Author's notes : This random note is the result of me dozing off during my information and coding technique class for real. Of course that means that I was getting my 'inspiration'. A complete fiction and a random plot. The saddest part is that I don't know how to end it, so this is part 1. I don't know if part 2 will come out, but I will try my best.For those who don't know, Galois theory is quite famous and useful in the field of communication. Only ExTC people will get it is what I'm assuming, but of course I wouldn't know.This note is basically based on those mathematicians and physicists like Galois, Poisson, Fourrier, Einstein etc, and my thoughts on them. The historical stuff is partly taken from wiki and is in part based on my imagination and interpretation. And I genuinely found Galois' history quite remarkable and respectable. I'm pretty sure not many are aware of who Galois really was.Also Galois was French but I have made him sound like an english man, for the obvious reasons.Anyway this read is for fun, so enjoy. If not, please forgive and forget :)
I was sitting in my class as usual, for the sole purpose of acquiring the attendance, and nothing else. Of course, time had long taught me that this wasn't the field where I belonged, not even by fifty per cent. But I think I have done enough complaining and whining about it, and so for the sake of not making the flow feel tedious to the reader, I'll leave that part out.
So let's get back to the class called the 'Information and coding theories', a grand name for a grand subject, where I was currently trying to purport an attentive posture and facial expression towards the senior-most professor of the whole college, to not fall in trouble, in general. (And also to avoid being detected as an individual.) I was very good at being a part of the crowd, quite far from the really intelligent students, or the real troublemakers. Balance and invisibility were two truly good notions to keep in mind, and I was thankfully really good at it.
And as already mentioned, the professor was not some one to be messed with, (or at other times, I wouldn't have bothered so much as to keep my eyes open), especially when the class was two hours long. And so for a change, I actually ended up listening to what he had to say that day.
And also had the chance to glance at the power point presentation that he was displaying on the big screen.
Évariste Galois
The first name that caught my eyes.
The bloke was a French mathematician who had developed a couple of theories in his youth. One such theory was called the Galois theory which had something to do with solving polynomials using radicals. I thought that I also heard some things called the 'Galois fields' and the 'abelian polynomial'.
(I might be mixing up the concepts here, so definitely do not use this note as a reference for any of your project or research work, or even plain studies. I think you are smart enough to not trust me in those matters).
My professor was an old bird. He was very excited about the whole 'Galois thing', and also about the boy whose crude and sketchy portrait was displayed on the projector screen, just beside the statement which was nothing but the famous theorem. Below him was also his date of birth and death, mentioned in bold.
25 October 1811 – 31 May 1832
We were all a little surprised when we saw the man had died at the age of twenty. He was just a boy, a shade younger than us, in black and white, with slightly prominent cheek bones and a straight nose. His brows were thick, and his hair was slightly messy. His eyes were prominent in the sketch, their colour for the obvious reason, indecipherable, so one could take them to be black, and his lips were small and ever so delicate. They were perhaps inherited from his mother, or may have been the artist's own touch. But whatever it was, it looked thus to me.
To think that this boy had nothing else to do but to work upon and create extremely complex mathematical theorems at an age when most of us struggled to get a hang of the HCF and the LCM or the normal algebra, did not seem so respectable to me (the work was great nevertheless and I do not deny). You see I am a simpleton. And I was never a fan of Algebra either.
But then our professor started dignifying that very fact (such a brilliant mind, something we could never posses! C'est brillant, C'est magnifique!- of course he wasn't really singing an ode to the mathematician in French, but that was what it sounded like to me, in my imagination), and we quickly found ourselves losing interest. Who cared?
'Just another nerd-kid worthy of Einstein', the thought crossed my mind, 'another contribution to the never ending syllabus. I thank you Mister Galois.'
“Well, they really kill the essence these days now, don't they?” a voice said from behind me.
“Whatever do you mean?” I asked, absent-mindedly.
And then I froze.
I was on the back bench. And today, my partner was absent, so I was sitting by myself. And the girls who were sitting right in front of me, well they were girls, and they were paying a really good amount of attention to whatever was being taught.
The voice belonged to a boy. And that too, with a French accent.
“Very simply this. The old bird looks like he is about to fall with all the excitement he is oozing.”
said the voice again. “He seems to be in love with me, which is kind of disturbing. I'm really not that type.”
I said nothing, as I tried to look for the source. It sounded like the person was sitting right beside me, despite there being nobody. And it couldn't have belonged to any of my other classmates who were sitting quite far. I felt a chill go through me.
“Hey! I'm still here! Don't ignore me.”
“Where are you?” I asked as quietly as possible, trying to keep my eyes on the professor as he jumped about to explain his own interpretation of the theorem.
“Oh but you are looking straight at me. But I suppose that won't be convenient. Perhaps this might help.”
And woo loo.
There, right beside me, was sitting a boy of around my age, in ancient clothing in the French style. The artist must have had an uncanny ability to reproduce portraits of people that looked exactly the way they had looked in their real lives, because this boy looked like he had just walked out of the display on the screen. Except that, the screen's picture was a sketch, whereas here was a man in flesh and bones.
Or was he? Or perhaps it was my imagination, because the edges looked a little faint, almost translucent. Perhaps I was dreaming.
I should really think on catching up on my sleep more often these days.
In the meanwhile I was unsuccessful at suppressing the squeal that escaped me anyway.
“Yes, miss? What is wrong?” the professor asked irritably. The whole class was looking at me. I stood up. I could still see the figure of the boy laughing quite audibly at me. He had a mischievous aura around him, like that of a prankster's.
Still everybody neatly avoided the French lad of around twenty, straight from the early 19th century, laughing his buttocks off on my right, and continued staring at me.
Was I really going through some chemical imbalances in my head that was leading to such hallucinations? Did someone slip something illegal in my food during lunch?
But it was clear, that only I could see and hear this ghost of an old mathematician.
“Miss. Do you think this is funny?” the professor asked curtly. “Do you think Galois is funny?”
“Well honestly, whoever knew me in my time, knew the kind of fun that I was.” Galois chuckled from beside me. I had to stop staring. I was pretty sure I looked dumbfounded, which was the cause of irritation for the old bird.
“Er no sir, sorry. I actually hurt my self a little as my hands had slipped over the desk.” I tried to cover, trying not sound like I was losing a nerve.
“Is that so? Well sit down. I do not want any noise from your side from now on. Get it?” and so the professor backed off, and went on with his teaching.
I sighed a little, before collapsing on my seat. But I was far from relieved.
“How come only I can see you? What do you want?” I whispered, my nerves still being on tenterhooks.
“I don't know myself. Seems like your disinterest in my work kind of irked my grave, so here I am to see the cause of distress. At least that is my theory. But I am not going to blame you. Hadn't you been there to amuse me, even I would have fallen asleep in this class.” the boy said in a serious tone.
“Are you a ghost?” I asked.
“I'm dead ain't I? What does that make me?”
“Am I the only one who is disinterested? Or the most disinterested, that you had to choose me?”
“Well you certainly aren't very enthusiastic about me being here. I really don't know why you, but they had to choose a pea from the pod, so it might have been a random selection.”
“You sound like one of your theorems.”
“Hey nothing on that! They really are interesting if you give me a chance to explain! It is fun to see how important they make me out these days, yet make my work lose its integrity and respect.”
“Did you always talk a lot? Will you ever go?”
“That's rude.”
“Well you are not real. You are the result of my lack of sleep last night.” I declared. “I will just ignore you.”
“All the best!” he cheered.
“Hypothetically speaking, even if you are a real ghost, what are you here for? Even though I know I'm talking to an illusion being projected by my own mind and so asking these questions are meaningless, so I am losing my head,” I ranted on.
But the ghost just tutted as it shook his head mockingly. “And then you tell me that I sound ambiguous and nonsensical. Congratulations for making up your own indecipherable theorem.”
I tried to ignore, but Galois kept on ranting about the new era and its wastefulness and the useless old bird and so many other things, with an exclamation in French here and there which made no sense to me, but only succeeded in annoying me. So in the end, I had to lose my patience.
“Will you shut up? How can I make you go away?”
“How can you ask a ghost to provide techniques for his own exorcism? How ridiculous,” Galois said simply, “I'm simply bored of this class. And you are not even paying me any attention, one of the most useful mathematicians of the era. Kind of disheartening you know.”
“So you want me to pay you my respect or something?” I asked, “Were you so desperate to get people's attention and respect that you needed to come out of your grave for that? Or the projector for that matter?”
I thought that would have touched a nerve and would stop the annoying ranting. But it only made it worse as Galois burst out laughing.
“You are extremely sharp you know! Bingo! Even I just realised that, that is what I had wanted my entire short life. Hence the rashness of the youth that led to that stupid duel that took away my life.”
I looked up astonished. “A duel? You died in a duel? The kind they show in the movies?”
“I know not what these 'movies' are. How else did you think I had died?”
“I er-I don't know. I didn't really give it a thought. But I would have guessed at some illness maybe.”
“Quite typical. What sort of disease might have crossed that brilliant mind of yours may I know?”
“Listen Galois, I really don't know and neither do I care.” I said as respectfully as I could. “Sorry for being insensitive, but you have been dead for about two hundred years now, so maybe it is time that you moved on or something. Or you should get a new fish instead of me to talk to. I'm pretty sure the old professor over there will be more than delighted to have a chat over tea with you.”
“That old nonsensical bird? He would bore me so much that my buttocks would fall. I think I really wanted to talk to someone closer to my physical age. You know, you really take me in the wrong sense. I was a chivalrous bloke back in my day! And quite the known skill at courting! Let's leave the maths behind, why don't we just have a plain talk? Why are you so averted to me?” Galois asked in his most pitiable tone, that it almost lulled me to believe and sympathise with him.
But I stopped short.
“Averted? Well nothing personal, and I do respect your work and all, but really your theorems do not belong to my field of interests.”
Galois sighed for the first time. It sounded really sad, and it almost made me feel bad to have told him the truth. It was so queer relaying out my emotions to one of the real deals. These scientists were great, and their work and everything else were so noteworthy and have changed the course of history so many times, and the reason that we were enjoying the twenty first century was all due to them.
But being a student and actually having to study all these, didn't really give any room to appreciate. In fact the case was quite the contrary.
“I'm sorry,” I added.
“It isn't your fault. To be honest, maths was simply like an art to me. It takes a different level to be artistic with numbers. Oh mine, yet I try to sound my humblest.” Galois sighed again, “I was a politician too, you know. Just like my father. Although I was closer to my mother, who had taught me Latin.”
“No ways, what? Now that is different.” I said, amazed.
“I actually hated school.”
“Even Einstein hated school. You have never been to college too right?”
“Well I was being admitted to the college of Reims at the age of 10, but my mother refused. She was too attached to me.”
I almost coughed a lung out.
“At-at 10? It is like you had your life compressed or something!”
“Well I was a little too brilliant. But even I failed quite a number of times.”
“That is not possible.” I almost guffawed, but stopped short. I had to remember that I was talking to my own hallucination, and that wasn't the sanest thing. Plus it was prudent to not get under the radar of the professor again.
“Well my papers kept on getting rejected all my life. They rejected me at Ecole, and then Cauchy rejected my papers too.”
“You mean the Cauchy from the Cauchy's theorem?” I asked, my eyes widened.
“Augustine-Louis Cauchy. The very same. Although it seems he is no better off than I am in this world, especially when it comes to your opinions. I feel a little satisfied now. I'm pretty sure you think the same for dear Fourrier.” he said in a faked innocent tone.
“No. Fourrier's series is something I will never understand. I would say, your theorem is still bearable.”
“Really? I feel bad for the poor man. I kind of respected him. Grudgingly so, as he was so famous, but then he was a brilliant man.”
“Why did they have to send a mathematician's ghost to me?” I cursed a little, “Couldn't it have been an artist or a writer? I might have felt a tad more understood.”
“Irony is a cruel thing, yet something that has become of life. Have you heard of Poisson?”
“I can recall something I guess. Something related to physics?”
“Oh yes, a physicist and a mathematician. Siméon Denis Poisson. Wave theory of light? Rings a bell?”
“Maybe.”
“Your thoughts madame?”
“No different. I didn't really enjoy wave theory as much.”
“That makes me happy! I am not of any different opinion either. The bloke had jeered at my work. Literally jeered! In written.”
“You mean he rejected you?”
“You could have done well in the field you know? Why do you keep denying your sharp mind? Bingo. And with quite an insult. He made me abandon my work for a time.”
“Well that is bad. You must have held him in quite the high light.”
“Who wouldn't have? I was in my teens,” he said in a slightly heated tone, “I got the news when I was in jail.”
And that made me cough again.
“Excuse me? Jail?”
“Yes. For leading a protest on Bastille day. Quite a long story.”
“You are like an all rounder, and I swear you have had your full span of life compressed into two decades! What teen goes for protests?” I said unbelievably.
“France was quite in the turmoil. You are no different than me when it comes to the heated temperament of the youth.”
“And you suddenly seem so wise, eh?” I said sarcastically.
“Well two hundred years, does make a difference,” he said quietly.
“What about the duel?” I asked. I was already aware that I had somewhat lost my irritation with the ghost if Galois. On the contrary, he seemed quite interesting. In my tongue, he was that kind of a badass guy. Dude has seen life, I thought, “What was the duel about?”
At that, Galois stopped short. “A bashful heart, is all.”
I thought it was strange, but I didn't want to push it despite of being curious. This chat with Galois' hallucination was extraordinary. But more was the fact that I didn't quite see him as the mathematician any more. Neither did he sound as normal as any of my friends. Indeed he was a queer personality.
But I was impressed.
“There is a lot more to you than meets the projector.” I said, and Galois laughed as that broke the tension around him.