At 28, a late starting but highly intelligent man, Ime Binn decides to attend a University where it is discovered that he is brilliant in mathematics. A visiting Professor urges him to study Quantum Cosmology and obtains a full scholarship for him where one of the most outstanding men in the field teaches. While brilliant in his intellectual efforts, Ime is a failure in the social world where he is excluded from most activities and has never had a date with a girl. He develops an attitude of applying himself to his studies which in the long run gives him a mastery of his work.
After many years of solitude, Ime, quite by chance meets an intelligent woman in the park where he generally goes to relax each afternoon. The woman unfortunately is suffering from an incurable cancer.
The story is based on the way a true friendship develops into a deep love despite the circumstances.
Excerpt:
An innocent looking, small article in the N.Y. Times placed at the bottom of the scientific page of some six lines announced the holding of a meeting of some 60 space scientists, mathematicians, astronomers, cosmologists and other space specialists at Puerto del Sol, in Valle Nevada, Chile starting August 8th and concluding on the 1st of September. Nothing else was mentioned but it would turn out to be one of the most significant meetings in the modern world. The conclusions of the meetings could not be verified for several thousand years and if the hypotheses were correct, would affect the entire Universe as we now know it.
These experts were invited from all the great Universities in the world and included 3 members of the United States; 2 men and 1 woman. The topic of the meeting was to try to verify the theories of one Cristof Wetterich of the Heidelberg University, an astronomer very widely respected who was in agreement with the Big Bang theory that theorized that the Universe was at the end of its expansion; and that now, we were in a change from expansion to contraction. No additional energy source could account for its continuance with the exception that God was the supplier of the needed energy. Being a firm atheist, the idea that a God was the creator of the Big Bang or that He (God) supplied the needed energy to keep the universe expanding was not at all a consideration for him.
Of the 2 North American scientists, one was named Ime Binn, the Director of the Astronomy department at Princeton University in New Jersey His position with respect to the Wetterich theory was that of the Oscillating Universe theory in which the universe expanded and then contracted when the energy between the force of the Big Bang was bettered by the gravity of the universe. He called it my “Rubber Band Theory” and concluded that at some point in time, the elasticity of the expansion and the contraction would bring the conclusions of Wetterich into being, but that time was inconclusive at the present moment and that further study was needed.
A little about the man: Born to low / middle class Jewish parents who had immigrated from Lithuania, he was raised first in Manhattan where his father was able to obtain a job with the Department of Sanitation. The pay was adequate but more important was the fact that the work was steady. It was at the time of the Great Depression and any steady work was considered a golden opportunity. He had two sisters, both younger who followed the religious tenets of their mother.
Ime was an extremely intelligent child but totally without discipline. While he respected the fact that the family was never without sufficient food, he felt that his father should have secured work that was more dignified. He would not admit it but he was ashamed of being a “garbage man’s son”. When still in High School, he got a job delivering packages and would always jingle his pockets to so show that he had money while they, poor suckers had to ask their fathers for money for a movie or an ice cream cone. As soon as he was of age, he was assigned a job as a truck driver to deliver long hauls. The pay was very good; he loved driving and he was his own boss. He stopped when he wanted, ate when he wished, took a snooze if he felt the need and was away from the authority of his father. He also developed his one expensive habit of smoking cigars. He remembered with a touch of delight the look on the cigar vender’s face when he [plopped down $40.00 for four Cohida Behicho cigars which he smoked with pleasure on his long hauls. Then, with the world under his command, he enjoyed his independent life as real pleasures. True, at times he felt a little lonely but he could switch on his radio and let it boom until his head ached. Perhaps it was the long hours alone when those vaunted advantages seemed a lot less worthwhile. As was mentioned, he was an extremely bright child and had an IQ of 154. His teachers tried to press upon him the mental advantages he was gifted with and that he should consider studying for a career, but his obstinacy always won out. “Such a waste “, they thought, “here he was with the great gift of intelligence and was wasting his time”. Ime eventually changed his thinking but it was not until he discovered that he was one of the unfortunates who had a weak back. The constant driving and sitting in the truck soon had him more at home than at work. He was diagnosed with a herniated disk in his spine which gave him little relief or expectations that he would be able to continue his high paying work as a long haul driver.
