Authors: Robert Kroese
“
Did you know it was a bomb?”
“
No, but I should have.”
“
So your crime wasn’t murder; it was being a little dim. And that’s probably not entirely your fault. You may have been born a little dim.”
I can
’t help laughing. “I’m having that engraved on my tombstone,” I say. “Paul Bayes, 1976 to 2013. He was born a little dim.”
He smiles.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Paul?”
“
Do for me?” I ask. “No offense, but why are you even here, Rabbi? Why don’t you go visit the families of the people I killed?”
“
It’s not my place to intrude on their lives. I pray for them, and that’s about all I can do. You, on the other hand, I feel some responsibility for. I thought you could use a friend.”
I want to keep arguing with him, tell him he
’s a fool for giving a shit about me when I’m at best a complete schmuck and at worst a mass murderer. But I find myself unable to muster the strength. I’m on the verge of tears. Finally I manage to sputter, “Thanks, Rabbi.”
We talk a bit more, first about Tali and Heller and then Deb and the kids. He tells me he
’s done a little poking around but hasn’t been able to find out anything about where Tali is. He asks me if there’s anything that he can do for Deb or the kids, but I tell him no. The fact is that they’re probably better off without me. Rabbi Freedman leaves after about an hour with a promise to visit me again when he can.
I sit for a while pondering his words and trying to understand why he bothered to visit me at all.
On a surface level, it makes no sense. A normal, rational person would conclude that if I had anything to do with the mall bombing, I deserve nothing but anger and scorn. If someone does something wrong, the appropriate response is to demand justice. For every crime, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. But that isn’t the way Rabbi Freedman thinks. He seems to have transcended the knee-jerk push-pull physics of human interaction.
My mind keeps going back to
something he said the night I met him: the true God is a God of love. Does that mean that love is a fundamental aspect of reality? That it underlies everything, at an even more basic level than the quantum phenomena Heller studies, possibly a level more basic than reason itself? Heller would laugh at the idea, I’m sure – but then Heller was a sociopath. He was completely rational and batshit crazy. Because for all his genius, he was missing something – call it empathy or inner peace or self-awareness or whatever you like. In his obsessive search for truth, he lost some vital quality of
humanness
.
The funny thing is, as I read his book I get the sense that Heller was pretty close to understanding this, at least on an intellectual level. The section on consciousness creating the present reality reminded me of something, and when I read the part about Kant, I realize what it is: Heller
’s notion of consciousness coming into being as the result of the concepts of time and space becoming impressed on a child’s mind is just a slightly muddled adaptation of an argument from Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason
. I took a class on Kant in college, and amazingly some of it actually stuck with me.
Before Kant, it was assumed that time and
space were real things existing in the universe outside of the observer, and that the principle of cause and effect could be deduced through empirical observation. But Kant (relying on the philosopher David Hume) argued that this is nonsense: you can’t observe cause and effect; you can only observe one event habitually occurring after another. If you observe enough objects falling from the Tower of Pisa, for example, you might hypothesize that objects dropped from a height will always fall toward the ground at a particular rate. You might go on to call this hypothesis the “law of gravity,” and then you can confidently explain that objects dropped from a height fall “because of gravity.” But all you’ve really said is that objects can be expected to fall because objects have always fallen in the past. How do you know that objects in the future will act the same way as they did in the past? You have no experience of the future, so the best you can do is assume that they will. Where does this assumption come from?
Kant argued that our minds are essentially hardwired with the concepts of time, space, and causation. We don
’t come to understand time and space by observing them; time and space are categories that we apply to our observations. This is more or less what Heller is saying when he says that consciousness creates the present. The present isn’t something that exists independently of us; it’s the direct result of our application of
a priori
categories to our encounter with the universe (
a priori
is a fancy philosophical term meaning “prior to experience”). This is a trippy idea if you think about it, because in a very real sense it means we are creating the universe we experience. In fact, if you pursue this line of reasoning far enough, you realize that it isn’t at all clear that there’s a universe out there to be observed. After all, I have no direct access to the universe; all I have access to is my observations of it. And if those observations are at least partly created by my own
a priori
intuitions, why not just go all the way and assume that the whole universe is in my head? In fact, that’s what a lot of philosophers after Kant claimed. The most extreme version of this point of view leads to solipsism, the belief that only I exist.
I
’m not sure Kant ever satisfactorily addressed the question of how we can know that an objective universe exists. But the neat thing about his philosophical schema is that it allows him to smuggle in certain intuitions that are
a priori
and
pre-rational
. He doesn’t have to give a rational explanation for causation because causation is just an arbitrary concept that exists in the mind. But once you successfully smuggle in one pre-rational
a priori
concept, it’s tempting to smuggle in a few more. For example, Kant suggests that human morality is grounded on
a priori
principles. Kant doesn’t think that you can develop a sense of morality simply by observing the world around you; at least the basic principles have to be hardwired in your brain. And if the principles of morality can be hardwired into one’s brain, why not the concept of love? Or the idea of God Himself?
Heller seemed to be in agreement with Kant about the nature of space and time, but he doesn
’t mention morality, love or God. Did Heller think about these things? Did he agree with Kant that morality was
a priori
? Or did he think that morality could somehow result from the application of reason to experience? Did he even believe in morality, or in good and evil? Whatever Heller’s concept of morality was, it failed him. For that matter, so did mine.
I still don
’t understand why Heller sent me to the mall with a bomb. I’m certain that he had been pressured to do it by Tali’s kidnapping, but I don’t know why someone would want him to do that. It made sense from Ananke’s perspective: the bombing brought the police to Heller’s door, prompting him to kill himself. It took me out of play too, for that matter, and it almost killed Tali. If she had been a little closer to the bomb, if I had dropped the case on the floor instead of tossing it into the fountain, she and I would both likely be dead. But then close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, as they say. Tali doesn’t deal in
almost
s.
This realization prompts another unsettling line of thought: Ananke could have killed Tali, but she didn
’t. Why? I don’t flatter myself that I’m important enough for Ananke to worry about; I imagine she doesn’t particularly care whether I’m a free man or rotting in prison. But Tali … Tali is an actual threat to Ananke’s plans. In fact, if anything she’s a greater threat than Heller was. Heller was content to keep his studies academic; it was Tali who insisted on acting on the psionic field detector data to change the future. So why had Ananke killed Heller but not Tali?
It occurs to me that I don
’t actually know that Tali is still alive. Maybe her kidnappers killed her after the bombing. For some reason I don’t think so. Maybe I just want to believe that she’s alive, the way that I wanted to believe that she hadn’t intentionally stood me up. I don’t know what I’ll do if Tali is dead. Actually, I do know what I’ll do: nothing. I’m in prison, on suicide watch. I don’t have a lot of options. Still, it’s better for what’s left of my sanity if I imagine she’s still alive. And she
had
been alive the last time I had seen her; if the kidnappers had wanted to kill her, why didn’t they do it in the midst of the chaos after the bomb went off? They hadn’t been shy about sending a few bullets
my
way.
So, assuming that Tali
isn’t dead – why not? Did something happen to negate her as a threat to Ananke? Or was Ananke planning on using her somehow, the way she had used me? I laugh ruefully as I realize I’m giving Heller a pass. By putting the moral onus on Ananke, I had reduced Heller’s own role in the bombing to that of a tool in her hands. Maybe Heller’s at the Pearly Gates right now with a blood-spattered note from Ananke absolving him of any responsibility. I wonder if he’s having more success with Saint Peter than I’m having with the California justice system.
Back on the subject: i
t could be that Tali is alive because Ananke simply hasn’t had the opportunity to kill her yet. Clearly there are some limits on what Ananke can do in the wake of an unplanned event. Jelinek’s death had occurred six months after his and Heller’s “genius moment,” and Heller didn’t succumb for another two years after that. I think about the mountain stream again. On the leeward side of the boulder, there’s a dead zone where one can rest, free of the inexorable pull of the stream. Jelinek and Heller had bobbed about for a while in the relative calm provided by the boulder but eventually they were caught up in an eddy that carried them back into the stream. So is that it? Is Tali just bobbing about in the eddies behind the boulder, waiting to be carried downstream? To mix a metaphor, is Ananke just waiting for the opportunity to strike?
I may be full of shit
, but I don’t think so. Tali had been courting death nearly from the moment I met her. We could easily have been killed in a wreck on the way to Embarcadero that day. A spray of errant buckshot could have killed her at the pier. She might have been accidentally shot during her abduction, or hit by a piece of debris during the bombing. Somehow she had survived, and that makes me wonder if Ananke still has plans for her.
My lawyer returns a few days later with some information about Heller
’s lawsuit. Apparently he had filed a two million dollar suit against Peregrine, claiming that they had unfairly denied his claim. The suit rested on the document claiming that Heller’s work was a fraud. A week after the suit was filed, the matter was settled out of court. My lawyer has dug up another interesting piece of information too: Heller apparently filed papers of incorporation a few days after the suit was dropped. The description of his business on the paperwork is “Actuarial Consulting Services.” Did Heller go into business with Peregrine?
My lawyer also gives me some information on Peter Girell
’s old boss, David Carlyle. Up until about a year ago he was the Claims Director for the Western region. Then he was promoted to the head of a new division, called Predictive Analytics. His promotion occurred three days after Heller filed his papers of corporation. Interesting. Included with the biographical information is a picture of Carlyle: it’s the man I saw get into the Cadillac with Tali.
I get a preliminary hearing a week after my arrest. I
’m hauled into a courtroom in the Hall of Justice in downtown San Jose and sit there like a dumbass for twenty minutes waiting for something to happen. Eventually it becomes clear that the prosecution is having trouble producing a key witness. The mall’s head of security, who was supposed to verify the authenticity of the recording, hasn’t shown up and he isn’t answering his phone. They send a deputy to his house and he is found unconscious in his bathtub, apparently having slipped in the shower. He is rushed to the hospital. The prognosis is good, but he’s not going to be making a court appearance anytime soon. My lawyer informs me that the prosecution will have to re-file charges and that until they do, I’m free to go. I tell him that’s a pretty shitty joke, and he assures me he’s not joking. This stuff happens occasionally: if a key witness is unavailable, the suspect has to be released until charges can be re-filed. The judge tells me not to leave the state and confirms that for now at least, I’m a free man. I can hardly believe it. Is this Ananke at work again? Or just dumb luck?
I
’m transported back to the jail, where I change back into street clothes. I walk outside and flag down a cab. Half an hour later I’m home. As I get out of the cab, I notice an unmarked police car pulling up to the curb half a block down from my building. I may be a free man, but the police are keeping me on a short leash. I should have asked them to give me a ride.
The apartment seems positively welcoming after three days in the San Jose County Jail. I take a shower, make myself a TV dinner, and go to bed. It
’s barely dark outside, but I’m exhausted. I sleep well, for the first time in three days. When I wake up, it’s still dark. I go to the window and see that the car – or another one just like it – is still there. I wonder if it’s the only one. Am I important enough to warrant more than a single police car? Probably. I’m kind of a big deal now. But it’s hard to see how they’d watch the whole apartment complex. My apartment has a pitiful little patio that backs up against a central courtyard flanked by three other buildings. Unless they’ve got somebody camped out in that courtyard, it would be pretty easy to slip out unnoticed. And if they catch me sneaking out, it’s not like they can do anything but follow me. I’m a free man, for now.