So that was what created the force fields! Even though atoms contained almost nothing but empty space, these electric charges caused a repulsive force between neighboring atoms, just the way the poles of two magnets repelled each other. At the same time, they created an electric force of attraction to bind atoms together and to pull multiple atoms together to form a molecule. The strength of the bond between atoms determined whether the matter was solid, liquid, or gas. Liquids and solids could move freely through gases, but solids couldn’t encroach on the space occupied by other solids. The electric fields produced structure from mostly empty space, and these structures combined to form larger structures. These fields were the glue that bonded solids tightly together. Saeko’s elbow didn’t pass through the table thanks to the powerful electromagnetic forces at work in the quantum world.
Saeko’s father was delighted by Saeko’s explanation.
“Very good. That’s basically it. There’s just one other thing. The elementary particles that make up matter, like quarks and electrons, are classified as fermions. They’re characterized by the fact that no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. It’s called the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and it serves to maintain the structure of matter.”
Saeko wasn’t sure she understood, but she made a mental note to look up the term “fermion” later.
“The universe works much the same way. Let’s say the sun is a ball measuring ten centimeters in diameter. The earth would orbit at a distance of ten meters, and it would be about a millimeter in diameter, like a sesame seed. About 400 meters from the ball you’d find Pluto, the planet with the outermost orbit. And that gives you a basic idea of the size of the solar system. See? Just imagine a circle with a radius of 400 meters with a ten-centimeter ball in the center. From there, the closest star would be Proxima, of the Centaurus Constellation, approximately 2,500 kilometers away. Between our solar system and that star, there’s nothing but emptiness.”
Saeko’s father paused, giving his daughter time to grasp the scale of the universe surrounding the sun.
“What do you think? Both the universe and our little world are pretty empty, huh?”
Saeko felt a wave of uneasiness. The structure of the world seemed surprisingly tenuous when she considered how riddled it was with empty space.
Saeko’s father was always trying to show her how important it was to understand the mechanisms governing her world. He reasoned that knowing those mechanisms would enable her to overcome obstacles and make better decisions in challenging situations.
Saeko reflected on these lessons from her father as she pored over physics texts, taking notes. She was so absorbed that she didn’t notice the passage of time or realize that she was hungry. A satisfying feeling of exhaustion alerted her to the fact that her brain needed nourishment. Time for a break. Saeko headed downstairs for a snack.
She took the elevator to the first floor and had a sandwich and cup of coffee in the library cafeteria. Cutting across the lobby on her way back to the reading room, Saeko noticed the newspaper and magazine racks that occupied more than half of the shelf space.
Condensed editions of each month’s news lined the walls, twelve per year, an archive of incidents past. Saeko’s gaze gravitated naturally towards the volume marked August 1994. Telling herself it would be a good break from the technical tomes she had been scouring, Saeko pulled down the volume and sat down on a sofa to rifle through its pages. Almost unconsciously, her fingers turned to August 22, 1994—the day her father had disappeared. The local news section had run a major story about the arrest of a kidnapper who had abducted a five-year-old girl. Saeko remembered the incident clearly — the place where the ransom was to have been exchanged had been close to their apartment. It had been all over the TV news as well, and Saeko recalled half-listening to the coverage that day while eating the boxed lunch she’d picked up on the way home from cram school. Skimming the local section of the newspaper was the perfect way to jog her memory as to what sort of day it had been, and what incidents had taken place. Apart from the kidnapping, there had been a food poisoning scandal at a luxury hotel, and tidings from a provincial city where the residents were having problems with an organized crime syndicate. When the news ended, Saeko had continued watching television. It was easy to find the name of the program she’d watched in the TV listings. The names of all the old programs from that era brought a wave of nostalgia. A pop music program called “Music Parade” occupied the eight o’clock slot of the station where Hashiba worked.
Saeko remembered how hungrily she had watched the program, taking notes to learn the names and songs of popular artists. As she skimmed the list of artists appearing on the show that night, their hit songs began to come back to her. She remembered the melodies, but only bits and pieces of the lyrics.
She had been so ensconced in the program, she hadn’t noticed the time. Eight o’clock came and went. Only when the program ended and the clock read nine did Saeko realize that something was amiss. When her father was away on business, he called her every evening at eight o’clock without fail. But that night, the phone hadn’t rung.
“Hey, Sae! How’s everything going?”
As Saeko now imagined her father’s voice on the line, she felt a stab of longing and hopelessness, and her eyes welled with tears.
She looked up from the newspaper, changing her posture and her train of thought, and waited for the rush of sadness to pass. Given that her father hadn’t called at eight o’clock that night, something must have had already happened to him.
She scanned the rest of the local news pages for anything that might relate to her father’s disappearance but didn’t find anything of promise.
She turned to the morning newspaper from the next day — August 23rd. The first thing that met her eye was an article about a plane crash over the North Atlantic Ocean. “On August 22nd at 4:15 p.m., after departing from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, United Airlines Flight 323 crashed in the North Atlantic Ocean. All 515 passengers and crew members are thought to have been killed …”
It came as a shock to Saeko that the fact that a major plane crash had taken place on the same day as her father’s disappearance had slipped by her. She had been so caught up in her concern for her father that she’d been completely oblivious to anything else.
Of course, there was nothing in the paper about her father’s disappearance.
Saeko closed the heavy volume in her lap and laid her head against the back of the sofa, in the same pose she’d assumed a moment ago to fight back tears.
Even with her mind flooded with memories of her father, a certain word kept nagging at her brain, as if it had become imprinted on her mind.
Though the blinds were closed, the afternoon sun was strong, and it was much warmer inside today than it had been the night before. The rays of sunlight that streamed through the slats made thin stripes on the wall, like a spectrogram.
Sun.
That was the word that caught in Saeko’s brain. Perhaps she’d seen it printed in the bound newspaper collection just before she’d snapped it closed, or maybe it was because she’d spent the entire morning reading about the universe and solar system. In any case, the word “sun” loomed large in Saeko’s mind.
She reopened the volume to the same page as before, scanning the local news pages of the day after her father’s disappearance from beginning to end. Finally, she spotted what she was looking for. Just below the list of winning lottery numbers was a chart that gave the high and low temperatures of the previous day in various parts of Japan. Just to the left of that spot was a tiny article, only about the quarter of the size of a standard piece. No wonder she had almost missed it.