The Orthogonal Galaxy (3 page)

It was always the way
Professor Zimmer treated others. He was naturally complimentary,
and in spite of being one of the world’s greatest intellects was
never condescending. Few ever doubted his intentions, for in the
well-established career and character which he had developed, there
was never any reason why he should ever have to ingratiate himself
to anyone. And certainly not to a first-year graduate student from
Kansas.

Before Joram had an
opportunity to fumble for a response to this somewhat embarrassing
recognition, the professor continued, “Mr. Anders, I suppose that
you will be able to tell me the distance from our own Sun to
Proxima Centauri.”

“
4.2 light years,
Sir.”

Zimmer whistled lowly
through his lips. “So that means that if I could travel at the
speed of light from Earth, I would arrive at the nearest of these
thousands of stars in just 4.2 years?”

“
Naturally,” responded
Joram somewhat conversationally now.

The professor thought for
a moment. “Are there any rest stops along the way?” More
laughter.

“
Mr. Anders,” implored the
professor. “Why should I care about Proxima Centauri, if I could
never practically travel there to see it?”

“
Sir, there is much we can
and have learned from the stars without having to travel to them,”
responded Joram. “Besides, I thought the race was on to discover
the means of interstellar travel.”

“
Are you referring to all
of the warp drive nonsense that the media is so colorfully pitching
these days?” Professor Zimmer stared inquisitively at
Joram.

Slowly responding to the
professor’s question, Joram refused to commit an opinion on the
matter, although he was certainly very opinionated and excited at
the hopes for interstellar travel. “I’m not sure about the details
or the validity of all of these projects, Professor. But it does
seem like every scientist in the country is in hot pursuit of
interstellar travel these days. Somebody must be thinking that it’s
possible.” Joram paused to weigh his next words, but emboldened by
the excitement of the discussion, he breached his better judgment
anyway. “What do you think of interstellar travel,
Professor?”

Before Zimmer could begin
to formulate a response to that question, the door in the back of
the room opened up, allowing a flood of sunlight to penetrate the
room. Every student looked back to see a man enter the room. Joram
squinted at the silhouette but didn’t recognize the man. He did
suspect that he was another professor, judging by the whiteness of
his hair—at least that little bit which remained on the sides of
his rather bald pate—not to mention the fact that the conservative
style of his attire was similar to that of Professor Zimmer. The
man and Professor Zimmer exchanged nods and smiles knowingly while
the man allowed the door to shut. He remained standing along the
back wall, while the students returned to their previous
postures.

“
Let me answer that
question in the following way, Mr. Anders,” began the professor.
“During your course of investigation into the astronomy program
here, you may have become aware of a little research project of
mine involving the possibility of parallel star systems. Do you
suspect that I am engaged in this activity, because of an
overwhelming stack of evidence suggesting that parallel universes
do indeed exist?”

The professor shook his
head, and then appearing to address the man in the back of the
room, he continued in a more animated manner of hand gestures and
body language. “Contrary to popular opinion, living a life of
science isn’t always about facts and evidence. Many very important
discoveries have been made more from the hunch and imagination of
the scientist than the data with which he is presented.”

His attention returned to
Joram as he took two steps towards him. “Mr. Anders. Let me answer
your question with a question. Do you think I would be engaged in
such a research project, if I believed that interstellar travel
would prove to be impossible? Do you think I would want to make a
discovery of a so-called parallel solar system, and then not be
able to travel there to study that star and its orbiting
bodies?”

Joram’s question was
answered.

At this, the professor
paused for a few seconds, and the campus chime was heard ringing
from some distant point. Joram looked at his watch. What? Could the
entire 50-minute lecture be over already? Why, certainly no more
than five or ten minutes had elapsed.

But he was wrong, and he
knew it. Along with the rustle of items being haphazardly returned
to backpacks and the hands of his analog wrist watch, Joram knew
that his first lecture from Professor Carlton H. Zimmer had
officially adjourned.

…

Professor Zimmer waited in
the front of the room while all of his astronomy students left the
planetarium. After the last one exited the room, he made his way up
the stairs of the theater while the man in the back of the room met
him half way down.

The man greeted Professor
Zimmer warmly with a firm handshake. “Carlton, nice to see you. How
was the trip?”

“
Oh, it was fine,
Ballard,” answered the professor. “But, it’s good to be back
home.”

“
I’ll be eager to see your
official report, Carlton, but how about a preview. Any news from
Chile?”

“
Well, it was a busy
summer down there for us, but we continued to narrow down our list
of target stars in the South. We had about 800,000 stars when we
started this summer, and have narrowed that list down to just under
a half million. But that’s still too many to start targeting any
data collection efforts using the Kepler3 telescope. I do believe,
however that we have a darned good team assembled down there to
continue their work and should whittle that list down by 50% before
I return next summer.”

At this, Zimmer thought
he’d detected a slight frown from his longtime friend and Dean of
Astronomy at the University. “Ballard, you know that this is the
proverbial needle in the haystack. These things don’t conclude
overnight.”

“
If there is a needle,
Carlton,” countered Ballard with an apparent allusion to his
disbelief in Zimmer’s research project.

Changing the subject,
Professor Zimmer offered, “Hey, how is your son doing on the Star
Transport team at the Jet Propulsion Lab?”

“
I just had dinner with
him over the weekend. He’s pretty stressed right now.” Ballard
gladly accepted the change of direction. “He mentioned a pretty big
design review coming up, and he believes that his team will get
highly scrutinized this time. Although, I must say, if your
research is the needle in the haystack, then I think this
interstellar transportation stuff is the Holy Grail. Yes, I know…
the theories abundantly support the concept of travel at the speed
of light, and yet, I have a hard time swallowing the practicality
of such a maneuver.”

“
I believe you may have
heard a similar doubt from one of the grad students just a few
moments ago,” smiled Zimmer.

“
Yes,” chuckled Ballard
with a playful wink. “It seems you are having a harder time winning
converts to your cause these days, Carlton. These kids these days
come in here with their heads the size of Betelgeuse. In the old
days, they used to come in respecting their professors. Now, they
enter thinking they know more. But, just as will be the case of
Betelgeuse, their education will explode like a supernova if they
are not careful.”

“
Do you know who that
student was?” asked Zimmer impatiently.

Ballard looked back at the
door, as if he might still be able to catch a glimpse of the
student walking away from the room. “No, I only saw him from the
back. Should I know him?”

“
That was Anders.” Carlton
lowered his voice as if worried that somebody, perhaps Joram
himself, would overhear the conversation.

Ballard’s look turned
serious. “You mean, Joram Anders?”

Carlton nodded.

“
The kid from
Kansas?”

More nodding.

“
The same kid who had the
highest astronomy entrance exam of any entering grad student in the
last decade?”

A final nod convinced
Ballard that Joram Anders was indeed a real person, and not just a
figment of his imagination. He’d always had a very hard time
believing the results on Joram’s exam.

“
Well then, I’ll be very
interested in getting to know this young man better.”

“
Me too!” exclaimed
Professor Zimmer.

Looking at his watch,
Ballard noted, “Gotta run. I have an appointment with the NASA
folks in a little bit. Hey, I have a free hour this afternoon at
four o’clock. Can you meet me at my office? There is a lot to catch
up on, and I want to hear about the new telescope down at Cerro
Tololo.”

Carlton looked at his
watch. “Sure, I’ll stop by at four.”

…

Kath and Joram emerged
from the planetarium squinting from the bright Sun that was just
starting to lower in the sky. He shielded his eyes with his hands,
while she fumbled around her backpack searching for her
sunglasses.

“
Well,” Kath said casually
as she put on the dark sunglasses. “It looks like my study partner
selection instincts have served me well yet once again.”

“
What do you mean?” Joram
asked while twisting his head to see her face. It was as much an
attempt to look away from the blinding Sun as it was to interpret
the expression on her face.

“
Let’s see,” Kath said
playfully, and then lowered her voice. “Such amazing credentials
you have, Mr. Joram Anders, from Kansas.” Returning to her normal
voice, she explained, “I seem to recall Zimmer saying something of
that nature, didn’t he?”

Joram blushed. “I would
hardly consider myself the teacher’s pet just yet. And just look at
my note tablet. It’s still perfectly blank!” Joram was appalled and
disappointed in his lack of note-taking on the first day of class.
“By the way, did you see any look on his face while we were talking
at the beginning of class?”

“
No,” she said honestly.
She was among the rest of the students focused on synchronizing the
course textbooks to their Readers at the time that Joram had
spotted Zimmer looking their way.

“
So, you’re from Kansas,”
Kath changed the subject conversationally. “I’ve never been
there.”

“
Not surprising,” Joram
admitted. “There’s not a whole lot there, you know. Just miles and
miles of farmland.”

“
Did you grow up on a
farm?” asked Kath.

“
Yeah. My father is a
dairy farmer.”

“
He must be so proud of
you, coming here to CalTech,” Kath boasted.

“
Yes, but I’m not sure
that I convinced him that CalTech is any better than Wichita
State,” Joram smiled upon recollecting his conversations with his
father about why Joram had to go so far away.

“
He kept asking me, ‘Are
there any more stars over Southern California than there are here
over the farm?’”

Joram enjoyed sharing the
laugh with Kath as they strolled along the winding paths and
well-manicured landscape of the university. Conversation came
naturally to the new friends, and Joram found out much about the
Southern California native, who seemed to have many interests as
well as the energy to keep up with them all. She was a regular at
the gym early in the mornings, unless the conditions were just
right to go surfing. As an avid tennis buff, she placed fifth in a
state-wide tournament in high school. Her father was a chemical
engineer who spent most of his career working on alternative energy
sources. She was not ashamed to admit that she was proud of his
accomplishments and was quick to mention how he had helped
transition the world away from its addiction to non-renewable
sources of energy.

In turn, Kath was amazed
to discovery that Joram had a deep love for astronomy and had
amassed quite a wealth of knowledge in the field. She began to
understand that it was more than just the Kansas connection that
compelled Professor Zimmer to quickly recall the name of Joram
Anders. She was enamored at his description of life on the farm. It
was so different from her own upbringing, and she could tell that
some of Joram’s physical features stemmed from his time on the
farm. His golden, almost leathered complexion spoke on the amount
of time he spent in the blazing sun. His broad shoulders and barrel
chest were certainly the result of real work, and not that of so
many other weight-lifting, muscle-pumping goons she’d met time and
again at the gym. If only she’d had a dollar for each nauseating
pick-up line from some arrogant muscle-flexer who assumed that
every woman owed them for their existence. Of course, even she
wasn’t oblivious to how much she enjoyed being attended to at the
gym, and it was a fun hobby of hers to record and review her little
book of pick-up lines. Even so, it still irritated her to think
that these guys really believed that they could “charm” a girl
through such triviality. It was just so offensive to her
intelligence.

At the end of their
conversation, Joram was simply amazed that he had spent an hour and
a half with her on the patio of the Red Door Café, where Joram
nursed his lemonade and Kath finished off two iced coffees. Where
had the day gone? His first astronomy lecture had flown by, and now
his acquaintance with Kath had seemed but a flash.