Quantum Times (4 page)

     “But you say he was brilliant. How would you know?”

     “It was just obvious. The papers he wrote… his comments on anyone else’s work. He’d say something you first thought was ridiculous and then he would say just a little more and then you’d realize he saw connections that everyone else was blind to.”

     Dr. Wheeling was back to nodding his head like a crane going after a fish. “We have to find him! It is so obvious!”

     “What’s obvious?”

     “David, think about it… we were just saying that to explain the behavior of The Object we had to examine it in terms of quantum physics. Then we discover that of all the 6 billion people on this planet The Object wants to communicate with a young physicist who had a strange idea in the field of quantum physics – though perhaps not just at the quantum level -- that was not mainstream and so was rejected. Obviously he was on to something and somehow The Object knows it! Now that is another question for us! So how does The Object know of him? And WHY do they want him”

     “OK, I get it! So we have to find him. But how do we do that? I’m sure the government with all their resources is already looking for him. People all over the world are now looking for him.”

     “The governments are looking for someone with the name Benjamin Planck. But we know who he is. And it would not surprise me that perhaps he will not want to be found.”

      “But we can tell our government who he is.”

     “No David -- that we cannot do! If the government finds him first they will hide him away and keep him from us! He is too important to trust to any government. Too much is at risk!”

     “You don’t trust the U.S. Government?” I was a little shocked that he had said it.

     Dr. Wheeling just shook his head. “The fate of our world may depend on this! Would I trust any government with that? Look what just happened in Korea! There is no Korea now! Millions of people are dead because our governments did not know what to do about one crazy leader who was allowed to keep nuclear weapons as his personal toys!”

     I couldn’t argue the point. “I’ve got to find Ben Planck.”

     The Alien was dazzled by the lights of downtown Tokyo. The crowds of humans pulsed with a frenetic energy that this Alien found distasteful. He had requested to come to observe Japan in the hope that he would find something different. But this seemed much like what his cohort had observed upon his visit to New York. He realized he had been hoping for something that could not be.

     Before disembarking from what Humans now called The Object, he had learned about Japan’s history and culture. He had been shocked to see Japan’s cultural history was so similar to his own. But Japan had drifted away from the cultural underpinnings they shared whereas his whole planet had fully embraced them. Although the terms were different and the actual histories evolved differently, the similarities were astounding. What here was called Zen Buddhism and truly practiced now by only a few, on his planet it was practiced by the majority. And the warrior code that evolved out of Zen Buddhism that was here called ‘the Samurai Code’, on his planet was embraced by all – in fact growing up outside The Code was unthinkable and dangerous. How could one not put honor and wisdom foremost? And how could one not approach life fearlessly? Warriors needed such a Code!

     He was also learning how few people here engaged in deep meditation. How was it that though it had been practiced here for centuries, it had not spread and evolved to its higher manifestations? On his planet it was a guided daily ritual for the multitudes! The power of his world depended on it!

     Curious about its historical antecedents, while walking through the busy shopping district, he accessed the encyclopedic data compiler his cohorts were building and submitted a query about how the Samurai Code had developed here and why it had not spread across the planet. Similar to his own planet’s history, it had evolved in earlier centuries when Zen Buddhist monks who had come to Japan from China interacted with warring clans in the age of territorial acquisition. The fighters had found that Zen mindfulness could prepare them to enter battle fearlessly and more strategically. Again his planet shared a similar history. “A Zen warrior was a victorious warrior!” was a rough translation of his planet’s most quoted saying.

     But as he accessed the data compiler further, the similarities disappeared. Here Japan discarded its cultural ties to a warrior code and lost confidence in the benefits of meditation. It seemed to become a copycat culture with a diminished sense of itself. The Alien was coming to believe that he had less to learn on the streets of Tokyo than he had hoped. And what he was observing was not redemptive.

     The Alien realized he was hungry and selected a busy restaurant where he could blend in easily. He ordered by pointing at menu items while saying little and he was unsure what food would be served. When it came he was happily surprised – much superior to their shipboard fare. He also found it amusing to figure out how to use the wooden sticks he was provided as eating utensils. He observed the other diners using them and found he could get most of the food to his mouth.

     In the bustle and din of the restaurant he overheard snatches of conversation and watched the animated expressions on the faces. Watching people eat communally was very informative he believed. So much of cultural values and social customs were on casual unprompted display. He found he felt good sitting amongst these people. Interestingly, they seemed happy and involved in their own personal affairs. He sensed no general awareness of the risks and dangers that existed on their planet. He remembered a quote from this planet’s great playwright, “Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise.”

     It became clearer to him why this planet might be doomed. 

     Back at his apartment, David started his search for Ben Planck. He began by trying to remember every detail he had ever known about the young man that David and his friends had just called Planck. Then he Googled every data base he thought at all possible. He checked for civil and criminal actions, financial records, obituaries, and social networks and even dating sites. He used all the skills he had acquired while hunting down facts for his writings.  He did find some Benjamin Plancks but they just turned out to be clearly not the one he was looking for – but he realized they were already being harassed by virtue of their names – David was clearly not the only one now looking for someone named Benjamin Planck.

     Hours went by. Somewhere in the middle of his search he recalled that Planck had loved to watch baseball and always seemed to be wearing a Yankees baseball cap – But he never attended a game at the stadium, only watched on the TV in his small apartment. And he never went to sport bars to watch – in fact he never went to bars at all.

     And Planck knew every baseball statistic! Planck loved to present before any action occurred the statistical probabilities of a hitter advancing a runner or a pitcher getting a batter to ground out as opposed to striking out. So David searched baseball references to find a Planck somewhere mentioned. Nothing.

     Then he remembered something else about Planck, he loved weather forecasts! He would track the statistical probabilities associated with the weather. He was fascinated with the popular example of Chaos Theory where the butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and storms develop in Florida – or some such thing! Twenty minutes chasing down that rabbit hole got nothing too.

     David’s head hurt and his back hurt. Gabriela had arrived home and had gone about making dinner; that is calling for take-out which tonight was to be Italian. She called out to him from the kitchen whether he wanted a drink? Definitely!

     When she brought him his usual gin and tonic she asked how his search was going.

     “I got nothing!”

      “How long have you been looking?”

     “Forever!” David went on to describe in detail about the trails he’d tried in his search. He told her about the baseball connection and Planck’s fascination with the weather. He wanted sympathy.

     But rather than stirring her maternal instincts, Gabriela’s penchant for scientific inquiry was roused. She pursed her lips and tugged on her longish straight black hair and stared out the window while she thought. Not for the first time, looking at her David thought about how her intellectual intensity cast a mask over her really lovely features. Only after a couple of drinks in the evening did the hidden flirtatious woman in her ever show herself. Gabriela continued in silent thought for a few moments and then said what David should have thought of. “He does not want to be found but somehow The Object knows about him. So we have to assume he is somewhere here and he has done something that captured their attention.”

     “But he keeps a very low profile,” David added.

Gabriela nodded her beautiful head, “So let’s start with where he is hiding. Where would someone like him hide? Did he ever talk about somewhere he always wanted to go to?”

     “I remember telling him where I always wanted to go. We were watching a baseball game and I had just come back from a spring break trip to Nassau in the Bahamas. I told him what a great time I had had at Paradise Island. I had walked away a small winner from the Blackjack tables….he was interested because of his usual fascination with probabilities.” David then smiled as he remembered something else.

     “And you know what… he said he loved islands. He loved going to a remote beach that no one ever went to. He said he envied Robinson Caruso. He said he had read that book about ten times.”

     Gabriela interrupted with, “Really? You remember all this?”

     “What can I tell you…I have a great memory – and the more I remember the more other memories come back to me! Memory works that way you know.”

     Gabriela held up her hand to stop David. “You know what I know,” she said. “I know that The Bahamas has like 700 islands and that a lot of them are remote and have very few people on them and would be a perfect place to hide if you wanted to be like Robinson Caruso!”

     David reluctantly went back to his desk with his laptop thinking about all the islands in The Bahamas where Planck could be hiding and then if not there, all the other islands in the Caribbean or anywhere else for that matter. But he was on the hunt and he emphatically did not want to go back to Dr. Wheeling without having found Ben Planck. And he agreed with Gabriela: Planck had done something that brought him to the attention of The Object – so there was something to be found. So he resumed his search focusing first on The Bahamas and then crossed that looking for baseball and weather notations.

     An hour later he hit pay dirt. In an article in The Nassau Tribune from six months ago there was a story about a little island southwest of Nassau that had somewhat miraculously been spared from a hurricane that should have blown right over it but which had instead at the last minute detoured right around it. That season there had been a number of hurricanes. And the reason the story received the attention of the newspaper was that not just that time but a year earlier too the little island had been detoured at the last minute though reliable local forecasters had been certain that the island was in the middle of the projected hurricane paths. Given how close the hurricanes had come before the last minute detours, the probability that the island would twice be spared seemed highly unlikely.

     And further down in the story, there it was. A local resident of the small island, the Director of a religious order there, was quoted as saying it was just God’s will that they had been spared destruction by the hurricanes. And that man’s name was Planck.

     Triumphantly David shared the story with Gabriela. She too instantly believed this religious leader would prove to be the right Benjamin Planck. But her reason took David’s thinking to a whole other level.

     “It fits,” she said. “Do you know why The Object wants to meet with your old friend Planck?”

     David shook his head, “How would I know that?”

     Gabriela smiled and gave him her ‘she was smarter than he was’ kind of look. “Because he moved those hurricanes around his island!”

     Mostly because of the look she had given him, David argued “How could he have done that? It’s a hurricane … it goes where it wants to go!”

     “Go and meet him and you’ll find out how he did it. But he did it!”

     “I guess I’m going to The Bahamas. You want to come?”

     “Let’s see … it is summer and I have no class to teach and we’re talking about a trip to The Bahamas to meet with probably the most sought after person in the world right now. What do you think?” Gabriela smiled and nodded.

     Sitting at his usual seat on Air Force One Hank Scarpetti, the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, found himself looking out the window when he should have been working at returning emails with these few minutes of alone time. He was too tired to work and too amped to sleep. And he had eaten too much too quickly at the $5000 a plate dinner – and the food had been cold and tasteless. He had fallen off his diet for nothing; his good intentions to lose some of the extra twenty-five pounds he was carrying around had failed him again. And the fundraiser in Miami the President and he had just left hadn’t gone all that well. Sure they had raised some dollars for the campaign war chest, but the heavy hitter donors and packagers who had been in attendance had obviously left disappointed with how little the President had told them about what was REALLY going on with The Object. The President didn’t want to admit that he didn’t know any more than they did so he bluffed them with a national security excuse.