Nomadic
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Graduation Year
2026
Writing Track
Fiction
Degree
Master of Fine Arts
Program
Creative Writing
Program Director
Judy Halebsky, PhD
First Reader
Hannah Michell
Description
Following his mother’s death and an autism diagnosis, thirty-year-old Michael leaves a postdoctoral fellowship in mathematics at UC Berkeley. He intends to take a brief sabbatical, crashing with former graduate school friends, but five years later, he is still adrift, forced to confront his shifting friendships, professional stagnation, and rootless lifestyle.
In the first part, “Another’s Dream”, Michael visits Aditya, who operates a New Age cult on a cattle ranch in the Nevada high desert, living out a childhood dream of being “a brahmin and a cowboy”. While collaborating on a quantum error correction algorithm, Michael realizes that Aditya’s isolation has cost him his scientific edge and that his manipulative nature has gotten the better of him. He leaves, taking two of the compound’s residents with him.
In the second part, “Another’s Secret”, Michael collaborates with Miles, a professor at a selective liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, on proving the inscribed rectangles conjecture. Their collaboration is fraught because Miles previously took sole credit for their joint work to secure tenure. After Michael inadvertently exposes Miles’s web of personal lies to his wife, fracturing their marriage, he decides to move on to his next destination.
In the third part, “Another’s Love”, Michael visits his closest friend, Emily, an assistant professor at a struggling state school in small-town Western Pennsylvania. Emily’s relationship with her new boyfriend, a wealthy but grounded sawmill owner who promotes the ethos of "thinking small”, highlights Michael’s own aimlessness. Michael and Miles successfully complete their math proof, but are scooped by a rival researcher. Shaken by this setback and the tragic end of Aditya’s dream, Michael resolves to abandon his vagrant lifestyle.
In the epilogue, “A Room of One’s Own”, Michael has stabilized his life and is reflecting on the developments in his friends’ lives on the eve of starting a new job at an AI startup.