MINI-STORIES FOR THE YOUNG AND NOT SO YOUNG

2. Nuclear Paradigm
Steven Hiller and Anna M. Furdyna

Walthers was not in the least religious. His parents were completely secular. Walthers considered his father atheist and his mother merely brainless. They were part of an extensive, highly educated clan populating the east coast. Walthers, true to his family's tradition, excelled in nuclear physics at MIT and Harvard. He then moved his own budding family to the south-east, where he was soon part and parcel of the applied physics establishment. He had married early. His wife, Kate, a comely and sociable biochemist presented him with a son, Thomas, of whom Walthers was inordinately fond. In fact, things were going exceedingly well for him for quite some time. The highly classified project he worked on was proceeding full force and he advanced rapidly.

Then something happened. He discovered his wife was seeing another man. Before he could come to grips with this blow, he was sent to a meeting in Washington , DC , where an acquaintance urged Walthers to visit with him the Holocaust Museum . In order to get away from his problems, he acquiesced.

The Museum at first made little impression on him. Somewhere in the middle of the tour, however, he began to feel a rising apprehension. By the time they came to the end Walthers was wet with sweat and desperately trying to maintain composure. His companion noticed the change in him and took him back to the hotel, where there was a hidden, tree-shaded and secluded spot for use of classified personnel. Walthers went there as soon as he could. It was then that the full impact of an organic, cosmic fear transfixed him totally. He realized that he was laboring under the brunt of guilt accumulated over years of working on the nuclear project. The Universe stood in judgment all around him as an impenetrable wall. Crushed and mute with dread, he went back to his quarters, where he spent a tortured and exhausting night. The next day he feigned illness and returned home on the first plane out. When he came in, no one was there to greet him. His boy was at school. Kate was probably with her biochemist. He threw himself on the bed, shaken by sobbing.

He knew it was no use going to the project therapist. He would only give him some tranquillizers and claim he was overwrought and irrational. This would be all the more true of his peers at work who would take his state as a supreme breach of loyalty to the project. The more he thought, the worse, more despairing he felt. Finally, however, after a tremendous effort of ratiocination, he found the name for his existential debacle. He was having a crisis of conscience. This discovery gave him a modicum of courage. Before Tommy came home, he was able to shower and get into bed. Tommy arrived and immediately realized his father was really ill. He brought him milk and cereal which Walthers forced down , not wanting to worry the child. Tommy came and lay down beside him and he gained strength in stroking his son's shapely, blond head. He hoped they would doze off together but sleep would not come. He told Tommy to get his own supper and tried to imagine what he would tell Kate when she appeared.

This happened soon enough. Kate looked at him sharply. She asked, "Have you been crying ?" He was so taken up with his moral dilemma that he forgot completely the question of her infidelity. He started weeping again and blurted out what had happened to him in Washington. At length he managed to explain to her his predicament. When she came to him with open arms and told him that it was this very problem that had gradually estranged her from his love he was amazed and relieved beyond measure.

They sat talking far into the night. Kate said she had a friend , a social worker who could help them. The next day they went to see her for an emergency visit. Walthers and Kate went through a lengthy intake process with her. When she asked for his religious preference and he said he had none, she told him: "You have come to the right place. I am secular humanist." She was very astute. After a lengthy session she concluded that the change Walthers had undergone was permanent. She told them that in future sessions they could work out what to do about reshaping their life together.

In consequence of this, Walthers resigned from the project and found a position at a renowned state university researching and teaching statistical mechanics. It had been his minor field of study. Kate, meanwhile, after weaning their second child, Chloe, returned to biochemistry. Both of them became highly active in Anti-Nuclear circles, and in a socially dynamic ecumenical grouping which included secular humanists.

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