by Mike Ashley
“No, not random,” Lauren said.
She’d said the same thing this morning. I could hear her starting to sob again.
“Look, Phil,” she continued. “I really think I’m close to understanding this. I’m going to make a few more calls. I, uh, we hardly know each other, but I feel good talking this out with you. Our conversation last night helped me a lot. Can I call you back in an hour? Or maybe – I don’t know, if you’re not busy tonight – could you come over again?”
She didn’t have to ask twice. “I’ll see you at seven. I’ll also bring some food in case you’re hungry – you have to eat.”
I knew even before I drove up that something was wrong. I guess my eyes after all these years of looking around crime scenes are especially sensitive to the weak flicker of police lights on the evening sky at a distance. The flicker still turns my stomach.
“What’s going on here?” I got out of my car, Chinese food in hand, and asked the uniform.
“Who the hell are you?” he replied.
I fumbled for my ID.
“He’s OK,” Janny Murphy, the uniform who’d come to stay with Lauren in the afternoon, walked over. “He’s forensics.”
The food dropped from my hand when I saw the expression on her face. Brown moo-shoo pork juice dribbled down the driveway.
“It’s crazy,” Janny said. “Doc says it’s less than one in ten thousand. Some rare allergy to the shot the medic gave her. It wasn’t his fault. It somehow brings out an asthma attack hours later. Fifty per cent fatality.”
“And Lauren – Dr Goldring – was in the unlucky part of the curve.”
Janny nodded.
“I don’t believe this,” I said, shaking my head.
“I know,” Janny said. “Helluva coincidence. Physicist and his wife, also a physicist, both dying like that.”
“Maybe it’s not a coincidence,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Janny said.
“I don’t know what I mean,” I said. “Is Lauren – is the body – still here? I’d like to have a look at her.”
“Help yourself,” Janny gestured inside the house.
I can’t say Lauren looked at peace in death. I could almost still see her lips quivering, straining to tell me something, though they were as sealed as the deadest night now. I had an urge again to kiss her face. I’d known her all of two days, wanted as many times to kiss her.
I was aware of Janny standing beside me.
“I’m going home now,” I said.
“Sure,” Janny said. “The captain says he’d like to talk to you tomorrow morning. Just to wrap this whole mess up. Bad karma.”
Yeah, karma, like in Fritz Capra’s Tao of Physics. Like in two entities crossing each other’s paths and then ever more touching each other’s destinies. Like me and this soul with the soft, still lips. Except I had no power to influence Lauren, to make things better for her any more. And the truth is, I hadn’t done much for her when she was alive.
I was awake all night. I logged onto a few more fringy physics lists with my computer and did more reading. Finally it was light outside. I thought about calling Stephen Hawking. He was where? California? Cambridge, England? I wasn’t sure. I knew he’d be able to talk to me if I could reach him – I’d seen a video of him talking through a special device – but he’d probably think I was crazy when I told him what I had to say. So I called Jack Donovan instead. He was another friend who owed me. I had lots of friends like that in the city. Jack was a science reporter for Newsday, and I’d come through for him with off-the-record background on murder investigations in my bailiwick lots of times. I hoped he’d come through for me now. I was starting to get worried. He had lots of connections in the field – he could talk to scientists who’d shy away from me, my being in the Department and all.
It was seven in the morning. I expected to get his answering machine, but I got him. I told him my story.
“OK,” he said. “Why don’t you go see the captain at the precinct, and then come over to see me? I’ll do some checking around in the meantime.”
I did what Jack said. I kept strictly to the facts with the captain – no suppositions, no chronological or any other protection schemes – and he took it all in with his customary frown.
“Damn shame,” he muttered. “Nice lady like that. They oughta take that sedative off the market. Damn drug companies are too greedy.”
“Right,” I said.
“You look exhausted,” he said. “You oughta take the rest of the day off.”
“More or less what I had in mind,” I said, and left for Jack’s.
I thought my office was high-tech, but Jack’s Hempstead newsroom looked like something well into the next century. Computer screens everywhere you looked, sounds of modems chirping on and off like the patter of tiny raindrops.
Jack looked concerned. “You’re not going to like this,” he said.
“What else is new,” I said. “Try me.”
“Well, you were right about my having better entrée to these physicists than you. I did a lot of checking,” Jack said. “There were six people working actively in conjunction with Ian on this project. A few more, of course, if you take into account the usual complement of graduate student assistants. But outside of that, the project was sealed up pretty tightly – not by the government or any agency, but by the researchers themselves. Sometimes they do that when the research gets really fringy – like they don’t want anyone to know what they’re really doing until they’re sure they have a reliable effect. You wouldn’t believe some of the wild things people have been getting into in the past few years – especially the physicists – now that they have the Internet to yammer at each other.”
“I’m tired, Jack. Please get to the point.”
“Well, four of the seven – that includes Ian Goldring – are now dead. One had a heart attack – the day after his doctor told him his cholesterol was in the bottom 10 per cent. I guess that’s not so strange. Another fell off his roof – he was cleaning out his gutters – and severed his carotid artery on a sharp piece of flagstone that was sticking up on his walk. He bled to death before anyone found him. Another was struck by a car – DOA. And then there’s Ian. I could write a story on this even without your conjecture—”
“Please don’t,” I said.
“It’s a weird situation all right. Four out of seven dying like that – and also Goldring’s wife.”
“How are the spouses of the other fatalities?” I asked.
“All OK,” Jack said. “But none are physicists. None knew anything at all about their husbands’ work – all of the dead were men. Lauren Goldring is the only one who had any idea what her husband was up to.”
“She wasn’t sure,” I said. “But I think she figured it out just before she died.”
“Maybe they all picked up some virus at a conference they attended – something which threw off their sense of balance, caused their heart rate to speed up,” Sam Abrahmson, Jack’s editor, strolled by and jumped in. Clearly he’d been listening on the periphery of our conversation. “That could explain the two accidents and the heart attack,” he added. “Maybe even the sedative death.”
“But not the drive-by shooting of Goldring,” I said.
“No,” Abrahmson admitted. “But it could be an interesting story anyway. Think about it,” he said to Jack and strolled away.
I looked at Jack. “Please, I’m begging you. If I’m right—”
“It’s likely something completely different,” Jack said. “Some completely different hidden variable.”
Hidden variables. I’d been reading about them all night. “What about the other three? Have you been able to get in touch with them?” I asked.
“Nope,” Jack said. “Hays and Strauss refused to talk to me about it. Both had their secretaries tell me they were aware of some of the deaths, had decided not to do any more work on the local wormhole project, had no plans to publish what they’d already done, didn’t wa
nt to talk to me about it or hear from me again. Each claimed to be involved now in something completely different.”
“Does that sound to you like the usual behavior of research scientists?” I asked.
“No,” Jack said. “The ones I know eat up publicity, and they’d hang on to a project like this for decades, like a dog worrying a bone.”
I nodded. “And the third physicist?”
“Fenwick? She’s in a small plane somewhere in the outback of Australia. I couldn’t reach her at all.”
“Call me immediately if you hear the plane crashes,” I said. I really meant “when” not “if”, but I didn’t want Jack to think I was even more far gone than I was. “Please try to hold off on any story for now,” I said and made to leave.
“I’ll do what I can,” Jack said. “Try to get some rest. I think there’s something going on here all right, but not what you think.”
The drive back to Westchester was harrowing. Two cars nearly sideswiped me, and one big-ass truck stopped so suddenly in front of me that I had all I could do to swerve out of crashing into it and becoming an instant Long Island Expressway pancake.
Let’s say the QM time-travel people were right. Particles are able to influence each other travelling away from each other at huge distances, because they’re actually travelling back in time to an earlier position when they were in immediate physical contact. So time travel on the quantum mechanical level is possible – technically.
But let’s say Hawking was also right. The universe can’t allow time travel – for to do so would unravel its very being. So it protects itself from dissemination of information backwards in time.
That wouldn’t be so crazy. People are saying the universe can be considered one huge organism – a Gaia writ large. Makes sense then, that this organism, like all other organisms, would have tendencies to act on behalf of its own survival – would act to prevent its dissolution via time travel.
But how would such protection express itself? A physicist figures out a way of creating a local wormhole that can send some information back in time – back to his earlier self and equipment – in some non-blatantly paradoxical way. It doesn’t shut off the circuit that sent it. So this information is in fact sent and in fact received – by the scientist. But the universe can’t allow that information transfer to stand. So what happens?
Hawking says the universe’s first line of defense is to create energy disturbances severe enough at the mouths of the wormhole to destroy it and its time-channelling ability. OK. But let’s say the physicist is smart or lucky enough to create a wormhole that can withstand these self-disruptive forces. What does the universe do then?
Maybe it makes the scientist forget this information. Maybe causes a minor stroke in the scientist’s brain. Maybe causes the equipment to irreparably break down. Maybe the lucky physicist is really unlucky. Maybe this already happened lots of times.
But what happens when a group of scientists around the world who achieve this time travel transfer reach a critical mass – a mass that will soon publish its findings, and make them known, irrevocably, to the world?
Jeez! – I jammed the heel of my hand into my car horn and swerved. The damn Volkswagen driver must be drunk out of his mind . . .
So what happens when this group of scientists gets information from its own future? Has proof of time travel, information that can’t be? The universe regulates itself, polices its timeline, in a more drastic way. All existence is equilibrium – a stronger threat to existence evokes a stronger reaction. A freak fatal accident. A sudden massive heart attack. Another no-motive, drive-by shooting that the universe already dishes out to all too many people in this hapless world of ours. Except in this case, the universe’s motive is quite clear and strong: it must protect its chronology, conserve its current existence.
Maybe this already happened too. How many physicists on the cutting edges of this science died too young in recent years? Jeez, here was a story for Jack all right.
But why Lauren? Why did she have to die?
Maybe because the universe’s protection level went beyond just those who received illicit future information. Maybe it extended to those who understood just what it was doing, just—
Whamp! Something big had smashed into the rear of my car, and I was skidding way out of control towards the edge of the Throggs Neck Bridge, towards where some workers had removed the barriers to fix some corrosion or something. I was strangely calm, above it all. I told myself to go easy on the brakes, but my leg clamped down anyway and my speed increased. I wrenched my wheel around, but all that did was spin me into a backward skid off the bridge. My car sailed way the hell out over the black-and-blue Long Island Sound.
The way down took a long time. They’d say I was overwrought, over tired, that I lost control. But I knew the truth, knew exactly why this was happening. I knew too much, just like Lauren.
Or maybe there was a way out, a weird little corner of my brain piped up.
Maybe I didn’t know the truth. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe if I could convince myself of that, the universe wouldn’t have to protect itself from me. Maybe it would give me a second chance.
My car hit the water.
I was still alive.
I was a pretty fair swimmer.
If only I could force myself never to think of certain things, maybe I had a shot.
Maybe the deaths of the physicists were coincidental after all . . .
I lost consciousness thinking no, I couldn’t just forget what I already knew so well . . . How could I will myself not to think of that very thing I was trying to will myself not to think about . . . that blared in my mind now like a broken car horn . . . But if I died, what I knew wouldn’t matter anyway . . .
I awoke fighting sheets . . . of water. No, these were too white. Maybe hospital sheets. Yeah, white hospital sheets. They smelled like that too.
I opened my eyes. Hospital rooms were hell – I knew better than most the truth of that – but this was just a hospital room.
I was sure of that. I was alive.
And I remembered everything. With a spasm that both energized and frightened me, I realized that I recalled everything I’d been thinking about the universe and its protective clutch . . .
But I was still alive.
So maybe my reasoning was not completely right . . .
“Dr D’Amato,” a female voice, soft but very much in command, said to me. “Good to see you awake.”
“Good to be awake, Nurse, ah, Johnson,” I squinted at her name tag, then her face. “Uhm, what’s my situation? How long have I been here?”
She looked at the chart next to my bed. “Just a day and a half,” she said. “They fished you out of the Sound. You were suffering from shock. Here,” she gave me a cup of water. “Now that you’re awake, you can take these orally.” She gave me three pills, and turned off the intravenous that I’d just realized was attached to me. She disconnected the tubing from my vein.
I held the pills in my hand. I thought about the universe again. I envisioned it, rightly or wrongly, as a personal antagonist now. Let’s say I was right about the reach of its chronology protection after all. Let’s say it had spared me in the water, because I was on the verge of willing myself to forget. Let’s say it had allowed me to get medicine and nutrition intravenously, while I was unconscious, because while I was unconscious I posed no threat. But let’s say now that I was awake, and remembered, it would—
“Dr D’Amato. Are you falling back asleep on me?” She smiled. “Come on now, be a good boy and take your pills.”
They burned in my palm. Maybe they were poison. Maybe something I had a lethal allergy to. Like Lauren. “No,” I said. “I’m OK, now, really. I don’t need them.” I put the pills on the table, and swung my legs out of bed.
“I don’t believe this,” Johnson said. “It’s true – you doctors make the worst God-awful patients. You just stay put now – hear me?” She gave me a look of exasperation and stalked
out the door, likely to get the resident on duty, or, who knew, security.
I looked around for my clothes. They were on a chair, a dried out crumpled mess. They stank of oil and saltwater. At least my wallet was still inside my jacket pocket, money damp but intact. Good to see there was still some honesty left in this town.
I dressed quickly and opened the door. The corridor was clear. Goddamn it, I could leave if I wanted to. I was a patient not a prisoner.
At least insofar as the hospital was concerned. As for the larger realm of being, I couldn’t say any more.
I took a cab straight home. The most important new piece of evidence – to this whole case, as well as to me personally – was that I was alive. This meant that my assessment of the universe’s vindictiveness was missing something. Or maybe the universe was just a less effective assassin of forensic scientists than quantum physicists and their knowing wives.
I called Jack to see if there was anything new.
“Oh, just a second please,” the Newsday receptionist said. I didn’t like the tone of her voice.
“Hello, can I help you?” This was a man’s voice, but not Jack’s. He sounded familiar but I couldn’t place him.
“Yes, I’m Dr Phil D’Amato of NYPD Forensics calling Jack Donovan.”
Silence. Then, “Hello, Phil. I’m Sam Abrahmson. You still in the hospital?”
Right. Abrahmson. That was the voice. “No. I’m out. Where’s Jack?”
Abrahmson cleared his throat. “He was killed with Dave Strauss this morning. He’d talked Strauss into going public with this – Strauss supported your story. He’d picked Strauss up at his summer cottage in Ellenville – Strauss had been hiding out there – and was driving him back to the city. They got blown off a small bridge. Freak accident.”
“No freakin’ accident,” I said. “You know that as well as I do.” Another particle who’d danced this sick quantum twist with me. Another particle dead. But this one was completely my fault – I’d brought Jack into this.
