The Harvest

by John David Krygelski

Penfield looked over at Reese and smiled. “You think your head hurts…mine feels as if it’s about to explode.”

  “I’m sorry to have this impact. I warned you that we were treading into difficult areas. Just remember that I’ve simplified this.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Penfield responded. “So, Einstein was smarter than we all thought. It really is all relative. It’s just relative to a greater degree than even he thought.” Pausing for a moment, he added, “How’s he doing, by the way?”

  “Quite well, actually. And he disagrees with you. It is not to a greater degree than he thought…well, let’s just say that a rereading of his work with this concept in mind might be illuminating.”

  Penfield laughed. “I do have another question.”

  “I’m sure you have many.”

  “Well, yes. But…was he right about what happens to matter upon reaching the speed of light? If entropy slows as the time-energy value is diminished, and the value diminishes with velocity, it would seem that the reverse would be true…that you would have a particle that would last forever.”

  “In a sense, yes, he was right. He believed that matter ceased to exist if it reached the speed of light. Because achieving that speed reduces the time-energy value to zero, the particle would become eternal if it could maintain that precise velocity. However, it would remain eternal in the sense that it would be frozen in time, while we, the observers, have moved on. That would render it, from our perspective, out of existence. Because the speed of light is an infinitesimal point on the continuum, maintaining that exact velocity is impossible. You may only approach the speed of light or exceed it. The only way to do this, at present, is by falling into a black hole. When that occurs, the velocity of the matter coinciding with the speed of light is only momentary.”

  Reese asked, “What happens next?”

  “I’ve already answered that question.”

  “You did? When?”

  Elohim reached forward and tapped his finger on the written equation. Penfield slid the paper closer and stared at it only for a moment before exclaiming, “I just assumed the value of ‘T’ was absolute. It isn’t, is it?”

  Elohim just shook his head, smiling.

  Confused, Reese said, “Walt, could you please explain?”

  Penfield looked up at Reese and said, “Okay, ‘T’ is the rate of time. Normally, this would be a positive value. But if ‘v’ – the velocity of the observer – becomes a number greater than ‘s’ – the speed of light – then ‘T’ becomes a negative value!”

  Elohim answered without a pause, “As the matter passes the threshold and continues to accelerate, the energy value we are calling ‘time’ begins to rise again, in the negative.”

  Penfield, his voice higher, said, “That would mean….”

  Reese finished the sentence. “The matter, or the observer, would go back in time.”

  “That can’t be!”

  “It can be,” Elohim answered, “and it is. Once sucked into a black hole, matter reverses its journey through time, although physically continuing on the same vector in which it arrived, until it encounters something that causes it to slow down below the speed of light. At that point, to an observer who is present in this new time, it appears to pop into existence from nowhere.”

  “Zero state,” murmured Penfield.

  “Another incorrect conclusion. The quantum mechanics proponents believe that matter pops in and out of existence randomly. In fact, what is occurring is a particle returning to a previous time.”

  “So, a particle that comes into existence today is from the future?” asked Reese.

  “Yes. At any given moment in the universe there is a vast quantity of matter in transport, so to speak. Because it is not observable by those on this side of the time arrow, it does not exist. However, the gravitational interaction between matter is impervious to its time directionality.”

  “It’s the missing matter?” Penfield surmised.

  “Missing matter?” asked Reese.

  Penfield explained, “If the universe is to eventually collapse into a singularity, there is a substantial amount of matter missing that is needed to provide the gravitational force. Also, there are galaxies that are spinning much too fast to hold together unless there is additional matter to hold them together. We’ve been looking for ‘dark matter’…a material that is unobservable, and yet exerts the required force.”

  Elohim added, “Yet, you have observed other galaxies that are not only expanding, but their rate of expansion is accelerating, also. To explain this, you have coined ‘dark energy,’ an undiscovered repellent force. Neither dark energy nor dark matter is required to explain the functioning of the universe.”

  “How does what you’ve described explain the accelerated expansion?”

  “As I described before, gravity and time are also linked. As time speeds up, as it has here in this solar system, gravity increases to compensate. It is a two-way street. As gravity increases, time accelerates; as gravity decreases, time decelerates. As a galaxy expands, its gravity becomes more diffuse, or diluted. Time compensates by slowing down. To an outside observer for whom time is not also slowing, the rate of expansion seems to be accelerating. No dark energy is needed. No dark matter is needed, partially because of the gravitational influence of the matter that is time-traveling, so to speak. And please, do not forget that your ‘time’ is accelerated. Galaxies are not truly spinning too fast for their own gravitational good; they only appear to be from your ‘time’ perspective. Another factor is further explained by our earlier discussion about neutrinos.”

  “Yes, I meant to get back to that…you mentioned that we would get a higher incidence of neutrino collisions if our time wasn’t faster; yet, our time is 36,580 times faster, and our shortfall is only about a third of what we expected. If we plug in the time factor, we’re now getting about 12,200 times more neutrinos than we should? Are there that many more neutrinos?”

  “No, they are only a little larger than was thought.”

  “You’ve lost me again,” Reese said. “Thought we were detecting all of the neutrinos that arrived.”

  “Hardly,” Penfield replied. “Billions of them pass right through us every second. They are so small that almost all of them pass through the entire Earth, colliding with nothing. The way that we detect them is to fill a vast cavern with pure water. As the rare neutrino crashes into a water molecule, energy is released. Sensors detect that release. We can calculate how much emptiness there is in water, and infer the size of the particle by how many of them actually hit something instead of passing right through. If the particle is slightly larger, its tendency to interact…collide…with the water molecules goes up exponentially. Since there are so many neutrinos in the universe, if our calculation of their mass increases only slightly, the sum of their total mass would have a powerful gravitational effect.”

  Pausing, Penfield said, “I need a break, breakfast or something. How about you?”

  Reese answered, “I wouldn’t mind a Danish, I guess. Elohim?”

  “No, thank you. The two of you, please, go ahead. I’ll wait here. I’m certain that getting away from me is a part of the break that Walter needs.”

  Penfield chuckled as Reese asked, “That reminds me…is it because you are visiting this…I don’t know what to call it…time rate, I guess, that you do not sleep and rarely eat or drink?”

  “It’s true that the entire time I have been here would only be moments in Heaven. The transition is something like jet lag. The longer I remain, the more often I would need to eat, drink, and eventually sleep.”

  “Weird!” said Penfield.

  Elohim smiled. “Not as weird as superstring theory.”

  “Touché.”

  א

  Reese, Claire, McWilliams, and Reynolds were again congregated in a break room, this time joined by Penfield. They each picked a Danish from a platter on the table and began eating.

  “Well,” said Craig, “what do you think?�
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  Penfield looked thoughtful, obviously planning his answer before speaking. “Nothing supernatural that I can prove yet. It will take quite some time to test everything he told me. And even if it all proves to be true, he could simply be a brilliant theoretical physicist.”

  “What would it take to convince you?” Claire asked.

  “I haven’t thought about it. Remember, I wasn’t planning on doing this meeting.”

  Reese said, “From what you’re saying, I would guess that any physics solution He gave would fall into that category.”

  “Probably true,” Penfield answered.

  “Well,” Reese said, “so far, if He isn’t God, He’s a brilliant physicist, the world’s greatest linguist, and a mind reader.”

  “And physician,” reminded McWilliams.

  “That’s true,” acknowledged Reese. “And that touch.”

  “Yeah, the touch,” agreed Penfield. “What’s the deal with that?”

  “I know the effect it has had on the Cardinal, Craig, the Archbishop, and my husband. For each person, it was different. What did you feel?” Claire asked.

  “Boy…it’s hard to describe. It was definitely positive. After I heard about the others, I was almost afraid to do it, you know. It was as if…a vast panorama opened in my mind. All of my work, going back to college, was there, but each project, almost each equation, was represented by an object. The mathematical work I did a few years ago on binary pulsars was a patch of infinite darkness with the two blinking stars whirling around each other. I could see the physical manifestation of my calculations. I could see where I had been right and where I had made some errors. I had never caught the errors, but there they were, obvious as can be, right in front of my mind’s eye. And there were hundreds of things like that. I was able to focus on them all, without distraction. I guess the best way to describe the experience would be that my whole life I’ve been turning in my work for grades, and I just got them all back with the professor’s notes in the margins.”

  “Did he give you an ‘A’?” asked Claire, her eyes twinkling.

  “Very funny,” said Penfield. “Seriously…looking at all of it, with the errors I’ve made, I’d probably give myself a ‘B-.’”

  “Not the kind of grade you’d expect a Nobel Prize winner to receive,” Reynolds commented. “How do you know that His corrections to your work are accurate?”

  “That’s just it. It didn’t feel as if they were ‘his’ corrections. It was as though I’d gotten smarter, you know, moved up to the next tier, and was looking back at my old work. The errors were easy to spot.”

  “I remember when I was moving out of an apartment at the same time I was going for my doctorate, I found all of my freshman and sophomore papers in anthropology. Reading them, I couldn’t believe how much I’d progressed,” said Reese.

  “Yeah, kinda like that. The concepts and equations that I had struggled with just a few years ago, graphically represented, looked so much simpler.”

  “Wasn’t that how Einstein supposedly did his physics – graphically?” asked Claire.

  “Yes,” answered Walt. “He’d go for walks. Wouldn’t even carry a pencil and paper. He would visualize his theories. Sometimes he would get so deeply into them that when he came back to reality, he would be lost, miles from home on a strange street, sitting on a curb, with no recollection of how he got there.”

  “Maybe he was on to something?”

  “Claire,” Walt answered, “believe me, we’ve all tried it. It has never worked for anyone else.”

  “Until today.”

  “Yes…until today.”

  Claire continued, “You know, maybe it’s like music or a foreign language. You never really master it if you don’t start learning it at the age of four or five. If you start then, when your brain is still getting organized, a part of it gets switched on for that purpose. Maybe our friend, little Al Einstein, started visualizing galaxies and cosmic processes at the age of four.”

  “It could be. That makes sense. Well, if that’s the case, I guess I was visualizing GI Joe instead of pulsars because mine never got switched on.”

  “Until today,” Reese reiterated.

  “Yeah,” Penfield answered, “until today.”

  The group fell silent for a time, all lost in their own thoughts, all chewing their own pastries. After at least ten minutes, Penfield spoke. “You know what’s bothering me is…why? Why is he doing this? For those of us who grew up believing in God, it’s not consistent with our image…my image, at least…that He would arrive this way…asking for our stamp of approval.”

  “Maybe it’s a test?” Reynolds asked.

  “I guess it could be. But what’s the test, exactly?”

  Reese offered, “You know, He has said that His previous visits were more consistent with the Hollywood epic arrivals, and the results weren’t exactly as He wanted.”

  Penfield, curious, asked, “How so?”

  “Well, the best comparison I can conceive of, for what He described, is childbirth. If His earlier visits were dramatic and frightening, it might have had a traumatic effect on the Chosen…you know, somewhat ruining the transition for them. The conclusion of the obstetricians is similar. Instead of the bright light, rough handling, loud voices, and noises in the delivery room, they dim the lights, speak softly, and deliver the new baby into a tub of warm water.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” said Penfield.

  “I think it’s for the benefit of the ones who stay,” said Reynolds.

  “What do you mean?” asked Claire.

  “Well, if all hell broke loose upon His arrivals in the past, those staying would be the most traumatized. With all sorts of biblical cataclysms going on, it would be harder to deny the fact that God had been here and judged you and you had failed.”

  “That’s true,” Reese commented. “Denial is not only an extremely common trait among humans, it is a very necessary one. If, instead of being in denial about our shortcomings, we obsess on them, it can lead to becoming totally dysfunctional.”

  “Doesn’t denial prevent us from correcting our flaws?” Penfield asked.

  “For those who exercise it to the max, yes, that’s true. For most, denial allows us to pack away all of our flaws, bringing them out one by one to deal with as we can handle them.”

  McWilliams joined in, “It kinda makes sense. The way people are, they’ll just tell themselves that it wasn’t really God, it wasn’t really Judgment Day, and they’ll go on with their lives.”

  “Even after however many millions, or maybe just thousands, leave with Elohim?” asked Claire.

  “Yes,” McWilliams replied. “They’ll convince themselves that space aliens took them…not God. People have an amazing ability to rationalize to protect their own egos.”

  “So anyway, Nicholas,” Reese continued, “you might be right. Perhaps this is His way to minimize the impact of His visit…to try to ensure that the least amount of damage occurs to the ones left behind.”

  Reynolds asked, “Has anyone else noticed that we’re all referring to those who aren’t going as ‘them’ and not ‘us’?”

  Silence filled the room as Reynolds’ words sunk in. After a few moments, Reese replied, “Again…that’s human nature. Whenever we look at illness statistics, accident statistics, anything like that, we always assume ‘not us.’ This is basically the same.”

  “Basically the same except that with diseases the ratios are like one in ten thousand that you will get sick. From what I’ve heard Elohim say to you, He’s planning on taking very few. It might be one in ten thousand, or one in a million.”

  Craig added, “It still holds true, Nicholas. If someone is going under the knife for heart or brain surgery, and is told it only has a one-in-a-hundred survival rate, most often the patient will believe that he or she is that one. It’s hard-wired. We have to feel that way. Marine Recon guys going on a suicide mission believe they will survive.”

  Sighing, Cla
ire said, “My husband has been talking to Elohim constantly for days and won’t ask Him.”

  Reese looked sheepish. Craig came to his rescue. “Again, that’s normal. As long as he doesn’t ask, he can believe whatever he wants.”

  “Well, I didn’t marry a ‘normal’ guy!”

  Everyone laughed, except Reese. Softly, he responded, “If I…we are going, we’ll have an eternity to enjoy it. If we’re not, I would prefer not to know until the last moment.”

  “You, Claire, Matthew, and Melissa will be joining me in Heaven.”

  Everyone whirled to see Elohim standing at the open door to the break room. Reynolds was the first to speak. “I really wish You would stop doing that!”