The Fan-Shaped Destiny of William Seabrook (55 page)

Is there some symmetry principle behind JJ birthing a vehicle for her lost mother as she did in this world for her grandmother?
The perpetuation of the name seems more than merely symbolic. The whole curiosity of the
gens
of the Justines suggests a far more involved mind-body connection than we have yet imagined. Deutsch had identified the basis:

But now we have come almost full circle. We can see that the ancient idea that living matter has special physical properties
was almost true: it is not living matter but knowledge-bearing matter that is physically special. Within one universe it looks
irregular; across universes it has a regular structure, like a crystal in the multiverse …
⁹¹

Like a diamond,
if you will, its iridescent glory shining into the skies of many worlds.

In such places, objects extend recognizably across large numbers of universes … as the location of the processes—life, and
thought—that have generated the largest distinctive structures in the multiverse.
⁹²

So, we could see knowledge-bearing matter, immortal in the sense that it’s replicated across many worlds, and thus across
time, as inextricably bound up with destiny. The life-cycle of organic beings, all the possible patterns of our genetic identities,
is our portion of those great structures!

We could, probably will, go on endlessly. The Fan-Shaped Destiny spreads out over infinity. We will continue to explore it,
like adventurers on the unknown footpaths of late colonial Africa or Arabia. But we are at best explorers. Our elongated memories
give us only a slight advantage, not ultimate answers. And they tell us more about humanity than about nature.

And so, at last, this book is nearly finished. I am preparing to print out this epilogue from the PC on Justine’s desk. It
sits above the elderly Underwood, still nestled in the desk well below. I reach out to caress the cover of her old copy of
No Hiding Place.
I think that synchronicity may be as close to the hand of God as we will ever see. I’ve wanted no more than to be at home
with her while we completed the account and digitized
The Fan-Shaped Destiny.
It contains the method for effectuating the transit, the heart of which Seabrook brought out of Africa, inspiring literature
and, perchance, some of science itself.

I have thought long, and can conceive of no greater tribute to those who inspired that body of work, than what I’m about to
do. Justine
²
is hell-and-be-damned that, in this life, I should take her to live in the south of France to redress what she felt denied
before. Her means are hardly inexhaustible, but it’s not out of the question. We will be leaving soon.

Tonight, after my printout is finished, we will insert the other disk and begin to upload
The Fan-Shaped Destiny
onto the Internet. If Willie’s fear of dark, suppressive forces was right, what a wonderful thing this late-century technology
may be. No longer may books be burned or thinkers consigned to oblivion. From a satellite sailing across the constellations,
it again comes back to you, you whom it has actually been with always.

Kong has gone on ahead of us now. His passing made me reflect that I cannot persuade myself that all sentience does not share
in the miracle. Somewhere, Linda has found him. Somewhen, I will have done with looking to the past. On that day, I would
like to go with my Justine to a new place, let the waters of Lethe close over us, and awaken in a bright new morning where
we can be children together. This is a prayer, as has been my recounting of this whole strange saga. Perhaps, finally, I’m
still as far from having seen it all as I ever was.

Justine
^2,
with her high “psychic” potential, has indeed been able to recognize many more like ourselves than is surmised, even among
the devotees of
metempsychosis.
A part of what she does is the mere application of common sense to manner or speech distinctly out of place, to the unguarded
assumption that doesn’t fit in time and space. Look at the reality about us with a new eye, and you will witness much of this
for yourselves. She says they move anonymously, attending to their own affairs and, no doubt, avoiding the generation of large
paradoxes. She thinks that most have memories of paths through space-times closely related to this one, though a few may recall
very different worlds.

I wonder, too, if there may not be broader meanings to some old religious concepts. Might “born again” have denoted, not a
subjective catharsis, but a literal answer to that universal prayer for yet another chance?

Don’t misunderstand me. We were not and are not saints, and have no ambition to become such in any foreseeable lifetime. If
you regard our condition as a blessing rather than a curse, and wonder that people as unworthy as ourselves should receive
it, we would first question where the hell you get off—presuming dominion over to whom the grace of God is extended?

Men and women presumably can make incremental progress during even one life. To our eyes now, our other selves appear cruel
and shallow. We are better now and, in the eternity ahead, and behind, and sidewise, the “better angels of our nature” will
continue to sit upon our shoulders. Sometimes not so gently.

It is true; we recall no suffering in villages ridden with Ebola, or of starving in a refugee camp. Our remembered trials
were very personal. Let me assure you, that is no guarantee against bleeding out from a hole in the heart. We do not claim
to have deserved anything;
this is the human condition,
consciously recalled or not. “In my Father’s house, there are many mansions.”

It is New Year’s Eve, the century along with the Millennium draws to its close, and we’re going down to Peachtree Street to
celebrate. Justine
²
just dropped through, again, to model her scandalous attire for the evening, pleasantly annoying me to remind you that she
thinks the numbers of the “born again” among us seem to be growing. Maybe mankind is special after all. Maybe our ability
to see the otherworlds, even through a glass darkly, is what distinguishes us.

Maybe something wonderful is happening.

Selected Bibliography

P
HYSICAL
S
CIENCE AND
R
ELATED
T
OPICS

Deutsch, David.
The Fabric of Reality.
NY: Penguin, 1997.

DeWitt, Bryce and R. Neill Graham, editors.
The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics,
Princeton Series in Physics, Princeton University Press, 1973. Contains the original Everett and Wheeler papers, first popularizations
by Everett and DeWitt, plus other material.

Dunne, John William.
An Experiment with Time.
NY: Macmillan, 1927.

————— .
The Serial Universe.
Macmillan, 1938, London: Faber & Faber, 1934.

————— .
The New Immortality.
London: Faber & Faber, 1938.

————— .
Nothing Dies.
London: Faber & Faber, 1940 (rev. ed. 1951).

————— .
Intrusions.
London: Faber & Faber, 1955 (finished and published posthumously by Dunne’s wife).

Polchinski, Joseph. “Weinberg’s Nonlinear Quantum

Mechanics and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox,” in
Physical Review Letters,
Jan. 28, 1991.

Schrödinger, Erwin. “What is Life?” and “Mind and Matter,” Cambridge University Press, 1967 (first published 1944) pp. 65,
75. Based on lectures delivered under the auspices of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies at Trinity College, Dublin,
in Feb. 1943.

Weinberg, Steven. “Testing Quantum Mechanics,” in
Annals of Physics,
Volume 194, Mar. 6, 1989.

————— .
Dreams of a Final Theory.
1992 NY: Vintage, 1993–94.

Wolf, Fred Alan, works, especially
Star Wave,
NY: Macmillan 1984.

S
ELECTED
C
LASSIC
S
CIENCE
F
ICTION
P
REDATING THE
E
VERETT
T
HEORY

de Camp, L. Sprague, and Fletcher Pratt. “The Incomplete Enchanter.” In
Unknown,
May and Aug. 1940, first published in book form by NY: Doubleday, 1941.

Heinlein, Robert A. “Elsewhere.” In
Astounding Science Fiction,
Sep. 1941. Title was changed to “Elsewhen” in the collection
Assignment in Eternity,
NY: Signet, 1953.

Leinster, Murray (Will F. Jenkins). “Sidewise in Time.” In
Astounding Science Fiction,
Jun. 1934. Published in various collections.

Moore, Ward.
Bring the Jubilee.
NY: Del Rey, 1955.

Piper, Horace Beam. “Time and Time Again.” In
Astounding Science Fiction,
April 1947. Various collections.

Stapledon, William Olaf.
Star Maker.
London: Methune, 1937.

S
ELECTED
P
ERTINENT
F
ICTION

Benford, Gregory.
Timescape.
NY: Simon and Schuster, 1980. Afterword by Susan Stone-Blackburn. Winner of SFWA 1980 Nebula Award.

Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Garden of Forking Paths.” 1941. English publication 1956, various collections.

Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle.
NY: Putnam, 1962 (won the science fiction Hugo Award in 1963).

Greene, Ward.
Ride the Nightmare.
New York and London: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1930. Reissued by Avon in 1949 as
Life and Loves of a Modern Mister Bluebeard.

Matheson, Richard.
Bid Time Return.
1975, retitled
Somewhere in Time,
as was the film. Features Priestley’s work as Priestley features Dunne’s.

Priestley, John B.
Time and the Conways.
NY: Harper and Brothers, 1938.

————— .
Man and Time.
NY: Doubleday, 1964 (Crescent, 1987), nonfiction work including the theories of J.W. Dunne.

N
ONFICTION,
B
IOGRAPHY, AND
M
EMOIRS

Benford, Gregory. Commenting on Everett and Leinster. In
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Jul. 1993, p. 96.

Clark, VèVè A. with Millicent Hodson and Catrina Neiman.
The Legend of Maya Deren: A documentary biography and collected works, Volume One.
NY: Anthology Film Archives, 1984.

Man Ray.
Self Portrait.
NY: Little, Brown and Company, 1963. Reissued in 1988 with new illustrations from the Man Ray Trust.

Seabrook, William B.
Adventures in Arabia.
NY: Harcourt Brace, 1927.

————— .
The Magic Island.
Harcourt Brace, 1929.

————— .
Jungle Ways.
Harcourt Brace, 1931.

————— .
Asylum.
Harcourt Brace, 1935.

————— .
Witchcraft.
Harcourt Brace, 1940.

————— .
No Hiding Place
(autobiography). NY: Lippincott, 1942.

Seldes, George.
Witness to a Century.
NY: Ballantine, Random House, 1987.

Symonds, John and Kenneth Grant, editors.
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley.
NY: Hill and Wang, 1970.

Taylor, S.J.
Stalin’s Apologist.
NY: Oxford University Press, 1990. On the life and career of Walter Duranty.

Worthington, Marjorie.
The Strange World of Willie Seabrook.
NY: Harcourt Brace, 1966. A hope, a prayer.

The New York Times,
1927–76 for news items, feature stories, marriage notices and obituaries concerning William Seabrook, Katherine Edmondson
Seabrook-Worthington, Lyman Worthington, Marjorie Muir Worthington-Seabrook, and Ward Greene.

1
. Man Ray,
Self Portrait,
NY: Little, Brown, 1963, 1988, p. 154.

2
. Wolf, Fred Alan,
Star Wave,
NY: Macmillan, 1984, p. 96.

3
. Deutsch, David,
The Fabric of Reality,
NY: Penguin Putnam, 1997,p. 49.

4
. Everett, Hugh III,
The Theory of the Universal Wavefunction,
Princeton thesis, 1956, 138 pages (publication in DeWitt, Bryce and Neill Graham,
The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973. The collection of all pertinent documents).

5
. Feynman won the 1965 Nobel Prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics (QED) and was among the earliest to speculate on the possibilities of quantum computing. Matthew Broderick’s sentimental film treatment,
Infinity
(Overseas Filmgroup, 1996), a story of Feynman’s early life (including the death of Arline Greenbaum, his young wife), might suggest additional motivation for his refusal to join in the conspiracy of silence against Everett’s concepts of time and reality.

6
. Deutsch, David, in
The Ghost in the Atom,
editors P.C.W. Davies and J.R. Brown, Cambridge University Press, 1986.

7
. Norton, Andre,
Star Gate,
NY: Harcourt Brace, 1958. Quotation is from the prologue.

8
. Cramer, John,
Twisto
r, NY: Morrow, 1989.

9
. Stapledon, (William) Olaf,
Star Maker,
London: Methune, 1937.

10
. Borges, Jorge Luis, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” in
Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings,
editors Donald Yates and James Irby, NY: New Directions 1964, Modern Library 1983 (written 1941).

11
. Heinlein, Robert A., “Elsewhen” (originally “Elsewhere”) in
Astounding,
Sep. 1941. Subsequently published in the collection
Assignment in Eternity,
pp. 69–70.

12
. de Camp, L. Sprague and Fletcher Pratt, “The Incomplete Enchanter,” in
Unknown,
May and Aug. 1940.
Unknown
was the other classic “pulp.” It perished in the World War II paper shortage.