and you just completed the ninth grade. You shouldn’t even be able to pass the admission exam.”
“However, here am. Ivan Gerkhardovich, ask me questions.”
“I’ve already asked, Igor. And if you don’t understand the question, I’ll briefly reiterate. How is this possible?”
I went silent, and then sighed and pushed the tablet aside so that the ward became visible in the webcam.
“I’ve had a very strong incentive, professor. VERY strong. I’ve had asteroid fever for six months. I want to stay alive, Ivan Gerkhardovich. I need your assistance.”
To say that Stein was confused would be a colossal understatement. The professor just lost it.
“But… how can I help you?” he asked, pulling himself together. “I work in theoretical physics, not in medicine.”
“Ivan Gerkhardovich, may I ask for a meeting in person? I’d like to describe a treatment for my disease in which nuclear physics plays an important role. I need an expert to confirm that my idea is not the ramblings of a dying man. Otherwise no one will believe me.”
The professor stared at me pensively.
“Let’s finish with the exam first, Igor. I’d like to see the depth of your knowledge beyond standard testing. I want to see how serious it is. Are you ready?”
“Sure I am.”
“First, a math question that is decisively inseparable from theoretical physics. Are you familiar with Kanthor-Shiman’s conjecture?”
“Yes. I’m familiar with Kanthor-Shiman’s theorem.”
“Theorem?”
“Yes, namely, a theorem. I can provide proof.”
“That’s unexpected. You have my attention.”
“Five minutes please.”
My fingers started to flutter over the virtual keyboard. The proof extracted from my memory covered one and a half standard pages. Near the end I intentionally allowed a small mistake while indicating the boundary conditions that were not totally correct. I hoped the professor would find this small mistake that would not seriously affect the course of the proof.
Stein examined the file for half an hour shaking his head in astonishment from time to time, then he looked up at me. He did everything just as I expected.
“That’s great, young man, just great. But there is a mistake, it seems you may have been a bit hasty. This term – he put the part of the proof in question on the screen – should look like this. And the professor corrected my mistake.”
“I totally agree with you, Ivan Gerkhardovich,” I uttered gratefully. “I hadn’t realized that. But you corrected me just in time. It seems to me that Kanthor-Shiman-Stein’s theorem sounds much better than Kanthor-Shiman’s conjecture.
I smiled and looked him in the eye.
Stein looked at me thoughtfully.
“That’s wrong,” he finally expressed his doubts. „Stein-Lavroff’s proof will sound far better. That’s more than enough to pass the exam. I’ll send your diploma in 10 minutes. Congratulations on graduating from the Colonial Technological Institute.”
“Thank you, professor. And what about a meeting in person?”
“I understand,” Stein looked around my room, “you’re inviting me to your place?
“Yes, if it’s possible.”
“OK. When?”
“I need to invite two more people, and I don’t yet know if they will. To tell you frankly, I don’t even know who are they.”
“What particular areas do you need specialists from?”
“Medicine, radiotherapy, and biochemistry.”
“Do you know biochemistry as well as physics?”
“I think so.”
“Then I have a worthy candidate. I’ll persuade him to come.”
“I’ll appreciate that. Is he your colleague at The Colonial Technological Institute?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll take the biochemistry exam tomorrow. Could you ask him to examine me?”
“Well, that’s easy to arrange.”
I spent the following two days on the tablet. Olga was very concerned that I’d tire myself and called on the doctor’s assistance. Ilya Sergeyevich came in, greeted me and approached me silently, looking at what I was doing, which was one of the medical assignments; namely, I was conducting virtual surgery to remove shrapnel from a patient’s left lung. After standing a couple of minutes behind my shoulder, the doctor silently left my room and closed the door quietly. What he thought, I don’t know; but he had no questions, and Olga didn’t bother me anymore.
As for biochemistry, I passed with flying colors, but with medicine I had a hard time. There are a lot of practical matters in this discipline, even with the automation of the main processes. Besides, all the medical equipment was completely unfamiliar to me. Nevertheless, I obtained all the required three diplomas, and set up a meeting with three professors. Local science was enriched by Lutsko-Lavroff’s cell membrane permeability estimation method, Lavroff-Grishin’s radiotherapy tolerance express test, and Stein-Lavroff’s proof.
On the fourth day my ‘mom’ visited me. She was so glad that I felt better and I decided to tell her some things. Quite surprisingly, even though I was an orphan I saw this older but attractive woman as my mom. Igor Lavroff was a kind homeboy and loved his mother very much. A part of his personality apparently settled in my head, and having nothing against it, I wondered about that myself.
Mother sat down on a chair near my bed and took my hand in hers.
“Igor, you clearly feel better. Perhaps, everything will be fine.”
“If we keep on going the way we're going, it won’t be okay,” I replied firmly. “This is just a remission, a temporary improvement. Within a fortnight I'll be in worse condition and it will be irreversible.”
“But how… Ilya Sergeyevich told me nothing.”
“And he won’t. He doesn’t want to ruin the last days with your son. But there is something he doesn’t know, mom. Tomorrow three professors will come here to see me: a radiotherapy specialist, a biochemist and a physicist. Please come. It will be useful for you to hear our conversation. And one more thing. I’m afraid we may need all the money we have. Everything that’s left.”
Chapter 3
I notified Ilya Sergeyevich in advance about the professors’ visit and asked him to also be present at the meeting. He looked at me somewhat strange but didn’t say anything aloud: he had evidently decided that the terminally-ill patient was just grasping at a straw and he should be allowed to continue since there was no sense in making him upset before his death.
The guests arrived almost simultaneously. In any
