Quantum Times

by Bill Diffenderffer

  Seeing the island somehow made this hastily set up trip seem real whereas before it still had seemed dream-like. With his eyes still on the island, David thought about the sequence of events over the last 48 hours that led him to an encounter with no predictable outcome. Once he had verified that Ben Planck was still on the out of the way island with the foreboding name of Pirate’s Cay, getting a phone number for him was easy. But before attempting to call Planck he had informed Dr. Wheeling of how and where he had found Planck and the professor had immediately told David he too wanted to go with David to meet Planck. As it turned out that was a good thing because when he finally succeeded in talking to Planck, Planck was not at all eager to meet with David.

  The call had started with a brief recollection of their days as doctoral students at Columbia and then quickly Planck stated that he was not the Benjamin Planck everyone was looking for. He had already been emphatic about this to the local Bahamian Police who had come to check and then to agents from the FBI who said they were running down everyone with the name Benjamin Planck. Planck then told David what he had told everyone else: in fact Benjamin was his middle name. He had actually been named after his great great great uncle and his first name was indeed Max. Then he said that his little island community was a Zen Buddhist retreat and nothing he had done or had been doing could possibly be of interest to The Object or anyone else for that matter. Even this brief exchange had taken slow minutes as Planck’s reticence to talk had not changed.

  David heard him out but kept prodding. He brought up the matter of the hurricanes and Plank’s attachment to physics. Planck just remained silent to that line of approach. Then David mentioned that Dr. Wheeling also wanted to come meet him. After confirming that indeed it was the Dr. Janus Wheeling, winner of the Nobel Prize, Planck’s attitude changed. He had read Wheeling’s major papers and books and yes he did know that David had co-authored the recent bestseller – for a book on theoretical physics. On the proviso that Dr. Wheeling came too, Planck invited them to come see him.

  The small plane landed and taxied over to a hut with an extended roofline where waiting and disembarking passengers could gather in the event of rain. As the three of them exited the aircraft, David saw a lean suntanned young man wearing khaki cargo shorts and a white tee shirt standing next to the hut waiting for them. It took a moment before David recognized him as Planck. Planck looked younger than David would have thought and more like a California surfer than the bookish pale skinned nerdy student he had known ten years earlier.

  As they approached him, he came forward too and everyone said hello and David introduced Dr. Wheeling and Gabriela, who David said was his girlfriend. Gabriela was quick to add that she too was a physicist and for a rare moment David wanted to be able to say that he was too.

  In the next moment Planck stated without preamble that he was sorry to disappoint them but as he had said to David on the phone call, he was not the one everyone was looking for. Then he just looked back at each of them. For the moment David was at a loss as to how to respond.

  Clad in white slacks and a multi-colored, floral patterned Hawaiian shirt, looking not at all like a famous physicist, Dr. Wheeling smiled back at Planck and nodded his head several times. “Planck … may I call you Planck? For that is how David always has referred to you.”

  Planck nodded.

  Dr. Wheeling went on, “Well Planck, if I were in your circumstances I would say exactly that. Good for you to be wise enough to want to stay anonymous – to hide away in fact. But I’m sure you are the one and more importantly I know why you are.” The professor held up his hand when Planck started his denial. “Planck, once David told me about you, I did a little research on your work while you were a doctoral candidate at Columbia. I ignored your actual work that earned you your PhD but looked at what you had originally submitted – that which your advisors were foolish enough to discard. With the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge that The Object’s appearance substantiates…. And then what appeared to happen with respect to the course changes of the hurricanes ….well, obviously, you are not only the one everyone is looking for but quite possibly you might be the only one who understands how it is that The Object is here now.”

  Planck looked past the three of them for a long moment and then turned back to face Dr. Wheeling. The seriousness of his expression put the lie to his tanned beach boy looks. Then with his mind apparently made up, he said, “Dr. Wheeling, I am on the frontier of the most important physics discovery since Einstein. Honestly, I could use some help.”

  Wheeling just nodded as if he had known that all along. “That is why I am here,” he said.

  The three of them gathered up their bags and squeezed into a jeep that Planck had parked nearby. He drove them a few hundred yards to what once had been a 50 room resort hotel sitting almost in the sand of a white sand, coconut tree enclosed beach. To their surprise it did not look run down and it was not deserted. There were a number of people around looking very much like they had been there awhile. No one had funny drinks with umbrellas stuck in them, no one was sunburned, and no one was sitting with their legs in the pool, though the pool looked great. Rather they all looked like they had a purpose for being there. There were several small study groups meeting under the roofed porch or where there were clumps of shade. These people tended to be in shorts and a tee shirt. But there were more sitting alone or in quiet conversation with one or two others who had shaved heads and were attired in monkish robes, robes that had to be hot in the summer heat.

  To their questions Planck explained that his island really was a Zen Buddhist retreat where a very deep meditation was practiced and he looked forward to introducing them to the Zen Master who led the group. But there were also some physicists who had been invited to come once sworn to secrecy. And some of the physicists had crossed over, as Planck himself had done, and now mixed with both groups. In fact, Planck explained, that joinder of the two disciplines was essential to the work that was done there on the island.

  When asked, he said he had acquired the island 4 years earlier and the number of residents had grown slowly to its current population of 29. The people who were there had been carefully selected though word of mouth alone had identified them. When Wheeling asked how all this was funded, Planck cryptically replied, “The Universe provides.”

  Planck settled the three of them into a room for the professor and a room for Gabriela and David. The rooms both had beachside views but the furnishings were spare. Also Planck apologized that though it still looked like a resort, it functioned like a home: a home without servants or cooks. Planck shared that their Buddhist master insisted on that.

  They agreed to meet late that afternoon after everyone had settled in.

  The Alien walking down the Champs Elysees felt disoriented. Paris was not what she had expected. She had thought she was prepared and would know the streets; but much was different. The beauty of the city was there; but the look and feel was wrong. She had been led to expect it would look more like Berlin or Munich.

  The city was more beautiful than she had imagined. This Paris was different than the Paris she had thought she would see. She had not expected to see The Louvre in its stately majesty or the triumphant symbol of the Eiffel Tower. She liked best the brasseries and bistros with the customers sitting outside in the summer sun arguing art and politics or more prosaically just sharing their day’s events. She had sat at one and had a vin blanc and imagined herself a Parisian. With her cosmetic changes she thought she not only fit in but that the males passing her by found her attractive. She rather liked that.

  She liked the clothing that the females in Paris were wearing. The flow of the soft fabrics and the bare arms and legs combined in a tantalizing fashion; very different from the skin tight militaristic tunics of her planet. The skirt she had on was knee length and when she had been sitting at the little table on the street and sipping her wine she had crossed her legs and felt a delightful flirtatious naughtiness that wou
ld have earned her a reprimand at home.

  She was thrilled that she had been selected to be one of the planet visitors. Though most of the cadre wanted to go down planet side, only a few were selected. This was only her second mission but her scholastic diligence had been rewarded. But perhaps because she was so inexperienced she could not see what made this planet such a danger to so many. She hated that it might soon suffer extinction. She knew it could happen.

  Chapter Three

  “Consciousness determines existence.”

  It “was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness [of the observer] …the very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate reality.”

  Eugene Wigner, Nobel Prize winning Physicist

  Planck had asked them to meet him in what used to be the lobby of the resort hotel at 4PM. At the appointed time David and Gabriela and the professor walked from their rooms to the central building which housed the lobby. The lobby had large hurricane shutters at the front and the back which were fully opened and gave the appearance of always being in that open position. A breeze drifted through the room and the sibilant sounds of the waves cascading to the shore were a quiet reminder of the resort that this building once was. Planck was there to greet them but to their surprise the lobby which had no furniture was filled with the twenty or so island residents all seated on the floor, many in the lotus position.

  As David approached Planck he was struck by the incongruity of it all. He had come with a Nobel Prize winning physicist to talk to a grad school friend of his on a tropical island where religious zealots were apparently meditating. They were there because some extra-terrestrials wanted to meet his friend too. And somehow in the ten years since he last saw his friend, Planck was looking better than ever – and part of that look was of a man who knew things that no one else knew. Like the secrets of the universe.

  “Just go with it,” he thought to himself.

  Planck met them at the entrance and put his finger to his lips to suggest they be silent. They noticed he had a small grocery bag in his hand. He led them a few feet away from the lobby where he felt more free to talk.

  “I believed our discussion would go better if we started with a little demonstration. But there needs to be a slight alteration in my plans because we must address a more serious, but purely internal, matter.” As Planck spoke he looked mostly at Dr. Wheeling but Gabriela and David were given brief glances too.

  Planck went on when they all nodded. He then opened the grocery bag he was holding and showed that it contained four bananas bound together just as one would purchase them at the grocery store. They were six or seven inches long but were not nearly ripe, in fact they were green. “Quite green aren’t they?” He said as he put them back in the bag and curled the edges of the bag so that it was closed and handed the bag to Dr. Wheeling.

  Planck then said, “I would like the three of you to join us in a meditation exercise for a few minutes – just sit quietly and try to quiet your mind. Try not to think of anything. When thoughts do pop up, just push them to the side. Let your mind be quiet and still. You needn’t close your eyes, feel free to observe. See without thinking about it. Professor…I would like you to keep the bag with you and do not open it until you leave the meditation. Keep it with you in such a way that no one could interfere with it without your knowing. David and Gabriela feel free to watch the bag if you like. You will understand later why I ask that. Fifteen minutes will be enough, and then the three of you should get up and leave.

  “I will need to stay in the meditation for a while longer. One of our members has just learned that he has a brain tumor and we need to address that. I suggest that when you do get up and leave the meditation you might gather together outside and discuss….discuss instances of mind over matter. “

  Dr. Wheeling with no hint of bemusement repeated, “Mind over matter.” Then he nodded his head several times as if he had known that was to be discussed.

  Planck then brought them into the lobby and showed where they should sit on the floor near the back. The people in the room were silent and sat motionless. No one looked up at them. Planck moved to the front of the room and sat down there. Gabriela sat in a pretty good semblance of the lotus position and David and the professor did the best they could. The professor placed the bag down on his lap with his hand firmly clasping it. David looked at his watch to check the time.

  First the time seemed to turtle by for David but once he stopped watching the minute hand of his watch and instead just tried to see the room without looking, his watch soon showed the fifteen minutes was up. He stood up and went outside and Dr. Wheeling and Gabriela joined him. They walked out on the patio and sat at a round table for four with a beach umbrella in the middle of it.

  Without saying a word, Dr. Wheeling opened the grocery bag and took out of it four beautifully ripe yellow bananas. The three of them stayed silent moments longer and stared at the bananas. Then calmly the professor took one of the bananas and as he unpeeled it he said, “Reality is different than I had supposed.”

  “Could it be a trick of some kind?” David asked but he didn’t know how it could have been.

  Dr. Wheeling shook his head. “The Object is real. Moving the hurricanes was real. These bananas were green and now they are ripe and these bananas are very real.” In emphasis of his last statement he ate the top third of the banana. Then he said, “This is not the time of tricks and magic. This is the time to re-think what is real.”

  “I think we should do what Planck asked us to do. Let’s talk about mind over matter.” Gabriela said. Then she went on, “As physicists we try very hard to ignore certain things we know are true. We know the need for an “Observer” in quantum physics exists, but we try to ignore why or what that means. The role of The Observer is to turn potentialities into actualities, but why that is so we try not to ask. But it is predictable and experiments like the classic double slit experiments substantiate it. And in fact we have many instances where ‘mind’ affects ‘matter’.”

  David agreed, “This issue has bothered me for a while. It is why I was writing the article on how quadriplegics were interfacing with computers through mental exertions to move their wheelchairs. But similarly, we know that what we think affects the molecules in our bodies: we routinely think ourselves sick through stress. We also know that we can think ourselves healthy too – the placebo effect shows that…and that prayer can help as well. People with positive attitudes are much more likely to recover from serious illness than people with negative attitudes.”

  Gabriela added, “I know as a physicist I’m supposed to reject that work by Emoto where he shows the effects of human consciousness on water molecules but I don’t think his work has been proven to be a sham.”

  Dr. Wheeling had finished his banana. “I believe that the issue is now decided—the mind can rule matter – though I did just eat the evidence,” he said with a smirk. “We are not here to debate that issue. We are here to understand the physics of it and perhaps to use that understanding to save our planet from The Object – if in fact our planet does need saving from The Object.”

  As if on cue, they saw Planck leave the lobby and come their way. He pulled a chair from a nearby table and sat down with them. He gave the group a boyish smile but said nothing. Then he raised his index finger and pointed at the bananas.

  Dr. Wheeling nodded his head up and down, up and down, then gave Planck a bemused smile, “The banana was delicious. Never before have I observed a physics experiment that was both edifying and edible.”

  Planck grinned, “It wasn’t magic, you know. It is both predictable and repeatable. It is just not particularly believable. That is why I thought it best to just show you.”

  “How do you do it?” Gabriela asked.

  “I did not do it – all of us together did it. During the first fifteen minutes while you were there a
ll of us, all 29 of us, meditated on the ripening of those bananas. I had set that up with the team earlier today. I apologized to them for the parlor trick nature of it but felt it was necessary. Then we had more serious work to do.”

  Dr. Wheeling seemed already to understand. “Your colleague with the brain tumor. Would I be correct in supposing that your group meditated on its disappearing? Is he now going to be all right?”

  Planck nodded, “We think he’ll be fine. How did you know?”

  “You mentioned earlier that you needed to address that. And I have noticed that all of the residents here – yourself included – look remarkably fit and healthy. So is it the power of meditation by a large trained group with everyone focused on a single thought?”

  Planck nodded and smiled again. “That is partly right. But it really helps if you have one of these.” He put his hand to his right ear and pulled out a little device that resembled a hearing aid. “This little amplifier helps a lot. It broadcasts my thoughts to the Universe. Once I figured out the right frequency the Universe became much more attentive.”

  Dr. Wheeling, Gabriela and David all stared at the tiny electronic device. Planck said nothing.

  “An amplifier,” David said, not a question just a simple statement while his mind was considering the implications.

  Planck then added, “We think it might work better if it was implanted inside the skull but we are not sure yet.”

  Dr. Wheeling started nodding his head as he did whenever his thoughts were crystalizing, “I suppose the challenge was in tuning it – both to receive and send…finding the right frequency.”