Hearing a boy at this age use the expression psychosexual, Mark had to glance to Bodie’s face, golden-tanned, beetling with sincerity. “But your daughter,” his expression grew tender, “We’ve had some amazing conversations. She’s so great. And we just decided. We just said this is ridiculous. We said, let’s be real. It’s ridiculous. Look at it. When you’re putting a lot of effort into making yourself a ‘Celebrity,’ and you see the state of the world?”
“Well, Bodie. Let me just say that I don’t disapprove out of hand. Not of walks on the beach. Not at all. I assume that such decisions as you and Lotta make are esoteric to yourselves, and you have every right to use this time as you see fit.” (Why was he talking in this stilted way?) “If you want to walk on the beach, I think that could be a fine way of using this time, which, after all, was always devised for your indulgence. It’s your vacation, this weekend.”
He had to wonder whether Lotta had mentioned to him her little insight—that Dad and the escort seemed to be sweet on each other. Knowing Lotta, she would keep surmises to herself. But if she had mentioned it, Bodie might perceive a secret motive in a father’s permissive lenience now. For, when the grown-up chaperones don’t have to spend the last day of the trip watching one more taping or one more rehearsal, then they—Mark and Blythe—have the day off to themselves.
“You know something? Dr. Perdue?” With a twist of a big wheel, he wedged forward. “I’m serious when I say this. I’ve always wanted to talk to an astrophysicist. Now that we’re stuck in here for a little while, can I ask a couple of ‘dumb’-type questions? Things I’ve always wondered?”
Mounted on his mobile stupa, his pedestal on wheels, Bodie Lostig was in fact a kind of centaur, wily and strong. In the role of suitor he apparently wanted to actually grapple about this here. Mark, in his unreadiness, began evasively by yielding ground: “Bodie, you know, a scientist becomes so specialized, you’d be amazed sometimes, how ignorant a scientist is of the whole general field. People just tend to know their one little thing.”
“I’m really just asking the old What-Are-Things-Made-Of question. I mean really. I mean below atoms and quarks and superstrings. When you get down to it.”
Mark smiled. “Nobody knows, of course.” He smiled harder.
Bodie just kept staring.
“The main thing about being a scientist, Bodie, is what you don’t know. That’s you’re guiding light: your ignorance. I can’t describe this, but it gets to be a funny mental habit. What you think you do know—‘Knowledge’—isn’t interesting anymore after a while. You actually dismiss things, or rather ignore things, and don’t have it all wrapped up neatly in your mind. So-called knowledge is possibly harmful, to deeper understanding. So really you delve in your little place and stop paying much attention to a lot of the ‘certainties’ and ‘verities’ and things long-settled. Nothing is much settled, ideally.”
He had talked about his job this way before, plenty of times; so did everybody; it was, in the profession, a standard song and dance; but at this moment, he really did see his own workaday fuzzy indeterminacy as forlorn, or else heroic; same thing. Maybe it was because he was trying to explain it to a religious fundamentalist, sitting smiling his unconvinced smile. Or it was that he was viewing his own ordinary life now from an actual “jail cell,” for an hour seated upon the public cement pew of consideration and remorse. Every day in Berkeley’s corridors he was a ghost, a bewildered, confused ghost, that rare tingle of apparent consciousness in the universe, arriving at his office doorway and tapping his office key on his own upper lip, lower lip, left cheek, and right cheek, then touching the key to the door above and below the knob and to left and right of the knob, before inserting it. “It’s a habit of mind. You kind of get dumber as you go in deeper. That is, if you’re in research. Not everybody is in research.”
Bodie kept gazing.
“The short answer to your question, right at the moment, is ‘strings.’ They’re the new version of ‘particle.’ Now strings are the smallest.” (From his expression, Bodie had already heard all about strings.) “Take the nucleus of an atom. Strings are twenty billion billion times smaller than that. That’s small. Twenty billion billion is a lot. I don’t know if you can picture that. You know how many a billion is. Well, multiply a billion of those billions. That’s the factor. The factor smaller than an atom’s nucleus. Which was, already, pretty small.”
“All right, but then, what are strings made of?”
“Made of? Strings are our own pictures. They are our own cartoons. Strings are some kind of entities which vibrate ‘like’ the musical tones of tiny strings. So they have that quality. Of mathematically vibrating. The picture fits mathematical models.”
“And I’m saying what are they made of? What’s vibrating? There’s some little thing vibrating.”
“Oh,” Mark with happiness saw what a pure question he was asking, and he would dispose of it with relish. “Now you’re asking a theological question.”
Bodie let his eye drift aside while his brain was going clicketyclack. “No,” he came back. “Everything is made of something. Some kind of stuff. That’s science, that’s not theology.”
“The idea of ‘stuff’ is religion. A physicist knows things are only made of information. They’re made of our observations. There’s no basic ‘clay.’ Except in the Bible. That’s where we got misled: the Bible: in Genesis: that clay.”
Bodie stared at him while his mind made an effort to knit around this. Things, mystically, are made of our seeing them. If the young man was a believer, he might regard such a point of view as nihilism and despair. Or even deviltry. Baha’i religion was a complete blank spot. But one does have the impression most religions tend to feel threatened: religion is the war against death, and it’s futile; it’s the hope for something supernatural. (In Mark’s own mind, honestly, his only belief was that the world is supernatural, but that’s never quite relevant.)
He went on, “In the Bible, ‘clay’ was the basic stuff. Before God got to it, the clay was just sitting there and it was dead and stupid, supposedly. So people still view particles that way. Inert like clay. And free of information like clay. In fact, you know, in truth, the photons zipping around this room right now,” he dipped his hand upward into the bath of light particles from the fluorescents, “are immortal. Time actually does not pass, for little light particles zipping around. That form of eternity is all around us.” He was just trying to amaze and affright the boy now, and awe him.
Looking up at the lights, Bodie said, “Whew. That’s hard to picture.”
It was the response—the concession of wonder—Mark supposed he’d aimed at.
But then the rolling bust of a sphinx that was Bodie Lostig folded his powerful forearms over his chest, and he scowled, coming up with something. He was one of those people whose hands seldom or never come near his face. Mark habitually observed this distinction in people: a certain kind of person—a kind who seems at a special or even unfair advantage in life—never touches his face or nose or mouth, whereas his daughter Lotta was an instance of one who is constantly rubbing and scratching and smudging the clarity of her pretty features. The attraction of this boy, for Lotta, would be his statuary upper half—the lower half sunken, submerged, wavery—so when the two kids kissed and fondled in the back seat of their limo, he had to suppose, Lotta would have been in love with an iconic “handsomeness,” which, however, was planted in a nether world, of passive vulnerability. She would have played the part of flame around him, in her own mind. It seemed the only way to imagine the necessary eroticism.
Bodie, behind his folded forearms, had hit on a way to disagree, frowning. “‘Time’ would still be passing, though. Maybe the photon hasn’t changed since it was created. Not changing can seem like timelessness. But time is still going on. Time is,” his hands tossed air, “… time.”
“No, this is old, settled Einstein. Little tiny subatomic fast things are literally outside time. We, us, we’re in
side time. We’re big, slow creatures, so we experience time.” He lifted his arms, like a sleepwalker’s arms, showing himself as an example: large, complicated, bewildered creature, doomed, hulking, silhouetted in eternity’s spangled shimmer. “You know, we humans are incredibly slow compared to the speed of the universe. Compared to the speed of the big bang. Which we’re in the middle of. The universe is happening really fast, instantly fast. It seems like forever to us.” (Bodie looked dully uncomprehending.) “What time is, is, time seems to be an ‘emergent’ phenomenon in the universe. That’s the word they use. Time emerged. It came out of other more fundamental things, like mass and space. During a tiny period they call the Planck era. Whether there was time before: that’s a debate. Time probably didn’t emerge till later.”
“‘Later’ after … ?”
“After whatever the big bang was.”
“Yeah, right. When, supposedly, there was ‘nothing.’”
The boy—could it be?—seemed to jeer at the notion of a big bang.
If Bodie Lostig were a bona fide fundamentalist—the complete package!—then Mark would despair but also he’d rejoice, because then he’d have his deal killer. Lotta, too, will see it.
Bodie said in dismay, “There would still be ‘time,’ even when there’s nothing. Even if there’s nothingness everywhere. Still, time would be there. Ticking away. Only without clocks or anything.”
Shamelessly in his effort to goad the person inside there, Mark kept doubling back, “Well, there does seem to be such a thing as total nothingness.” He positively leered.
“Ah. Like nothingness between atoms,” Bodie said. It was something he would have heard in high school.
“Actually, between atoms, no, it isn’t a vacuum. It’s packed with energy and stuff, and potential mass. But there may once have been true ‘nothingness,’ back at one point, back outside the quantum event people call the big bang.”
Bodie waited for more info, his clear Baha’i gaze scanning for error. His Adult Children of Alcoholics gaze.
“I phoned our driver, by the way,” Mark said. “She’s going to find some money for us, for bail. She ought to be here soon. Did anybody phone your parents back home?”
“There’s no such thing as totally nothing,” Bodie’s hands lay together in his lap, palms up. “Because imagine this.” He closed his eyes and spoke: “Imagine some kind of place that’s empty, empty in all directions forever—if that’s what nothingness is—imagine that situation. Well still, even in that situation, two plus two would still equal four.” He opened his eyes. “And all the other laws: multiplication and division. And calculus, too. Algebra. All of it would be there already. Maybe you’ll say ‘time’ doesn’t pass in the vacuum, but still, in that empty place, two plus two would equal four. The math is there. It’s always everywhere. The law would still be hanging out there, in the vacuum.”
His lids had sprung open and his gaze was so intense, so imploring, the eyes actually pressed closer together, squeezing the little spongiform organ that was Bodie’s soul. “Wouldn’t it? Still equal four? Even in a vacuum?”
“Interesting!” Mark groaned, revolving away on his cement seat.
At last his own accumulated tiredness had arrived. It combined with the force of Bodie’s little intellectual challenge, forming a wave he couldn’t breast. Weariness made him rise up—and stand up—from the cold cement pad that was supposed to be a cot and go have a peek out through the cage wall. He gripped the vertical bars, like a typical jailbird. Still, nothing was out there but the four never-used computers along a solid Formica counter. Nothing in sight. Not even a Bic pen. Because of course a Bic pen could serve as a weapon: some crazy inmate could grab it and stab somebody. A jail is a place where the flow of “time” comes to a halt. Little box of eternity. His cellmate Bodie Lostig was the kind of kid he’d shied away from in high school, enthusiastic, diligent high-achievers broadcasting a personal inner radiance that cancels all shadows around themselves, people for whom everything seems simple, so therefore it all does come up simple. Everything is simple in the vicinity of such people. Which is why you have to get away from them. He wondered if, for Lotta, that was the appeal. Simplicity. Answers. He hoped not.
“You know, Bodie, Lotta tells me—or she kind of implies—that there’s a kind of whole moral aspect. Dropping out of all the Celebrity festivities. A kind of ethical, moral, moralistic aspect to that.” He did feel himself a sneaky bully luring the boy out into the open. He got more specific: “All the gasoline and jet fuel it takes to fly out. The ecological mess of it all. So Lotta says.”
Bodie was looking at him, but he seemed to be seeing something else, something very different from Mark, which he was considering in a new light. At last he said with a soothing empathy, “You know, Mr. Perdue, I’m scientific. I know we’re evolved from little chemicals in the sea. And from …” he plapped his two hands on the armrests, “stardust. I know we’re machines, biological machines. And our ‘minds’ are only just electrical impulses. And hormones. Our thoughts, our idealistic ‘ideas’: just hormones and enzymes and excuses. Just electrochemical blips running around the brain. We’re machines, survival machines, you and I.” Like an invitation to fight, his one hand beckoned, rollingly, in the space between them. “Aren’t we. Evolved from DNA. Just for survival reasons.”
This was slightly alarming; it was a sort of taunt, or a sort of upbraiding, and Mark actually shrank back a little, because this was a small room with just the two of them. In a way, he was pleased, because now the young man had shown himself, and if he was capable of a kind of bizarre irrelevant ranting, he might be ruled out of Lotta’s life with good reason. Bodie went on in the same theme, gripping a good pinch of his own dead thigh meat illustratively, “So we’re like Frankenstein machines, I know. Making little noises at each other, on this planet. Just noises we’ve evolved socially. Noises that are intelligible to each other. And they’re socially … socially ‘useful,’” he condoled. “But we’re basically selfish. Pretending we’ve got high intentions and, like, ‘motives’ and ‘altruism.’ ’Cause that’s a social thing, too: ‘altruism.’ We all have to seem altruistic. But really, all we’re programmed to do is survive. Take advantage of each other and exploit each other. Really we just want to defeat each other in natural selection. As robots, biologically.” He gave one more shake to the thigh in his grip, his attached other half. “Robots. From atoms on up. So, I do see all that.”
He seemed to have made his point then, and his hand pressed out in the direction of Mark’s knee, as if to apply the balm of commiseration. He smiled. End of sermon.
So Mark was starting to see satisfaction, maybe. Because now at last this was the famous other side of Bodie, a side where the word crazy might apply, or at least the word inappropriate. That Bodie, he’s pretty intense, Rachel in the little bar had said. Now in watching a bright, sociopathic young person trot out his little performance, he could only wonder where he’d gotten it from. From what Baha’i youth discussion group did this line of moral philosophy originate, sarcasm and all?
More likely, it came from the meetings in church basements with children of alcoholics, where on weeknights God manifests Himself like a tacked-up instructional visual aid. Those kinds of get-togethers have tables of free “literature” and brochures, and you get your little handbook with placemark ribbons. Gilt-edge pages. Daily prayers and affirmations, doctrines and maxims, rules to live by. All to help the birth-defective boy start grooming himself as the designated family Hero. In a family-structure where “the father” was the designated Problem. So the Ohio boy in Mark’s view was starting to develop a few details in his life story, and Mark had to admit, he found him slightly brave, to be brandishing these toy swords of his in Mark’s face, in this situation in a jail cell together.
“Anyway, yes, there’s the environmental issue with this expensive trip,” Bodie swung back, quite calmly, as if he hadn’t just made a huge illogical swerve in the direction of preachi
ng. As if that completely irrelevant little paragraph of his had been delivered by some standin actor, who was now gone.
“There’s the jet fuel all right. Not to mention—oh, you name it—laundering linens in the hotel, burning gasoline so we can go cruising around in stretch limousines drinking corn-based artificial sweeteners. All that.” He smiled. That smile, it was always like a rinsing facial splash. “But also, mainly, Lotta and I just wanted to just walk on the beach. It started to seem like a waste of our last day together, not seeing each other.”
He was starting to appear as a harmless, containable threat, a boy who sits around saying Whenever we turn on a lightbulb something dies out there, and Mark began to realize he’d been hosting that heart attack feeling, which he really might shrug off, and burst through, with a deeper breath. For a minute there, it was scary, when from his wheelchair he’d beckoned, saying we’re all cold-blooded monsters. One couldn’t help but think he was talking about himself: that his own admitted motive was to reproduce with the daughter.
But at some point right back there—right at the point of corn-based artificial sweeteners!—he started to deflate back to the normal size of a seventeen-year-old. If this whole situation had been feeling as if they were two wizards from opposed cults hurling their bolts at each other, then Mark Perdue would definitely be the old, dark one, Bodie the untested boy-wizard, and right now all the boy-wizard’s spells had curdled on his hands.
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