Copyright © CRM Publishing, 2015 -
Prologue
“You’re obstinately obsessed,” they would say. “You can’t go on like this. Forget it, or you’ll end up insane.”
He wasn’t sure if they were warning him about his theories or the girl. Perhaps both. But, of one thing he was sure: they would never accept his ideas.
The concept was way removed from current thinking, and no one in the fields of general relativity and quantum physics paid the slightest attention to any of his papers.
His age was no help. He was considered neither old enough nor wise enough to propound upon such matters or to put forward such preposterous theories—their words, of course, not his.
As often happened whenever he reflected upon that period of his life, he was transported back to the time, imagining himself sitting on the stool in his study, letting it swivel slowly so that he could survey the walls of the room as they passed before his eyes: walls covered with a mixture of charts, newspaper cuttings, and posters.
The charts were his, the product of his youth and long hours working on complex projections, using modelling techniques developed on his network of bio-
The cuttings and posters were something else. Those were the result of his hobby—or, perhaps he should admit it, his obsession.
He stumbled upon the posters three years previously. All but one depicted a number of movies starring the same actress. He also possessed recordings of most of those.
The exception, his favourite poster, took centre stage on the main wall; a glorious photograph of that same actress wearing a stunning gown, twirling her skirts as she danced. But her haunted smile bore witness to the cuttings on either side, and even as he looked at those, he felt the familiar surge of anger at her fate.
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