Elliot loved the rich history of this six-hundred-year-old institution, and as he walked the large flagstones that formed the lodge floor, he reflected on how he’d changed in his two and a half years at Lincoln. He’d arrived there a naive boy, and over time, as though he’d imbued the magic and tradition of the place, had become a man. Simply being part of such a long and ancient story had transformed him and given him a perspective that transcended the boundaries of his own life.

‘Mr Asha,’ a voice called, and Elliot turned to see Pip, one of the college porters, beckoning him from the service window in the lodge office.

‘I’ll catch you up,’ Elliot told his crew, who hurried around front quad towards Deep Hall, the ancient bar that was tucked beneath the oldest parts of the college.

‘Sorry to bother you, sir,’ Pip said. He was a kind old man with ruddy cheeks and wild grey hair and even though he had seen decades upon decades of young men and women pass through these gates, he somehow managed to make them all feel special. ‘Professors Hoyt and Gardner were looking for you. I said you were likely at the river, and they asked me to send you up to Professor Hoyt’s room when you got back.’

Elliot didn’t bother to ask what they wanted. He had a suspicion he already knew.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome, sir,’ Pip replied, before sliding the window shut.

Elliot headed into front quad, which was formed by four sets of college buildings linked together in a square, set around a perfectly manicured lawn. Professor Hoyt, the head of the physics department, had rooms in the building on the northern edge of the quad. It was covered in ivy which was positively alive in the sunshine. Elliot walked towards the old archway that led to the staircase where Hoyt’s rooms were located, and as he started up the steps his good mood ebbed away faster than water draining from a canal lock.

He was expecting a hard time.

Extract from the journal of Professor Lindsay Hoyt, Professor of Physics, Lincoln College, Oxford

Printed with the kind permission of her family.

The Icarus Theory curses physics. We spend so much time pursuing truth, trying to understand the essence of reality, we lose touch with it. We reach for knowledge that would have been beyond us in our natural, primitive state, and once exposed to it, some minds are burned. I have known many Icari and some might say I am an Icarus myself, although I would dispute such an assertion. I am eccentric where others are disturbed or depressed. My oddities do not compare with the absence of mind of Heisenberg, or the lack of empathy of Oppenheimer, or the obsessive compulsion of Erdős. I’m positively rational and grounded in comparison, but of all the minds I’ve ever encountered, the one that troubled me the most was Elliot Asha.

He was an Icarus, and I believe he had flown higher than any of us, and it had cost him his ambition. He was twenty-one and his mind had already been scorched. Most people didn’t see it, but I knew because I could tell when a person had seen beyond the constraints of life and perceived some new reality. Michael – Professor Gardner – and I had called Elliot to my room early in Trinity term of his final year.