Quantum Times (5 page)

     Once the fundraiser was over and they were back on Air Force One heading back to D.C., the President had roasted his Chief of Staff for not having anything that the President could say. Scarpetti really couldn’t blame the President – it was his job to know the important things that were going on. He was supposed to make the President look good and in control. The sad truth was that they didn’t know anything about The Object. Like everyone else, all they could do was guess.

     Guessing wasn’t much of a basis for action or policy making. The President desperately wanted to appear to be doing something. The media was hounding The White House for answers to questions about The Object. And they had an endless stream of questions. Unfortunately, The White House had no answers – lots of experts with lots of what they claimed were educated guesses, but to Scarpetti they didn’t seem any better than what his golf buddies came up with. Though he shouldn’t disparage his golf buddies – they were pretty big players in Washington in their own right.

     In fact he realized he should call one of them. General Carl Greene had been put in charge of the military’s response to all things related to The Object. Maybe Greene had come up with something he could feed to the President.

     Thinking about what the military might know led him to thinking about what had happened in Korea. As cynical as he had become – and the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States had to be extremely cynical just to survive in D.C., and he had now served two Presidents in that position – he still was amazed at how quickly the nuclear holocaust that had destroyed North and South Korea had faded from the nation’s consciousness. Once The Object had showed up, the Korea story disappeared in the media. It was like the media couldn’t concentrate on more than one thing at a time. A visitor from outer space was a bigger story than nuclear destruction with twenty million killed. Now there were just routine follow up stories about Korea much like the stories that followed the cleanup after a Category Five hurricane destroyed an island country like Haiti.

     The American people didn’t like the Korea story to begin with. They wanted to forget all the Americans – soldiers and civilians -- who had died there. They wanted to forget that it had been American nuclear weapons that had been used to respond to the North Korea nukes. Scarpetti knew that all the protocols had been followed and the United States had to do what it did, no one argued otherwise; both parties were in in true bi-partisan lock step on that, still the result was horrific. It gave him nightmares and he knew the President was suffering too.

     Scarpetti liked the President. He liked that the President was a genuinely nice man. A little too sure of himself and too concerned with his own destiny but Scarpetti had seen worse among the political leaders who commingled in Washington like prideful roosters.  He had been brought in just a year ago as the savvy political pro that would help rescue this administration’s agenda from the quagmire it had settled into. At sixty years old it was to be his final hurrah; a proof point that he had a made a difference with his life. He thought he had been making some progress before Korea happened and then The Object showed up. Now he knew he had just been moving the furniture around.

     The thing about Washington he had learned was that most of the time just moving the furniture around was enough to get by. The country was pretty indestructible; at its core it had an ambitious and inexorable spirit that pushed it forward and it was big hearted too in a way that made him proud to be an American. The President’s job – and his by extension -- was just to ensure that the country remained strong and that all the people benefitted. Most of the time, that was it. Just do that. Not that doing that was so easy, but it was clear to him what was called for.

     But now was one of those times which occurred only once or twice a century when the world shifted. New major forces came into play and real existential risk surfaced. Now the political leaders in Washington had to be good at something more than just winning elections. Maybe once upon a time Washington had been about more than just elections, but probably that was all it had ever been about. If so, then during those prior existential risk moments, the country had been lucky. The leaders could do more than just win elections. With the challenges now facing the country and the political leaders running the country now, it was going to take a lot of luck. Scarpetti wanted to believe that he could help the President make the right decisions so that luck was less of a factor. Sitting there at 35,000 feet onboard Air Force One he wasn’t at all confident. The country needed to be lucky.

     He took another sip of the scotch and water he’d been working on for the last thirty minutes. He wanted to gulp it down and get another but he knew he’d had enough. He couldn’t afford a hangover tomorrow: there was just too much to do. Being a good drinker was a real political asset in Washington circles but at sixty he couldn’t drink like he used to. The hangovers came quicker and lasted longer. He took another sip.

     Looking out the window at thirty five thousand feet he saw the continuous blaze of city and suburban lights below that more than anything showed the population density of America’s East Coast. All the people down there were looking to the President – and by extension, looking to him – to get them safely through the geopolitical unrest caused by the nuclear devastation in Korea and the risks and uncertainty of newly discovered alien life that now hovered threateningly above their heads. Until just a few weeks ago he believed ardently that the U.S. government could protect and serve the people, could guide and deliver them to a safe and prosperous future. Now, sitting quietly and alone in the sky over Washington, numbed a little by the good scotch whiskey, he felt no such certainty. And he wasn’t the only one feeling the stress and anxiety. He’d been around the White House of too many administrations not to be able to sense the collective mood. The people that worked there, from the President on down, all felt it. They were the true insiders and knew the detail of things. And like him, they were worried and unsure of what was happening. Unsure of what was going to happen. They were scared. And so was he.

     As the pilot of the small chartered airplane circled the little island sitting like a beach encircled jewel in the quiet turquoise waters of the Caribbean, David spotted the small landing strip and then alongside that a row of two story buildings that he had been told was the remnant of an exclusive resort hotel that had gone bankrupt twenty years earlier. Gabriela sitting next to him was also craning her neck to look out the window and in the window seat in front was Dr. Wheeling doing the same thing. 

     Seeing the island somehow made this hastily set up trip seem real whereas before it still had seemed dream-like. With his eyes still on the island, David thought about the sequence of events over the last 48 hours that led him to an encounter with no predictable outcome. Once he had verified that Ben Planck was still on the out of the way island with the foreboding name of Pirate’s Cay, getting a phone number for him was easy. But before attempting to call Planck he had informed Dr. Wheeling of how and where he had found Planck and the professor had immediately told David he too wanted to go with David to meet Planck. As it turned out that was a good thing because when he finally succeeded in talking to Planck, Planck was not at all eager to meet with David.

     The call had started with a brief recollection of their days as doctoral students at Columbia and then quickly Planck stated that he was not the Benjamin Planck everyone was looking for. He had already been emphatic about this to the local Bahamian Police who had come to check and then to agents from the FBI who said they were running down everyone with the name Benjamin Planck. Planck then told David what he had told everyone else: in fact Benjamin was his middle name. He had actually been named after his great great great uncle and his first name was indeed Max. Then he said that his little island community was a Zen Buddhist retreat and nothing he had done or had been doing could possibly be of interest to The Object or anyone else for that matter. Even this brief exchange had taken slow minutes as Planck’s reticence to talk had not changed.

     David heard him out but kept prodding. He brought up the matter of the hurricanes and Plank’s attachment to physics. Planck just remained silent to that line of approach. Then David mentioned that Dr. Wheeling also wanted to come meet him. After confirming that indeed it was
the
Dr. Janus Wheeling, winner of the Nobel Prize, Planck’s attitude changed. He had read Wheeling’s major papers and books and yes he did know that David had co-authored the recent bestseller – for a book on theoretical physics. On the proviso that Dr. Wheeling came too, Planck invited them to come see him. 

     The small plane landed and taxied over to a hut with an extended roofline where waiting and disembarking passengers could gather in the event of rain. As the three of them exited the aircraft, David saw a lean suntanned young man wearing khaki cargo shorts and a white tee shirt standing next to the hut waiting for them. It took a moment before David recognized him as Planck. Planck looked younger than David would have thought and more like a California surfer than the bookish pale skinned nerdy student he had known ten years earlier.

     As they approached him, he came forward too and everyone said hello and David introduced Dr. Wheeling and Gabriela, who David said was his girlfriend. Gabriela was quick to add that she too was a physicist and for a rare moment David wanted to be able to say that he was too.

     In the next moment Planck stated without preamble that he was sorry to disappoint them but as he had said to David on the phone call, he was not the one everyone was looking for. Then he just looked back at each of them. For the moment David was at a loss as to how to respond.

     Clad in white slacks and a multi-colored, floral patterned Hawaiian shirt, looking not at all like a famous physicist, Dr. Wheeling smiled back at Planck and nodded his head several times.  “Planck … may I call you Planck? For that is how David always has referred to you.”

     Planck nodded.

     Dr. Wheeling went on, “Well Planck, if I were in your circumstances I would say exactly that. Good for you to be wise enough to want to stay anonymous – to hide away in fact. But I’m sure you are the one and more importantly I know why you are.” The professor held up his hand when Planck started his denial. “Planck, once David told me about you, I did a little research on your work while you were a doctoral candidate at Columbia. I ignored your actual work that earned you your PhD but looked at what you had originally submitted – that which your advisors were foolish enough to discard. With the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge that The Object’s appearance substantiates…. And then what appeared to happen with respect to the course changes of the hurricanes ….well, obviously, you are not only the one everyone is looking for but quite possibly you might be the only one who understands how it is that The Object is here now.”

     Planck looked past the three of them for a long moment and then turned back to face Dr. Wheeling. The seriousness of his expression put the lie to his tanned beach boy looks. Then with his mind apparently made up, he said, “Dr. Wheeling, I am on the frontier of the most important physics discovery since Einstein. Honestly, I could use some help.”

     Wheeling just nodded as if he had known that all along. “That is why I am here,” he said.  

     The three of them gathered up their bags and squeezed into a jeep that Planck had parked nearby. He drove them a few hundred yards to what once had been a 50 room resort hotel sitting almost in the sand of a white sand, coconut tree enclosed beach. To their surprise it did not look run down and it was not deserted. There were a number of people around looking very much like they had been there awhile. No one had funny drinks with umbrellas stuck in them, no one was sunburned, and no one was sitting with their legs in the pool, though the pool looked great. Rather they all looked like they had a purpose for being there. There were several small study groups meeting under the roofed porch or where there were clumps of shade. These people tended to be in shorts and a tee shirt. But there were more sitting alone or in quiet conversation with one or two others who had shaved heads and were attired in monkish robes, robes that had to be hot in the summer heat.

     To their questions Planck explained that his island really was a Zen Buddhist retreat where a very deep meditation was practiced and he looked forward to introducing them to the Zen Master who led the group. But there were also some physicists who had been invited to come once sworn to secrecy. And some of the physicists had crossed over, as Planck himself had done, and now mixed with both groups. In fact, Planck explained, that joinder of the two disciplines was essential to the work that was done there on the island.

     When asked, he said he had acquired the island 4 years earlier and the number of residents had grown slowly to its current population of 29. The people who were there had been carefully selected though word of mouth alone had identified them. When Wheeling asked how all this was funded, Planck cryptically replied, “The Universe provides.”

     Planck settled the three of them into a room for the professor and a room for Gabriela and David. The rooms both had beachside views but the furnishings were spare. Also Planck apologized that though it still looked like a resort, it functioned like a home: a home without servants or cooks. Planck shared that their Buddhist master insisted on that.