'Tokens?' Laura asked.
'Yes! How did you know? Oh. Psychology, right?' Laura smiled and nodded. 'Well, anyway, he would store those 'tokens' for times when he later revisited the subject. I mean, imagine thoughts so complex as to encompass the entire discipline you've spent your life studying. Suppose, for a moment, that you wanted to encapsulate the whole of psychology, with a certain meaning or logic or formula for every single disputed point, with a resolution from among competing theories for every uncertainty, into one term for use in your thoughts and discussions.'
'Instantiation,' Laura said, finding her voice assuming the low and almost reverent tones with which Paulus discussed Gray. 'The concrete embodiment of an immensely complex concept. You're not suggesting that's possible for a human?'
Paulus shrugged. 'Have you met Joe Gray? The boy was the epitome of a genius. I don't mean your garden- variety high-IQ types. This place is brimming with those.' Paulus wore a warm, genuine smile. 'I mean the transcendent intelligence required to encompass the size of two completely different disciplines. That's the true [missing] sure you know. Your little tests are quite fine for ordinary mortals. But when you try to measure a boy like Joe, well…' He held his hands out, shaking his head. 'True geniuses apply proofs from one science in solving problems in another. Maybe you use physics to make a breakthrough in biology. Or math to solve a chemist's problem.'
'And Joseph Gray had that type of mind?' A look of complete serenity descended on Paulus's face. Laura knew she was not there to him now. He was far away.
'I once saw the most amazing thing.' His voice was prayerful. 'Joe was standing in a corridor of the fine arts building, just standing there. His head was kind of' — Paulus tilted his head—'kind of leaning to one side. He was frozen there, holding his books. People bustled by but he didn't even notice. I walked up to him. Frankly, I was worried. It just didn't look… right. I tapped him on the shoulder, and he looked around at me startled. And then he just took off.' Paulus laughed. 'I was a bit more sprightly back then and I caught up with him in an empty classroom. He was bent over a notebook scribbling furiously. I looked at what he was writing, but it was gibberish to me. Just a page full of formulas — arrays, I think they're called — composed of a variety of symbols that I'd never seen before. I asked him. I said, 'Joseph? Joseph, what are you doing?' He mumbled something about 'Fouer transformations,' something like that, so I just left him there. He was still sitting at that desk scribbling at nine o'clock that night, twelve hours later. I made him go home.'
'What… what are you saying?'
'I'm saying,' Paulus replied, returning to the room and focusing on Laura again, speaking slowly, 'that when Joe looked at art, it sparked storms of abstract mathematical fury!' He sat forward. 'I saw him in the library one day listening to music. I went over to say hello! He…!' Paulus was shaking his head, barely managing to contain what Laura guessed was anger. 'The music set it off, I just know it did. He began speaking and wouldn't stop! He built this gleaming spire of logic, each conclusion seamlessly forming the premise of the next argument! He spoke nonstop for half an hour! Symbols, proofs, reasoning so brutally unassailable that…' Laura was taken aback. Paulus was half out of his seat, his hands pressing down on his desk. 'If only I could have him back.' He sank into his chair, deflated. Exhausted. 'If only I could have written down half of what he said to me in the library that afternoon. God, I would give everything…' Paulus's face was buried now in his hands.
The office was still, and Laura hesitated before breaking the silence.
'What was he saying?'
Paulus held out his hands like a supplicant, palms-up. 'I don't know.' His head was shaking from side to side. 'That's… that's the point. I just don't know!'
After a respectful pause, Laura bid him good-bye. At the door, however, she stopped and turned back. 'What was his proof of Descartes' argument, by the way? How did he connect 'I think' with 'therefore I am'?'
Paulus hadn't moved from where she'd left him. He was too tired. Defeated. He answered in a lethargic voice. 'Joe believed that every person is a world unto himself. What one person experiences can never be said to be the same as what anyone else experiences. All thinking beings, therefore, create and constitute their own world, their own universe. A 'virtual world' he once called it. Yes! A virtual world.' Paulus seemed pleased, reinvigorated at recalling the words. 'I asked him about that later, but he never would talk about it again. That was the way he was. When he was thinking something over, he would talk. But once he had his answer, he was on to something else, leaving the rest of us behind.' He huffed loudly. 'But I think those ideas, in particular — the ones about people's 'virtual worlds'—were to him… almost a… a religion. You see, the maker of each of those 'virtual worlds' is, to Joe, the god of the world they create. Something like that.'
'Everything is relative,' Laura said.
'Bite your tongue! Joe hated relativism. He was very much an absolutist, an objectivist. There is one truth, one moral correctness, and only one.'
'But that's inconsistent.'
'Not to Joe. You see, only some people see the truth, the correctness. Those people whose heterophenomenological worlds — the worlds inside their heads — substantially overlap with the real, objective truth. In your world, you may think yourself to be totally in the right, but it is still valid to measure you by objective standards. You are still either good or evil based on how close the world inside your head compares to the real truth.'
'Meaning he's an egomaniac who thinks he sees the only truth,' Laura said. Paulus cast her a glance that made her instantly regret her slight. 'So, Professor Paulus, why did you say it was a shame? That Gray was brilliant, but it was a shame?'
'Oh, well, he lost interest. He ran through our curriculum two years plus the three summers.' Paulus shook his head. 'If only he had kept at it. If only he had… had written.'
'So he graduated after two years? He got his B.A. at age fifteen?'
Paulus nodded. 'What did he do then?'
Paulus flung his thumb toward the window. 'MIT,' he said as if in explanation of his disappointment.
5
'The greatest waste of human talent I've ever witnessed!' Professor Petry snapped. Laura sat in the spacious office of the chairman of the MIT mathematics department. She watched the man who'd only just settled into his chair rise to pace the floor behind his desk.
'Just couldn't stick with it. Had to go to Wall Street and make money.' His mouth was twisted in a show of contempt. 'I wrote him a few years ago, you know, before all this television nonsense. I told him I would put forward his dissertation and get him his doctorates if he'd just write the damn thing.'
'Doctorates?' Laura asked. 'Plural?'
'Yes!' He tossed his pencil onto the desk. 'I talked to the department heads over in engineering and computer science. They all agreed to an interdisciplinary project of Joseph's choosing, but…'
'You mean he had earned doctorates in math, engineering, and computer science — except for his dissertation? After majoring in philosophy?'
He nodded his head, then sighed. 'Greatest waste I've ever seen.'
'Why's it such a waste?' Laura blurted out, then lowered her voice. 'I mean' — she held her hands out and loosed a burst of air from her lungs that was neither a sigh nor a laugh—'so he wasn't all caught up in the academic rat race. There are other things in life, you know.' The stern-looking man stared at her with knitted brow.
'Other, you know, than…' she began lamely, but then fell quiet and looked away. 'Did… did he reply to your letter?'
Petry snorted and went over to a small side drawer to extract a single sheet of paper. It appeared to be the drawer's only contents.
Looking at it, he read, ''
'May I see it?' she asked, and he handed it to her — holding the edges carefully with his fingertips.
The short text of the letter was typed beneath the bold letterhead
J.G.
