"Chormatica™"

Success, with hardly enough exclamation points to convey it properly.  So mind-blastedly overwhelmed by the success of this project - four years in the making, plus the hundreds of thousands of man-hours’ worth of research - Dr. Pavla Kormatikos cannot quite find the words even.

“I-” the assistant Stepan begins to say, but Kormatikos gestures him to remain silent.  This is an epic moment, integral in that they will be quoted and paraphrased with every retelling.  Eyes still moistened at the glorious sight, Pavla wracks his brain for something memorable, something catchy to say.  A eureka reaction, but something singular and downright candid.  …  

                                                                He wonders why it is that when one truly needs them, one cannot find the proper words.  Perhaps that could be his lab’s next point of research, fraught with numerous MRIs and possibly some clinical tests.  Some sort of inhaler device might come of it, which a person could use to trigger candor and wit.  But for the present he is positively stumped.

“Alert the press,” he says at last, content at least to silently bask in the presence of his greatest accomplishment.

“What should we call it?” Stefan - the intern, not to be confused with the assistant - asks as he blindly feels for a phone on a nearby desk, likewise unable to take his eyes off the marvelous new thing they had wangled.  It defies a lifetime of experience, and looking at it makes Stefan fear he might have a seizure at any moment.  And for an awful moment, Pavla realizes he does not know what to call it.

*          *          *

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Dr. Kormatikos begins.  He feels uncomfortable without his lab coat; without its numerous deep pockets he feels unsure what to do with his hands.  For the present they rest clasped together on the podium, knuckles beginning to whiten.  The assembly is smaller than he had hoped for, and Pavla recognizes none of the dozen or so reporters sitting before him.  Second- and third-stringers mostly, more than a few slouching idly or texting on their phones with a maddening indifference.  Agrotes, his father would have called them.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am most pleased to say that after years of research and almost ceaseless activity from my staff, we are proud to unveil for you that which is never before been seen,” and again, Pavla wonders why he is bothering with any introduction at all.  Pearls before swine, besides which the words which had looked so good on paper seem to be coming out in a driveling jumble.  Disregarding his notecard speech, with a sharp tug on the velvet rope the equally velvet curtain draws back from the pedestal on the stage.

“I give you Kormatika, ladies and gentlemen.”

The room is palpably stunned at what they see.  Atop the doric-styled plaster pedestal, a simple square sheet of plastic is propped up, the color of… well, a color yet unseen by human eyes.  Not quite gold or burnished bronze, a bit like blue and yet positively not.  Kormatikos himself looks at it wistfully, sure that he will never tire of its subtle beauty.  How to describe it, short of Olympian?  The color of the gods themselves, a sort of visual ambrosia.

One by one, reporters and photographers regain some sort of composure.  Flashbulbs begin their controlled explosions, pencils are pointed as an onslaught of questions are raised, an industrious few head to the back of the room with their cellphones and begin to call up reinforcements.  With a certain satisfaction, Pavla realizes the crowd is about to get infinitely bigger.

“We’re going to need a larger conference room,” Stepan whispers into the doctor’s ear.

*          *          *          *

The science behind Kormatika is surprisingly simple (as all things are, in hindsight), yet larger developments make divulging its secrets highly illegal.  With every idea comes a practicality; a hypothesis needs an observable phenomenon, research needs equipment, data needs logging, and the whole process requires a surprising quantity of money if it is to reach any sort of applicable conclusion.  As part of the process of raising said money, Dr. Kormatikos supplemented his lab’s piecemeal grant funding with privatized investment.  While providing a boon for the laboratory’s research capabilities, this privatized investment required a contractual agreement promising the marketable yields of their intellectual property, et cetera and so forth until such time.  Kormatikos did not mind this then, and does not even still as he sits towards the far end of the board room table with the innumerable suits around him.  It’s not as if we were curing cancer, he shrugs.

A suit at the front of the room is delivering a PowerPoint demonstration rife with charts and figures.  Pavla is no economist, but the gist of the matter is the name aesthetic.  By slightly altering it to a more Americanized Chormatica™ the numbers on the charts and graphs indicate an expected sale boost of 9 to 12%.  Already it is being heralded as ‘the new color of the decade’ by the fashion industry.  Clothing, automobiles, house paint, toys, furniture, carpeting; not to mention the innumerable marketing uses on billboards, packaging, and corporate logos.  The R&D at General Mills has already been contracted to find an application of Chormatica™ to food dyes.  Bigger than lime green and electric blue combined, the charts cheerily promise.

Pavla does not mind, for really what is in a name?  Chormatica™ has made him the most notable physicist of the year.  There are even whispers he may win the Nobel Prize for Physics this year.  He had always hoped he would win the prize for promoting peace, but this would do just as well.  Besides which, his new color has made him quite the wealthy man.  A mansion in the north of France, a summer home in Kavála, half a dozen cars he doesn’t know what to do with and a forty-foot yacht named the Visual Ambrosia.  While Kormatikos would like to resume his researches, he finds himself caught up in a whole pageantry of interviews, presentations, lectures and endorsements.  The attention is nice, but for the first time in his life Pavla finds himself having to deal with boredom.  Looking at his chormatic-colored pen, he wonders if it has lost some of its original lustre.

*          *          *          *          *

It takes about three years for the novelty of Chormatica™ to fully wear off, largely relegated to the shelves of Sherwin-Williams between the different shades of brown and gold.  When people now see it, either in the form of the odd dress shirt at the back of the closet or the random hybrid on the road, they are generally reminded of the mid-2000-teens, of Lady Gaga videos and the days before privatized postage.  Dated, basically.  A colorful splotch on the e-pages of history.

Doctor Pavla Kormatikos has since returned to his research, currently heading up a query into recoloring dark matter.  He has no complaints to speak of, a Nobel Prize in his study and a Kormatika - because it will always be Kormatika to him - tie clip underneath his lab coat to remind him of his heydays.  The mansion in France and five of the cars have been pawned off for research money; they weren’t of much use to him, anyway.  He will always have the house in Kavála, close to home and the sea had not thought much of since boyhood.  Most importantly, he will always have his research.  Fifteen minutes come and go, but the trivial questions that continue to jape humanity will come at us forever.