Authors: Bill Diffenderffer
Khalil was consumed by the big idea he had. He hungered to regain the sense of joy that he had felt in the first few hours after destroying the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. But when he started to tell people that he was the one who did it, very few believed him! And then there were the rumors that some secret cell of Iranians had done it. Looking back now he realized he had not handled that well. He had lost his temper and had screamed at people he should not have screamed at. Quite reasonably they thought he was deranged. He was claiming credit for the greatest act against both Israel and the Americans and he had no proof. And he had not told anyone ahead of time. So no one gave him any recognition or credit. But he knew he had been the one!
He knew and it gave him confidence that he could do it again. And the act would be even bigger! But he knew he needed the help of Hasan. He needed the special missile that was so powerful and left that strange blue-tinged mushroom-like cloud of smoke. And he needed other help as well, but he believed Hasan could help him do it. He had thought a lot about Hasan in the last two months and believed that he understood what Hasan was doing. Though Khalil didn’t know how, he suspected that Hasan might have been involved with the acts of terrorism in New York and Paris and London. Khalil had to admit he was jealous of those acts. How he wished he had been part of that!
Khalil figured that Hasan had been very busy recently. Hasan wanted all these acts of terrorism to happen. It bothered Khalil that he did not know why. Hasan had told him he was helping to do the work of the Great Prophet because that was his beliefs too. Maybe so, but Hasan’s Earth was not Khalil’s Earth, so Khalil feared trusting him too much. But he could ask for Hasan’s help without trusting him too much. The target was worth taking many risks! To strike inside America at one of its mightiest landmarks would stun the world. Khalil’s reward in both this life and the next would be great – and this time he would make sure that there would be no doubts that he was the one.
Khalil ordered another cup of espresso and watched the people going by. At times he envied those people who led normal lives. He would have liked a wife and sons. Looking back he wasn’t sure when his path had been chosen. He didn’t think he had ever made the decision. Perhaps it was like they said: a man’s life was written in the sands of time before he was ever born. His fate was unavoidable. He could believe that. And he would not seek to change it. His destiny was to do great things. When he had done them, then he could have a wife and strong sons.
A man came from behind Khalil and slid into the seat next to him at the small table.
“Hello Khalil, you wish to talk to me?” Hasan asked.
David looked up from his desk where he was reading the latest news stories on his laptop and studied Gabriela as she was reading a physics paper while lying on their couch. She wasn’t going to like what he was thinking. She saw him looking over at her and put down her iPad.
“I think I need to try to get another interview with Captain Ragnar. And I think I need to try to meet with the Captain of The Lucky Dragon too.”
Gabriela looked at him like he was crazy, “No you don’t. You really don’t. Things are too dangerous now. This isn’t about science anymore. The massacre at the Paris airport wasn’t about science. The bombing at Times Square wasn’t about science. And whatever it was that happened in Beijing, that wasn’t about science either!”
Gabriela straightened up to a sitting position on the couch, “David, I’m scared. And you should be too. What’s going on now isn’t like anything we had before. The cable news stations can’t even keep up with it all. Last week was horrible. I love New York, but I’m afraid to walk down the street.”
David rose up from the desk and came to sit in the armchair close to Gabriela. “Now that’s crazy. The odds are far against anything happening to you. Or to me. You know that.”
“Sure I know that. But I don’t feel that. I feel like suddenly the world is a much more dangerous place!”
“It was always dangerous. We just didn’t focus on that.”
“Exactly. It wasn’t happening here. Well now it is happening to us. And I can’t ignore it now.”
David looked at this woman whom he loved and didn’t really have anything to tell her that would make her feel any better. Instead he was offering something that would scare her more. “I know. I feel it too. It is happening to us now. But I do think it is connected to the arrival of these other Earths – if only because the timing can’t be coincidental. And I feel I have to do everything I can do to help. And if I can meet with Captain Ragnar and whoever is the boss on The Lucky Dragon, then I need to do it.”
“But they aren’t going to tell you anything.”
“I won’t know that until I ask.”
“Why can’t you just go talk to Plato? What does he think about all this?”
“I think this is what he was warning us about. But you’re right; I should talk to him too.” David breathed out slowly as he thought about what he knew he had to do. He felt like he had no choice. Somewhere earlier he had started down a path that led him now to meetings with these leaders from other Earths and he knew he just had to stay on the path. Even as he knew the path was getting more treacherous, he had to stay on it.
“Good. Then we can go to Planck’s island.”
“Yes, but not until after I go up to The Freya and The Lucky Dragon.”
Gabriela could see he was not going to change his mind. “But after that we can go to the island, right?”
“What is this ‘we can go’ thing?” David teased.
“Don’t even pretend to think you can go without me!”
The same shuttle came to pick David up at the same place as the last time. The same soldier was on board and once again gave him a quick security check. The soldier seemed as bored with his task as any airport security guard. The only real difference was there was no x-ray machine and he was allowed to keep his small bottles of water.
David sat at the same table in The Freya’s lounge as he had the last time he had interviewed the Captain. This time he had more time to look around as Captain Ragnar had not yet arrived. He was struck how similar this lounge looked to that of the U.S. Navy ship lounges he had been on when he was researching an article on an advanced model of a Destroyer class ship. There was even what looked like a big refrigerator and next to it a microwave oven. The few tables and chairs looked made out of aluminum and plastic. It certainly did not look particularly space age.
It also struck him this time that the ship was probably not that large. The lounge looked like it could only accommodate about twenty people at a time and he thought he recognized a couple of people from the last time he was there. He wondered if there was some minimum number of people required to meditate together to move the ship through the dimensions necessary to transport the Freya from its world to this Earth. He made a note to talk to Plato about that.
He also started noticing that the people he had seen walking in the hallways or sitting in the lounge seemed to fall into two groups. Though all wore the same uniform, some looked much more militaristic in them than others. The ones who looked like they didn’t belong in a uniform had a more calm and slow moving way of being. David noticed too that the two groups didn’t mix. The non-militants seemed to be there at the sufferance of the real soldiers. To David’s perception they seemed a recent adjunct to the crew.
After a five minute wait, the Captain arrived. He greeted David with a handshake and a quick and limited smile and took a seat. Captain Ragnar looked across the table at David Randall. He had quickly agreed to be interviewed this second time by David because he preferred putting his message across in the press rather than the TV media. With the press, messages could be more carefully crafted and one could always claim to have been misquoted or not understood. Visual media was too immediate and too subject to impressions. And he knew that he did not come across sufficiently amiable and friendly. He liked the indirectness of the print media.
He liked the timing of this interview as well as the fact that the interviewer was the foremost science writer and not a writer who wrote the usual front page news. Though very satisfied with the onslaught of recent terrorism, he did not want to be closely tied to it. He very much wanted to appear to be above it all. And he knew he needed to make that point.
David started by asking some warm up questions about how he was finding this Earth to be different from his Earth. As he had before, his answers made it appear that the two Earths were pretty similar. And he shared how he missed his wife and two children and looked forward to seeing them soon. He found he like talking about his non-existent family.
He was waiting for David to bring up the issue of the upsurge in terrorism and soon David did.
“So Captain, as you probably know a lot of people think that this recent wave of terrorism is somehow the result of your arrival and that of the other two ships from other Earths. What do you have to say about that?”
The Captain gave David his most concerned and sincere look. “The recent events are horrible to be sure. And I cannot really say what actions might have been taken by The Lucky Dragon or by The Bucephalus, but I can assure you we had no direct hand in any of it. But that is not to say that the increase in terrorist activity is unrelated to our arrival and the arrival of the others.”
“And how is that?” David asked.
“The political situation on your planet is very unstable. With the arrival of what your people think of as three ships from outer space, tensions and anxieties and uncertainty is certain to increase. Plus there is the very strangeness of the Participatory Physics that they are learning about. These raise very unsettling issues and concerns. One’s very worldview is shown to have been wrong at a fundamental level. Put all that together with religious extremists and long simmering nationalistic rivalries and it is like lighting a match in a fireworks factory. There are bound to be explosions. Our arrival is the incendiary factor – even though we took no provocative actions. When we have arrived in similar circumstances on other Earths where the local governments are more in control, there has not been any sudden increase in violence.”
David considered the response, and then said, “So you think that we are essentially responsible for these recent acts of terror?”
“You must admit the problems preceded our arrival.”
David nodded, “That is certainly true. But there are rumors of heightened provocations by unknown participants.”
“I don’t know of such rumors,” the Captain said.
“For instance, “David persisted, “It seems that there is circulating through the Islamist extremist community the idea that on other Earths, Islam is much more powerful and that the Muslims here are somehow deficient in their commitment to Allah.”
“Again, I’m sorry I don’t know of that. But it is true that Islam is far more powerful on other Earths.”
David decided he needed to change directions. “So Captain, what are your plans here now that you’ve been here a while?”
“Well we are still learning about your Earth. But I will tell you confidentially that we are in discussions with companies here over the sharing of intellectual capital. Our scientists have gone down different paths and I believe we have much to trade.”
“Could you give some examples of that?”
The Captain waved the subject off. “That would be premature for now. But we are quite satisfied with how things are progressing.”
David thought about the Captain’s assessment. Even allowing for cultural differences, the Captain seemed rather smug in his final comment.
Looking around at The Freya’s military austerity and the uniforms and demeanor of the crew who passed through the lounge, David couldn’t quite reconcile what he saw with the Captain’s statements that their mission was to find trading partners for intellectual property.
The Captain watched David leave with one of the men he had ordered to escort David back to his car. He was pleased with the interview and wondered how much more media he should do. He didn’t like the attention and he didn’t like dealing with the media. Though necessary, he thought nothing good could come of it. Still, he had needed to be public in his denials. As things continued to worsen, it would be increasingly important to have his denials on record. And as he knew better than anyone, events were going to get much worse. So he would place blame on everyone but himself. In fact he needed to think more on how to do that best. People would believe what they read in the newspaper.
Chapter Thirteen
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
Albert Einstein
Hank Scarpetti sunk down into the corner of the sofa across from where the President was sitting in a facing sofa in the Oval Office. Though only the middle of the afternoon, he was bone deep tired. Still, he thought he looked and felt better than the President. The last ten days had been brutal and it showed on the President’s face. He looked like he had aged ten years in just the ten days. He was slumped down, his face pale and slack and his eyes seemed to just randomly stare at things without any real comprehension of what he was looking at. Scarpetti realized he probably looked the same way. Right then both men had centered their gaze into the unlit fireplace at the north end of the room.
They had both just come out of another emergency meeting in the Situation Room. The meeting had accomplished nothing. Thoughtless recommendations had been tossed around by the cabinet members desperate to act as if they knew what to do. But they didn’t. All they really accomplished was to share with each other all the real and imagined security threats that seemed to be popping up everywhere now. The intelligence briefings were jammed with fact-less rumors of devastating events and fearful ‘what-ifs’ that showcased real vulnerabilities. And then there were the things that were certainly true. And they were horrible as well.
After a few long silent moments the President turned his gaze from the formless depths of the fireplace to the haggard face of his Chief of Staff. “We need to do something!” President Morningstar declared. “There’s got to be something we can do.”
“We don’t have enough information,” Scarpetti responded. “I want to hit something but I don’t know what to swing at.”
“I know I can’t just keep sitting here in the Oval Office doing nothing. I know a lot of Americans died in Paris….including Arthur Glass, a friend of mine dating back to law school. And his wife and son too. Five Americans died in that bombing in Munich. In London more Americans died. And Times Square was just terrible. The people are looking to me to do something! And you just say we don’t know enough.”
Scarpetti shared the President’s anger and frustration. So he just said what they all knew already, “Each incident seems different – with different players. And who knows what went on in China? That is the most bizarre of all…and perhaps the most dangerous. That’s the one that scares me.”
The President nodded. “I agree. But let’s come back to that one. And let’s set aside the Munich train station bombing. I think that was a sort of copycat thing. They wanted to get in on the action. But London, Paris and Times Square seem related – and are probably tied some way to the Tel Aviv bombing of our Embassy. And since we think that the missile that destroyed the embassy didn’t come from this world then by implication one of our visitors from other Earths may have had something to do with them too.”
“OK. But which visitor? Plato and his guys? The Freya? The Lucky Dragon?”
“That’s the problem isn’t it?” The President tried looking up at the ceiling, but found no answers there either. He knew from his reading of history that great Presidents made the tough decisions that were proven by events to have been correct. Looking backwards over the decades and centuries those decisions had seemed easy enough to him. Now he was thinking that maybe they had not been so obvious back then.
“Yes Mr. President. But you know, General Greene said something interesting at the last meeting. He reminded us that at least according to Plato, they do not all have the same level of technology. So they are not all equally powerful.”
“What are you getting at Hank?”
“Well…we know that shooting missiles at Plato’s ship didn’t work. But maybe The Freya or The Lucky Dragon can’t do what The Bucephalus can do. Maybe we are not as powerless against them as we think.”
The President thought about it. “You think we should try to find out?”
“I think we should at least develop plans. And I think we have to find out what each of them is up to. I think the guys at Langley should be told to do whatever it takes to find out whatever we can. Because I’ll bet there is more coming at us. And it will get worse each time. I don’t know that we are even safe here in the White House.”
The President nodded glumly. “I’ve thought about that. But I have to stay here and be visible. The symbol matters. But I’ve ordered the Vice President to stay away from me until the situation normalizes.”
Scarpetti gave a grim laugh, “Well, at least some good is coming out of this.”
The President shook his head, “Don’t get me started.”
Scarpetti shuddered. “I don’t want to think about him running the country!”
The President grimaced. “It’s not my favorite thought either.” He looked around the room and then returned his gaze to his Chief of Staff. “OK…now tell me about China. How bad is that situation?”
Scarpetti took a deep breath before turning to that. “We are picking up some strange intel that maybe the Japanese were behind it as some sort of retaliation for something China did to them. But again, I don’t see how it could have happened. The security there around Tiananmen Square and The Great Hall is incredible. So it makes me think that one of the other Earths could be involved. But again we have the question as to which one?”
“It seems there has to be some way for us to learn who and what we are dealing with. Have we heard anything back yet as to meeting with The Lucky Dragon?”
Scarpetti shook his head, “Not yet. But we know that the Chinese have met with them. But we don’t know what was said there. And we suspect but cannot get confirmation that the Japanese Prime Minister has had a meeting with them.”
“That’s not good enough! Tokyo has to keep me informed. I want to know everything that’s going on. All of a sudden, everything going on over there seems to be in crisis mode and no one is telling us anything.”
“Imagine if the General Secretary had not been running late. If he had died in the blast who knows what would have resulted!”
The President sat up straighter on the couch as he sought to lift up both his body and his spirit. “We have to learn more! What could have provoked the bombing there? If someone in Japan’s government is behind that, we could be looking at World War III.”
As David and Gabriela looked out the window of the charter airplane as it came in to land on Pirate’s Cay, it struck David that the pretty little island was like the quiet center of a turbulent hurricane. The gentle waves of the turquoise waters of the Caribbean lapping against the island’s sandy shore foretold nothing of the political dramas playing out in the world’s capital cities. The sunshine streaming onto the island belied the storm clouds gathering worldwide.
Once the small plane had landed and come to a stop near the little shed that served as the island’s airport, David and Gabriela grabbed their bags and as they exited the plane were glad to see Planck waiting for them next to his Landrover. Next to him was a very pretty woman holding his hand. Planck introduced her, “This is Megan Baxter. She has been helping me with social media stuff.” They all exchanged handshakes and Gabriela hugged Planck.
“It’s great to see you, it’s been a while!” Planck said. David and Gabriela both echoed the sentiment. They were now clearly comrades in arms and wanted to share their recent battle stories.
Gabriela grinned at Megan, “Now I understand how it is that Planck has become such a media sensation – it would have taken a lot to get him out of his island mentality!”
David gave Planck a friendly punch on the shoulder, “Apparently not so much – just the determination of a beautiful – and I’m sure talented woman.”
“Planck has told me a lot about the two of you. And of course, David, I follow your articles and your blog posts. I’m looking forward to knowing you both better.” Megan responded.
“Definitely,” said Gabriela, “You’ll find it is a very small island.”
“Guess what?” Planck continued, “Dr. Wheeling is here – with a lady friend I might add – and he and I want to bring you up to date on what we’ve been figuring out the last two months. And then I think you are supposed to meet with Plato. He’s here a lot now…but very busy. A lot of people keep coming here to meet with him. It’s a real list of the movers and the shakers. Most of who seem to have their own airplanes – though not all.”
“I can’t wait, let’s do it!” declared Gabriela, dashing David’s idea of first taking a swim in the ocean.
They met in one of the conference rooms in the main building. The room seemed to have been converted into a classroom with desks arranged in a half-circle and whiteboards in the front and on the side walls. When David and Gabriela entered the room, the professor was there with Planck and Catherine Ozawa was there as well. David noticed immediately that Catherine somehow looked different and then realized that she looked ten years younger than when he had seen her last which he figured was about two months earlier. He saw that Gabriela had noticed the change too.
After the greetings were done, Dr. Wheeling stepped to the front and turned to focus particularly on David and Gabriela. It seemed Planck and Ozawa were already in the know.
“In the last few weeks we have really come to understand more of the basics of Participatory Physics,” he began. “We have pretty much had to figure things out from first principles as Plato’s people seem prohibited from sharing too much. Still, in science it is always much easier to reverse engineer a theory once you know the result. And they have helped us understand the potentialities that are the product of a Participatory universe.”
Planck interrupted, “It’s so cool! The Professor has taken the work I had done and saw how to extend it. He even figured out the beginnings of an equation that can be used to show the energy requirements to transform the states and molecular structure of matter to effect the desired changes. It’s remarkable – some changes require relatively little energistic expenditure and others quite a lot. But for the equation to work we had to come up with a new constant.”
The professor took back control. “Yes we think there is a necessary constant. And Plato’s people seem to confirm its necessity. And despite my young friend’s exuberance for it, we are not going to call it ‘the other Planck constant.’ That would go too far.” David and Gabriela laughed, all sharing a joke that only other physicists would think was funny.
“So where does the energy come from?” Gabriela asked.
“It’s all around us!” Planck exclaimed. “And it’s the most abundant and cheapest energy in the universe.”
“Dark energy,” both David and Gabriela said simultaneously.
“Precisely,” stated Dr. Wheeling.
“And how do you tap into it?” asked David.
“Through the mind of course. But that is where the challenge lies. It all occurs at the electromagnetic level. And because the pulses are so tiny there are quantum fluctuations that must be accounted for. And that is what we have been focusing on for the last few weeks. And I should say that Dr. Ozawa has been invaluable in this area.”
Catherine Ozawa shook her head, “These guys are way over my head. I just help with the meditation aspects that prove the theory. You see we are learning that not all people have equal abilities to do the mentalization. And the variance among people seems to exist both because of training differentials but also genetic differences. Some people seem naturally pre-wired so to speak, while others seem to have no wiring for it at all.”
Gabriela quickly saw the sociological implications, “So mankind will once again be split into the haves and the have nots. And I presume the variability among individuals lies along a spectrum, with some with a very high potentiality, some in the middle and some at the low end.”
Catherine nodded, “Yes, we think so, but it is too early to tell how that spectrum will map parabolically.”
David then spoke up, “Did I understand correctly that you said that there is variability in the degree of difficulty – or perhaps I should say the energistic requirements -- to mentalize certain changes?”
“Precisely” Dr. Wheeling answered. “The more energy required to turn X into Y or the more energy required to move X from A to B, the greater the amount of mentalization is required – that’s where our equation is put to work with the new mathematical constant.”
Planck then added, “And we were correct here in believing that mentalization powers can be synergistically linked together through a highly focused group meditation – particularly among those trained in meditation. And we were correct about the enhancement capabilities of our amplifier – though I have to admit that Plato’s people could not keep from laughing at how primitive my amplifier is. Which obviously means that there is a lot of room for improving output and efficiency.”