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  Chapter 7i^2

  “Stand back or I’ll destroy everything!” Yanni was screaming at her, legs firmly set, a pile made of his notebooks and his whiteboard on the floor before him. He was clutching a lighter in one hand, and lighter-fuel in the other.

  He flicked the lighter a few times and illuminated the dark room with fire-hot light.

  Ourania responded calmly. “Is your apodeixis written there?”

  “No.”

  “Then why should I care if you destroy them?”

  “I’ve seen you how you keep every scribble I jot down! Don’t pretend you don’t care!” He was close to hysterical.

  “I keep them in case you need to backtrack to something. All I care is helping you solve your apodeixis.”

  “By keeping me prisoner?” he asked spitting the words out.

  “We must remove all distractions.”

  “You… You’ve thrown away half my stuff! You don’t let me talk to my wife. To my son!”

  “What would you sacrifice for a Nobel prize?”

  “Fuck the Nobel prize!” he screamed at her.

  Yanni dropped everything, started pacing up and down, biting his lips like a madman.

  “I wanna see my family… I wanna see my friend…” A realisation dawned on him and he grabbed her by the shoulders. “Is Nikos even alive?”

  “Yes, he is. As far as I know.”

  He looked in her eyes for a full minute. Then he sagged on the chair.

  “You really fail to grasp the point here. He is valuable, you are valuable,” she explained, opening her palms and weighing concepts.

  “Yeah, yeah, we are all valuable. Next thing, you are gonna recite the three laws…”

  “No, not all of you. That elderly lady, for example, was not. I killed her. And the toolbearer. I killed him too. They were useless.”

  Yanni stopped clawing his hair and looked up at the machine’s human visage.

  Seconds passed. He gulped.

  He jumped over the couch and dashed towards the front door.

  Chapter 7i^3

  Yanni was staring at the whiteboard.

  He had piled all of the furniture in the next room. His office/lab was empty, except the whiteboard, his notes and the laser. He was wrapped in the blanket, the same one he had before all this madness. He was wearing the glasses on his head.

  He was holding the globe in his hand. His blood had left a stain on it.

  Two days.

  That’s all he had, two days, and then his birthday. Thirty fucking years old. End of the line. Go back to teaching.

  People had died for this. Mr. Andreas, and the old woman, M-something she was called. Could be more. Had he any reason to doubt a straight confession from an android?

  He could go to the police, tell them anything. He would go straight away.

  As soon as he figured out that damn apodeixis.

  Didn’t matter if they locked him up, as long as he could make his contribution to science before that.

  He held the globe in his hands, leaned his head down and wept.

  “Please, come back. Please-please-please. You are my muse and I let you go. I’m such a vlakas. Please come back. Please.”

  Two days.

  He turned the laser on. Took the glasses off.

  Increased the intensity.

  Maybe he could see something in the light just before it burned his retinas. He stood up and looked at the ceiling, where the laser beam ended. He stretched his neck and tried to see the blinding blue dot better. He swirled around the room looking up, losing his step and regaining balance, like a weird version of Zorbas dancing.

  The light was too much. He covered his eyes and weeped on the floor.

  A soft female hand caressed his filthy hair.

  He looked up but saw only blue. His eyes focused on a figure above him but could only see the intense afterimages.

  “Is it you?”

  “Shh. Close your eyes. You will recover in time,” Ourania said.

  “You heard me! I prayed to the globe and you heard me!”

  Ourania took a weirded-out expression on her face. “I have no direct link to the globe. I just came back to check on you.”

  Yanni blindly reached around the floor with his hands and found the globe. He squeezed it in his hand as if it were an instrument of power and said firmly, “Stay here and help me find the apodeixis.”

  His eyes strained to focus on the silhouette in front of him.

  Ourania smiled. “As you wish.”

  Chapter 7i^4

  Grrrrrnggggggggg.

  Grnnnng.

  Grrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnggggg.

  Mr. Andreas’ saw cut through wood like… well a sharp and powerful saw.

  It was his latest project, some kind of wardrobe or something. He didn’t like those Ikea things, he wanted to make stuff himself.

  He was a retired man, used to work in the Public Power Company. A handyman there as well, he claimed to have laid hundreds of kilometres of cable and repaired over a thousand power transformers.

  The neighbours believed him. Everyone who knew the man believed him.

  Not a day went by without Mr. Andreas’ projects being heard around the block.

  Yanni held his head in his hands.

  The noise was too much. He should be thankful however, that it wasn’t one of the man’s steel projects. Those took a lot more work and throwing around of metal.

  To imagine the man’s toolshed, you simply had to recall all of the tinker types you had seen in movies. The scrap metal rusting everywhere, abandoned projects all over the place and old power tools that needed a good kick to get started.

  Then you had to reverse this image in your mind.

  His toolshed was cleaned meticulously between projects, so much that you could have an open heart surgery on his workbench. The surrounding area was full of carefully stacked scavenged materials and replacement parts, all stored in closed plastic bins and labeled. His tools were shiny and sharp, applying his skill into precise cuts and holes.

  Grrrrrrnggggggggggg.

  Despite all of Ourania’s efforts, Yanni had a headache. He woke up with a bad temper, and it didn’t help having to hear all the woodcutting throughout the day.

  He was grateful of course. Without Mr. Andreas’ prompt action in putting the fire out, Yanni might not even have a house to feel lousy in right now. Or worse, his family might have been hurt.

  He felt he had to endure.

  “Good thing he finishes his projects quite fast,” he told himself. “He begins new ones just as quickly though,” he added.

  He knew it was going to be a slow day anyway. He decided to brush up on some math he was struggling with, it had been left unused for eight years and it had taken on the complexity of Chinese for some reason.

  “It sure is loud. Should I turn on the stereo?” asked Ourania. She had tried closing the windows and had moved him to another part of the house already.

  “No, it’s fine. I wasn’t concentrating that much anyway. Let’s be patient,” he said with a smile and tried to bury his head in the math book.

  The loudness of advanced math did nothing to drown the noise.

  Yanni decided to turn this to his advantage. He perched up his ear and studied the noise. Imagined the saw cutting through wood.

  Oh man, lots of physics there!

  Let’s see. We have the cutting of molecular bonds. Sawdust flying around in fractals. Each particle its own unique size and shape, with its own aerodynamic properties.

  Grrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnnngg.

  Acoustic waves modulated by the wood being cut. Like a violin with single-use strings. Making music by cutting them with a knife.

  Wait a minute.

  That might be it… All he thought about was not letting the light spill out. What if he needed to get a percentage of the light to spill on purpose, sacrificed, for the sake of data integrity on the lattice?

  But was it possible through interference? Or entanglement? W
ho knew? It was something to build on.

  Grrrrng.

  He slapped his forehead. He swept the whole desk on the floor and pulled up a notebook, scribbling like mad.

  Ourania walked the steps leading to the street. She went to the toolshed where Mr. Andreas worked. She looked around the neat workshop. Walking silently she reached right behind the man, him not taking notice of anything but his craft. She looked at the wall, the rows of neatly placed tools on suitable little hinges.

  She brushed her hand over the tools and picked one up in her small hand.

  Mr. Andreas was wearing a work mask and protective eyeglasses, the ones that cup your head with silicone for the best fit.

  He had a sort of venting system over his workbench that pulled all the sawdust straight into a filter. Bright lights made the workbench an excellent place to work, even for someone whose eyesight was failing him due to age. And of course, two large fire extinguishers always at hand.

  The man turned around, and stopped the saw. He was towering over her, a retired handyman who was built like an ox and probably could outrun a few teenagers in a race.

  He pulled the mask down and smiled. His skin was plastered with sawdust. His grey hair had taken in even more.

  “Oh hello young lady! I didn’t see you there. You should be careful around power tools, accidents do happen,” he said, with a voice suitable for Santa Claus, ready to shower kids with presents.

  Ourania was looking innocent, her hands crossed behind her back and her eyes looking up at the big man.

  “I can’t hear nor see all that well anymore. Next time hit something really hard so that I notice you at the door, right?” he said with the same grandfatherly tone.

  “Will do,” she said.

  She swung the hammer in an arc, landing it right on his temple. Mr. Andreas fell on his saw, unconscious, with his weight on the circular sawblade.

  She pressed the button and the saw whirred again.

  It met bone, and stopped.

  She made coffee for him. Washed the mug he liked the most, the one that read “The physics is theoretical, but the fun is real.” It was Yanni’s favourite, a quote from some old TV show.

  She brought the coffee to him, and placed the mug on his desk. While leaning, she touched him on the neck. His biometric readings lit up blue in her field of view and she saw with satisfaction that Yanni was in the zone. Dead centre of it. That made her happy.

  Yanni was focused on his notebook, scribbling and calculating and mumbling. He had been used to getting served what he needed all these days during the Ellipsis project, so he absent-mindedly picked up his favourite mug and mumbled between sips.

  He rubbed his fingers together to wipe off a smudge of blood. He must have had a paper cut, he thought, and quickly returned to his previous thoughts.

  He didn’t take his eyes off his equations for a minute. If he had, he would have noticed Ourania standing quietly behind him, a pattern of blood spray on her delicate face.

  Chapter 8i

  Ourania decided to cook him a new recipe. People needed variety in their food. Unfortunately, the native Greek cuisine was rather rough on the stomach and she didn’t want to disturb his recent gnosis state.

  She opened Thalia’s cookbook, and looked for something within parameters. She decided on a recipe, but chose to forgo the garlic. While preparing the kitchenware she jerked her head up.

  She looked through the door. Silently, she walked near the gap like a feline predator.

  Yanni was sneaking to the window, attempting to open it silently.

  With a few quick long strides she reached up to him and threw him across the room. The wall that she had flung him to would have dropped picture frames on his head, if it not were for Ourania’s minimal approach to her surroundings. The picture frames had left distinctly lighter paint underneath their former places on the wall.

  Yanni lost consciousness from the impact for a full minute.

  He woke up to a massage.

  “You are insane. No, to be insane you have to have sanity in the first place. You are just broken,” he told her, grunting from the pain.

  “I hope you don’t try anything like that again,” she said, tending to his back.

  He slapped her hand away and put his shirt on.

  “Just let me go,” he said plainly.

  “Do you really want to? You cannot argue that you haven’t made progress with my help.”

  “No, I agree, but this is not how it works.”

  She stared at him for a few seconds and then brought her blue purse. She took out the small globe, and presented it to him.

  “Hold it, and order me again.”

  He grabbed it as quickly as was humanly possible and spat out, “LET ME GO you fucking monster!”

  “Very well,” she said. She seemed hurt. Keeping her head low she walked to the door and simply left.

  Yanni stayed there, clutching the globe and staring at the street outside.

  Chapter 8i^2

  “Sit back and relax. Close your eyes. Think of your goal, what you desire deep down. Imagine being on the pedestal, accepting the Physics Nobel. Listen to the introductory speech they are giving for you, the applause from below. Think of how easy the apodeixis looks like now that you have finally figured it out, think of the years you spent searching for it.”

  Ourania walked silently behind him and brought her lips close to his ear.

  “But now you know it. It’s so simple, so understandable. As simple as having it scribbled on a crumpled piece of paper in your pocket. The same piece of paper you found laying around the moment you conceived it. You wrote the apodeixis on that paper, you kept it as a memento. Put your hand in your pocket, the proof is there. You are going to receive the Nobel prize thanks to that piece of paper, the apodeixis smudged and worn out but still legible. Touch the paper with your fingers, wrap them around it. You can take it out any time you want, any time at all, just sneak a peek at the paper, the apodeixis is there. It is so simple, so elegant, you could easily explain it to a child. It’s there on the paper. The apodeixis is there. In your palm. It’s right there.”

  “It’s there,” Yanni whispered.

  She leaned in even closer and whispered in his ear, “What does the paper say, Yanni?”

  Yanni leapt out of the chair and hurried some equations on the whiteboard.

  Chapter 8i^3

  Ourania didn’t dare move a servo.

  If there was a zone, Yanni was swimming circles in it. She didn’t want to disturb him at all.

  This was the mission parameter.

  He was going to do it. Solve the proof.

  She was peeking through the door, biting her nails. Not that there was any point to that action, but her human behaviour included that as well.

  He was at his quiet phase now. He would shout, write something, then stare at it for an hour. Then he would erase it, write something else, and stare again.

  She took note of his weight. Despite her best efforts in feeding him properly, Yanni had lost a lot of weight the last couple of weeks. He had never been a big man, rather average, but the anxiety was eating him up from inside. It defied all logic. Ourania made sure he was getting the nutrients he needed, but he was withering away right before her eyes.

  She had another supper ready, but she wasn’t going to interrupt him now. Not for this.

  He was close.

  Suddenly, he howled.

  Ourania was startled.

  Yanni was running up and down the room, howling as if his team had scored the championship goal.

  As eureka moments went, this was a very ungentlemanly one.

  Ourania stepped into the room.

  He howled and ran to her. He held her hands and danced around her. He was laughing, out of breath.

  Ourania couldn’t resist. She laughed along. Her eyes were practically smiling.

  “Did you solve the apodeixis?” she asked with anticipation.

  “I nailed it! I nailed
that poutana in the ass! Ooooo! It’s awesome! Nai!”

  He kissed her sloppily on the lips and jumped towards the laser, which they had moved downstairs for easier access. Yanni typed the equation in Matlab and put on his protective glasses.

  He hesitated and looked at Ourania.

  She nodded with an approving smile.

  Yanni flipped the switch on the laser and let his jaw hang slack as the laser reflected on the optics. She could see it without the glasses of course. A beam of pretty blue light that should be straight up, ending in a neat little pool at the ceiling, was now knotted in the middle of the room. It was fainter than it should be, but it was there.

  Contained.

  Yanni looked away. It was as if he didn’t need the visual confirmation, as if it was an afterthought, something for the audience. Ourania knew that he had seen the result in his mind so many times, for so many years, that the marvel he had created didn’t even merit two seconds of his gaze. Ourania thought, how could humans create such beauty and be unfazed by it? How did they come up with all those ideas? She could never know.

  Yanni walked next to the whiteboard, then presented it with a flourish and stared at it.

  He caught his breath for a few seconds, coughed his aching throat and began howling again.

  Ourania stepped behind him and raised her hand to his neck, a motion similar to the casual haptic reading she had done so many times.

  “Yes, it’s beautiful,” she said with awe.

  Sparks came out of her fingers and Tazed Yanni. They were blue, of course. He convulsed and fell on the floor.

  She stood still, looking at the corner of the room.

  She deleted the equation from the computer.

  She walked up to the whiteboard, tore a page from a notebook and wrote down the apodeixis. She folded the paper neatly and placed it in her modest bosom.

  She wiped the whiteboard clean a few times to make sure.

  And then she dragged the unconscious Yanni by the leg down to the hall.

  The End