"So let me describe my star," he continued, "as being a medium-big one. In all other respects it is similar to your sun, in that it is a sphere of hydrogen and helium gases—nearly everything of importance in the universe is a sphere, as you may know—and, like all other stars, it is en route to its death, merrily burning away its matter in a chain of nuclear reactions. In exactly the same way as your sun is doing, which by the way has about another 4.5 billion years to go. So that's the region I come from. And now, I assume you will want to know how I got here, am I correct? Not physically, obviously, and I'll explain to you why. But to be able to do that, I will first need to give you a few additional ad hoc ideas concerning the dimensions, distances and speeds involved in the universe of which you are a part. So that you can consider the situation in its proper perspective."
He stood up, picked up his glass of water and went over to the window, looked out at the building opposite. Keep silent, I instructed myself, he is clearly in full flow. Full lunatic flow.
"You are in a galaxy, a word you have chosen from your Greek language, 'Galaxias'. It actually means milk and is why you refer to your own galaxy as the Milky Way. You are situated more towards the outer edge of your galaxy than you are towards the center, you are in what you call the Orion arm. But even if you were able to travel at the speed of light, which as I have mentioned is over 1 billion kilometers per hour, it would still take you 26,000 years to reach your galaxy's center. Which you wouldn't want to do, by the way, as the center is something you call a Black Hole, a relatively small object of almost infinite density, and about which you still don't know very much. But one thing you do know, black holes swallow everything that comes within their sphere of influence. There is no escape, not even for light, which is why there is nothing there for you to actually see, nothing at all. But believe me, Mr. O'Donoghue, you wouldn't want to have your planet situated even halfway closer to your galaxy's center, because the cosmic radiation would kill all life. You wouldn't exist, you couldn't exist. Your planet's fortuitous location within its galaxy is just one of the many, many random circumstances which allow it to harbor life."
He stopped and looked at me. I looked back again. He gave me one of his polite smiles and continued with his astronomy lesson.
"Your galaxy contains about 200 billion suns, or stars as you also call them. Quite a lot you may think. But some galaxies have a lot more. And, you may well ask, how many galaxies are there? Well, some of your estimates say there are about 400 billion. Quite a large place you might think…but that only refers to a part of it, the part you know and can 'see' and which you call the universe. And if I were to tell your scientists that there are over a trillion of their so-called universes, why, they would simply laugh at me."
He turned from the window and peered at me to see if I was going to laugh as well. But I wasn't, at least not until I had checked my bank account.
"And if I were then to tell them," he continued, "that in fact there are not a trillion galaxies but an infinite number, that there is no 'end', that they go on into infinity, why, then they wouldn't even bother to laugh. And that's because the only concept they are capable of grasping at the moment is the one in which everything, absolutely everything, has a 'beginning' and an 'end'."
He peered at me again, but you could have mistaken me for a stone Buddha.
"Now, as you probably know, everything in your universe, and I mean everything, is moving. Your planet itself is spinning around on itself in a counterclockwise direction—as viewed from your north celestial pole, i.e. from the direction of the star you call Polaris—at a speed of around 1,000 kilometers per hour. At least for you that is, where you live—if you lived near your equator, it would be closer to 1,500 kilometers per hour, not that you would notice the difference. One full turn is what you call a day. And as well as rotating on its own axis, your planet is travelling around your sun, also counterclockwise, at a speed of over 100,000 kilometers per hour, and one complete round trip is what you call a year. Your moon of course follows you, while at the same time circling you at differing speeds, fairly slow, let's say at an average of 3,000 kilometers per hour and—surprise—also in a counterclockwise direction. Your sun itself rotates of course, and also in a counterclockwise direction, but being a plasma of hot gases as opposed to a solid, it simultaneously rotates at differing speeds depending not only on latitude, but on other factors such as depth, gas composition and so on. At its equator, one complete external rotation takes 25.6 earth days. It is also speeding along at your galaxy’s current speed of around 1,000,000 kilometers per hour, pulling you along with it of course. And you have various conflicting theories as to why your galaxy’s speed is increasing, but we don’t need to go into the reasons here and you wouldn't be able to understand them anyway. Sorry…no offence intended Mr. O'Donoghue."
Pleased to hear he's maintaining a modicum of courtesy. It helps, if not a lot.
"None taken," I said. How much longer is this going to go on for?
"Naturally, being borne along at all of these speeds doesn't affect you, nor do you notice it any more than you would if strolling down to the restaurant car on a train doing 200 kilometers per hour, or walking down the aisle on a plane travelling at 800 kilometers per hour. So…everything is moving and sometimes there is what we might call a crash. Your scientists have recently noticed two galaxies colliding, VV 340 (North) and VV 340 (South), as you call them. These two galaxies collided 450 million years ago. But 'colliding' is perhaps the wrong turn of phrase, as very few of the stars actually crash into each other, the distances between them being too great. And your galaxy, as it happens, is also going to collide with another one, a much bigger one which you call the Andromeda Nebula. Andromeda has around a trillion stars and you can see it on a moonless night with the naked eye. However, Andromeda is roughly 2.6 million light years away and, although you are approaching each other at an accumulated speed of close to 1 million kilometers per hour, it will still take another 3 billion years or so before the collision occurs. That is admittedly well before the end of your sun's lifetime, but…in spite of that, it is nothing to prevent you sleeping at night, obviously."
At this, he chuckled. Come to think of it, I thought to myself, his face looks a bit like a moon as well. A moon-faced madman, albeit an agreeable moon-faced madman. Agreeable so far, anyway. An apparently agreeable moon-faced madman, let’s say.
"No, Mr. O'Donoghue," he continued, "your sleep would only be disturbed by the arrival of a large enough asteroid, or by your species’ self-extermination, possibly by nuclear suicide. These appear to be the mathematical favorites for the not too distant future. By which I mean anything between 100 and 8,000 more orbits of your star."
"You are being very patient," he smiled, "and I would like you to know that I very much appreciate that. Now… if you wouldn't mind, just a couple of additional pieces of information to complete the picture. Your Voyager 1 spacecraft, now leaving your solar system at a speed of close to 20 kilometers per second, will still need another 300,000 years to reach one of the planetary systems closest to your own—such as, for example, the one you call Gliese 581, which is only 20 light years away, or around 190 trillion kilometers. I am aware of the fact that even small distances such as these are difficult for you to conceive—and this is a small distance, very small—even if you could envisage being able to live for 2,600 consecutive lifetimes travelling at Voyager's speed in order to get there."
"And for all you know," he continued, "there might be nothing there for you to find anyway. However, and just for your information, there is something there for you to find. There is life on one of that star's planets, although to you it would merely appear to be a colony of reddish swamp scum surviving in an atmosphere of chemical components that would spell death to you guys within a microsecond, mainly a mixture of hydrogen, methane, helium and ammonia as well as some water in evaporated form. And as for your closest galaxy, the one you call Canis Major, well, that is 80,000 light years away
, and if you were travelling in Voyager I it would take you 10 million consecutive lifetimes to get there."
Poor lunatic Jerry stopped his window-gazing, walked over to the corner table, picked up a bottle of Coke, raised his eyebrows at me to which I replied with a nod, brought two bottles and a bottle-opener over to the table and sat down again. He was regarding me with a seemingly bemused expression, obviously aware of what I was probably thinking. He opened both bottles, handed one to me, and started off again.
I have decided to give this one more hour, maximum. Saturday evening is coming up, I have things to do.
"O.K.," he said, "that rounds off the piecemeal picture I wanted to paint to assist you in understanding some of the things involved. Obviously I couldn't travel here in the way that you understand the word 'travel'. Your Einstein stated that the maximum possible speed in the universe is the speed of light, 300,000 kilometers per second, or over 1 billion kilometers per hour as mentioned already, and part of his reasoning was that the faster matter moves, the heavier it becomes, and at the speed of light its weight would reach unbearable levels. On the other side of the coin, some of your scientists have recently been looking more closely at neutrinos, particles so small that they can move through granite, indeed through your whole planet without any trouble at all, and a few of these scientists actually believe that these particles can move at a speed faster than light, and perhaps by taking a short cut via an unknown dimension. Well, as regards the speed for physical objects, they are wrong, and your Einstein is right. But as regards an unknown dimension, they are definitely right, although they don't know it yet. There is unfortunately no way I could attempt to explain that dimension to you, you will just have to take my word for it. By entering that dimension, I have been able to arrive here on your planet. Not my physical presence of course—that would be impossible—but my brain."
"Just what kind of physical presence do you have, if you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Parker? I mean what do you look like back home?" I asked. Still prepared to show some interest, keep the game going for a while longer, then it's along to the nearest pub at a high rate of knots, believe me.
"Well, we're not like you, Mr. O’Donoghue. Everything in the universe is made up of matter, either solid or gas. You, like your planet, are what one would call physically solid, water being as far as we are concerned also a solid, and constituting a large part of your bodily configuration. We, on the other hand, are a form of gas, with a nucleus, similar to the composition of, let's say, your sun or your planet Jupiter, and our form is surrounded by a membrane. Just like you, you have a membrane, you refer to it as skin. Can you imagine what would happen to your protruding intestines and other organs without a membrane? We are also much smaller than you, about a quarter of your size. Difficult no doubt for you to conceive of an intelligent life form as dwarfs in the form of a gas, but that's the way it is and we'll just have to leave it at that. So…what happens is that a copy of my brain is made and transmitted via what, for descriptive convenience, you may choose to call the fifth dimension, to wherever we want to send it to."
"The fifth dimension?"
"That's right. It is a dimension you are unaware of. As I have said, I can't explain it to you in any way that would be intelligible to you. Your scientists are currently only aware of three dimensions, plus, if you will, an imaginary fourth one to account for the imaginary direction in which matter is supposed to extend in addition to the three dimensions of Euclidean geometry."
"So…why do you look like a human being?"
"You mean, I suppose" said Jeremy, "why do I look and sound and behave like a human being? Hmm…what would be the best way for me to clarify that?"
He looked at me with one raised eyebrow, drank some water, saw that I was not about to provide him with any suggestions, and continued. "Let me try this—I assume you know what a computer hacker is in your world?"
"Yes."
"A good one can enter into other people's computers, private computers, big business computers, military computers, virtually any computer, and manipulate the data, the programs and the processes within those computers. He can directly influence how the computers and their programs function. And if he is particularly talented and malicious, he can also in some cases copy the data or destroy all the data and the programs as well. Eliminate them entirely. Without needing to be anywhere near the computers themselves of course."
"Indeed, Mr. Parker. But I.T. disaster recovery procedures usually include security methodologies to counter attempts at data and program manipulation or elimination. And in any case, everything is subject to continuous back-up operations. I do agree, nevertheless, that it can cause temporary chaos. And I also agree that the copying of sensitive data can have dangerous consequences of course."
He looked at me with a polite but patient stare, like someone attempting to teach in a kindergarten.
"Yes, well, there are no back-up possibilities for your brains, Mr. O'Donoghue. I zeroed in on a mentally handicapped patient, of which there are around 6,000 in your U.K. hospitals. This was a sad, hopeless and incurable case. And I installed the copy of my brain into his. In the same way as you install chips into your computers or mobile phones, except that my chip is not made out of physical material. I am walking around in his body. I use the undamaged parts of his brain for the purpose of all physical functions, which are controlled of course by my own brain, which, in addition, has taken over the management and operation of all the active mental functions. I speak your language because that is the language stored in the patient's memory—grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and so on. Just like your computers, brains operate on electrical impulses and there is, for us, nothing particularly complicated about this methodology."
My feelings were now becoming pretty mixed. On the one hand I would like to get out of here. On the other hand it is definitely fun, but then again, overall I am beginning to feel quite sorry for the guy. He is obviously far gone, totally zapped, away on another planet—great allegory—and here I am playing games with him. Which I shouldn't be, I really shouldn't. But he's totally crazy, deluded enough to be taking everything seriously, and he might really have wired me the €100,000. Or not. Probably not, but let me just push him along a little bit further, just for the hell of it. Just for the fun.
"Mr. Parker," I said, "this is all very interesting for me to hear and, as you will no doubt agree, equally difficult for me to understand, let alone believe. Tell me please, what documentation do you carry, how did you create or get hold of these companies, where did all that money come from?"
It is a game I shouldn't be playing. But let's see what else he can come up with.
"Simple," he said. "The patient was a man called Jeremy Parker and under my auspicious direction he completed a miraculous, comprehensive and undeniable recovery which left them with no alternative but to eventually hand him his papers and release him back into society. Jeremy was on his own. His only remaining relation, his mother, had died some two years previously and, of course, they wanted to keep me under regular observation, to study me in fact. But I severed my contact with the community care people almost immediately, and I have never been back to the asylum and I don't believe they can force me to in any way."
"And the rest?" I asked.
He finished off the last of his Coke, smiled that gracious moon-smile of his, and said, "Before I answer that, I will need to demonstrate something. At this point in time, you still don't believe a word of what I'm saying, that's evident, it's natural and I don't blame you, any other attitude would be irrational. You are not quite sure about the fraud angle, I would guess, but you've determined with absolute certainty that I am a lunatic, a raving one probably, out of my mind in a big way. But as I said at the start of our meeting, I hope to be able to convince you otherwise and my attempt at this will only take a few moments. Would it be O.K. with you if we went down to the street for a minute?"
"Sure it's O.K.," I said, "no problem."
Qui
te right it's no problem. On the contrary, I am not coming back up again, superb way out, terminate this afternoon's waste of time, well…weird bit of fun.
He led the way down, then around the corner, and there he stopped. There were plenty of pedestrians and a few people occupying outdoor tables at a café just down the street. It's not cold, but it's not so warm either, I wouldn't be sitting outside at this time of the day, but Brits are Brits. I checked my watch, around 4 p.m.
"Think of me, if you don't mind," said Jeremy, "as a computer hacker, and ask me to hack into one of these people's minds and make him or her do something, something innocuous, something that will cause nobody any harm. Go ahead."
"Anything?"
"Yes, anything innocuous, anything at all."
Well, well, well, well, is this going to be intriguing, I don’t think.
"Well now, let me see…let's take that waiter who has just appeared. Do you think you could you make him drop his tray with everything on it?"
It happened within two seconds. The waiter dropped his tray, and two bottles, two glasses, and a cup of coffee smashed across the pavement. A confused and apologetic waiter, briefly startled customers, and an incredulous, disbelieving me.
I looked at Jeremy and he just held up his hands and shrugged. "One more go?" he asked, raising his eyebrows at me, completely relaxed, nothing unusual going on here as far as he was concerned. My mind on the other hand was racing with all kinds of ridiculous thoughts, as you may imagine, electrical impulses flashing back and forth and around and around, and finally arriving at the only conclusion their logic would allow, namely that what had just happened could be—no, had to be—an extraordinary coincidence of the mind-boggling kind. And having told me this, my brain took the next logical step and told me to check this out, test him again, and to make it something difficult this time, don't mess around.
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