Craig Dirgo
The Einstein Papers
For my father, Lt. Colonel Earl Dirgo —
an atomic warrior who died too soon
Prologue
"It can't…," Albert Einstein started to say, "it's so…" Then he lowered his arm and his fingers relaxed.
The noise of the chalk shattering as it struck the worn green linoleum was not loud. Still, the sound in the otherwise silent
laboratory had the same effect on Einstein as snapping a leather belt on a dog's rump. He jumped. Stepping forward, closer to the blackboard, his left shoe ground a piece of the chalk into dust as he stared at the final equation in shock.
All at once the shock faded away and he felt instantly euphoric. It was the same sensation felt by a gambler hitting the grand prize jackpot after a lifetime of losing. He grinned and stared up at the heavens. He felt a welcome peace he had never felt before. The feeling was electrifying, instantaneous, and completely unexpected. The hair on the back of Einstein's neck stood straight out. This was immediately followed by a tingling sensation that grew quickly until his entire scalp felt as if it were on fire. Einstein shook his head, then turned it slightly sideways and stared at his final notation once again.
The last symbol jumped from the blackboard as if lit by a huge spotlight. Several minutes passed as Einstein's mind fought to accept the reality of what had finally been accomplished.
He blinked and continued staring at the equation on the blackboard. Almost without thought, he reached in his pocket, removed a box of wooden kitchen matches, and struck one against the side of the box. It flared instantly, tingeing the air with a sulphur smell as the flame grew larger. He held the burning match poised in the air in his right hand. With his left he removed his ancient meerschaum pipe from the pocket of his trousers.
Frozen in place, the match burned slowly down as Einstein stood mesmerized, staring at the blackboard. Seconds passed until the last remnant of the flame licked the tip of his finger, breaking his concentration. Flicking the match back and forth to extinguish what little flame remained, he tossed it over his shoulder toward an ashtray already overflowing with spent pipe tobacco that sat on a long wooden table parallel to the blackboard.
Opening the box and lighting a second match, Einstein touched this to the top of the pipe, then drew deeply through the stem. Blowing the smoke through his mouth, he took a few steps, then sat down behind the long table and leaned back in an old leather chair. And then he smiled again.
The final and most difficult part of the puzzle that Einstein called the Unified Field Theory was discovered on the second day of August, during the last month of World War II. The solution he had sought for decades surrendered itself to him at just past three in the afternoon.
Just prior to the eve of the Great Depression, in 1929, Einstein had delivered his first paper on the theory. Now, sixteen long years later, the physicist was a rapidly aging man of sixty-six. The last few years, as the aches and pains of old age grew stronger, he began to fear he might leave this earth without ever solving the theory. The last four years had passed without Einstein making any noticeable progress, and he had become discouraged. But he had forged ahead — somehow confident he was on the right track. He was nothing if not patient.
And then, like an epiphany revealed to the faithful, the answer had made itself clear. His face remained in a smile of triumph as he stared at the solution again. Einstein laughed, at first to himself, a chuckle really, but this was soon followed by a loud, raucous belly laugh. He wiped a tear of joy from his eye.
It was all so uniquely obvious.
Rubbing the side of his nose with the tip of his finger, he stared again at the blackboard. Just at that instant a shaft of sunlight burst from behind the clouds outside. A single beam shot through the window of his laboratory as if it were a beacon from the heavens. The beam lit the dust hanging in the air, a visible legacy to Einstein's refusal to allow the cleaning people to violate his inner sanctuary. His pipe smoke rose toward the beam, mixing with the dust and deflecting the light.
For a moment Einstein experienced complete clarity of thought as he stared at the fruit of his years of labor etched in chalk on the blackboard. Then, placing his pipe in a briar rack on the table, he rose from the chair. He walked the few steps to the couch in his office and lay down, pulling a light blanket folded on the edge of the couch across his body. In seconds he was sound asleep.
He dreamed no dreams that afternoon.
When he awoke from his nap he walked home and ate dinner. He told no one, not even those closest to him, of the discovery he had just made.
Einstein spent the following day locked in his laboratory carefully rewriting the complete series of equations onto three fresh blackboards. Then, without pausing for even a moment of rest, he spent the next forty-eight hours testing and retesting his complex formulas and equations, attempting to find a flaw. By the third day the exact same conclusion had been reached.
Shaking his head in amazement, Einstein sat in his worn leather chair once again. The physicist felt ecstatic that the Unified Field Theory was at long last solved. His knowledge that the theory had at last been proven, that his years of work were not in vain, was a defining moment of personal triumph.
In the rarefied world in which Einstein worked, the answers he sought never revealed themselves easily. Even so, the Unified Field Theory had consumed a great deal of his life, more than any other problem he had sought to solve. Rising from his chair, he committed the solution to memory, then began erasing the secret from the blackboards.
"I shall go sailing now," he said under his breath as the last equation disappeared from the board.
Satisfied the grand puzzle to the universe was at last completed, he decided to reward himself with a rare day away from his laboratory. When he reached the door he paused and stared back at the now blank blackboards.
"Yes," he said to himself again, "a sailing trip is in order." The sixth of August, 1945, dawned warm, with bright clear skies, in Princeton, New Jersey. The sun creeping over the horizon signaled the beginning of what promised to be an idyllic summer day. Waking without the benefit of an alarm clock, Einstein rose slowly from his bed. He rubbed his hands across his wrinkled face, a face that was easily one of the most recognizable in the world. It was graced with a bushy white mustache, a bulbous nose, and eyes that looked upon the world with a curiosity that age had not diminished. His hair was long, straight, and stood away from the scalp as if electrified. A distinct lack of physical exercise had given him a thickness in the midsection, as is often the case with older men, but overall his health was still quite good. Other than smoking a pipe, his only unhealthy habit was a propensity to overwork himself. Dressed only in tattered boxer shorts, Einstein looked out the small dormer window of his upstairs bedroom. The rising sun shot across his lawn, the golden rays forming a blinding arc across the dew-dampened grass. The beams of sunlight broken by the shrubbery surrounding his yard looked to Einstein like the fingers of God himself. He smiled at the thought, then slowly stepped from the window.
Caring little about fashion, he donned the same clothing he had left on the floor at the foot of his antique wooden bed the night before. He pulled on the same pair of wrinkled tan pants, with the same worn black suspenders hanging down, then zipped up his fly and snapped the pants closed. Donning yesterday's shirt, once white but now a yellowish color from repeated washings, he absent-mindedly fastened the buttons crookedly, one hole too high, then pulled the suspenders across his shoulders. He tucked his shirt in, but carelessly left one of the tails partially out. Sitting on a worn chair, he pulled on a pair of dingy socks and laced up his worn brogans. Rising slowly from the chair, he stretched his arms to the ceiling and took several deep breaths.