The Tree of Knowledge, Daniel Miller [unputdownable books txt] 📗

the rearview and noticed a powerful silver sedan turn off a side road and accelerate behind him. The glimmering Rolls-Royce followed ten feet from the Bolt’s rear bumper and showed no signs of abating.

Am I being tailed? Should I speed up? Slow down? His mind went into overdrive, his hands trembling lightly on the wheel.

Albert’s nerves temporarily subsided when the police station came into view. He took a sharp right into the parking lot. The Rolls turned in behind him. A stranger emerged from the car in a black trench coat and dark fedora, giving off a Vader-like impression that rattled Albert’s delicate constitution.

He quickly grabbed Detective Weatherspoon’s file off the passenger seat, exited the car with his head down, and prepared to bolt into the station. He looked up to see the stranger standing directly in front of him, blocking his path. Terrified, Albert glanced back to see if it was too late to jump back in his car, but before he could make a move, the stranger took off her fedora to reveal an absolutely stunning woman with rich black hair. Her smiling face and big white teeth gleamed in the sun.

“Dilbert! It’s so good to see you.”

Chapter 13

Angus Turner and Ying Koh sat in silence. The ticktock of Turner’s grandfather clock pierced the quiet like the crack of a whip with each move of the second hand. Then, without a word, the professor jumped from his seat, eyes gleaming, and darted down the hallway to his study. Not knowing quite what to do, Ying continued to sit and quietly sip her lemonade while looking around the room in a state of confused innocence. The Tree of Knowledge? Can it be real? What does this mean for me? For my family? For the world? She could hear the professor shuffling papers in the back room but dared not disturb what looked like divine inspiration. Ying had been in academia long enough and had enough fits of intellectual fire herself to understand that there were times when just staying out of the way was the best move.

Germany. That was when it had started for her. That was when she realized she was different, but also found out where she belonged. She stood on a small temporary stage in a simple brick building for the Junior Mental Calculation World Cup. The building smelled chill and dank like a wine cellar. The crowd was small, but all eyes were on her. The man that stood beside her sported a walrus mustache and glasses with a chain around his neck. She thought he looked like an underwater librarian.

The final test was simple. On a screen in front of her, six five-digit numbers would flash for .4 seconds—just long enough for her to see—and she would be asked to add those numbers in five seconds. Ying adjusted her back brace. Her leg braces had been removed that August, but her back brace would have to stay on until she was fifteen. She looked out at the crowd expecting to see snickering faces, like what she received at school, but she saw the opposite. Just hopeful smiles. The warmth calmed her as she shifted her attention to the computer monitor in front of her.

The screen shone pure blue. In a matter of seconds, five-digit numbers would tumble forward one after the other, and her mind would have to simultaneously memorize and add those numbers instantaneously. Answer correctly and she wins; incorrectly, she loses.

“Are you ready?” asked the moderator.

Ying focused and unfocused her eyes on the screen, taking herself to the place between presence and imagination. She nodded.

As the numbers flickered forth on the screen, Ying slowed the world around her and blacked out the space. She froze each screen, holding a unique number in her mind, and placed them side by side, adding them as they were cataloged in her imagination. Seconds later, they were organized in her mind like books on a shelf with the final book being the answer. She ran her fingers across the smooth keyboard in front of her and typed in the number: 70,392. The moderator revealed the answer: 70,392.

Her parents and the rest of the audience burst out in applause and rushed the stage to congratulate her and shake her hand. Not one face held judgment or mockery. Just amazement and awe. Ying felt special. She was somebody.

But as she stood in Turner’s living room, Ying wondered what type of somebody she would be, should be. She was proud of what she had accomplished. Getting into Princeton, traveling to the United States by herself. Entering the PhD program. Getting an assistantship with Professor Puddles. But was that it? Was this her life? To be a math nerd, gathering dust in academia. Something about this murder, and the mysterious logic tree that came with it, had sparked something in her. She was searching.

Ying turned on the local news in the hopes of seeing something about the murder. She clicked the wood-paneled remote to Turner’s 1980s Zenith television. Is this the first TV ever made? she wondered. Although, Turner having a TV at all is a minor miracle.

Ying flipped the channels but was disappointed to see that all the major stations were running national news programs. She slid her thumb over the power button, intending to shut off the ancient device, but then something caught her eye.

On the screen stood a tall, striking black-haired woman surrounded by a sea of red-shirted supporters. The woman gripped an ornate wood lectern bathed in stage lighting in some type of arena. She wore a crimson suit, which contrasted with her dark eyes that burned like embers in a fire. The effect of the lights gave the woman a godlike quality as she thundered away to the audience. And the audience. The audience, dripping in bright-red T-shirts, hats, and jackets, appeared to move in unison like a monstrous red ocean bobbing and crashing with ecstasy. Young people lined the