Love Story: In The Web of Life (20 page)

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."