Christopher Golde
Date: 17th April 1955
Location: Princeton Hospital, USA
The night was about to fall and now only a sliver of light entered the modest hospital room through the slender crack between the curtains. The light that did enter, fell upon a slightly raised bed before ending its journey on a small table covered in papers and an assortment of colourful well-wishing cards.
The sole occupant of the room, lay still beneath the covers of the bed, only a fragile pair of shoulders exposed. A shock of white hair, splashed across a large pillow, framing a face deeply furrowed and gaunt from many years of deep contemplation, exasperated even more by a long-term of illness.
As the light began to fade, his eyes opened and slowly the room came into focus. He was surprised to find that he was alone and that everything was so quiet. At first, he thought his hearing failed but then he heard what sounded like a breeze rustling leaves.
‘Highly improbable in here’, he thought as he attempted to lift his head to see more.
From the foot of his bed, something caught his eye.
‘Something moved’, he thought.
It was at that moment he heard a voice, a familiar voice, but one he had not heard for so long now he couldn’t even remember when it was he had heard it last.
‘Hello Albert, we haven’t spoken for a long time’, said the voice in its usual deep ageless tone.
Albert could now see the outline of the figure at the end of the bed and smiled to himself.
‘I suppose you’ve come to take me away, have you,’ he thought, but with the intention of his thoughts being heard by the dark figure?
‘I’m going with you of course. Remember, in life and death, just as we agreed, all those years ago,’ said the voice. ‘You need not fear death, Albert. But then you know that, don’t you?’
‘Where is everybody,’ Albert asked?
‘They’re still here,’ the dark figure replied, ‘they’re just in a different dimension to us, that’s all. How has life been for you, Albert?’
Albert contemplated, as he always did before answering a question. Though it was difficult to hide anything from ‘The Darkness’, he liked to believe that he had some private thoughts.
‘All those years ago, I listened to what you taught me and did exactly what you told me to. Of course, you were always right, and I appreciate what we accomplished, but there were times, times that what I achieved, well, it may have caused…’ Albert thought of the end consequence of some of his work and shuddered.
He had spent the last years of his life trying to complete his theories so that the end result would justify the anguish of his uncertainty. Even to his deathbed, he had taken his notes and work. His friends and family thought that he was obsessed, in reality, he was desperate, but the answer had eluded him and he knew his time had run out.
‘Why did you show me such things, when you knew they would be used like that?’
‘Albert, you know as well as I do that man is his own monster, and with or without you, he would have created them. With you at least they had a hope of understanding what they could achieve in the future.’
Albert knew he was right and consoled himself with the knowledge of just how much he had given to the world.
‘I hadn’t finished you know. You abandoned me at the end, and I still have not solved the most critical puzzle of them all.’
‘There will be others in good time, Albert,’ the voice said, ‘you have paved the way, you were the prophet of knowledge, and you will be remembered, and celebrated long after you have gone. Even your theories that have not yet been proven will eventually be vindicated as fact, not fiction. You should be very happy, Albert, and we are all very impressed.’
He had lived long and seen much, but, oh how he would like to see the future now, even though he had said the opposite so often.
‘Maybe you will,’ said the voice, ‘as you know this is not the end, only the beginning.’
They continued their conversation until just before the stroke of midnight. The dark figure revealed to him what for so long he had sought to know. Albert lay there listening and asking the occasional question, a content smile on his aged features.
‘It is in the end as it was in the beginning’, he thought to himself. He remembered how as a child, and as a young man, he and his spiritual mentor had spent the long hours of each night discussing the mysteries of the Universe. His only regret now was that he would never have the opportunity to share this new knowledge with some of his dearest intellectual friends and say, ‘it’s so obvious!’
Finally, ‘The Darkness’ began to fade from Albert’s tiring eyes.
‘Now go back to the land of living for one more time, Albert, and I will see you first thing tomorrow morning.’
Albert closed his eyes and murmured once more, but this time he said it not in his mind, but aloud so that the living could hear.
“Strange, but now it all seems so obvious,” he said in his once native German tongue. A nurse in his room looked at him expectantly, but there would be no more. She had not understood what he had said; only that he had spoken in German, as she would later tell his family. He then relaxed, slumping back into his pillow, and once more dreamed of stars, planets and ‘multiple universes’. He wondered how the human race would fare in this brave new world of tomorrow.
During the second hour of the morning of the next day, Albert’s spirit and mind rose up from his feeble body and became one with eternity.
‘The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day’.
-Albert Einstein
Chapter eight
The Physicist