‘Well,’ he said. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘How are you feeling, more like?’ I said.
‘You were the one who was acting strangely, I would have thought,’ he said.
‘I would have thought it was you,’ I said.
‘Would you really?’
‘First you banged on about marauding Danes and then you lay on the ground. For no apparent reason.’
‘There was a reason. I was explaining it to you, but you were so distracted,’ he said.
‘Well, the ambient hum was too loud, I couldn’t hear anything else.’
He gave me a strange look. Of course, it was a strange thing to say. I had to remember. The strange versus the not-strange. The distinctions therein. Of course a great hum had not reverberated around the misty park, and ricocheted across the clouds. None of that was real.
I needed to create an indelible and certain system.
REAL
The day
The street
The people of the present
UNREAL
The night
The hum
The people of the past
On his desk, I saw a piece of paper. Something about it, something frilly, drew my attention. He saw me looking, and covered it with a book.
‘Could I possibly have a look at that?’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘Just – a whim.’
‘Why are you acting like this?’
I was reaching towards the piece of paper when he picked it up and handed it to me. It said –
An incantation for dispersing shadows
(Alhazen of Cairo)
‘Frills! But that’s insane,’ I said. ‘And frankly unfair. I’ve been trying to rationalise things, get them back into their respective categories. Then – this!’
Now I lunged for the curtain and dragged it open, much to Yorke’s further consternation. He stood as if to say, what the hell? Yet, I was intent on this action and it transpired it was absolutely the right thing to do because when the sunlight seeped across the room, I felt better. More real.
‘Hangover begone!’ I said.
‘Are you talking to me?’ said Yorke.
‘Blatantly not!’
Now the dust became visible and the room was full of sparkling jewels, hanging in the air. I stared at the glinting dust. Ephemeral forms, captured in minuscule particles, drifting on currents of air. So beautiful!
And the night had been dispersed by the day, and now everything shone. For a moment I was not remotely disconcerted. At all.
*
I put the paper carefully back on the desk. It was a coincidence. Or, I had seen the frills in Solete’s room, the other day. My unconscious mind had absorbed them. I was jumping to conclusions!
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Sorry, I just – I didn’t sleep well last night.’
He looked at me and opened his mouth, as if he was about to say something. Then he closed it again.
We stood in silence, with the dust drifting between us.
‘So what do you actually do in here?’ I said. Trying to change the subject.
He smiled and said, ‘I work on Light, and colour.’
‘Like Robert Grosseteste?’
‘You’ve read his work?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, especially De Colore.’
‘I also work on Xenophanes, for example,’ he said. ‘In the sixth century bc, he said there were only three colours in the rainbow: purple, greenish yellow, red. He believed that everything that exists must always have existed, otherwise it cannot exist at all. And he believed the earth itself is infinite, just as it reaches into infinity. Like a rainbow, in a sense. Everything therefore has neither an end nor a beginning.’
‘So what?’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘Homer called the rainbow triple-hued. No one ever said the rainbow had seven colours, until Isaac Newton divided it thus in the 17th century. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. But Newton even admitted that he was not very good at differentiating one colour from another. Originally he thought there were five colours in the spectrum – Red, Yellow, Green, Blue and Violet. Then he included Orange and Indigo, because he wanted his numbers to tally with the seven spheres, the seven notes of the musical scale, the sephiroth, the mystical significance of the number seven. It was a symbolic adjustment to reality. We make them all the time.’
‘Tactless, in the circumstances, to talk about reality, wouldn’t you say?’
He looked at me and smiled. ‘Seven,’ he said. ‘The great arches of the ancient world. All creation encompassed. The single version of reality. Newton thought reality was light. Therefore, it had to be divided into seven as well. But this was plainly an imposition. Completely new.’
I remembered, ages ago, his question.
‘Light,’ he said. ‘Rainbows. How many colours does a rainbow have?’
‘You,’ I was saying. ‘Henges. Druids. Rainbows! You’re an expert. Another one!’
He looked bashful. In response, I was angry. ‘Why phone at midnight, that was the beginning of all this!’ I said. ‘A normal hour! Just a reasonable time of the night!’
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘Do you even know where you are? You’re nowhere! That’s where!’
I was adamant. But of course, it’s illogical. If you’re standing there, refusing to accept that a reality is real, then there’s not much point making any assertions at all. Your assertions are, presumably, part of the unreality and therefore not real either. So you’re back to the beginning.
‘Well,’ said Yorke. A flock of birds shrieked across the quad, heading towards Port Meadow. ‘Do you want to go?’
‘To the priests?’
‘The Quantum realm, yes.’
Now we both aimed at a full recovery. ‘If you’ve the time?’ he said, politely.
‘Yes, that would be good,’ I said.
*
So we walked into the burnished city. The light was dazzling, though the air was cold. Frozen puddles glinted in the sun. The buildings looked whitewashed, standing against the blue sky. Tourists were being herded around the square, and at the top of one of the colleges I saw them progressing carefully along a parapet to admire the view.
I had seen it all, just the night before, in a dream.
‘At least, I thought it was a dream,’ I said.
‘Everything OK?’ said Yorke. Hands in his pockets, disturbing the line of his already crumpled suit.
‘Rich, coming from you,’ I said. ‘Since when have you been a barometer of normality?’
‘What, coming from me?’
‘Then I shouldn’t have taken tea, with those freaks, who freaked me so,’ I said.
‘Which freaks? There have been so many.’
‘It’s not even fair. I’ve led a blameless life. I’ve never been one to experiment. I’ve maintained what I felt was a steady and incremental path through life. Nothing out of the ordinary. Even when my father died, I never went off the rails. Solete saw that. He knew! And to send me to the fucking chrysanthemum people, it was a mean trick.’
‘He didn’t send you. Who sent you?’
‘The mechanical magicians, but he sent me to them in the first place. Or Port did. By way of that freak Cassavetes. It was a trap!’
‘You’re tired. Overwrought.’
‘Didn’t I once say that to you?’
He paused and looked across at me, as we moved among the perpetual motion of the street, with the tourists surging onwards and people clutching phones to their faces, and the glittering pools of frozen water. At a college, an old wooden door creaked open, affording us a glimpse of a frost-white quad, students moving slowly in their halcyon enclave, carrying books.
‘The quantum physicists have a theory,’ Anthony said. ‘Solete argued with them. About Light.’
‘In what way?’
‘In his own shifting and peculiar way.’ He shrugged. I realised, too late, that he was making a jok
e.
*
We crossed the Parkland in silence. Shades and shadows and – I was thinking that we always make adjustments. People vanish, and yet, we continue, we assimilate impossible events. We call them normality even though they are madness indeed! I was thinking that I had strayed perhaps from ordinary reality but – still – the sun was shining in the usual way, and Anthony was not exactly reassuring but he was, at least, continuous. He was wearing one of his studiously crumpled suits and he was walking swiftly.
We passed over Nightingale Bridge and continued along the banks of the Cherwell, as it ran towards the Isis. The tendril trees were gleaming white and the frosted grass shone as if it had been scattered with diamonds. Then the greater river swallowed the smaller, and the moment was commemorated by nothing much, just a swirl of water, before the Isis flowed on, to the city of London, and the ocean.
The towpath was full of people who were happy again, their mood salvaged. The advent of the sun had relieved the tension. Though it was a little gusty, and the water was curdled by the wind, that was definitely preferable to torrid mist. A man walking a dog stepped aside to let us pass. We thanked him profusely. Then we all walked on again.
*
‘How old are you?’ I said to Yorke.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t mean to be personal.’
‘No, you achieved that already.’
I looked across at him. He was smiling. We were both sustaining an equable mood. I said, ‘I just meant, are you married? Do you have children?’
‘Yes, a daughter. Rosie. Very sweet. She’s six. She lives in New York, with her mother.’
‘You’re divorced?’
‘Yes. I didn’t manage things well. I was penurious. I was clearly culpable. And the mother, well, she’s very successful. Professor of Cultural Studies at NYU. A real – you know – Fucker.’
‘So, when do you see your daughter?’
‘Oh, I fly over, once a month. I can’t afford more. And then, we talk a lot, over the web. So I see her. She sees me. It’s clearly not ideal.’ He looked completely crushed. ‘If anything, it’s quite dreadful.’
We kept walking. Another pause seeped across the banks and threatened to consume us once again. His wife had dumped him, and taken their child away. Now he saw the kid growing up, as a series of pixels, buzzed across the Atlantic. Bands of light.
‘It’s my fault,’ he said. ‘She tried. They both did, in fact.’
‘You’re being too hard on yourself,’ I said. ‘I mean, quite possibly. No doubt there’s blame on both sides. Not the kid, I’m sure. But both sides of the adult equation, I mean.’ I stopped, thinking at this point it was better to pause. Lest I offend.
Sometimes silence is less dangerous than speech.
This seemed to be one of those times.
*
We approached another estimable building. This one was a technocratic slab. It looked like a silver bird that had stuck its beak into the ground. Or, as Priddy said, a crashed aeroplane, nose-down. Its sloping sides were full of blank windows, reflecting the sky. Around it was a car park, filled with shiny cars.
A sign at the door said: ‘Quantum Futures.’
‘More prophets,’ I said.
‘I haven’t met any prophets,’ said Yorke. ‘At all.’
‘You need to drink the tea.’
*
Here the numerical realm was worshipped. That much was evident from the moment we arrived. We were hovering in the technocratic entrance hall, waiting for the receptionist to come back with orders from our host. They had put up screens everywhere, with scientist-heads speaking inaudibly. Then one of the scientist heads seemed to launch itself from the screen and appear beside me. Once again, I measured my impressions. I told myself that people do not descend from screens. Clearly they had filmed him earlier, and now the real version, the non-digital version, was standing beside me, with his hand out. He was wearing a t-shirt with numbers inscribed on it, and he had long silver hair. He introduced himself as Aubrey Land.
He was accompanied by another man, who was smooth and scalped by time, and said his name was Caspar Overson.
I asked Land about the numbers on his chest.
‘An equation,’ he said. ‘Here –
It was one form of Maxwell’s equations describing the relationship between the electric and magnetic fields. This was what Land explained, and then he said, ‘If you want to, you deploy vector calculus on these equations, and then you eliminate B and thus you arrive at –
As he spoke, he pressed a button on a small device he was holding, and the equation appeared on the screen behind him.
‘That’s clever,’ I said.
‘Effectively, Maxwell thought light was a wave,’ said Land.
‘And is it?’ said Yorke.
That prompted a flurry of smiles. They beamed, because the question was clearly in some way humorous. Yorke didn’t smile. We walked, then, along a silver corridor. Everything was made of chrome, except the walls, which were covered in these screens, with prophet freaks enunciating silently. Secrets so esoteric we couldn’t hear them.
Overson was walking ahead of us, looking shiny. Land was silver bright and he told us that Light is a wave according to Maxwell. And what was, is. So, the equations indicate that light is a wave.
‘If you believe them at all,’ said Yorke.
Time-smoothed Overson took up the refrain, as we walked into a shimmering laboratory, where there was a practical particle accelerator and a time crusher and a universe expander and then something else, that I was told was a chair. I could sit here, without being projected across the ethersphere and exploded into photons. I sat, quietly, while Land said that there were rival theories that light is a particle. Or, made up of particles. Streams of particles, and thus we imagine light as dust floating in rays, again. I thought of Alhazen, with his clouds of shining dust, and I thought of a great desert, and drifting clouds of fiery dust, settling on aged books. And the library at Alexandria, burning to the ground, smoke clouds pluming across the desert.
Here everything was sterile and if particles were permitted at all they were controlled and placed in an accelerator and then –
Accelerated –
One had to assume.
*
Land seemed to be saying, ‘experimental evidence’. We nodded. Of course. Aristotle didn’t need it. Bacon loved it. The historic photo-electric effect, he added. This shows that the wave model of light is not always sufficient.
‘The nice equations on your t-shirt?’ said Yorke. Amidst the silver, he was more pallid than ever. He pushed back his faded blond hair. He looked suddenly exhausted.
Land glanced at his chest. I noticed his hand was clenched, like a claw. Some minor genetic deficiency, or the asperities of age.
‘When we say particles, or photons, we just mean things. Light can be thought of as a load of individual things,’ said Land.
‘Dust?’ I said.
‘These light things have energy that depends on the wavelength and so if you call the things photons then a brighter light just produces more photons per second.’
‘Is light a particle or a wave or a collection of things?’ I said.
‘Really,’ said Overson. ‘The thing is. It depends on how it’s feeling.’
‘Light is mutable. Like everything else,’ said Land.
‘Why call it one thing or the other then?’ said Yorke.
‘We don’t,’ said Land. ‘Here we favour a multipartite particle model of thing-dom.’
‘Watch,’ said Overson.
*
We watched, and Overson pressed a button on a small device he was holding, and the screen ahead flickered and changed, and the computer started spilling out Arabic. Except I realised it wasn’t Arabic at all. Numbers not words. I had forgotten again.
‘But this might be wrong,’ said Land. ‘Do you see?’
Because it is not the spell to disperse shadows?
I
wanted to explain, that this must be why it was not correct, at least potentially. But Overson was speaking again, and as he spoke he sweated, so he glinted with a sheen of animal heat and light – ‘You might favour this model instead, you see.’
The screen said:
‘Relativistic momentum,’ said Overson.
There was also a gravitational model of light, he added. So the screen illuminated another spell.
‘But this is Wrong,’ said the Over-priest and so when he smeared his forehead with his hand the screen changed and now it said:
I fear I may have mixed up all the spells. In that case, what would occur? The world would run backwards. The path of the light ray would turn around. ‘Could this occur?’ I said.
They looked at me as if this was not the question I was meant to ask. What, then, was the question I was meant to ask?
‘Solete came here a lot,’ said Overson. ‘He was a good man. A bit sceptical, and he called quanta little atomies, which is technically incorrect.’
‘Why did he do that?’ said Yorke.
‘His point was that the word is not the thing. At one level, that’s all fine. But the word, not-thing though it is, is also riddled with extant associations. If you use atomies then you are confusing everyone. There are separate things called atoms, of course. But Solete meant atomies in the sense of Leucippus, i.e. the smallest thing. So quanta were the smallest thing. Solete refused the later use of the word. He wasn’t a scientist, of course.’
He was a man. And such a man – ‘And so, he came and – did he say anything about the Field Guide?’ said Yorke.
‘Yes, of course. He came and conducted interviews. And he was interested in where the thing stopped and the rest of the world began. Where the edge of the atomie resides. If you can even find it. Why there, and not there, etc.?’ said Land.
I was reeling slightly from the shock of the spell-casting, and now – Overson summoned another spell –
A Field Guide to Reality Page 12