When Jones had excitedly told her favourite Oxford lecturer that she had landed a place to study for her doctorate in America, at the famous Ivy League university, the man, a somewhat grizzly and very English don of the old school, replied sagely, ‘America? Princeton isn’t in America.’ Jones soon learned exactly what the lecturer had meant. Moreover, she quickly concluded that not only was Princeton most certainly not in America, it probably wasn’t even on planet Earth. But that didn’t concern Sandy Jones at all.
Whatever she felt about the curious unreality of Princeton, Jones knew she had been given a wonderful opportunity to complete her studies there. Princeton was at the cutting edge of her area of science. And it was where probably the greatest physicist of all, Albert Einstein, had sought his ultimate refuge from Nazi Germany and completed so many of his great works.
However, to begin with, she thought she was never going to fit into the place. She was a blue stocking with few social graces. The air of casual sophistication she acquired later in life was still a long way off. She hadn’t known how to dress then, and in any case had yet to acquire any interest in clothes. And she hadn’t a clue about make-up. She reckoned, in those days, that she was skinny rather than slim. Her breasts had barely developed since adolescence, which embarrassed her – particularly after the doctor who carried out her Princeton medical told her she was the nearest thing he’d ever seen to a hermaphrodite. However she had good skin, intelligent hazel eyes, and unusually glossy black hair, shaped into a sharp bob. She did know she was not entirely unattractive, and there had been one boyfriend – or very nearly – at Oxford, who had relieved her of the burden of her virginity. But after three rather fraught months he ended it, telling her that he couldn’t cope with being treated as a biological experiment. And Sandy Jones was honest enough to accept that he’d probably assessed her attitude to sex rather accurately.
She became something of a loner at Oxford, and felt destined to become even more of one at Princeton. She was, in fact, painfully lonely – and therefore receptive to, and even grateful for, the attentions of fellow student Ed MacEntee.
Ed was a brilliant mathematician, a child prodigy, but, not unlike Sandy, something of a lost soul away from his own rarefied world. He was, however, clearly smitten with Sandy Jones from the moment they met.
They became friends, at first no more than that, very quickly studying together in the evenings at the Firestone Library, and often sharing a table at the dining club at mealtimes. They walked around campus together. They pooled their resources to occasionally visit the town’s hippest bar – not that Jones considered anything Princeton, town or university, could offer to be remotely hip really. They went swimming together in the campus pools, and at weekends they would sometimes go to the movies, or a nearby bowling alley.
Ed was tall, thin, and more than presentable, even though he was already losing his wispy blonde hair. He was also the kindest and gentlest of men. Best of all, because of him, she was no longer lonely.
When the friendship ultimately moved on, and they became lovers, Sandy Jones was glad, if only because this surely made her like everybody else. The earth most certainly did not move for her. Ed, in the second year of his BSc was a year or so younger than Jones, and possibly even less experienced. But the sex was pleasant enough, and she at least tried not to give the impression that she was treating it as a scientific experiment.
Perhaps surprisingly for a mathematician, Ed, it turned out, was heavily into RECAP. He frequently talked to her about the project, but most of the time she didn’t even listen properly. After all, he was inclined to tell the same thing over and over again.
One warm summer’s evening when they were sitting in the shade of Nixon’s Nose – the irreverent name given by the students to Princeton’s massive Henry Moore sculpture which from a certain angle is considered to resemble the profile of the disgraced former president – Ed was particularly persistent.
‘I mean, people think it’s weird, but it’s not,’ he told her. ‘Connie says it’s all about studying powers of the human mind which have always been there. We’ve lost the use of them, that’s all, just like you’d lose the use of your legs or arms if you didn’t exercise them. That’s partly why Paul came up with the name, RECAP, because at least part of the purpose of the project is to look way back in time over the way the mind has developed and changed, in order to move forwards …’
Jones nodded sagely. Connie this … Paul that. She really wasn’t that interested.
‘The thing is nobody can explain why it happens, but laboratory condition experiments across the world are proving that it does happen.’
‘Uh huh,’ Jones responded. Why what happens? She couldn’t even be bothered to ask. In any case he had probably told her already. Repeatedly. She just hadn’t taken any of it in properly. She had her own work to think about.
‘You know, you should come along and meet Connie and Paul, see what they’re doing first hand,’ Ed continued.
‘Of course I should, I’d love to,’ Jones replied resignedly. She wasn’t keen, but she’d known this was going to happen sooner or later. And she’d grown fond of Ed. She valued their easy relationship. She didn’t want to offend him.
Ed duly arranged a visit a couple of days later. He led her to the Science Research Building and through a network of corridors before pausing outside a stained wooden door. ‘Room 38’ was scribbled in faded biro on a piece of yellowing white card held in place by a rusted drawing pin. It was RECAP’s only announcement of itself.
‘This is it,’ he said, his voice a mix of awe and pride.
‘Great,’ she said. ‘Shall we go in?’
What she had meant, of course, was, shall we get it over with.
They were greeted by a tall angular woman with a mane of wild red hair, standing in the centre of the most extraordinary laboratory Jones had ever seen.
Several smaller rooms, doors all wide open, led off one central one in which place of honour was given to a low squashy sofa housing a host of cuddly toy animals. A young man sat in the middle, almost submerged in a heap of fluffy rabbits and bears. Green plastic frogs were balanced on the back and arms and gathered in occasional piles on a desk in the corner and elsewhere throughout the room. There were other toys too, and assorted mobiles dangled from the ceiling.
The young man on the sofa broke off briefly from staring at a giant pinball machine on the wall opposite him, and waved cheerily.
Clutter was everywhere. The walls were covered in the kind of plastic wood cladding that at the time was a favourite of mass-market DIY stores worldwide, and further adorned with an extraordinary selection of pictures and slogans.
Jones realized she had stopped dead in the middle of the doorway. Whatever she’d expected it wasn’t this.
‘Come on guys, don’t be shy.’
The red-haired woman beckoned them forwards. Jones guessed she was probably in her late thirties or early forties. Her smile transformed a long, narrow, and otherwise quite plain face. It radiated warmth, caused her eyes to sparkle with life and mischief, and instantly made her look not only years younger than she probably was, but almost beautiful. She had a great smile. She had great eyes too. They were a vivid green and perfectly oval.
Yet Jones quickly realized that this was that rare human being who genuinely had no personal vanity. Her face showed no trace of even a dash of make-up, and her clothes were truly awful. Indeed, by comparison, she made Jones, in her habitual jeans and nondescript shirt, look rather well turned out. The woman was wearing a baggy tunic top in a particularly startling shade of orange, and ill-fitting murky grey trousers that might or might not have begun their life black.
A button badge pinned to her T-shirt proclaimed: ‘Subvert the dominant paradigm’.
Jones smiled in spite of herself. She couldn’t imagine ever being any kind of rebel. She was a thoroughly logical, extremely ordered, and ambitious young woman blessed with a brain like a bacon slicer. But all she wante
d to do was fit in to the academic world, not radically challenge it.
None the less she appreciated the message on the badge, maybe even envied slightly the spirit that lay behind it. And as an analytical scientist she understood the message absolutely.
Subvert the dominant paradigm. Subvert meant change, turn upside down, forcefully. Dominant paradigm was the accepted pattern. It was a call to rip aside parameters. And it was, of course, what scientists were supposed to do.
Jones stepped forwards. As she did so, she felt her right foot slip and very nearly lost her balance entirely. Grabbing the door jamb for support she only narrowly avoided falling to the ground. Looking down she saw that she had stepped directly onto one of several pieces of newspaper spread across the tiled floor of the lab.
The piece of paper was still beneath her right shoe. She lifted her foot. The paper was stuck to it. She noticed that it was wet and stained a rather suspect yellow colour, with one or two even more suspect brown patches. She shook her foot but only managed to detach the unsavoury looking paper by scraping her shoe against the edge of the door.
‘Sorry,’ said the woman. ‘It’s Paul’s new puppy. She hasn’t learned the ground rules yet.’
‘Right.’ Jones moved further into the room, this time looking carefully where she put her feet. Ed followed, closing the door behind them.
‘I’m Connie Pike,’ said the woman. ‘You must be Ed’s new friend.’
‘Yes, Sandy Jones,’ said Jones.
And if it wasn’t for being Ed’s friend, there was absolutely no way she would ever visit a place like this. It was clearly a madhouse. Jones was mainstream. She already knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. Did these people really believe that mind power could alter the pattern of machines, for God’s sake? It was lunacy.
‘Good to meet you,’ said Connie Pike.
‘And you,’ responded Jones disingenuously.
Not that I have any desire to meet you, she thought, and not that I have any interest in this project which I reckoned was completely off the wall even before I saw this room, and now I am even more convinced of it.
‘We never try to convert anyone here, but if you’re prepared to suspend your disbelief I will gladly show you round.’
Jones blinked rapidly. She was momentarily startled by the insight Connie Pike had displayed with this remark. Could the woman read her mind, or what?
Fortunately Ed stepped in whilst she was still searching for the right response.
‘But Connie, Sandy doesn’t have disbelief,’ he said. ‘She’s fascinated by what you’re doing here. I’ve told her so much about it all. She’s already convinced. That’s why she wanted to come here and meet you, and Paul, and maybe take part in the experiments.’
‘Really?’ Connie Pike raised one eyebrow quizzically in Jones’s direction.
By then Jones had found her voice again.
‘I would absolutely love to look around the lab, Connie,’ she said, surreptitiously checking her watch.
FOUR
Sandy Jones would never forget that first day in the RECAP lab. She sceptical, bordering on cynical. Ed so eager. And Connie just being Connie. Getting on with it. Prepared to talk, to share her ideas with anyone who would listen. Jones had assumed that she was used to being dismissed as a nutter, accustomed to mockery.
‘This is our pinball machine, giant size, five thousand marbles. And this is Stephen, one of our volunteer operators.’
Connie gestured towards the young man sitting on the sofa, who again waved a hand while keeping his eyes riveted on the machine.
‘Simply put, the question is, can Stephen’s mind power alter the pinball’s accepted function?’
‘I see.’
Jones tried to keep her voice non-committal. She was actually wondering why the university even allowed this lab to operate on campus.
Connie led her into one of the smaller rooms off the main reception area.
‘That’s our REG,’ she said, pointing at a box-like structure with dials which could, Jones thought, have come straight out of a very early episode of Doctor Who.
REG. Random Event Generator. Jones knew vaguely what it was and what it was supposed to do, and she also knew it was Professor Paul Ruders, director of the RECAP project, who had invented the curious machine.
‘It’s fascinating seeing something I’ve heard so much about,’ Jones said. The remark was half true, and not entirely down to Ed, but misleading in that the handful of mentions she had spotted in scientific journals had almost all been disparaging.
Connie smiled that small enigmatic smile Jones was to become so familiar with.
‘“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Arthur C. Clarke, Clarke’s third law,’ she said suddenly.
Jones did a double take. She had suddenly realized that whilst Ed might accept her bogus interest in RECAP at face value, Connie Pike was not the tiniest bit taken in by her. She knew Jones thought the whole thing was hocus-pocus. She damned well knew.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jones.
Connie smiled and shrugged. Unfazed. Jones glanced towards Ed who looked puzzled.
‘I really would like you to tell me about the REG,’ she told Connie. After all there wasn’t much point in making the effort to come to the lab and meet the team if she didn’t try to at least appear open-minded.
‘Really?’
‘Really,’ said Jones.
Connie Pike stared at her for a few seconds, almost as if considering whether or not she was worth the bother, Jones thought. Then Connie nodded, and placed one hand on the REG, a rectangular box about a foot high and deep and eighteen inches across.
‘This machine repeatedly generates at random numbers one and zero,’ she told Jones. ‘As I’m sure you know very well, the laws of physics dictate that these numbers, over a sufficient period of time, will be produced equally. We, however, are in the process of proving that under certain circumstances random events can alter the results.’
‘Events or people’s minds?’ asked Jones.
Connie smiled.
‘Both,’ she said. ‘Our experiments with meditation seem to prove that the machine’s sequence can be affected by the power of the human mind. Yet we cannot explain why. Now, you are a scientist and a sceptic …’
Jones opened her mouth to interrupt.
Connie waved a dismissive hand at her.
‘No, you are, and that’s fine. We like sceptics here. Keeps us on our toes, and it’s the only way to spread the word, isn’t it? What’s the point in preaching to the converted?’
Jones nodded her head in meek acceptance. To her surprise, she was beginning to rather enjoy this visit.
‘As I was saying,’ Connie continued. ‘You are a scientist and a sceptic, so let me give you some data. Some indisputable data, we think. To date, forty-seven different operators have generated two hundred and ninety complete REG experimental series, all under strict laboratory-controlled conditions. That’s a total of over two and a half million trials. We make a graph of the results, a cumulative deviation graph.
‘Now, we accept that the laws of physics dictate that over extended periods of time the line of the graph will be level, because pure chance will ultimately produce exactly the same number of zeros and ones, or heads and tails, if you prefer. Right?’
She paused, studying Jones as if to see if she was listening. Jones was concentrating hard.
‘Right,’ she said.
‘OK,’ Connie continued. ‘If at any time you want to study these graphs you are welcome, but in overall terms of a fifty per cent hit rate, i.e. fifty per cent zeros and fifty per cent ones, which is what would be expected if left entirely to chance, our experiments with operators showed an overall deviation of one per cent. In other words, varying between fifty-one per cent zeros, forty-nine per cent ones, and conversely.’
She paused again.
‘Doesn’t sound like much does it?’
Jo
nes shook her head.
‘Statistically the odds on that level of deviation happening by chance are a trillion to one,’ Connie said quietly.
Jones did another double take. She had no idea that this kind of data even existed, and there was something about Connie’s calm and considered approach that left her in little doubt of its accuracy.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked none the less.
Connie nodded.
‘Absolutely. Look, I’m just giving you the results. The data is all here.’
She gestured towards a row of battered filing cabinets.
‘I told you, take a look any time. Help yourself.’
Jones responded thoughtfully.
‘Let’s take it that your results, as they stand, are unimpeachable. But how can you guarantee the integrity of the REG? If it is possible that the machine might at any stage cease to function perfectly, then your entire database loses all scientific value.’
‘We don’t allow that to happen,’ said Connie. ‘A Random Event Generator is based on a source of electronic white noise generated by a random microscopic physical process. That’s how it gets its name. Several other research establishments now have them. Ours utilizes as its random source a commercial microelectronic noise diode unit commonly incorporated in a variety of communications, control, and data-processing equipment circuitry, rendering this noise into an output distribution of binary counts, and entailing extensive fail-safe and calibration components which guarantee its integrity—’
‘Hold on,’ interrupted Jones. ‘You’ve totally lost me.’
It was clear that, beyond the cuddly toys, this project was considerably more hard-nosed than she had expected it to be. It was also a world away from her field of scientific expertise.
‘All right,’ said Connie. ‘Just think of it as a sophisticated electronic coin-flipping machine with loads of built-in safeguards. Instead of heads and tails it flips numbers.’
Cry Darkness Page 3
