Alexander: [Alexander Trilogy Book Two]

by Stan I. S. Law

  “Well, I thought I was. Is there a connection between consciousness and quantum mechanics?”

  “Of course!” There was a prolonged ‘ahhh’ in the audience. Alec waited until the intake of breath died down. “It is difficult to discuss quantum mechanics with someone who is unconscious.”

  Half the audience laughed uproariously, the other half wasn’t amused at all.

  “Are you making light of the theory?” a young lady asked.

  “No, ma’am. Photons have nothing to do with it. I really meant what I said.”

  More laughter. Then Alec raised his hand.

  “I just finished speaking on the subject of what could be described as omnipresent information. Just as other fields may be traced in interstellar space, so, I believe, can information. What form this information takes is another story. If you wish to call it consciousness, that’s your prerogative. But if you do, it still does not prove any link with quantum theory.”

  “But what about the photons in the DPR paradox?”

  “What about them?”

  Silence. But a silence which some like to call: pregnant.

  Alec thought time was ripe to conduct his experiment. The experiment was based on Einstein’s statement about infinity. Old Albert had once said that ‘Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe’. The theory was often quoted but never proven.

  He tapped the tiny listening device in his ear and immediately heard quiet confirmations. ‘B34’, seconds later ‘P14’ and ‘K29’, all confirmed their presence and locations. His coconspirators were in place.

  “Do not confuse information with other forms of communication,” Alec said in a slightly pontifical tone. “It is one thing to assert the presence of information, quite another to be able to access it. And not all information is accessible. For instance....” he raised his hand as if to quiet the audience, then raised his eyes to the ceiling. “The lady in the seat number B34 has a book in her handbag. The book is entitled ‘Maternity’. She is completely preoccupied with this subject matter.”

  Heads turned.

  Alec looked down at the audience, his voice down to a whisper. “The information is there. But I, for one, have no idea why the lady in B34 finds the book so important. Very few of us can access such information. Don’t you agree?”

  There was a momentary silence, then a giggle followed by a startled exclamation. A young lady from the 34th seat in row B jumped to her feet.

  “How on earth did you know that?” She waved a book with ‘Maternity’ splashed across the cover in red letters.

  “I didn’t and I don’t. I only know that the information is there. Had you not confirmed it, it would still be there. Right?”

  “I suppose so...” She sounded doubtful but slowly sat down.

  “And what about me?” A young man waved his arms from the rear of the hall.

  “What about you, Sir? I am not a mind reader...” A gentle, almost hesitant laughter followed Alec’s assertion. “But I can tell that you are in row P, seat number 14. That much is self-evident.” Alec was looking at the other end of the hall as he said that. Then a wave of heads turned in the direction of the young man.

  “You couldn’t possibly have known that!” the young man exclaimed.

  “Of course not. I don’t know that any more than I know that the gentlemen in seat K29 just stuck his chewing gum under the seat in front of him.”

  There was a stir in rows L, K, and M as people looked in the direction of the young man, who got up and fought his way over people’s toes towards the exit.

  “That’s not funny!” he threw over his shoulder. And he was out. The sooner the better, Alec thought .

  “So you can see that the omnipresence of information has little to do with Cosmic Consciousness or Quantum Mechanics. It’s just there. For anyone to pick and use as they choose. Is it true? Isn’t truth whatever you believe in?”

  With this enigmatic question Alec gathered his papers, nodded to his audience, the visiting lecturer, and left by the back door. The hall was in total uproar. The crowd was milling around for a look at the girl with the book on maternity. Others pushed to examine the chair in front of seat 14 in row K. They appeared to have no interest in Alec’s lecture, in the Information Theory, nor even in any cosmic or quantum connotations. The only thing that seemed to matter to them was magic.

  The miracle?

  It seemed to be of absolutely no importance to them how the ‘miracle’ was accomplished. In no time at all they’d released the girl, first making sure that the miraculous book was left behind with them. They passed it from hand to hand, flipped through it, looking for some explanation. They shook it, shuffled the pages and finding nothing they shook their heads in wonder.

  By the time the public had settled down, Alec, Desmond and their three young accomplices, were sipping their ‘lights’ in Pasadena. Before the session, at the very last moment, Alec had advised the UCLA people that he could give the lecture as scheduled, but he would not be able to stay for a tête-à-tête afterwards, nor hear Dr. Goudoff speak. He regretted it very much but he had an urgent meeting that just couldn’t be cancelled. “Something to do with National Security. No, he had no idea what. He’d just had a phone-call and was told to report to his office as soon as possible after the lecture. It could have been a crank call, Alec admitted, but whoever it was sounded very, very serious.”

  Thus the ground had been laid.

  Frankly, Alec regretted not being there to hear the Russian deliver what everyone apparently wanted to hear. Or almost everyone in the hall, that is. Alec wondered just how much wind he’d taken out of the good doctor’s cosmic sails. Now sipping a light beer, they were considering a plan of action.

  “So, what’s next?” Alec asked a little nervously. “Do we own up?”

  “Oh, we’ll own up, alrright,” Dr. McBride assured. “In fact we’ve alrready done so.”

  “We what?” All four young people looked up.

  “I wrote a detailed descrription of how the mirrracle was accomplished and sent it to all thrree prrincipal dailies. As I slipped it into the mail-box just beforre yourr blarrney; they should get it by the morrning post.”

  “I hope there is no extradition treaty between Pasadena and Beverly Hills...”

  “Don’t worry, lad. I made it all legal. I explained why it was done. All in the name of science.”

  Alec took a deep breath. “Thank God for that...” he whimpered without conviction.

  “Oh, and I left a copy of my little exposé in a sealed envelope on dean’s desk. Old grumpy Hezeldorff will enjoy it. I know the man. He’s really on our side, only he lacks, excuse my Latin, lassie, he lacks balls.” McDes was so excited he’d forgotten to roll his r’s.

  “I thought I had a malt, coming,” Alec wailed also downing his glass.

  “That you have, my lads. And lassie, of course. You’ll all be rrichly rrewarrded in due courrse. That you will.” Desmond reverted to his Scottish ancestry. “Only firrst let us get away frrom herre. I saw no reason to involve the young’uns. Officially only Alec and I put on this show. You thrree are clearr. It’s one thing to wrrite letterrs, anotherr to meet y’rr enemy face to face. When you get to be my age, you’ll want to keep y’rr teeth in y’rr mouth.”

  The three youngsters got up.

  “Thanks for the fun, Sir. And you Dr. Baldwin. And thanks for the beer.” With respectful nods the sophomores filed out in a single file.

  “Come tomorrow, they’ll be famous…” Alec mused.

  “Though I would give up one of them just to hear Dr. Goudoff talk his way out of that one!” When Alec looked blank, he added, “One of my teeth, lad!”

  “Me too,” Alec agreed.

  Alec gazed after the three youngsters. They reminded him of himself, barely three or four years ago. They did not consider their participation as a good deed for science; they were in it for the free ride, for the fun of it. He sighed almost i
mperceptibly.

  As he and Dr. McBride also rose, the Professor turned to Alec with a satisfied grin.

  “At least they won’t botherr you, lad, anymorre with that nonsense. Not anymorre.”

  “Oh? I thought I might become a cause célèbre in some circles. Surely, you don’t think the believers are going to accept your explanation of...”

  “My? Why lad, it’s you who signed the letters!”

  And suddenly Alec didn’t feel quite so well. He wanted to disappear into thin air.

  “You know, Des, you are a bit of...”

  “...son of a bitch? I know. Isn’t it fun?”

  “I was thinking more in the firearms’ department.” He grinned. “But if you insist...”

  A day after Alec’s venture into the occult, Suzy arrived for a weekend visit. It was a longish flight from Montreal and she was looking forward to a quiet rest. Alec had just rented a bigger place, two bedrooms and a decent L-shaped living room overlooking the San Gabriel Mountains. He hadn’t had time to furnish it, hoping that Suzy would give him a hand. When Suzy saw the empty walls, she sat down on the floor in the middle of the large living room, and wiped her eyes.

  “It’s so empty...” she whimpered. “How can you live like this?”

  “Darling, please, darling.” He tried to embrace her but she held him off. “I’ve only spent one night here. I was hoping that you’d give me a hand with the furniture.”

  “B-b-but, I live in Montreal...” The tears wouldn’t stop.

  “But surely you’ll join me after we’re married?”

  “Ma... ma... ma... what did you say?”

  He repeated his last statement.

  “You want to marry me?”

  “I’ve only asked you a dozen times!”

  “B-b-but not since last week....” Nevertheless, the flood was coming to an end. “You don’t have to get down on your knees since we are already on the floor.” A smile illuminated her face.

  “You mean you will? Finally?”

  “You first asked me after the tango. I was fourteen then. And ever since I’ve thought you were too young.”

  Alec spread his arms. “And now? Do I have to get the Nobel Prize before you say yes?”

  “It would be nice,” she sighed. “Mrs. Alexander Baldwin, Ph.D., N.P.”

  “There is no such thing as N.P.”

  “There should be.”

  “Could we delay this discussion until after I get my Nobel?”

  “I don’t know. Without it I would be just a pheee’d.”

  “A what?”

  “How do you pronounce Ph.D., isn’t it pheee’d?

  They spent the night on a single mattress laid out in the middle of the master bedroom. About midnight Susan agreed to become Mrs. Phee’d, providing he’d continue to live with her. She said that living in Montreal while he had all the fun here was not fair.

  She was right, of course. What’s the point of getting married if you are to live a continent apart? In their case, something like 4000 kilometers as the crow flies. They agreed that Suzy would try to resign her post as soon as possible, but at the latest to leave Montreal before Christmas. Alec would go home for the holidays, to see her parents and his own mother, and then they would sublet their apartment in Montreal and move to California.

  Dr. McBride’s secretary offered to take care of the immigration formalities. The application stated that Dr. Alexander Baldwin was gainfully employed in the US of A, and, according to a statement by the Dean of the Department of Physics, he absolutely irreplaceable’.

  On Tuesday, the furniture arrived. By the end of the day the apartment looked presentable. Unfortunately, next morning Suzy had to return to Montreal.

  “My parents would never forgive me, you know,” she said at the airport.

  “Oh, yes...?”

  “You’ve forgotten already!” She kicked him none too lightly.

  “Ouch! What have I done now?” He hopped on one leg away from her.

  “The wedding, silly? We can’t do it here. My parents would kill me.”

  “Of course…” he agreed, still hopping. “We must do it in Montreal. It really hurts, you know.”

  “What, the thought of marrying me?” She came closer and massaged his shin. “I’m sorry. I really must learn more self-control. Forgive me?”

  “Only if you marry me soon.”

  And then the loudspeaker announced that her plane was ready for boarding.

  Alec drove back. His rented car was expensive, but their other car was in Montreal. Unfortunately, one could not live in LA without wheels. An automobile was taken for granted, just like the morning fog and smog and red-rimmed eyes. It came with the territory.

  His, or really their, new apartment, also quite naturally, had air-conditioning. Another thing taken for granted. If you wanted to breathe, that is. And every time Alec thought of having Suzy with him on a permanent basis, he wanted to breathe for a long, long time.

  Yet, even as he was thinking of his life with Mrs. Baldwin, the memories of Sandra began to insinuate themselves into his awareness; not competing for attention, but rather, in a strange way, participating. What a peculiar way to remember Sandra, he thought. Sandra who was already part of him, even as Suzy was about to become.

  But it wasn’t the same.

  There was never a question of competition.

  Who was Sandra? Or better still, who is she?

  Had Alec been a religious man, the answer would have been simple. My soul, he would have said. But Alec didn’t indulge in escapes into metaphysics. He had problems enough with the memories of his early exploits. Some of them he remembered as vividly, if not more so, than his experiences of last week.

  What was it about Sandra that once made her so close? So immediate? He remembered her words: I’ll always be with you. He even had both explicit and implicit recollections of the ‘merging’, of becoming one with Sandra. But it was one thing to relive the experiences of his teenage years, and another to accept it all with a mature, adult brain. He could not deny what happened on that ‘Third Step,’ the step he’d taken at her bidding, the final step of becoming ‘one’. Or was it One with a capital O? His mind trained in scientific, inductive and deductive reasoning did not quite open wide enough to place that experience in its proper place.

  Who is Sandra?

  When he was a little boy, he was lonely. What boy isn’t, on occasion? Especially if he is the only child. But to create a personality as complex as Sandra’s would have been near impossible for a fourteen-year-old. In some respects, it might prove even more difficult for an adult. Yet Sandra was no less real today then she was then, only in a different way. Then—she was immediate, tangible, palpable. He could see her; on the ‘Home Planet’ he could touch her.

  Alec did not suffer from inability to accept, what might be called, the invisible world. Indeed, his career was centered on ‘things’ he could neither see, nor smell, hear, taste, or touch. Things that did little more than, under conditions of almost absurd pressures, leave fleeting trails behind them. Things which came into being, ‘physical’ being, for fractions of a second and were instantly absorbed back into a world as yet inaccessible to men. He wondered what Sandra would say about his profession. Would she approve of physics? Particle physics? A science that seemingly competed with her to gain a foothold in the visible world?

  Somehow Alec harboured an inner conviction that, in a certain way, he couldn’t do anything Sandra didn’t approve of. Rather as with Suzy, only... he had to face it, only infinitely more so. He might take liberties when Suzy was in Montreal, but with Sandra? Sandra was always with him. She’d said so.

  On the other hand, it seemed that Sandra’s powers, compared to his, were near infinite. Also her concept of morality, if there was such a thing in her term of reference, was vastly different from the human version.

  And the Home Planet was another problem. Did he really invent its reality, as Sandra had implied? But if so, then she’d as good as
admitted that he had also invented her. The tangible, palpable her. Only he knew he hadn’t. Or if he had it must have been at such a deep, not merely subconscious but unconscious level, as cannot be reached by an act of will; certainly not by an act of will of a mere, fourteen-year-old stripling. Perhaps the great gurus, the swamis of the mysterious Orient, might be capable of such things, but not a young sailor, a budding tennis player, or a generally confirmed prankster. And, at the time, he’d been all three.

  So, who is Sandra?

  Carl Jung might call her his anima—perhaps his Superego. But if that was the case, then did he create Sandra or did Sandra create him? Had she been biding her time, revealing herself to him only when he was ready? She’d said something of the sort. But if that was the case...

  If that was the case, then, in a manner of speaking, he wasn’t Alec at all. He was the out-picturing of Sandra herself—the outer sheath of his inner Self.

  Or was he just raving because Suzy had left and he was lonely.

  Like a little boy...

  The questions just wouldn’t go away. But they had to. After all, he was getting married. He just couldn’t keep two women in his heart. Could he?

  And then, quite out of the blue, Alec remembered the words of his idol: “I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing....”

  Only Richard Feynman wasn’t there to tell him who Sandra was. Perhaps she was just part of nature’s behaviour pattern. Perhaps the doctor, the man who traded ideas with Einstein and Bohr, the man whose brilliance was only equaled by his chutzpah, could have told him. Alas, he wasn’t there either.

  Sandra was his, and his alone to discover. To rediscover? It was almost like trying to get to know yourself—only much, much more so. But of one thing he was sure. Whatever Sandra meant to his youthful fancies, it was time to grow up. It was time to be and act like the scientist that he was. Regardless of what his emotions might call for.

  Goodbye, Sandra, he whispered. And then he added even more softly, Goodbye my love…