Here & There

by Joshua V. Scher

  53. Δt′ = Δt / √(1 - v2 / c2)

  54. Adhering to the warping of three-dimensional space as a result of gravitational forces.

  55. Luc Sante in his article “Sontag: The Precocious Years” for The New York Times, February 1, 2009, in discussing the journals and notebooks of Susan Sontag, posits how diarists either write with the hope of publishing or the fear of being published. Both however preclude innocence in journal-keeping. There is no true voyeuristic insight for the reader in these confessionary works, simply a fiction in which both the writer and reader are complicit.

  56. Jean Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulations” in Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1988), p.166.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Where is your father?

  59 What is happening?

  60. Bertram was most likely referencing the unorthodox practice of opening up his notes on Eve to me. It’s an understandable and forgivable reaction for any psychologist in spite of the Department’s insistence on National Security and the threat of a court order compelling his cooperation under the Patriot Act.

  61. Author of several narrative science books, including Teleportation: The Impossible Leap. See www.daviddarling.info.

  62. David Darling in his book Teleportation: The Impossible Leap (locations 67-75 in the Amazon Kindle version).

  63. Bennett, Brassard, Crépeau, Jozsa, Peres, and Wootters.

  64. Darling, locations 148-51.

  65. Later Ms. Hubbard had young Reidier explain his method. He shrugged and said, well, since they were all pairs it wasn’t too hard. Prodded a little more he revealed how he saw that by adding 1 and 100 he got 101, and likewise that by adding 2 and 99 he got the same number, and so on. So all he had to do was multiply 50 x 101.

  66. Martin Dent (theater critic) from his article, “The Mise en Scene of a Multimedia Mystic,” The Village Voice, March 15, 1980.

  67. Kaleb described this anecdote while discussing the nature of an audience’s suspension of disbelief in an interview for the July/August issue of American Theater Magazine in 1981.

  68. Martin Dent (theater critic) from his article, “The Mise en Scene of a Multimedia Mystic.”

  69. Richard Feynman, from his lecture given at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech, December 29, 1959

  70. Paul Valery

  71. Ibid.

  72. The Panopticon is a prison designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The design concept permits an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to determine if and when they are being watched, thereby establishing a “sentiment of a sort of omnipresence”[i] and invisible omniscience.

  Bentham himself described the Panopticon as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”[ii]*

  * * *

  [i] Bentham, Jeremy. Proposal for a New and Less Expensive Mode of Employing and Reforming Convicts (1798).

  [ii] Bentham, Jeremy. Panopticon (Preface). In Miran Bozovic (ed.), The Panopticon Writings, London: Verso, 1995, 29-95.

  * For those of you still feeling a little lost, just go to Hulu.com and watch any episode of the HBO series Oz. Also, I looked up Schrödinger’s cat to refresh my memory. Hilary was right not to explain it in a footnote. It’s just a quaint little philosophical conundrum involving a black box, poison, a radioactive trigger, and a cat that might or might not be alive. Other than the box part, I don’t understand Reidier’s joke at all. I don’t know, maybe it’s hilarious to physicists. Or cats.

  * * *

  73. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, written by Michel Foucault, published in 1975.

  74. There’s an eerie, borderline omniscient, resonance in this nanobot footage. In spite of the terrifyingly apt irony, I am convinced that neither Eve nor Reidier were aware of the constant and omnipresent observation and recording of their lives by the Department.*

  * * *

  * I knew she could only resist so long before injecting herself. Still, she relegated herself to the confines of a footnote. Props for that, Mom. And yeah, this is a tad eerie. Especially since you’re the Watcher in all this.

  And I guess by extension, me. All of us really. Implicated through the simple act of reading.

  * * *

  75. This phrase is actually a misquotation. The closest the show ever got to it was “Beam me up, Mr. Scott.”

  76. The Director not only installed nanobots all over Reidier’s home and office, he bugged himself for each and every one of their meetings. This, being early on, was only an audio bug.

  77. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a type of specialized MRI scan that measures blood flow related to neural activity.

  78. Measures weak magnetic fields outside the skull.

  79. Transcranial magnetic stimulation, applies strong-pulsed magnetic field from outside the skull.

  80. Pierce is paraphrasing Newton who once modestly said, “If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

  81. Resonant choice of words. Was Pierce insightful or was he consistently listening in on the Reidier home? Though it seems a moot distinction, inevitably, his perspective would color his treatment of Reidier and the events surrounding him. Like with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the observer ultimately affects the observed.

  82. This video documentation was compiled from “hitcher feeds” (nanobots that have attached themselves to an individual’s clothes, hair, etc. after being brushed against).*

  * * *

  * Are you kidding me?! Hitcher feeds. The fucking nanobots can latch onto your clothes and hair and just tag along?! When did Hilary learn about these? Did she start burning her clothes periodically and giving herself DNA-cleansing scrubdowns?

  * * *

  83. Due to questionable audio quality during this portion of the footage, that statement might not be accurate. However, upon multiple hearings as well as some technical adjustments, Reidier does seem to say cucumber eyes. The only reason it has been kept in at all is due to the fact that it resonates with various other peculiar phrases peppered throughout the material. Whether these are somehow part of a thematic reality or merely a collection of odd malapropisms has yet to be determined, but should be kept in mind nevertheless.

  84. Mark Roth, “Why do we think spiders and snakes are so scary? It just might be evolution.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 7, 2007.

  85. See Chapter II

  86. Bertram references the eighteenth-century philosopher, David Hume. Hume was particularly brutal with his assertions about epistemology, how we know what we know. He focused specifically on how information rests on our belief in matters of fact. He observes how,

  When one particular species of event has always, in all instances, been conjoined with another, we make no longer any scruple of foretelling one upon the appearance of the other . . . We then call that one object, Cause; the other, Effect. We suppose that there is some connection between them; some power in the one, by which it infallibly produces the other, and operates with the greatest certainty and strongest necessity. (Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), pp. 80-81.)

  Hume supports his challenge of our understanding of knowledge with a favorite example, a seemingly undeniable given, our belief that the sun will rise tomorrow. Obviously, this is a matter of fact, based upon our conviction that the sunrise is an effect caused by the earth’s rotation. Our belief in this causal relationship, however, is based upon past observations. We hold this to be true because every day, since the dawn of humanity, the sun has risen. But our confidence that this will continue in the same manner tomorrow cannot be justified by referencing the past. We have no rational basis for believing the sun will rise tomorrow, yet believe it, we do.

  87. Stranger anxiety develops in the first year. Once separation anxiety develops (also in the first year) when mother departs
, normal infants are upset. Ecco was not an infant, but barely acknowledged the absence of Eve. And when he did, it was an act of curiosity not fear.

  88. According to Jerry Fodor, an American philosopher and cognitive scientist at Rutgers University, “Some philosophers hold that philosophy is what you do to a problem until it’s clear enough to solve it by doing science. Others hold that if a philosophical problem succumbs to empirical methods, that shows it wasn’t really philosophical to begin with.”

  89. See Chapter VI.

  90. As much as scientists hold themselves up as “rational” beings, often many of them take on God complexes in their work. Consider Oppenheimer’s famous allusion to the Bhagavad Gita after overseeing the first successful test of a nuclear bomb when he states, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” A mathematician, Dr. Theodore Kaczynski, after resigning from a post at the University of California, Berkeley, at the age of twenty-five, took it upon himself to reform society and lead a worldwide revolution against the effects of modern society’s “industrial-technological system” and became the Unabomber. Even the much beloved and admired Einstein once wrote that God does not play dice with the universe, to which Niels Bohr reportedly replied, “Stop telling God what to do with his dice.”

  Reidier, however, avoids the deistic mantle, spurning any assumption of control, let alone godly perspective or power. At least consciously. On a subconscious level, he consistently seems to play the part of Prometheus trying to steal fire from the gods.

  91. “The dissolution of memory is inversely related to the recency of the event.”

  ~Théodule-Armand Ribot

  92. A. Franklina; G. V. Drivonikou; L. Bevis; I. R. L. Davies; P. Kay; and T. Regier, “Categorical perception of color is lateralized to the right hemisphere in infants, but to the left hemisphere in adults.” PNAS March 4, 2008, vol. 105, no. 9 3221-3225.

  93. “Babies See Pure Color, but Adults Peer Through Prism of Language,” March 3, 2008. Wired.com (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/babies-see-pure/#ixzz0qBGnZmFm).

  94. Robin Lloyd, “Infants Have ‘Amazing Capabilities’ That Adults Lack” LiveScience.com. May 24, 2007. 02:00 p.m. ET. http://www.livescience.com/health/070524_infant_intelligence.html.

  95. Ibid.

  96. Paula Block, “Infant Science.” Seattle Times, March 6, 2005 http://o.staging.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/infant-science-a-uw-couple-leads-our-new-thinking-about-babies-amazing-minds/.

  97. See pages 76-78 and 88.

  98. See pages 33, 37.

  99. Is this appropriate? Or am I kicking a hornet’s nest? Must reconsider this entire section.

  100. Nor do I want for the source to become a Department “asset” . . . Am I saying too much with this as well? Will the Department troll through every mental facility I ever walked into and try to find out who I went to so they can conscript them as a resource for other projects? I don’t want to risk exposing _____ but I can’t include any further discoveries without an explanation as to how I arrived at this. A cover story might only raise eyebrows and inquiries, and I doubt anyone would buy my having broken the code as an option.

  *

  * * *

  * These were scribbled in the margins—obviously my mother’s handwriting.

  I read them three times. She broke the rules. She admitted it. The question is, did they see it? Did the Department know?

  I still haven’t left the house. No food for a while. Can’t go out. Can’t trust a delivery guy, that’s for sure. If a Department stooge could dress up like a tourist, I’m sure they could impersonate a delivery dude. Man can go without food for a while anyhow, drinking water from the bathroom tap. Jesus fasted for forty days in the desert. Just him and the devil. Me, I got my mom to keep me company.

  Fasting focuses your mind. You see things more clearly. Isn’t that why all those religious prophets and holy men did it? Course they all came back saying they saw visions of angels, and God and Satan.

  I’m not hallucinating. I mean, yeah, you could’ve maybe convinced me that I might be dreaming things up with my little visitor. Especially since he hasn’t come back. But I did not imagine my mom’s margin notes. They’re right there. I see them.

  Proceed with caution.

  Is this what happened? She crossed a line, and it ended up being a point of no return? Is this when she started hiding her report? I always had imagined she kind of just went and hid it here toward the end, in a last ditch effort. But maybe she stowed the majority of it there and kept stopping in to add another file, another chapter.

  That’s an even bigger risk, though, with a greater chance of being followed. And I’m still pretty much going with the Department never found it. They never knew about my Dad’s studio. Maybe she handed in a dummy report.

  Then why are they still following me?

  Especially if they disappeared her.

  There’s a chance, then, that they didn’t. She disappeared. Never handed in a report, and no sign of it in the house. Now they’re desperate to get their hands on it, to find out what happened with The Reidier Test. And to figure out what happened with her.

  Still, they could’ve found out about her little indiscretion without having read the report. Maybe they nanobotted her house, read her communiqués. And followed her.

  Like they’re following me.

  No way for me to know really. Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.

  Proceed with caution.

  A note to herself? A message to me?

  How am I going to get out of here? My sanctuary has become an oubliette. I’m not even hungry anymore.

  * * *

  101. See pages 61, 67, 68.

  102. See pages 62, 63.

  103. See pages 35-37 for a more detailed analysis.

  104. SD card was found lodged behind three-ring binder mechanism in Reidier Notebook #7. Notebook was dropped while being removed from trunk. To date, no other memory sticks have been found in any other notebook.

  Source of video footage is unknown. It’s not Departmental NB footage. Have to assume it’s Reidier’s own recording. Method unclear. Device unclear, but apparently some sort of hidden camera around chest level.

  105. Beimini® Corp is an LLC incorporated in the Cayman Islands on September 9, 1999. It’s owned by the Bettencourt family, who are also the largest stakeholder in the L’Oréal Group cosmetic and beauty company. It’s unclear what service this corporation performs, what product it creates, or how much interaction and overlap there is between the two companies.

  106. See footnote 90.

  107. Beimini = Bimini!! It’s a different spelling. Bimini, of course, is a chain of islands located fifty-three miles due east of Miami. It’s the westernmost district of the Bahamas. It is also, however, the alleged location of the mythical Fountain of Youth.

  Bimini comes from Taino, the Native American Language of the Caribbean. It’s derived from Bibi, mother, and Mini, waters. The Mother of Many Waters. It is the pre-Columbian name for what is now known as Florida.

  Allegedly, in the sixteenth century, Ponce de León learned of Bimini and the restorative powers of its waters from the inhabitants of Puerto Rico. He had grown tired of material wealth and led an expedition to find it, discovering Florida in the process.*

  * * *

  * Hilary neglects to mention that Ponce never found the Fountain of Youth. The fact is that, even though he might have heard of the Fountain and even set out looking for it, he never mentioned it in any of his writings. Ponce’s name wasn’t even associated with the story until after his death. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo in his Historia General y Natural de las Indias alleges that Ponce de León set out in search of the magic waters of Bimini in order to cure his impotence. That would explain Ponce’s own muteness on the subject.

  * * *

  108. See page 226.

  109. Often referred to as Bee Orchids due to a resemblance to the furry bodies of bees.

  110. Pages 169-171
.

  111. Due to the stationary medium shot and the quality of the visual, it is presumed that the recording was shot on standard camera from behind a one-way glass. Judging from the placement of Rear Admiral Wisecup and Director Pierce (they are sitting at angles that provide a ¾ shot of their back and profile) it seems likely that they were both aware of the recording in progress, as opposed to Reidier who was sitting facing the mirror/camera.

  112. Especially if one keeps in mind that the story coincides with Reidier’s discovery and inoculation of the nanobots. It simultaneously validates Reidier’s actions and tracks their transformation into trespassers in their own home.*

  * * *

  * Providence, Day 2: Professor Bertram Malle has all but been erased from the annals of Brown University as well. There’s a record of him, sure. He used to teach here. For a bit, then he left. Did some promising work with robotics, neurology, and amputees and paraplegics. A couple of papers published and on file, an article or two about him in the alumni magazine. That’s it, though.

  Same with Clyde Palmore. He’s a professor emeritus for the Engineering Department. However, his house has been locked up and winterized for what appears to be a while. According to Brown, he’s on an extended sabbatical working in Haiti on low-cost, earthquake-proof construction adapted from Incan architecture.