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By Root 618 0

over, and slapped it against the pile on his desk. With his other hand, he reached into a drawer and pulled out a cheap ballpoint pen, snapping it in two with his thumb. From his pocket he retrieved a pair of cuticle scissors and cut into the refill cartridge. Kloska jerked backward to avoid the splash of ink, which landed mostly, but not entirely, in a sloppy pattern across the scrap paper on Cepeda’s desk. “We have here a seemingly random series of splotches, but if we wanted, we could figure out an equation for a curve that ran through every one of these dots. These random dots, in other words, can be described with math. This is also true of the physical universe, and this is where you have the chicken and egg question of creation. Which came first? The dots or the math that describes them?”

Kloska sensed the onset of a patronizing tone as well as a minor smirk across the professor’s lips. This time, he felt like he deserved it.

“In a modern context, the Pythagorean concept of harmonia could represent a mathematical description of creation,” Cepeda said. “A theory of everything, with applications across all the sciences, and the humanities, as well. Pythagoras symbolized it with the number ten. The decad.” He tapped the ten dots of the tetraktys he’d drawn. “The sum of everything. You and me and the universe and all the gods together.”

“The gods?” Kloska said.

Cepeda paused and drew a satisfied breath. “What is religion except for a layperson’s theory of everything? In fact, some call Pythagorean thought the ‘religion of science.’ That’s because Pythagoras was the first to claim that numbers were infallible. That two plus two always equals four. But we can’t prove that. It’s faith, based on observation. I can calculate the exact location of Venus relative to the sun. I can calculate its orbit and its speed and tell you exactly where Venus will be three days from now. Three months from now. All of science depends on such calculations, done properly, always providing an accurate result.”

“And don’t they?” Kloska said.

“Almost always.” Cepeda took a long draw on his cigarette. “The math I use to explain the forces holding together the planets in galaxies can’t be used to explain the forces holding together protons and neutrons in atoms. Little tiny objects act very differently from big ones—the math just doesn’t sync—and we don’t know why. As a result, physicists are desperate to find their own theory of everything, something that would explain both heavens and atoms together. Einstein was obsessed with it. Because to admit that numbers are fallible is for a scientist to have a crisis of faith.

“In fact, some say scientists are often no better than creationists who just ignore the fossil record because the Bible tells them the earth is only six thousand years old. Some say that when confronted with evidence that challenges the basic tenets of our blind, Pythagorean faith in numbers, we scientists simply ignore it. We say it can’t be or insist that someday someone will figure it out. That someday someone will bring those pesky neutrons and electrons and quarks back in line.” He laughed. “Truth is, up until the point that science becomes predictive, science is religion.”

“And that’s what Marlena Falcone was after? Proof of God?”

Cepeda made an uncertain gesture with his hand. “I might argue that the only way to prove or disprove the existence of God is through math. Some Pythagoreans believed the discovery of harmonia would help them achieve immortality of the soul. But God or no, a theory of everything would produce a thunderstorm of practical applications, not just theological ones. Medical science. Physics. Robotics. Cryptography. The military applications alone are enough to keep me up at night. Whether you think it has anything to do with the afterlife or not, whether you think this is just an academic, intellectual exercise, a great financial windfall awaits the person who can unite the whole universe—large and small, macro and micro—using math.”

Bobby still didn’t understand what any of this was about exactly,