High Energy Collision [Completed]

Prologue - where is the Genius?

A knot of people had gathered around his grandparents' front door when Plan returned from working the rice terraces.

His empty stomach filled with dread as he approached them, trying to mentally prepare himself for the worst.

Both his grandparents were at an age where a seemingly harmless infection, an unfortunate household accident, or a sudden heart attack could kill them and leave him even more of an orphan in this harsh world. Since his father had left him even before he was born, without ever meeting anyone in the family and his mother had died in childbirth while having him, his grandparents were the only known family he had.

They had been so kind to take him in and raise him with as much love as they still had in them, despite the fact that his birth had robbed them of their only daughter and left them with a small, sharp boy instead.

He hurried over towards the open veranda that also served as a substitute for a living room in their shabby village hut, increasingly confused by what he saw.

The people he had seen from afar weren't the neighbours... they were... no, that was absurd, what were reporters doing here?

Usually, it was the talk of the year if one single reporter strayed to their village, either because they wanted to make a feature on traditional rice terrace farming or because they were doing some kind of nature documentary on the wildlife in the surrounding areas, annoying everyone working the paddies for days.

As soon as the first reporter spotted him and one of the neighbours mingling with them nodded and pointed at him, the entire bulge of people began to move like a swarm of insects towards him.

He instinctively pulled his wide-rimmed hat deeper over his forehead. Luckily, he had been wearing one to shield himself from the blazing heat of the sun today. He also pushed his large, round spectacles up the bridge of his nose as if he hoped it would protect him.

For a moment, he contemplated running away – but despite his discomfort, curiosity got the better of him.

He observed the movement of the crowd like a liquid flowing towards him, individual people like molecules forming a bigger whole.

"Are you the resident Genius?"

Genius like a title, like a honorific.

"Plan Rathavit? How are you feeling about the scholarship?"

"What do you tell people who call you Thailand's Einstein?"

He rolled his eyes, safely hidden in the shadow of his hat. What were these overexcited people getting at?

There must be someone playing a practical joke on him.

Sure, he had always earned good grades at school effortlessly, but he had graduated from high school down in Chiang Mai two weeks ago and now he needed to help his grandparents work the paddies, so they could finally reduce their own workload and enjoy the winter years of their lives in peace and tranquillity.

He had been lucky enough to attend high school at all to satisfy some of his thirst for knowledge, only because his village teacher had recommended him to a school director down in the city.

He had been allowed to stay in the director's garden shed and attend school for free in exchange for helping out the gardener, but that was already more than a poor farm boy like him could have expected.

It was true, of course, that ever since he had discovered the word "why?" and the village teacher had shown him the beauty of the universal language of mathematics, he had delved deeper and deeper into the study of the rules guiding the physical world and the universe around him, whenever he had time to spare – but that didn't make him a genius, much less a Genius or the next Einstein or whatever.

Determined to ignore the reporters buzzing around him still, he continued walking towards his grandparents' hut.

When the last of the reporters in front of him stepped away from his glaring eyes, he finally spotted grandma sitting in her old plastic chair on the veranda, holding a pristine white letter in her hands, showing her wide, almost toothless smile upon seeing him.

"Grandma, what is going on?"

Instead of answering, she handed the letter to him and joined the bulk of reporters in watching him expectantly as he unfolded it.

The words began to swim in front of his eyes.

This was...

Special scholarship... UdG University... an amount of money bigger than he had ever seen written in earnest, that if it were theirs... it would allow his grandparents to retire comfortably tomorrow.

He looked up from the letter and at his grandmother.

"Why does this letter say I have been granted a scholarship? I didn't apply for no scholarships, did you fall for a scam grandma? What did those people tell you the letter says?"

An overly twitchy reporter next to him retreated his microphone with an annoyed grunt.

"You didn't apply? Then... isn't this your science paper you submitted to the National Young Researchers competition?"

What?

He hadn't submitted anything anywhere, it was pointless anyway, he was a rice farmer after all.

However, after glancing at the paper the reporter was holding up, he recognised the homework he had handed in for his science final.

It had just been a summary of some basic mathematical simulations of liquids he had made while playing around on the old laptop his science teacher had gifted to him at the beginning of his last semester at school.

How that paper had ended up in a national competition completely eluded him.

"It is my homework," he shrugged, "I don't know why you have it, though. Now if you please... I need to have dinner and get some rest before tomorrow, rice still doesn't harvest itself, you know."

"Does this mean you are not accepting the scholarship?" a baffled reporter asked him.

Plan looked down at the letter again and gulped silently upon seeing that insane amount of money it says he'd been granted.

If it were true, it would be madness not to accept, but at what price?

Leaving his grandparents again to fend for themselves, after everything they had done for him?

Moving to... Bangkok, where UdG was located. UdG was the fanciest, most exclusive public-private university in the country. Financed and attended by Thailand's richest people, home to the best research facilities and the most prestigious professors in the country.

Could he afford going there, even with the scholarship money? What were the conditions attached to it? He hadn't read anything about that in the letter.

He sighed.

If life were easy, going to UdG would be a dream. He had read physics papers by Prof. Marsden, the hotshot foreign theoretical physicist teaching and researching there. He would love to learn more from her, to have new ideas he could mull over while working in the terraces during the day and write down during the quiet hours after dinner.

But again, at what price?

"I need to think about it."

Leaving the baffled reporters behind, he stepped onto the veranda and hurried over to the bedroom, that thankfully had a door he could close behind him.

Well... at least those villagers who offered some form of food or accommodation services to outsiders, tourists usually, would get good business out of these reporters today.