Quantum Times (10 page)

     Ozawa held her hands out with palms up again, “It won’t change the fundamental nature of man or of life. Life is change. Karma will still exist. A man will still be judged by the good and bad he does. The cycle of life won’t change. Actually for me it solves a puzzle that has confounded me since I was a young woman. You see, in Zen Buddhism we believe that Karma is real, reincarnation is real. But we do not believe in a god. Buddha was godly but not a god. So the puzzle for me was, ‘how is Karma determined? Who or what is the judge? There is cause and effect, but as seen through what lens or set of factors? But now the answer is less cloudy. Karma is administered through Consciousness. So now I have a new puzzle. What is consciousness?”

     “You got me! But I have another question: what is the role of meditation in this?”

     “It is pivotal! Only through meditation can one truly learn how to focus the mind with such clarity that the universe can pick out the individual message from the sea of chaotic mental states produced by the billions of people just on this planet. Meditation provides the clearest link –the link without static –to the universal mind. In fact, new studies show that the physical mind, the brain, actually changes at the neuron level in those people who engage in significant meditation. There are physical and functional changes to the brain that improve a person’s ability to perceive reality.”

     David interrupted, “What you are saying is that meditation will not only allow you to better perceive reality – it can also allow you to change reality. And
that,
Zen Master is a whole other thing!”

     Ozawa just held her hands open again.

     David just shook his head. “In a few hours I am going to have to explain that to a roomful of military bigwigs who are just going to hate all this. And then they are going to want to know how to weaponize it.”

     As if on cue they heard what turned out to be two Gulfstream executive jets coming in to land on Pirate Cay’s landing strip. David said goodbye to Catherine Ozawa and wished her luck and went to find Dr. Wheeling.

     It took only a few minutes for the team of ten men coming off the Gulfstream jets to approach David and Dr. Wheeling as they waited at the front of the retreat’s main building. Though clad in polo shirts and either jeans or khakis, the team made no attempt to hide their weaponry. The one in charge walked right up to them and introduced himself as Captain Donald Deutsch.

     He said, “Dr. Wheeling, David, as I think you know, I’m here to take you to a meeting at the Pentagon. But first if you don’t mind, I’d like my men to look around the island and make sure that everything is OK.” David noticed that his men were already moving, doing exactly that.

     David then introduced him to Catherine Ozawa who he described as the leader of the Retreat that accounted for the people and the buildings on the island. Turning to Ozawa Captain Deutsch informed her that he had orders to leave most of his men on the island to ensure that whoever had abducted Benjamin Planck did not return to take anyone else. Both Dr. Wheeling and David looked at each other with quick glances that suggested they did not quite believe that was the real reason but said nothing.

     Ozawa smiled and said that she and her people would welcome their presence.

     Captain Deutsch turned back to David and the professor. “For your information, we sent a team out to find the fishing boat.”

     David interrupted and pointed out at the tiny blur of a boat that could still be seen on the water’s horizon. “You mean that one?”

     “Yes sir, that one.”

     “Well that’s great! Is Planck OK? Was there any trouble getting him?”

     The Captain’s response was a negative. “We didn’t get him because he wasn’t on the boat. The boat was deserted.”

     David was incredulous, “There was no one on it?”

     Captain Deutsch looked back impassively and gave a minimal shake of his head.  “The boat was just floating there. No one was on it. Strangely when we tried to start it up again, we couldn’t. The engine seemed frozen.”

     David thought about that and then asked, “What about a little dingy with an outboard? Was it there?”

     “Yes, it was there. It wasn’t used to take anyone off the boat. We couldn’t get it to work either.”

     Dr. Wheeling spoke up for the first time, “It seems our problems are getting bigger. I presume you are still looking for him.”

     “Yes sir, we are. But frankly we have no idea what happened on that boat.”

     “I guess some other boat must have met them and picked them up. Is there no sign of any other boat?” David asked.

     “No sign at all.”

     “Poor Planck,” was all David could think to say.

     Captain Deutsch gestured to one of the unmarked Gulfstream exec jets. “I’m to get you to Washington as fast as possible. So we need to leave now. My men are going to stay and ask questions about the abduction this morning and they’ll be able to follow up if anything new happens here. Shall we go?”

     A little more than four hours later, accompanied by David’s uncle who had met them at an entrance to the Pentagon, and after walking down more hallways than David had ever known to exist in a single building, they entered a meeting room and were introduced to General Carl Greene. The General then introduced the other officers in the room and the lone civilian sitting at the table. Counting Wheeling and David there were a total of eight to sit at the meeting room table. Dr. Wheeling did not need the last introduction to the man in the grey suit.

     “Andrei! How nice to see you again. How are my friends at MIT? Are you here perhaps to help our military friends with a little physics?”

     Dr. Kasinsky rose out of his chair to shake Wheeling’s hand, “It is a pleasure to see you again, Janus. I’m very much looking forward to hearing about the ‘little physics’ that we might discuss. From time to time I do some consulting with our friends here but I think this might be especially interesting.”

     David looked at Kasinsky with surprise. He hadn’t expected another physicist to accompany the generals, but he realized he should have. Kasinsky was average height, middle aged and balding but his round face was enlivened with large round eyes that seemed to actively regard everything around him.

     With everyone seated General Greene spoke first and had everyone introduce themselves. Then immediately he switched to the core topic. Greene had the look of a man who would always be focused on the core issues with no tolerance for perambulations. Certainly now, with the seriousness of the issues they all confronted, whatever casualness and humor might sometimes be revealed on his face were nowhere to be seen. His close cropped dark hair had grey mixed in and his square brow and cheekbones and strong jawline all showed a weather beaten tenacity that would yield to nothing. Yet his blue eyes betrayed his stern countenance, they suggested a warm and engaging intelligence. If he was the man in charge at the Pentagon for all things alien, David thought that an open mind was going to be needed.

     “As I understand things,” Greene began, “we have two distinct challenges that seem to have occurred concurrently but perhaps deliberately so. And at the core of both of those challenges there seems to be scientific issues that go to the heart of theoretical physics. The first challenge is presented to us by The Object and its apparent ability to move in defiance of physical laws – and its ability to simply disappear multiple missiles. The second challenge comes from the discoveries of Benjamin Planck that seem to suggest that mind over matter should not be just relegated to some sort of metaphysical daydream. Somehow the human mind can manipulate matter. And this capability is no longer theoretical it is actual and replicable.”

     The General paused and looked around the room. Then he added, “And it also appears that these two challenges come together because The Object has asked to communicate with only one individual out of all the billions of people on this planet and that individual is Dr. Planck. And to make matters even more challenging, Dr. Planck now seems to have been abducted by parties unknown off of his small island in The Bahamas where he was doing reality changing physics unknown to all of the rest of us.”

     The General paused again and looked around the room. “Now do I have that about right?” 

     No one said anything. His two staff officers and David’s uncle, General Randall, all looked down at the table.

     Greene looked at Dr. Wheeling. “Could you at least summarize what new physics we have here? Now it was a long time ago but I had Physics at West Point and I have followed it as an interesting hobby. But please feel free to dummy it down somewhat.”

     Dr. Wheeling responded by standing up and addressing the group as if he was speaking to a class back at Columbia. “Let me explain. For the last 100 years, theoretical physics has had a huge problem right at its heart. We knew how matter behaved at the large mass level. Classic physics as explained by Einstein. And we knew how matter behaved at the particle level. Neils Bohr, Max Planck and many others showed us quantum mechanics. All of our electronic devices work because of what we know about quantum physics. However our problem is that those theories don’t work together. Though Einstein and Bohr were friends, their theories do not get along with each other. They are ultimately incompatible. Hence for a 100 years we have been looking for a theory that ties them together –what we call The Theory of Everything.

     “What our friend Benjamin Planck has shown us is that what we know about quantum mechanics can in fact also apply to the everyday world of large mass. But the quantum world is a very strange world filled with spooky and bizarre results. It is a world of potentiality where a particle could be here or it could be there. Particles can pop in and out of existence. Where particles that are entangled can influence each other instantly regardless of distance and ignore the speed of light barrier. And worst of all, and we have many experiments that show this, it is a world where nothing becomes real until an Observer is there to see it. Particles remain in an opportunistic state. And when they did resolve themselves to a particular result because of the Observer, we did not know why it picked the result it did from what could have been many possible results –although we knew that some results were more likely than others.”

     Dr. Wheeling looked to Dr. Kasinsky, “You would agree?”

     Kasinsky nodded, “All of that is well understood.”

     Dr. Wheeling continued, “What Planck figured out was that the Observer is really what we call consciousness and that consciousness can dictate quantum level results and then he figured out how to instruct that consciousness to produce a particular result and then to his great surprise he discovered that what could be done at the particle level could be done at any level of mass.”

     Dr. Kasinsky interrupted, “This makes me think of John Wheeler’s famous statement of ‘it from bit’. That is that at the core of reality is information. Quantum Information. Matter evolves from information. And consciousness is the user of that information. Or perhaps it is better to say that Consciousness is the construct of that information.”

     Dr. Wheeling approved. “Perhaps that is correct. But let me continue. Because the next thing that Planck discovered was how to issue instructions using meditation powers aided by an electronic amplifier to literally change the state of matter.”

     General Greene interrupted here, “Not just changed particles …he changed the weather – he moved hurricanes around. Is that right?”

     The Professor nodded his head, “Yes that is correct. But we are at only the beginning. The limits of what can be done are as yet untested.”

     General Greene was shaking his finger to get back to a prior point. “Dr. Wheeling, you just mentioned something I had not heard before. Did I hear you say that Dr. Planck invented an electronic amplifier that somehow enhances the ability to change matter? Really, an amplifier?”

     “Yes an amplifier that fits in the ear that essentially makes it easier for the Universe to understand what it is being asked to do. Think of it as a reverse hearing aid.”

     “How is that even possible?” The General was clearly dismayed.

     The Professor was in his best classroom mode. “Conceptually it is quite simple. The brain is essentially an electronic device that emits electromagnetic waves. The amplifier essentially increases the volume of the waves. And then when you give such a device to a group of people all of whom together focus on the same action, the volume and the clarity of the message is increased proportionately.”

     David spoke up then, “General, perhaps an analogy will help. Imagine you are standing at the entrance to a very large and very busy restaurant. You would hear a loud buzz of conversation but you couldn’t pick out the words of any one person at one of the tables. But if now that person and the others at his table had bullhorns and all shouted the same message, even over all the cacophony of the people in the restaurant you would still hear the message shouted by that table. We think that is how this works. Normally, the universe just hears the cacophony of individual minds so it goes about doing what it does, but whenever one message starts dominating, then the universe moves in that direction.”

     The General looked back at Wheeling. “Would you agree with that?”