CHAPTER 1 - HYPOTHESIS SPACE

“What Isaac Newton didn’t know was that he was giving us the tools to break all the laws that he set forth.” Guillaume de l'Hôpital

Tuesday May 14th 1743

“Mild to moderate test anxiety...” that’s what it said. Owen wasn’t supposed to be looking at his own file, but how could he resist? The confidential report continued “...coupled with mild symbol confusion and a daydreaming attitude” The student evaluation report wasn’t what he’d call flattering, but there wasn’t anything in it that he could point to as untrue. Then, as he scanned the bottom of the page, he saw something he didn’t expect … “Excellent candidate for DEVELOPMENT”. Based on the information in this report (as well as the rest of the file), he would think that the conclusion would be that he wouldn’t succeed in life beyond primary school.

Owen heard footsteps coming down the hall, and he hurriedly put his file away and tried to look busy putting the twenty year old and older files into the storage boxes. He had purposely left the last dozen files out of the box so that he wouldn’t be seen to be hanging around after he had finished his task.

“Are you done then?” asked the docent. Unfortunately, he was in charge of Owen’s duties while in the service of professor Colin M‘Laurine. Owen had hoped to spend time with the professor by offering his services but, when he had arrived, this man directed him to fill the file boxes that were to go to storage. The docent was a rather fat man with thinning gray hair. His tone and body language were those of someone who was generally tired of life, and, lacking the creativity to do anything other than what he had always done, was probably destined to do the same thing until age took him from this world.

“Just boxing up the last of them.” Owen said, trying to make himself sound like he had been working hard for the last few minutes, instead of reading his own file.

“All right, I’ll expect you here tomorrow when the cart comes to take them to long term storage” said the portly man. “I’ll call the dog cart to take you home, it’s not safe to be on the street at this time of night.” He said all of this with an air of extreme boredness, it was clear to Owen that he was very accustomed to saying something like this to many eager students who wanted to ingratiate themselves to a professor.

“Don’t bother, I could be home in less time than it will take for the cart to get here. Besides, I know the places to avoid.” Owen didn’t wait for a response, and rushed down the hallway and out the front door. The docent contented himself with the fact that he had offered the one horse carriage, and didn’t have any motivation to insist that Owen wait, and let him go without another word. He was actually concerned about walking home, but didn’t want to wait. A small carriage wasn’t going to keep him safe anyway. Plenty of people were attacked by footpads whether or not a horse was pulling them. You were only really safe if you had guards with you, and a dog cart certainly didn’t have guards, just a simple postilion riding the single horse.

‘Excellent candidate for DEVELOPMENT’ for the life of him, he couldn’t think of why the teachers had come to that conclusion. After all, he had never been very consistent academically. Sure he would get top marks when a subject interested him, because that motivated him to apply himself. But he would get below average marks in any subject that didn’t interest him. Really it would seem to anyone looking at his academic summary that he was really all over the place. Most of his teacher’s notes were of the “he seems to understand the material but fails to apply himself” variety.

It had rained a bit that evening, so there was only about half the normal amount of dust in the air, so Owen breathed more deeply than normal, enjoying the cool night air on his walk home. When he arrived at home and scraped the wet mud from his shoes, he went to go find his Dad so he could talk to him about what he’d seen in his file, but his mother found him first.

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“Staying late to help the professor again Owen?” the sweet voice said from inside the kitchen. There was nothing judgemental or accusatory in his mother’s tone, just the loving concern of a mother who wanted to verify that everything was all right.

“Yeah, if I want to become his doctoral student, I’ll need to impress professor M‘Laurine.” While it was preferable to impress professors with his academic work, providing a service and demonstrating a good work ethic surely wouldn’t hurt.

“Well, dinner will be ready in twenty minutes dear. Go wash up and tell your father to do the same” Mom was great, she always knew when not to press for details. She knew that being too interested in what was going wrong would just cause more stress. Owen knew how much she loved him, she would always consider how others were feeling and do just the right things to help them feel better.

“Okay, thanks mom!” Owen called as he ran up the stairs to his father’s study. On his way home he had considered asking his mom about what he had read. But while he knew that his mother would listen and be supportive, he knew that she just wouldn’t have any insight into something like this. He needed dad for this, dad would know what to do about this.

He knocked on his father’s door and the old man grumbled, signalling that Owen should come in. “Mom said that dinner is in 20” dad grunted his understanding and continued reading his book. “Dad, can I ask you something?” He held up a finger, then, after a moment, put his book down, looking at Owen expectantly.

“Do you have any idea what it would mean for me to be an ‘Excellent candidate for development’?” The question hung in the air for an unnatural moment.

Father’s eyes widened slightly, then caught himself and then controlled his reaction. “Where did you hear that? I think I’d need some context.”

Somewhat ashamed, Owen looked down and confessed “Well… I accidentally may have looked at my student evaluation while I was helping the professor to box old files for storage. It said it at the bottom, it seemed significant, but there didn’t seem to be anything else that would justify that conclusion.”

“Owen, what do you know about Prestidigitation?”

“What, you mean like magic tricks?” Owen had seen street magicians performing sleight of hand for tips. But Owen doubted that this was what his father was actually talking about.

“Not tricks son, Presti-Digit-ation,” he said emphasizing the middle syllable, “the manipulation of natural laws. Based on what you’ve told me, I think that your teachers may think that you have a talent for it. I’ll need some time to prepare your options” father paused for a long moment. “I thought this day might come.” father said gravely. “You did the right thing by telling me, but right now I can’t tell you until I speak with some people. Until then, act like you never saw that file, don’t ask anyone else about it, especially not at school.”

“Have you told anyone else?” his father asked seriously.

“No… but”

“Keep it that way” father interrupted. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know, but for now, just trust that I am making sure that you’re safe.”

“Dad, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry about that, I would like to tell you not to be afraid. I don’t want to lie to you, there is some danger in what you just told me, but for your safety, it is necessary for you to at least have the appearance of calm.”

“Dad! What’s going on?”

“I really can’t tell you everything right now, but I’ll give you the bones of it. First, what have you been told about the Leibniz-Newton calculus controversy?”

“The What?”

“No, I guess not. There might be trouble if I tell you now. Tomorrow, son, I promise we’ll talk tomorrow.”

Needless to say, Owen was a wreck at dinner. Mom mentioned the after school services for Professor M‘Laurine. Dad excused him from dinner early. Owen noted that his father was uncommonly normal about the whole thing. ‘I didn’t think that dad was that good of an actor.’ thought Owen.

“Prestidigitation” Owen didn’t get much sleep that night, he wasn’t so much scared, as he was excited. Owen heard his dad leave around midnight, and he wasn’t there in the morning when Owen awoke.

Owen dressed in the same style suit that he was expected to wear as a student of the university. It wasn’t very comfortable, but at least he didn’t have to worry about “fashions”. Plus it did look pretty good on him. Then he gathered his books and headed downstairs and out the door.

“Good luck on your test today honey!” his mom called out as he was leaving.

‘My test!’ Owen thought. With all the excitement last night Owen had completely forgotten about the physics test that he was taking today.