Chase Hatter's Origin of Pangaea

Chapter Ten

The bus dropped Andrew off three miles away from his destination, somewhere along the border of Maryland. He biked up a road beside the wheat fields as the sun rose up behind him. It took no time at all before he saw his first stop, a red and white circus tent sitting at the edge of the valley. Andrew jumped off of his bike and wheeled it the rest of the way through the fields. As he got closer, he noticed a man on a ladder fiddling with the AC box attached to the tent.

"Hello!" Andrew greeted to the stranger. Andrew's sudden presence shocked the stranger and caused his ladder to tip. He fell and hit the ground with a noticeable impact. "Oh, that must've hurt." Andrew observed. The man stumbled to his feet and stared Andrew up and down.

"Are you the Pangaean?" He asked. Andrew nodded. The stranger didn't seem convinced. "...The acrobat?" Andrew nodded. "You're more... formal than I thought you'd be. I'm Chester. The clown."

Chester extended his arm in preparation for a handshake, but was instead handed a duffel bag.

"Now," Andrew began as he wheeled his bike past Chester, "I have a question about sleeping arrangements. Are we all boarding in the tent?" Andrew turned when his question was met with silence. Chester looked overwhelmed.

"... We got a trailer." Chester explained. Andrew smiled.

"That was rude of me." Andrew realized. "I'm sorry. I don't meet new people very often. In Pangaea, I pride myself in knowing everyone, so I don't do introductions very often. My name is Andrew Valentine." Andrew retreated inside of the tent and Chester followed.

"Andrew, it's nice to meet you, but we need to talk." Chester said as Andrew gave himself a tour of the empty tent.

"I'm listening."

"I know what Riley and I talked about over the phone, but something's come up and we may need you for more time than we thought."

"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that." Andrew apologized. "But I won't be staying longer than what you two agreed on. Six weeks."

"It's not personal." Chester explained. "It's a financial issue. Todd, the guy you're replacing, has his recovery going on, but now he has a warrant out for him over some unpaid child-support back in Michigan. And our lion tamer just put in his two-week notice. He's gonna go back to school for plumbing or whatever. He says he wants more stable income. Those are some of our biggest acts and we have to put them both on hold for the rest of the year. Without them, we'll be in the red this year and we won't be able to keep the show on the road."

"What a dilemma." Andrew mumbled. "Six weeks."

"Andrew, please!"

"However," Andrew began, "as a diplomatic favor, I won't let you starve. And I will do it in six weeks."

Andrew returned to his self-guided tour of the tent. Chester dismissed himself back outside, no more reassured than he was when Andrew first arrived, but being able to advertise that he had an acrobat in his act again was a load off.

In Chester's eyes, Andrew, this man in business casual attire, hardly seemed capable of circus level acrobatics, but the performance that night calmed his nerves. Knowing nothing about Andrew apart from what he looked like, Chester introduced the acrobat as the Amazing Businessman and the Pangaean did not disappoint. Every trick that his previous acrobat, Todd, was able to pull off seemed like mere child's play compared to Andrew. The Pangaean didn't even opt for a costume change into the traditional leotard.

Andrew's act had only been on a few nights before it happened. Adelyn. Pamela Watson's Interview. In her email, Adelyn attached the entire one hundred and fifty six hour deductive proof. Every night, after every performance, Andrew would watch pieces of the interview. After the first fifteen minutes of the one hundred and fifty six hour long interview, it was decided that it would be converted into a research discussion that would decide the permanent description of a Pangaean.

Axel DeWitt stood at the white board that they had attained as the other four, Pamela included, sat on the floor in front of him.

"Who are we," Mr. DeWitt began, "to decide what a Pangaean is?" Pamela was thrown into a fit of rage.

"Mr. DeWitt, you yourself said you were the best people to do it!" She reminded him. "That's why you locked us in here!"

"I did," Mr. DeWitt agreed, "but we have to prove it."

"Way ahead of you." Elijah said as he stood up from the floor. Mr. DeWitt handed him a marker and stepped aside. Elijah flipped the board around to the cleaner side. He drew a two dimensional, imaginary coordinate plane and a unit circle in the center. He marked three points.

{1, j, -1, -j}

Then he wrote names beside the respective points.

{1, j, -1, -j} -> {Grants, DeWitt, Sage, Richards}

Elijah capped the marker. "This is how Ethan and I have always thought about the theorem of complex conjugates in relation to the subspace of Pangaeans." Elijah explained. "Imagine it, each Pangaean being represented with a complex number. If we can prove that the five of us lie on these points then we will prove that our differences are significant enough to define a basis for a Pangaean. We will prove that every Pangaean can be represented by a linear combination of any two co-perpendicular vectors from this set. We are the most basic basis for a Pangaean."

Theo seemed bewildered. "Complex numbers on a circle?" He asked. "Like colors on a color wheel? RGB?"

"No." Elijah said. "Like a unit circle."

"Seems like more of a spectrum to me." Mr. DeWitt told Elijah.

"That's funny." Elijah said. "Because to me, it seems like a unit circle."

Pamela shrugged her shoulders. "I see a circle with lines in it."

"It's a unit circle!"

For the next six weeks, Andrew watched the interview alongside his acrobatic act at the circus. By day, his face was fixed to his laptop screen. By night, he fought gravity and falling confetti on a mission to entertain. He watched the five Pangaeans stitch together an argument to prove that every Pangaean could be represented as a linear combination of five Pangaeans.

As this segment of the interview came to an end after only fifteen hours, so did Andrew's time as a circus acrobat. His final performance came to an end shortly after one in the morning and he was wheeling his bike back to the street before two. Chester walked beside him.

"Where are you going after this?" Chester asked. "Back to Pangaea?"

"It will be some time before I can go back home." Andrew said. The two reached the street and Andrew prepared to leave.

"Thank you, Andrew." Chester said. "I know this is like a research credit or something for you, but you really kept us off the streets. Thank you."

"No need for thanks." Andrew told Chester.

"See you later, Andrew."

"I will see you as well," Andrew began, "in another life."

Andrew began to ride down the street, on to his next destination. As he got on the road, he took his tuned Radio Cube and tossed it into his bike's basket. It was now capable of showing him the interview, and only the interview, as it appeared in Adelyn's email. The screen was much fuzzier, but it was still visible enough to enjoy as he rode down the street.

"If our theory is based on the idea of circles," Theo Sage said, "then we should name it appropriately. What if we call this the Color Wheel Interview?"

"The Unit Circle Interview." Elijah Grant demanded. "Because I drew a unit circle!"

"The Spectrum Interview," Axel began, "seems more exciting to me."

Pamela Watson's eyes widened. She pulled herself up from the floor and stood between Mr. DeWitt and Elijah. She put her hands up, quietly demanding silence from everyone else in the group. They gave her their full attention as the journalists began smiling, seeming as though she had gone mad.

"What if we use all three?"