Embry On Holiday: Prologue 2

Embry sat on a surprisingly clean double bed at a roadside motel. He remembered passing places like this over the years, regarding sparse parking areas with modest vehicles. He had wondered who stayed there and made assumptions based on the fact that they were usually very cheap, only one floor, quick room entry from the parking lot, and well curtained windows which afforded a good view of the road. He had a moment to realize he had been right about the conditions which necessitate patronage of such establishments.

In front of him was a small table which he had pulled close to the bed, having no other seating options. Granola bar wrappers, scrap papers, and a half eaten bag of chips festooned the surface along with some empty energy drink bottles. A cash only lifestyle leads to some questionable eating habits. Still, he was grateful that most gas stations and a few pawn shops maintained a spirit of anonymity even in such a digital age. He had a substantial amount of money in his checking account but he dare not access it except as a last resort.

In the center of the table was what would have looked like a shoebox were it not for its plain wooden construction. Embry pulled it closer to him, the table shifting under its deceptively heavy weight. He lifted the lid firmly to unseat the crudely fitted dull gray metal that lined each side. Inside were two mylar lined bags, one of which he opened to reveal a plain, elegantly shaped boxed metallic frame. Any shape would have done the trick but Givens Embry had a penchant for design and anything he had time to build always had the feel of a 1990s Sharper Image catalog. He had taken some ribbing from students over this, but he typically responded by saying he was sorry that they didn’t witness the peak of Western Civilization. It was a joke, on its face at least. A square frame of flat gray metal rods held a precise suspension of wires woven like string art between small, shiny hex bolts.

From the second bag he pulled a similarly made item but slightly smaller. He slid the second box neatly into the front of the first. In the empty center a twisted shape containing a small circular image began to appear as if coming into focus. The second frame nested into place with a click and Embry held it up to one eye, looking through a hole no larger than a dime at a fascinating, kaleidoscopic expanse. Shapes and colors overlapped and spun, resolving themselves into objects, structures, whole worlds. As he gazed into it he saw a beautiful, transitory reality. No matter what he saw he couldn’t escape the odd sensation that it wasn’t actually there until he saw it. These blissful moments were his only pause from a life on the run that he never expected. Mesmerized, he thought back to the moment he first understood what he was seeing.

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Dr Embry started writing as fast as he could in a script that would resemble a foreign alphabet to anyone else. Years of hurried scrawling had led to a near shorthand which was indecipherable to anyone but himself, and even he only had 95% translation rate. Normally he was chasing the images and feelings even as they raced away from his consciousness, but today their echoes seemed to linger.

The fractal shape from the day before was foremost in his mind. It seemed his entire visual recollection was a repeated version of that shape, whether seeing the blooming light of an entire universe forming before his eyes or the subsequent dimming as it snuffed out. At first the vacillations between light and dark, expansion and contraction, were a rapid strobe somehow twisting and folding within itself. It was disorienting, but he was comforted by the distinct sensation of someone being there with him. That someone was looking on with awe, fascination, wonder, and peace. He could sense an underlying stoic resignation, but it was without grief. He wanted to turn his head to see who was there but his neck was thick, his head heavy, and his eyes couldn’t look away from the captivating rhythm before him which was abating ever more as he gazed upon it.

Suddenly the pace slowed significantly and he noticed that each manifestation, each bloom, was not identical to the one before. There was a flurry of rapid activity which was different with each pulse. It froze and he heard a friendly, almost familiar voice.

“In a beginning…”

Embry watched nothing become something. Somehow the shape, The Equation, that he now felt he had known his whole life was repeating itself but in new and unusual ways in rapid succession. He struggled to try and describe the other dimensions of activity that were taking place before him in what was once a void. He somehow knew that he was watching eons, time unfathomable, race before him, yet at the same time seeming slow and deliberate. Beautiful, rhythmic, and flowing.

He saw stars form, galaxies coalesce around black holes and then fall inside themselves, seeming to explode, emerging from another place before falling back again. The cadence was repeating in expressions approaching the infinite, thrilling in their variety and scope. He felt what the presence beside him felt.

Then came the planets, and the life. Green, gold, blue… he stopped trying to identify them and took it all in. He watched a planet, and then a galaxy, fill its interspersed spaces with an algae-like bloom of consciousness. He felt trillions of beings run through all emotions at once. He felt himself weeping for joy.

Then, a change. The stoic aura of his companion clouded into a palpable miasma of weighty sadness. He saw that bloom of life start to darken, contract, grow sickly. And then reality was falling back into itself again. He knew now what he had been seeing, over and over, in rapid succession. His tears of joy became tears of regret, melancholy. Rage.

“You hold the key, Professor Embry. I entrust it to you and to you alone….”

Embry’s phone began to ring. Snapped out of his writing the feeling of being in two places came to a close, and the only proof he had of his feelings just a moment before were the tears still rolling down his cheeks. He sniffed them back and looked at his phone.

It was the academic dean. He let it go to voicemail and saw notifications from several students asking if class was canceled. He forced himself to take a few moments and send messages that he would be taking a personal day.

By the time he finished squaring away his schedule the dream had faded. He read back through his scratched notes but was unable to call into his mind, and more significantly his heart, the depth of what he had experienced. The only thing that lingered, spinning in its intricate convolutions which always returned to its home appearance, was the shape of that ultimate equation.

Embry returned to his study and started to pore over his notes again. Now that he knew it so well, this fractal oddity, it was everywhere. In a moment a thought struck him,. He went out into his garage and rifled through the several boxes that held his entire childhood. He found what he was looking for. In his early teenage years Embry had been obsessed with string art creations, the act of using straight lines in planned proportions to create interesting optical illusions of curves and circles.

He was unsurprised to see an indication of the formula hidden within its dusty threads. Embry pushed and pulled a few strings here and there, snipped a few and restrung a few more. He felt more than saw a focal point begin to resolve itself, creating a dim but appreciable glow. In the center of the framed board a pinpoint flash popped, snapping the strings and leaving him staring at a singed, felt covered board. He smiled in spite of the smell of his slightly burnt eyebrows.