Modern Magic
Page 221
“Richard, I have no intention or desire to keep you in the dark. There are many levels to this, as you put it, game. When you return to the island, we’ll talk. There’s no reason you shouldn’t know the whole story”
Chapter Ten
The Secret Origin of Dr. Know
Richard placed his hand against the warm glass. Before him, Amelia was suspended in a tube filled with translucent pink goo. She was awake but couldn’t speak, as her lungs were filled with the fluid. She stared at him, her eyes gray and hard, her lips thin and tight. It wasn’t a look of pain, so much as a look of contempt. Richard wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.
He left the lab, unsure what to make of anything he’d witnessed earlier that day. He tried imagining what good purpose Dr. Know could have for kidnapping death-row inmates, and was hard-pressed to find an explanation that seemed remotely ethical. What kind of man was he working for?
He went to the library, and found Katrina there. He didn’t see her much these days, now that she had stopped attending dinners with her husband and daughters. He hadn’t heard her speak to Paco or anyone else since the episode in the museum. She seemed a living ghost, just as he was. On the rare occasions he saw her outside the library, she seemed lost in her own thoughts, somnambulistic as she wandered through the halls. Presently, Katrina was reading a book written in an alphabet Richard didn’t recognize. She stared at the text before her for what seemed an unnaturally long time before her trembling hand turned the page.
Kneeling before her, Richard said, “I feel so bad about all this. Like it’s my fault. If Dr. Know hadn’t tried to make you see me maybe you could have gone on in whatever passed for normal in your relationship with him. I’m sorry.”
Of course, she didn’t acknowledge this. With a sigh, Richard turned away, distracted by a noise from the lawn.
Richard walked out onto the balcony. A helicopter was landing. Something was familiar about it. Then he realized he had seen this chopper in the background of dozens of news broadcasts. He wasn’t surprised in the least when the President of the United States emerged from it.
He went back to the library.
“Your husband has powerful friends,” said Richard.
Katrina continued her reading. Richard left her, curious as to what the President might be doing here. After a brief search, he found not only the President, but also a dozen other men in suits seated around a large table. Some looked vaguely familiar, though no names sprang to mind. He wished he were more up-to-date on world affairs.
Dr. Know entered the room. The men rose from their seats.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “Thank you for coming. I know you have many questions about the course of action that we will be taking to deal with recent events. Rest assured, your questions will be answered. Rex Monday’s little stunt last night is far from a disaster for our cause. It is, in fact, a wonderful opportunity. But before we begin our discussion, I ask your patience. I have a brief matter to attend to.”
As he said this, he looked across the room to Richard.
“Patience?” asked the President. “You have a lot of gall to ask for our patience. What’s so important about this business of yours?”
“I merely wish to extend private thanks to someone who provided aid and comfort to my daughter in her time of need,” said Dr. Know, walking toward Richard. “And we both know I have a surplus of gall.”
He placed a hand on Richard’s shoulder and led him from the room.
“Who are those people?” Richard asked.
“Heads of state, captains of industry. What the press might call world leaders.”
“Might call? That’s the President in there!”
“Yes. He’s a vital member of my cabinet.”
“Your cabinet? What’s going on here? Who do you think you are?”
“Richard, I owe you a debt of gratitude. Amelia says you roused her from unconsciousness in the middle of a burning building. You may have saved her life.”
“I don’t even understand why her life was in danger. What are you doing kidnapping prisoners? Who was this Rex Monday and why did Amelia murder him? There’s no way to justify that as an act of self-defense.”
“Perhaps not. But it was a defensive act. It was a blow for the safety and security of the whole world. Alas, it was also a futile blow. The man beneath that hood has been identified. His name was Michael Winston, and he went missing from the campus of the University of North Carolina six months ago. He was far too young to be the true Rex Monday, though I have no doubt he was brainwashed to believe every word he said on television.”
“So Amelia killed an innocent man? This is supposed to reassure me that she was doing the right thing?”
“Richard, allow me to show you something.”
As they spoke, they had walked back into the mansion’s command center. Dr. Know went to his chair in the center of the room and pressed a button concealed under the armrest. The floor around the chair began to lower.
“You have a real fetish for this hydraulic stuff, huh?” said Richard.
They descended several hundred yards down a steel tube. Richard began to feel claustrophobic.
At last the walls of the tube gave way to open space. They were in a vast chamber, filled with the sort of pink goo tubes that Richard had seen in the infirmary. These tubes held dozens, perhaps hundreds, of men, all sleeping.
“By now,” said Dr. Know, “I imagine Sarah has revealed to you my special ability”
“She says you can read people’s minds,” said Richard.
“This is accurate, to a point. On the subtlest level of consciousness, my mind touches the thoughts of nearly every other person in this world. I cannot focus on the direct thoughts of everyone at once, however. So the privacy of the vast majority of the world’s citizens is in no danger. I’ve trained myself to pay attention to subtle anomalies in people’s thoughts, so I’m aware when truly unusual events are occurring, and are being witnessed by someone my mind touches. This is how I found you. Henry and Martha truly believed they were seeing something supernatural. Scanning the area, I saw you on a television broadcast, dressed in your pink robe, and thought it strange that your presence failed to register in the minds of anyone who saw the broadcast. At first I thought you were perhaps one of Rex Monday’s men, as my mind could not touch yours, and he has somehow perfected a way to shield his agents’ thoughts from me. Only through careful analysis was I able to piece together the chain of events that led to your present existence.”
“And this explains all these people in tubes how?”
“Richard, what I’m going to tell you next you might find morally objectionable. I ask that you approach this with an open mind.”
“Sounds like you’re an expert in open minds.”
“Due to your no longer being fully in phase with our world, your mind is now closed to me, if it makes you feel any better.”
“What might I find objectionable?” Richard asked.
“I have the ability to enter a person’s mind so thoroughly, their entire personality is subverted. I control their thoughts.”
“That isn’t objectionable,” said Richard. “That’s flat out repulsive.”
“It takes time,” said Dr. Know. “Several weeks often, to suppress someone with a strong ego. But once this occurs, I control all areas of the brain devoted to conscious thought. I can’t control their bodies, as muscular movement and balance requires more than the conscious mind. But, I can use the areas of the brain I do control to work on intellectual projects.”
“So you take death row prisoners, fake their deaths, slap them into goo tubes, and turn them into external brain packs?”
“Well summarized,” said Dr. Know.
“That’s just… monstrous. I mean, I don’t support the death penalty, but death has to be preferable to this. What gives you the right?”
Dr. Know walked over to the nearest tube. The man within was small, thin, and bald, his skin covered with tatto
oed swastikas.
“This is Thomas Weilder. Twelve years ago, in celebration of his twentieth birthday, he took the .38 Special his friends had given him as a gift and tried it out by shooting the first black man he saw. His aim left something to by desired. He fired six shots at his victim, only two of which struck, both in the left thigh. In frustration, he beat the man unconscious with the butt of his pistol. Then, he locked the man in the trunk of his car, and kept him there for seven days. The man had stopped struggling and crying after two. But Thomas waited the extra five days to make sure.”
“So the guy’s a racist creep,” said Richard. “It doesn’t make what you’re doing to him right.”
“It’s possible I could have stopped him,” said Dr. Know. “My mind touched his. I also touched Marcus Jefferson, the man who died so horribly. I sensed the hatred, I sensed the pain and fear, and I paid it no attention because I always feel these things. Right now, you can’t imagine all the hate-filled minds I’m in contact with, all the fear and loneliness and despair I’m witness to. I recoil at these emotions. I cannot focus on individuals, to bring peace and comfort to their lives. There is just too much pain in this world to handle on a person-by-person basis.”
Richard was silent. The tortured tone of Dr. Know’s voice revealed the true depth of his sorrow. But could mere sorrow justify this forest of tubes?
“All the evil in this world,” said Dr. Know, “rests upon my shoulders.”
“You aren’t to blame for this guy being a Nazi,” said Richard. “But I guess I can see where you’re coming from. I can see why you want to change the world. But there must be a better way.”
“Thomas Weilder’s mind, once so filled with hate, now whirls ceaselessly as it processes the information flowing in from the AIDS research centers that I fund. Within his head, I collate and analyze the data.”
Dr. Know moved to the next tube. “Morgan Mathers. A tragic life, filled with abuse from his earliest childhood. He snapped one day, and seventeen people died before he turned the gun on himself. It was empty by then, to his dismay. He welcomed his death sentence, and fought every appeal on his behalf. Now, his head is filled with numbers. I use his brain to analyze financial data from around the globe. I create wealth with this knowledge, and use it to provide funding for dozens of charitable institutions. Through him, I feed the world.”
He moved to the next tube. “Tyrone Adams. Rapist and thug. Murderer of a dozen men. Inside his skull I keep track of millions of endangered species and design plans for habitat protection.”
The next. “Martin Banderas. Hitman for a drug cartel. Thanks to my use of his brain, the cure for most cancers has perhaps already been discovered. Even now, I’m studying the test results he’s receiving via electro-retinal stimulation.”
“OK,” said Richard. “OK. I get the idea. I still don’t get what gives you the right. So you can’t stand feeling people’s pain and misery. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just get out of everyone’s heads? And what is it with your whole family anyway? How on Earth did you get such powers?”
Dr. Know faced him. He smiled gently, with the hint of a twinkle in his eye. “Perhaps when I say that I am to blame for evil in this world, you imagine that I speak metaphorically.”
“You’re not Satan,” said Richard. “Wait. That would explain a lot.”
“I’m not Satan,” said Dr. Know. “But Satan didn’t create evil.”
“Then you’re not God.”
Dr. Know nodded. “I happen to know there is no God.”
“Really,” said Richard. “I’m not exactly religious, but blanket statements like that get me looking for lightning bolts. How can you be so certain God doesn’t exist?”
“Because,” said Dr. Know. “I was there when this universe was created. God was nowhere to be seen.”
Richard studied the doctor, searching his face for some hint of a joke. “You mentioned that universe thing the day I met you. Sarah’s also alluded to it. Does this have something to do with your time machine?”
“So much would have been different if my grandparents had never left Russia,” said Dr. Know. “Because of my heritage, and because of my groundbreaking research on quantum mechanics, I was closely watched by the American military establishment during the late 1950s. Eventually, I learned to use their paranoia to my advantage. I made it known that the fruits of my research could be used to develop weaponry more powerful than even the H-bomb. This led to a long and intellectually profitable alliance with the American government. I was supplied with nearly limitless funds and equipment as I pursued my research into the energy potential of pure vacuum. The entire space race was concocted to mask the enormous expenditures the United States was making on the V-bomb.”
“The V-bomb?” said Richard.
“The vacuum bomb.”
“I feel inadequate,” said Richard. “I know there’s a joke here using the word ‘suck,’ but for the life of me I can’t think of the punch line.”
“I was, of course, disturbed by the prospect of the V-bomb actually being used in wartime. I deluded myself into believing that after one display of its potential, the world would shun its awful power and turn toward a path of peace. In truth, I didn’t care about the consequences. All I wanted was proof of my theories.”
“Which were?”
“One of the basic conclusions of quantum mechanics is that there is no such thing as a true vacuum. Particles and anti-particles constantly spring forth from pure nothingness, and annihilate each other. In theory, the vacuum is a source of infinite, inexhaustible energy. I felt certain I knew how to tap into this energy. Vacuum had undergone one phase transition shortly after the Big Bang, and still contained the potential for another.”
“You’re losing me,” said Richard.
“At the time of the Big Bang, all of creation was confined in an infinitely tiny space. Yet, even then, there was vacuum. But the vacuum was, for all intents and purposes, solid. Only as the universe expanded did it melt.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“In the summer of 1968, I went into a bunker three miles beneath the Nevada desert and made the worst mistake of my life. I proved my theory correct. With the power of twenty-two carefully focused H-bombs, we were able to shock a tiny, magnetically confined vacuum to reverse its phase transaction, for only a nanosecond. And when the vacuum melted back to its normal state… well, I found out just how ‘infinite’ infinite energy could be. I died instantly, of course. The vacuum phase shift had recreated the conditions present at the Big Bang. There was no stopping it. A new Big Bang was happening, and in far less than a second, Earth, the sun, our entire solar system, were wiped out in the expansion of the new universe I’d given birth to.”
“Tragic,” said Richard, rapping his knuckles soundly against a nearby tank. “So what’s all this we’re standing in? Your story might be a tiny bit more plausible if the world no longer existed.”
“I think I was Schrodinger’s cat,” said Dr. Know.
“Come again?”
“Surely you have heard of Schrodinger’s cat. It’s the most famous metaphor in all of quantum physics.”
“Oh!” said Richard, slapping his forehead. “Schrodinger’s cat! I thought you said Schlessinger.”
“It’s a famous thought experiment. You place a cat in a box along with a vial of poison. There is a fifty percent chance that the vial of poison has broken while the lid is closed. Without opening the box, we can’t know if the cat is dead or alive. So, we must regard it as both alive and dead simultaneously, until an observation is made.”
“Yeah, but it isn’t,” said Richard. “It’s one or the other.”
“You can’t know until you open the box.”
“Whatever. I find it plausible that you’ve actually put cats and poison into boxes to test this out. I accept the premise. Move on.”
“Your discomfort with the idea isn’t uncommon. The metaphor reveals perhaps the most controversial concept of quantum m
echanics, the notion that particles exist in all possible states simultaneously until an observer makes a measurement, collapsing the possible states into one.”
“Again,” said Richard, “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Then I ask you to also take my word that I was still alive after the Big Bang I had caused. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. I existed as consciousness unfettered by matter. My condition panicked me. I was trapped in unbroken darkness and silence. I didn’t yet comprehend what had happened. With no lungs to draw a breath, no throat to form sounds, and no tongue to shape syllables, I spoke: ‘Will someone please turn on the lights?’”
“And there was light?” guessed Richard.
“And there was everything. I was standing in the observation room, in the presence of the nation’s top military commanders. The room was exactly the same as it was before, except my clothes were gone. I knew this not only from the touch of air on my skin, and from the evidence of my eyes, but from the evidence of the eyes of everyone in the room. Everything they thought, felt, and saw was in my head. The cacophony of sensory input was too much for me to bear. I began to scream, to shriek, to gibber. I was quickly confined and dragged away.
“I knew what had happened. The old universe truly did die that day. A new one was born. And I was the observer that collapsed the possibilities. There’s no need to open the box to make an observation. There’s already an observer present—the cat. I was the cat in the box. It was my consciousness that snapped the new reality into order. It was my knowledge of physics that gave the new universe its physical rules. But I didn’t know all the rules. I understood the basic physical laws of nature better than any man, but my knowledge was still limited. The world was put together exactly the way I understood it to be. And it included certain ‘improvements.’ I had often fantasized about superhuman powers. I was a child during World War II, and drowned out worries about the war by reading a nearly limitless supply of comic books. The amazing things I read sparked my interest in science. I remember the sense of disappointment I felt as my knowledge of science increased. I understood why men could never fly just by jumping hard, or why no one could ever run faster than a mile in under three minutes, or why I would never be able to read other people’s minds. But I still dreamed that such things might exist.”