“But let's get back to the scientific method. As I said before, it always begins with observations. For example, a geologist might observe two rocks and see similarities in them. That's an observation.
“The next step is to come up with a hypothesis, an idea that explains something about the observations, a way of fitting them into a new understanding. For example, the geologist looking at two kinds of rock that are similar might hypothesize that they formed in similar ways.
“Kareef had a dream unlike any he had ever had before. He was clever enough to realize that he'd never fallen asleep near one of the metal sphere before, either. Two observations.
“Another observation might be that nothing like this had ever happened to him before...before he fell asleep with a sphere under his pillow. The next thing he did was form a hypothesis to connect these observations. He got the idea that the dream was somehow caused by the combination of the nearness of the sphere, and the condition of being asleep.
“Now it's not always obvious what things cause other things. Our ancestors thought the full moon caused madness, which is why we have the words 'lunacy' and 'lunatic' to describe the condition and the victim. It is easy to come up with faulty hypotheses like that.”
He eyed them. “The difference between superstition and science is that in science we check our hypothesis. We don't just assume that any explanation that pops into our head is correct. We devise a way to test it. And that is the next step in the scientific method: performing an experiment to test the hypothesis. You figure out what will happen in a particular case if you do something related to the hypothesis, and then you do it and compare the predicted result to what actually happens.
“And this is exactly what Kareef did. His idea, his hypothesis was that falling asleep near the sphere caused his dream. To test this idea, he performed an experiment: he had Nathan fall asleep with the same sphere under his pillow – to see if he had the same dream. And he did. The hypothesis seemed to be verified.”
“Seemed?” said Esteban.
“Well, it might have been a coincidence,” Xander told him. “Coincidences do happen. Or, maybe the sphere had nothing to do with his dream, but being near him Nathan had somehow picked up his thoughts and re-created a similar dream. But so far Kareef's hypothesis seemed to be verified.
“The next step in the process is to publish your results. One scientist might get all kinds of wrong ideas by himself and think he had proved them. So what a scientist then does is tell others of his ideas and experiments, so others can repeat them. If they get the same results, then he might be on to something.”
“Wasn't that what he did with Nathan?” Carolyn wanted to know. “I mean, he got Nathan to do what he had already done.”
“No,” he told her. “And I'll tell you why. Kareef's first observation was an accident, not an experiment. Getting Nathan to repeat his experience was Kareef's experiment to test his hypothesis about what had happened to him.”
He smiled at them all. “It could have been a fluke, a mere coincidence that Nathan had a dream too. But Kareef took the next step. He came to me and told me how to repeat his experiment, and gave me a written prediction of the results. He didn't just tell me, he wrote it down, so that I could read his prediction after my own experience. That way he didn't tell me in advance what to dream, so I could make my own observation without knowing the expected results in detail before I did it.
“And my experience matched his predictions exactly. We now know something extremely important. The blue spheres record memories – experiences of things seen and thoughts the observer had while they were having those experiences. Thanks to Kareef, with Nathan's help, we now have a way not only to see into the past through the eyes of the Ancients, but to even experience their thoughts about those experiences.”
He paused again to let them absorb that.
“This is all very fine,” said Lester. “And yes, it's amazing. But, and forgive me for saying this, Kareef, so what? We already have books written by the Ancients describing their world and their lives and their experiences. Yes, the spheres sound like they give it all more immediacy, more personal detail...but if we don't know how to make them, how to form the weave that gives them this property, I don't see how it helps us much.”
“Don't you see?” Xander asked him, seeing the frown on Kareef's face that could erupt into angry words. “All of the learning of the Ancients, all of their science, all of their skills, were acquired by experiences. And the spheres record experiences! This could be the break we've been waiting for – a chance to rebuild technology faster than we ever dared hope!”
Lester nodded, as the words seemed to finally sink into his head. “You're right. What's the next step?”
“The next step,” Xander informed them, “is to investigate this in a serious and organized way.” Standing up, he stepped over to a table and pulled a brush out of a bottle of paint. He withdrew Kareef's sphere from a pocket of his robe and dabbed a numeral 1 in orange paint on the metal surface. “I'm marking this first-experienced sphere '1' so we can tell it from the others.” He blew on the painted number and set the sphere carefully down on the table.
Next he picked up the bag, grinning as it produced a burst of metallic clicks. “And here are the others. I want you to number them all, so we know which is which, and then everyone takes a sphere to tuck under their pillow tonight. I'll expect detailed descriptions of the dreams they give you, so we can begin to classify the kind of experiences stored in each sphere.”
“Do we have to wait until tonight?” Nathan asked.
Xander laughed and this nearly precipitated another coughing fit, but his excitement nipped it in the bud. “No, of course not. If you want to take a nap before then, go ahead. But either way, I want a written description of your dreams.”
Chapter 42
Lobsang: To the Beat of a Different Drum
“Good speech does not seek faults”
– The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tse
To say that he attracted some attention when he rolled into Esalsee would be putting it mildly. It must have been market day or something; the streets of the old city were clogged with pedestrians carrying bundles and bags, and horse and donkey-drawn carts rattled along among them.
He had to loosen the spinspace weave on the rear axle and reduce speed to a crawl to avoid injuring them. At this rate it might a couple of hours to get through the ancient city.
Now that he wasn't barreling down the road, the vehicle began to warm up more. Already feeling himself beginning to sweat again, he stroked the thermodyne to increase the amount of cool air it emitted.
The people here seemed a little better-fed and prosperous than the ones in the People's Republic of Wyoming he'd passed back through on his way West. This puzzled him, since Deseret seemed to have considerably less vegetation than Wyoming.
He didn't notice the people thinning out in front until it was too late. Suddenly they were gone and he saw the roadblock.
Lobsang swallowed when he saw the double row of wagons closing off the road ahead.. What was this? Doubtless they had some good reason for blocking the road that had nothing to do with him. How could they possibly have sent word ahead and organized this all just to stop one vehicle? Grimacing, he reached out mentally and released the weave on the rear axle, letting the car roll to a stop just short of the wagons.
Well, now what? He could just sit in the car and wait for them to come get him. He'd figured out how to use the manual door locks, but he couldn't stay in here forever.
Right. He stroked the thermodyne, shutting it off, and slipped the pipe into a pocket in his gray robe, then unlocked the car and slipped out to stand there on the ancient pavement.
Nobody moved for a movement.
Silence had dropped like a fisherman's net over the street. He remembered reading somewhere that the larger cities of the Ancients were never silent. Cars honking, trucks rumbling, machinery whirring and vibrating, and the inevitable quiet roar
of a million or more people shouting, talking, or even whispering had made a constant background drone of large cities that their inhabitants became so used to they hardly noticed it except when they went out to the countryside and fond real silence – or what passed for silence among and between the croaking of frogs, mooing of cows, whistling of birdsong and the chirping of insects.
But that was the past. The present version of Esalsee didn't have millions of people honking car horns, driving rumbling trucks or using humming air conditions. So it could be very quiet at times. Like now.
He wondered id a hundred crossbowmen had him in their sights. Why had they stopped him? He began to ready a pathspace weave to deflect arrows...
As he did so, he felt an echo from in front of him. There must be a wizard, or a potential wizard among the roadblock wagons. A strong echo, too. He stopped his weaving, suddenly sure they were not going to fire.
A man in sand-colored clothing slipped between two of the parked wagons and approached him, strolling across the pavement. He seems unworried. Either he thinks I won't attack...or he's pretty confident he's a match for me.
Lobsang stepped toward the oncoming figure, trying to copy his air of complete unconcern. I don't think you'll attack me, either. Either you're confident enough to parlay first, or you're curious about why I have no horses, he thought.
“I come in peace. I'm Lobsang, originally from Cali."
The stranger showed him empty hands and extended one. “I welcome you, Lobsang, from Cali. My name is Ezrah. Would you follow me, please, sir?”
He shook Ezrah's hand, but frowned before he could stop himself. “Follow you? Am I under arrest, or something?”
Ezrah shook his head, smiling. “Of course not,” he said. “Should you be? I'm sorry about the roadblock. The wardens have standing orders to intercept any Gifted travelers.”
Suddenly he felt a fool. They must have detected my power when I came near or into the city, and I was too busy steering and trying not to run over anyone to notice them. They must have some means of sending word ahead to arrange the roadblock.
He wondered what they would do with him. Should he be trying to escape? “Gifted? Oh. And you have enough Gifted of your own to post them as lookouts?”
“Oh, I wouldn't say we have many,” said Ezra. “But of course only the juniors have to do their shifts on the highways. I'm curious, Lobsang. You say you're from Cali, yet you travel toward the West, not from it. Returning home from a journey, perhaps?”
You wouldn't say you have many. Of course you'd keep their numbers secret. But just because you wouldn't say it doesn't mean it isn't true. “You could say that. I've been attending the Xander School in Denver,” he said, watching Ezrah's reaction to this disclosure.
Ezrah's eyebrows twitched. “Oh? Did you learn much?”
Ah, so you have heard of the School...or at least you've heard of Xander. “More than I expected,” he admitted. “Where are we going?”
“There are some people who'd like to meet you,” the man said. “Don't worry. We offer no harm to those who bring none to us. They merely like to meet any Gifted travelers who pass through Deseret.”
Lobsang wasn't sure how he felt about that. They'd forced him to halt, and now he was being separated from his vehicle. But he sensed no menace from Ezrah, at least not yet, so he continued to allow himself to be led down the street.
Why didn't they stop Trent's caravan on the way to Rado? But he knew the answer. Before coming to Denver, he must have been so weak in metaspace talent that he hadn't registered on the senses of the lookouts, the 'wardens'.
“Will this take long?” he asked Ezrah. “I mean, will they expect me to stay the night? I'm in a bit of a hurry. The lives of my family might depend on me getting back to Angeles as soon as possible.”
Ezrah darted a stare at him then reached forward to pull open the door. “Relax,” he said. “I'm sure no one here would want your family to come to harm.”
He stepped through the doorway and found himself in a huge marble-lined room with four metals doors at one end and a granite desk at the other end, near the doors. “Looks like nobody's home,” he said. His voice echoed.
Ezrah strode toward the four metal doors that Lobsang recognized as elevators. “They'll be on the tenth floor. They prefer meeting in the gardens.”
Lobsang followed him. At the last possible second Ezrah turned and stepped over to a ordinary-looking door with a doorknob on it. Aha, Lobsang thought. So they haven't figured out how to get their elevators working again, either. The thought gave him some comfort. Whoever ruled Esalsee these days, at least they couldn't be very far ahead of Xander, if at all. They might know things he didn't, however.
As they began to ascend the staircase, he experienced a minor wave of nostalgia: the stairs were just like the ones in Kristana's building: no-nonsense concrete with no banister. Just as in Denver, the builders of this edifice had never really expected its occupants to stop using the elevators.
For all their purported wisdom and technology, even the Ancients didn't anticipate the Fall. The wonders they had, like their electricity, had made them arrogant.
He wondered whether city-dwellers had stronger leg muscles than the people who lived in the country. Most farmers never have to climb ten flights of stairs. He wondered if this was a test. Ezra seemed in good shape. He must make this climb often. For the first time, Lobsang was glad Xander's School was so far up in the Governor's 'scraper. All those weeks of trudging up and down the steps to get to the cafeteria and back had paid off in a way he'd never expected. Whoever they were going to meet would see his own legs were in good shape. From that, they could infer the School must be up in an old building. But for all he knew, they knew its location already.
Another thought marched on the heels of that one. Xander had given him no guidelines on how much of the School to reveal to other people. Before he said too much to whoever he was about to meet, he had to consider the possibility that they could turn out to be enemies of the School in the future. In that case, he should reveal as little as possible.
But what if whether they became allies or foes depended on how much he revealed? Suddenly he wished Xander was with him now.
Ezrah had already opened the door on the tenth floor by the time he reached it. He followed the man in and found himself in the gardens. But these were like no gardens he had seen before. Instead of individual planters for fruit trees and group planters for flowers and herbs as Aria had in Denver, this floor was filled with structures that looked like upside-down mushrooms. From the sides of their stalks, flowers and small bushes stuck out at angles between vertical and horizontal.
He could hear water gurgling and splashing, but did not see any. What sort of gardens was this?
The upside-down mushrooms were arrayed in concentric circles, with aligned gaps that made an aisle between them from the stairwell door to the center of the floor. Ezrah lead him up this aisle, and in the center they reached a small clearing with a circle of six chairs. Three men and a woman occupied four of the seats, leaving the two closest chairs empty. Ezrah sat down in the one on the left of the aisle and Lobsang decided he was supposed to take the one on the right.
The man on the chair opposite to Lobsang's spoke first.
“I understand your time is limited, Lobsang, so we will expedite matters. This is an exchange of information. You may ask us a question, and after it is answered, we will ask you one, and then it is your turn again, until we know enough about each other.”
Lobsang opened his mouth to speak, but the man held up a hand, forestalling him. “Since we have initiated this meeting, we will answer a couple of your your most obvious questions before we begin, to save time and to let you think about more important questions.
“You first question is obvious and you already know the answer to it. Why are you here? Because you are Gifted and our lookouts detected it. I am sure you know how such things happen.
“As for your next question, it
would probably be, who are we? We are advisers to the First Presidency. It goes without saying that we are Gifted ourselves, which is why we were chosen to assist in this capacity.” The man made a small gesture with his hand. “now that we have that out of the way, you may ask your first question”
Is there a Second Presidency? he wondered, but managed not to waste a question on it. He had to finish this and get on his way, assuming they'd actually let him leave.
“You'll probably think this a foolish waste of a question,” he said, “but what kind of gardens are these? I'm sure your visitors ask that question at some point, and the mystery is distracting me, so I'll ask that first.”
And I've just given you some information already, he realized. My question tells you we have nothing like this in Denver.
The man to the left of the first speaker answered him. “It's a fair question,” he said. “It still surprises us that no one else seems to have aeroponic planters.”
“Aeroponic? I'm not familiar with that term.”
“The cultivation of plants can be done in various ways,” the man told him. If the plants are rooted in soil, the Ancients called it geoponics, from a combination of two old words for 'earth' and 'labor'. Working the soil. Another method they developed was called hydroponics, in which the plant roots are suspended in water.”
“So in aeroponics the roots are in air? I don't understand. How could that possibly work?”
“For a long time, most of human history, actually, plants and trees were grown in soil. The convenience is undeniable – just poke a seed in the ground and make sure it gets water. However, as farmers learned, while rooting plants and trees in the ground supports their weight well as they grow, it also makes them vulnerable to drought, flooding, and creatures in the soil that can eat the roots. Eventually, hydroponics was developed to try to get around these problems. But the newer system turned out to have its own problems. When plant roots are immersed in water, they grow differently than they do in relatively dry soil.”
Tonespace: The Space of Energy (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 3) Page 16