Chapter 5
Five
Milo’s text came just a few hours after Elio left the institute and returned to his work at Muriel’s.
Relieved to have that matter settled, Elio tossed his phone on the bed and bit the cap off of a new red marker, approaching the board in the room he was occupying.
He only used red because it suited his mood and he preferred to work in as little clothes as possible.
The windows and glass walls in Elio’s office could be switched from clear to frosted but he might get in trouble if he took off his clothes at Starlight. He certainly wouldn’t beat the mad and erratic allegations. Elio also respected that other people might not want to see him naked.
He wasn’t that much of an arsehole and he wasn’t a creep.
Thankfully, Milo had found something Elio could sink his teeth into and it would help take his mind off of where he was working. He was thoroughly hacked-off and ready to wash his hands of the institute after his “meeting” with Hector the previous Friday.
Furious at finding the brightest mind at Starlight cowering in a bathroom stall, Elio had confronted Hector. The older man had simply laughed and said that Ashby was an “odd duck” and that a little friendly competition was good for office morale.
“An odd duck?” Elio had parroted, planting his hands on Hector’s desk and leaning in until their noses almost touched. “Ashby is the smartest man in this building, myself excluded. Why isn’t he running his own studies? Why doesn’t he have an office?”
“Ashby?” Hector gulped and laughed shakily. “He’s…brilliant, sure, but the boy doesn’t have a backbone. They’d never listen to him.”
“A backbone? He has a disability!” Elio straightened and stepped back as his frustration exploded into anger.
“Fucking hell! What is the point of this place?” he shouted, knocking a stack of glossy pamphlets off of Hector’s desk.
“You aren’t leading the way in anything but ableism, mediocrity, and nepotism.
A scientist should be respected for his achievements and his abilities, not how many gift cards he can win or how popular he is. ”
Hector stood and held out his hands as he came around his desk. “You’re absolutely right and if it were up to me, Ashby would be running this department. But I have to work with what they give me and maintain some sort of order.”
“This is a bloody joke! How many adults are working here?”
“Here, in Computational Astrophysics? We have sixty-two adults, if you count Chad and Bryan.” He gave another tense laugh.
“You don’t have to worry about them—any of them,” he said with a wild wave.
“Be your own department and do whatever you want! The board made it clear that they don’t care what it takes, I just have to keep you happy,” he said, then held up a finger before Elio could suggest some personnel cuts.
“I can’t fire the people you don’t like, unfortunately.
Some of them have parents on the board or are related to donors.
They pay my salary and control the purse strings around here. ”
“Fine. I’ll be my own department and I want Ashby to be my project partner.”
“Consider it done!” Hector said and held out his hand for a gentlemanly handshake.
Elio gave it a disinterested slap before he turned on his heel and stalked out of the office and kept going until he was back at Muriel’s.
He spent the weekend working, stopping only to eat, shower, and for the occasional nap but he managed to drag himself to the institute for the “mandatory” Monday meeting.
Instead of addressing any of the asinine behavior or bullying, it was business as usual for Hector and little would change for Milo.
Working in academia had its drawbacks, especially in the UK, but merit mattered a great deal more in Europe than America.
Titles and money could get you into the right schools overseas but you had to prove yourself if you wanted to lecture and run grant-funded projects.
Money wasn’t thrown at pampered brats and scholars treated each other with respect.
At least, most scholars did. Respect was a case-by-case matter for Elio and most of his peers weren’t worth his time.
Milo deserved Elio’s respect and he was worth the time, but he wouldn’t work anywhere else.
With little choice but to accept it, Elio had left the rest in Milo’s hands and returned to Muriel’s.
It was surprising that Milo had chosen a Millennial Prize Problem for their first project.
Elio wanted them to make a statement and establish themselves as a team and for Milo to gain some confidence.
But this was a bold choice and would draw a lot of attention if they could solve it.
The $1 million prize would also give them more freedom and funding for more ambitious projects.
Elio already had an extremely ambitious problem for them to solve—one he had been working on for close to a decade—but he had to be sure that Milo was ready and could be trusted.
And trust went both ways. Elio had to earn Milo’s trust before asking him to take such a huge professional leap of faith.
They would both be labeled as madmen and possibly laughed out of the institute and the wider physics community, unless they were successful.
That was a tremendous gamble for both of them and as much as Elio wanted to rush, he would have to bide his time and endure Starlight.
He had to if he wanted to work with Milo and Elio had gone as far as he could on his own.
He kept hitting walls with his calculations and there wasn’t enough research on quantum time theory but solving the problem of polynomial time, versus exponential time through P versus NP could be the breakthrough Elio needed.
And if they could solve that, it could act as a professional and reputational ice-breaker before Elio’s true intentions were discovered. What was another year or two if Elio could master time and finally get what he truly wanted?
Logically, it would be nothing, but Elio felt a familiar pang of grief and longing and went back to his phone.
Matteo would understand best and his voice or presence usually calmed Elio, but the horrific tableau in Truman’s kitchen was still too fresh in his mind.
Theo and Doobie were off on Mondays and probably busy with their dogs or each other, so Elio gave in and dialed Leo’s number.
“Wie geht’s, Eli?” Leo answered after the first ring.
Tense as usual and bracing himself for bad news.
Leo could never understand and assumed that most of Elio’s actions were done out of spite, or in spite of him and the House of Hessen.
In reality, Elio didn’t give a damn about the title or the Foundation and rarely gave either any thought.
The margraviate was so minor compared to Elio’s work and had only caused his family pain and suffering before Leo inherited the title.
Leo was still suffering under the Foundation’s thumb, but at least he had Jonathon.
“I’m not in trouble and you won’t be getting a bill for damages.”
“Wunderbar! How are you settling in at Muriel’s and the institute?” Leo asked and Elio pushed out a groaning sigh.
“The apartment is fine but the rest is just as fucked as I had imagined and I was right to stay on the other side of the ocean.”
“Let’s not be hasty,” Leo replied in distress and it sounded like he had fumbled the phone. “You’ve only been there for a few weeks.”
“I know exactly how long I’ve been here, Poldi.” Elio rolled his eyes and wished Leo had a little more faith. “I’m not irrational. I was just wondering—”
“I cannot get you access to the Hadron Collider. I don’t know that I would if I could,” Leo said carefully.
“That’s not why I called,” Elio snapped back, then remembered why he had called and that his brother loved him, even when he was at his worst. “Sorry. I just wondered if Mamma and Papà ever said anything about why they chose Elio for me.”
“For your name?” Leo clarified, his tone lowering with concern.
Elio already knew what Leo’s answer would be, but every now and then, another forgotten clue would emerge from his brothers’ memories. Being an infant when his parents died, Elio had no memories of his own and had to rely on Leo’s and Theo’s to know and understand them.
“You and Theo have traditional Austrian names. You were named after Papà’s side but Matteo and I have Italian names.”
“Ah.” Leo made a thoughtful sound. “I think that the rift wasn’t as final when Theo and I were infants but the relationship between our parents and the rest of the von Hessens had deteriorated a great deal by the time Matteo was born.”
“I know about all of that. But why did they name me Elio? Did they know something about my future or did either of them have a secret passion for physics or astronomy?”
“Eli… This again?” Leo laughed softly. “Our parents were both very smart people and Mamma could play any instrument and she was an amazing baker, but they couldn’t have known that you’d be a genius and change the world of physics.”
“How can you be certain?”
“I can’t,” Leo confirmed. “There’s a lot about our parents that I don’t know and conversations I wasn’t privy to.
But Papà studied finance and history before he fell in love and left the von Hessens.
He loved the opera and Mamma and he worked as an accountant to support us and keep me and Theo in school. ”
“Gah! I know all of this!” Elio complained as he stomped towards the dry erase board. “But there had to be a reason.”
“Why? Do you need to put more pressure on yourself?”
“That’s not—” Elio started but it was. Whenever he was most frustrated with his work on the time problem, Elio would think about his parents and wonder if his name was a sign or a message. Was this the path they had wanted for him and was he letting them down?