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equations. There is something missing—it is like a directional sign, true enough on its own level, but perhaps nothing more than an arrow that points to the real destination far beyond it.
    The plaque beside the closed double doors says C ALISTOGA B ALLROOM . This is it. He pauses, looks down the empty corridorand takes a deep breath, as the piped-in orchestra soars through what must be the crescendo that will tie up all the loose ends Schubert has postulated in the course of his symphony. Judging by the tarantella rhythm and the progression of the harmonics one after another, a sequence of key changes that builds and builds, this is probably his Third. He was only eighteen when he wrote it. It reminds Theodore of a November wind that blows through an Italian forest in the mountains, or a pack of wolves running through the snow.
A seed of thought, a grain of sand that grows and grows.
The voice comes back to him, tangled up with the final drowned out notes of the symphony.
Propelled by nothing more than the authority of my thinking.
    A giant thought that grows and grows. What if the universe is nothing more than that? An idea, pure and simple, taken to its furthest possible extent, from zero to infinity in a single instant. The image flashes before his eyes, blanking out the door and his hand reaching for the handle. A single thought, thought by whom? By someone, the only one, and he is in it. A dream that never ends and never did begin. It cannot be. He is hallucinating, going insane. The door is still here, his fingers grasp the burnished handle and pull it down, which pries the door open with a click and a creak. And beyond the door, as he steps through the threshold, is a room full of people who have been waiting for him.
    There is a center aisle, not wide, angled between row upon row of chairs crowded with the most exalted aspirants in the String Theory firmament, which he must navigate. The heads turn, nearly all of them male, many balding or gray, and follow him as he proceeds towards the front of the room where araised stage has been erected. He can feel the heat of their staring eyes boring into his head. But he does not look at them, he dares not meet the gaze of a single one of them. Each man and woman, every one of them, has done before what he is doing now, has faced a room full of his colleagues and spoken to them of his life’s work, boiled down into a few dozen slides and an hour or so of discussion. It hardly seems fair, that this is the format by which his great knowledge, his depth of understanding of the workings of the universe, should have to be transmitted. He would prefer a series of informal talks over a period of about a week in the hallways of the Institute or at the comfortable couches and easy chairs of the coffee shop by the quad. He can picture the windows steaming up there, the soothing smell of roasting coffee lending a magical precision to the conversation. But this artificial division that has been set up in this room, this controlled aura of confrontation between the many, the audience, and himself—the one—is stifling really, a forum for despair.
    He spots Pradeep in one of the back rows just past, his eyes inky black. He ignores him. If he looks towards him and catches his eye, he will not be able to go forward. For some time now he has been able to sense in Pradeep a sullen watchfulness, a wariness that is unusual in their exchanges about the daily goings on at the Institute. He knows that it is because they have been rivals now for the Directorship, that Pradeep sees him as his chief obstacle to the next, and most important step on the career ladder. Opportunities like this don’t come along very often, and though Pradeep is young, much younger than Theodore, he must know that obtaining a position like that will sethim up for life. But there will be other chances for a bright young man like Pradeep. Theodore, on the other hand, is almost past it. If this