The Meaning of Everything

By Stan Schatt

Does the universe have a purpose?

Brilliant astrophysicist Olivia Wilson has always been different. Tormented for years by the mysterious equations she dreamed as a teenager but never could reproduce when awake, she discovers that the fate of billions of humans and aliens alike depend on her filling in the gaps in her theory and publishing the results before whoever has made multiple attempts to kill her can succeed.

Olivia always scoffed when religious scientists pointed to the statistical improbability of many of the key elements necessary for life on Earth calibrated so precisely and concluded that God must be behind everything. Now she is very close to answering the question of who created everything. When her brother returns from a closely linked multiverse with the woman of his dreams, Olivia’s decision to go public with her discovery becomes very personal because it will impact the very people she loves the most.

What is the meaning of life? Do people have free will to control their destiny? Olivia finally turns to a world famous psychic to learn who or what is pulling humanity’s strings. The Meaning of Everything is a thought-provoking and thrilling roller coaster of a read that includes a visit to a multiverse where a theocracy rules humans and aliens alike and where the Federation of Planets is a frightening reality where billions live in slavery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stan Schatt
• Release date: Jun 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463524091

Stan Schatt

Stan Schatt has held senior management positions with some of the leading global technology research companies including Forrester Research, Computer Intelligence, Giga Information Group, and ABI Research. He holds a PhD from the University of Southern California and an MBA from the American Graduate School of International Management (Now Arizona State University). He has been cited for teaching excellence by USC, the University of Houston, and DeVry Institute of Technology. Schatt is the author of fifty books on a wide range of topics including data communications, telecommunications, green technology, and data networks. He also has published fiction, including mysteries and science fiction.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

A longhaired skateboarder raced around a blind corner while staring at his iPhone and almost collided with the young woman walking in a perfectly straight line toward the Physics building. Leaping off his board, he stumbled forward before planting both feet firmly on the grass and coming to an emergency stop. The young man struggled to maintain his balance much like a drunk leaving a bar at closing time. Embarrassed and clearly annoyed, he turned back in the direction of the woman who never broke stride as she crossed the neatly trimmed grass and shrubbery. He stared at the retreating figure and whistled in apparent recognition that he had almost clipped Olivia Wilson, this year’s sure bet for a Nobel Prize for astrophysics according to Bartleby University’s school newspaper.

Olivia did not even notice the student who almost smashed into her because of her singular focus on a meeting that she feared could have a profoundly negative impact on her career. She entered the brick building without pausing in the lobby to look at the faded solar system mural that still displayed Pluto as a planet before bypassing the elevator and trudging up the stairway toward Marcus Martin’s office on the fourth floor.

She always avoided elevators except when they were absolutely necessary even though her brother Michael teased her mercilessly about it. She concentrated on counting the number of stairs, sixty-six, even though that number never varied. That comforted her because it provided some reassurance that her world made sense. After all, some things never changed and that meant she could depend on the logic and rationality of mathematics in contrast to the unpredictable behavior of people. Her thoughts centered on one very frightening person.

A turban-wearing student looking vaguely familiar hurried down the stairs and brushed against her. He smiled apologetically and nodded in her direction. Olivia gave him a wary smile in return and then added a slight nod because she did not want to be rude. Marcus had told her that some faculty complained she ignored them. Couldn’t they understand that she probably didn’t recognize them because all gray-haired men over fifty looked virtually the same to her? Who was the guy with the turban? Was he a grad student in one of her classes or perhaps a part-time instructor? If so, she couldn’t remember his name. Maybe he was one of Marcus’ postdocs.

Why should she be expected to remember everyone’s name? In the grand scheme of things she deserved a little slack because her mind generally focused on probing the nature of the universe. She had thought about nothing but the equations that now covered her office’s whiteboard since more than a decade ago when she awoke from a dream with only the barest memory of what had been completely fleshed out and perfectly clear to her while she slept. Michael had likened her experience to that of the English poet Samuel Coleridge who staggered awake from a drug-induced dream only to find that he only could capture a small portion of the long poem that he lamented would have been magnificent. She’d have to take her brother’s word for that story because she had always avoided literature classes and never read anything but astrophysics journal articles with one exception, and she wasn’t about to reveal that secret to anyone.

Who had time to read poetry? In much the same way Michael had described Coleridge’s reaction, she knew her equations, perfectly clear in her dream but now painfully partially reconstructed while fully awake, were still far from complete because her whiteboard displayed a hole in her logic enormous enough to house a black hole. That was bad enough, but now she was running late for a meeting with the world authority on string theory that also just happened to double as her department head.

Had she hurt the feelings of some full professor by failing to greet him in the faculty dining room? Marcus Martin should have far more important things to think about than anything she might have done. People couldn’t pick up a magazine or tune to the public television channel without seeing his face. Marcus hosted Universe, the History Channel’s popular show where he explained the cosmos in language the average person could understand. Why had he placed a handwritten note in her departmental mailbox, a missive covered with several red exclamation points that followed a sentence written in all caps demanding that she come to his office at this time when a simple email or voice message would suffice? Who even handwrote messages anymore? It had been many years since she was in high school, but she experienced the same butterflies in the pit of her stomach that she felt whenever Mr. Evans called her into his office at Riverdale High to inquire why she just couldn’t fit in with the other students. Somehow her brother Michael had always blended in while she stood out like an ant in a bowl of white flour.

Olivia entered Marcus’ outer office and saw Mrs. Thompson raise her palm and motion for her to wait. She whispered something into the mouthpiece of her headset before nodding.

He’ll see you now.

Olivia brushed past the receptionist and noticed her face quivering.

He’s really upset, she whispered and then turned her head away as if she feared Marcus would chastise her as a disloyal employee.

The man Time Magazine called Einstein’s heir apparent sat at his desk staring at a newspaper clipping. Olivia glanced at it, but she never had mastered the trick of being able to read text upside down. Even though she was probably the least observant person she knew, Olivia could see that fame had taken its toll because Marcus’s face so often seen on billboards now sagged with the extra weight he’d probably added from too many banquets in his honor. His navy blue suit seemed tighter across his chest now than how she remembered it fitting a few years earlier when she first joined the department. He peered at her over his red-framed glasses while one of his hands gripped a ballpoint and clicked it open and then closed repeatedly. The sound struck her as surprisingly loud. After what seemed like forever, he sighed and spoke in a tone that clearly was a command and not a request.

Please close the door and take a seat.

Olivia’s heart began to beat so quickly that she feared she’d have a heart attack on the spot. He hadn’t spoken to her in the melodious James Earl Jones’ tone that his fans raved about. Instead, he thundered in much the way that a much younger Olivia imagined God used when dictating the Ten Commandments. She complied and sat in the only unoccupied chair in the room, one that faced his desk.

She fidgeted in her seat when she saw telltale signs that Marcus Martin’s famous temper was about to erupt. A vein in his forehead pulsed while his face took on the color of a very ripe tomato.

Rather than sit passively while she waited for the explosion she knew was coming, Olivia went on the offensive. I don’t understand what I could possibly have done to upset you. I haven’t missed a class this term, and I’ve already handed in my grade sheets on time. I’m even smiling at the other faculty members now.

Olivia had planned a much longer speech, but she saw that her words were only making the situation worse.

I saw your picture in a full page ad that the Children’s Welfare Mercy Foundation is running. It quotes you on how wonderful that organization is. You’re no fucking genius no matter how many awards you’ve received. We must have been crazy a few years ago when we made a girl of twenty-seven a tenured full professor. You’re a damned fool! Marcus Martin’s famed bushy eyebrows rose until their corners almost touched.

I don’t understand. When is giving money to help children such a big deal? It’s the least I could do. You should see how sad those kids looked in the photo.

You’re not just anyone who gives money to a cause. You’re the recipient of a McArthur Genius Award and the youngest full professor we’ve ever had. Your name’s on that plaque we sent into space last year, for God’s sake!

It’s my money, and orphans are a good cause. You don’t know what’s it’s like to grow up without parents who love you.

Olivia Wilson’s face grew warm, and she wished she could control her body like one of those yogis she read about. A confrontation with anyone was bad enough, but it was far worse to quarrel with the famed head of Bartleby College’s Astrophysics department and someone she had idolized as a geeky teenager desperately looking for a role model. Despite everything, she was determined not to cry or show any weakness. Astrophysics was virtually an all-boys club, and she wasn’t about to give Marcus a reason to view her as the weaker sex.

Of course you can use your money to help all the sad children you want, but lending your name to a charity for orphans where over ninety percent of the money winds up in the pockets of the people running that racket makes this department and our university look bad. Just promise me you’ll run the names by me of any charities you plan to support before you agree to allow them to use you name in any advertising.

Olivia nodded and Marcus continued talking. She saw his lips move as he gestured with both hands, but she was too upset to hear his words. Finally the man who singlehandedly changed the direction of modern physics and doubled the university’s graduate student enrollment in physics programs seemed to wind down like a clock that had been running much too fast for its own good. He struggled for breath before regaining some semblance of normalcy. He turned his full attention to a report that lay open on his desk. Olivia waited for a moment as the silence grew.

I’ll go now.

Marcus ignored her although she noticed that a vein on his neck still pulsed. Olivia rose, opened the door as softly as she could, and passed Mrs. Thompson whose head was buried in a manuscript. As she went down the stairs, she thought about how quickly Marcus had lost his temper. He exhibited all the classic signs of someone very agitated. His voice had risen even though he had avoided swearing at her. Thankfully, unlike her father, he was an open book that even she could read clearly.

Theodore Wilson’s emotions had always been a mystery to her because he never altered his expression nor raised his monotone voice no matter how dire the situation. Maybe, she thought, things might have been different if her mother had not died while giving birth to her and her brother. Olivia studied the family pictures her Uncle Bill shared with her and saw that her mother’s face clearly conveyed her feelings whether it was joy at her wedding, pride when receiving her graduate degree, or fear when confronted by a snarling German Shepherd. The man standing beside her in all those pictures never smiled or frowned, and his eyes seemed lost in deep thought. Why couldn’t she have been more like Michael? Her brother never seemed to have a problem expressing his emotions or interpreting other people’s emotions. She remembered all the times he had lost his temper and screamed at their father only to have him calmly explain in a monotone that such a response was inappropriate.

She thought again about how Marcus screamed at her as his face turned crin red. Well, at least he couldn’t fire her because she did have tenure. Physics was all she’d known since childhood. Why couldn’t he of all people understand her? Surely he also must have felt like a freak while growing up.

Time’s cover story while focusing on her genius award had described her incredibly rapid journey through college and graduate school and quoted the Dean of Stanford’s graduate school when he learned that her IQ was one of the highest ever recorded. One in a million and a freak of nature, he declared. She was a freak all right. Oh, outside she looked normal enough, but inside it was if God had piled neuron after neuron on the rational side of her brain but neglected to give her the kind of practical knowledge of how to get by in a world that other people took for granted.

Olivia knew it wouldn’t do any good to try to work now even though she sensed she was very close to a breakthrough because she was just too upset to think clearly. Michael probably would be working on a story with a deadline that would make it impossible to talk, and Kelly wouldn’t be coming to meet her for dinner until seven. Why not go for a jog to calm her and get rid of her stress?

Once she proved the feasibility of creating tiny wormholes for teleportation, it would free Earth-bound humanity from the tyranny of near light-speed snail pace travel. She thought of science fiction movies such as Passengers that showed people frozen and stuffed in little compartments for long trips in space. The crypts holding the passengers reminded her of packages of popsicles, or as her best friend Kelly remarked when she grasped the concept of deep-freezing people, peopsicles.  Instead of spaceships filled with humans frozen so they could endure centuries of space travel before being revived upon arriving at their destinations, people would be able to travel to distant galaxies in mere seconds. Rather than worry about overpopulation and declining natural resources, humans could colonize distant planets where they would have plenty of room to grow.

Professor Alfred Lowell had been on a panel with her at the last American Association of Astrophysicists convention and chose that occasion to call her efforts to develop her equations a fool’s errand much like Don Quixote’s quest and warned that she might wind up disrupting a quantum universe and opening a Pandora’s box by making inter-dimensional travel possible to parallel worlds in other dimensions. She smiled as she remembered how Marcus Martin, also on that panel, had turned his considerable verbal guns on Lowell and soon the conference’s audience had joined him in ridiculing the skeptic. Perhaps, Marcus said while he rolled his eyes in ridicule, there would be no need to create a Jurassic Park because travel agencies could offer tours to parallel worlds where dinosaurs still ruled or offer those same dinosaurs package deals that included a stop at Disneyland. If she were on a fool’s errand, at least she didn’t have any competitors who might beat her to publishing the equations. Assuming, of course, that a prestigious journal would even accept such a radical view.

Once she firmed up the math in her equations, others would be able to build the necessary equipment for galactic travel. Imagine being able to prove to her critics that Albert Einstein’s time paradox was interesting but irrelevant. Space travelers would not have to worry about aging more slowly than the loved ones they left on Earth because the time dilation effects would be minimal. No longer would someone travel for forty years at near light speed only to return and find that time had progressed a few hundred years on Earth and that everyone they cared about including their grandchildren and great grandchildren would be long dead.

With a touch of sadness Olivia realized that few people would care if she went on one of those space missions. Her brother had taken the bulk of punishment from her father and left home after high school, joined the Navy SEALs, and never returned to San Diego or spoke again to Theodore Wilson. She knew he loved her, but they lived in two very different worlds and on opposite sides of the country. The tabloid investigative reporter in New York and the theoretical astrophysicist in San Diego had little in common to talk about besides their very difficult shared childhood. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to have a really close relationship with a brother or sister. Well, at least she had Kelly.

Olivia reached the second floor where she locked her office door behind her and closed the shades before opening a file cabinet drawer that she used to store miscellaneous items. On top was a stack of paperback historical romance novels. Their covers displayed women in elaborate gowns and men dressed in clothing from an earlier age. She smiled at this evidence of her guilty pleasure. What would people say if they knew what she read for fun? Maybe life would have been easier for her in the distant past, she mused, because it seemed like it was easier at that time to read people. Then again, though, she wouldn’t have been permitted to be a scientist. Still, it was fun to think about a period of history when there was a prescribed code almost mathematically unwavering for the way men and women treated each other and the language they used. In those days both sexes even had an agreed upon set of definitions for the flowers men sent to women. A maiden didn’t have to guess a knight’s intentions because the gift of a specific flower spelled out his feelings very clearly.  Even better, maidens didn’t have to analyze every word a knight spoke to see if what he said was a sincere expression of his feelings or mere sarcasm.

Life in general and the relations between men and women in particular were far more complicated and confusing now. Maybe Kelly would have some suggestions for how she should handle Frank Miller if he asked her out again. She thought she had been firm but polite the last time when she made it clear she didn’t see any reason why she should go out with him even though he pointed out that they shared a love for theoretical physics and worked in the same department. She thought over their conversation and felt her logic had been impeccable when she laid out four reasons why they shouldn’t date again. Still, he kept finding excuses to visit her office even though his was on the floor above.

On one occasion he startled her by dropping by her home because he said he happened to be in the neighborhood and thought she might like to join him for a quick bite at a nearby restaurant. She felt like he was stalking her. Was she sending the wrong signals and somehow encouraging him? Why couldn’t he just take no for an answer? Only Kelly knew her very limited dating history. How many women her age could list all her previous dates on the fingers of one hand? She smiled at the thought that maybe she should ask the software engineers at Google if they could enhance their translation program to handle conversations between men and women and display the words men used followed with what these words actually meant in parentheses.

She moved the paperbacks aside, gathered the T-shirt, shorts, and gym shoes she kept there and changed quickly before opening the shades and glancing out her window at the endless expanse of meadow and forest. Horatio Bartleby had willed his home and surrounding grounds to the college that bore his name. Although he made his fortune as a wildcat oil driller with no qualms about despoiling the environment, he had kept his own estate pristine and now the university utilized solar power whenever possible. While parents eagerly embraced the college for its Ivy League academic reputation and its standing in the top five rated schools in the U.S. News and World Report’s latest survey, students fell in love with its picture perfect campus that included miles and miles of jogging trails.

Somebody interrupted Olivia’s thoughts by knocking on her door. When she opened it, Frank Miller quickly stepped inside before she could protest. Tall and thin to the point he reminded her of the Ichabod Crane character she had