“I think it depends,” David said. “Right before Plato left Pirate’s Cay to go to meet with the President, he told Dr. Wheeling, Planck and me that he wanted us to do some things – things that he thought were very important. It was like all of a sudden we were on the same team – his team. Planck, who had spent a couple of days on The Object, was clearly already on Plato’s team.”
“What does he want you to do?”
“Well first, he wants me and Dr. Wheeling to return as soon as possible to Planck’s island. Plato is planning on making that his base of operations. In fact, he is going to bring his crew members down to the island. He says they are all bored up on The Object and want a little R & R on the beach.”
Gabriela laughed, “I guess that means they really are just like us. We all love the beach!”
“He wants me to do a full interview with Planck and he wants me to learn all about The Object so that I can write about it. But the next thing he wants from me is the strange one. He wouldn’t tell me why, but he wants a list of the most influential people in the United States. He wants everybody from the CEO’s of the TV networks and Cable companies to the most popular actors and athletes to the bloggers who have a million followers.”
“Why do you think he wants that list?”
“I can only guess that he wants it because he wants to influence them…. Anyway, my point is that Plato wants me to do these things to serve some purpose of Plato’s and The Object’s. But what do they really want? Are they good guys or bad guys?”
“I think you should do what you do best. Write the story. Follow it step by step. That’s what you do.”
“That’s what I want to do. So I guess I’m going back to the island.”
“And you said he wants Dr. Wheeling to come to the island as well?”
“Yes – I think because he wants him to be a spokesperson – about what exactly I’m not sure.”
“Well that settles one thing,” Gabriela said adamantly. “If you’re going back and Dr. Wheeling is going, then I’m going too!”
After several days at home, Dr. Wheeling returned to Pirate’s Cay to find it more resort like and less like a monastic retreat. People he didn’t recognize were out by the pool and others were sunning themselves on the beach. Then he looked closer and saw that the appearance of some of the newcomers to the pool and beach area was markedly different than what he had thought previously was a human norm. Skin colors varied from the white to black he was familiar with but included yellows and greens and blues he had never seen before. Hair colors and styles varied with new creativity that would be the envy of avant garde hairstylists everywhere. Then he noticed ear shapes varied too. Almost all the crew, male and female, stood well over six feet tall and looked like they spent all day in the gym and had never tasted junk food.
As he approached the lobby he saw monks meditating there led by Master Ozawa and then he saw Planck rising from where he had been sitting to come over to him.
“Dr. Wheeling! I’m glad you returned.”
“Planck I’m glad to see you too. What is going on around here?”
Planck seemed like a little boy at his own birthday party, “My island seems to have become an interstellar rest spot. We’ve been joined by some of Plato’s cohorts off The Object. As you see, physical appearance seems to be more a matter of choice with them. By the way, we don’t call it The Object anymore. It actually has a name. It’s called The Bucephalus, after Alexander the Great’s horse.”
“I’m surprised you are not besieged by the media.”
“Yesterday was the first day, right after the Navy Seals left. We are keeping it secret. I think Plato wants to use this as some kind of base of operations – although to do what I’m not sure. I told him to make himself and his team at home. I did have to send a boat to Nassau to get more supplies. But I figure I owe him since he rescued me from the Russians. So what brings you here?”
“He said I should come back. He says he has a role for me but I am not sure exactly what it is he wants me to do.”
“You should go find David, he’s here too. Gabriela as well. He spent a lot of time with Plato this morning. I think he knows what’s up.”
Dr. Wheeling found David sitting by the pool writing on his laptop. He noticed Gabriela in a light blue bikini floating on an air mattress in the pool. She looked lovely. His eyes lingered on Gabriela; she saw him looking and waved at him and gave a smile. He waved back and then smiled to himself as he remembered his previous evening in the city with Dr. Mary Grasso, a lovely woman in her own right, he thought.
“Professor, good to see you here. I’m a little surprised but Plato told me he thought you would come back.”
“I surprise myself too. Planck tells me perhaps you know why I’m here.”
“I think I am beginning to know. Or at least I know what Plato wants me to know. What he tells me makes sense. Frankly it is stuff I never wanted to hear but can’t ignore once I did. And it is stuff you always sort of knew anyway, you just didn’t want to look at it straight on. Plato makes you take the rose colored glasses off.”
“So tell me.”
When David finished, Dr. Wheeling nodded several times. “Yes that is what I expected. What he told us when we first met him. He wants us to help lead the world away from insanity. And what exactly is it that Plato wants?”
David shook his head, “I’m still working on that. But I’m pretty sure we’re on the side of the angels.”
“So how do we do this?”
“Wait until you hear.” And David told him how it would start.
Later that day as Dr. Wheeling returned to the open air lobby from his room, he found the grounds of the retreat deserted. No one was lying on the beach or lounging around the poolside. But for the sounds of the waves and the chirping of birds, the sound of his steps on the gravel path was all he heard. As he neared the lobby he saw why. The lobby was full with the silent crowd of Planck’s original group and crew members down from The Bucephalus all sitting on floor mats while meditating. He saw there too at the back were David and Gabriela. In the front of the room were Planck and Ozawa and Plato.
Dr. Wheeling took a seat at one of the umbrella-covered tables just outside the lobby. He enjoyed the peacefulness of the setting. After 10 minutes, while all the others remained where they were meditating, Catherine Ozawa rose up and came to join him.
“Dr. Wheeling, I am so glad to have a chance to talk to you.”
Until she came over it hadn’t occurred to the professor to seek her out, but now that she was there, he was glad. Looking at her was like looking at a beautiful hand carved piece of antique furniture. Form and function blended together timelessly. Her gaze rested on him and it was as if she saw him just the way he would want to be seen – though he really didn’t know what that would even mean.
“I feel the same way. I see you have expanded your practitioners…is that the right word?”
Ozawa smiled, “As good as any. Perhaps next time you’ll join us.”
“I don’t know that I understand…why are Plato’s people meditating with you here?”
“Meditation is very common with them. It is part of their culture. When I talked to Plato about it, I felt like the student talking to the Master. He says the mind is the doorway to existence…a quiet mind. A quiet mind welcomes stillness. There is no balance without stillness. Existence without balance invites chaos. Chaos breeds destruction.
“What is fascinating,” Catherine Ozawa continued, “Is how that links to understanding the physics of the universe – of the many worlds. The universe starts in balance with empty Potentiality. Then a quantum anomaly, a singularity, occurs and we have the Big Bang when everything is chaotic and then the hyper expansion in the early moments when that chaos is spread. Then the laws of physics get to work, the force of gravity forms stars, stars go nova and more and more fundamental elements are formed – and somewhere within all of that is consciousness arising, consciousness with its own imperati
ve to expand. Its own imperative to encompass existence which leads to intelligence -- then mind gets to work and order comes out of chaos. Balance is restored and the cycle is complete”
“It is that last part that an old physicist like myself has trouble with.” Dr. Wheeling responded.
“For this I find it better to think like a Zen Buddhist and not a physicist.” Catherine laughed. “The idea that the universe seeks balance is like saying that the ocean seeks to be wet. There is no seeking. Whether a universe or a man, balance is the natural state – it is all the same.”
“But man doesn’t seek balance, rather the opposite it seems.”
“An enlightened man is in balance.”
Dr. Wheeling pointed at the group meditating in the lobby, “Is that what they are doing there – seeking enlightenment?”
Ozawa shook her head, “No not now. Plato is leading them to focus on an event he seeks to cause. They are working.”
Dr. Wheeling looked over at the group where all was quiet. Everyone there was perfectly still. The only sense of movement came from a soft breeze coming in off the ocean with a delicate salty edge.
Ozawa looked at them as well then turned back to the professor. “Dr. Wheeling, how would you like to join me on a walk? There is a path bordering the shore that is quite beautiful as it wraps around the island. There is a form of meditation in Zen Buddhism known as kinhin. There is a certain rigor to it, but let’s put that aside. Just walk with me and do not think of anything. Just see. See the island, see the sand, feel the sand, see the water and walk. And be aware of your breath as you walk. When we finish the walk I think you will feel very refreshed. And your steps on this walk may lead you on your own path to enlightenment.”
Dr. Wheeling smiled, “Sure, it will be good to stretch my legs.”
“Yes, it will do that at least.”
The next global communication from The Object was not a short text message as had been the two previous ones. This one was long and detailed and described where The Object had come from, how this Earth was just one of many, and that soon there would be others coming to investigate this Earth. It also presented the risks in horrifying exactitude to this planet’s survival: risks from further nuclear war, risks from terrorist use of biologicals, risks from environmental and economic degradation. And each risk was accompanied by statistical evaluations based on twenty-five year and fifty year models. And on such time scales, the risks were not low, rather they approached certainties.
And it showed how each risk could act in conjunction with other risks so that something that might seem minor could swell to major catastrophe. World economies were far more fragile as they grew more interconnected. Butterflies flapping their wings had grown to monstrous proportions and chaos loomed just out of sight.
As a last visual, it showed aerial photography of what the Koreas now looked like.
Plato’s transmission in all the world’s languages to all electronic devices was bleak and terrifying to see and to read.
It was accompanied by a stellar light show that was equally horrifying; the Earth’s sky seemed all aflame for a two minute period that seemed to last forever. Over all the major continents and over the oceans of the world, the horizon seemed on fire. No movie’s special effects of an Armageddon was ever more realistic – though what was seen left no mark anywhere afterwards – that is no physical mark. The emotional after image was scarring. No movie screening held such long term impact. The movie screen had been the Earth itself, the audience was everyone and only afterwards was it known to be a hellish mirage.
It was quite an attention getter. Plato hoped that everyone now understood the problem.
Plato had put David to work as well. David wrote a full account of all that he had witnessed. He wrote an interview with Planck and he wrote up an interview he had with Plato. In each the same themes were repeated. The world faced grave dangers that needed to be confronted. Changes in philosophy, in governance, in cultures and in societies needed to occur. People needed to take responsibility. Things would not just stay the same as they had always been. It was an illusion not to see that huge changes had already occurred. It was a delusion not to see that larger changes were coming. Technology change was accelerating and putting ever more dangerous capabilities in the hands of both unstable countries and unstable and extremist religious and political factions. His articles were published in media worldwide.
The results of Plato’s actions were as varied as the people who observed them.
Stunned silence, crying and screaming, prayer gatherings, binge drinking, pagan rituals, star gazing, families gathered, suicides, lonely wanderings, rioting in the streets. Churches were jammed as were the bars. People looked for guidance from pastors and rabbis and mullahs and bartenders and actors and reality TV stars and talk show hosts and parents and grandparents and business leaders and NFL quarterbacks and talking parrots. As fears subsided, people calmed down and Plato’s message was considered, discussed, argued, confirmed and rejected, and all of the above all at the same time.
Plato knew that whether it would make a difference, time would tell.
“This all makes us look like idiots,” the President said to Hank Scarpetti and Barbara Wilcox, his chief political advisor, as they sat facing him at his desk in the Oval Office. “We had rioting in Los Angeles and Chicago with mobs looting stores. We’ve got our churches filled with crowds claiming ‘the end is near, repent!’ Parents pulled so many kids from schools yesterday that the schools all closed down. Businesses shut their doors.”
Barbara held up her hands, palms out to him, “When you go on TV tonight you’ll calm things down. This could be a great moment for you to demonstrate your leadership. The people want to hear that there is nothing to fear. You have things under control.”
“But we don’t have things under control. Those things that Plato is saying, they are true. I can’t just go on national television and tell them don’t worry, no big deal! And you’re telling me the ratings are going to go through the roof – everyone in the country is going to be watching me. And I have nothing to tell them!” His usual strong clear baritone voice was sounding more like a shaky tenor.
Barbara Wilcox was steady as always. Despite almost no sleep in the past two days her short brown hair was meticulously in place and her make-up looked like it had just been put on at a movie set. Her blouse and skirt were unwrinkled. She prided herself in always maintaining a calm and wise persona. Her detractors called her the ice queen and made no mention of any wisdom, though her political smarts were not in doubt. “You tell them they have nothing to fear but fear itself. You go all Churchill on them. This is your stage, your moment to show them your greatness.”
The President shook his head in denial. “Forget about greatness! I just want to calm everyone down! Life is no different today than it was last week before this started. Plato is exaggerating everything. The world has always been a dangerous place. But we are doing the right things. My policies are working and making the world safer!”
Hank Scarpetti had been listening quietly. He knew that in other rooms staffers were already at work writing the speech. He had talked to Barbara earlier and knew she had instructed them to write a ‘Churchillian’ speech about not giving in to fear….typical of her she was confusing what Roosevelt had said with Churchill, but the point was the same. As soon as she had told him that she was going to so advise the President, he knew that any chance of a really substantive speech was lost. If he argued with Barbara in front of the President for a speech that really addressed the issues head on, he knew he’d lose.
And if he did somehow win the argument with Barbara, the President would ask him what the substance of the speech should be. The trouble with that was that Hank knew he didn’t know what to say. And perhaps that was the real point of what Plato was doing. He hadn’t suggested answers yet either. What the President needed to do was go on national television tonight and both admit that the problems were real and that he w
ould lead the people as they solved the problems. Roosevelt didn’t tell the people not to worry about Hitler; he assured America that it would prevail regardless of the strength of the enemy.
Scarpetti knew the President would not see it that way. The President could not admit that after six years in office, the world was now in such a mess. His policies had not made the world safer – in fact, the world was less safe. The Arab nations were at war with each other and with themselves, terrorists were everywhere. Religious leaders there were screaming louder and louder for the destruction of Israel. The example of North Korea somehow seemed to encourage extreme action, not discourage it. Crowds were gathering in the world’s capitals and were milling about with only random destruction as a plan and, like mobs everywhere, were not rational. And fear only made everything worse.
Illusions or reality
By David Randall
This is my first blog post of what I hope will become a series. Let me start by saying that in this blog, I am not writing on behalf of any newspaper or media institution. When writing there my reportage will be as unbiased and fact based as possible. Here I intend to express my personal observations and viewpoints – hopefully the two will overlap!
Plato showed us our world on the precipice of destruction and doom. Even as we knew the fires in the skies were an illusion, we feared it as a coming reality – at least I did. In fact I find myself increasingly confused by what is real and what is an illusion. I know that there is war and destruction occurring somewhere on this Earth even as I write this, but here in New York City as I look out the window at Lexington Avenue all I see are people walking the streets going about their business and cars rushing past. I see Lexington Avenue; I don’t see the wars and the death. I also don’t see children starving in the Sudan or rebel forces killing and maiming and raping in Central Africa. But just because I see Lexington Avenue and I don’t see the wars and the terror and the other atrocities of the world, that doesn’t mean my only reality is Lexington Avenue. I know better than that. And so do you.
Quantum Times Page 16
