The Master of Chaos by Pauline Melville

Author:Pauline Melville
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781913207557
Publisher: Sandstone Press Ltd
Published: 2021-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

THE DARK PHOTON

Even as I write, I think of the time when the pages will have turned to dust, the computers long since disintegrated and all life vanished, leaving nothing behind but the cold universe. And then the universe itself gone out. Total extinction. But I write anyway.

It was either February or March – I’m not good on dates and it was a while ago. I was staying in the Nunez area of Buenos Aires, having returned to Argentina after many years (assuming that I didn’t just dream I’d returned, as it sometimes seems). Unwilling to pick up the threads of my former life I told no-one I was coming back. Instead I rented a small apartment and spent the evenings on my own, cooking for myself or eating pizza and preparing my conference paper on the dark photon – that elusive portal into the world of dark matter – which I was to present at the university later in the week. Earlier that same evening I had gone to the trouble of making a beef stew which I was mopping up with tortillas, while keeping half an eye on the television in order to catch one of the crazier soap operas.

The loud knocking on the front door of the building signalled distress. It came late at night. I looked out of the window of my fifth-floor flat. My friend Bernardo Brach, whom I had not seen for years but who was immediately recognisable, was standing on the pavement outside. I had to go down five flights of the narrow staircase because, for some reason, he refused to let me throw down the keys. The lights on the stairway didn’t work. When I reached the ground floor Bernardo stood there in the glare of the street lamp. He looked more haggard than when I had last seen him in the United States. To my alarm he had a suitcase with him. He caught my disconcerted glance at his bag.

It’s all right. I’m not staying. I need to ask you something then I’ll be on my way.

We embraced each other and went upstairs to my flat.

How did you know I was back?

I keep an eye on what’s happening. You’re here for the science convention, aren’t you? I saw your name and cajoled one of the secretaries into giving me your address. I’ve been back here myself, looking into some things . . .

His voice tailed off. The stubble on his face suggested that he had not shaved for at least two days. He was staring intensely at the floor with the closed sweaty look of a man who is living a secret life in his head.

We wasted hardly any time discussing what we had both been doing since we last saw each other. I now lived in London and worked in the physics department of Imperial College. Bernardo had settled in North America. We had been close friends at school and since then had kept in touch, if only infrequently. He told me he had worked at various jobs and tried running an unsuccessful art gallery.

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