“Brilliant for him,” Daniel answered dully. “What’s this imposter’s name?”
“Colin.”
“Colin,” he repeated distastefully.
“Look, I know he’s not you,” I said, “but aren’t you at least curious what he’ll be like? Whether he’s even a little bit like you?”
“No,” Daniel said. But then he added, “Mildly.”
I knew the soft gong would be summoning me back any moment. I didn’t want to make the mistake again of using up all my time talking.
“I have to leave soon.”
“I know,” Daniel said.
“So kiss me . . .”
“Audie?” came the professor’s voice from somewhere through the walls. “Everything all right?”
I lowered my arms and coughed into my hand. I wondered if they’d all just seen me obviously making out with the air.
“Fine, Professor,” I said. “It worked just like you said.”
60
We took a break for lunch. Albert stayed behind in the lab, so it was just the professor and me. He walked me across campus to a Chinese takeout place.
We picked up a couple of teriyaki rice bowls, and then the professor and Bess and I found a place to sit outside. It was sunny out there, but cold. I was happy for my new sweatshirt and the ski jacket.
The professor and I batted around some more theories for a while, but then I decided I’d rather venture into another topic. Something I’ve been curious about for quite a while now.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” I said, “whatever happened between you and Professor Hawkins?”
“What makes you think anything happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just the way he talked about you in his book.”
“Hmm.” For a minute I thought that was all he was going to say. Maybe I’d overstepped my bounds by asking him such a personal question.
But finally he answered me. “I think the Hawk got scared. Our friendship’s never been the same since.”
“Scared about what?”
The professor set down his food.
“I showed him things that went way beyond anything he could ever imagine. At first he found it all fascinating, and invigorating—”
“That review he gave to your book,” I said.
“Yes,” the professor answered. “That was back in the beginning. But Hawkins likes theory—most of these physicists do. What they can’t stand is when you show them that the universe really is as miraculous and mind-bending as they keep saying it is.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“One demonstration too many,” Professor Whitfield said. “A few of us were out to dinner one night, talking big the way physicists like to do to each other, and I offered to let them try my latest experiment.”
“What was that?”
“I’d been working on a sound recording using various tonal oscillations,” Professor Whitfield said. “Experimenting with sound waves and their effects on the brain. My theory was that I might be able to change the vibration within the right and left hemispheres of the brain, and have them communicate in a way they normally don’t.
“Everybody else made their excuses, but the Hawk was interested enough to try it. So after dinner we went back to my lab. I fitted him with the headphones, asked him to describe everything he saw as he went along, and then turned on the sound.”
Professor Whitfield checked his watch. “We should head back now. We still have a lot to do.”
“But what happened?” I asked as we started walking back to the lab.
“It took him a little while to detach from his body—” the professor started to say.
I stopped. “What do you mean, ‘detach from his body’?”
And just then my phone rang. I must have forgotten to turn it off last night after I talked to my mother.
It was Lydia.
“Hey,” I said, turning slightly to the side, away from Professor Whitfield. “Can I call you back in a while?”
“Nope, just passing along the message. Lasagna tonight. My mom wants to know if you’re coming.”
“Um, tell her thanks,” I said, still hunching away from the professor. “But I have a lot of homework. Can we do it another night?”
“Gemma’s going to teach us how to dance at her ball.”
“Oh, ha! Well that sounds like fun. Have a good time.” And then I quickly hung up.
And immediately turned back to the professor.
“Professor Hawkins detached from his body?”
The professor gave me an odd sort of look for a moment, but then he returned to his story.
“What we’ve found,” he said, “is that certain sound vibrations encourage OBEs—out-of-body experiences. It’s not that unusual, it’s just not always reproducible in the lab.”
“You’re saying he left his body,” I said. “Floated off somewhere.”
“In a manner,” Professor Whitfield said.
“So what happened?” I asked.
We both started walking again.
“He spent about an hour in a suspended condition,” Professor Whitfield said. “Heart rate, respiration—everything on the slower range of normal, perfectly healthy. Meanwhile his consciousness, or ‘prana’ or ‘essence’ or whatever you prefer to call it, was off exploring other dimensions.”
“Wait,” I had to interject. “So all of this is true. It’s all real.”
“See, Audie, now you’re getting to the problem. People don’t want to believe. They see it, they experience it in the moment, but then their minds refuse to accept it afterwards. It’s a form of cognitive dissonance—the brain likes to defend itself from anything that doesn’t automatically fit its world view. So even though the evidence is all there, and the person knows in his heart something is true, his brain will continue to fight it by coming up with explanations like ‘He tricked me,’ or ‘It was a hoax’—anything to avoid having to change a deeply-held, lifelong belief.”
“Is that what happened with Professor Hawkins?” I asked.
“You tell me,” Professor Whitfield answered. “I conducted the experiment the way I always do, keeping a voice recorder going and having the person talk to me throughout the session. Dr. Hawkins was very active—a good reporter. There were very few gaps when he wasn’t talking.”
“So what did he see?” I asked.
“Gray spaces, amorphous forms, light energies—same sorts of things other people have reported. But then the Hawk finally saw someone he knew.”
“Who?”
“He didn’t know the name,” Professor Whitfield answered, “but he recognized him. Or ‘it’—it was really more of an entity.”
“An ‘entity,’” I repeated. “Not a person.”
“Not a flesh and blood human, no,” the professor agreed. “But a form that was comfortable for the Hawk, and that communicated with him.”
“This is so trippy,” I said.
“It always is,” Professor Whitfield said.
“Do you still do this experiment?”
“Sometimes,” he said.
“Have you ever done it?” I asked. “I mean, be the person who has the out-of-body experience?”
“Several times.”
We were nearing the lab building, but I wasn’t really ready to go in. I paused beneath a big pine tree and waited to hear the rest of the story.
“This ‘entity,’ we’ll call it,” the professor went on, “seemed very happy to see Hawkins. Told him it missed him, asked him what he was doing there again. Hawk didn’t have a good answer—said he was just visiting. The entity asked him if he was there for the school, and Hawk said he didn’t know. It was a very confusing conversation—I could tell from the Hawk’s face he wasn’t enjoying it. Even in that kind of a situation, he still likes to be in control.
“So I gave him a prompt,” Professor Whitfield said. “I told him to ask the person, the entity—‘Ask him who he is. Ask him how he knows you.’ The
Hawk did, and then I waited for him to report back.
“‘He says we were schoolmates,’ Hawkins told me. ‘Ask him when,’ I said. ‘A long time ago,’ Hawkins came back. ‘He doesn’t know the year.’ It went back and forth like that for a few minutes, us trying to get more information, the entity giving us all sorts of vague answers.
“But then the Hawk had a question of his own,” the professor said. “From out of nowhere he asks, ‘Is she still living?’ and the entity told him yes. ‘Do you know where?’ and the entity answered with a string of numbers. The Hawk seemed to understand it, even though he didn’t explain it to me. And then the entity told him it had to leave, and the Hawk starts crying.”
“Crying?”
“Like someone just told him his dog died,” the professor said. “By then he looked really exhausted, and his vitals had dipped a little, so I decided it was time to end the session. I changed the sound vibrations and pretty soon he came out of it.
“Or came back into it, is the better description,” the professor said. “His body jerked a little once he returned to it, then his vitals immediately went back to normal.”
“I can’t believe any of this,” I said.
“Neither could he,” the professor answered. “He remembered everything. As soon as he opened his eyes he broke down and started crying again. He was really inconsolable for a while—the whole thing was very profound for him. And then he left and that was the end of our friendship.”
“Why?”
“Because again, Audie, it’s the cognitive dissonance. It’s the difference between having a theory and having an actual, living experience. Not everyone can handle it—you’ve done amazingly well. I know a lot of these experiences must be challenging for you, but you keep on taking it. You don’t break the way some people seem to.”
“And you think Professor Hawkins broke,” I said.
“I think he did, yes. He thought—and you have to understand this, Audie, because it’s not that uncommon for certain kinds of people—the Hawk thought he’d actually gone crazy. As in permanently harmed his mind. And he thought I was the person who had done it to him.
“He accused me of drugging him, of doing something surgical to his brain—it was pretty ugly for a while. He didn’t want to accept what he’d really seen. Then finally enough time passed—we’re talking months—and Hawkins was finally able to convince himself it had all been some fantasy his mind cooked up.”
“But you don’t think it was,” I said. “You think he had an actual out-of-body experience.”
“I do,” Professor Whitfield said. “I’m fairly certain of it.”
“Why are you so sure?” I asked.
“Because of . . . certain things that he said,” the professor answered. “Things he wouldn’t have told me in a more guarded moment. Things I’m not really at liberty to share. But I will say this: I can pretty much guarantee you’ll never read about that experience in any of Hawkins’s books.”
Which is true—so far I haven’t.
“So does he really hate you now?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think he hates me,” the professor said. “Dislikes me strongly? Probably.”
“But he still talks to you,” I pointed out. “You had lunch at that conference he wrote about in his latest book.”
“You’ve heard the phrase, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’?” Professor Whitfield asked. “I think he’s afraid I’m going to tell people—expose him in some way. Tell people that the great Herbert Hawkins had what most would consider a paranormal experience, and yet he still keeps acting like he’s normal.”
“Isn’t he?” I said. “Normal?”
“Of course he is,” Professor Whitfield said. “The same as you are. Just because you’ve had experiences above and beyond what the average person has, doesn’t make you crazy or abnormal. It just makes you better-informed.
“And by the way,” Professor Whitfield added. “That whole thing about me forgetting my wallet and him having to buy my lunch? Never happened.”
“He just made it up?” I asked.
“The Hawk sometimes likes to . . . embellish, to make his point.”
“And what was his point?”
“That I’m a fool,” Professor Whitfield said. “Not to be taken seriously.”
“But then why did he put your idea in the book at all?” I asked. “Because you know that’s what gave me the idea for this whole experiment.”
“That’s the thing about the scientific community,” Professor Whitfield said. “You never know who’s going to come up with the next great idea. So at least this way Hawkins can say, ‘Ah, yes, Whitfield and I were discussing that at lunch.’ It keeps his hand in.”
“Professor Hawkins would do that?” I asked.
“Everyone does it, Audie.”
“Wow. You all must end up hating each other.”
Professor Whitfield laughed. “I don’t hate the Hawk—not at all. I admire him for everything he’s done in our field. But trust him? That’s another matter.
“And speaking of trust,” the professor added, “now I have a question for you.”
Uh-oh.
“Tell me the truth, Audie: Does your mother really know?”
61
“I could get in a lot of trouble,” he said. “You’re under eighteen. You need a parent’s permission. You really shouldn’t have put me in this position.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m really sorry. And I’m sorry about the money for my mother’s ticket—I’ll pay you back.”
“It isn’t the money, Audie, and you know it.”
I blew out a breath. “How long have you known?”
“I suspected when I picked you up at the airport,” he said. “But I wasn’t sure until that phone call you just had.”
“But that wasn’t my mom,” I said.
“But you still didn’t want me to hear it,” the professor answered. “Which told me you’ve been lying to me.”
There was nothing else I could say. “So what are you going to do?”
Professor Whitfield shook his head. “I don’t know yet. Keep going, for now. You’re here, and we’ve already started the tests. And I have to admit,” he added, looking slightly uncomfortable, “I could have questioned you at the airport. I could have made you get right back on a plane and go home. But I didn’t, did I?”
“Because you want to know,” I said.
“That’s right,” he agreed. “So it’s my own fault for letting it get this far. But Audie, you have to understand how serious—”
“I know,” I said. “I really do. And I’m so sorry. But it’s just that you don’t know my mom. She’ll completely freak out when I tell her.”
“But you are going to tell her,” the professor said. “If I don’t have your assurance on that—”
“No, I already decided,” I said. “I’m telling her as soon as she gets home next week. She really is in Philadelphia—I didn’t lie about that.”
The professor was not impressed.
“But I thought it would be at least a little better if I had some proof for her first,” I said. “Something to show her it’s not dangerous. Do you think I’ll have something like that? I mean, you think it’s safe, right?”
“The sensors fell off once you left,” the professor said, “so all we could record was up until that moment, but yes—until then, everything seemed fine. I have no proof that it isn’t safe, but I can’t say I have proof it is, either.”
“Then we’ll have to keep trying,” I said. “Because I really do need some proof. Otherwise this could be the end of all of it.”
“Then are you ready to get back to work?” the professor asked.
“That’s what I’m here for,” I said.
We went back into the lab. Most of the grad students who were there in the morning had gone. It was just Albert and a few other people hanging around Professor Whitfield’s side of the building.
Albert and I fol
lowed the professor into his office. Bess came in, too, and plopped down onto the dog bed in the corner. The professor shut the door.
I looked up at the clock and did a quick calculation. It was nighttime in the Alps—everyone would be asleep. I could have used some rest myself. Maybe curl up next to Bess on her dog bed and take a little nap.
“So,” Professor Whitfield said to Albert and me, “what’s everybody thinking?”
While Albert spun out some theory involving quantum entanglement and resonance fields, my mind started to wander.
First to the story about Professor Hawkins. How weird. I wonder if he really did have an out-of-body experience. And if so, why hasn’t he ever talked about it? It seems like that’s the kind of thing you would talk about if you were a quantum physicist. The same way Professor Whitfield and I are trying to figure out how my body goes from one universe to another in the blink of an eye.
Shouldn’t scientists want to know absolutely everything about absolutely everything they can? And shouldn’t we all talk about it to each other so we can learn and then go off and try other things? I thought that was the whole point of science—learning and discovery. Maybe I’m missing something.
Then my mind wandered off to other topics. I have to admit my brain was seriously fried. Too much attention this morning, too much talk, too much pressure—too much everything. I don’t do that well with overstimulation. It really tires me out.
But sometimes when I’m my most tired, my brain feels more free to roam. And this time it drifted along at its own leisurely pace until it landed somewhere it felt like burrowing in.
At some point the professor must have noticed some change in my expression. “What are you thinking, Audie?”
“It’s those wave patterns,” I answered kind of dreamily. I’d been absent-mindedly tracing my finger across my opposite palm, picturing the two outlines Albert had shown us on the monitor.
“Remember when you were talking to me about psychokinesis?” I said. “And how maybe the observer problem is involved?”
“Yes,” Professor Whitfield said.
“You said maybe it was my thoughts that got me across the gap. That Audie the observer had moved Audie the observed—right?”
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