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Chapter 2

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Cemone’s fifth year at Oxford was her busiest by far. She knew this by recalling the times she looked at her modified 1950 Omega pocket watch—a gift from her father. The watch held a positively Pavlovian effect on her: whenever she found herself running behind, she would pull out the watch to see how late she was. The watch would remind her of her father, making her grin, and thus reinforce her constant delays. In an average year, Cemone would happily look at her watch seventy-nine times. In 2004 alone, she had looked at this watch over 600 times.

If she were any other student, Cemone would have been suspended or expelled after her first year. However, she was not any other student. From the earliest age, Cemone had demonstrated an intellect that grew exponentially: so much so that the girl didn’t need calendars or days to measure her age. Instead, she used complementary adjectives. As a child she was considered “gifted,” then a “prodigy,” when she reached her teens it was “summa cum laude,” then “genius,” and then finally in womanhood it was “doctor”—a title she found as meaningless as it was expensive.

Nevertheless, it was because of this latest title that Cemone had become much tardier than usual. It was in her seventh year that she was earning her second doctorate, making her the greatest young mind in 2004—a fact that the faculty of the physics department continually reminded themselves while waiting to conduct her final oral examination, for which Cemone was twenty-eight minutes late, having spent her time procrastinating with internet videos (cats and laughing babies), rather than getting ready to leave her home. When she finally came running through the large oak doors of the physics department’s largest lecture hall, the crowd of faculty members seemed more agitated than usual, due either to the twenty-eight-minute delay or the unusual presence of 100 or more annoying spectators in the 300-seat lecture hall. Cemone stood in shock at the sheer volume of people in the room: so many people that she wondered if she were in the right place. Only when Cemone saw Dr. Cart, nestled in a formidable line composed predominantly of men in button-up shirts and quirky ties, did she realize that she was indeed in the right venue. He and his neighbors were responsible for the actual review of her work. In the political realm of academia, they were the jury and executioners. Behind them sat the sea of educated spectators who, while docile, seemed bloodthirsty to Cemone. She quickly panicked as she made a beeline to her old professor.

“Doctor, why are there so many people here?” Cemone asked. “This is meant to be a small affair.” The old doctor smiled as he watched his student nervously twitch in front of the large crowd. Dr. Cart’s smile was a notable trademark. Whenever people came to the institution and needed to find him, they needn’t search by name; instead, they needed only to search for his grin in faculty pictures according to a verbal description of how, whenever he smiled, his gray moustache would curve upward in a way that most found almost impossible to ignore. It almost resembled a little gray hill under his nose.

“It still is, Cemone. After word got out about your viva, almost every academic begged to be a part of the examination. All of these people are doctors in some field of physics or astronomy.”

“Is this really necessary?” Cemone whined. “The last time we did this I only had to fend off the three of you. Now you’re telling me I have to argue with the entire room?”

“The last time we did this, you were twenty years old, and forty minutes late. Now your three years older, and twenty-eight minutes late; you’ve grown considerably. I’m sure you’ll be able to handle a few questions. Besides, your spectators are hungry for a lecture. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“That’s easy for you to say. This is practically the Spanish Inquisition. I’m completely outnumbered.”

“Yes, you certainly are. But you were also outnumbered the first time. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Cemone wanted to say something pithy, but felt stupefied at the tiny gray hill on Dr. Cart’s face. It usually accompanied good things for those that saw it, or so said the superstitions of the undergrads.

“Can we move this along, Isaac?” asked one of the many professors behind Dr. Cart. “We’ve been here for over half an hour now.”

The old man nodded at Cemone and patted her on the shoulder. “I think it’s time to start,” he said. Cemone shook her head, Dr. Cart nodded. She shook again and he nodded again. She did this a third time. “Cemone!” Finally she rolled her eyes, took a deep breath, and walked toward the front of the lecture hall. The room fell silent as she approached the podium. Finding her place behind the oak lectern with protruding mic, she took another deep breath.

“Hello. Today I will be explaining my work in theoretical superposition calibration—a otherwise known as spatial destiny.” The crowd moved forward as she announced her topic. Cemone forced a smile at their intrigue, and began.