The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

That’s why advances are usually made by the young. Not because they’re more intellectually agile but because they have less accumulated self-deception.”

Carmen realizes that she is grinning at Kierk. Talking to him feels novel, refreshing, weird.

“Well, whoever makes noticeable progress goes down in history as the next Einstein. Is that what you want?” Carmen had put too much wasabi on her sushi and her eyes begin to water so she dabs at them with her napkin.

“I don’t know. I want that insight, you know? I mean, if I had some inkling, something to go on, some idea for which I could live and die.”

“But by working with Moretti you’ve already contributed. What was that like, anyways? Alex was telling me you basically disproved the very thing you were working on. He must have been so interesting to have as your mentor.”

“We were trying to develop a theory of consciousness so working with him was . . . intense. When Gertrude Stein met Alfred North Whitehead, she said a small bell went off in her head, informing her that this man was a genius. It only rang once more in her life, and that was when she met Pablo Picasso . . . When I met Antonio Moretti my own bell went off for the first time. It has not rung since.”

“But see, even a disproof is a contribution!” she says. Kierk’s face collapses. “No really,” she continues, “It’s an accomplishment.”

“I don’t think of it that way. It was against my research as well.”

“Then you’re not looking at it right. Listen, when I was in graduate school I did research I didn’t believe in. We didn’t lie or anything, but I’m a coauthor on at least one paper that’s unconvincing even to me. But it was a learning experience.”

“A learning experience? I wasted four years of my life. And the only thing I have to show for it is that I falsified one of the infinite numbers of false theories.”

“You don’t think it will help you if you’re actually looking to come up with something original?”

“Not yet . . . I must have generated and thrown away a dozen theories. I’ve got old notebooks filled with them. If I could . . . if I could find a solid surface on which to stand I could lift the earth from its axis. But I can’t.”

A waitress sets down a hot bottle of sake and Carmen pours it out into the little ceramic cups.

“So, where does that leave you, Archimedes? Back with us mortals?” She raises her cup.

“Me, I don’t know what I’m going to do. So fuck it, you know, I can find something else. I can be happy doing something else. I’ll be fine.” He grins widely as they touch the rims of their little trembling cups and drain the hot liquid, tilting their heads back. Kierk sets his cup down and stares out the window, and for a moment Carmen thinks his profile looks infinitely sad.

But she herself is happy to be sitting across from him, in this program, having discussions that stimulate her. It is moments like this that she wonders what the other Carmen would be doing, had her mother gotten her way. Who would be sitting across from her? It was the closest possible world to her, so close that occasionally she felt she could reach out and breach the barrier to the universe abutting this one, and that one day, on waking, she might slip streams into the other, into some different but similar bed somewhere nearby in the city, unaware that she was a point discontinuity in a continuous curve.

Kierk and Carmen’s phones buzz simultaneously: a group text from Alex. Carmen’s glad that an inchoate social group is forming. She’s turning twenty-seven this year, so she, Alex, and Kierk are all around the same age. This summer has been the loneliest she has experienced in the city since those long-ago days when she was an undergrad at Columbia. Recently all her close girlfriends had left New York after getting their PhDs, scattered to the far corners of academia. And so, despite all her changes, the work she’s put into her close friendships, her self-perspective and self-consciousness which have been carefully cultivated since her early twenties, Carmen is alone again.

Laughter as they both read: TIME TO GET DRUNK NERDS!

Mike pushes the hood on his Harvard sweatshirt back, watches Kierk and Carmen walking down to the corner of Union Square to where some of the Crick Scholars are supposed to meet. Mike had gotten here five minutes ago but has been hanging back, not wanting to be the first to arrive. Watching Kierk and Carmen he wonders if the two are sleeping together yet, and feels like maybe he should have actually intervened in the situation, but at this point he’s just going to pretend he didn’t care in the first place. Plus Kierk already had all that mystique from being the person who had discovered the break-in to the lab. What had that weirdo been doing in the building that late anyways?

Stepping out beyond the shady street corner where he’s been lurking, he waves, then realizes that Alex and Jessica are with them as well. A reevaluation takes place as he watches Jessica laugh at something Alex says.

Apparently this is the full set of Crick Scholars for tonight. Mike has no idea what the others could be doing instead. He hopes they aren’t in lab—a terrifying thought. The five of them head to this bar that Carmen recommended for pool: Amsterdam Billiards. Mike doesn’t like how Carmen and Alex already seem to be the social center of everything, and how they’ve adopted Kierk like a stray puppy. But after talking to Jessica for a while Mike is starting to feel better as he notices that Jessica, as long as Carmen doesn’t stand directly next to her, is very attractive.

While waiting at an intersection Carmen shows off the Band-Aid still on her forearm, and soon