“David, this is General Carl Greene. I’m the one in charge on this –at least for the moment. You mentioned that you knew more about this Benjamin Planck thing than was in the paper. Could you tell us what you know please? We are all very eager to hear but take your time and please be complete.”
On the other end, still standing on the beach in front of the resort buildings, with the view of the fishing boat still barely in sight, with a somewhat stunned sense of weird reality settling in on him, David locked his mind in on just telling what he knew. All of it. Once he had met Planck on the island he had known that events could get very big very fast, but it had all seemed so theoretical, just discussions on advanced Physics, Planck playing the role of the brilliant young Einstein and Dr. Wheeling playing the role of the dubious but equally brilliant older scientist. David and Gabriela were the privileged audience. The role playing was over.
“Sir, I’m not really sure where to begin…Perhaps I should start with how I found Planck – and by the way, he did not want to be found, and that was before The Object said it wanted to meet him! After that started, he really did not want to be found! He is somewhat reclusive ... which is why it has taken this long.” David went on with how he had remembered Ben Planck from his days at Columbia and thought that he might be the right Benjamin Planck. Then David told them he had spent many hours hunting Planck through the internet and how he had come up with the story about the two hurricanes that against all weather tracking odds seemed to go around Pirate’s Cay where David had set up a religious retreat.
Then David described how he had enlisted Dr. Janus Wheeling to go with him to meet with Planck and that once there they learned that Planck had moved theoretical physics to a new frontier.
General Greene interrupted, “Wait a minute…let me digest what you just said. You said that this Benjamin Planck had the power to move not one but two hurricanes so that they wouldn’t hit his island. And then you said that you and Dr. Janus Wheeling –the Nobel Prize winning Dr. Wheeling no less, went down to this tiny Bahamian island where Planck had a sort of meditation slash theoretical physics group. And that then you and Dr. Wheeling and Planck discussed theoretical physics. Do I have that more or less right?”
“Yes sir…I know it sounds pretty bizarre.”
General Greene cut in again, “Son, everything about The Object is pretty bizarre. It’s because your story is bizarre that I tend to believe you. I also have read your science writings in the past. I loved your series about finding the Higgs Boson. So I have a simple question for you. Do you believe ….and does Dr. Wheeling believe that Planck moved those hurricanes away from his island?”
“Yes sir, I do. And so does Dr. Wheeling.”
Greene continued, “I have a feeling I’m not going to like the answer to my next question. How did he move those hurricanes?”
David’s response came quickly, “With his mind, Sir.”
“With his mind?”
“Yes sir. Actually with his mind and with the minds of other people here on the island. About thirty other people.”
Then David heard the General say, “This is going to be a nightmare.”
There was total quiet in the meeting room. Then General Greene finished shaking his head and asserted control. “David, is Dr. Wheeling there with you on the island?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well I think it is too dangerous for you to stay there. I don’t want anything more said on your cell phone. I’m going to send a plane to go pick you up …you and Dr. Wheeling. I want to bring you here to the Pentagon. And then I’m going to want to hear everything. We happen to have an Air Force base at Homestead in Florida. My guess is a plane will be there in not much more than an hour. Is this all right with you?”
“Do Dr. Wheeling and I actually have a say in this?”
“It is better if you say yes. But yes you will be picked up there.”
“Then I better go find Dr. Wheeling.”
David found Dr. Wheeling in the lobby area. He had heard the bare details of the kidnapping of Planck. David filled him in on what he had seen and on the conversation he just had. He agreed that Planck’s kidnapping changed everything. He went back to his room to gather his things. David went back to his room and found Gabriela and caught her up too. She wanted to go to the Pentagon with him but since they didn’t know how that would work out and no one knew anything about her yet she ultimately agreed to find her way back to New York. Both Dr. Wheeling and David thought it would be best if she could share what they now knew with a couple of Wheeling’s peers and she was the best one to do that.
Neither Dr. Wheeling nor David were really comfortable with submitting themselves to the care and control of the generals in the Pentagon, so they thought the more people that knew they were there the better. David then called the Editor at the Washington Post and just told him that there were new developments that he could not yet talk about but that if he didn’t hear anything from him in two days to start asking questions at the Pentagon. David wasn’t sure if he was being paranoid or smart… or dangerously naïve.
But before the military came to get him there was one other person David wanted to talk to there on the island. He went in search of Catherine Ozawa; the Zen Master Planck had brought to the island. Planck had introduced them the first afternoon.
With his usual almost total recall, David remembered the brief bio Planck had told him about Ozawa. She had been born in San Francisco to parents who had emigrated from Japan prior to World War Two. As an adult she had returned to Japan and studied at a Zen Buddhist monastery there for ten years. As a woman that had been difficult but she had adjusted to what could be done. In her bio she had written, “On the path to Enlightenment there aren’t separate restrooms for men and women.” David had liked that when he read it.
Then she had returned to the Bay area where she founded her own retreat. Along the way she had also studied advanced physics and had a Doctorate from Stanford to show for it. She found no incongruity between Zen Buddhism and theoretical physics. She thought the doctrine of Karma was just another way that the Observer functioned in the universe. She also had worked at some early Silicon Valley start-ups that were now worth billions of dollars. Planck sought her out and convinced her to come join him on Pirate’s Cay.
David found her in conversation with two of her students in the lobby. When she saw David wanted to speak to her she left the two monks and came over to where David was standing under a palm tree.
Catherine Ozawa was in her late sixties. Somehow she looked like age was not relevant to her. Her face was lined with a few wrinkles that seemed to be in the right places, laugh lines stood out around her eyes. Her body was lean and her posture straight. Her hair was mostly white and short. Her eyes were somehow old and her expression calm but careworn.
David stared awkwardly for a moment; he had never talked to a Zen Master before. “I’m sorry; I don’t really know what to call you. Should I call you Master?”
“Just call me Catherine.”
“OK Catherine… I guess you pretty much know about everything that goes on here…” Ozawa nodded and David continued, “Well, whoever it was that just abducted Planck, it seems it was not the US government. I just was talking to a bunch of generals and they claim ignorance. But within the next two hours I’m betting this island will be swarming with soldiers. And Dr. Wheeling and I are going to be picked up and taken to the Pentagon.”
Ozawa considered the implications, “I had better go and tell everyone.”
“Before you do there are some questions I’d like to ask you.”
“I’m sure you have many.”
David smiled, “Yea. Too many for the time we probably have. But my first one is, how powerful is this mind over matter capability that you and Planck and the others here are working on?”
Ozawa held out her hands with the palms open to the sky. “How powerful is the universe?”
“Is that a koan? Like what is the sound of one han
d clapping? I think I need to talk to the person with the Doctorate in Physics not the Zen Master.”
Ozawa laughed, “No that was not a koan. That was my physics answer. What we are learning here is that consciousness gives form to everything. So the power is almost infinite. However, if the question you really are asking is how much can Planck and those of us here actually manipulate so far, well the answer to that is not all that much. We are just beginning to learn.”
“Moving hurricanes is not such a little thing.”
“That depends on the point of comparison. Let me answer your question this way – with what we know how to do already we can change weather patterns all over the world. We can solve the global energy problem. We can do things that would seem like miracles. But…and this is a big but, we have no solution yet for the law of unintended consequences. We are not wise enough to use the power – and mankind is definitely not wise enough.”
David paused then and looked at the little wizard of a woman who was telling him that the world was about to change. “You know that there is now no way to hold this back – your secret will not be a secret much longer.”
Catherine nodded. “I told Planck that. The coming of The Object hastened everything… but the future can never be held back. The ocean’s tides cannot be resisted.”
“Was that the physicist or the Zen Master?”
Ozawa laughed again, “That was the Zen Master.”
David nodded, “Then let me ask the Zen Master a question. I’ve been beating my head against the wall on this. What does this new understanding of physical reality actually mean for us as people? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?”
Ozawa held her hands out with palms up again, “It won’t change the fundamental nature of man or of life. Life is change. Karma will still exist. A man will still be judged by the good and bad he does. The cycle of life won’t change. Actually for me it solves a puzzle that has confounded me since I was a young woman. You see, in Zen Buddhism we believe that Karma is real, reincarnation is real. But we do not believe in a god. Buddha was godly but not a god. So the puzzle for me was, ‘how is Karma determined? Who or what is the judge? There is cause and effect, but as seen through what lens or set of factors? But now the answer is less cloudy. Karma is administered through Consciousness. So now I have a new puzzle. What is consciousness?”
“You got me! But I have another question: what is the role of meditation in this?”
“It is pivotal! Only through meditation can one truly learn how to focus the mind with such clarity that the universe can pick out the individual message from the sea of chaotic mental states produced by the billions of people just on this planet. Meditation provides the clearest link –the link without static –to the universal mind. In fact, new studies show that the physical mind, the brain, actually changes at the neuron level in those people who engage in significant meditation. There are physical and functional changes to the brain that improve a person’s ability to perceive reality.”
David interrupted, “What you are saying is that meditation will not only allow you to better perceive reality – it can also allow you to change reality. And that, Zen Master is a whole other thing!”
Ozawa just held her hands open again.
David just shook his head. “In a few hours I am going to have to explain that to a roomful of military bigwigs who are just going to hate all this. And then they are going to want to know how to weaponize it.”
As if on cue they heard what turned out to be two Gulfstream executive jets coming in to land on Pirate Cay’s landing strip. David said goodbye to Catherine Ozawa and wished her luck and went to find Dr. Wheeling.
It took only a few minutes for the team of ten men coming off the Gulfstream jets to approach David and Dr. Wheeling as they waited at the front of the retreat’s main building. Though clad in polo shirts and either jeans or khakis, the team made no attempt to hide their weaponry. The one in charge walked right up to them and introduced himself as Captain Donald Deutsch.
He said, “Dr. Wheeling, David, as I think you know, I’m here to take you to a meeting at the Pentagon. But first if you don’t mind, I’d like my men to look around the island and make sure that everything is OK.” David noticed that his men were already moving, doing exactly that.
David then introduced him to Catherine Ozawa who he described as the leader of the Retreat that accounted for the people and the buildings on the island. Turning to Ozawa Captain Deutsch informed her that he had orders to leave most of his men on the island to ensure that whoever had abducted Benjamin Planck did not return to take anyone else. Both Dr. Wheeling and David looked at each other with quick glances that suggested they did not quite believe that was the real reason but said nothing.
Ozawa smiled and said that she and her people would welcome their presence.
Captain Deutsch turned back to David and the professor. “For your information, we sent a team out to find the fishing boat.”
David interrupted and pointed out at the tiny blur of a boat that could still be seen on the water’s horizon. “You mean that one?”
“Yes sir, that one.”
“Well that’s great! Is Planck OK? Was there any trouble getting him?”
The Captain’s response was a negative. “We didn’t get him because he wasn’t on the boat. The boat was deserted.”
David was incredulous, “There was no one on it?”
Captain Deutsch looked back impassively and gave a minimal shake of his head. “The boat was just floating there. No one was on it. Strangely when we tried to start it up again, we couldn’t. The engine seemed frozen.”
David thought about that and then asked, “What about a little dingy with an outboard? Was it there?”
“Yes, it was there. It wasn’t used to take anyone off the boat. We couldn’t get it to work either.”
Dr. Wheeling spoke up for the first time, “It seems our problems are getting bigger. I presume you are still looking for him.”
“Yes sir, we are. But frankly we have no idea what happened on that boat.”
“I guess some other boat must have met them and picked them up. Is there no sign of any other boat?” David asked.
“No sign at all.”
“Poor Planck,” was all David could think to say.
Captain Deutsch gestured to one of the unmarked Gulfstream exec jets. “I’m to get you to Washington as fast as possible. So we need to leave now. My men are going to stay and ask questions about the abduction this morning and they’ll be able to follow up if anything new happens here. Shall we go?”
A little more than four hours later, accompanied by David’s uncle who had met them at an entrance to the Pentagon, and after walking down more hallways than David had ever known to exist in a single building, they entered a meeting room and were introduced to General Carl Greene. The General then introduced the other officers in the room and the lone civilian sitting at the table. Counting Wheeling and David there were a total of eight to sit at the meeting room table. Dr. Wheeling did not need the last introduction to the man in the grey suit.
“Andrei! How nice to see you again. How are my friends at MIT? Are you here perhaps to help our military friends with a little physics?”
Dr. Kasinsky rose out of his chair to shake Wheeling’s hand, “It is a pleasure to see you again, Janus. I’m very much looking forward to hearing about the ‘little physics’ that we might discuss. From time to time I do some consulting with our friends here but I think this might be especially interesting.”
David looked at Kasinsky with surprise. He hadn’t expected another physicist to accompany the generals, but he realized he should have. Kasinsky was average height, middle aged and balding but his round face was enlivened with large round eyes that seemed to actively regard everything around him.
With everyone seated General Greene spoke first and had everyone introduce themselves. Then immediately he switched to the core topic. Greene had the look of a man who would always be f
ocused on the core issues with no tolerance for perambulations. Certainly now, with the seriousness of the issues they all confronted, whatever casualness and humor might sometimes be revealed on his face were nowhere to be seen. His close cropped dark hair had grey mixed in and his square brow and cheekbones and strong jawline all showed a weather beaten tenacity that would yield to nothing. Yet his blue eyes betrayed his stern countenance, they suggested a warm and engaging intelligence. If he was the man in charge at the Pentagon for all things alien, David thought that an open mind was going to be needed.
“As I understand things,” Greene began, “we have two distinct challenges that seem to have occurred concurrently but perhaps deliberately so. And at the core of both of those challenges there seems to be scientific issues that go to the heart of theoretical physics. The first challenge is presented to us by The Object and its apparent ability to move in defiance of physical laws – and its ability to simply disappear multiple missiles. The second challenge comes from the discoveries of Benjamin Planck that seem to suggest that mind over matter should not be just relegated to some sort of metaphysical daydream. Somehow the human mind can manipulate matter. And this capability is no longer theoretical it is actual and replicable.”
The General paused and looked around the room. Then he added, “And it also appears that these two challenges come together because The Object has asked to communicate with only one individual out of all the billions of people on this planet and that individual is Dr. Planck. And to make matters even more challenging, Dr. Planck now seems to have been abducted by parties unknown off of his small island in The Bahamas where he was doing reality changing physics unknown to all of the rest of us.”
The General paused again and looked around the room. “Now do I have that about right?”
No one said anything. His two staff officers and David’s uncle, General Randall, all looked down at the table.
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