THE PATCHWORK QUILT

Ever since he came to live in the village he had this handicap. He was clearly used to it as his ability to complete most tasks demonstrated. In fact many who saw him relaxing in the local with a good pint would be unaware that he had a problem. It was his left arm which was damaged. From the elbow to his wrist, his arm was just a shrivelled black stick, unpleasant to look at, and virtually useless as an arm. A blackened ball was all that was left of his hand. However he kept it well hidden, and being naturally right handed he managed must things quite well. A casual observer knowing of his difficulty would often offer help when non was required. Richard Simmings was, on the surface, a thoroughly normal male in his prime at a healthy thirty five. Good looking in an intellectual kind of way, he was also blessed with generous personality. Indeed if one ignored his arm he was well built and undoubtedly handsome being very popular with the ladies. He lived on his own in a house that he had modified extensively to enable him to cope with the usual daily chores. And judging by the always neat garden he managed very well. He was even able to drive his modified sports car which rested gleaming on his drive. He had had a number of relationships with the opposite sex, but these had stopped short of the intimate physical side, a factor which had always resulted in a sad and sometimes prolonged break up. It was in fact Richard who drew the line in the sand, sensitive as he was to the effect that a sight of his handicap would inevitably have on their love making. He was also quite well known. His training as a physicist and with a degree in engineering and his ability to create clever solutions to all manner of problems quickly made him locally well known. He even gained approval at the `big house’ when he was able to resolve their poorly designed central heating system and with a very clever modification solved their problem. The cry `Have a word with Richard Simmings he will fix it for you - for certain.’ Was the usual response to someone describing some unique failure of some modern item of equipment. He was specially good with electronic devices and systems, so far with not a single failure to his name. There was a mystery though - no one knew where he came from. Or where his wealth came from, his background was a complete blank, and his answer to prying questions was the inevitable - `Sorry I don’t remember - it was so long ago.’ But Richard had a previous life, and a successful one, that is until his `accident’ put a stop to it. In the village he appeared to be well adjusted and pleasantly normal - but there was however obviously something wrong. His house was situated on its own some distance outside the village. People who had ventured there reported someone screaming loudly as if in great pain. But knocking on the door resulted in a pale faced Richard standing there trembling. `It’s OK please don’t worry, I am fine - thanks for calling - Goodbye!’ And they would be faced with a closed door. The secret, for that is what it was, began early in Richard’s life, where the cause of his withered limb was buried. His early childhood was normal, a rough and tumble boy grew up into a tough rugby playing youth with a keen interest in everything scientific. Top of the class in physics he won an honours degree in physics and in engineering at one our better red brick universities, where he stayed on to do some fundamental work relating to the structure of matter. At this time he found himself captain of the university rugby team, and at the local he was known to `chuck a good arrow’ but was not selected for the darts team due to a certain inconsistency. His father new little of the science which was beginning to take a hold on Richard’s imagination, and so was unable to warn him of the potential danger of what he was now beginning to see as a lifetime ambition. His much younger sister was just a bystander. He was about twenty when one of our industrial giants with associations with the university heard of his interest and offered him a job. And a very good job it was, a well equipped laboratory and associated staff went with the un-refuseable salary. The company tried not to interfere but clearly wanted a return on their investment. And so Richard was constrained to limit some of his more adventurous experiments. But even within these limits he had every opportunity to pursue his ultimate ambition. The question to which he addressed his main curiosity was - MATTER - stuff - substance - what were the ultimate building blocks. The firm was so universally powerful that Richard had access to all the latest results from the LHC - the Large Hadron Collider. This undoubtedly gave him the edge over others working in the same field. As he delved into the structure of atoms and then the behaviour of those particles which made up those atoms he began to wonder what would happen if we were to change just one of the immutable governing constants like Plank’s Constant.