Quantum Times

by Bill Diffenderffer

  As his staffers discovered, he did have a wonderful, broadly curious mind. And in discussions he was always respectful of others’ opinions. He wanted everyone to end up agreeing. As he argued with people he would shift his position closer to theirs until everyone walked away thinking that everything had been agreed upon. Then an opposing group would meet with him and they would have the same sort of meeting – but walk away with a different agreement. The result with this President was that there seemed to be lots of agreement but things never got done.

  The truth as the President saw it was that he was elected to run things – and he liked the position of power. He had been treated all his life as the center of everyone’s attention – and in his mind he deserved that. In return he had learned, it worked even better if everyone agreed with him. He had found that was the best way to win elections. And he was very good at winning elections. Going all the way back to running for Class President in the sixth grade, he had never lost one.

  “Well gentlemen,” the President started while looking at David and Dr. Wheeling, “My advisors here have been bringing me up to date on what you two and the missing Dr. Planck have been up to and though my understanding of the Physics might be a little light, I think I get the gist of it all. All quite brilliant actually. I look forward to getting deeper into it. But I wanted to talk to you two because I need to hear about this as directly and unfiltered as possible. Now for the moment let’s put the theoretical physics aside, tell me why I should believe this whole mind over matter thing. Frankly it sounds pretty far-fetched.”

  Dr. Wheeling, as was his want, took the lead. “Mr. President…without getting too deep into the theory, you should believe it because it is the natural extension of what we have discovered to occur at the quantum level of existence. We knew of the importance of the Observer in quantum mechanics. And we knew of the mysterious properties of consciousness. Yet we were hesitant as physicists to link the two. Dr. Planck was bold enough to do so…”

  The President held up his hand, “Please one moment Dr. Wheeling. When you start putting words like quantum mechanics into your sentences my friends here in the room start staring blankly at me.”

  “Perhaps I should try to explain,” David said. “What troubles everyone here is the idea of mind over matter…the idea that one can change the physical world we are used to living in just by the application of mental processes. I have a new word for you – let’s call it ‘mentalization.’ But in fact, this is not a new idea. The central idea has been around for centuries and many people believe in it. Prayer is one of the examples. Many people believe that their prayers are answered – that physical realities occur because of their prayers. They attribute that to God. Now whether you believe in God or not, many doctors will tell you that prayer helps some people get well – that is ‘thoughts’ effect physical changes in the body.”

  The President held up his hand, “Are you saying that this is somehow about the nature of God?”

  “No I’m not, but I expect that many of your constituents will link the idea of a universal consciousness as a proof of God’s existence.”

  The President nodded, “I can see that – in fact I might be able to use that if I ever have to explain this to a national audience. What do you think Barbara?”

  Everyone looked at the hawk-faced woman to the President’s left. “I’ll have to do some polling but that might be a good approach.”

  “This is helpful,” the President said to David, “Keep going.”

  David saw all eyes were on him. “So my point is that the idea of mind over matter is not so foreign to mankind. There have been all the claims that people could bend spoons with their mind or move things around – I’m not saying those claims were true, only that many people believed they could be. The fact is, that if Dr. Planck tried to bend a spoon with his mind …well I think that spoon bends – particularly if he has his team with him and his amplifier in his ear.”

  “Have you actually seen that happen?” the Secretary of Defense asked.

  “Not that, no” David replied, “But Dr. Wheeling and I did see Planck turn unripe green bananas into ripe yellow ones. Hard to believe I know – and it may sound like a parlor trick, but it wasn’t. Planck handed Dr. Wheeling a grocery bag that had green bananas in it then he and his team did a little meditation or mentalization about those bananas turning yellow. Then we opened the bag and the bananas were now ripe.”

  The Secretary of Defense looked at Dr. Wheeling. “You saw it – no tricks, no optical illusions, no magician’s magic or prestidigitation?”

  Dr. Wheeling smiled at the group. “All he did was change the state of certain of the molecules in the bananas. Just the application of our new understanding of physics.”

  The President’s Chief of Staff, Hank Scarpetti, spoke up, “I think we have to accept that this new Physics is real – that mind over matter is real. The Object wants Dr. Planck. Dr. Planck has been kidnapped. The Object did not ask for some hack magician and we have no reports of missing magicians. Also, we have a very distinguished Nobel Prize winning Physicist sitting in front of us telling us this is all true; so let’s start accepting that this new understanding of reality is for real and let’s start deciding what in hell we are going to do about it!”

  David regarded Scarpetti closely. He had heard that Scarpetti was the one who made things happen. But Scarpetti didn’t look like it; he had none of the President’s imposing physical presence. At average height and twenty pounds overweight and thinning hair cut short, he was easy to overlook. Only his unwavering gaze above his sagging jowls suggested there might be something to him. But David thought he could also see hiding under Scarpetti’s very ordinary appearance a fearless resolve to push himself and his ideas to the forefront of any debate. He was a man who liked being the power hiding behind the curtains.

  “I agree with Hank,” the President said. “So what do we do about it? Barbara what do you think? What do you think the polling will tell us? What will the people want us to do?”

  “I’ll get right on that, Mr. President.” She replied.

  “Hold on, let’s think about this,” the Secretary of Defense, Joe Anderson interrupted. “Is this even something we want the people to know about? I think before we do anything we need to throw a big blanket of national security over the top of this until we understand the ramifications much more than we do.”

  “I think Joe is right,” the President agreed. “This could be huge! This is important! … You know what I think? I think we need the equivalent of The Manhattan Project. And it needs to be as secret as that was all during World War II. This is like discovering nuclear energy – like creating the atom bomb! We need to be in complete control of how this is disseminated. The people need to be protected from this – it could cause panic.”

  Hank Scarpetti agreed, “We need to know a lot more about this. We need to see it – understand how it works. Something as revolutionary technologically as this looks like it will be will change how our society works. We can’t just let that run its course without any oversight by us. We have to manage how this unfolds.”

  As the President looked around at his team for agreement, David looked at Dr. Wheeling. As they exchanged a glance they shared the same thought – they both wished they were somewhere else.

  Right then the President remembered they were in the room. He looked back at them. “I hope you two want to be part of the project. What do you think we should call it?”

  Though the President was smiling at them, David didn’t like the smile at all. He was afraid that if he and the professor didn’t want to be part of the project they would be hustled off to some place like Guantanamo before they could even make a phone call.

  Fortunately Dr. Wheeling spoke up for them, “Of course! We consider it our duty as Americans to do what’s best for our country.”

  “Splendid,” said the President as David admired the subtlety of the professor’s remark. Later, if there was a later, he would
have to ask Dr. Wheeling what he really thought.

  Dr. Janus Wheeling didn’t really appreciate that he was being detained somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon until the soldiers, who he now thought of as guards, led him into what looked like a hotel room and then walked out of the room and closed the door behind them – a door he then noticed could only be opened from the outside. He had wondered why earlier they had told David to follow two of them in a different direction, now he knew. As an eminent professor and Nobel Prize winning physicist, he found it hard to believe that they would detain him against his will. He had never thought it possible that anyone could fear that he was a threat to national security.

  He then realized that fear was the key to it. When governments were afraid, their actions could be extreme. When fear takes hold in a government, their need to tighten control was inevitable. So he found himself standing in the middle of what was a well-appointed cell. He then caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror: a tall, thin man with black hair streaked with grey and just long enough for a little ponytail, wearing the blue pinstripe suit and dark tie he had picked for his meeting at The White House. Even with the suit he still looked like a college professor. He took the jacket off and wrapped it around a desk chair and then loosened his tie. He sat on the side of the bed.

  One hour went by and then another as he continued to sit on the side of the bed. At first he was impatient and angry; then he found the quiet and solitude of the room was inducive to thinking through his situation. He found that he was not concerned. He expected that someone would come soon with an agreement for him to sign. They would want him to work for them and in return, after he signed a non-disclosure agreement that if violated would constitute a breach of national security, they would release him. And then they would send him somewhere to work on their hush hush project to learn the New Physics Planck had discovered and then hopefully to weaponize them.

  To his surprise he found that he had no intention of signing anything or going off to the current equivalent of Los Alamos and engaging in their Manhattan Project. He found he was eager to meet again with Planck and David and hopefully with whoever or whatever ran The Object. There was going to be a need to explain these New Physics and their implications to the general public – to the peoples of the world. He found he wanted to be part of that – to even be a leader of it. He realized he had grown too detached, too willing to rest on his laurels. The coming times would be challenging and new leaders needed to emerge. He would refuse to sign anything that would limit his role.

  Then he surprised himself again as he found himself thinking about Dr. Mary Grasso, a professor of Biochemistry who recently he had met at a dinner put together by mutual friends who were trying to set them up. Mary and he had followed that with a dinner at an Italian restaurant that they both knew. But that had been four nights ago and he had not called her afterward. He regretted that now and was annoyed that he could not call her. They had taken his smart phone and no phone was in the room.

  Though only a few years younger than his just about to be sixty years, he found her attractive and fun to talk to; and not at all alike his quiet ex-wife. Mary said she liked going to the movies and the symphony. Then they had talked about running in the park, spurred on in part by his overstating his level of cardio vascular conditioning. But he would get in condition. As soon as he escaped the clasp of the government, he would call her.

  As he sat there on the bed in some high security area in the Pentagon, he smiled to himself. He remembered a favorite time in his life when he was hard at work on solving the problem that had led to his winning the Nobel Prize. His commitment and focus was so total – nothing else mattered. Yet it was a great time. A lot of years ago, he conceded, but not too many. He had simply grown a little complacent. Time to throw that off! Though brilliant physics insights tended to come before one was thirty years old, what the situation now called for was something he could well accomplish. Now was not the time to yield to age …or to a government that thought it knew best what was needed.

  Later that evening, Hank Scarpetti took a sip of his single malt scotch as he sat in the kitchen of his longtime friend General Carl Greene who also had a glass of scotch in his hand. The two of them had agreed they needed to meet as soon as possible when they had walked out of the meeting with the President that followed the meeting with Dr. Wheeling and David Randall. They had been friends long enough and good enough that they trusted to talk frankly with each other. In D.C. that was rare in normal circumstances and these circumstances were the antitheses of normal.

  At sixty years old and having spent twenty five years in Washington including ten years as a Congressman from his home state of Illinois and then four years as Chief of Staff of a former President, Scarpetti thought he had seen it all. Then six months earlier he had reluctantly agreed to take another stint as Chief of Staff because the current President’s term and a half in office was a widening sinkhole for their Party. He thought he had just started to make some progress when The Object had shown up on the horizon. Its arrival he at first had thought, like any good politician, might be a great opportunity – if it didn’t destroy the planet – but now he wasn’t so sure. Between dealing with The Object and dealing with the implications of the New Physics – the term now used around the White House because they couldn’t really describe what Planck had come up with, real leadership was going to be required of the President. And no amount of issue polling could fill that need.

  Scarpetti looked over at his friend and was struck how strong and fit Greene looked – not just physically strong, but intellectually and emotionally too, yet they were both about the same age. Greene looked ready to face these new challenges. But Scarpetti couldn’t say the same about himself. It wasn’t just that he was twenty five pounds overweight, balding and a little jowly, he was tired too. But he knew he had to rise up and find his A game again. He just had to!

  “So Carl, you’ve been working on this New Physics thing for a couple of days now – what does your gut tell you?”

  “I think it all is for real.”

  “If it is – then everything is going to change.”

  “Maybe…but maybe not as much as you think.” The general said as he sipped his drink.

  Scarpetti sipped his as well and then said, “You want to hear something funny? You know Jill and I have been married now for about eight years. A second marriage for both of us… and we both had been single for a while before we met. Well about a year before we met Jill wrote down on a piece of paper a list of all the characteristics that she wanted in a man. And some of the things she listed were pretty darn specific. At the time I was still living in Chicago. She put that list in a drawer and forgot about it. But then I moved here to D.C. and we were set up on a blind date and from the first day we met we started being together – like we were made for each other. A couple of months later she found the list – and I pretty much was everything she had listed. We joked and said it was that list that brought me back to D.C. That it was the Universe bringing to her what she asked for.”

  “The Universe?”

  “Yea, the Universe. Of course that was just a way of putting a name on how our individual personal realities come together. Who knew it might have been the actual force?” Scarpetti took another sip. “Pretty ironic, don’t you think?”

  “If Dr. Planck is to be believed, apparently Jill’s list was received loud and clear.”

  “Yea… of course now Jill says after having been married for a while she’d like to add a few things to that list.”

  “My wife would like a list like that too.”

  They both just sat in silence for a moment and then each knew it was time to talk about what they really needed to talk about.

  “So what do you think of the President’s idea to start up some kind of Manhattan Project to deal with the situation?” Scarpetti asked Greene. Scarpetti had long ago learned that starting conversations with questions was a great way to ensure that he didn’t
say something stupid by talking before he had been thinking.

  “I don’t know that it is even possible in this age of the Internet – information flows too freely.”

  Scarpetti shrugged, “Perhaps…but I think we have to try. We can’t afford to lose control of this. People would start looking to the Universe for assistance and stop looking to government. We could lose our hold on them. And the people aren’t ready to deal with mind over matter. That would put too much power in their hands.”

  Greene was not surprised by his friend’s answer, though he didn’t agree with it. With all that had happened in the last couple of days he’d been forced to accept that major changes were looming. As intelligent as he knew he was, he knew there was no way he could anticipate all that was ahead. He had decided the best he could do was to help steer its military implications. “You think the government is ready for this new power?”

  “Absolutely! We are the only one’s who’ll know what to do. We have the smartest people in the world within our government – we have the academic community to draw on. Who else could do it? You know you can’t put this kind of control in the hands of the people. Forget what we say on the campaign trail – this is the biggest thing to hit mankind in a thousand years! Situations like the one that faces us now are what governments are supposed to manage.”

  “You think the government can manage this? This President’s administration isn’t exactly known for management competency.”

  “That’s why I’m here now. I know how to manage this!”

  General Greene had learned to be more cautious in the use of power – like most senior military officers. “So the answer for now is to throw a shroud of ‘national security’ over it all?”

  “Yes! Damn right.”

  “And that’s why we just took a writer from The Washington Post and a Nobel Prize winning physicist and put them in isolated detention, shut off from communication with anyone.”