The Coming of Enki VIII

An update and part eight of a previously unpublished science fiction story

Welcome to the latest edition of Confections & Reputations. Your donations and subscriptions allow me to keep writing so many, many thanks to those that have paid something to read this substack.

I know it’s been a while since I wrote a post on the history of science. There are a few reasons for that. The first is simply that the tail end of the school term brings certain commitments and organisational challenges, as parents will be aware! The second is that I’ve been pressing on with finishing a children’s science fiction novel, which should be done in the next couple of months. More on that next year I hope. Lastly, quite unexpectedly, I was recently approached to co-host a new science podcast. The concept is very cool. For now, I’ve recorded a couple of episodes and the series is in development, with a view to streaming after the summer. I’ll update you all here as soon as I’m allowed.

Next week, with Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ coming out, I think it’s time for me to take a look at von Neumann’s relationship with Oppie, including the incredible letter that Oppenheimer sent von Neumann inviting him to join the top secret Manhattan Project. I am a huge, huge fan of Nolan’s work and, in particular, the way he has helped science fiction acquire artistic credibility and mass appeal over the past two decades. However, I doubt that there will be much —if any— von Neumann in ‘Oppenheimer’. Though von Neumann’s star has unjustly dimmed since the 1950s, he was a legendary figure among the denizens of Los Alamos, famously competing, for example, with Enrico Fermi at the blackboard to solve difficult physics problems—and winning every time. Von Neumann, if portrayed properly, would overshadow everyone else as I think Benjamin Labatut’s forthcoming novel, ‘The Maniac’, will amply demonstrate. He deserves his own movie, the time is ripe and I hope Nolan’s listening.

Lastly, as a thank you to the paid subscribers that allow me to work on this blog, I’ll start hosting some virtual ‘teatime’ sessions after the summer. This is a nod to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where von Neumann spent so much of his working life. The teatime’s he enjoyed are still held today and as sacrosanct as they ever were. We can and will chat about anything and everything. So why not upgrade to paid, and join us?

Now for the next part of ‘The Coming of Enki’, which is steaming towards its conclusion. Here are links to Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI and Part VII. All previous parts are free for now. Please give the post a ‘like’ and share if you enjoy it.

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The Coming of Enki

XII

It is a cloudless, bright day and the college pond glitters as the warm, summer breeze whips and scatters it into wavelets. Serena does not allow herself to look at the man preening and posing next to her on the wooden pier, or the crowds, mostly come to cheer him on. She knows she can win this foolish bet. She feels it with her entire being. She knew it two weeks ago when, drinking in a bar close to campus with her friends, this second-string quarterback had tried to flirt with her.

They were not acquainted but she knew he was well-liked around college and had a reputation as a good-natured joker. She was not interested. They were from different tribes with almost nothing in common. She socialised little generally, and never outside a small clique of friends. A talented mathematician, she spent most of her time pushing beyond what was taught and laying the groundwork for a PhD on the theory of online architecture. She loved the Net. Like the albatross of her favourite Baudelaire poem, she felt ungainly in her interactions with the ‘real’ world but in that perpetual twilight, she soared higher than any other. In what spare time she allowed herself, she played strategic war games, her male alter ego triumphing time and again. She even paid her way through college by entering a few tournaments. When gaming threatened to take up too much of her time, she quit. She had no desire to turn professional.

Then there was the swimming. She hated competitive sports. But she had been brought up on the Gulf coast and taught to master its waves by her father. Navigating the Net efficiently required physical poise as well as mental agility. Swimming was the perfect exercise for those wishing to negotiate it with ease. At dawn on all but the very coldest of days she swam lengths of the college pond, observed only by bitterns and coots.

So when the drunk quarterback, frustrated by the failure of his advances, began to boast of his sporting accomplishments, Serena, also tipsy, mischievously baited him until he proposed a wager: he would beat her at any sport she cared to name. He graciously added that she could use gene doping or any performance-enhancing drug she wanted. He would be clean.

“Two lengths of the college pond,” she said, instinctively. “And I don’t need the boosters. We both get tested before the race to make sure we’re clean.”

He must have thought her crazy to agree, crazier still to decline pharmaceutical assistance. She was not even on the swim team.

“And if I win,” he said, “we go out on a date.”

“And if I win,” she replied, “you leave me the hell alone.”

Her friends laughed. She did not even find him particularly objectionable but as she told her friends afterwards, “A girl’s got a right to a quiet drink with her buddies without a visit from the goon squad.”

The starter gun fired and she dived off the pier, as she had done a hundred times or more before. She entered the water perfectly, its coolness instantly dispelling the grogginess that had begun to settle on her earlier in the afternoon. When it was over, she was surprised by the margin of her win. Mostly, though, she was relieved for in the two weeks since the bet, the contest had taken on epic proportions. Losing would have been humiliating. When he got out of the water, his face registered disbelief.

“How did you do it?” he asked her as they shook hands.

She shrugged. “I’m just a much better swimmer than you, Jon,” she said quietly and left him staring after her, his pride draining from him like the water that streamed from his shorts.

Her win brought unwelcome celebrity which faded in time as the events of the day passed into college folklore. For him, on the surface of things, the repercussions of the defeat were disastrous. He resigned from the football team and lost his social set altogether.

He handled it with equanimity. The hours he had spent training he now devoted to his studies. They avoided each other on campus but met, by coincidence, a year later browsing rap records in an out-of-the-way antique shop. She bought him a coffee.

“So I got my date after all,” he said, ruefully. She raised an eyebrow. They both laughed. Serena though he had changed for the better. The frat boy jock was largely gone. His jokes were a little more self-effacing. They did not see each other again for another year, when, with college nearly finished, he asked her out on a date. She said yes.

Over time, their recollections of the match would mingle as they shared them with each other over and over again. As a result of their love, they would each come to see the event from the other’s perspective, creating a melange of memories that would confuse the Movement’s analysts when they tried to unpick Serena’s memories of that day.

Lieb would eventually acknowledge that it had, in some ways, worked out for the best. The future for a backup college quarterback was rarely rosy. He left university with a creditable degree and the beginnings of a good career in marketing. He had a knack for making sales and was promoted quickly. Yet it would take him much longer, until years after they were married, to believe she had not worked some impossible magic that fine afternoon or found a way to cheat him of his win even though she beat him, again and again, every time he demanded they re-ran the race.

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Now read Part IX.

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