Mercedes Araújo

**Mercedes Flora Araújo** is a Spanish-American astrophysicist.

## Early Life

Mercedes was born in Santiago de Compostela, in the Galicia region of Spain. The city is the terminus of the Way of St. James, a Catholic pilgrimage. Located in the mountains, the area is home to beautiful vistas and night skies. Both of these factors contributed to Mercedes’s life.

Her first memory is asking her mother what Santiago de Compostela meant. Her mother replied “Saint James of the Star Fields.” Her powerful imagination flowed, visualizing a god-like man in endless stars. This helped spur her lifelong passion for theology and astronomy. Ever since she was a child, Mercedes was highly inquisitive and gifted, reading voraciously and scoring the highest in her class. In her youth, she became devoted to God and the Catholic Church, alongside a burgeoning interest in all things astronomy. Mercedes saw God in the stars and planets. The day her father bought her a telescope remains one of the happiest days of her life. Interestingly, her imagination was as strong as her intellect, giving her powers of highly vivid visual conceptualization. Mercedes saw her thoughts, abstract or concrete, in her mind like a 3D model.

As she grew older, her faith in a deity deepened but her trust in the Church waned. What followed was a dive into mysticism and philosophy that is still continuing. In secondary school, she excelled, especially in science and math. Mercedes earned national recognition in physics, geometry, and calculus. Chess was another passion during her first two years of secondary school, with her ranking nationally for her age group. After graduating first in her class, she studied astrophysics at Princeton University. She decided that astrophysics was a more promising path with more challenges to be overcome. Theology and philosophy she continued to study, while her belief in some god both wavered and strengthened. Math, physics, and chemistry she studied not only for knowledge and enjoyment but as a tool to better understand cosmological phenomena. Mercedes also loved to create fictional calendars based on real astrometric principles, marrying creativity and intellect.

## Education

Mercedes earned her BS in 3 years from Princeton and completed her PhD program at Harvard within 3 years. While at Harvard, she befriended a young Thalia Argyropoulou, the Greek-Egyptian archaeologist and anthropologist soon to be renowned for her discoveries at Santopagus, Greece. Two-and-a-half years in at 23, she became pregnant, deciding to keep the child. While 7 months pregnant, Mercedes managed to finish her degree. Two months later, her son Ignacio was born. She then traveled with her son to Spain to visit her family for four months. Once back in the United States, she began applying at research institutes. Mercedes loves motherhood. Although usually rather cold and distant with others, she channels her affection very demonstratively to her child. The father, David Konig, was earning his Masters’ Degree at Harvard in applied mathematics. He started a high-paying, entry-level position at an investment firm in Boston in time for his child’s birth. Although the parents split up, they both are committed to co-raising their child in Boston, with Mercedes taking the child to Spain during summertime. Mercedes’s parents, who are *quite* wealthy, gifted a large sum of money for the child, allowing the parents time to become stable. Mercedes and David both soon became independent and comfortable financially.

## Career

At 24, Mercedes began working at the Center for Astrophysics, a collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard College Observatory. It is a highly prestigious post where her genius can be realized.

## Personal Life

While visiting Yale University for a professional conference, Mercedes met writer Peter Stein, who was finishing his final year of undergraduate studies. They briefly had a relationship, and Mercedes was cited as a small influence on Stein's character Catalina Torres, a protagonist in *Coral, Iron, & Silver*.

## Dream Incident

Not long into her career, she suffered a severe mental break. Her psychiatrist’s account sums up the episode:

> Mercedes Flora Araujo, 25, first came under my care, clearly distraught, after an apparently involved and concerned effort of her child’s father, David Konig, 25. Mr. Konig reported that Mercedes had ignored his calls and texts over a two-day period, and worried about her welfare drove to her Boston apartment. The shades were all drawn, no lights were turned on, and Mercedes was in her room with the door locked. Distressed, Mr. Konig attempted to coax her out, and after long efforts, he did. She was ragged, weak, and delirious, having hardly eaten or drinken and having slept zero hours in two days. Their child had been left with an on-call nanny while Mr. Konig had come to the apartment. He then convinced her to seek help. According to both my observations and Mr. Konig’s comments, this compliance is starkly out-of-character from Mercedes’ stubborn nature, thereby suggesting the seriousness of her condition. On our first meeting, I asked why she was here. Now, in the ward I have had the whole gamut of clients, from mostly stable to hardly functional, but Mercedes’s session was different. She looked me dead in the eyes confidently and calmly said: “They are living in my dreams. He is aware. No one believes me, but I don’t expect them to.” The earnesty with which she said this took me aback. I did not doubt her, not one bit. To be clear, I believed that this is true *for her*, that whatever cause for this “revelation” she was to describe did in fact happen to her, only that her conclusion was utterly false. She continued: “I was dreaming, and in my dream I was at a crowded carnival at night. The colors were magnificent and quite vivid, like all my dreams. Then, then… then everything stopped. The orange ferris wheel slows down, the people stop moving, and this one man in the corner of my vision turns to look straight at me and coolly, flatly says to me: ‘I know this is a dream. I know none of this is real. I am now real.’ And then I woke up.”
> Mercedes honestly believed that one of her dream-denizens achieved sentience. An eerie sentiment. As I said, I believed her, in the supposedly patronizing way mental health professionals believe their clients. Now this is a woman who has always followed her convictions, but this is also someone who is clearly of genius-level intellect. There have been many cases, especially popularized ones, of geniuses “going mad.” John Nash, Howard Hughes, and Bobby Fishcer come to my American mind. A distinct aspect of intelligence is pattern-detection. Now, cranked-up to near superhuman levels, this marvelous feat can make some… well rather bizarre conclusions. But whether these crack-pot convictions are just other products of their brilliant mind or the delusions of a schizophrenic is unclear to me. Being the only one who holds a truth does not make that truth false. But then again, we just don’t know. However, until evidence turns up, I won’t use ignorance as an excuse, a la God of the Gaps, and say that this idea of hijacked dreams is true. I am rambling now. In conclusion: More Sessions Needed.
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> -Paula Ericson, Ph.D.
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> MGH Psychiatry
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