Miss Buddha

by Ulf Wolf

  :

  It took a full month.

  The writing, the stating everything as clearly, as unambiguously as possible, took one, two, three drafts, then some input from Ananda and Melissa, then a fourth draft read with meticulous care by William Williams, Julian’s perfectionist assistant, who spotted no less than fourteen what he called inconsistencies (but what any normal person would call typos, or grammar mistakes), then a final draft that they all agreed upon. This was all done in less than a week.

  The problem was the review board. What Ruth thought of a red tape. Turning very red indeed.

  The board, consisting of three Cal Tech professors, all with a host of patents to their name, all busy on their own projects, and all a little envious—if not suspicious—of Julian and his pretty protégé assistant, flat out did not believe the findings.

  Not until they got assurances, both in writing and in person, from the head of Intel Labs concerning the soundness of the EPROMs used; not until they had spoken to—again in person—to the Cambridge team leader, as well as those heading up the Borneo and Colombia sites, to verify every last comma (it seemed to Ruth) of the paper.

  “The worst thing that could possibly happen to Cal Tech as an institution,” Julian told Ruth, “is that they sign off on these findings only to have them disproved. Cal Tech would be the laughing stock of science. It happened to the University of Utah in 1989 with their Fleischmann–Pons cold fusion experiment, which was prematurely reported by the school to the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry only to then be disproved by just about every attempt to replicate it. Talk about eggs and face.”

  “Yes, but two weeks.”

  “They’ll come around,” said Julian. “They have no choice. They’re right to be cautious, but they’re also good scientists, and they’re doing all the right things, speaking to the right people. I don’t blame them.”

  Again, the teenager looked her age, not liking the delay one bit.

  The final step was the board’s interview with Julian and Ruth, which took two full days—though with ample breaks for coffee, sandwiches, lunches, seemingly any excuse for a break. In the end, however, they were satisfied—and scared, was Ruth’s observation—that their experiment was sound, and that the result was scientifically correct. Impossibly unexpected, is how they put it, but obviously true.

  They signed the paper, and it was rushed to publication in the Journal of Particle Physics, which had it online within an hour after submission.

  Julian—with Ruth’s concurrence—knowing that the paper would create a storm (and a storm of inquiries and questions, both from the scientific community and the press) had made it abundantly clear in the prolog to the paper that the research team (meaning himself and Ruth) would answer no questions—or grant any interviews—from anyone who did not seriously intend to replicate the experience; stating clearly that before this was made available for public consumption, as he put it, he wanted verification in place.

  This assertion notwithstanding, within hours Cal Tech was inundated with calls, and soon thereafter, visits. All wanting to speak to Julian and Ruth, and now.

  The Cal Tech switchboard had been instructed to ask every caller if they intended to replicate the experiment, if not, sorry, we can’t help you.

  Many a caller lied, of course, sure, that’s why we’re calling. Those were put through to Julian’s office and fielded by the efficient-as-ever William Williams. Julian had left him a list of institutions and teams that should be believed if they claimed to plan a replication, and for each caller (or visitor), William went down the list, vetting them.

  Julian and Ruth, meanwhile, had cleared out, and was spending the week following the publication at Melissa’s.

  The result of this storm was that four teams declared that they would like to replicate, and as they were all on Julian’s list appointments were made, and meetings were held, questions were answered, dates were set.

  The four teams that were to mirror Julian’s and Ruth’s experiment were UCLA in Los Angeles, California; Cal Tech’s archrival MIT in Massachusetts; QUT (Queensland University of Technology) in Brisbane, Australia; and KTH (Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm, Sweden.

  All four teams had travelled to Pasadena, had met with Julian and Ruth, and were now confident that they could recreate the experiment exactly, although each team member—with the exception of Sara Karlsson, heading up the Swedish team and who smiled a lot—expressed serious doubts as to the outcome. This simply wasn’t possible was it?

  “I think it’s possible,” smiled Karlsson.

  :: 88 :: (Pasadena)

  The first team to complete verification was QUT in Brisbane. Twelve runs. Perfect duplication. On the April video call their team leader looked as stunned as he looked pleased: “I’ll be damned,” he said. “I’ll be damned.” And then for good measure said it a few more times.

  “I take it you confirmed,” said Julian.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said.

  Sara Karlsson at KTH called two days later. Smiling.

  “I knew it,” she said.

  MIT, however, had bad news. Aaron Short, heading up the MIT Molecular Phenomena Department, was shaking his head. “Not a single time,” he said.

  “I know I have no right to ask, but I have to,” said Julian. “You did follow the procedure exactly?”

  “Of course.”

  The UCLA team arrived two days later, in person, with champagne. “Incredible,” was their consensus. “Incredible.”

  :

  Two days later, Julian and Ruth arrived at MIT, to see Aaron Short.

  “Tell me, precisely,” said Ruth. Which saw a raised eyebrow or two, especially from Professor Short, who was accustomed to always occupy center stage, no one would tell him what to say, precisely.

  “Please,” added Julian.

  So he did, take them through it, step by minute step, and it all replicated the Cal Tech protocol, to the letter.

  Julian was shaking his head, he didn’t understand.

  Ruth observed, “Shouldn’t you keep those EPROMs under wraps, the sunlight could disturb the data.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” said Aaron short, they’re not EPROMs, they’re Flash Memory. UV can’t harm them.”

  “They’re not EPROMs?” said Ruth, shouted Julian, with one, strange combined voice.

  “Same principle,” said Short.

  “No, no, no,” said Julian. “They have to be EPROMs.”

  “What are you getting at?” asked Professor Short. “They’re non-volatile, just like EPROMs. And a lot cheaper. We did ask the Intel Labs for some, but it seems KTH got to them first. They were out, and we could not wait.”

  “It will only work with EPROMs,” said Ruth.

  “You’re kidding,” said Short.

  “No, not kidding,” said Julian. “There is a lot of electricity floating around for the particles to use to revise the Flash Memory history, and they obviously found and used it. Only EPROMs.”

  Short turned and looked at his colleagues. “EPROMs,” he said. “Nothing else will work.”

  “I’ll call Intel Labs if you want,” said Julian.

  “No, don’t worry,” said Short. “We’ll take care of it.” Scrambling to regain some of his lost control.

  :

  A week later, on the last day of April, Aaron Short placed another video call to Cal Tech.

  “I have to apologize,” he said. “And congratulate you.”

  “You confirm?” said Julian.

  Aaron Short smiled and shook his head. “I don’t understand, I really do not understand it. Not yet, anyway. But I confirm. We ran it twelve times, every time confirmed. You’ve really stumbled onto something here, Julian.”

  “It was Ruth’s stumble,” said Julian.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Ruth.

  “Incredible,” said Short. “This is really incredible.”

  “Not really,” said Rut
h.

  Apart from some more or less formal wrap-up pleasantries, that was the gist of the call.

  :: 89 :: (Pasadena)

  “And now what?” said Ruth.

  “Now we write the public paper,” said Julian.

  “How public is public?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are we writing for broad consumption? Should it be accessible to the man on the street?”

  “Both of those.”

  “How do we best include my mission?”

  “You’re really serious about that?,” said Julian. “I’m not sure this is the appropriate venue.”

  “I am serious about it, Julian. People will care about this, about what we’ve shown here. That’s why I’m sure they will also care about who I am.”

  “I don’t see how we can work it in.”

  Ruth was waiting for more.

  “It’s not like we can add a footnote,” said Julian. “Oh, by the way, Ruth Marten is also the Buddha returned. Or include it in the bio section.”

  “We should outline the sequence of universal agreements, explain that this is why the EPROM worked where RAM and even Flash Memory would not. We should clarify which agreement came first, which agreement takes precedence.”

  “I think we’ll lose them.”

  “Surely we should mention it?”

  “The agreements?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure. I see the paper as a less technical version of what we’ve already published.”

  Ruth was shaking her head. “It has to be more than that. We’ve proven that without life there is nothing.”

  “What we have proven,” said Julian, and rather carefully, “is that without life looking for these four seconds there is no subatomic particle. That’s what we’ve proven. Nothing else.”

  “I mean by extension.”

  “I think you’re giving the man on the street too much credit, intellectually.”

  “He is smarter than you think,” said Ruth, and not especially kindly. “The man on the street.”

  Julian regarded the young girl in silence. She was no young girl, this he knew, of course, and now this was more evident than ever. Then he said:

  “What do you suggest then?”

  “Do you mind if I write the paper on my own?”

  That had, in fact, been on the tip of his tongue to suggest. “No,” he said. “Actually, no. I don’t mind. This really is your experiment, your idea. Your recollection, as you put it.”

  “Thanks, Julian. I will do that then.”

  Then Julian told her, “According to William, they’re already clamoring for it. The papers, the television stations.”

  “That is good. Clamor is good,” said Ruth.

  :

  Technically speaking, Ruth’s public paper—which she referred to as her coming-out paper (see below)—should have been approved by the Cal Tech review board, but Julian, once he had read it (and being well versed with the board) advised against showing it to them.

  “They’ll never let it see the light of public day.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Bad? No, not at all. It’s that good. It’s too radical. It’s too much.”

  “For the board?”

  “Yes.”

  “But the public, what do you think?”

  “I think it’ll raise some eyebrows.”

  “Do you think they’ll get it?”

  “I’m understating. Yes, I think they’ll get it, at least many will. And it’ll cause a storm. That’s what I think. A storm that Cal Tech will not necessarily welcome, but there you have it.”

  Ruth nodded. “So it’s a go.”

  “I’d say so.”

  Enlisting the services of Cal Tech’s Public Relations department, Julian saw to it that copies of Ruth’s paper were widely disseminated. It was a Monday. It was the third of May. It was late in the afternoon.

  Even so, after much scramble and rearrangement of topics, most U.S. television stations led with the story that evening.

  :: 90 :: (Ruth’s Paper)

  What The Colombia-Borneo EPROM Experiment Revealed

  by Ruth Marten

  Cal Tech Department of Particle Physics

  Life

  Nothing exists but life.

  Before the beginning there was life. Or, perhaps better put, there was a stillness, a spaceless and timeless nothing which nonetheless held the potential of life.

  That potential is still here, it has gone nowhere. It has nowhere to do. Being nothing but still potential it cannot be killed, and existing outside of time it cannot expire.

  Everything tangible in this Universe will one day expire. Death will one day visit everything that exists (along with taxes, some say). Everything except this silent potential that will forever remain in a time-less now.

  One day the Universe will fold in on itself and then withdraw into this potential of nothingness. So it will one day return home.

  The Buddha called this home, this ever-present potential, Nibbana.

  Non-Locality

  Over twenty-seven years ago, on April 11, 1999, in his Colombia-Borneo Laser Experiment, also known as the Parallel Laser Project, or the Polarity Change Confirmation Experiment, and officially named the Cal Tech Twin-Particle Polarity Experiment, Doctor Julian Lawson of the Cal Tech Department of Particle Physics proved—to the satisfaction of even the harshest scientific critic at the time—the existence and phenomenon of non-local communication between twinned (bonded) subatomic particles, and so, once and for all settled Einstein’s challenge to the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) thought experiment and paradox.

  To fully appreciate the significance of both Doctor Lawson’s experiment, and the recently successful Colombia-Borneo EPROM experiment (and bear with me here) you have to understand a little about quantum physics.

  Therefore, a small, or not so small, detour.

  Quantum Mechanics

  Here is a fact: no one has ever seen an atom. They are simply too small even for the most powerful microscope man has ever made to detect.

  How small is too small? Very. Consider this:

  There are 2 sextillion oxygen atoms and 4 sextillion hydrogen atoms in a single drop of water. One sextillion is a number 1 followed by 23 zeros—thus: 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

  To illustrate the minuteness of atoms and molecules (which of course are larger than atoms, being a combination of them), Lord Kelvin paints this amazing picture: Suppose that you could color all the molecules in a glass of water, say bright yellow; then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter thoroughly, so thoroughly that you distribute the yellow molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas; if then you took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, whether on the surface or tne kilometers down, you would find in this glass about a hundred of your marked, yellow molecules. If you don’t believe that, try it for yourself.

  For a long time, Science considered that the atom and its three major constituents, (the proton, neutron, and electron) were elementary particles, that they were the smallest particles in the universe, the basic building blocks. Atom, after all, is ancient Greek for “indivisible.”

  But, if we have never seen one, how do we know atoms exist? We study their effects. Every effect has a cause, and specific effects were observed that could only have been cause by an atom, constituted precisely the way we now understand them. That is how Niels Bohr, the Danish physics genius, mapped and discovered the workings of the hydrogen atom—a discovery that eventually earned him the 1922 Nobel Prize.

  Not so long thereafter, however, we discovered that the Greek had it wrong and that the atom was divisible after all, and so we surmised the existence of subatomic particles and gave them names like quarks and photons. These are at least a thousand times smaller than the proton, and that would qualify as very, very small.

  And what do the quarks and photons consist of?

  Some now say that the photon i
s an elementary particle, meaning that it does not consist of parts, cannot be divided. Well, that’s what we thought about the atom as well.

  We will eventually find a way to divide the photon as well, and eventually we will find a way to divide the particles that make up photons, too. In the very end, when we finally cut through all this very, very, very minutenesses to the very core, we will find that there is nothing there, nothing but thought.

  We will discover that nothing exists but life.

  But let us return to the strange (some would go so far as to say magical) world of the subatomic particle, the realm of photons and quarks. Let’s return to the heart of quantum physics or quantum mechanics.

  Although we have definitely detected (or unequivocally surmised) that these particles do exist, it is not a true statement to say that they always do.

  To Be or Not to Be

  To borrow a line from Shakespeare, we have “To Be” and we have “Not to Be.” But in this realm we also have that thing in-between: “Maybe To Be.”

  For there is this odd, mysterious uncertainty at the heart of quantum nature that lies at the core of nature itself, and this uncertainty is what Albert Einstein fought for years (if unsuccessfully) to disprove: the apparent laws of quantum mechanics.

  Most readers—if they have heard of quantum mechanics at all—will consider it an esoteric science without real-world applications. The truth begs to differ, for without quantum mechanics, and without the knowledge of how to use quantum mechanics, we would have no Mortimers, no cell phones, no mp3 players, no computers: these inventions and devices all rely on, and perform in accordance with, the properties of quantum mechanics.

  Einstein’s objections notwithstanding, quantum mechanics, as a mathematical description of the world, is the most successful scientific theory ever devised. No experiments have ever been made to disprove or contradict this theory.

  And not only is the theory of quantum mechanics productive, it also forces us to confront the deeper issues of existence; in other words, it’s not only a matter of a mathematical recipe for describing (and, some would say exploiting) the world.