The End Of Mr. Y. Scarlett Thomas

equations, the end result of his original thought experiments, show that matter and energy are different manifestations of the same thing, and that if you tried to approach the speed of light, you’d just become heavier the closer you got as your energy converted to mass. He also showed that space and time are essentially the same. For Lumas, the fourth dimension was a space containing beings, or, at least, thought. For H. G. Wells, it was a greenish otherworld containing spirits. For Zollner, it was a place full of phantoms that seemed to like nothing better than helping out magicians. But for Einstein, it wasn’t a place at all. But it wasn’t simply time, either. It was the fourth dimension of space–time: not just the clock, but the clock ticking on your wall, relative to you.

      The technician clears his throat. ‘Almost there,’ he says.

      ‘Great. Thanks,’ I say back.

      Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to be Einstein, sitting in a stuffy patent office looking out at the trains and the railway track. There’s something romantic about it, of course, in the way only other people’s lives can be. I briefly look up from my notes and out of my big, steel-framed window. Something comes to me, suddenly, some weird Lumas connection, and I look back down at my notes. I write:

      Metaphor (as in Lumas preface) … Trope … (Troposphere! – weird) Ways of thinking about the world. You can’t use trains as metaphors if there are no trains. Cf. différance. Can a thought exist without the language with which to have the thought? How does language (or metaphor) influence the thought? Cf. Poetics. If there was no evening no one would think it was like old age.

      ‘All right,’ says the technician. ‘All set. If you just want to come over here and type in the new password …’

      He gets up and moves to the other side of the room while I sit there and try to think of something. I should just use my own password; that would be simple. A few possible words go through my mind. But something makes me calmly type ‘hacker’ into the box. It comes up as six little stars and I hit OK and then tell the technician I’m done. He comes over and does a couple more things and then restarts the machine.

      ‘All done,’ he says, and leaves.

      I have moved the mouse about a millimetre across the desktop when the phone rings. It’s Yvonne.

      ‘Has that technician been yet?’ she asks.

      ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘He’s just gone.’

      ‘You got your document all right then?’

      ‘Er … no. Not yet. I’ve literally only just logged in.’

      ‘All right, well, you sort it out and I’ll be down in ten minutes to do the desks. Roger’s here now, but I’ll just give him a cup of tea and we’ll hang on for a bit. You’re all right to wait ten minutes or so, aren’t you, Roger?’ I can hear a muffled ‘Yeah, if there’s a biscuit as well’ in the background. ‘OK, Ariel, see you soon.’

      Ten minutes. Shit. I’m not going to be able to investigate Burlem’s machine in ten minutes. OK: plan B. I take my iPod out of my bag and connect it to the back of Burlem’s machine. I pray (to what? to whom?) that it won’t reject the connection, and in a couple of seconds it’s appeared as the F drive. Fantastic. Now all I need to do is transfer the contents of Burlem’s ‘My Documents’ folder over and … There. That took about twenty seconds. Would he have hidden any information anywhere else on the machine? I metaphorically poke around for a bit, but a few clicks on folders tells me that he doesn’t use anything apart from ‘My Documents’ for his files. I’m not completely satisfied, but that will have to do. I double-check that the files have copied OK; then I unplug my iPod and shut the machine down just before a knock on my door tells me that Yvonne has arrived.

       EIGHT

      YVONNE IS UPSET ABOUT THE number of books in the room.

      ‘What do you think, Roger?’ she asks.

      ‘Well,’ he says. ‘You’re not going to fit any more shelves in here.’

      ‘No. That’s what I thought.’

      While they’re having this conversation, I’m clearing out Burlem’s desk drawers, something I should have done much earlier. I’ve already filed a few loose documents relating to his Literature and Science course, and now I’m onto the general debris. There’s a teaspoon, presumably stolen from the kitchen, which I hide before Yvonne can see it. There’s a bag of filter coffee, unopened, which I also hide, thinking something along the lines of ‘finders keepers’, but also that Burlem probably wouldn’t mind me having his coffee in an emergency. But there’s nothing else of interest in Burlem’s drawers: just lots of pencils and board pens. Oh! And an electric pencil sharpener. I’m having that as well.

      ‘What do you think, Ariel?’ says Yvonne.

      ‘Sorry?’ I say. I’ve been so carried away with looting Burlem’s drawers that I’ve somehow managed to tune them both out.

      ‘We’re just saying that Professor Burlem’s books might as well go in storage, too. If I bring down some boxes, do you mind packing them up? We’ll finish the rest tomorrow morning.’

      By four o’clock I’ve packed most of the books. Or, at least, I’ve packed most of the books that I think I won’t ever want to use (mainly literature classics that I also have copies of, also in this room), and I am alarmed to see that they have only filled two of the five boxes I’ve been given. The shelf space they’ve left behind is minimal at best. I look again. There’s no way I’m sending all Burlem’s theory books into storage. I need all those. And the Literature and Science textbooks have to stay because I’m teaching the course in a couple of weeks’ time. What about the nineteenth-century science books? I suppose I do have a lot of them at home. Shit. What am I going to do?

      While I’m contemplating the situation further, the phone rings.

      ‘So …’ It’s Patrick.

      ‘So,’ I say back, playing along.

      ‘Guess what I’ve got.’

      ‘What have you got?’

      ‘Keys.’

      ‘To?’

      ‘The Russell study bedrooms. So I was thinking …’

      I laugh. He wants to fuck on campus. That’s new. There’s something in his voice I haven’t come across before.

      ‘Patrick,’ I say, as though I’m about to explain to a kid that you shouldn’t play with matches. ‘What if … ?’

      ‘There’s no one around,’ he says. ‘Why don’t you bring that thing I sent you?’

      Can I tell him I’ve got to pack boxes instead? Probably not. What about investigating Burlem’s computer files? I open my desk drawer and look down at the object he wants me to bring. And then that’s it. Desire bites me hard and I feel its warm poison creep through my body. I ignore the fact that Patrick’s voice is weird, and that this is a stupid idea, and, after agreeing to meet him in a remote corner of the Russell Building, I pick up my bag and go over there, looking behind me a couple of times in case anyone is watching. I’ll do the boxes later. And how long can this take? A quick fuck might be just the thing to break up the afternoon. And other people have tea breaks, don’t they?

      Afterwards, at six o’clock, still sitting in the small, slightly sordid room after Patrick has left, I wonder if the reason I tend to say yes to everything is because I deeply believe that I can survive anything, but I’m still looking for the definitive proof. It turned out that Patrick’s voice was odd because his wife is in the process of leaving him – not because she found out about me, but because she has fallen in love with one of her toy boys. Patrick had been angry; that was clear. And it wasn’t as if he’d called me up so he could take it out on me – he’s usually a nice guy. But once