Edwin's Reflection: A Novel

by Ray Deeg

  “Nice one, Connie. Sounds like another sweet commission for you, my friend. Samsung will make tens of millions, maybe hundreds.” Tom turned to face his screen again, wanting to cut the conversation short.

  “Tom, let’s not forget about the little people,” Conrad replied sarcastically. “The little people will have parsable memory capabilities built into their smartphones, computers, tablets, and TVs. A win-win-win.”

  “You’re amazing, Connie, and I want you and your three-star-Michelin clients to know that we appreciate your contribution—despite the two-thousand-dollar dinner bills. I mean, if you’re closing these deals over the phone, where are these dinner bills coming from? Seriously, I need you to reel it in. Seven-hundred-dollar bottles of wine are not defensible.” As Tom spoke, he realized he’d had this conversation many times before. The prospect, the deal, the close, the money, the expenses. Every week it started over again. He was drawn into the shallowness of work; its hooks were so deep now that this was his life, and there wasn’t room or energy for anything more. “Listen, I’m up to my neck, but we’ll celebrate soon,” Tom said.

  “How about a little animal talk?” Conrad asked.

  Tom glanced at his inbox, which was quickly approaching panic level. “Connie, I’m totally slammed. I have four hundred e-mails and that talk at Columbia this afternoon.”

  Conrad wasn’t impressed. “Isn’t this your third time? You should know it by heart now. How about a kangaroo? No, a sheep. Don’t you dare say ‘baa humbug,’ either. That’d be too easy.”

  Tom focused on his inbox, resolutely pecking away.

  Conrad transformed himself into a Middle Eastern merchant conjuring magic with his hands to aid his negotiation. “My friend, do not avoid the magic of talking animals. Perhaps a cute little kitty cat?”

  Tom surrendered. “You gato stop this.”

  “You must be feline better,” Conrad replied excitedly.

  “I’m purr-turbed and need to cur-tail this conversation,” Tom said, his eyes still focused on the laptop.

  “C’mon, you’re just cat-ching up. You can catnap later,” Conrad shot back.

  Tom took a deep breath. “I’m starting to feel furr-ocious.”

  “Maybe it’s a hairball,” Conrad shot back.

  “Me-owt of words now, so I’ll cat-cha litter,” Tom said, and then he pounded the desk with a closed fist, hard. “Get out of my office, or I’m going to scratch your eyes out and then spray you.”

  Conrad scowled. There was a moment of silence, quickly broken by the rain-like patter of Tom’s fingers pecking again. Conrad pondered his predicament but finally surrendered. He walked out of Tom’s office but turned to get in one last shot. “Puss.”

  CHAPTER 7

  RANDALL EVANS STOOD between Patience and Fortitude, the library lions, marveling at the tons of Vermont white marble insulating the fortress of knowledge. Upon entering the library, he could smell paper—aging and yellowing, literally disintegrating as time passed. For him, the massive structure felt more like a courthouse, a place whose presiding law was the mass of untold truth. He sensed that a powerful authority had once resonated within its walls. Perhaps these were echoes from another age, a bygone era that demanded harsh punishment for library members who kept books past their due dates. Randall imagined a stricter code of ethics that banished tardy readers to the lower basement dungeons in shackles, forcing them to persist on a diet of foul-smelling gruel. He imagined these offenders being whipped, tortured for days for their disdain of library rules. And if a member dare dog-ear a page or accidently drop a book in water, public immolation was the only fitting sentence.

  He moved deliberately toward his mark, his imagination getting the best of him. He glided past students, researchers, and a bag lady wearing an I heart New York T-shirt. He wondered if his intentions were noble or evil—and what was the difference. If he was successful, he wondered how history might celebrate Randall Evans. Randall is not a very powerful name, he thought. He walked toward the information desk, where a young girl greeted him. “I’m looking for writings from something called the Vedanga Jyotisha and the Vedanta, as well as books on Swami Vivekananda.” Randall showed the girl a list on his phone.

  She began typing on the computer terminal. “We have several translations of the original scripts from the Vedanga Jyotisha,” she replied, reading from her terminal. “I’ll print all these over there. It looks like you’ll be tapping into something pretty intense.”

  You have no idea, Randall thought, feeling the weight of the harmonic coil in the satchel over his shoulder. He wandered through the library, unsure of himself. He’d never enjoyed reading and wondered if there was an easier way. After locating the titles on his list, he moved to a nearby table, flipped open a book, and began reading a title, Vedanta: The Heart of Hinduism.

  But in a state of deep sleep his I-consciousness disappears along with antagonism between “I” and the rest of the world. There is no longer anything opposing him, no objects and no other human beings. The infinite comes into the realm of possibility and that is immortal.

  Randall flipped to another chapter.

  How does the brain produce consciousness? Most scientists and philosophers view consciousness as an emergent property of complex computation among ‘integrate-and-fire’ brain neurons which interconnect and switch at chemically-mediated synapses. However the mechanism by which such neuronal computation may produce conscious experience remains unknown. Consciousness has often been argued to be a sequence of discrete moments. William James described the “specious present, the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible.” The “perceptual moment” theory of Stroud described consciousness as a series of discrete events, like sequential frames of a movie. Consciousness is also seen as sequences of discrete events in Buddhism, trained meditators describe distinct frames or “flickerings” in their experience of pure undifferentiated awareness. The best measurement of consciousness through modern science is gamma synchrony electro-encephalography or EEG with 30 to 90 Hz coherent neuronal membrane activities occurring across various synchronized brain regions. Early electro-encephalography was discovered by Alfred Lee Loomis…

  Randall remembered seeing something in the case file about brain waves and electroencephalography. He flipped through more pages—where were the CliffsNotes?

  This deep relation between discrete energy levels and frequencies of oscillation underlies the wave/particle duality inherent in quantum phenomena. Neither the word ‘particle’ nor the word ‘wave’ adequately conveys the true nature of a basic quantum entity, but both provide useful partial pictures…

  He moved to another book, opening it about halfway.

  Had one described “nothing” as empty space before we understood, possessing no real materiality, that person may have received little argument. But the knowledge uncovered in the past century has taught us that empty space is far from the inviolate nothingness that we presupposed before we learned more about how the universe really works. But what if we are willing to describe “nothing” as the absence of space and time itself? Nothing means nothing, but it implies an empty space even though nothing is truly an absence of anything, including space and time.

  Randall was getting impatient. These hints and clues were tantalizing, but he couldn’t see between the lines. He moved to a book containing the translated writings of Swami Vivekananda, opening it about a quarter in.

  Man has wanted to look beyond, wanted to expand himself; and all that we call progress and evolution has been measured by that one search, the search for human destiny, the search for God. No study has taken so much of human energy, whether in times past or present, as the study of the soul, of God, and of human destiny. The present is determined by our past actions, and the future by the present. Cause is never different from effect, the effect is but the cause reproduced in another form. Everything, both mental and physical, is rigidly bound by the law of causation and the perfect circle repeatin
g itself. It was through me the creator himself gained liberating knowledge, I am being, consciousness, bliss, eternal freedom: unsullied, unlimited, unending. My perfect consciousness shines your world, like a beautiful face in a soiled mirror, seeing that reflection I wish myself you, an individual soul, as if I could be finite! A finite soul, an infinite goddess—these are false concepts in the minds of those unacquainted with truth. No space, my loving devotee, exists between yourself and myself, we all come from and shall return to the same place. Know this and you are free.

  Randall closed the book in frustration. He was getting angry again. He wanted more, and he wanted it faster. Frankly, he wanted someone to do it for him. He flipped to the inside cover to see the author’s biography. Amar Sharma, an expert on Hindu philosophy—and he lived here, too. Randall opened his phone and began texting.

  Jojo, get me the address of author Amar Sharma here in Manhattan.

  Randall opened his file folder and began examining the case notes. The first case entry was made by agent Walter Evans and detailed the fifth Solvay conference on physics, held in Brussels, Belgium, in 1927. The conference focused on a new proposal surrounding mind versus matter—the choice topic of conversation among leading scientists at the time. The group brainstormed on methods for resolving inexplicable behaviors in the newly formed quantum theory. The greatest minds in science attended: Einstein, Pauli, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and others, all of whom had made similar observations independently. It was theorized by the group that their own minds were somehow affecting the results of the experiments being conducted. The mathematics of predictability were not repeatable or reliable when they observed an experiment and then purposely refrained from observing the same experiment again. It became evident at the conference and within the case files that the act of observation itself affected the results of their experiments. Albert Einstein argued that this idea was impossible because it violated all mathematical models for how the universe was known to work. Later, however, Einstein finally admitted that it was indeed happening, just as everyone had suspected. Randall noticed a red circle drawn around a handwritten entry. It was a quote attributed to the physicist Max Planck.

  All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force. We must assume that behind this force is the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind and it is this mind which is the matrix of all matter.

  As Randall scanned Walter’s case notes, he smiled. The crazy old man’s stories were real, and the details came flooding back. In time, you will begin where I left off, succeed where I have failed. This is your destiny, boy. As Randall referenced his notes, he reopened one of the titles, flipping through the pages until he came to his mark.

  All matter behaves like a wave when no one is observing it. It’s as if the atom, the building block of all matter, is in many places at once when no one sees it. But consciousness through the act of observation collapses matter’s wave function, forcing the atom to take a specific position. Without consciousness, without the observer observing, the universe would only be an ever-expanding super position of possibility without anything real or definite ever actually happening. It is the act of observation by a conscious entity that causes the world and the universe to exist and time to happen, bringing forth change like a continuously flowing river.

  The wheels in Randall’s head were turning. Most of the information was fairly common knowledge, but he knew there was something else, a powerful truth that only a small group had come to realize. Something much more profound was completely missing from these pages, but it had been hinted at—over and over. How could they have hidden it from so many people? he wondered. Randall was well aware that the US government spied on its citizens; it had since its inception. In today’s world, it was well known that the NSA, FBI, and other government agencies captured the e-mails, texts, and phone calls of every American as well as traced their movements using the GPS systems in their phones. They were even crawling the records of credit cards, banks, and utility bills in direct contravention of the Constitution and then pretending to do these things lawfully or denying the activities altogether. The Bureau of Investigation was the first US agency created for the sole purpose of domestic spying, and Walter Evans was one of its first agents. The case, number seventy-four, was opened in June of 1926 and officially closed in February of 1943, about a month after the death of Nikola Tesla. The larger truth was deliberately hidden from the public, just as his grandfather had told him. This was a cover-up, perhaps the largest ever perpetrated. After all, the effort was enabled by the considerable resources of the federal government—including the Department of War and the Bureau of investigation. Now he had the keys to the kingdom, and he would take what was rightfully his. Randall closed his eyes. So much to learn, to know, to do.

  CHAPTER 8

  THREE HUNDRED STUDENTS listened intently as Tom Hartger spoke. It was his third talk as a thought leader at Columbia University, and as a Columbia alumnus himself, he felt both duty and pride. He chose his words carefully, speaking to the students as gently and deliberately as his own mentors had spoken to him. He was nearly finished now and wrapped up as he always did. He looked around the auditorium and smiled.

  “Your time on earth just so happens to coincide with the pinnacle of our civilization’s technological evolution. Yes, that statement could have been made at any time in the last ten thousand years and been true, but the pace of that evolution has increased dramatically. In just the last hundred years, we’ve mastered electricity, radio waves, and the computer. We’ve harnessed the power of the atom, learned to fly, put men on the moon, and sent robots to mars. We’ve sent satellites to measure distant planets. And we’ve connected ourselves so thoroughly that we’re all living in real time, wondering what to share next. Are more selfies the answer?”

  The crowd laughed.

  “We’ve even discovered the God particle—the Higgs boson and its magnificent magnetic field—the very thing that holds this universe together. We’ve learned to live with accelerating change, but there’s a growing restlessness inside us. We’ve surpassed our ability to sustain our technological acceleration without making a quantum leap. The increasing scales of our existence threaten us. The puzzle is not nearly complete, and there are still many pieces to be found, fundamental truths hidden in those spaces in between. Those who came before you overlooked them. Now it’s your turn to find them. Fundamental changes in our world are destined to happen, and it’s no coincidence that you are here. Your work here can’t be just about making money—not anymore.”

  “What about our student loans?” a female voice shouted.

  There was an awkward rumble in the audience and then silence. Tom strained to identify the heckler but could only make out a sea of faces waiting for an answer. He broke the awkward silence. “It’s a fair question, but I’m talking about creating more customers, not fewer. I’m talking about bigger markets, not smaller ones. Fear and financial burdens are exactly what’s preventing us from finding the things that have been overlooked, the things that will take us to the next level. I love making money, but the fear is a lie—fear of not getting what we think is important: money, security, freedom from debt. Fear that the world is not abundant, that it's all been used up. I know this fear and still struggle to overcome it.

  “It’s time for me—and you—to understand the now. The world has become irritated, angry, and offended that someone else dares to have a different opinion. The world has become resentful. Our modern machines are poisoning the earth and speeding the pace and stress of our daily lives. We spent ninety-eight percent of our existence as hunter-gatherers. Now we’re running twenty-first-century software on fifty-thousand-year-old hardware. Our minds are still primitive, but we’re expected to handle the world’s relentless pace. We experience one wave of future shock after another, and because the rent is due, we can’t seem to slow down long enough to understand what’s happening to us.

  “Look at all the people older than you,
my age. See how they run on their hamster wheels, constantly worried about jobs, money, debt, failure. All that stress—is that what life is about? And if you think I’m knocking capitalism, you’re not hearing me. Economic viability is the key to solving a lot of problems, including happiness, but we have to think critically about our pace. Wisdom is like wine; it needs time to ripen before being uncorked. There will be many challenges ahead, and you must rise above the noise, avert the same empty cycles. Turn off the angry TV; have faith that the world is abundant. Slow down and ponder your actions closely, and I’m positive the future will be brighter. You are the world’s new hope, so be kind. Thank you.”

  The auditorium lit up with applause and whistles. Tom shook hands with students and faculty as he made way downstairs and through the lobby. After a few turns, he found himself walking down a dark hallway. He was completely alone and felt a growing sense of déjà vu. He’d walked down this very hallway many times, but today it felt cold. He felt something in the air and scanned the area to spot it. He looked behind him. No one there. He opened the exit door and walked outside. It was chilly, but he felt the afternoon sun on his skin.

  He was startled by a female voice calling his name. “Tom Hartger, I knew our paths would cross again.” He spun around quickly. The woman approaching was almost as tall as he was, slender and athletic. Her hair bounced as she walked while two of the most gigantic green marbles you’ve ever seen blazed a trail. He remembered how much those eyes could see. As she moved, she summoned the colors of the world to shine a little brighter. He remembered her gait as she came closer, and the details of her face emerged. There were certain tokens of kindness and mystery in her face, and he felt himself begin to panic. His brief time with Gwen Pierce, and his love for her, had changed him forever—shaped so much of who he was now.

  “Gwen?” he said, his voice cracking. The universal laws of physics had ceased to be predictable or measurable. He felt off balance.