Charlie Thorne And The Last Equation

At the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in the present day, Agent Dante Garcia speaks with Jamilla Carter, the Director of the CIA. He wants to bring in a 12-year-old girl named Charlie Thorne to help with a CIA case. Carter examines the file on Charlie Thorne, a genius with an IQ nearly as high as Einstein’s, who speaks 12 languages and studies theoretical physics in college.

Though Carter knows Charlie could be useful, she is worried about Charlie’s rebelliousness and disrespect for authority. Dante argues that geniuses are often disrespectful of authority because they know they are smarter, and he insists he can handle Charlie. She has a criminal history, and he intends to blackmail her into compliance. Carter reluctantly puts Dante in charge of the mission, and Dante requests Agent Milana Moon as his partner.

Charlie Thorne is skiing from Deadman’s Drop in Colorado, a “sixty-degree slope flanked by sheer walls only a few feet apart” that ends at a cliff (19). The jump is highly dangerous, but Charlie is an excellent skier who can see the numbers involved and knows how to get through the slope and over the cliff safely.

Charlie knows she should be in her theoretical physics course at the University of Colorado. However, she finds the class boring because she knows more than the professor. She is flippant about her coursework, except for rock climbing and self-defense, which she at least finds interesting.

She skillfully maneuvers through Deadman’s Drop and lands with a round of applause from other skiers on the lower slope. Then she notices Agent Milana Moon waiting at the bottom for her.

Dante and Milana tracked Charlie to the mountain and split up to catch her. Milana positions herself at the bottom of the slope to catch her while Dante stands guard at the ski lift in case something goes wrong. Despite knowing how intelligent Charlie is, they underestimate her observational skills. Charlie is hyper-aware of her surroundings. She notices Milana and realizes a government agency is after her. Skiing through the trees, Charlie quickly loses Milana, and then she suddenly runs off another cliff.

Dante follows Charlie. He sees the cliff ahead and worries about Charlie’s safety at the bottom, then sees she survived the landing and follows. Frustrated, Charlie keeps running. Ahead, she sees a mansion with a man cleaning the pool and his truck in the driveway. Charlie approaches him and asks for the keys to the truck, but he laughs and calls her “girlie,” prompting her to attack him with moves she learned in self-defense class. She feels justified because he is being “a sexist jerk” and takes his keys (43). She drives off haphazardly as she has only driven once before. Then, her second pursuer jumps in front of the truck, and she hits the brakes, spinning the truck into a snowbank. Just as she loses consciousness, she recognizes the man chasing her as Dante.

Charlie wakes up on a CIA jet. Dante and Milana took her passport, money, and phone. However, she realizes they missed an item in her pocket, which she saves for later. Dante is beside her in the main cabin, and Milana is piloting. Charlie greets Milana through the open door to the cockpit and asks if she is Native American. Milana says yes but will not tell her which tribe. Then Charlie and Dante discuss lunch and their tastes in sandwiches, leading Milana to realize that the two know each other somehow.

Charlie knows Dante is CIA. The money she stole is not in his jurisdiction, so he must want something. Dante admits that he wants her to work for them. He could blackmail her for her “supposed crimes” but believes she will freely choose to help them because “the lives of billions of other people” are at stake (55, 56).

Dante explains: Einstein, famous for his theory of relativity, left behind a secret equation he called Pandorabuchse (Pandora’s box in German). While the equation E=mc^2 gave the world “the power of the atom” (60), Einstein was never satisfied with it, feeling that it was too difficult to use. He believed there was “another equation that would make the process of converting mass to energy considerably easier” (60-61). He called this equation Pandora’s box, based on the Greek myth in which a woman, Pandora, opened a box, releasing evil called the Furies upon the world, though the box also contained hope. Einstein believed his equation could solve the world’s energy crisis but could also pose great danger.

The CIA believes he successfully devised this equation and then hid it, having lost faith in humanity and believing no one could be entrusted with such power. However, he also left clues to its location. The CIA had Einstein’s home under surveillance before his death and, therefore, knew that his final words confirmed the existence of the equation but could not decipher his clue. Now, Dante wants Charlie to help them locate the equation because “someone bad” is about to find it first.