Flip

  “You’ve got to get out of here! Now!”

  The boy lifted the little girl and set her down on the wing, and Aida watched the little girl while the boy helped his mother.

  “I’ve got her. Get the other children.”

  Without moving or walking, Aida was on the tip of the wing, urging them all to follow her. Then she was on the ground about ten meters away from the wing, right at the edge of the jungle undergrowth. She called to them, and they came down the wing toward her. Still too close. I’ve got to get them farther away.

  In a blink she was standing in the thick undergrowth. “Follow me.” She waited until she heard everyone force their way through the underbrush toward her. In another blink she was standing in a clearing on top of a hill about twenty meters from the group of survivors. On the opposite side of the clearing, a cut path ran down the hill and into the thick jungle foliage.

  The group arrived at the hill, and Aida was at the bottom, at the beginning of the path. They came down the hill to the path, and she stayed twenty or thirty meters ahead of them. Once the entire group was on the path, the last of the fuel in the plane caught fire and exploded, but that was expected.

  Aida had no idea how she was doing what she was doing or how she had gotten there. For now, for the right now, her whole world was just about rescuing these people and leading them to a safe place. The next thing she knew, the path broke out of the jungle and ended at the side of a gravel road. She heard the group behind her on the path; they would be here in a moment or two. They would be safe here. She wondered about any injuries they might have and how she could treat them; emergency field medicine hadn’t been her specialty.

  They’re all ambulatory. They’ll mostly be frightened, banged up, and bruised, but on the whole, they’ll be fine.

  She waited at the side of the road to greet them. With the immediate emergency over, the 3-D image of the pearls of light in their rows and columns flashed in her mind, and she felt a tug on her focus like an elastic band pulling itself back into shape after being stretched. She blinked, and the road and the jungle and the people were gone. She looked out at the 3-D stereogram world again, and the rows and columns of lights were gone too. A short distance from her, a half dozen or so pearls had grouped together. They spiraled slowly around one another, and the whole group grew brighter. The group moved en masse in the same direction, and the white spider threads that they left behind showed the path they had traveled. The threads ran back toward her, then turned at a hard-right angle and ran to Aida’s right along a different path.

  She looked at the group as it continued along a straight path away from her, and ahead of the group was, well, not much. There were no lines approaching it, no hills for them to go over, no waves to wash the pearls from their course. She looked out a little farther ahead of the group and saw another group, tightly clustered and moving together. The second group moved toward hers at an angle. She saw that the paths of the two groups would cross, but at the rate they were moving, that wouldn’t be for a while.

  “Most likely the second group will pick up your group from the side of the road. They’re probably in a bus or truck on a cross-country trip,” a calm baritone voice said. “As long as they each stay on their path.”

  “Who’s that? Who’s there?” Aida searched the lights and the dark rolling waves around her for an indication of where the voice came from, but nothing caught her eye. She turned around and saw different patterns and groupings of pearls. Like before, countless groups of clusters and clusters of clusters slowly orbited around one another and left their spidery traces of filaments behind them; together they all formed a vast interconnected and seemingly endless web. In one patch, though, the pearls had ceased their dance. They all moved away from one another off onto their own paths alone. It didn’t seem natural, which disturbed her.

  There still was no sign of who had spoken to her. “Please, I need help. I don’t understand what this place is? What’s happening?”

  “Acknowledging that you don’t understand is the starting place of wisdom.” The man was silent for a moment, and then he asked, “Do you know who you are and how you got here?”

  “I’m Aida Doxiphus. I’m a professor of neurology and a medical doctor. I’m a researcher in University City. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t even know where or what here is.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember before being here?”

  “I was in my lab, calibrating new sensors in my brain-scanning device. I heard the hum of the capacitors charging, and then I woke up here.” There must’ve been some malfunction in the helmet. I don’t know what happened. Her analytical mind couldn’t explain what had happened or what she was seeing. Nor could it explain how she had helped those people on the plane. Did I die? Am I dead? Is this some sort of near-death experience? She reached to check for her pulse in her carotid artery. For the first time since she had woken up, she realized she had no hands, and there was no pulse to check. She looked down to where her body should be but only saw the endless web beneath her.

  “Where’s my body?” she cried out. Panic built in her as she thrashed about, trying to connect with anything solid and familiar.

  “I’m over here,” said the voice as a pearl appeared from behind the slow-moving curtain of the dark background. “Don’t panic. You’re alive, and you’re safe. Clearly you’ve never seen the world in this fashion before.”

  The pearl that had just appeared was brighter than the ones Aida had seen in the plane. She drew nearer to it, and as she did, the background vibration—the one enormous voice of everything—became clearer and more distinct. She felt and saw the pearl vibrate in resonance with the voice of everything, and in doing so, it amplified it.

  Aida locked her focus on him, on the pearl that was talking to her. The panic retreated as she held her focus. “Who are you? Where am I?” She was all business now.

  “My name is Matthew. I’m a Buddhist lama in New Mexico. As to where you are, I can tell you that you still have a body and you’re still in it. I expect you’re still in University City. I know you’re very disoriented by what you see, but you’re looking at the exact same world you’ve seen every day of your entire life but in an entirely different way.”

  13 Understanding

  T he gravity of Matthew’s last statement sank in as Aida looked around at the otherworldly world.

  “I figured out that the pearls of light are people,” she said.

  “For the most part, yes,” Matthew corrected her. “We certainly are the most plentiful around here. Each pearl is a living consciousness, moving through its day-to-day life.” He anticipated her next question. “Humans aren’t the only beings that have some type of consciousness. Many living things are aware of their inner experiences to varying degrees. The better they can distinguish between their inner experience and their outer experiences of the sensory world, the more self-aware they are. The more self-aware they are, the larger and brighter their pearl of consciousness is. Most life, though, isn’t capable of being aware of the inner experience. This type of life has no pearl of consciousness.”

  “Please go on,” Aida said.

  “The world as you’ve always known it hasn’t changed—it’s your perception of the world that’s changed.”

  “Yes, you said that,” she said with some frustration, “but how did it change, and why?”

  “I don’t know how you came to view the world in this way,” Matthew said. “I wish I did. Perhaps I can best help you by explaining how I came to view the world like this.”

  There aren’t going to be any easy answers here, Aida admitted to herself. “Sure, that would be a good starting place,” she said. Any explanation would be good.

  “I first saw the world like this eight years ago, when I was meditating on the Buddhist theory of emptiness,” Matthew began. “This theory holds that nothing has an objective existence; nothing is independent and whole in and of itself. Not material things, not events or thought
s or even abstract concepts such as time. Everything exists only in relation to everything else—everything is interdependent.”

  “Even us?”

  “According to the theory, yes.”

  “Descartes would disagree with that—Cogito ergo sum. ‘I think; therefore I am.’” That was snarky, Aida thought, regretting her statement. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t helpful. Please go on.”

  She’s a bit frightened and starting to become defensive. “It’s okay. You’re very disoriented and looking for way to get a handle on your situation. I’ll help you.” She needs something concrete, quickly.

  He continued, more strongly than before. “I was very deep in my meditation, not holding on to any thoughts or images or sensations. I was just letting them pass me by and not even acknowledging them. I had moved into profound awareness of my internal experience and away from the experiences of the sensory world. My mind was very quiet, more so than I’d ever achieved before; I’d finally reached a state in which the relentless momentum of my thoughts was quiescent, and I just existed. At first I just let the experience occur without trying to interpret or judge it. Then something subtle but powerful shifted, I didn’t know what it was, but out of the visual darkness of my inner experience, this world we see around us now emerged.”

  “So your first experience of this was seeing it? I felt the vibration first,” said Aida.

  “That happens sometimes when a person first makes the transition.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We’re not sure if it means anything,” Matthew said, “other than your first connection with this experience happened in a tactile way rather than visually.”

  “So how do you know we’re not dead?”

  “It’s a little bit embarrassing, but the first time I saw things this way, I got so excited that I let go of the discipline of my meditation and tried to grab on to the experience of this place. As soon as I did that, I lost this experience and my world was back to normal. I was sitting on my meditation cushion in the Zen Center in Chama Valley, New Mexico. The sky was growing brighter in the east, so it was just before dawn. But the unusual thing—and I only found this out later—was that it was the day after I had started my meditation. Since then I’ve been practicing moving back and forth between experiencing the sensory world as solid objects and independent things and experiencing it as waves—and completely interdependent things and pearls of consciousness.”

  “Do you have a name for this place?”

  “I call it the Wave World.”

  Aida was silent in disbelief. Something in Matthew’s description was familiar to her. She knew what it sounded like, but the scientist in her knew it wasn’t possible. Still, she couldn’t deny the evidence of her senses. And the way Matthew described it, it just fit. If this is what I think it is, and it can be reproduced…I’ve got to tell Greg about this! She thought about her husband, pictured his face, heard his voice, remembered the feel of his hand in hers. Wait a minute—this isn’t right.

  “I wasn’t meditating when all this happened to me,” she said, “and I was just thinking about my husband. Why haven’t I gone back?”

  For the first time, Aida heard concern in Matthew’s voice. “Those are the questions we need answered. I can help you with—”

  Out of nowhere, a thick line carrying two pearls came toward Aida and struck her broadside. The world tumbled around her. When it finally settled, she was looking down a street at an ambulance rushing toward her, its lights flashing and sirens blaring. Jarred by the transition, she took a few seconds to get her bearings. She smelled freshly mown grass, and the tender golden light from earlier had strengthened since she had driven through here this morning. Now it warmed the world of trees, cars, buildings, and people. Gravel crunched beneath her feet, and with that she was able to set herself firmly in the world she was familiar with. I’m at the intersection of University Drive North and University Drive South. I’m on campus; the lab’s a little way over there, she thought, looking to her left.

  The ambulance slowed as it approached the intersection and moved to make a left turn. That ambulance is probably for me. Aida saw the woman who was driving. She had just hit her signal to turn onto University Drive South, which was already starting to back up.

  No, not that way. There’s construction. For a second, Aida saw the driver look at her; with both arms, Aida pointed to the right, trying to direct the ambulance around the construction. With a slight squeal of the tires on the pavement, the ambulance lurched and made the right-hand turn onto University Drive North. They need to put up a detour sign here or traffic will be screwed up all day.

  Aida read “Medic 82” on the back of the ambulance as it sped away on University Drive North and started to go around the corner. Now what should I do? She was back in the normal world; she had feet and hands again, and people could see her. Greg’s still in Chicago, but Natalia should be in class. I can go to her.

  Aida went to take a step but felt the rubber band tug on her mind again. This time she tried to resist, planting her feet firmly in the gravel. She closed her eyes and tried to hold on to the world she knew, but the rubber band only pulled harder. When the tugging stopped, she opened her eyes and saw the endless tracery of fine light filaments against a deep black background.

  “What are you doing?” Matthew sounded astonished.

  “I was back on campus, and there was an ambulance. I think it was there for me—for the me that’s in my lab, that is. It was going to turn the wrong way, so I showed the driver the right way to go.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean, how did you get there?”

  “I don’t know. I was talking to you. Then suddenly it felt like something hit me and everything spun, and I was on campus.”

  “How did you come back here?”

  Aida spoke rapidly, answering the question for herself as much as for Matthew. “I tried to stay there, but I felt a tug in my head that was pulling me out. I closed my eyes and tried to hold on. Then, when I opened my eyes again, I was back here.” Now it was her turn for questions. “What did you see happen?”

  “An event line carrying two pearls appeared from behind a wave. All three struck you. Then a flash of light jumped from your pearl of consciousness to the other two pearls. I saw you directing traffic, and the other two pearls made a slight turn off their previous path. The flash of light jumped back from them to your pearl of consciousness, and now you’re back here. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “You mean you can’t do that?” Aida asked. “I thought you could go back and forth anytime you wanted.”

  “I can move my perception of the world back and forth when I’m meditating. But I can’t jump from here into other people’s experiences—no one can. Remember, if we try to interact with what we see here, we lose it immediately. It’s like a sieve; when you put it in a sink full of water, the sieve has water in it, but when you pick it up, the water runs out. The sieve can’t hold water; water can only be in the sieve.” Matthew paused. “Besides that, we have a rule. We don’t interact with people we see here or use our knowledge in any way to influence their choices.”

  “Why not?”

  “For several reasons, but primarily because we choose not to interfere with others’ free will and to keep this view of the world secret. I’m afraid we haven’t always been successful regarding that second effort.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean by that,” Aida said, “but keeping this view of the world secret is wrong. Humankind only advances when knowledge is shared freely.”

  “I understand your concerns, and believe me when I say this is a point of intense debate among us,” Matthew said empathetically. “I’ll be glad to discuss the issue with you at length, but first we must get you back to yourself. I don’t know how you got here, I don’t know how you’re able to do the things you do, and I don’t know why you haven’t gone back to yourself. But when I said we haven’t been successful in keeping this view of the
world secret, I wasn’t referring to you. Other people are using artificial means to gain access to this view of the world, and they’re using it to their own advantage—not to help others as you are. These people have noticed your presence and your activities here, and they’re looking for you. I think you may be in danger.”

  “How can they hurt me here?” Aida asked.

  “They can’t hurt you here, but right now, even though you’re still in your body, in the sensory world you’ll appear to be in a catatonic, unresponsive state. You’re vulnerable, and if they find you, they can do whatever they want with you.”

  “So what do we do now?” Fear crept into her voice.

  “The first choice would be to get you flipped back, but since we don’t know how to do that, we’ll have to protect you in the sensory world. I’ll have to leave you for a while, but other monks from my order will always be watching you. I’ll need help in the sensory world.”

  “Call it the Particle World, not the sensory world,” Aida said. “It makes more sense from a quantum physics perspective, and I’ll be glad to discuss that with you at length when we can. You should contact my husband, Gregorio Doxiphus, and my daughter, Natalia, too.”

  “I’ll need some way to convince your husband to trust me. He’ll have no idea who I am, and I won’t be able to explain the Wave World to him.”

  Aida thought for a moment, then asked, “Do you speak Greek?”

  14 Death in the Wave World

  A ida watched Matthew’s pearl as he flipped back to the Particle World. She had just told him something he should have no business knowing, something that would immediately get Greg’s attention and, she hoped, engender a feeling of trust for Matthew. If it didn’t get Greg to trust Matthew, at least it would get Greg thinking, which means he’ll start asking questions. After that, everything was up to Matthew.