Seven Point Eight (2 page)

The woman’s predicament touched Ava more deeply.

“Like Maria’s original diagnosis?”

Her escort tried to smile sympathetically, although she said nothing. Ava made eye contact with the intense character behind the door, which sent a chill down her spine.

“She reminds me of the girl from The Exorcist,” she commented.

They turned the corridor, where Ava observed two more enigmatic characters. An Afro-Caribbean couple resided in the same room, and appeared to be actors in a play of their own making.

“Lost in their own little world, aren’t they?” Ava said.

“We call them The Time Travellers, as they always insist they’ve visited the past and future. Most of the time they’re locked in an imagery scenario, living some other reality.”

Further down the corridor, where a broken fluorescent light flickered, Ava peered through the window to see a man with fair hair, who had a tendency to punch walls or shout for books. He remained oblivious to their presence and Ava’s gaze. On this day, he stood in front of a wall, reaching out to touch it with his fingers.

“What is he doing?” Ava asked.

“He believes he can walk through walls,” her escort explained. “My, we’ve had some bruises over the years. I don’t know what’s worse, his wall or book obsession.”

All these residents seemed to have some strange back story, and Ava felt intrigued by what tale lay behind their predicament. How did they end up so crazy and sick? Were they doomed to spend the rest of their lives scribbling, snarling, punching walls, or acting out another reality?

She followed her escort through some double doors, which required a security code to gain entry into the next corridor. There, they soon found Room 104 and Ava paused outside.

“Has there been any change in her condition since I last visited?”

Her escort shook her head with regret.

“She’s still in a persistent vegetative state, exactly the same as the day she arrived.”

Ava accepted the situation with reluctance.

“She’s the only living relative I have. I hope one day I’d discover where we came from, who our parents are, and if our father is still alive. Did you recover the file from the facility she transferred from?”

“I’m sorry, it’s still missing.”

Undeterred, Ava pressed further.

“Does anybody else visit her? They may be able to offer some clues to her history…why she ended up in this condition, when and why she cut her wrists...”

“I can’t disclose that information, it’s confidential I’m afraid.”

Her escort opened the door and Ava entered, determined to present a face of hope to Maria, her sister.

***

She felt a sense of relief to turn the key in her front door, and collapse on the sofa in her flat. Ava closed her eyes, trying to dissolve the day’s frustration through positive thinking, but didn’t totally succeed. There were too many questions and nothing made sense. Her life was becoming chaotic, not that it had ever actually been fathomable.

Rather than cook a meal, she decided to grab a takeaway. Only when she opened her handbag did she notice something that certainly didn’t belong to her, or any of her flatmates. In fact, she felt sure it hadn’t been in her bag before she left the flat. Ava stared at a red, silk scarf. How had it found its way into her bag, and why did she feel it held some personal meaning for her? This innocent little object disturbed her immensely.

With the red, silky fabric entwined around her fingers, she wandered over to the bay window and looked out at the twilight sky. The stars were obliterated due to light pollution, but for that moment, she felt a fleeting sense of connection to the cosmos. As if projecting her concerns to the universe, she communicated her anxiety.

“Nothing is real anymore,” she said. “What’s happening to me?”

Part One

The Genesis of Genius

I cannot but regard the ether, which can be the seat of an electromagnetic field with its energy and vibrations, as endowed with a certain degree of substantiality, however different it may be from all ordinary matter.

*

Hendrik Lorentz, physicist, 1906

1

Earthship

“Our story is the story of the cosmos, because every little piece of you, every little bit of me, everything you hold dear and everything you hate, all emerged from the first few minutes of life in the universe. The atoms inside our bodies came from the hearts of stars, or were created in their fiery deaths. When we die, those atoms will be returned to the cosmos, as part of the endless cycle of death and rebirth. I ask you, dearest audience, isn’t it wonderful to be a part of the universe?”

Dr. Paul Eldridge gazed at his attentive audience, who filled all the seats in this oak panelled lecture theatre. A mixture of potential students, accompanying parents, past alumni, and curious adults sat dressed in a typical array of post war fashions: casual and smart suits, pencil skirts, full pleated skirts, tailored dresses, trilbies, pill box hats, and real stockings. They hung on his every word, and his passion and charisma seemed to entice others to study at the university. Since attaining his doctorate in 1947, he’d accepted an invitation to lecture on physics, and had never looked back.

Paul’s proud, dignified features reflected his natural sense of authority and although not traditionally handsome, he came across as a fascinating individual. His striking blue eyes suggested both wisdom and curiosity. They possessed warmth and humour but also a special intensity, as if they were the doorway to some great cosmic knowledge. His fair hair curled in an anarchistic fashion, so he kept it short to ensure absolute follicular rule. He dressed conservatively when necessary, and casual when that rule didn’t hold. This particular day, he wore a cream shirt with neutral coloured trousers, which he deemed acceptably smart.

As he spoke, he gesticulated powerfully, etching his enthusiasm and beliefs into his facial expressions while walking up and down the stage.

“We live on this amazing giant floating ball of rock and water, spinning on its axis at over a thousand miles per hour, and travelling around the sun at over sixty-seven thousand miles per hour. Our sun drags the solar system around the galaxy at over fifty-five thousand miles per hour, and all the while, our galaxy itself is moving through the universe faster than the speed of light. What a ride!”

“In essence, our home is an Earthship which is over four billion years old. We orbit an immense power source, and in the universe, there are billions more stars like ours, possibly with their own family of Earthships. How many planets out there in the universe support life?”

“However vast our cosmos may be, it is still composed of tiny particles called atoms. They are so small that if an apple were magnified to the size of the Earth, then the atoms in the Earth-sized apple would be approximately the size of the original apple.”

At this point, he picked up an actual apple that he liked to use as a prop.

“As we journeyed through the twentieth century in today’s lecture, it became clear that atoms are not, in fact, unbreakable”.

He threw the apple to an alert young man in the second row, who caught it in one hand. Perfection. Paul continued as he paced the stage.

“Peering inside the atom, we found that its solidity is an illusion. The nucleus within it compares to a fly in a cathedral, and that leaves us with an awful lot of empty space, over ninety percent actually. We’ve always seen this void as empty and matter as full, but now that we can smash apart atoms, freeing a host of new quantum particles, will we begin to peel away the bottom layers of our reality?”

He paused briefly, as if contemplating the question.

 
“Einstein attempted to draw together space, time, matter, gravitation, and electromagnetism into one unified theory but this eludes him, and his theory remains incomplete. Will we ever develop a universal understanding of the cosmos, and our place within it? I’d like to think so, yet the more we discover the more unpredictable the universe becomes.”

“This brought us to the world of quantum weirdness, where the universe exists as an infinite number of possibilities, having no precise location or being until something happens to lock one of those possibilities into place. This is known as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. In his double-slit experiment, a photon particle behaved as if it passed through both slits at the same time, but, when it was observed closely, it chose a definite slit. He concluded that when we observe something, we turn quantum possibilities into reality. Maybe it also means we can be in two places at once!”

Paul heard a murmur from the audience, along with a few subtle chuckles.

“I conclude this lecture with more questions. Where is quantum theory taking us? Will our reality be further shattered, our quantum experiences breaking the bottom of the proverbial pail? Will the world change beyond recognition because of this? What applications will we find for this new knowledge? And where, if any place whatsoever, is there room for God? Any questions?”

Silence greeted Paul’s ears. Most of the audience pondered the lecture, temporarily existing in their own universe, either parallel, quantum or classical. A flashbulb fired, capturing Paul and his audience for posterity, yet still no one dared ask a question. Most lectures were never short of those willing to attempt the opening of Pandora’s Box, to be oppositional or controversial, to challenge the contemporary notions of science.

Then, finally someone spoke up, a fairly unassuming man in his early twenties who appeared to be bamboozled by the lecture.

“You said that atoms are full of empty space. Explain to me why things look and feel solid.”

Okay, a good start.

“Well…think of a bicycle wheel,” Paul began. “The spokes represent solid matter, or to be more exact, the neutrons and electrons in the atom with space in between, right?” The unassuming man nodded, so Paul continued. “When the wheel spins fast, representing the vibration or jiggling of the atoms, the spokes blur and look solid. If you reach out and touch them, they repel your fingers. They feel so solid that you wouldn’t be able to pass your hand right through them. When the wheel stops, or vibration ceases, they look and feel solid no more.”

The man smiled, no longer as bamboozled.

“So, if the neutrons and electrons stopped jiggling about, we can walk through walls?”

 
“Theoretically!”

The audience laughed.

“But,” the man added, “What’s in the empty space?”

A tough one to answer, but it didn’t faze Paul.

“Physicists aren’t certain what it contains, if anything at all.”

“Isn’t it full of the ether?” the man countered.

“Science considers the ether to be an archaic concept, akin to hogwash. It originated with the Greeks and referred to a universal field of energy that connects everything, it was the air breathed by the Gods. Pythagoras and Aristotle saw it as the fifth element of creation, along with air, fire, water, and Earth. Many of the greatest minds in history, including Einstein, believed in the ether, saying it was necessary for the laws of physics to work.”

“Well, if so many great minds believed in it, why isn’t it an accepted part of science?” the man pointed out.

“Because science requires proof, not faith. In 1887, two men set up an experiment to prove the existence of ether. Just as we’re able to detect a breeze blowing a field of corn, they proposed that it was possible to detect the ether in a similar way. They shot two rays of light simultaneously in different directions, thinking that one ray would experience resistance in the way that when, we say, cycle into the wind, our progress is slowed. However, no ether wind was detected, and the hypothesis was disproved. This result has hindered the concept of ether in its quest to be taken seriously.”