Quantum Lens

by Douglas E. Richards

“But let’s get back to finding a way to kill Al Yad that doesn’t guarantee my death,” said Craft. “I told you that even if Alyssa’s hypnosis—or placebo enhancement, whatever you want to call it—works, I don’t think I can beat Al Yad. But what if two of us were at that level? Or fifty? At some point, I have to believe we could focus enough energy to overcome him. No matter how strong he is.”

  “I don’t know, Bren. Now you’ve just multiplied the number of unstoppable people. And if absolute power corrupts, you could end up with a worse situation.”

  “That’s exactly what Alyssa said,” admitted Craft.

  Martin smiled. “I really do like her already,” he said.

  “Just so you know, I agree with both of you. And I’m working on a solution. I’m sure you can grasp the paradise we could build if everyone could tap into the field.”

  “Yes, but even if we all become invulnerable, it just takes one Al Yad to destroy the Earth out from under us. A neutron bomb kills humans but leaves buildings. This would be the reverse. If we all had our own shields like you do, we could survive Armageddon but find ourselves living on a sea of magma and sulfur because a single asshole decided to play Dr. Destructo.”

  “I know that,” said Craft with a pained expression. “But there has to be an answer. I don’t believe that such a promising future will be forever out of reach because of the demons of our own nature. Of our own mental health. We need to understand human behavior better. Human psychosis. Or find some kind of regulator switch that only allows for peaceful, constructive uses of the field.”

  “It can’t be done,” said Martin adamantly. “There will always be those among us who will turn anything constructive into the opposite. Even if it’s potential for destructive use isn’t obvious. A violin seems about as innocent as you can get, but you could still use it to beat someone to death.” He shook his head. “But in the case of zero point energy, the destructive uses are the most obvious ones.

  “Thousands of murders are committed around the world each day,” continued Martin. “If someone goes crazy, they can shoot up twenty kids at a school. That’s tragic enough. But what if they could each destroy the entire world? You’re envisioning billions of people, who are each their own weapon of mass destruction. We wouldn’t last fifteen seconds.”

  “There has to be a way,” insisted Craft stubbornly. “I agree with what you say. But I refuse to believe we have the genius and ingenuity to turn each of us into a veritable demigod, but don’t have the genius to solve the most difficult problem our species has ever faced.”

  “Ourselves?” said Martin.

  “That’s right,” said Craft. “And if it takes me a thousand years, I’m going to find the answer,” he insisted.

  40

  While she was being tortured in the back of a van, Alyssa would never have believed that the next week of her life would be the best she would ever have. She slept a full fifteen hours on the impossibly comfortable queen sized bed on Martin’s jet, and awoke feeling great.

  As she had expected, Martin’s island was majestic. It was about a square mile in area, with cliffs on one side, white sand beaches on the other, and a lush woods in between.

  Near the beach end of the island, in a clearing in the forest, was a seven-thousand square foot home with a swimming pool, spa, and tennis court. Colorful, cotton-mesh hammocks were scattered around the grounds and surrounding area, each more than large enough for two people—as long as the two people didn’t mind being somewhat entangled, which she and Brennan Craft did not.

  The two visitors had taken up residence in the guest house, which, at three-thousand square feet, was considerably more spacious and opulent than Alyssa’s own home. The first night there the two of them had made love repeatedly, alternating between wild abandonment and tenderness, and she already felt herself falling in love. Craft had more endurance and was more passionate than any man she had ever been with, and she wondered idly if the ability to harness an infinite sea of energy translated into the bedroom, or if he was just naturally gifted in this way.

  Craft demonstrated his always-on second skin, as he called it, showing that no sharp or pointy object could so much as scratch him. Alyssa had wondered if he would be slippery because of it, but his skin felt perfectly normal against her body.

  Despite Craft’s assurances, Alyssa wasn’t comfortable sleeping next to him. Not given Patel’s description of what had happened to an entire pickup truck, and mercenary, that had hit Craft’s shield when it was active. She helped Craft move a second, smaller bed beside the king size bed in the master bedroom, and when they had become too exhausted to talk or make love, she rolled onto it to sleep.

  They spent their days on the beach, but it was also a working vacation for Craft. Even though it was an island, Martin had made sure to have all of the phone and wifi coverages, and advanced computers, necessary for him to conduct business here. So Craft tapped these resources to gather further intelligence on the activities of Major Greg Elovic, and also make sure he understood the electronic security measures that protected Alyssa’s lab.

  As he had expected, Elovic assumed Craft had been responsible for the gruesome killings of Alyssa’s two bodyguards, and that she was most likely dead. Still, her retina scan or fingerprints would continue to gain her access to the facility, although the system had been programmed to alert Elovic the moment she used it. If Craft forced her to return to her lab, the major must have reasoned, this would enable him to pick up their trail.

  According to Elovic’s reports to his superiors, in his heart of hearts, he was convinced Alyssa had been killed. Now he was hunting for Craft more urgently than before, if such a thing was even possible. Capturing Brennan Craft to get intel on Al Yad had been one thing. But capturing him because he had almost certainly murdered one of their own was quite another. Elovic had become as obsessed with seeking vengeance for Alyssa as any cop had ever been over the murder of his partner, as Alyssa had insisted would be the case to Tariq Bahar.

  During her second day on the island, Alyssa sent off a brief text to her parents, which Craft had made certain couldn’t be intercepted, letting them know she was alive and well. She told them she would explain everything later, and that it was vitally important that they not tell anyone except her two brothers that she had contacted them, under any circumstances.

  After this she spent all of her time resting on the beach, making love to Brennan Craft, and feasting on some truly outstanding cuisine, including fresh seafood from the area. She was soon feeling strong physically, and was as happy as she’d ever been. Her arm and thigh hadn’t fully healed, but she no longer needed pain meds on a regular basis.

  And she was having the chance to get to know Eben Martin as well.

  Eben was amazing. Bren had been right about him. He was still down to earth despite his fortune: humble and self-effacing. He had a sharp wit, playful sense of humor, and was a great conversationalist. He also possessed the kind of compassion and kindness that couldn’t be faked.

  In many ways, Eben was similar to Bren, and Alyssa could see right away why they had been such close friends. She was falling in love with Brennan Craft, but she had a feeling that if there were an alternate universe in which she had met Eben Martin first—even if he weren’t wealthy—she could have fallen in love with him as well.

  On their fourth night on the island, after she and Bren had engaged in a particularly passionate session of lovemaking, Alyssa called up a thirty minute clip of one of her favorite stand-up comedians on the master bedroom screen, which took up much of the wall in front of the bed. She and Bren were propped up against the headboard, leaning against one another, and Alyssa had drawn the bed’s burgundy satin sheet over her shoulders like a shirt, less because of any self-consciousness she had over being naked in Craft’s presence, and more because of the chilly breeze coming from the bamboo ceiling fan overhead.

  The comedian elicited plenty of heartfelt laughter from both of them, and when he had finished, Al
yssa switched off the screen with the bedside remote. She turned her head and gave Craft a quick peck on the lips.

  “Okay,” she said. “Before it gets too late. You promised me a rain check, remember?”

  Much had transpired since their conversation in the Bluegrass Waffle House in Covington, Kentucky, but after a few seconds of thought Craft remembered. “The God Theory,” he said simply.

  “That’s right. Lay it on me.”

  Craft smiled and returned the quick kiss with which he had just been favored. “All right. But you really need to read the book. I won’t do it justice.”

  “Deal,” said Alyssa. “But in the meanwhile . . .”

  Craft slid a few feet away along the headboard so they weren’t touching anymore and turned his head to face her. “It’s really fairly simple, actually. Reminds me of a marketing slogan from a board game I played as a kid: a minute to learn, a lifetime to master. So here goes: the first step is to postulate an infinite conscious intelligence. With infinite potential.”

  “That’s pretty much the typical description of God, isn’t it?” said Alyssa, unimpressed.

  “True enough. But bear with me. Let’s go on to postulate this infinite consciousness exists outside of space and time. In a way that is well beyond our possible comprehension. As you suggest, for want of a better word, let’s call this infinite consciousness, God. I like that this God is postulated as being beyond space and time. Independent of space and time. If he weren’t, then he would require a creator.”

  Alyssa considered this. So far, so good. This at least acknowledged something glossed over by many: that if a universe required a creator, one would think God would require a creator as well. “Okay,” said Alyssa. “I’m with you so far.”

  “And I’ll use the pronoun, he, for convenience. But I would never suggest that an infinite being who exists outside of space and time has a gender.”

  “What?” said Alyssa with a grin. “Is he like a Ken Doll down there?”

  Craft laughed. “I sure hope not,” he said. “But it wouldn’t matter, even if he was . . . supremely endowed. Because there is only one of him. So if he did have this particular appendage, what would he do with it?”

  Alyssa smiled. This was certainly something she had never considered before.

  “Which leads me directly to God’s problem,” continued Craft. “If you think about it, since this postulated God is everything, he is also nothing. He isn’t big, and he isn’t small. He isn’t great, and he isn’t weak. There is no contrast. Like a kid who is an only child saying, ‘I’m the smartest kid in my family, but also the dumbest. The nicest, but also the meanest. The most attractive, but also the ugliest.’ All if this is true. When you’re the only one, the only thing, you can’t get any scale, any contrast.”

  Alyssa smiled. As usual, Craft had a way of explaining things she would have thought to be absurd in a very compelling manner.

  “So this God has no way to get a sense of his own greatness,” continued Craft. “Or a sense of anything.” He raised his eyebrows. “And he certainly can’t experience the bliss of making love to the most amazing woman in the universe. Like I have.”

  Alyssa beamed, but then caught herself and pretended to be alarmed. “If I find out who this woman is,” she said playfully, unable to fully suppress a grin, “I’m going to kill her.”

  Craft leaned toward her and kissed her again, unable to help himself. “As you know, the book was written by a scientist named Bernard Haisch. He writes, ‘God is infinite potential, but potential—infinite or otherwise—isn’t the same as experience.’” Craft paused. “Still with me?”

  Alyssa nodded.

  “So God wishes to experience. He wants to transform potential into this experience. Haisch uses the example of a game. Playing it is far more satisfying than just reading the rules. Another analogy he uses is that of a man who has a billion dollars but isn’t allowed to spend a penny of it. He has vast potential spending power, but can’t actualize any of it. What good does money do you if you can never spend it?”

  Alyssa thought of Eben Martin, the only billionaire she knew, and smiled. He certainly didn’t suffer from the particular problem.

  “So if you were this God, how would you rectify this problem?”

  Alyssa thought for a moment. “Create a universe to enjoy?”

  “But how would you create it?”

  Alyssa shrugged.

  “You can’t create something in addition to yourself,” continued Craft. “You’re already all there is. The only way to create a universe is to limit yourself.”

  “Now you’ve lost me.”

  “Don’t worry. Not for long. Let me switch gears for a moment to my favorite subject, light. How many shades of color are there?” he asked.

  “Well, there are seven colors of the rainbow. But as far as shades go, there are basically an infinite number.”

  “Exactly. And if you combine all the infinite shades together, what do you get?”

  “White light,” said Alyssa, remembering that contrary to intuition, all wavelengths in the visible spectrum, combined in equal intensity, produced white light rather than black.

  “Right again. But as Haisch points out, if the universe were made up of nothing but white light, you couldn’t see anything. Again, no contrast. Just a fog of white. Why is the ocean blue? Because water absorbs all colors of light except blue. The color of the ocean isn’t created from adding blue. But from subtracting everything but blue from the white light.”

  Craft paused. “Haisch uses a brilliant example. You remember the old-time slide projectors? Plastic slides have gone extinct, of course, but these devices are still used to project computer images up on a screen. But either way, turn these projectors on and they shine a strong white light onto the screen. But what do you see in this light?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Right. Because there isn’t any contrast. But this light has infinite potential. If you put a slide of Eben’s island in front of the light, different wavelengths are subtracted out, allowing you to see green trees, blue ocean, yellow hammocks, and so on. By subtracting different shades of light from the white nothingness, you can create an infinity of different images.”

  “Very interesting,” said Alyssa thoughtfully. “So Haisch is saying that God is this white projector light, so to speak. Infinite potential to create images. But by itself, nondescript. So that’s what you meant by God creating the universe by limiting himself. God puts slides in his personal projector, so to speak, subtracting out bits and pieces of his infinite potential to achieve contrast.”

  Craft gazed at her appreciatively. “I couldn’t have said it better. There are a few lines from the book I remember exactly, and one of these sums it up nicely. ‘The process of creation is the exact opposite of making something out of nothing. It is, on the contrary, a filtering process that makes something out of everything.’”

  This explanation did resonate with Alyssa, so long as she was willing to accept the postulate of an infinite God. An infinite God really couldn’t experience anything, since he was everything. And a universe couldn’t be something in addition to God, since God encompassed all. Thus the central tenet: the universe wasn’t made from nothing, it was subtracted from everything.

  “Haisch writes that ‘by limiting the infinitely possible, you create the finitely real. In this way the infinite consciousness moves beyond sterile potential to actual creation—to doing rather than just being. He gets to act out and live out his ideas . . . his fantasies. He gets to spend his billion dollars.’”

  “I’m surprised to find myself intrigued,” admitted Alyssa.

  “So God is experiencing himself, experiencing existence, through a lens that is the universe, and all living intelligences in the universe. Which, of course, includes us. He’s limiting himself. Breaking himself into fragments so to speak. And making sure none of these fragments are omniscient. Because what fun is omniscience? Nothing can ever surprise you. It’s mo
re fun reading a mystery when someone hasn’t spoiled the ending for you.”

  A playful smile came over Alyssa’s face. “And it’s more fun having sex when you aren’t the only being in the room at the time,” she said. “Infinite or otherwise.”

  “Amen to that,” said Craft in amusement. “So once this postulated being of infinite potential limits himself,” he continued, serious once again, “you get polarity. Which is an absolute requirement for existence, for experience. You can’t have tall without short. Fast without slow. Up without down. And so on. Since our universe does have polarity, on the other hand, God can experience how powerful he is, how great, because there are things that are weak, and small. There is good versus evil. In versus out. love versus hate. Polarity. Not just a fog of white. By breaking himself up into limited bits, God has created a rich tapestry of experiences. Or, as the great physicist Freeman Dyson observed, ‘The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible.’”

  “I’m guessing you believe then that at the end of our travels, each of us is ultimately reunited with the whole.”

  “Ultimately, yes. This way of looking at God, and how he solved his initial problem, makes sense to me. And I like the implications of the theory as well. This belief system encompasses many of the tenets of different religions. And if this is true, if we are all part of God, existing to help God experience existence, there is no need for prayer. No need for organized religion. Not that these both aren’t welcome. But this isn’t a requirement. And there is no heaven or hell. And no deity sitting in judgment. The only thing required of us is that we live and experience the richness of life and of contrast.”

  “But then aren’t good and evil equivalent?”

  “Great question. But the answer is no. Because Karma is a bitch. Because if you really are part of God, any pain you inflict is just being inflicted on yourself. But again, there is a need for pain. How could you experience pleasure if pain didn’t exist? If everything was pleasurable, nothing would be. How could you recognize good if not for evil? You ultimately will be reunited with the whole in a non-physical realm. And there you will have to face and relive the pain and terror and hardship and cruelties that you inflicted.”