Flip

  “I’m still waiting on a response to the offer of help I made,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about that. It was already committed and on track,” he replied.

  “Are you positive? Things aren’t so clear here.”

  “You can watch the instant replay when you get back. It’s the best we’ve got. A car and driver are waiting for you out front.”

  It was useless to protest further, and if Greg was already en route, she’d rather be there anyway.

  “I’ll be down in ten minutes,” she replied, and ended the call.

  19 Through the Night

  W estbound I-80 droned away under the wheels of the ambulance as the headlights pushed a hole in the slick darkness. In her anxiety, Nat willed the night to close completely behind them, erasing all traces of their passage. She was taking her turn driving, fresh from a three-and-a-half-hour nap in the back of the rig. They rotated the driving between John, Greg, and Nat. Matthew excused himself from that duty, still tired from his solo sixteen-hour drive from the Chama Valley Zen Center to University City. Instead, he spent his time meditating, tending to Aida with John, and trying to educate them on the basics of transperceptual meditation.

  University City was four uneventful hours behind them. They were halfway across Nebraska now, somewhere between Lexington and Cozad, according to the road signs. Overhead, layers of dense clouds blocked the moonlight that earlier had painted the surrounding landscape pale and spectral. For the most part, Nat’s perspective of the world was restricted to the meager distance of illuminated roadway in front of her. When she did look up, she could see semitrucks by the outlines of their running lights. Every ten or fifteen miles, clusters of quick marts, fast food restaurants, truck stops, and gas stations interrupted the night like illuminated islands in some strange archipelago.

  Her father sat sideways in the passenger seat, craning his neck so he could look at Matthew as they talked. In a different situation, Nat would have found the exchange fascinating. As it was, though, both of them were exhausted, slowing their work on this Gordian knot. Frustration weighed her father down, and several times, she expected him to dismiss what Matthew was saying offhand because there was no supporting empirical evidence and no scientifically sound method to frame the experiences Matthew was explaining. She also recognized her father’s struggle was the same as hers, one of understanding, not belief.

  With almost inhuman patience, Matthew continued. “Gregorio, your wife insists on referring to what we see around us now as the Particle World. I understand why we call the unfocused view the Wave World—it just makes sense, as everything in it but individual consciousness generally appears as waves. But why call this the Particle World?”

  Greg grinned. Aida was trying to describe her experience in a way that she knew he would understand. “Particles and waves are a quantum mechanics reference. You were almost right when you said, ‘We see what we choose to see.’ It would have been more accurate to say that reality becomes what we choose to measure it as.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Matthew.

  Now it was her father’s turn to tug at the knot. “You say—and all the current evidence supports your claim—that the physical reality we encounter around us, including our bodies, can be seen or understood in two different ways. One way is through our five senses. We can feel the air against our skin; we taste, hear, smell, and, most important, see. The other, which can only be attained through a very high degree of training and mental discipline, is through a different type of functioning of our perception of our interior experience. In this other view, the physical reality we’ve all taken for granted since birth exists but isn’t perceivable through four of the five senses. It is only through visualization that physical reality is perceived as wave structures, and the only substantial object in the Wave World is consciousness, which cannot be seen or quantified in the particle view of the world.”

  “That’s a very good summation,” the monk encouraged him. “Go on.” Maybe he’s finally getting this, Matthew thought.

  “And while you’re viewing the world one way, you can’t view it the other way. The two ways of perceiving are mutually exclusive, yet they’re one thing?” Greg’s chin was tucked down into his chest, and his eyes were closed.

  “Correct.”

  “Okay, then let me give you some context before I continue. I think I know what Aida’s getting at. Until the late nineteenth century, the accepted scientific thinking held that light was a wave. Just like waves on the ocean or ripples on a pond, or sound waves, for that matter. This had been scientifically proven.”

  “Right. There are the visible wavelengths of light and others that are invisible to our eyes, the ultraviolet and infrared,” Matthew interjected.

  “Exactly, good. Now, in 1905, Einstein published a paper on the photoelectric effect that postulated that light wasn’t a wave. He proposed that it was made of tiny particles or packets, called photons. This was considered heresy in the scientific community, but given Einstein’s standing, he was permitted some latitude. Never mind why he thought this, and that he wasn’t the first to do so, but it turned out to be true. It forced others to investigate, to try to resolve the particle or wave paradox of the nature of light. Subsequently it was scientifically proven that light was composed of particles.

  “To make a long story short, the only answer they found is that light is both. I can do a simple demonstration that proves light is a wave. I also can do a different demonstration and prove that light is a particle.”

  “So you’re saying that two different demonstrations that look into the nature of light give contradictory, mutually exclusive results?” Matthew asked.

  “Precisely! And not only light—in 1923, De Broglie expanded the wave-particle duality model to include all particles, including matter.”

  “So what’s different between the two methodologies?”

  “Plenty, but the only important thing is that they’re both scientifically sound,” Greg said. “The results of these demonstrations brought modern physics to the edge of what it can understand, and it implied something else.” He paused. Not only was modern physics at the edge of its comfortable envelope of authority, but so was he.

  “What? What did it mean?” John asked. Nat couldn’t see him in the back and didn’t realize he was paying attention.

  “It implies that light or potentially any type of energy becomes what the observer chooses to demonstrate it to be the first time it is measured. That somehow the conscious choice the observer makes in selecting which demonstration to do determines the physical reality of a particle or wave. Stated another way, nothing has an independent, objective reality that is separate from perception.” He finished, then fell silent, grappling with something else.

  Matthew smiled. “Why, Dr. Doxiphus, are you a student of Buddhism? This makes perfect sense to me. The Dalai Lama has written about the similarities between Buddhist world views and quantum mechanics.”

  Greg ignored Matthew’s comment, finishing his train of thought. “What my wife is saying is that you’ve revealed a view of reality where everything appears in its wave form.” She must also be curious why your group hasn’t made all this public, he thought.

  “So what’s it mean? I mean, what does it matter?” Natalia asked. “How’s any of this going to help us get Mom back?” This was all amazing and had to be studied more, but the prospect of being chased by people who would kill them and do God knows what to her mother was more pressing than the academic possibilities of this discovery.

  “Every piece of the puzzle helps, and Matthew has a plan for getting your mother back,” Greg replied, looking at the monk. The physicist shifted in his seat; something had been digging into his right thigh for the past sixty miles, and the discomfort it was causing had finally percolated its way up into his conscious mind. He fished in his pocket and pulled out his dead cell phone. He hadn’t thought about charging it since they had left University Hospital.r />
  Not much good like this. Dangling from the power outlet on the dashboard was a charger with a micro-USB adapter. He took it in hand and was pleasantly surprised when it fit his phone.

  “Natalia,” Matthew said, “I think if we can get your mother to calm her mind and focus on the Particle World, the two of you in particular, she’ll come back. We’ve just started obscuring her view of the Wave World to help, and we’ll be able to do more when we get to New Mexico.”

  Unsatisfied, Nat hammered at Matthew, unintentionally unloading on him. “But how did she get like this in the first place, and why is she trapped there?”

  Unperturbed, he answered, “Well, we know Mr. Fahy had something to do with her transition. I don’t know what’s keeping her there, though. I think the best person to figure this out is your mother.”

  Greg’s head popped up. “There are other implications too, I think. Matthew, tell me more about how you see future events in the Wave World.”

  Matthew shook his head. “No, that’s not right. We don’t see events before they happen. There’s no precognitive aspect to the experience. Anyone viewing the Wave World can see the causes of many events before those causes come together to make something happen. The view is just broader, more encompassing. When you can see all the causes and you understand how they move and flow, you can more easily predict how they will come together to produce an outcome. It’s kind of like a forensic investigation but run in reverse. Instead of looking for the causes of an event after that event has happened, you can see what look to be unrelated causes coalescing into an event.”

  “Are there other peop—” Greg started to ask, but his daughter interjected.

  “How is that different?” Nat said.

  “Imagine you see a drinking glass fall from a high shelf, and below it is a brick floor. Once that glass leaves the shelf, can you tell me what’s going to happen to it?” asked Matthew.

  “Sure, it falls to the floor and breaks.”

  “But have you seen it shatter yet?”

  “Well, no, but…oh, okay, I get what you’re saying, but that seems very mechanical and deterministic. I thought we were talking quantum mechanics—‘Things don’t happen until someone decides to see them that way.’ Dad?” she finished, asking her father for help.

  Matthew answered before Greg could. “Please don’t misunderstand me. The Wave World is much more complex than that. I was only trying to explain the difference between seeing a future event and being very certain what a future event is and that it will occur and when it will occur.”

  Nat could see they were heading into some showers; already drops were accumulating on the windshield along with the summer insects that had splattered there. She switched on the wipers. With a rhythmic thump-thump they mixed the water and bugs together, leaving wide gelatinous smears arcing across the windshield.

  “Heading into some rain,” she announced. “I can’t see very well. These are old wipers. I’m gonna have to slow down.” No one seemed to notice or mind.

  “I understand what you’re pointing out, Matthew. However, there are also greater implications. Let me ask you a different question,” Greg went on. “You talk about waves, events, and consciousness; I need to understand the interaction between the three. Can you tell me how it appears to work, from a viewer’s perspective, without any interpretation?”

  Matthew rubbed his hand across his head. “I’ll try, but it’s very difficult to do it justice.” Closing his eyes, he pictured the Wave World in his mind, then spoke. “The background is all dark, but it’s constantly moving, like the surface of the ocean, perpetually rising and falling with smaller waves sitting on top of larger and larger ones. These waves can wash across you from every direction. This sea has no surface, and you’re embedded in the background. When a wave washes over you, you can feel it tug on you and move you. Set in the background and moving on it are pearls of light; these are conscious minds. As they move, they leave a thin trail of light that traces out where they’ve been. Most have gathered into clusters, some of which are very, very large.”

  “What about events?” Greg asked.

  “Events are sometimes the consequence of some previous action by a pearl of consciousness, or sometimes they simply appear—perhaps randomly, perhaps not. They move through the background and leave one with the impression that they are lines. When they hit a pearl of consciousness, sometimes they influence it, and the pearl moves in a different direction. It’s possible to watch an event line move through the background, and based on the background waves it will move through—and everything else it will encounter, including other event lines—you can predict fairly accurately when and where something is going to happen.” He breathed deeply. “There’s so much more to it than that. Forgive me.”

  Greg fixed the monk with eyes that were clear and alert. “You’ve mentioned others who are viewing the Wave World; I assume they’re the ones behind all this?”

  Matthew nodded.

  “Then why haven’t we been caught yet? They obviously can make the same predictions you can.”

  “They can’t see us right now. The minds they use to view the Wave World don’t have an objective viewpoint. No one does for that matter. They’re embedded in the background too, and when the background moves, so do they. Sometimes background waves rise up and block a person’s view, and then we take advantage of such conjunctions to slip into other areas where we can hide. After years of practice, we’re quite adept at it. We also saw…something that was about to occur, something that would blind them for a period. It was coming, and we chose to take advantage of it to get all of you out of the hospital.” Matthew’s hesitation hung in the air, and the steady road noise and the thump-thump of the wipers were the only sounds in the stuffy cabin.

  “What’s the issue?” said Nat, glancing over her right shoulder.

  “We have a rule not to use anything that’s learned in the Wave World for personal gain. We are only to watch, never act. Violating that rule hasn’t been easy.”

  Greg sighed. “I don’t think anyone else would share your sense of restraint, Matthew.”

  “So what do they want with Mom?” Nat asked everyone and no one in particular.

  “We know it has something to do with the stim device,” her father offered, leaning his head against the high seat back.

  Matthew cleared his throat. “I think their interest started with your device—they were trying to sabotage it. In the process of doing that, something unexpected happened, something they can use. Now they want both your mother and the machine. Given what we’ve all seen her do, that’s understandable.”

  John chimed in. “Whatever we’re going to do, we’d better hurry up.” His voice dropped after delivering the warning. There was no sense in trying to hide this information from the family, but his being alarmed wouldn’t help either. “Aida’s showing signs of exhaustion, which will make it harder for her to concentrate. Her blood pressure has been slowly dropping since we left the hospital, and her pulse is going up. She’s having more PVCs. Uh…those are extra heartbeats. But those are benign. Her temperature is up too. I don’t have a reason for it. It just is.”

  Matthew supplied the answer. “She’s wide awake. She’s been wide awake, and her mind has been running at full speed since she flipped over to the Wave World. Her body is working to keep up with it. It’ll keep doing so until it can’t.”

  “What can you do? Can’t you give her a sedative?” Greg asked John and Matthew, looking for a way to hold off the inevitable.

  “No, we can’t do that; it’ll interfere with her ability to concentrate. Besides, I don’t think we have any,” said Matthew.

  John reached up to change out the IV bag of D10W. “I can give her supportive care, fluid, electrolytes, and glucose, and monitor her vitals, keep her cool, be ready for…” he said, stopping himself before he could say, “Be ready for kidney failure and to resuscitate her when she goes into cardiac arrest.” That was more than they needed
to know now. “Just be ready.”

  20 Back to Square One

  B everly Michelson looked out the window of the private jet. Last night’s storm had moved over the Cascades, leaving the tarmac glistening fresh and bright in the sunrise as they landed at the Astoria Regional Airport. She had managed only a few hours’ sleep on the way in before the bumpy descent through said storm and was decidedly not feeling fresh and bright. It was a six-hour procedure to insert a new reference observer, and she knew she wouldn’t be at her best.

  Just like surgical residency, except I was a lot younger then, she admitted to herself in a rare moment of honesty that was spurred by the lined face reflected in the window. That train of thought led to a distasteful place, so she stopped her self-examination. No benefit in second-guessing life choices that can’t be changed. Just move on, she rationalized.

  A car was waiting for her, and a few minutes later, from the high rise of the Astoria-Megler Bridge, she watched the plane take off and head east. Probably back to University City. Kelley should have authorized the transfer by now, and the Doxiphus family needed a way to get here. He hadn’t answered when she had called him a few minutes ago to check on them. She’d try again before she scrubbed in.

  ***

  The bright sunrise at 5:30 in the Pacific Time Zone found Alvin Kelley at 7:30 in the Central Time Zone scrambling around his office, preparing for the grant auditors. The Doxiphus situation had gone quiet, thanks to Beverly. He hadn’t heard anything from her overnight, so he assumed Greg had taken her up on her offer and they were all on their way to her facility.

  Glad that’s out of my hair.

  In any case, as he saw it, his role in the situation had changed. No longer the manager of the crisis, all he had to do now was show appropriate concern for the Doxiphus family and protect the university’s income. Since they were on their way to Washington state and beyond his help, he could focus entirely on the latter. Intent on the task ahead, he had forwarded all incoming calls and texts to Randy and turned off his phone. The hospital and university could survive without him for a few hours.