Genius was the only word that could properly describe him.
He was single, in his mid-thirties and totally bored with his present occupation and lifestyle. This was despite the fact that he’d written several brilliant papers on quantum mechanics, radioactivity, nuclear fusion and fission, his research concerning subatomic particles, together with his ground-breaking work on the grand unification solution. All of this stood as testimony to his elevated standing in the scientific community. He was aware of the fact that none of his contemporaries had ever observed the reality that his skills came so easily to him, but meant so little in the way of satisfaction. Furthermore, nobody would have suspected that the society dinners, the press coverage and the celebrity status that his work in the field had brought into his life, was in any way to his liking. He had managed to maintain a grin-and-bare-it posture for his immediate colleagues, but something inside him was moving towards some sort of breaking point.
He knew that a person’s decision to change careers can be seen as a weird turnaround by others. Such a choice that so often cannot be understood by those around them. Whereas, in the case of a bus driver going through an intensive course of training before moving to a specialist bulk carrying truck on a mine site may not raise many eyebrows, other career changes do. In his case, to walk away from such a well-established, highly paid position would be hard to comprehend for most.
Foreseeing that making known his desire to make a complete change in the way his future life was heading would attract even greater exposure to the world around him, he made plans. He realised that to actually slip away without being hounded by the press or pestered by those who thought he should remain in his line of work, he would need to put his highly advanced intellect to work towards his own interests.
When the time came, he quickly settled his affairs, wrote a simple letter of termination, bought a false passport, made modest changes to his appearance, purchased an airline ticket and flew out of the country.
There have been many rumours concerning his whereabouts, the latest being that he now owns and operates a small laundromat in Winnipeg.
