Page 55 of The Paradox Club

Several days later Mr. Parrish read in the Philadelphia Enquirer that Albert Einstein, freshly arrived in Princeton, would “give no interviews, issue no statements, and make no public appearances.” Such was Mr. Parrish’s influence that a week later he sat in the office of Dr. Einstein, who had, by that time, already examined the mysterious volume. No transcript was made of this discussion, only brief notes in the diaries of Mr. Parrish and Dr. Einstein, from which the following reconstruction is created.

Parrish: You will admit, Dr. Einstein, that this book is odd?

Einstein: When I first encountered it, I thought it nothing more remarkable than a misprint or perhaps a forgery. But as you say, there are too many unusual aspects to this volume to be so easily dismissed.

Parrish: The bookplate designating it as a school prize is from a school that never existed.

Einstein: Yes, and the paragraph you discovered in chapter two is not the only textual aberration.

Parrish: I’m not surprised to hear that, though I am impressed by your knowledge of Dickens.

Einstein: And there are other, more technical issues with which I shall not bore you. [Ed.: These “issues” are enumerated in Einstein’s notes preserved in the club archive, but as the present study is intended for the general reader, I shall omit them here.]

Parrish: And your conclusion?

Einstein: That this book did not originate in our universe.

Parrish: My thought exactly. I’m happy to hear you confirm my thesis.

Einstein: There is a deeper question here, though, Mr. Parrish.

Parrish: And what is that?

Einstein: What do we do with this…this object? I hardly know what to call it.

Parrish: As it has become detached from its universe of origin, I suggest untethered foreign object. [Ed.: Later Einstein would claim to have originated this moniker, but the notes show clearly that the coinage was Parrish’s.]

Einstein: Very well, what are we to do with this “untethered foreign object”? Its value to science is immeasurable, but so too may be its danger to humanity.

Over the span of several conversations, Einstein and Parrish decided to quietly convene a select group of scientists and philosophers to wrestle with this problem. They first met in a room of the Grolier Club, on East Sixtieth Street, of which Parrish was a member. Two meetings over the course of a weekend concluded with the drafting of the charter of the Paradox Club and an agreement among those present that the primary purpose of the club would be the gathering and safeguarding of untethered foreign objects in such a way as to prevent their irresponsible use.

THERAPIST N + 1

“You were happy?”

“I don’t know if you would call it happy, but I was having a good day.”

“Tell me about your good day.”

“I slept through the night. This morning the voices didn’t tell me to do anything more than tie and untie my shoelaces three times. I felt hungry for breakfast. And in my advanced psych class I spoke up. I’d never done that before, but someone mentioned OCD and I contributed to the conversation. I didn’t admit I was talking about myself, of course. I said I had a friend who heard voices. And as I was walking back to my dorm after class that phrase kept echoing in my mind. I have a friend. I thought maybe it could be true someday. And I felt this lightness in my chest. Breathing came easily and I noticed the sunlight in the trees and the birds reminded me of being on the island, and I think I smiled. It was the best I’ve ever felt at this place.”

“What you’re describing sounds a lot like happiness.”

“But it didn’t last. I got back to my dorm and my roommate, Ashley, had packed all her stuff in boxes and was shoving the last of her clothes into a suitcase. She said she couldn’t stand living with me anymore. I mean we hardly ever spoke, and she barely came into the room except to sleep and get dressed. But she said she was sick of my constantly rearranging her shoes and lining up pencils on the windowsill and remaking my bed ten times every morning. I didn’t even like her and I had wanted a single all along; a lot of seniors get singles. But for her to storm out like that, packing everything up when she knew I’d be gone—I just felt so rejected.”

“I’m sure you did. That’s a reasonable reaction to her behavior.”

“Ashley walked out with the suitcase and said her boyfriend would come and get the boxes and I was left alone sitting on my bed and I felt hollow. No, not hollow, empty. Like a balloon that had been popped. That crash from happy, if that’s what you call it, to miserable, left me unable to move or think or even breathe for a moment. And then the voices started back up and I spent the rest of the morning making and remaking her empty bed with my sheets.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that. Ashley certainly could have handled the situation with more compassion.”

“Do you think I could have manic depression? It’s happened before—teetering on the brink of happiness and then plunging into the dark abyss.”

“Something good happened and you felt happy; then something bad happened and you felt sad. That’s not manic depression, Tess. Those are normal human emotional reactions.”

“But that crash from high to low felt so devastating. I think what happened with Ashley would have been so much easier if I’d already been in my usual dour mood.”

“You shouldn’t use depression to dull your emotional senses.”