The Humans (8 page)

However, people had struggled to explain the apparently random pattern of primes. They thinned out, but not in any way that humans could fathom. This frustrated the humans very much. They knew
that if they could solve this they could advance in all kinds of ways, because prime numbers were the heart of mathematics and mathematics was the heart of knowledge.

Humans understood other things. Atoms, for instance. They had a machine called a spectrometer which allowed them to see the atoms a molecule was made from. But they didn’t understand
primes the way they understood atoms, sensing that they would do so only if they could work out why prime numbers were spread out the way they were.

And then in 1859, at the Berlin Academy, the increasingly ill Bernhard Riemann announced what would become the most studied and celebrated hypothesis in all mathematics. It stated that there
was
a pattern, or at least there was one for the first hundred thousand or so primes. And it was beautiful, and clean, and it involved something called a ‘zeta function’ –
a kind of mental machine in itself, a complex-looking curve that was useful for investigating properties of primes. You put numbers into it and they would form an order that no one had noticed
before. A pattern. The distribution of prime numbers was not random.

There were gasps when Riemann – mid panic attack – announced this to his smartly dressed and bearded peers. They truly believed the end was in sight, and that in their lifetimes
there would be a proof that worked for
all
prime numbers. But Riemann had only located the lock, he hadn’t actually found the key, and shortly afterwards he died of tuberculosis.

And as time went on, the quest became more desperate. Other mathematical riddles were solved in due course – things like Fermat’s Last Theorem and the Poincaré Conjecture
– which left proof of the long-buried German’s hypothesis as the last and largest problem to solve. The one that would be the equivalent of seeing atoms in molecules, or identifying the
chemical elements of the periodic table. The one that would ultimately give humans supercomputers, explanations of quantum physics and interstellar transportation.

After getting to grips with all this I then trawled through all the pages full of numbers, graphs and mathematical symbols. This was another language for me to learn, but it was an easier and
more truthful one than the one I had learnt with the help of
Cosmopolitan
.

And by the end of it, after a few moments of sheer terror, I was in quite a state. After that very last and conclusive ∞, I was left in no doubt that the proof had been found, and the key
had turned that all-important lock.

So, without so much as a second’s thought, I deleted the document, feeling a small rush of pride as I did so.

‘There,’ I told myself, ‘you may have just managed to save the universe.’ But of course, things are never that simple, not even on Earth.

ξ(1/2+
it
)=[e
^Ŗ
log
(
r
(
s
/2))π
^-1/4
(–
t
²
–1/4)/2]x[e
^i
Jlog
(
r
(
s
/2))π
^-
it
/2
ζ(1/2+
it
)]

I looked at Andrew Martin’s emails, specifically the very last one in his sent folder. It had the subject heading, ‘153 years later . . .’, and it had a
little red exclamation mark beside it. The message itself was a simple one: ‘I have proved the Riemann hypothesis, haven’t I? Need to tell you first. Please, Daniel, cast your eyes over
this. Oh, and needless to say, this is for those eyes only at the moment. Until it goes public. What do you reckon? Humans will never be the same again? Biggest news anywhere since 1905? See
attachment.’

The attachment was the document I had deleted elsewhere, and had just been reading, so I didn’t waste much time on that. Instead, I looked at the recipient:
[email protected].

Daniel Russell, I swiftly discovered, was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. He was sixty-three years old. He had written fourteen books, most of which had been
international bestsellers. The Internet told me he had taught at every English-language university with an intimidating enough reputation – Cambridge (where he was now), Oxford, Harvard,
Princeton and Yale among others – and had received numerous awards and titles. He had worked on quite a few academic papers with Andrew Martin, but as far as I could tell from my brief
research they were colleagues more than friends.

I looked at the time. In about twenty minutes my ‘wife’ would be coming home and wondering where I was. The less suspicion there was at this stage the better. There was a sequence of
doing things, after all. I had to follow the sequence.

And the first part of the sequence needed to be done right now, so I trashed the email and the attachment. Then, to be on the safe side, I quickly designed a virus – yes, with the help of
primes – which would ensure that nothing could be accessed intact from this computer again.

Before I left, I checked the papers on the desk. There was nothing there to be worried about. Insignificant letters, timetables, blank pages, but then, on one of them, a telephone number
07865542187. I put it in my pocket and noticed, as I did so, one of the photographs on the desk. Isobel, Andrew and the boy I assumed to be Gulliver. He had dark hair, and was the only one of the
three who wasn’t smiling. He had wide eyes, peeping out from below a dark fringe of hair. He carried the ugliness of his species better than most. At least he wasn’t looking happy about
what he was, and that was something.

Another minute had gone by. It was time to go.

Yes.

Deleting documents from computers is not the same as deleting lives. Even human lives.

I understand that.

A prime number is strong. It does not depend on others. It is pure and complete and never weakens. You must be like a prime. You must not weaken, you must distance yourself,
and you must not change after interaction. You must be indivisible.

Yes. I will be.

Good. Now, continue.

Isobel was still not back, on my return to the house, so I did a little more research. She was not a mathematician. She was a historian.

On Earth, this was an important distinction as here history was not yet viewed as a sub-division of mathematics, which of course it was. I also discovered that Isobel, like her husband, was
considered to be very clever by the standards of her species. I knew this because one of the books on the shelf in the bedroom was
The Dark Ages
, the one I had seen in the bookshop window.
And now I could see it had a quote from a publication called the
New York Times
which read ‘very clever’. The book was 1,253 pages long.

A door opened downstairs. I heard the soft sound of metal keys being rested on a wooden chest. She came up to see me. That was the first thing she did.

‘How are you?’ she asked.

‘I’ve been looking at your book. About the Dark Ages.’

She laughed.

‘What are you laughing at?’

‘Oh, it’s that or cry.’

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘do you know where Daniel Russell lives?’

‘Of course I do. We’ve been to his house for dinner.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘In Babraham. He’s got a whopping place. Can you seriously not remember? It’s like not remembering a visit to Nero’s palace.’

‘Yes. I can, I can. It’s just that there are things which are still a bit hazy. I think it’s the pills. That was a blank, so that’s why I asked. That’s all. So,
I’m good friends with him?’

‘No. You hate him. You can’t stand him. Though deep hostility is your default setting with other academics these days, Ari excepted.’

‘Ari?’

She sighed. ‘Your best friend.’

‘Oh, Ari. Yes. Of course. Ari. My ears are a bit blocked. I didn’t hear you properly.’

‘But with Daniel,’ she said, speaking a little louder, ‘if I dare say it, the hatred is just the manifestation of an inferiority complex on your part. But superficially, you
get on with him. You’ve even sought his guidance a few times, with your prime number stuff.’

‘Right. Okay. My prime number stuff. Yes. And where am I with that? Where was I? When I last spoke to you, before?’ I felt the urge to ask it outright. ‘Had I proved the
Riemann hypothesis?’

‘No. You hadn’t. At least, not that I knew. But you should probably check that out, because if you have we’ll be a million pounds richer.’

‘What?’

‘Dollars, actually, isn’t it?’

‘I—’

‘The Millennium Prize, or whatever it is. Proof of the Riemann hypothesis is the largest remaining puzzle that hasn’t been solved. There is an institute in Massachusetts, the other
Cambridge, the Clay Institute . . . You know this stuff backwards, Andrew. You mumble this stuff in your sleep.’

‘Absolutely. Backwards and forwards. All the ways. I just need a little reminding that is all.’

‘Well, it’s a very wealthy institute. They obviously have a lot of money because they’ve already given about ten million dollars away to other mathematicians. Apart from that
last guy.’

‘Last guy?’

‘The Russian. Grigori something. The one who turned it down for solving the Whatever-it-was Conjecture.’

‘But a million dollars is a lot of money, isn’t it?’

‘It is. It’s a nice amount.’

‘So why did he turn it down?’

‘How do I know? I don’t know. You told me he was a recluse who lives with his mother. There are people in this world who have motives that extend beyond the financial,
Andrew.’

This was genuinely news to me. ‘Are there?’

‘Yes. There are. Because, you know, there’s this new groundbreaking and controversial theory that money can’t buy you happiness.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

She laughed again. She was trying to be funny, I think, so I laughed, too.

‘So, no one has solved the Riemann hypothesis?’

‘What? Since yesterday?’

‘Since, well, ever?’

‘No. No one has solved it. There was a false alarm, a few years back. Someone from France. But no. The money is still there.’

‘So, that is why he . . . why I . . . this is what motivates me, money?’

She was now arranging socks on the bed, in pairs. It was a terrible system she had developed. ‘Not just that,’ she went on. ‘Glory is what motivates you. Ego. You want your
name everywhere. Andrew Martin. Andrew Martin. Andrew Martin. You want to be on every Wikipedia page going. You want to be an Einstein. The trouble is, Andrew, you’re still two years
old.’

This confused me. ‘I am? How is that possible?’

‘Your mother never gave you the love you needed. You will for ever be sucking at a nipple that offers no milk. You want the world to know you. You want to be a great man.’

She said this in quite a cool tone. I wondered if this was how people always talked to each other, or if it was just unique to spouses. I heard a key enter a lock.

Isobel looked at me with wide, astonished eyes. ‘
Gulliver
.’

Gulliver’s room was at the top of the house. The ‘attic’. The last stop before the thermosphere. He went straight there, his feet passing the bedroom I was
in, with only the slightest pause before climbing the final set of stairs.

While Isobel went out to walk the dog I decided to phone the number on the piece of paper in my pocket. Maybe it was Daniel Russell’s number.

‘Hello,’ came a voice. Female. ‘Who’s this?’

‘This is Professor Andrew Martin,’ I said.

The female laughed. ‘Well hello, Professor Andrew Martin.’

‘Who are you? Do you know me?’

‘You’re on YouTube. Everyone knows you now. You’ve gone viral. The Naked Professor.’

‘Oh.’

‘Hey, don’t worry about it. Everyone loves an exhibitionist.’ She spoke slowly, lingering on words as if each one had a taste she didn’t want to lose.

‘Please, how do I know you?’

The question was never answered, because at that precise moment Gulliver walked into the room and I switched off the phone.

Gulliver. My ‘son’. The dark-haired boy I had seen in the photographs. He looked as I had expected, but maybe taller. He was nearly as tall as me. His eyes were shaded by his hair.
(Hair, by the way, is very important here. Not as important as clothes obviously, but getting there. To humans, hair is more than just a filamentous biomaterial that happens to grow out of their
heads. It carries all kinds of social signifiers, most of which I couldn’t translate.) His clothes were as black as space and his T-shirt had the words ‘Dark Matter’ on them.
Maybe this was how certain people communicated, via the slogans on their T-shirts. He wore ‘wristbands’. His hands were in his pockets and he seemed uncomfortable looking at my face.
(The feeling, then, was mutual.) His voice was low. Or at least low by human standards. About the same depth as a Vonnadorian humming plant. He came and sat on the bed and tried to be nice, at the
start, but then at one point he switched to a higher frequency.

‘Dad, why did you do it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘School is going to be hell now.’

‘Oh.’

‘Is that all you can say? “Oh?” Are you serious? Is that fucking
it
?’

‘No. Yes. I, I fucking don’t fucking know, Gulliver.’

‘Well, you’ve destroyed my life. I’m a joke. It was bad before. Ever since I started there. But now—’

I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about Daniel Russell, and how I desperately needed to phone him. Gulliver noticed I wasn’t paying attention.

‘It doesn’t even matter. You never want to talk to me, apart from last night.’

Gulliver left the room. He slammed the door, and let out a kind of growl. He was fifteen years old. This meant he belonged to a special sub-category of human called a ‘teenager’, the
chief characteristics of which were a weakened resistance to gravity, a vocabulary of grunts, a lack of spatial awareness, copious amounts of masturbation, and an unending appetite for cereal.