Miss Buddha

by Ulf Wolf

  “To whom?”

  “To Kristina Medina.”

  “But she’s married.”

  “That is why,” said Ruth, “his heart will forever be given, for it will never, can never, be received. And so can never, will never be returned.”

  “What happened?” asked Melissa, but Ruth had said enough on the subject, and would not answer. Maybe she didn’t know the details.

  Melissa tried to envision the circumstances of Julian Lawson’s given heart but could not. What she did see, however, is that her daughter was right, for in recalling his visit, she could sense no interest whatsoever drifting her way from Ruth’s new teacher—his heart already truly given.

  :: 83 :: (Pasadena)

  Both Kristina and Julian held true to their promises to not only keep the secret, but also that they would do anything they could to help Ruth, and so it was that upon finishing seventh grade at Pasadena Polytechnic—and now an acknowledged fourteen year old science protégé—it was decided in an unprecedented move by both Polytechnic and Cal Tech that she would transfer to Cal Tech under the now Professor Julian Lawson’s guidance and tutelage to continue her education.

  At her own request, and eventually granted by Cal Tech—whose board didn’t quite see the point of it, but consented since Ruth, and her mother, both insisted—she would augment her science curriculum and research with courses in philosophy and religion. Her stated reason was personal interest, while her real reason was preparation.

  :

  Melissa more or less succeeded in wholly putting aside her interest in Julian Lawson, whom she saw a fair amount of, especially once Ruth transferred to Cal Tech; but she did not manage to finally transcend her perceived need until after a conversation they had in the spring of 2025 in Julian’s office (now much larger and better kept—William, his assistant, insisted on neatness, and would take matters in his own hands if Julian lapsed).

  Julian and Ruth were working on a new series of experiments to prove that what allowed non-local communication was simply life itself, the true underlying reality to everything. They had made good progress, but while they both saw the results as evident, other, more critical views, were nowhere near convinced, and so they continued to refine and redo.

  Another day had come to an end and Melissa had driven over to Cal Tech to pick up Ruth—they were headed for a dinner with Melissa’s parents. Ruth, however, was not ready yet, and pleaded for “five more minutes” which soon had turned forty-five.

  Melissa, meanwhile, dropped in on Julian, who, as always, was delighted to see her though still as un-interested (by Melissa’s yard stick) as ever.

  “She’s not ready yet,” by way of explanation, as she sat down.

  “Yes, I know. She wants to re-check some settings for another round tomorrow.”

  “Five minutes, she said.”

  “Don’t hold your breath—or her to it,” said Julian. Then he said:

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you. For a long time, actually.” But did not go on.

  “Meaning to ask me what, Julian?”

  “Does she talk in your head as well?”

  She laughed more at the surprise of it than the question itself, then quickly gathered herself. “Yes, she certainly does.”

  “It scared the pants of me the first time.”

  “Me, too,” she admitted.

  “Can you talk back?” he wanted to know.

  “Sure.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t seem to find that, that,” he faltered.

  “Tongue?” she suggested.

  “Yes, precisely. That tongue. I have to speak my answers out loud. But I hear her just fine.”

  Melissa wasn’t sure what to answer, what to suggest. For her the tongue, as she had put it, had been found naturally, it had just been there, for her use, no finding involved. Julian had not found it, and she could see that it bothered him, at least on some level. Instead of trying to say something comforting, she said something that had been on her mind for at least as long:

  “I have a question for you.”

  He waited.

  “Does your heart still belong to Kristina Medina?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Ruth.”

  This was the first time Melissa had ever observed someone about to blush but then change his mind. Like a shade announced that never arrived. Odd sensation. She realized that she had put Julian very much on the spot, and was about to apologize when he said:

  “Do you believe in fate?” Then, before she had a chance to answer, clarified, “I mean, do you believe that for each person there is a someone that is fated to be your,” he stopped, apparently searching for the right word; “your partner,” he said—having gone full circle and then some; from mate to partner to girl to intended to destined to mate again and then finally back to partner.

  “Do I believe there is someone out there meant just for you?”

  “Yes. That’s what I mean.”

  “I used to.”

  “Not anymore?”

  “I haven’t thought about it lately.”

  “I believe there is. And I believe that when you find that someone you’ll know, just flat out know that this is the person you were intended to spend the rest of your life with.”

  “But she is married.”

  “I know. Believe me, I know. That was my problem. She was already spoken for.”

  “Perhaps she is not the one.”

  “Oh, she’s the one, all right. I told you that you flat out know. I flat out knew.”

  “And,” she said. “You gave her your heart?”

  He looked up at hear, startled. “Yes, that’s precisely what I did. I gave her my heart.”

  “And you have not retrieved it in all these years.”

  “No, I haven’t retrieved it. I gave it away for good.”

  “You are an amazing man, Julian Lawson.”

  Julian didn’t reply. Instead he seemed to retreat a little, to consider some internal scenario, memory perhaps. Melissa regarded him with a feeling part wonder, part compassion. What was he giving up to remain true to his gift? Was he happy, was he truly happy with such a profound choice?

  Then something occurred that made them both sit up and look at each other in wonder, for he answered her question, quite clearly, and purely by thought: “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?” She said aloud.

  “You heard that?”

  “You heard my question?”

  “Yes I did,” said Julian.

  “Yes I did,” said Melissa.

  “Well, I’ll be,” said Julian. “Looks like I found that tongue.”

  Then she thought the question, “Does Kristina know?”

  “That she owns my heart?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “No. No, she does not.”

  Melissa nodded. Yes, she could see that the noble, the loving thing to do was to not tell her.

  “Yes,” Julian said. That’s the noble, the right thing to do.

  “I had a thing for you for a while,” said Melissa. “Though not anymore.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “Though now you feel to me more like a brother than anything else. A dear and close brother.”

  “Amazing,” said Julian. Again reflecting on finding his tongue, and on hearing her thoughts. Then he said, “We have to establish some sort of protocol.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Privacy,” he said. “Respect thereof.”

  “Ah, yes. Yes, we have to establish some sort of protocol.”

  But instead of discussing protocol, Julian said, “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “What is it like to be the Buddha’s mother? If that is that how you see yourself.”

  Good question. “No,” she said after a little while. “That is not how I see myself. I see myself as Ruth’s mother. She’s the one I carried in my belly, and she’s the one I’ve worried about and raised. That fact t
hat she’s also the Buddha Gotama, well, somehow that is secondary.”

  Julian nodded. Yes, he could see that. “But,” he said. “The responsibility?”

  “The responsibility?”

  “She’s on a mission. A crucial mission.”

  “I know.”

  “Legally, I mean. You’re still her mother.”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Is it a burden?”

  She shook her head. “No, no burden. Not at all. A joy.”

  He smiled at that. “She told me once that she chose you. She chose well.”

  “I hope so,” said Melissa.

  “I know so,” said Julian.

  “Flat-out know?” wondered Melissa.

  “Yes.”

  :

  On paper, what Julian and Ruth wanted to prove was straightforward enough: that life—at its most fundamental—was indeed the medium that facilitated instant communication between the twin particles. This, however, proved extremely difficult to demonstrate.

  Ruth had told Julian that from the ultimate view of the Buddha and his insight into the truth about nature—the thus-ness of things, as she put it—in that light neither of the correlated twin-particles really existed. She had told him that they—in truth—were a result of life thinking them, and that without life there would be neither particle or instant communication (knowing) between them.

  Julian was on board with this. Generally accepted research had already established that these particles were and also were not particles. What Ruth said—that these were direct products of life thinking them—was not beyond the realm of reason. But it would take some proving.

  At this proving this had proved more than just elusive, it was flirting with the impossible.

  A string of experiments were running into an either/or brick wall. Either life was present and looking, and then the instant communication between twinned particles did take place—Julian had already proven this

  But to show that instant communication did not take place when life was not present and looking, well, that was the problem, how on earth could you prove that since you were not looking? How could you tell anything about them if you were not observing?

  It was very much like the tree falling in the forest with no one to hear. Did it indeed make a sound? There was no real way of telling, was there? And never would be. For you—life, in other words—would have to be present to register the sound or non-sound to prove it one way or another, but in being present there would, of course be a sound.

  Perhaps non-local communication between twinned particles is impossible in the absence of life, but how on earth would you go about proving that?

  After many attempts, and many failures, they were quite literally back at the proverbial drawing board.

  :: 84 :: (Pasadena)

  “So, how do we fool them into thinking that we’re not looking,” said Julian. He said this partially as a joke, but as he said it, he also felt a deep-within rumbling sense of onto-something about that.

  Ruth shook her head. “As long as life is intimately involved in the experiment, the particles will exist and non-local communication will occur.” Then she went on to think out aloud: “If there were to be no life whatever involved in the experiment, there would be no communication possible. No instant communication between the twins will take place. Nor, of course, would there be any twin particles to experiment with.”

  “So, simply not provable. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I don’t know, Julian. We’re back to our either/or proposition. Either life is present to exist the twin particles into being, and with that the instant communication—their co-knowing; or, there is no life to facilitate their co-knowing, but then, by the same token, there will be no twin particles either.

  “So, not provable?”

  Ruth sighed. “I honestly don’t know.” Then, after a brief silence, she added, “I wonder if there can be a way to provide or display or manifest—I don’t know what the right word would be—to show a sufficient amount of life to keep the particles in place, to exist them, but not enough life to facilitate co-knowing.”

  Julian remained silent, still rumbling inside, waiting for more.

  “The real problem, of course,” she continued. “Is that life is always present, to some degree or other, or there would be no universe, no world, no twin particles, nothing to prove, nothing.

  “That’s a thought,” said Julian. “Problem solved.”

  “In more ways than you’ll ever know,” said Ruth.

  That earned he a long glance, which she chose to ignore. Instead she said, “Being, at heart, the product of thought and nothing else, the twin particles are finely attuned to thought, and they know that we—as experimenters—expect them to not only exist, but to instantly communicate. And, being friendly particles they oblige.”

  Julian remained silent. Listening intently.

  “This behavior was agreed upon aeons ago,” she said. “The physical has a long memory. And always does what it’s told.”

  “You lost me there.”

  “I’ve said it before, Julian. It is all illusion. All of it. Some a bit more illusion that others. Non-local communication is very fundamental to matter, without it matter would, literally, fall apart. The left hand has to know, at all time, precisely what the right hand is doing. Always coordinated. It is, truly, one body. As long as life is involved.

  “But life is always involved.”

  “Yes,” Ruth said. “That is the problem.”

  Julian sat very still while within him the rumble turned small geyser of intuition that gathered strength and then erupted, and then took wing, “Perhaps if we don’t observe directly.”

  Ruth looked up at him, with that look that took in everything, both external and internal. Still, she didn’t quite follow, “What do you mean?”

  “Perhaps if we place enough vias, enough relays, between us as observing life and the particles we observe, perhaps they won’t notice our looking?”

  Now she saw his reasoning, and smiled. “I don’t know,” she said. “But it’s worth trying.”

  “Or, perhaps they will see through the charade.”

  “I don’t know, Julian,” she said. “Chances are that they will, but we won’t know until we try. How do you see us setting this up?”

  Julian’s private geyser seemed to have had it all worked out from the start, and as he listened to it (if that is what he did) he nodded to himself and saw that if there indeed was a way to fool life into believing there was no life there looking, this would be it.

  “Remember the Colombia-Borneo experiment?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “We should duplicate that experiment, but rather than having the data sent directly to our monitoring computers, we should first beam it to a communication satellite, and from there to another satellite, and from there to a third, and so on, until we have enough relays and vias to appear to the particles that no one is looking. Nothing alive anyway.”

  Ruth smiled and nodded. “Worth trying,” she said.

  :: 85 :: (Pasadena)

  The experiment took three grueling months to arrange. The sites in Colombia and Borneo were easily enough brought online—lasers calibrated and made ready, as was Cambridge, it was the communication satellites that was the problem. One or two, fine, it was Cal Tech asking after all, they could have them on short notice; but Julian wanted ten, twenty, and that raised not only quite a few eyebrows but a host of objections. Julian stuck to his guns, he needed a minimum of ten, twenty would be better. In the end they managed to line up sixteen, for a window of precisely four minutes and twelve seconds.

  “Is sixteen enough?” wondered Ruth.

  “Is four minutes enough?” wondered Julian.

  They sat looking at each other across Julian’s desk, cluttered as usual, lately striking Julian more like something alive than simply wood and paper. How many relays were enough? Julian had pondered this what felt like endless
ly. He’d like a hundred, a thousand, but that was not going to happen, was it? Sixteen relays would inject roughly thirty milliseconds to the data path, which in particle physical time was a small eternity. Still, would it fool the twins? He hoped, but he was far from sure.

  He said, “I have to assume that if sixteen doesn’t fool them, then no amount will.”

  “I don’t know,” said Ruth. “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “There are so many agreements,” she said. “I don’t remember their sequence, in what order they were made. I don’t remember if delays were ever agreed upon. Or whether it was ever agreed that life could mask its looking.”

  “You are talking long ago,” said Julian, who by now had ceased to be surprised by anything Ruth said.

  “I am talking very long ago,” Ruth agreed.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” said Julian. “Although I am concerned about the window. Four minutes is not much.”

  “And twelve seconds,” added Ruth.

  “And twelve seconds, yes. But a single hiccup will eat all of that, and then we have no experiment left.”

  “So, we won’t have any hiccups,” said Ruth.

  “Let’s hope so,” said Julian.

  :

  The year was 2026, the day was December 16th. It was a Wednesday, and everything went smoothly.

  At precisely 14:10 hours, Cambridge time, the sixteen communication satellites would sync up and provide a path of relays for the data sent by the Borneo detecting laser.

  At precisely that time Cambridge fired a set of negative particle twins for the lasers, the Colombia twin hitting firsts and reversed to positive, the Borneo particle hitting its laser that hair-breadth of time later, which detected and reported back, via, via, via—through all sixteen relays—and the particle was: positive.

  And again, and again, and again. All positive. Non-locally told by its twin to change polarity, again and again.

  There was no fooling life.

  “Oh, well,” said Ruth.

  :

  December 17th was a gloomy day. I many ways.

  Pasadena did its best not to rain, but didn’t do a very good job of it. Clouds ran low and intrusively. The wind blew in no particular direction but that which at that moment would find some unprotected spot to usher the rain toward—at least that’s how Julian felt as he rang the doorbell. Melissa answered it. “Julian, you’re soaking.”