King of All I Survey
Chapter 90: First Day of School for the Teachers

Chapter 90: First Day of School for the Teachers

I had breakfast with Mom and Dad down in the house the next morning. Mom cooked eggs and had Joe send down some refried beans and fried plantains from the treehouse food synthesizer. She said she learned to like them during her time in Guatemala and wanted to share the experience with us. I have to be honest. The plantains were ok but give me a fresh banana any day. The refried beans? Well, I finished them just to make Mom happy. Dad either liked everything or he’s a better actor than I am.

"So, I’m going to school today," I said, then realized I hadn’t told Mom about being accepted at UMass yet. "Mom, I got accepted at UMass Amherst in the Physics program. So, no fourth grade..."

Mom looked at me with a big smile, "Oh, Tim, that’s wonderful. I’m so proud of you!"

A part of me wanted to shout You’re proud of me for getting into school? How about talking aliens into making me the king of the world with an AI system that has made me the richest person on Earth with secret hidden accounts and shell companies all over the planet? How about toppling drug cartels in a week during my summer vacation? How about sending you and Dad to watch the sunset in Fiji on a whim? Then she came over and gave me a big hug, and I said, "I’m hoping to make the Dean’s list this semester..."

"Oh, that would be amazing! You’ve always been such a good little student. Make sure you set aside time for your homework every day." I pulled back from the hug reluctantly.

"Listen Mom, I don’t think you understand. With memory implant learning, I know far more than any university professor about physics and advanced math. I got accepted because I drew up an equation that advanced the head professor’s cutting-edge work in a way that was beyond his skill. My goal in attending college isn’t to learn, but to teach and introduce a tiny portion of advanced physics into Earth society so we can help improve people’s lives."

"Just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you don’t have to do the work like everyone else," she said in her motherly advice voice.

"Mom, being smart and having memory implant learning technology means exactly that! I mean I have to process the information to make sure that I’m building linkages and neural pathways to apply what I learn to my conscious thinking, but..."

"See! Homework," she concluded. Well, she was right in a way. If I didn’t actively use what was implanted in ways that applied it to practical applications or my everyday thinking, then it would be a vast pool of data with solutions that didn’t occur to me when I needed them. I’d be able to find them, but only if I spent time in deep thought just thinking about the implanted learnings. By writing papers or discussing the concepts after the implant training, they became a more integrated part of my thinking, It was kind of like knowing how to speak Spanish fluently versus having my phone translate each sentence one by one as needed, then trying to pronounce it correctly from the phonetic spelling.

"I’ll do all my homework, Mom. I promise." I said, resignedly.

"That’s a good boy," she said.

"So, how was Fiji?" I asked, anxious to change the subject.

Mom looked at Dad as she answered, "It was... very nice, beautiful." Her gaze lingered on Dad for a few seconds before she turned back to me, "Thank you for that, Tim."

I beamed, "You’re welcome. I’m glad you two enjoyed it."

"Well," I said, "I’m off to school." I grabbed the notebooks I had written in last night, and moved away from the table. "Can you plop me down somewhere near Professor Donaldson’s office, Joe?" I knew he’d have the sense to keep my sudden arrival from thin air out of view of potential witnesses and security cameras.

"Sure thing," Joe responded. Suddenly, I was standing outside, next to a brick wall. A cool breeze was blowing, and I wished I’d worn a sweater. I mentally let Joe know and three seconds later a sweater appeared and lay draped over my right shoulder. I smiled. AI controlled Local Interdimensional Travel made packing a lot easier, that’s for sure.

I put my notebooks down and squirmed into the thick sweater. I picked up my notebooks and asked Joe to direct me to the meeting location. When I arrived, Professor Donaldson was already waiting for me. He stood up and shook my hand, "Good to see you, Timothy. Did you have a look at the papers I sent you?"

"It’s good to see you, too, Professor," I said with a smile. "Yes, I did. It’s very good for the approach you used, but the way you’re going, it looks like you’ve reached a... dead-end."

His face fell a bit. "Well, it’s just not possible to calculate the frequency of..."

I interrupted him, "I said it’s a dead-end the way you’re going... but there’s a different approach that not only advances the proof but completes it. Your hypothesis proves out and is, in fact correct, as far as it goes".

His thick brows shot up eagerly, "Really? You found a solution? Let’s see what you’ve got. I’ve had several highly credited mathematician’s say it’s not possible. Let me see." He looked eagerly at the notebooks I had brought with me.

I smiled, and opened the cover of a blue spiral-bound notebook and turned it around to be right side-up from his position across the table from me. "Let’s go over it together," I suggested, "I’m going to have to explain the way I look at things through a new mathematical lens..."

An hour later, he interrupted me for the seventh or maybe eighth time, "I really don’t understand what you’re doing here," he said pointing at a line in a long equation on the fourth page. "Do you mind if I call in a colleague who might be able to get a better handle on this?"

I hesitated, "Um... I mean, I don’t know how things work in the university setting, but this is... kind of proprietary. I mean I ’m not ready for this to get around, yet."

He looked up at me, "Oh, of course. Nobody will share anything about it until we decide to publish, that goes without saying."

"Well, you know, I’m eight, so maybe it goes without saying for college professors but, you know, my experience is limited..." I said honestly.

"I just need him to say before we begin that he’ll honor that confidentiality," then I mentally asked Joe to scan for truthfulness if and when the other guy showed up and promised to keep our secret.

Donaldson shrugged, "I’m sure that’ll be no problem." He chuckled, "Some researchers are very paranoid about having their work stolen before they publish, you’ll fit right in."

Donaldson made a call and asked his friend and colleague to come over and have a look at something he was working on without specifying exactly what it was, but saying it was interesting, and he needed another set of eyes on a particular problem.

Fifteen minutes later, the door opened, and an older man walked in. If I had to guess, I’d say he was seventy years old. He wore a loose-fitting suit jacket over a printed tee-shirt that said: That’s ok, science doesn’t believe in you, either! in a fanciful multi-colored font. I laughed out loud when I read it.

He looked at me, surprised. "What is this?" he asked, looking back at Donaldson, "Is it National Bring your Grandson to Work Day? What’s so funny, you never seen an old man before?"

"No, sir. I mean, yes sir, I’ve seen lots of old people. I just thought your shirt was funny. You know, because people say they don’t believe in science... and science kind of says that rational thought is a by-product of the predictable motions of particles determined at the time of the big bang so consciousness is just a side effect of quantum physics."

He blinked and his fuzzy white eyebrows lifted. Then he smiled, and said, "Yes, yes, just so, young man. Just so. You must be the young prodigy everyone’s talking about. Are you as smart as they say, or just a smart-ass?"

I laughed again, "Maybe a little of both. Like you."

Now he laughed, "Hah! I have been hoist by my own petard!"

My brow furrowed, "You... what?"

His brows lifted again, "Donaldson, get this boy to an English class. Now, what did you call me here for, other than trading barbs with someone wittier than myself?"

Right away, I decided I was going to like this guy.

"Well," Donaldson began, "You know the old Arthur C. Clarke quote: ’When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong’. Well, this boy says he has solved the problem I showed you a couple months ago that you told me was impossible. As it turns out, I’m not bright enough to understand his math, so I thought I’d have you give it a look."

"Really? Well. Then maybe an introduction is in order first," the energetic older man suggested.

"Oh, yes, excuse my manners. Professor Wagner," he pronounced it as Vogner, "This is Timothy Bailey, our newest student and research associate. Timothy comes to us from the third grade at Cheshire Elementary School. Tim, this is Distinguished Professor Doctor Ernst Wagner."

I put out my hand to shake, as he took it, I said, "Yes, I recall your name from Professor Donaldson’s paper, he cited your paper relating computational fluid dynamics to the motion of massless particles in empty space. Interesting work, Doctor Wagner."

He raised one eyebrow, "Yes, and I hear good things about the physics program at Cheshire Elementary." He said with a twinkle in his eye.

I laughed out loud again. I was definitely going to like this guy.

He pulled up a chair next to Donaldson and sat down. "Let’s have a look at your doodling, shall we?" He motioned to the open notebook in front of Donaldson. "I gather from the rather expressive handwriting of someone used to typing with their thumbs that this is the boy’s work?"