Solution: The End of the World... a Love Story.

By Jim Stratton

While recovering from a heartbreak of his own design, reporter Joe Rasley takes on the most interesting story he's seen in a long time - even though he seems to be the only journalist on the scene who seems to find the end of the world remotely newsworthy.

The year is 1977, and a particle physicist has unwittingly put together a substance that dissolves everything that comes into contact with it. He has created a universal solvent, and now confronts an unfortunate problem: what container can you put it in?

Joe finds himself getting a crash course in particle physics as he joins the eccentric Dr. Kohlman, the doctor's headstrong physicist daughter Diana, and a cat named Schrödinger, as they try to find any way at all to save the world. And it doesn't hurt to find himself falling in love along the way.

Solution is a clever, yet scientifically rigorous novel that explores the intersection of journalism, science and government. Set in the gritty cityscape of 1970s New York, its themes are just as relevent to the world we live in now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667880808

Book preview

SOLUTION

Another exclusive! Seeing the press release, Joe Rasley had been damn well expecting it.

This wasn’t the first time Joe had arrived at a press conference to find himself the only reporter. This story was an exclusive only because no other news outfit had cared enough to cover it.

Surrounding him was a large loft space filled with unidentifiable scientific things arrayed on tables, books and papers scattered here and there on the floor. It was billed as a physics laboratory, but if clutter was art, this place could have been a museum.

Except for an older man who looked to be the scientist, and the pretty public relations woman who had welcomed him into the lab, this press conference was empty of people. And he’d been a half-hour late.

This wasn’t Joe Rasley’s best day for exclusives. It was Memorial Day, May 30, 1977, and he’d already chased two parades he didn’t want to attend, the big one in Manhattan and a wilder, noisier, more interesting one in Brooklyn. He would have had the day off had he not groggily answered the phone when the office called. The previous night of drinking had brought with him an unsettled stomach and a disagreeable head.

The exclusive news he didn’t want to report today was that he would likely never again see the most beautiful woman he’d ever known. He had done it himself. He had broken up with Cynthia forever. Forever and forever. Perhaps it would be in honor of Memorial Day, because it would be a day he would privately remember in infamy.

He didn’t remember the specifics. His soggy mind, with its remainder of resident alcohol, wasn’t into specifics right now, despite the fact that specifics were what his reporter’s mind were trained to remember. All that mattered was that his Love was gone, certainly forever, and all because of his socks.

Did that make sense? Had he scuttled their two-year love affair for a pair of socks? Had some disagreeable rear-guard in his disgruntled mind stepped in to dispatch their two-year relationship for a mismatch that only affected his toes?

She was a fashion model and a social climber. He was a news reporter with a taste for jeans and odd teeshirts. He had wondered for two years how such different souls could fit together, yet for two years the two of them had fit together well. And frequently. Perhaps it was because she liked that he cleaned up well, and he liked that she had a spirited libido.

Or perhaps Cynthia had put up with him because he knew the mayor and governor personally. Clawing one’s way up the social ladder necessarily required appropriate name-dropping.

Of course, the mayor didn’t like him, nor did the governor. Cynthia didn’t know that, but assuredly Joe did. He always did his homework, often asking irritating questions that the newsmakers didn’t want to answer. Equally irritating to them was the likelihood that Joe already knew what they were going to say, and had a follow-up question ready that would be even more disturbing.

Oddly, despite his occasional needling interviews, he’d voted for both the mayor and the governor. But this was after having voted for their opponents in their primaries. As a reporter he regarded that as keeping an open mind.

This story he’d been sent to cover, however, was not City Hall. This was the fifth floor of a loft building on the Lower East Side, a building without an elevator, and therefore one having many stairs to climb. He’d been to a few such buildings in the sixties, when artists were turning empty spaces into homes that looked like remodeled parking lots.

This loft, however, looked like a chop shop for stolen cars. It was a big space with strange gadgets, littered by boxes of parts, cans of gunk, bottles of chemicals, and one wall was covered by steel shelving filled with books and stacks of paper.

The professor looked like he ran a garage. His library, despite the steel shelving, looking very out-of-place.

Out-of-place, too, was Joe. The press greeter, very attractive, had been frosty, very nearly unfriendly. Her glare seemed to catch every rumple of his all too casual casual-wear, every gray shadow under his eye. Hello, she had said in greeting, are you making a delivery?

Joe had glanced at the long dark hair, the lovely face, the cold eye. I think I’d prefer a pick-me-up instead, he countered. But no. I’m just making a delivery of my pen and notebook and obedient body to a press conference.

Those cold eyes narrowed. I’d like to see your press credentials. Or your bill of lading.

Reluctantly he’d laughed. The last thing this reporter needed was repartee. Also on that list of unwanted things, because he was grumpy, would be offering his press card to somebody’s secretary. The long night of drinking had left him without patience, and the forced march of two Memorial Day parades had tired him out.

He fumbled for his wallet. Take my dog tags instead. Pin them to my toe when the time comes.

It was her turn to laugh. Very well, suppose we give a pass to the dog tags until the moment arises. She waved her arm indifferently, like she was welcoming a wreck into the chop-shop. If you’re a reporter, come on in and report.

He gazed around at the laboratory, trying to make sense of what might be a story. The wrinkled press release that had brought him to this news event was unprofessionally written and short of anything that looked like a potential lead. Worse, it was science, and he was woefully short of qualifications in that area. Lafayette Street was an unusual location for anything scientific, a block with half-empty office buildings interspersed with a few surviving manufacturing lofts. He examined again the puzzling fact sheet that was what had brought him here, and tried to identify what to look at.

In front of him were gadgets, large and small. They sat everywhere on the floor and on the half-dozen tables that crowded the space. The older man’s focus, however, appeared to be a container that dangled from wires in something that looked like a water cooler. He was leaning over the container intently, and appeared to be stirring it with a stick. Or perhaps he was preparing soup for lunch. Whichever, this was not the kind of story Joe Rasley was equipped to cover.

The older man, tall, professorial, looked Joe’s way and smiled. He stepped away from the water cooler and stood next to the young woman, who looked up at the gentleman with a reproving twist to her lips.

Never mind the press card, she said with a humorless smile, I’m sure Doctor Kohlman won’t demand one. His press, today, is full-court.

The elder smile flickered, his eye narrowing upon the woman. Joe had taken her to be a public relations person, but he was now quickly aware that the relationship was much closer. There was unhappy communication there, unspoken. Secretary, perhaps. Book editor…? Loan officer…? Girlfriend…?

The professor had clearly been disturbed by something, but his cheer quickly returned. Let me show you the laboratory, he said after a handshake and introductions. It will give you a little background about what we do here.

What followed was an explanation not of what was in the room, but of work the man had done in a place where he sometimes did his research. It had been dubbed Synchronicity City, and Joe had been sent there once, far out in the suburbs, at the announcement of something called the Pleurabelle. He’d suffered through an afternoon listening to people speak a language called Particle Physics, and afterward had watched in embarrassment as the office science-guy rewrote his confusion.

Physicists had built what they called a collider, a huge circular race-track for atomic particles, guided and accelerated by their magnetic charge. Some particles were accelerated clockwise, some counter-clockwise, and they were allowed to bang into each other at nearly the speed of light.

Collisions broke the particles into even tinier particles. Something called a muon neutrino was what had sent Joe and his pencil out of town. The talk was that far more basic components of matter would soon be discovered.

Joe glanced around the doctor’s Lafayette Street workplace. Vaguely-understood tidbits from that Pleurabelle experience were being prodded uncomfortably back into memory, and Joe realized for certain that no super-colliding could be transpiring in this junkyard of scientific Stuff. As the man talked, Joe stared around with dubious interest, knowing that gadgets would never ease the pain left over from his long night. The collisions in his own brain were doing a much better job.

The doctor looked more youthful than the gray hair and the forty-nine years reported on his press release. Moving excitedly among his toys he might have been mistaken for a kid. A dim light went on in the back of Joe’s mind. The pretty public relations greeter… receptionist… could she be the man’s wife? Or his lover? He found this more fun to dwell upon than the array of gadgetry.

Cynthia. Gone…

A tense smile on his face, Kohlman seemed an anxious guide. Joe allowed himself to be swept along as he was led from one complex device to another.

Here we have a particle chamber, and an Einstein bosonic-atom experiment, Kohlman announced, responding with spelling when asked. He patted a piece of hardware as Joe jotted down notes, scribbling. More devices followed, some with the word laser, some he needed to have spelled, like hologram. Joe initially had spelled it beginning with a ‘w,’ thinking some other device might be a partial-gram.

The dull background disturbance that was his mind tingled with embarrassment. Einstein and laser were scientific words he knew. That was all. He’d muddled through physics in high school but had avoided the subject at college. At better moments Joe might have enjoyed the tour, but this wasn’t a better moment. His spine seemed to be boring up through his cranium.

The doctor returned to the table where he’d been hanging out when Joe entered. He pointed to what to Joe looked like a polluted water cooler. And here, in the bell jar, is where the mysterious gunk is trapped. He pointed at the container, hanging down rather perilously inside.

Kohlman explained that the news event was being stored in the squat gray container, and that the polluted water cooler was actually a vacuum jar keeping the news event sealed away from the air. Kohlman hit a switch and the jar whirred slightly. The vacuum was no longer a vacuum, he said. The jar rose overhead, revealing more clearly the container inside it.

It looked like nothing Joe remembered from high school science class. It looked like a wastebasket wound around with wire. What is it? Joe asked, pointing.

It’s a wastebasket wound around with wire, Kohlman replied.

That’s what I thought, Joe said after a moment. I guess I know more physics than I thought.

The wastebasket is an iron alloy, Kohlman explained. The electrical charge running through those wires gives it a kind of magnetic field, just as the windings of a transformer induces electricity in another wire.

That’s the story? A magnetic wastebasket? So you can throw things from across the room and you’ll never miss?

If the professor noticed Joe’s rising impatience he gave no hint. No. The wastebasket is just the container for the story. It’s what’s inside the wastebasket that makes it important. Joe peered over the edge of the container and saw nothing but the something-smudgy-translucent at the bottom. The something-smudgy-translucent thing at the bottom is the story?

Yes.

What is it?

I don’t know. That’s just it. I don’t know.

Even before this spiel, Joe had been dubious. Now he was disgruntled. Dispassionately, as a feature piece it could have waited for a day when the science guy could cover it. As hard-news, he was better off slumbering at his desk. This same press release had appeared on every assignment desk in the city, but no other assignment editor had disturbed the doldrums weekend by taking the bait.

His mind was veering away from the smudge. His mind had smudge of its own. They had owed him the day off. He’d worked every other holiday he could remember, often Saturdays and Sundays as well. Covertly he needed the overtime more than a day off, but today wasn’t one of those days. His pay grade was seven years, yet his pay was far below what people were getting at the networks. Even garbagemen took home more. Between embarrassment and a nagging cranial disturbance, resentment was growing…

Joe kicked himself in the mental butt. Feeling sorry for himself again. Cynthia gone gone gone. He took a deep breath as Kohlman disconnected the wastebasket-wound-around-with-wire and brought it down to eye level. Joe was invited to look inside and observe its contents close-up.

There wasn’t much more to see. At the bottom was indeed something that looked like dark sludge. It had an odd look to it, as if light were playing on it from the inside… not quite rainbow-like, as on an oil slick, but something similar. Translucent would do, said his editing mind.

Puzzled, he looked at the substance. Well, then, what is it made of?

I’m not sure I can explain that either, just yet. The scientist spread his hands helplessly. It might require a new kind of universe just to talk about it.

No hint of embarrassment was in that statement, not the faintest snicker of a put-on. The man was certainly sincere. That made the situation even more untenable.

This well-meaning man was a novice at publicity. He didn’t know how to play the game according to time-honored traditions. His patter should be a smooth sales talk, to keep reporters interested, and within easy reach should be even smoother libations, the right touch of alcohol to keep news crews in the right mood. Missing also were the usual superlatives, to keep news notes moving in the proper direction. But, for the moment, the only story Joe had was a dark translucent sludge in a wastebasket.

He had to do something to bring reality back. It was his job.

He held up his hand. Just a moment, doctor, we seem to be having semantic difficulties. He noticed the young lady ease her way back into view. The first semantic problem is… let’s see… ‘the container for the thing contained.’ Joe waved uncertainly at the magnetic wastebasket. "And now it seems like a circular lack of definition. A circular file that contains the indefinable. We’re not connecting here.

Look, I’m not a scientist, but I know you’re not going to call me to a press conference over something you can’t describe that doesn’t do anything. That doesn’t make sense. So why don’t you find a starting point. Explain, for example, how that stuff got to the bottom of your wastebasket.

A sad look clouded the professor’s face, and quickly passed. Ah, yes. Start from the beginning, go on to the end, and then stop.

Yes. Like Alice.

A smile came across the lean face. Yes, Lewis Carroll. Uh, what did you say your name was?

Joe. Joe Rasley.

Well, Joe, I’ll have to get something to show you if I’m going to begin at the beginning. Diana, keep Joe company for a moment while I get the plate.

Progress at least on the public relations front, Joe thought. A pretty face had more chance of improving his hang-over condition than a wastebasket full of gunk.

Diana seemed to stand in no particular awe of reporters. Why, exactly, did you come to a story when you have no scientific background to understand anything about it? she asked. There was a touch of contempt in those dark eyes that was unfamiliar in the public relations game. Joe suspected promoters always felt that way about the press, but he knew they were too canny to give evidence of it.

Joe’s reply, as usual, was honest. I’m here because I’m the only reporter in the house today. The other guys wisely called in sick. It’s a holiday weekend. If it weren’t for you people, I’d be happily snoozing away this dull holiday at my desk.

They pay you to take your forty winks?

Sixty winks. I’m on time-and-a-half.

Her reply was a laugh of surprising warmth.

All too quickly Dr. Kohlman was back at his elbow, this time waving a heavy-framed photographic plate in Joe’s face. Just as the encounter with the publicist was beginning to cheer him up, it was back to work. Joe pulled out his notes and started to scribble again.

This, said Kohlman, is where the gunky mess was born. See the hole in the center of the plate? That’s where it was growing when I discovered it.

Joe shook his head. I’m trying to keep an open mind about this, he said, but it’s just getting weirder…

The doctor chuckled. I see. Sounds like I was out taking pictures with my Polaroid, does it? Well, actually, I was taking my snapshots over at the Pleurabelle that I was talking about before. The Syncrotron. My work is matter-antimatter, and I was banging high-energy particles into one another. We get a photographic plate with track marks. If you know how to read the tracks, you can tell what kinds of particles were created or destroyed by the bombardment. I brought plates back here to my lab for study, and discovered that something on one of the tracks was growing.

It was your darkish friend over there.

Yes, as new-born. In a few days it was big enough to tear loose from the plate and drop into a pan. It proceeded to eat a hole in the pan. It was at that moment that I realized I had a tiger by the tail.

By the tail? Semantically we’re switching metaphors rapidly here.

Kohlman shook his matted gray hair unhappily. So long as the tiger is a hungry metaphor it’s not wise to let go. And metaphorically this is one hungry tiger.

What does it have for breakfast?

Anything and everything. That’s the problem.

Joe put down the pad and was about to make an impatient comment when Kohlman waved it away. I’m sorry, I know it sounds confusing. This stuff seems to absorb, or dissolve, whatever comes into contact with it. Now that the vacuum is gone, the sludge is busily absorbing air molecules that bump into it. He pulled a very small stone from his pocket and tossed it casually into the air. Granite, he said, catching it again.

Joe was in no position to tell the rock’s heritage, but it certainly looked solid. He expected some kind of parlor trick.

Kohlman dropped the stone into the mass at the bottom of the wastebasket and it disappeared from sight.

Joe looked into the container. Well? Does it jump out and do a soft-shoe?

The doctor shook his head. The outer layers of the stone are gradually absorbed into the gunky stuff until there’s nothing left of the rock. It becomes like the rest of the strange material. It gradually ceases to exist.

An unconvinced Joe imagined tiny words ‘Here lies…’ etched into the fading stone. How does it, um… buy the rock farm?

I don’t know. The gunk obviously disturbs the bonds that tie molecules and atoms together. Eats up those valence bonds like popcorn. Perhaps it neutralizes positive and negative charges, maybe even the strong force that interacts within atomic nuclei. I can’t tell too much about the process yet. If I stick instruments into it, the gunk eats them up.

(…Valence bonds like popcorn… eats them up…) Joe looked sadly at the gaps in his notes, figuring he would fill in blanks later. Then all you know about this stuff is what it seems to do. You don’t know for sure what it’s made of.

Pretty true, Kohlman said. It behaves something like a liquid, a very viscous liquid. It adheres together, like mercury. It doesn’t splash; in fact, I can’t separate out even a small amount, to run tests on it.

What kinds of experiments have you done? Joe asked, pencil poised.

"Mostly inferential ones. I shine a strong light on it and the dark thing stays dark, pretty uniformly, except there remain those oddish plays of light here and there. I apply heat but nothing seems to happen. I dip a thermometer into it, and when I pull it back out—minus a bit of its outer skin—it has the same reading that it went in with. This is curious, because