begin tomorrow and readjust. It is best to minimize distractions, you see.”

  Thalia held Yanni’s hand and said, “Of course. There’s nothing I want more than to see Yanni finally get the proof finished. If this is something that will help him do that, I’m happy to… cooperate.”

  “Perfect,” Ourania said and unzipped her little purse. She took out a globe, small enough to fit in her palm and did just that.

  “I’m sensing a theme,” said Yanni. The whole thing conjured in his mind the image of the Muse Ourania in mythology. Muse of Astronomy, wearing a light blue dress, holding a rod and pointing to a globe. The only difference being that the ancient Greek version would no doubt be chubby and staring at the sky. This one was petite and staring directly at him.