Love Story: In The Web of Life

by Ken Renshaw

  Candice emailed back, 'I am going home at noon on Friday because I have a light day. Why don't you come visit us at home in the afternoon-Altadena isn't that much farther than UCLA- and you can meet Tom. He is very interested in what you are doing. He can give you some ideas about the space-time travel he does with his clients.'

  I replied that I could be there about two-to-three, depending on the Friday afternoon traffic.

  She texted me the car GPS navigation information to get me to her house.

  Tina texted me a message: "Dinner sounds great. Pick me up at 7:00? Let's go to Hernando's for margaritas."

  I replied. ":-)"

  She responded, ":-x"

  ****

  I worked for a while and then Zaza came in and announced,

  "Bob Bennet who is working on that big new drug patent case wants you to join him in the conference room. He wants to introduce you to someone from his clients' company. You are supposed to brag about the settlement of Genstem."

  I walked into the conference room, and Bob introduced me to Sam Perris, the Chief Scientist at ChralMed, his new client. Sam was about six-feet six, weighed over two hundred fifty pounds, with silver hair, and had piercing stern grey eyes. He was dressed in a well-tailored blue suit. I was intimidated as he towered over me, shook my hand with threatening eye contact and a grip worthy of a dockworker. He said with a stern deep voice, "Pleased to meet you."

  As we sat down on at the conference table, Bob said, "Dave, outline your Gensten case, the one where we won the client a huge settlement."

  "I already know about that one," Interrupted Sam before I could open my mouth. "We encourage you to do as well or better for us. Our case should be worth many times the Gensten settlement."

  Bob started to say, "Bracken and Stevens has every confidence..."

  Sam interrupted in a big voice, "We expect nothing but the best. The scientific issues of our case are complicated but clearly in our favor. We want your best minds. Are you going to be helping Bob? Dave? Was it?"

  I replied, "Bob will have whatever resources he wishes to call on at Bracken and Stevens. Temporarily, I am assigned to another case that will be over in about ..."

  Sam interrupted. "What kind of case is more important than ChralMed's?

  "None! This is a prior commitment. The trial will be over in about a month."

  Sam inserted with an angry voice, "What kind of trial is over in a month?"

  It is a liability case involving...."

  Sam put his hands palm down on the table. "You are not working on ChralMed's case because you are on some slip and fall liability case?"

  "It involves a child's death and a former CIA psychic spy."

  Sam stood erect, as if called to attention.

  "Well, then, more power to you. Go after this so-called psychic. I am a member of a skeptics' organization dedicated to exposing fraud by all claimed psychic practitioners. There has not been one instance where could not expose trickery or faulty data analysis of any claimed demonstration. Get the bastards. They're the scourges of our age"

  Bob was looking chagrined. His eyes were saying, 'Help me out here.'

  Sam's face got redder and his eyes glared. He spoke in a louder voice, "All these claims about ESP are a bunch of crap. ESP is against all laws of physics and reason." He was shouting.

  "It's a good thing we have skeptical scientists dedicated to disproving all bullshit claims of ESP and other paranormal activities."

  I could tell he was starting on an even longer tirade. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket, pretended to read a text message, and said, "Pleased to meet you Sam. I am afraid I have to excuse myself for another meeting."

  As I left, Sam continued his rant at Bob. I thought to myself, "He's your grizzly bear. You get the collar on him."

  ****

  I had previously decided to get a second opinion of Candice's work from someone in the scientific community. I contact Dr. Peter Gallagher, an elderly physicist at UCLA who, in the process of retiring, had taken on the role of 'expert witness' in legal cases. He had been a good witness in one of my patent cases. I wanted to sit down with him and see what he thought about Candice's work. We had arranged to meet at his office at UCLA. Peter arranged for guest parking for me and emailed me a map of campus.

  UCLA has been in a period of great expansion in the past decades. Big, boxy industrial looking buildings with no unique features were side-by side in the new area. It appeared that UCLA had decided not to waste money on architects when they built the new additions. As I drove through, I thought how dismal an isolated researcher must be, working on a small grant, in a warren of offices in nondescript buildings. Strangely, Google and Apple have centers that are like campuses, while UCLA has research centers that look like high-rise industrial parks.

  Peter's office was in Sihler Hall, one of the older buildings in the original part of campus, looking as though it had been built in the nineteen thirties– a red brick exterior, white cement trim, only three stories tall, situated overlooking an open space with lawns and trees. I walked up to the third floor to Peter's office. His small office, looking out on the green space, crammed with books, was somehow very tidy and organized.

  Peter was a jolly–looking gray-haired man, balding, paunchy, wearing a worn sport coat and a sport shirt with a bolo tie.

  "Good to see you again, Dave. Sit down. Any trouble getting parked?"

  "No, I'd forgotten how beautiful it is in this part of campus."

  "I'm lucky, I guess on being on a faculty committee that requires me to be up here. One of my friends calls the new part of campus as 'E2L-ville' since, for many people down there, English is a second language. 'Big Research Dollar Granteese' is the native language. They need to build and fill those buildings as fast as they can. Big science means big research bucks, which means prestigious positions, which means prestigious university.

  "Up here, we still deal with something called education.

  "But, you didn't come out here to talk about how it was in the old days. I read Dr. Montgomery's papers and I am quite impressed. I had a couple of my peers also look at them. Nobody could find any scientific flaws! But, the eight-space paradigm is the kind of thing that would be hard to get accepted. Much of that big science juggernaut on the south campus would have to reorient its direction. Many people in many prestigious positions would have to significantly alter their programs. They would have to add crow to the south campus cafeteria menus because many people would need to eat it.

  "The first law of science is: you never can convince someone about something new if it will cost them money, from grants or department budgets.

  "The second law is: academia never accepts new ideas until the old ones retire.

  "Dr. Montgomery's ideas are perfectly sound. It will probably take a generation or more for anything like that to get academic acceptance. However, I'll be glad to testify to her paper's soundness for you."

  "Good!" I replied.

  Peter looking into the distance added, "Right after I graduated, I had to serve my ROTC commitment. It was toward the end of the war in Vietnam. I was assigned to a menial job in an aircraft carrier.

  "A Carrier Task Force is an amazing thing to see in action. The carrier carrying the Flag officer is at the center. Around that are screens of destroyers, and sometimes missile frigates, tankers carrying fuel oil, supply ships, etc. Tens of thousands of men going the same direction.

  "If the man on the bridge with the stars on his shoulders says, 'change the course by thirty degrees,' slowly but surely, all those ships change to the new direction, without altering the formation. It is awesome!

  "Changing the scientific direction of those people in the block buildings in the south campus would be much more difficult!"

  "Maybe our trial will add some stars to shoulders of those who might like to try." I replied.

  "It could change the practice of medicine by having doctors consider symptoms and maladies that might originate from other
space times!"

  Peter and I discussed the case and his suggestions on how to approach it for a while, and then I left.

  ****

  It took an hour to get to Candice's house in Altadena, built on the rolling hills on the border of where the land gives way to steep brush–covered mountains, above Pasadena. Some parts of the neighborhood looked as though it had been built in the 1930s, with porches where people sat and conversed with passing-by neighbors. Others built in the 1960s with low sloping roofs and stained wood siding, in a modern style, which had concealed entrances and no street side windows. It seemed the third generation monolithic faux Mediterranean stucco homes with intimidating entrances were replacing some of the older homes. The streets were lined with an assortment of palm trees from the thirties, when they were considered exotic plants, and an assortment of cypress and pine that were adapted to a semi-desert environment.

  Candice's house was of one of the 1930s California Bungalow Style ranch houses, with river rockwork around pillars in front of large porches, where people used to sit on hot days before air conditioning conversing with passing neighbors. It was elegantly and apparently lovingly restored and maintained. Candice met me at the door.

  "Come in Dave, welcome to 'almost the mountains'."

  "I love your house!" I paused and looked around the living room.

  "I love all the reddish natural wood trim against the forest green walls. Great Mission furniture! Is that picture by one of the California Impressionists?"

  "I'm impressed. Yes that is a Joanne Cromwell painting from the same era the house was built. We also decorated with authentic period furnishings. This is a 1930s house in most respects, except for the plumbing, wiring, kitchen appliances, air conditioning, and Tom's electronic music studio."

  "I can tell," I replied.

  Tom came into the room.

  "Dave Willard, meet Tom Watson," said Candice.

  Tom was a skinny, fortyish man with long, dark red hair pulled back into a ponytail, a bulbous red bushy beard and, small wire-rimmed glasses. He was wearing sandals and a black T-shirt with a Yamaha logo. He had a delightful sparkle in his eyes.

  "Pleased to meet you, Tom, I have been admiring your house. It seems very authentic except for the tech upgrades."

  They gave me a tour of the house and then suggested we enjoy the afternoon on the back patio. We enjoyed some iced tea and talked about living with wilderness right up against the back yard and the variety of animals about.

  I thought of my mobile home in the desert and said, "I have a mobile home in the desert at a place called CrystalAire, about 3,500 feet elevation, on the other side of the mountains in your back yard. I have a view across a hundred miles of desert, to the Sierras in the North and toward Las Vegas in the East. The day after a rainstorm, the desert will be a carpet of little yellow wildflowers. In the evening, I can hear Coyotes.

  "The mobile home is next to an airfield. I keep a sailplane there. I soar in the mountains and into the desert, sometimes for six hours in one day"

  I noticed Tom was looking at me with the same gaze Georgia Manteo used when she was sensing something psychic.

  Tom interrupted, "Sailplanes are those things with two wings. Aren't they called biplanes?"

  "No," I replied. "My sailplane has a single, long wing fifteen meters from tip-to-tip. They're sleek. Since there is no motor to house, the fuselage is only big enough for a man in a reclining position. Mine is made of gleaming white fiberglass and composite materials. They can glide a long way. If I were twenty–thousand feet above us here in Altadena, I could glide to Las Vegas.

  "Often, I find myself soaring with hawks or eagles. I enjoy that sense of freedom."

  "That sounds like quite a sport," Tom smiled.

  I was a little embarrassed. "Excuse my enthusiasm. I can go on for hours about soaring and my adventures."

  "It sounds like quite a passion," commented Candice. "Talk about vulnerability–flying to Las Vegas without a motor. How does this fit with your lawyering?"

  "It's the antidote!"

  They laughed.

  Candice said, "Lets go back to lawyering. Tell Tom about your case."

  "On the surface, it is a liability suit by the parents of a girl who got lost and died in a snowstorm. The suit is against a sheriff who ignored a credentialed psychic who told him exactly where a lost girl was. The girl's life could have been saved if the sheriff had acted on the information.

  "My client, Colson–also Candice's research sponsor–wants to make it a test case to show that the psychic was doing something explainable by science. He wants to open people's eyes to the idea that, with the eight-dimensional paradigm in physics, ESP is scientifically legitimate.

  "I find that all manner of information about psychic phenomena is coming my way. I have witnessed and learned about channeling, I have found the lady in my life can pick up my mental pictures. I find that I am now able to tune into and feel vibrations of people. Of course, Candice's work on eight-space is a foundation for all my scientific thinking and acceptance of all these new ideas."

  Then, I said to Tom, "Candice says you do counseling involving space-time perceptions. People's space-time perceptions will fit right into the puzzle I am working on."

  Candice excused herself and said, "I'll leave you guys to talk about this."

  Tom looked pleased and started, "People have been doing counseling involving space-time perceptions for a long time. For example, I read about a famous faith healer in the 1980s, who would have a person identify some problem, such as being mad at mother, and then ask for them to visualize the last time they were mad at mother. Then, they would tell the person to visualize Jesus coming into their visualization, taking them by the hand, and then walking backward in time to the previous time they were mad at mother. They repeated the walk backward to the earlier time they were mad at mother, which might be some time when they were a toddler and got spanked. Then, they would deal with the emotion in that time frame and the feelings of being mad at mother would be gone. I have left out some of the details of the procedure."

  "There have been hundreds of kinds of this general class of therapy, that I call 'sequential recall,' used by various people over the years. Some interventions, particularly those that were highly structured, could be very effective. Some people make significant changes in their emotional life in short times with this kind of therapy. For some, it can be the result of a weekend or weeklong workshop, for others it can be a matter of months of one-to-one counseling. Usually, tremendous change can happen by getting rid of a few really big issues."

  "Keep going!' I said, “I’m very interested in how this all relates to space-time."

  Tom thought for a minute and then said. "I think I know of a good metaphor. Lets take a little walk in the back yard."

  We got up, and Tom led the way to a clump of avocado trees in the back of his yard. He led the way through leaves and branches to a wooden fence.

  "Here, meet Mr. Spider, as Candice calls him. He is hiding up in that corner of the web, under that leaf."

  Tom pointed to a large, very elaborate spider web woven between branches of a tree and the fence.

  "His web is beautiful when it is covered with morning dew. After we first discovered him, or her, we don't know, we would swat flies and them bring them out here and throw them in the web. Mr. S would scrabble out from his hiding place and jump on the fly. Mr. S monitored the threads coming from his corner and when one vibrated he seemed to know exactly what part of the web to scramble to. He has information connections to the entire web. His attention is consumed in being aware of all parts of his web."

  "My metaphor is that we live in a web of space-time, a web of life. We have threads from where we are now to many places in our life. We normally call those places memories or subconscious memories, childhood memories for example. Our information threads are tied to emotional incidents that were of significance to us. Those threads are interconnected to other similar emotional inci
dents, similar to the cross–ties Mr. S has in his web. For many people, all their attention is tied up in a web with these information ties. When you talk to them, you have the feeling they are not really there. Sometimes, people are living their lives consumed with one idea that their web is tied to, like a spider with a one strand web."

  "I think I get the idea," I replied, "would you give me some more examples?"

  "Suppose your mother shouted at you that you were not good enough while spanking you when you were six years old. The idea might not be in your conscious mind, but still be connected to hundreds of later times when someone told you, implied, or made you believe you were not good enough. Your whole life might be organized around making up for being not good enough.

  "In space-time therapy, we would have you clear out the information web tied to the present and all the times when being not good enough came up. Sometimes it is very simple, and sometimes hard, to take the web of associations apart. Sometimes, simply recognizing the script, being not good enough, is the hardest part."

  "I get that" I replied. "More examples?"

  "Here is a real example of how an incident can dominate a person's life, which I surmised from reading the newspapers about a billionaire who recently died. This man, John, and his younger brother, Paul, and their father were all working together in a family business, which, as I recall, was a retail furniture store. His father announced he would retire and said he would pass the business on to Paul. When confronted by John, the father says, 'I am giving the business to Paul because I don't think you will be responsible enough to make money and keep the business going. You will never amount to anything.'

  "John left the business and struck out on his own, seriously dedicated to proving his father wrong. Although his father died a few years after John left, John worked ruthlessly, never achieving any real relationship with his many wives and assorted children, until he became one of the richest people in the world. He died a bitter, lonely man, but he did make his father wrong.