I have never seen Myron Ginsbook in a modest mood.
But then, why should I have? Mike--we all call him Mike, although he is Dr. Ginsbook, Nobel Laureate, to a reverential world--is a typical product of the twenty-first century. He is self-confident, as so many of us are, and by right should be.
He knows the worth of mankind, of society, and most of all of himself.
He was born on January 1, 2001, so he is as old as the century exactly. I am ten years younger, that much farther removed from the unmentionable twentieth.
Oh, I mentioned it sometimes. All youngsters have their quirks and mine had been a kind of curiosity about mankind's earlier history, concerning which so little is known and so little, I admit, ought to be known. But I was curious.
It was Mike who rescued me in those days. "Don't," he would stay, leering at the girls as they passed in their bikini business suits, and leaning over at intervals to feel the material judiciously, "don't play with the past. Oh, ancient history isn't bad, nor medieval times, but as soon as we reach the birth of technology, forget it. From then on it's scatology; just filth and perversion. You're a creature of the twenty-first. Be free! Breathe deeply of our century's clean air! It will do wonders for you. Look at what it's doing for that remarkable girl to your left."
And it was true. Her deep breathing was delightful. Ah, those were great days, when science was pulsing and we two were young, carefree and eager to grab the world by the tail.
Mike was sure he was going to advance science enormously and I felt the same. It was the great dream of all of us in this glorious century, still youthful. It was as though some great voice were crying: Onward! Onward! Not a glance behind!
I picked up that attitude from Paul Derrick, the California wizard. He's dead now, but a great man in his time, quite worthy of being mentioned in the same breath with myself.
I was one of his graduate students and it was hard at first. In college, I had carefully selected those courses which had had the least mathematics and the most girls and had therefore learned how to hemstitch with surpassing skill but had, I admit, left myself weak in physics.
After considerable thought, I realized that hemstitching was not going to help me make further advances in our great twenty-first-century technology. The demand for improvements in hemstitching was meager and I could see clearly that my expertise would not lead me to the coveted Nobel Prize. So I pinched the girls good-bye and joined Derrick's seminars.
I understood little at first but I did my best to ask questions designed to help Derrick demonstrate his brilliance and rapidly advanced to the head of the class in consequence. I was even the occasion for Derrick's greatest discovery.
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