Destiny

SIXTEEN

A woman in the back of the room looked over her computer monitor, her mouth opening to form an O, her eyebrows arching. She got the attention of her male colleague and pointed toward Marcus who stood with his back to them in the far section of the room, working the problem.

Marcus locked on each progression in the equation, his hand grasping the marker and moving with decisive, bold strokes. He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them and wrote non-stop for the next thirty seconds before replacing the cap on the marker. He backed away a few steps to take in the entire whiteboard and the series of steps he used to bring the problem to a conclusion, to a solution. Marcus sat down.

The woman lifted her cell phone to snap a picture of the whiteboard. She leaned closer to her colleague and whispered. “Do you think he’s solved it?”

The man’s eyes were trying to follow the numbers. He didn’t seem to blink for a long moment. Then he said, “I have no idea.”

Jacob returned. He glanced at the whiteboard, his face filling with wonder, his eyes tracing the sequence and conclusion to the problem. He said nothing for a half minute.

“Are you sure?” he asked Marcus, his voice just above a whisper.

“I’m sure that’s the solution, but that’s as far as my skills can take it.”

“That’s far enough. The hypothesis has been there a month. A dozen of the best mathematicians in Israel and elsewhere have tried to bring forth a conclusion. No one did until now. Do you know what it may mean?”

“What?”

“The postulate opens doors that may bridge mathematics and the cosmos. Do structures that exist mathematically also exist in the physical sense? Newton explored the premise. The postulate, now perhaps a theorem, is an extension of his notes.”

“But it proves nothing, really.” Marcus placed the marker back on the easel.

“Please, sit down, Paul. I’m a little weak in the knees after seeing that.”

“It’s numbers. Just numbers and beyond measurement, they don’t mean—”

“No, it’s more than that. I doubt if there’s another person on earth who could do what you did in the time I went to the bathroom. I believe you are Isaac Newton’s heir. Newton’s gift was legendary. One day, the great mathematician, Johann Bernoulli, on a quest by the Royal Society in London, brought a problem in physics to Newton. The postulate was to determine the curve of minimum time for a heavy particle to move downward between two given points. This challenge had baffled the most famous eighteenth century mathematicians of Europe for almost a year. Bernoulli left the problem with Newton in the afternoon. Later that day, after dinner, they returned to Newton’s home, and he had solved it.”

“Please, don’t compare what I just did to anything Newton accomplished. We’re still using his math to launch satellites. I might have a grasp on math and ways to approach encryption, but I couldn’t hold a candle to guys like Newton or Einstein. As much as you want it to be, I’m not the guy whose name is on the paper Newton wrote.”

“Your humility is gracious, but your discovery in gene therapy for heart disease places you in an area in which less than a measurable percent of the world will ever go. I believe Newton used science and theology to come as close to prophecy as humanly possible. And I think he was right about another thing — you. The Paul Marcus in his papers and you are the same man. Now, I’m convinced of that. At the end of Newton’s life, you are the man he predicts would carry on the research. Please, open the folder in front of you. That, Paul, is the first step.”