Quantum Times (6 page)

     They agreed to meet late that afternoon after everyone had settled in.

     The Alien walking down the Champs Elysees felt disoriented. Paris was not what she had expected. She had thought she was prepared and would know the streets; but much was different. The beauty of the city was there; but the look and feel was wrong. She had been led to expect it would look more like Berlin or Munich.

     The city was more beautiful than she had imagined. This Paris was different than the Paris she had thought she would see. She had not expected to see The Louvre in its stately majesty or the triumphant symbol of the Eiffel Tower. She liked best the brasseries and bistros with the customers sitting outside in the summer sun arguing art and politics or more prosaically just sharing their day’s events. She had sat at one and had a vin blanc and imagined herself a Parisian. With her cosmetic changes she thought she not only fit in but that the males passing her by found her attractive. She rather liked that.

     She liked the clothing that the females in Paris were wearing. The flow of the soft fabrics and the bare arms and legs combined in a tantalizing fashion; very different from the skin tight militaristic tunics of her planet. The skirt she had on was knee length and when she had been sitting at the little table on the street and sipping her wine she had crossed her legs and felt a delightful flirtatious naughtiness that would have earned her a reprimand at home.

     She was thrilled that she had been selected to be one of the planet visitors. Though most of the cadre wanted to go down planet side, only a few were selected. This was only her second mission but her scholastic diligence had been rewarded. But perhaps because she was so inexperienced she could not see what made this planet such a danger to so many. She hated that it might soon suffer extinction. She knew it could happen.

Chapter Three

“Consciousness determines existence.”

It “was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness [of the observer] …the very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate reality.”

Eugene Wigner, Nobel Prize winning Physicist

     Planck had asked them to meet him in what used to be the lobby of the resort hotel at 4PM. At the appointed time David and Gabriela and the professor walked from their rooms to the central building which housed the lobby. The lobby had large hurricane shutters at the front and the back which were fully opened and gave the appearance of always being in that open position. A breeze drifted through the room and the sibilant sounds of the waves cascading to the shore were a quiet reminder of the resort that this building once was. Planck was there to greet them but to their surprise the lobby which had no furniture was filled with the twenty or so island residents all seated on the floor, many in the lotus position.

     As David approached Planck he was struck by the incongruity of it all. He had come with a Nobel Prize winning physicist to talk to a grad school friend of his on a tropical island where religious zealots were apparently meditating.  They were there because some extra-terrestrials wanted to meet his friend too. And somehow in the ten years since he last saw his friend, Planck was looking better than ever – and part of that look was of a man who knew things that no one else knew. Like the secrets of the universe.

     “Just go with it,” he thought to himself.

     Planck met them at the entrance and put his finger to his lips to suggest they be silent. They noticed he had a small grocery bag in his hand. He led them a few feet away from the lobby where he felt more free to talk.

     “I believed our discussion would go better if we started with a little demonstration. But there needs to be a slight alteration in my plans because we must address a more serious, but purely internal, matter.” As Planck spoke he looked mostly at Dr. Wheeling but Gabriela and David were given brief glances too.

     Planck went on when they all nodded. He then opened the grocery bag he was holding and showed that it contained four bananas bound together just as one would purchase them at the grocery store. They were six or seven inches long but were not nearly ripe, in fact they were green. “Quite green aren’t they?” He said as he put them back in the bag and curled the edges of the bag so that it was closed and handed the bag to Dr. Wheeling.

     Planck then said, “I would like the three of you to join us in a meditation exercise for a few minutes – just sit quietly and try to quiet your mind. Try not to think of anything. When thoughts do pop up, just push them to the side. Let your mind be quiet and still. You needn’t close your eyes, feel free to observe. See without thinking about it. Professor…I would like you to keep the bag with you and do not open it until you leave the meditation. Keep it with you in such a way that no one could interfere with it without your knowing. David and Gabriela feel free to watch the bag if you like. You will understand later why I ask that. Fifteen minutes will be enough, and then the three of you should get up and leave.

     “I will need to stay in the meditation for a while longer. One of our members has just learned that he has a brain tumor and we need to address that. I suggest that when you do get up and leave the meditation you might gather together outside and discuss….discuss instances of mind over matter. “

     Dr. Wheeling with no hint of bemusement repeated, “Mind over matter.” Then he nodded his head several times as if he had known that was to be discussed.

     Planck then brought them into the lobby and showed where they should sit on the floor near the back. The people in the room were silent and sat motionless. No one looked up at them. Planck moved to the front of the room and sat down there. Gabriela sat in a pretty good semblance of the lotus position and David and the professor did the best they could. The professor placed the bag down on his lap with his hand firmly clasping it. David looked at his watch to check the time.

     First the time seemed to turtle by for David but once he stopped watching the minute hand of his watch and instead just tried to see the room without looking, his watch soon showed the fifteen minutes was up. He stood up and went outside and Dr. Wheeling and Gabriela joined him. They walked out on the patio and sat at a round table for four with a beach umbrella in the middle of it.

     Without saying a word, Dr. Wheeling opened the grocery bag and took out of it four beautifully ripe yellow bananas. The three of them stayed silent moments longer and stared at the bananas. Then calmly the professor took one of the bananas and as he unpeeled it he said, “Reality is different than I had supposed.”

     “Could it be a trick of some kind?” David asked but he didn’t know how it could have been.

     Dr. Wheeling shook his head. “The Object is real. Moving the hurricanes was real. These bananas were green and now they are ripe and these bananas are very real.” In emphasis of his last statement he ate the top third of the banana. Then he said, “This is not the time of tricks and magic. This is the time to re-think what is real.”

     “I think we should do what Planck asked us to do. Let’s talk about mind over matter.” Gabriela said. Then she went on, “As physicists we try very hard to ignore certain things we know are true. We know the need for an “Observer” in quantum physics exists, but we try to ignore why or what that means. The role of The Observer is to turn potentialities into actualities, but why that is so we try not to ask. But it is predictable and experiments like the classic double slit experiments substantiate it. And in fact we have many instances where ‘mind’ affects ‘matter’.”

     David agreed, “This issue has bothered me for a while. It is why I was writing the article on how quadriplegics were interfacing with computers through mental exertions to move their wheelchairs. But similarly, we know that what we think affects the molecules in our bodies: we routinely think ourselves sick through stress. We also know that we can think ourselves healthy too – the placebo effect shows that…and that prayer can help as well. People with positive attitudes are much more likely to recover from serious illness than people with negative attitudes.”

     Gabriela added, “I know as a physicist I’m supposed to reject that work by Emoto where he shows the effects of human consciousness on water molecules but I don’t think his work has been proven to be a sham.” 

     Dr. Wheeling had finished his banana. “I believe that the issue is now decided—the mind can rule matter – though I did just eat the evidence,” he said with a smirk. “We are not here to debate that issue. We are here to understand the physics of it and perhaps to use that understanding to save our planet from The Object – if in fact our planet does need saving from The Object.”

     As if on cue, they saw Planck leave the lobby and come their way. He pulled a chair from a nearby table and sat down with them. He gave the group a boyish smile but said nothing. Then he raised his index finger and pointed at the bananas.

     Dr. Wheeling nodded his head up and down, up and down, then gave Planck a bemused smile, “The banana was delicious. Never before have I observed a physics experiment that was both edifying and edible.”

     Planck grinned, “It wasn’t magic, you know. It is both predictable and repeatable. It is just not particularly believable. That is why I thought it best to just show you.”

     “How do you do it?” Gabriela asked.

     “I did not do it – all of us together did it. During the first fifteen minutes while you were there all of us, all 29 of us, meditated on the ripening of those bananas. I had set that up with the team earlier today. I apologized to them for the parlor trick nature of it but felt it was necessary. Then we had more serious work to do.”

     Dr. Wheeling seemed already to understand. “Your colleague with the brain tumor. Would I be correct in supposing that your group meditated on its disappearing? Is he now going to be all right?”

     Planck nodded, “We think he’ll be fine. How did you know?”

     “You mentioned earlier that you needed to address that. And I have noticed that all of the residents here – yourself included – look remarkably fit and healthy. So is it the power of meditation by a large trained group with everyone focused on a single thought?”

     Planck nodded and smiled again. “That is partly right. But it really helps if you have one of these.” He put his hand to his right ear and pulled out a little device that resembled a hearing aid. “This little amplifier helps a lot. It broadcasts my thoughts to the Universe. Once I figured out the right frequency the Universe became much more attentive.” 

     Dr. Wheeling, Gabriela and David all stared at the tiny electronic device. Planck said nothing.

     “An amplifier,” David said, not a question just a simple statement while his mind was considering the implications.

     Planck then added, “We think it might work better if it was implanted inside the skull but we are not sure yet.”

     Dr. Wheeling started nodding his head as he did whenever his thoughts were crystalizing, “I suppose the challenge was in tuning it – both to receive and send…finding the right frequency.”

     Planck nodded, “More trial and error than theory. And it doesn’t receive, only send. We may be talking to the universe, but it is not talking to us.”

     Nodding again the professor said, “Of course. I meant it receives your thoughts – not those of the universe. The electronics themselves I’m sure are quite simple.”

     Planck smiled, “Perhaps not that simple for me. Getting it calibrated to read very faint electromagnetic waves took some doing.”

     “Yes but the theory is not new.”

     “Agreed.”

     David interjected, “In doing the trial and error…what was the experiment?”

     Planck smiled again, “Not very original, I’m afraid. We moved pennies with our minds.”

     “You can move pennies with your minds repeatedly and under observation?”

     “Yes,” Planck replied, and then added, “But we found that moving objects through space takes a lot of mental effort. It really is not something the universe wants to do. It prefers to change the state of things. That is easier. Like turning off cancerous cells in the body… or making green bananas ripen.”

     Almost concurrently Gabriela asked, “You can cure cancer?” and David asked, “You can manipulate matter at the molecular level?”

     “Yes and yes. But we are still learning. We are at the very beginning of the journey.”

     Gabriela’s eyes were wide with excitement, “But why are you keeping this a secret? You should be publishing your work, get the peer review, and wait for the Nobel Prize!”

     Planck just shook his head, “It scares me to death.” The three of them just looked at him, not understanding. Planck went on, “If it weren’t for the appearance of The Object we would not now be talking about this.”

     Then Dr. Wheeling started nodding his head again. Whereas just a few moments earlier his eyes had been bright with excitement and a smile had danced on his lips, now his expression had turned somber and his eyes had narrowed with apprehension. “I think I now understand what the scientists working on The Manhattan Project felt as they designed the first nuclear bombs,” he said. “The social and political implications of Planck’s work are staggering!”

     “One more question Planck before I must go and just think about things. Am I correct in surmising that the distance between the participant or participants who are engaging in the mental exertions and the object that is the subject of those exertions -- that distance between them is largely irrelevant? The trick…no not trick…the change you just effected to our bananas, you could have done that with us in the room or the bananas could have been 5 miles away or five hundred miles away or even five million miles away?”

     Planck regarded the professor with a look of grateful appreciation. Dr. Wheeling’s mind could advance with his own down the dark hidden pathways of a reality that glimmered tantalizingly close.

     “Yes professor that is correct. The challenge is to locate the object in the mind. Where it is physically doesn’t seem to matter. But you need to have a very precise vision of where it is exactly. You can’t just give GPS coordinates.”

     Dr. Wheeling’s expression turned gloomier, “Oh my God. Mankind is not ready for this.”

     When Dr. Wheeling walked away wanting some time to think, Planck too said he had some things he had to do. All agreed to meet in three hours for dinner and to resume the conversation. Gabriela and David went back to their room and decided to take a walk along the beach. They changed into shorts and tee-shirts and walked out of their room and soon had the sand underfoot and the cool ebb and flow of the sea nuzzling their ankles. The sun was nearing the horizon and a breeze lightly drifted over them dissipating the lingering heat of the day. Though they walked holding hands their thoughts were far from any notions of romance.

     The writer in him led David to composing paragraphs in his mind that he was afraid he might never see published. “We are now among the very few people in the world who know that the laws of physics … the laws of the Universe …allow a man with just his mind –“