STEFAN MARKOVSKI - SHORT-STORIES

Stefan Markovski is a contemporary Macedonian writer, poet, screenwriter and philosopher.
 
Born in the town of Gevgelija (01. 12. 1990), he’s completed primary and secondary education in his hometown, graduating on both the Department of Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philology and the Institute of Philosophy of Ss. Cyril and Methodius State University of Skopje.
He’s obtained a MA in Screenwriting at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts (FDU) in Skopje with a feature film script titled “My Name Is Freedom” and theoretical explication of the potentials of the hybrid crime-drama genre within the future of Macedonian cinematography.
 
Markovski’s writing career and contribution to modern Macedonian literature has granted him literary prizes and honors in Macedonia, including the “Macedonian Literary Avant-garde” for a book of short stories, “Petre M. Andreevski” Prize for novel, “Beli Mugri” for a poetry book, “Krste Chachanski” for a book of short stories, The “7-th November Award” of Gevgelija municipality, “Knjizevno pero” of Croatian Writers’ Association (HKD), prize of UNESCO for Macedonian writers up to 30 years of age etc.
Mentioned in anthologies of modern Macedonian literature, participating in festivals around the country and abroad, some of Markovski’s works have been published in over 20 languages.  
He’s taken part in the Other Words literary residency in San Sebastian in 2018. 
Markovski is a member of Macedonian Writers’ Association, the Macedonian center of the International Theatre Institute, the European poetry platform “Versopolis” and other international associations.
He’s the chief editor of the oldest Macedonian literary magazine – Sovremenost as well as the poetry collections of the project Metric caravan.

A meditation instructor
​

 I went out in the park for a brisk walk with my best friend. Suddenly, I started giving meditation instructions:
– Imagine stairs ahead of your physical body; more precisely, in front of your nose.
(His nose was so huge he was balancing his body weight on the ground by just breathing.)
Don’t forget to breathe.
Now imagine yourself climbing onto them and simultaneously you’re becoming more and more relaxed while the Sun envelops you with light and therefore, you’re becoming lighter. The lighter you are, the happier you feel inside.
Become conscious and laugh with your whole being to the sky. Stay like this until I come back.
Meanwhile, I went to a bank, finished some administrative work in a whorehouse, scratched my toe, won a lottery,
went around the world on roller blades, returned to 4 years of age and turned into He-man, returned to a previous life form as a diploids and got back into the park.
My friend opened his eyes, noticing that I’m a diploids.
He was silent, spraying his wisdom all around.
Then he got up, suddenly stepping onto a invisible, air-made stair. The following moment he knocked himself off the ground and turned into pasta.
My allergy towards pasta and processed foods in general didn’t prevent an explosion of laughter as intensive as opening a 5-years old champagne.
– Hey – a pair of crackheads asked me, why do you laugh as intensive as opening of a 5-years old champagne?
– Hahahahahahahi!
– What type of shit’s gotten into you, dude?
– He’s been like that for a lifetime – my friend answered looking at me flying through the clouds laughing.
I’ve never seen that much disappointment combined as I did in that moment but anyhow, after clearing the sky out of clouds, the Sun appeared, so they mysteriously smiled and went away.

​

​A special business plan

The scoundrel was a pirate.
“Scoundrel, why is it that you are a pirate?” – he was asked by a captain, just a moment before his trial for piracy for which the penalty was known.
After serving it and the reincarnation into a body of another scoundrel, an antiques reseller, he began creating his business plans.
Once he organized an auction for purchase of toilet paper which he spent while taking notes on the, as the critics demystifying the literary essence of his artwork used to say, “beautiful poetry”.
Since no one ever bought it, he decided to go for a plan change and open up an Writers’ Units for Quick Deployment Agency.
On his business card one could read:
Traian Mitrevski, special writer
Head of the Writers’ Units for Quick Deployment Agency – “Dead Horse Reflexes”
Soon the word about the agency spread throughout the kingdom, and then throughout the world.
It was applied for entry by many reputable and internationally known writers, some of them even published.
However, the criteria were so strict that no one has come to the stage of the bidding; none of the potential applicants managed to apply before the public calls deadline.
The application period was from 8:13:03 to 8: 13: 03: 08 time zone UTC + 5: 00 (Islamabad and Karachi), but the speed of the potential candidates filing for candidacy did not allow to call themcandidates for Agency for rapid deployment of writers.
Once he was called by a landowner whose fountain has gotten spoiled, and accordingly, needed express reaction.
Within a few minutes Traian has come, after successfully hacking the external gate by setting a new password, then slipping through ten guards, then hacking the inner door of the house, suspending and fixing the cameras, making 2 coffees and boiling 5-6 eggs (it was his routine to exercise immediately before) and finally, to come to the fountain and start writing.
He always wrote while standing. He stood on one leg. The left one. He was a leftist in the heart. Even in the kidney. Only the left one remained. (In that honor, he once wrote a poem: “Only the left remained.”)
He wrote for a few hours.
He wrote from heart, not for the audience.
When completed, he gave the sheet to the landowner and mysteriously disappeared.
No one ever saw him again.
The following words of wisdom were written on the paper:
“This fountain is like the mind of the true writer. Only a cracked pipe can pour so much water. Only a cracked mind can be a source of endless inspiration from monumental dimensions. ”
He had written under a mysterious symbol: the word “AFRDOWDHR” and drawing pen.
After years of interpretations, a team of scientists came to a conclusion that the word is actually a shortcut to the Agency For Rapid Deployment Of Writers – Dead Horse Reflexes.
Nobody has managed to interpret the true meaning of the pen yet.

​

The All-at-once Man
​

2024.    I filed for presidency and gave my first promise:
“I’ll make MasterCards out of your party membership cards!”
A smart guy from the crowd shouted:
“We like our parties!”
I gave my comeback:
“Shut up”.
And I saw them all dressed up in piece-of-shit clothes, all drunk, starting to feel sorry for all of them. I started crying from the feeling of sorrow for my people.
I cried, cried, cried. (I lied, lied, lied.)
The next day, electricity went off.
Fortunately I had no microphone with me, otherwise the effect would’ve been so terrible.
“Is this cutting off of our electricity real, let’s keep it real?!”
All two of them started to clap fanatically crazed, falling in trance, jumping, hopping, falling in trance again, falling on the ground, meditating, experiencing Enlightenment just like in the Mayan temples where it was spoken of the world’s end.
“In my mandate I’ll do everything and achieve anything. I’ll use up the energy from the black holes and create many international interspatial interdimensional roads”.
The smart guy from the crowd asked:
“Will there be black holes on the roads?”
I answered:
“No, lol”.
Then I continued:
“I’ll do much more than Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Krishna, Vishnu, Aristotle and the Man of steel combined. I’m the All-at-once Man!”
I sneezed, shook my left glove, continuing:
“Whoever you vote, you guys know that the world’s end is bound for 4 years at most. If this is no good enough reason to vote for me, then… vote anyone!” – I got out pissed to the very limits with my eyes pointing towards the moon, simply extraordinary.


​

The Bridge
​

I crouched in order to get a somewhat better perspective on some elongated object taken by the river under, feeling the sudden slipping of the metal object from my shirt pocket.
How could I forgot that?
My watch made out of 18-karat Swiss gold fell off. It costed as much as a fortune, not to mention one couldn’t find anything like that on the market.
And that wasn’t even close to its true value.
The goddamned watch was the last memory from my far too early lost father.
He died without me ever seeing him.
Without me on this world, awaiting the materialization of the abstract noun of sorrow within our family.
I was thinking whether to follow the path of the time counting machine not able of feeling any pain.
Or maybe I could try finding it.
I marked into my photographic memory the spot where it fell.
Getting down from the bridge, my attention momentarily got focused on the object that caused my lack of attention in first place.
It pretty much looked like another metal object I had no courage to name.
Nevertheless, with my feet already touching the water, I reserved the attention towards it after finding the lost heritage.
My hand was waving into the water, touching the grassy floor of the river.
The water at its deepest was right up to the middle of my chest, cutting my heart in equal pieces.
It was muddier than grassy, giving the impression of swimming in a swamp.
Carefully I walked, not touching anything else other than couple of stones enveloped in grass.
After few more tries, I finally found it.
It was in a shape of a mirror giving a reflection of the world a few decades after.
I looked just like the one it belonged to.
I could recognize him – it was Me, father of myself.

​

​A story of an asphalt crack

It was short. Thick, deep, old and barely noticeable.
Once, a guy named Horny stumbled from it, crushing onto a nearby vending ice cream machine from the cake shop "Good way", and then, losing his balance crushed into the owner Tome.
Another time a guy named Pero stumbled from it, crushing onto a nearby ice cream machine from the cake shop "Good way", and then, losing his balance crushed into the owner Tome.
Another time a guy named Nimbly stumbled from it, crushing onto a nearby ice cream machine from the cake shop "Good way", and then, losing his balance crushed into a worker.
Another time a nameless hungry cat stood on it with a special love for sex with another nameless fed kitten, failing since it started to rain heavy as hell, much like reality itself. 
Another time Healthy, rushing with his bike as hell, barely missed it.
Another time on April 28th, the crack could not be detected, being covered with a political party stage made out of pure 24 carat gold from India for a rally.
And another time literally nothing happened since there was no one nearby.
The cake shop "Good way" in that time was in its absolute prime.
And Lucky, the co-owner of the rival bakery "Bad company & Co. Ltd" (once a former confectioner) regretted why he had to leave the confectioner's business after so many years of painstaking work in "Good way" and pass in the now dying baking industry.
He said to himself “I am cursed”, abruptly scratched his testicles and soon thereafter managed to enter a party and become member of the House of Commons, and even Deputy Minister of Labour.

​

The furious mad professor or On a new social parapsychology on The Being
​

The professor of social parapsychology – Michael Pope was equally angry and mad.
He was so angry that when one of his students by the name of Mr. Clear asked about the exam material he loudly roared "Aggressive behavior!", and given that Mr. Clear was slightly deaf and had to ask again, he replied: "AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOUR, MY DEAR COLLEAGUE!", with the doors and windows of the faculty building exploding and wounding several randomly chosen by Mother Nature victims (among whom more than half students); the incident was acknowledged a collateral damage by team of professionals, a few days later.
Then the professor humbly added: "To that you may add conflict resolution through reward and punishment, meta-social behavior, quasi-social behavior and screw-yourself-buddy behavior."
He was so mad that when Mr. Clear came to the exam instead of behavioral, he set non-behavioral issues. 
He was so angry that as he listened to him while Mr. Clear picked his nose amidst the exam, his whole hair fell off and during the fall the hairs themselves started to whiten and fell to the floor white as ectoplasm or similar parapsychological phenomena.
He was so crazy that after the exam he wanted to eat pork, jumped from the table and ran towards an innocent pig in the yard of the faculty. In a sudden surge of comfort, he thought to himself: 'Out of all the innocent pigs in this world, at least this must be guilty", put a mask and stabbed it with a knife made from Indonesian silver.
He was continuously stabbing it during the run up to the center of the megalopolis, where the pig finally collapsed and stopped running, and people overcame their unreasonable fear of the masked teacher with a knife, covered in blood.
He was so angry that after the meal he suddenly consumed a whole jar of honey for dessert and began choking, but failed to vomit, so he got stuck to the toilet bowl.
Then, his neighbor called spec ops to get him out of the crazed toilet bowl, which recently ended up in mental institution.
Symptomatically.

​

A Bloom Torn From The Silence
​

​ 
 
 
1.
 
The death from a metastatic colorectal cancer of the revolutionary scientist announced by the mainstream media that day stressed out not only the planet's scientific circles. The deceasing of the researcher who, for not very long succeeded to transform the entire world of science and became a science icon resonated as a shock among ordinary people, world leaders, fellow scientists, intellectuals, artists and influential figures on the social networks, planting bitterness in their souls and hope that the future will bring minds that will further develop the brilliant discoveries born from his pen.
The burial was followed by the world public as an event of highest category of importance, and was immediately given merit and recognition from the political leadership of quite a few countries.
 

 
2.
 
Years earlier, a Thursday in August, the Neurosurgery Clinic at the University Hospital in Bilbao resembled a giant box in which the employees seemed like trapped microbes trying to find themself in the melee. The dynamic atmosphere in room no. 133 required constant, concentrated engagement of the neurosurgeons and the medical staff, jointly using the benefit of emerging medical technologies for removing brain tumors.
The computer-navigated probe provided the tumor location.
The opening of the sulcus allowed access to the gyrus where the tumor was located, the doctor started cutting it, millimeter by millimeter, with extremely stable, super-slow movements.
After the extraction, the doctor put cotton balls soaked in hydrogen peroxide in the resulting after-cut cavity to assist the oxygen to further destroy the tumor cells on a micro-scale, after which the space was covered with a hemostatic agent and enclosed with titanium micro plates, screws and bone material.
The clock struck noon when in the hall of the Intensive Care Unit at the Clinic, one next to another, stood a man dressed in a brown, light-cotton linen suit and a doctor-specialist.
"I am glad that I met you, Sir. She will have to spend at least four more days here. Her situation, as you know, was, to say at the least, close to hopeless. As if a supernatural force intervened in order for our team to complete the surgery impeccably. You know, she will be under constant and comprehensive surveillance and you’ll be promptly informed about any new situation...” the doctor explained before showing the way to the bed.
Shortly afterwards Isaac, talking on the phone, entered the S-121 room and after a good look around he found the patient he was looking for.
Ending the conversation, he slowly bent over the woman's face hidden to the half behind the inside of the breathing machine’s translucent hemisphere.
"Oceana, I came" he spoke to her.
The soft fingers of the palm slowly straightened, and Oceana gently moved her face aside.
"The doctor said that in a couple of days you’ll be able to go home”, said her husband.
The trembling of the eyelids on her face was barely noticeable.
"You'll be fine. Sorry I couldn’t come during the operation" he said pursing his lips," these days I was freakingly busy, as you know, with the Institute’s new research project."
The angular position of the woman’s face remained unchanged.  
 
 ***
 
A few days later, Oceana was wide awake and already capable for more complex movements. She was allowed to use the bathroom and go to the balcony from where she could watch the nearby clinics and various types of trees in between. She could barely see, so they looked to her like a blur of colorful-green rags from the hospital's section which brought freshness, and breathed easily.
It was just before 10 am when she and Isaac left the hospital. Isaac drove carefully, briefly stopping on every prominent curve before finally arriving.
"How are you?" he asked, opening the door of the house.
The woman slowly opened her eyes.
"I've been better," Oceana replied, “time will tell. I just hope the vertigo will pass soon."
"And the eyes? Are they ok?”
Oceana turned slowly towards him, and with a slight smile on her face replied:
"I suppose they will be."
"Aren’t they now?"
"Vaguely. As if someone embedded a blurry lenses to them."
“It’s post-surgery. The doctor warned me, "said Isaac," about temporary side effects. "
"Yes, I guess that's it," the woman nodded, blinking again.
Their wedding from few months ago could get all epithets of luxury and wealth, with many upper class visitors, scientists, family friends, many relatives… One of Isaac's closest childhood friends, who was also a colleague-professor at Donostia International Physics Center, took the role of ultimate godfather.
From the few Oceana’s relatives that remained, her uncle with his family, her aunt from the mother’s side and few distant cousins came. 
Isaac declined her desire of inner circle wedding, promising her one of the greatest moments in her life.
Through the fresh air of the out of the city hotel garden, a variety of live musical content, from traditional Basque, Spanish and French folk tunes to jazz and pop-rock could be heard.
Like never before, Oceana was dancing, tasting, talking to different guests and photographing with almost everyone in attendance. After the surgery, she was adjusting to the low vision, which conditioned her with better memory of the bodily movements and increased her general focus on what she could visually differentiate.
Exhausted, she sat on her seat and instinctively recognized one of the cousins who wanted to take a picture. The photographer set the camera and, at the moment of shooting, Oceana felt an uncontrollable shaking in the limbs and a loud echo of voices inside her head. Breathless, she ran to the bathroom covering her ears with her hands before slamming and locking the bathroom door.
"No!" she shouted out loud, "I'm not crazy! This is not happening! "
The volume of the sounds was increasing...
"No, this curse is a side effect of the surgery too!" she said with tear-covered eyes, "no ..."
For a moment, her face turned red and her hands from her shoulders to her palms trembled like uncontrollable ocean waves. The sounds increased further. Her look was indistinct for a long time, locked in an infinitely small point of the golden lock.
“Oceana, open it,"she could hear the voice of her spouse.
"Isaac?" she asked.
“Oceana, what happened to you?"
"Isaac?" repeated questioningly Oceana, opening the door.
Isaac looked at her stunned, standing with his arms opened.
"What happened? You've been locked up in the bathroom for an hour," he said," I thought you were kidnapped by an uninvited guest, even though the wedding was too secured for such an adventurist jeopardy. "
Isaac, I think I heard cries from the fire ... my mother ... my father. I'm afraid I'm losing it. "
 
***
 
Isaac was pacing up and down his cabinet, smoking and carrying a half-filled cup of bourbon from which he drunk big gulps.
"I’m telling you, we were completely convinced of the success of the surgery," said the voice from the other side of the line, "and the tumor has been defeated."
"Her vision... doctor, she's more than a brilliant theoretician and ..."
"With all due respect, but are you aware, professor, of the long-term side effects which such a craniotomy can cause?"
“Doctor, I pointed out that's exactly what was I afraid of."
"The fact that we were able to defeat the disease with terribly fast deteriorating tendencies does not exclude side effects even on a long-term scale," said the doctor "and you were both warned."
Isaac took a slug of whiskey.
"What's left is to simply wait. Pituitary tumors press the optic chiasm. It's part under the hypothalamus where it comes to crossing the nerves that transmit visual stimulation from the eyes. The vision almost always comes back completely. "
"Almost always?"
“We will have to do specific analysis. More complex side effects are also possible. Given the positioning and size of the tumor, there's a possibility for the side effects to take the shape of a cognitive or aspects concerning the articulation of some aspects of reasoning ", said the doctor" ultimately, there is a possibility of a second intervention. But let's see how things will develop. "
"All right, doctor," replied Isaac bringing the ashtray closer to put out his cigarette, "we’ll stay in touch.”
"Have a nice day, professor."
Isaac took a gulp and returned the bottle to the desk. Not having enough time to put it on the massive mahogany desk, the cellphone rang again.
"Just want to remind you about tonight, mister professor," a female voice on the other side of the line emerged.
 
***
 
The rope which was tied to the boat was unusually difficult to untie and she staggered trying to do it faster, quickly returning it to the marked place afterwards.
She turned the boat battery on, put the oars inside and went across the bay.
Across the Pasaia bay where her native San Juan or Donibane as the Basques called it was situated, she used to sail for hours just to hear the waves and feed the fish.
The stopping of the progressive tumor, which over the past months caused unbearable headaches, transformed her dinky voyages into the ocean into a meditation that allowed experiences of tranquility with minimal visual stimulations. The direct sensing of the ocean motivated her intuition, so needed for work.
At a distance of three hundred yards from the coast and two miles from her home, the water on the surface seemed indestructible peaceful. Oceana took two bags, one with tiny fishes, and the other with fish food.
Widely opening the arched turquoise eyes in front of which the image of the outside world was slowly but surely beginning to return, she tried to follow her scaly friends from the depths, knowing the right moment to feed them.
In a moment, she started losing her balance again and sat down.
She covered her ears with her hands firmly, dropping her head.
For Lord's sake!?, she told herself.
She lifted her head and tried to separate her hands from the ears. In just a blink she heard an unclear, unnatural sound, and covered her ears again.
She closed her eyes, took few deep breaths, and exhaled slowly.  
After a while, she opened her eyelids again. Slowly began to separate the thumb parts of the hands that seemed hermetically glued to her ears. The sounds were reduced to a metal trembling in recurring rhythms through the air.
Oceana’s pale look lifted up to the sky while her hands turned on the engine of the boat, which soon returned her to the shore.
 
***
 
The experiment results in the Vandellòs plant in Catalonia were within the expected and Oceana made couple of suggestions about the methodology of the analysis that was to follow.  
One of the project's assistants, José, was sympathetic and kind enough to read her results, which she commented in the notebook in the form of equations and formulations. Her hand movements, which implied the formulations and graphic representations, were already pictured in her mind, thus excluding the possibility of any mistakes; the manuscripts were further examined by José and the rest of the team.
The next phase consisted of making suggestions for certain modifications in the future experiments.
Oceana in her seven years job as a researcher had additional experience in nuclear power plants in Spain and France and from time to time, she was serving as a visiting researcher in England, Switzerland and Germany.
As a graduate of the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Bilbao University, where she met her husband during the student days, she applied and received multiple invitations for freelance projects across the continent.
The Second unit of the Vandellòs plant belonged to the third generation of nuclear power plants in Spain with an annual production of over nine thousand gigawatts energy. The PWR reactor functioned on the basis of high-pressure water cooling, implying that the water was pumped into the core of the reactor, where it was being heated from the energy emitted through fission, after which the warm water was transferred into a separate compartment meant for generating steam and electric generator turbines, giving the water a dual role as a water cooler and a neutron moderator.
Oceana's laptop was carelessly put on one of the low metal storage cabinets in the middle of the workroom, when a signal was heard.
Mail, at last, she said to herself, pointing to her own computer. I'll go to Geneva next year, she added, goggling her eyes.
On the screen there was a message with an invitation for an extraordinarily important event for the theoretical physics under which one could notice the recognizable logo of one of the most significant organizations for modern science.
My God, CERN, finally, she whispered to herself, packing the laptop.
In shortly, after checking the password card and passing the security protocols, she found herself in front of a massive building located near the E-15, the so-called Autopista del Mediterráneo or the Mediterranean Highway, linking Barcelona and Valencia.
On the parking lot there was an old shiny metallic SUV in which she entered and a minute later, accompanied by José, she left the complex in direction of Tarragona and the official residence during the work responsibilities associated with the plant.
 
                                                    ***
 
After a few days, the experiments were over and Oceana was ready to return to Bilbao.
It took an unusually long period for Oceana to fully stabilize and recover her vision, and with it, a strange sensations in form of sounds came.
Driving on the highway to her home, in the middle of the ride she often took notes crossing her mind, usually related to the obtained results.
Getting to a part of the road with no particularly large turns and curves ahead, she put the vehicle in the third SAE[1] level of the driving automation, the so-called conditional automation, which allowed occasional breaks from driving and handing control over the vehicle to its partially autonomous AI system.
Decreasing the volume of the radio, she took the notebook and pen and quickly added several equations, comparing the comments of the results obtained. Then she turned a new page.
The same sounds again. The same blend of refined ultra-softness and cumbersome micro-noise.
She picked up the pen and brought it closer to her ear. The sounds became clearer. In disbelief, she removed the pen for a moment, then put it and hold it close to the ear again.
Undoubtedly, it was absolutely the craziest experience beyond any imaginable framework of reason.
The sounds came from some deeply buried inner world of the overly ordinary pen.
She grabbed it again and on the opened page of the notebook wrote two of the modern physics’ most famous equations: E = hf and E = , Planck and Einstein's determinations of the mass, below them, adding: m = hf / .
"The mass expressed through the frequency for determining the photon energy and the Planck constant...", she said rapidly writing the formulations. "The Higgs field possesses a high-frequency potential expressed as a Higgs boson, but such that has no interaction with photons. Because of this, they do not have a mass. On the other hand, energy has a mass that curves space-time, and since photons are energy carriers, they are carriers of mass, which is also supported by experimental findings according to which the rest of the photon mass can not be reduced to exact zero. "
At that point she stopped for a moment. The sounds became highly phonic and clearer simultaneously. She picked up the notebook and brought it to her ear. Different sounds were coming from there. She put down the notebook and continued.
"If we can make changes to the Higgs field, we could also change the energy that would be released from a given mass, according to the Einstein equation... but we could not always make those changes because the mass of the particles is not always generated by interacting with the Higgs field. For example, the mass of the photon is due to motion. The whole Higgs mechanism is but a special case.”
The self-steering system of the SUV signaled the need for a small human intervention and Oceana instantly set herself behind the wheel. Shortly after crossing a column of vehicles, she returned her focus to her notebook.
"On the one hand, the partial interaction of particles with the Higgs field results in having a mass, but on the other, mass is an inherent feature, including the photons that are composed of massive particles of opposite charge that generate electric fields, and from their movement magnetic fields arise, that is, the resultant electromagnetic fields. Each particle, including the photon and the gluon, inherently possesses a mass, but also, at the same time partly bases it as a result of the interaction in accordance with the Higgs mechanism, similar but not identical to the one derived from CMS and ATLAS[2]. "
Completing the last sentence, she picked an old rock radio station when a rare recording of Beginning to See the Light from The Velvet Underground was emitted, a track she didn’t listen to since her early 20s.
 
 ***
 
The sky above Bilbao was shrouded by heavy clouds unwilling to leave the city. The rain, which with several interruptions was falling for a week before its sudden pause, announced a return after a barely two-day period.
Oceana didn’t sleep all night, and early in the morning she was still writing endless mathematical strings in the notebook and her PC, equations and descriptions of phenomena which were hers and Isaac's specialties in the field of subatomic physics related to quantum mechanics and the theory of quantum fields.
While her look was spotlessly focused somewhere in the urban horizon offered by the wide and elegant metallic aluminum windows amidst the 16th floor of the red brick building not far from Nervion river and at the same time almost without movements of the neck muscles, she penned extensive mathematical strands, occasionally reaching for thick porcelain cups from which the smell of coffee seemed unwilling to cool down and dissolve.
Perhaps because there was absolutely no such dosage of coffee enough to charge up all the energy necessary for a comprehensive mathematical enrollment of new realities, she thought before each turning on the coffee machine and putting more of the dark source of extra mind speed.
The pages were written by themselves, as thoughts themselves melted into systems of mathematical statements from the telepathically obtained information.
 
***
 
 
Late in the afternoon, Isaac, cutting through the rain with a new car along the wide avenue leading to a very tall monument of a mildly subdued Jesus in the heart of the metropolis, stopped. А girl in the late twenties, before stepping out of the car and walking in the direction of a household equipment store, gave him a kiss and provocatively straightened his lump, to which the professor grumbled, grabbing her almost gently by the hair and sending her a warning stare. A moment later, the car's engine began humming again providing a path through the traffic jam of El Botxo, the capital of Biscay.
 
***
 
The rain was too warm and soft to miss the opportunity for a walk by the river, and Oceana completely forgetting about taking an umbrella, put on her shoes, catched the elevator and in a few minutes found herself in the nearby park.
Completing the main equation section of the work in accordance with the abstract and the outlined points, she felt an immediate need for a respite.
The movements of her irises in the middle of the large sclera were alternating between abrupt and fairly slow as she sat quietly at one of the benches and leaned her head on the wooden backrest.
They could be heard. She could hear them. The endlessly minuscule indestructible tenderness of what she had been searching for decades by devising clever experiments could be touched by carefully listening to the soundtracks in the air. And the wood, and the air, and the pen, the notebook, and every imaginable part of the space, had a voice that could be heard.
The woman spent an indefinite time with her widely open eyes having an almost fixed straying look and a head tilted on the wooden bench when in the park a familiar sound from a new, distracting car could be heard.
 
  ***
 
"I have never witnessed any similar extraordinary effort from any colleague, Oceana," Isaac said calmly, looking at the papers he was given. The semi-innate smile on the woman's  face was concentrated in the right corner of her full lips.
"By denying or promoting the understanding of Higgs mechanism, you suggest a literal redefinition of the foundations of modern physics. Do you realize that?"
"Additional experiments are needed, Is," she said. "Yes, it is a scalar particle with a zero spin. Yes, it has a positive parity and also the final breakdown outcomes are those provided by the current Standard Model."
"So this is not denied, but a new context of Higgs boson has been set up?" Isaac asked crossing his hands.
Oceana, holding the same fixed view, nodded.
"Okay, I have to consider this in detail. Can I take it? "
"Of course. The final part is not ready. But this contains the fundamentals of a new theory."
"I understand. Tell me, how do you come to these conclusions?"
"We always find ourselves halfway."
"Excuse me?"
"The conclusions... they were already there. In the form of voices. I just managed to read them on that basis and in accordance with my knowledge to compile an equation and theoretical system."
"Voices? Do you mean, like sound waves that move through the space at a speed of 343 meters per second? "Isaac smiled slightly.
Oceana shook her head.
"You are not achieving superluminal communication? Actio ad distans in the context of phonons with a long wavelength? I'm joking. I'll read this, Oceana."
Isaac came close to her and with his hands touched her face.
"But please," he said "try to relax ..."
The woman noded her head.
Artificially pumping his mouth with air, the physicist with half-closed eyes, turned his head and left the room.
Oceana's look remained sealed in a dead end on the horizon from which it could reach the view from the window.
 
***
 
The office was like a holy temple to the professor; there he could concentrate on solving of some, while, on the other hand, continuously formulating other emerging problems whose adequate resolution awaited his echo in the world of modern quantum mechanics.
The professor scrolled and made corrections and notes on a hundred-pages document, inserting them into his ever-switched laptop until his cell phone rang. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and answered.
"Yes. Yes, I was looking for you," he said, "See, for many years you've come to know my seriousness as a man and a researcher. I'm afraid, I'm really afraid about her health ... mental health. I'll explain it to you. Are you free tonight?"
The stiff deep female voice on the other side monotonously confirmed.
"Okay, I'll call you soon."
Isaac, bringing a glass of water to his lips, lowered the mobile phone instinctively, turning his eyes into a sharp curvilinear, almost elliptical arc from bottom to top right.
 

 
3.
 
May was in full swing when an event took place in the sanatorium not far from the central city area, involving a simultaneous activity of several professional musicians with patients. A few days earlier, patients with affinity for painting completed a cycle of paintings, some of which were sent to students for analysis, and some were given to a humanitarian auction to provide funds for children with cancer.
Several canvases remained exposed in the long main corridor of the ground floor.
There were not too many people, and the rooms were clean.
In one of them, under the wide cloth blanket a middle-aged woman with wobbled hair was cramped in a half-laid position. In a panting manner she could barely be heard, repeating as a mantra some difficult-to-understand sentences.
Few prominent and branched wrinkles passed through the middle of her cheeks.
"The equations are flower petals, and the flower - a complete fulfilment. The understanding is a flower torn from the gloom of stupidity, " she uttered by repeating the same phrase for a minute.
She grabbed the pen firmly, preparing to write something, when the nurse interrupted her.
"You have a visit," she said, and the next moment in the room, elegantly natty, Isaac stepped in.
"Every piece of reality hides its truth in the shadow of the whole," she repeated again.
Isaac came closer.
"Do you know that?" she asked, staring at him.
"I know that every piece of our reality hides its truth," answered Isaac.
"In the shadow of the whole. Every piece of reality hides its truth in the shadow of the whole. Every piece ... " she repeated with a blurry glimpse.
"I know. You told me that, "Isaac said, and noticing a leather notebook on the bed, reached for it.
"You? Who's you? Who are you? As if I know you... "
The notebook on one side was disorderly strung with hardly readable mathematical expressions, matrices, functions, factorizations, proofs. On the other, there was a picture, a colorful flower.
"What is this?" the physicist asked.
"It's a graviton."
"A graviton?"
"The particle that in some way keeps us all together. Together with the other three particles that quantify the fundamental interactions. "
Isaac swept the pages curiously. At the same time, he tried to take an apple from a bowl placed in the middle of the table in the center of the room, but dropped it and it fell to the ground.
"The graviton has no mass. And how do you know that the graviton looks like a flower? "
"Like the others, I can feel it. The flower is a display of its inner state", she said "you do not have to have a mass to have an internal state. "
Isaac put the apple up and with an ultra-fast scanning look restored his focus on the mathematical expressions while turning the pages.
"Hmm, non-Abelian Lie groups," said the physicist, "chromodynamics, strong forces ... weak forces plus electromagnetism. This looks like ... ", stopped on one of the pages," this looks like a proof that... for... for every compact simple gauge group" he said,"there is a non-trivial quantum Yang-Mills theory in a 4-dimensional Euclidean space. Isn't it?"
Oceana slowly blinked.
"The theory that corresponds to the gauge group is axiomatic?"
Isaac's thoughts remained absorbed in the cognitive centrifuge with a mathematical brain storm imprinted on the pages of the leather notebook.
"For God's sake, are you serious? A Yang-Mills solution means a million dollar reward. Plus, you have both atomic and quantum-mechanical descriptions. Let's not talk about the potential opening of one of the possible paths to a framework for the Theory of everything. "
"How can I be serious," Oceana said, "when I'm in a mental hospital?"
The professor turned his head off with a bitterness. From the inner pocket of his jacket, he picked up an identical furry notebook and replaced the old one. He picked up Oceana's notebook and put it inside the jacket.
"How can I be serious when I'm in a mental hospital?" she repeated the question.
The solid green apple was crunching not very loudly under the physicist's teeth.
"I think I want to kill you ... but who would I kill?"
"It's the disease, my dear physicist. The disease, not you. "
"Indeed, I can not recognize you because I'm sick."
Isaac ate the apple and threw it into the bin, taking a blunt look at the watch.
"I was glad, but I have to leave now."
"Again?"
"Yes. Do you remember? "
"Maybe."
The physicist left the room with a smile, hurryingly. 
Before she laid down, Oceana put her hands under the bed and pulled out a thick folder of papers scribbled with mathematical expressions.
It was 13:03 pm, a period when every patient could freely devote to his skills and hobbies.
     
***
 
The freshness of the spring air in the hospital garden inspired freshness and thought clarity. Its tranquility enabled a sense of sublime equanimity and serenity that gave Oceana the desire to sit for hours, telepathically speaking to the atoms, particles and all infinitely small parts of the space whose voices only she could hear.
"I could be crazy... maybe," she said, listening to the echoes of the subatomic particles inside the chamomile petals.
The sunset in the distance was announcing almost perfectly harmonious, cloudless and windless spilling of the rest of the diminishing daylight into the sky's darkness that was about to take over the city.


 
07.09.18,
Bayonne
 


[1] Society of Automotive Engineers or SAE International

[2] CMS‎: ‎Compact Muon Solenoid; ATLAS‎: ‎A Toroidal LHC Apparatus - particle detector experiments taken in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN