“Have I changed anything?” he asked himself half-aloud.
And then he remembered the asteroid belt. Damn, I shouldn’t have made that planet!
He jumped up, ran to the dial and switched on the solar system. He zoomed in on the inner planets just in time to witness a ghastly explosion, as the fifth planet from the sun burst into a minor nova. The planet was no more. And even as he watched, a string of giant rocks began to take on an orbit about halfway between Mars and Jupiter. Within seconds he watched, aghast, as the fourth planet began to lose its blue hue. The atmosphere on Mars was gone.
“My God! What have I done?” he shouted, his throaty voice reverberating in the large chamber.
He looked away from the cosmic disaster. For some inexplicable reason he felt sure that both Mars and the planet that had just exploded had been populated by his own kind; by hairy, intelligent, perhaps brilliant, very advanced people.
He turned towards the chaise longue and caught his breath. Lying on the sofa was the body he presently occupied. It looked limp, one hairy arm hanging over the edge; the eyes, lifeless, staring senselessly at the ceiling. Alec reached over and, instinctively closed the man’s eyes. Then his own. He’d seen enough.
Suzy looked worried. She was bending over him, a glass of water in hand. Her eyes wide open, filled with disbelief mixed with admiration.
“You’ve done it again, darling,” she whispered. “Only it was different this time. Wasn’t it?”
“I have?” He rubbed his eyes, as though not used to the light.
“You’ve peek-a-boo’d...” she said. “Only... here, take a sip of water.” Alec lifted his head and obeyed.
“I remember... some things...” he said. “Some things...”
And then he glanced at his legs. He tried moving them. Not even a quiver. They were as flaccid as a half-hour ago. Or had it been a million years? He felt beads of perspiration forming on his forehead. The man was dead when I left his body; physically, mentally and emotionally, dead. And when he died he was an old man. Like me. An old man of twenty-five.
“Like when you were fourteen?” He imagined he heard Suzy’s thoughts.
“What? Oh, no. Nothing like that. Nothing like that at all.”
For the next few moments Alec seemed to vacillate between two realities. Only this time he knew he was in Suzy’s hands. Dear Sue. Had you come with me, you would have seen me walk. Like in the old days. And now? Now I am dead. At least my body is. The beautiful hairy body I walked in.
“God forbid,” he muttered remembering the exploding planet.
“What darling?”
“Thank God I have you, Sue. You can’t begin to realize how much I need you.”
And the next moment Alec’s eyes seemed to close of their own accord, and unwittingly, he took a short, dreamless nap.
Throughout all this time, Matt had remained immobile, standing within a few feet, yet deceptively invisible. When he saw the Suzy and Alec relax, a vague smile played at the corners of his mouth. Then, making no sound at all, he withdrew to the terrace.
***
14
Reconciliation
Dr. McBride left immediately after breakfast. He needed to go to his office. It had something to do with the reports on an experiment he was overseeing, which had just arrived from Waxahachie. The Professor had spent a short time on the cellular, and left almost at a trot. As Joan had once put it, Christmas didn’t stop the Collider from smashing the poor atoms. There was a long line of scientists waiting for a chance to conduct their experiments.
In early afternoon Des was back. He looked deflated.
During his absence, Alec and Suzy took it upon themselves to replenish the fridge. Maria gave them a list as long as her arm. Alec asked Matt to drive him all the way to San Diego. While Suzy took care of the food, Alec searched for a malt Scotch good enough for the Professor. In spite of his good intentions, they failed to find the Professor’s favourite Single. Thanks to Matt, however, Alec made a discovery that even Desmond might find acceptable. It was an impressive glazed ceramic bottle worthy to house a genie. The blend was called: King of Scots. Officially it was labeled a 17 year old, but on the back of the cask, the explanations assured that the figure 17 referred to the youngest ingredient, not the oldest. Alec wouldn’t dream of indulging in such a luxury for himself, but his debt to Desmond was beyond his ability to pay him back. This was but a small token. When they got back from shopping, the Professor was already on the terrace, stretching on his deckchair.
“The place is dead,” he said, reaching for the Sangria at his elbow. By then, Sangria consisted mostly of fruit and carbonated water, with just enough dry wine to give it zest. Alec decided the Scotch would wait till the evening.
“Caltech?”
“No, the whole city. There are no people in the streets. Even the expressways are empty. Like after a major earthquake. There aren’t any riots, either. There is a general sort of malaise in the air that is quite palpable. It’s as if people were overwhelmingly fed up.” The Professor was as much reporting as thinking aloud.
“With what, exactly?” John wanted to know.
“Oh, I don’t know. With just about everything. I only met with a few of them—the security guards, the janitor, two or three students. I got my paper from the fellow on the corner. Usually he gives me a ‘Hi doc’. He didn’t even look up. And he was the only man on the street. It was as though he didn’t care...” Des continued.
“...about?” This was Joan.
“About anything. Whether he lived or died. My secretary came in only to make sure I got my documents. She’s always spreading cheer. Today, she didn’t say a word. Almost. She looked not so much worried as indifferent,” the Professor shook his head from side to side, as though not quite believing his own words. “It’s some kind of sickness, a virus, only it seems to affect people’s hearts.”
“Whatever brought the riots to a head was a long time coming. People expected the government to do something about it all, but… could it be, that those in power dipped their fingers in the extortion.” Alec put in.
“Extortion? Isn’t that illegal?” Alicia didn’t accept her son’s speculation.
“Look it up in the dictionary, mother. Extortion means the practice of extracting money from people by undue exercise of power or by the exaction of too high a price. Try not paying your taxes. Or refusing to pay full price on something where the profit margin is over a hundred percent, and you’ll end up in jail in both cases. Isn’t that akin to extortion?”
“But people must make a living...” His mother tried to defend the guilty.
“Yes, they have a right to do that. But not when the extorter’s income is ten times that of the person who’s being exploited. Look at the lawyers’ fees, at the cost of medication, look at insurance premiums, even the cost of education... Each can jointly and severally ruin people who need those services. And God forbid you should break a leg without insurance coverage. You would keep paying with your blood for the rest of your days. Isn’t that so, Desmond?”
“Pretty close. There are also the vested interests in Washington, as I am sure there are in your country, if not to the same extent, which abuse the public trust. They are there to line the deep pockets of our elite...” the Professor admitted quietly.
Alec looked out to sea. His mind drifted to the luxurious villas hugging the gentle slopes of the verdant city; a ‘city’ for people who appeared to have everything. Whom did they exploit? Where did the ‘workers’ live? Who invented this dream?
“I had a dream...” he murmured still looking out towards the hazy horizon. “I have a dream,” he changed the tense, “of a place where all people have all they need, yet never at someone else’s expense.”
“We’ve all had such a dream, at one time or another,” Desmond nodded, “but we––Homo sapiens––are not ready for it yet, lad. Not by a long shot.”
“I wonder...” Alec held his ground. “I wonder...” he repeated bu
t wouldn’t say any more. He was thinking of creating such a great wealth within that it would spill over to the outside. That the wealth would not be drawn from other people, only from a source that never runs dry. That people would not accumulate wealth, because there would be no need to. The source would always be there, open. He saw such a world already existing, knocking on the doors to be allowed in. Into people’s consciousness. Like his Information Theory.
“Alec!” Suzy shook his arm. Then she leaned over to his ear and whispered, “you’re shifting.”
He wasn’t aware of doing anything of the sort. But he’d given up arguing with Sue. If she’d said he did it, he must have done it. It seemed that whenever he felt strongly dissatisfied, something happened to restore his mental and emotional, equilibrium.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
But his mood swung the other way. Most people are walking in circles, he thought. Some are going completely the wrong way. Others have stopped, before they could get too far on the wrong track. I suppose they are the lucky ones. Then he looked down at his legs.
Perhaps they are the lucky ones, he repeated silently. But he doubted his own thoughts.
I am little more than an observer. I live in a wheelchair. This morning even my arms hurt. My bodily functions are discharged without leaving the chair. That drove Suzy crazy until we got Matt to live-in with us. To dress me, wash me, and clean me in moments of incontinence. And now Matt’s salary is paid by my mother’s inheritance.
I am dead. Or might as well be dead.
Sandra...
Alec argued long and hard against such a financial arrangement. But Alicia dug in her heals. “I can’t take the money with me, Ali, and you have Sacha to look after.”
She’d won.
Actually, the whole affair was vastly exaggerated in Alec’s head. The lion’s share of Matt’s salary was paid by Alec’s medical insurance. The extra amount did not place undue hardship on Alicia or anyone else. And Matt himself expressed little interest in money.
Later that afternoon Alicia stayed with Sacha, and the ‘young couple’, as everyone except Maria called them, went for a walk. This time the beach was less inviting, but Alec insisted on a little exercise. He thought that using his arms would stop, or at least delay, the progress of, what was beginning to look like some sort of muscular atrophy. He hasn’t exercised nearly enough lately, and propelling the wheels with his arms for a few miles was the least he thought he could do. Keeping to the higher ground they only just managed to evade young cyclists pelting along, who were presumably imagining that they were on the Tour de Californie. On their left, the tide was at its highest. After a mile or so, Alec slowed down. His arms hurt badly. He pulled to one side, his eyes searching for answers in the rolling breakers. The waves seemed to waver, roil in a confused manner, then retreated about forty feet down the sand; retreating under his gaze. Like the tsunami? Perhaps on a small scale—only this time it was much easier. Alec grinned, turned his wheelchair, and continued along the bicycle path.
“It’s nicer now,” Suzy murmured. She’d hardly said a word since they left the villa. She seemed to sense Alec’s discomfort. “I think the wind is dying down.”
“Could be,” he smiled, grinding his teeth in an effort to keep rolling. All his attention was again directed toward moving his arms. He was only vaguely aware of having had anything to do with the retreating waves. Ever assuming that he had. He simply thought that the inner and outer realities should be brought more in line. That, in a way, all realities are a question of faith. Of belief. Or it could have been just his imagination.
To his surprise, his arms seemed to hurt less with each stroke.
He knew that, sooner or later, he must become reconciled with the power that was welling up inside him. He must stop setting himself apart from it. Perhaps he didn’t have to apply scientific principles to absolutely everything in his life. Nobody else seemed to. They relied on their emotions, instinct, and intuition as much as on their intellect. Perhaps he could, and should, be a little more flexible. Suzy accepted the evidence of her eyes, no matter how improbable. On the other hand, since nobody else seemed aware of his peek-a-boo antics, perhaps she was not espying him with physical eyes. Did that make any sense?
Sacha was quite another story. He seemed to enjoy it—his reputed shifting.
Does the lad know something I don’t? Does he see a reality that neither Suzy nor I can perceive? What is reality anyway? Isn’t matter mostly empty space?
As a physicist he knew that it was. Some 99.9999% of it.
The same old questions returned to him with renewed force. Like the breakers, which now seemed to come back, echoing his inner strife. What once had been happening only in his dreams he now seemed to retain in his waking hours.
Am I retaining some peripheral ability to affect reality? Or am I loosing my senses.
At the same time, if it were true, if these weren’t just ravings of a disconsolate mind, he felt it wasn’t his power. He had no idea how it worked, nor did he even know whence it came. It had its origin in his subconscious, perhaps deeper. He only knew it was there. It was in the same category as Atlantis.
Now why did I think of Atlantis?
“You know, Sue, when we were on the terrace together yesterday…” Alec stopped his chair, reaching out for Suzy’s arm.
“Of course, darling. You were really away...”
“I was in Atlantis!” he said, keeping his voice from shaking when he said it. “Do you think I’m going crazy?”
“Why would you ask such a thing, darling? Do you feel as though you are?” It was meant to be a joke.
“Sometimes...” He wasn’t smiling.
They resumed their way. Since yesterday, Suzy felt that something very traumatic had happened when Alec fell asleep on the terrace. After a while, without breaking her step, she asked him why he thought he’d been to Atlantis.
“After all, how would you know?” she asked. “After all, no one’s ever been to Atlantis.”
Alec chewed on that before answering. There was a problem. If our planet Earth were to collapse into a black hole, it would be about one centimeter in diameter. The whole of the 'empty space' would have been squeezed out of it, and... well, it would become solid. Really solid. Conversely, if the process were to be reversed, Earth, the planet Earth, would be mostly empty space. Like we all are. Even now more than 50 trillion solar neutrinos pass through an average human body every second without even slowing down.
What is reality?
After another half a mile, the wind died down considerably. Alec stopped again and pulled Suzy down to sit beside him on the sand. They were close to the spot where they had rested the last time. Only on higher ground.
“Frankly, I have no idea. It just came to me. You know,” he hesitated, then nodded to his thoughts, “it was the same with the Information Theory. First it came to me, and then it took me eighteen months to work it out to be able to put it on paper. Inside, I knew it all along. But it just wouldn’t come out. Now that it’s in the open, the theory I mean, most people, at least in my circles, accept that it might be valid.”
And just as suddenly and unexpectedly, Alec’s memories retreated to his childhood.
The Home Planet, the Far Country, the many jaunts he did as a boy, it was all part of the same thing. Reality was defined by man, the individual. Not man by reality. You created your own universe. It wasn’t fixed, immovable; it was as flexible as the waves that agreed to stay farther down the beach. It was as flexible as the feeling of joy or sorrow, or even love and hatred. We all create realities. We explode into riots, rebellions, against the abnormalities of our own constructs. None of us should ever blame others for our fate. We are the sole creators of our destiny.
“But isn’t Atlantis a little farfetched?” Suzy prodded gently.
Her question brought him back. He weighed it before answering. His mind was still elsewhere. He was beginning to long for the state of consciousness that once all
owed him those journeys into the unknown; journeys that provided so many answers. But, of course, then there was Sandra...
“Back in Montreal, I read some books about Atlantis, Lemuria, the Kingdom of Mu––that sort of thing. I forget the author, the title also for that matter, probably because I didn’t take any of it seriously. But I was a student and you wouldn’t move in with me, and I’d lost the ability to ‘project’ as the book called it... well, I’d been reading the book because it reminded me of my own escapades. And, as I said, you wouldn’t move in with me...”
“I heard you the first time. Now, you know why.”
“That’s not fair. I got the book after you refused...”
“I was just kidding.” She looked at his furrowed brow. Alec was not smiling. Something was eating at him. From within.
“Oh, of course. Well, anyway, the book made some interesting assumptions. It said that periodically the whole world changes. That a certain critical mass is achieved by humanity, and then there is a sort of cosmic leap in consciousness. The previous states just cease to exist––new ones are formed.”
“That doesn’t sound so far fetched.” Suzy’s tone was conciliatory but still a little doubtful.
“No. Not really. Evolution is said to advance in leaps, not in a continuous curve, or even a jagged line like a chart in the Wall Street Journal. Between those leaps, there is virtual stasis, until the next leap takes place. Something must happen to Homo sapiens, or a good percentage of us, before the next leap can occur. At least the book suggested that...”
“It seems to echo the old Hindu theories that there has been a golden age, followed by silver, bronze and iron ages. In Esoteric Buddhism humanity seems to be on a descending spiral, rather than ascending...” There was a time when Suzy read avidly on Eastern Philosophies. As a feminist by nature, she started with Helena Blavatsky.
Alexander: [Alexander Trilogy Book Two] Page 18