Love Story: In The Web of Life

by Ken Renshaw

  Pilots have to be careful not to get sucked up into the clouds. A sailplane pilot decided to explore flying into a thunderhead during a legendary flight in Germany seventy years ago. A half hour after he entered, his frozen body and the shards of his splintered wooden sailplane fell out of the bottom of the cloud. It might be a legend, but I have decided not to try it myself.

  In about a half hour, I could see that I was nearing the end of the street of clouds and the Mojave Desert ahead looked like a big blue hole with no sign of any lift. Twenty miles away, I saw a very large, isolated, cumulus cloud, perhaps topping thirty thousand feet. It was yellow in the late afternoon sun and was bent over by the late afternoon wind. I flew fast over the sinking air, loosing thousands of feet of altitude, to get under the cloud, into being sucked up at nearly a thousand feet per minute.

  I did a calculation. There would be no lift between here and CrystalAire, ninety miles away. There would be a tailwind. I figured I would need to get to twenty-five thousand feet to glide home. Cloud base was at eighteen thousand feet, and I wouldn't consider going into the cloud. Then, I remembered the thunderhead was bent over by the wind, and there would be a stream of wind flowing up the windward side. When I got to the ragged underside of the cloud, I flew to the upwind side and sure enough it was there, a river of air flowing up and over the side of the cloud. I began tacking back and forth near the cloud, occasionally speeding up to keep clear. Climbing steadily. I pulled the lever to dump my wing water ballast. It streamed into the cloud, my offering. I was now at twenty-three thousand feet and was sure I could make it home. I called Joshua Control, the station that controls the airspace over Edwards Air Force Base and the test ranges, and asked for permission to overfly. It was granted. It was 5:00. All the test pilots were dead, retired, or in a bar at California City; I had the airspace to myself.

  A minute later, I heard Dan at CrystalAire call me.

  "King Romeo. Where are you, we were worried?"

  "I am eighty-five miles out. Starting my final glide."

  "Did you say eighty-five?"

  "Yes, I'll be there in about an hour. Would you call Tina for me?"

  "Wilco," He replied. I could hear cheering in the background.

  As I settled into the long, quiet glide, I reflected on the day, the excitement, and the occasional terror. I was achieving my flight goal, maybe a life goal, maybe an inter-life goal. I would get an FAI gold badge with three diamonds, an alternative to the Blue Max without having to kill anyone.

  I had traveled in space and in time, from noon to evening, from CrysalAire to Independence. I had traveled in space-time, fulfilling the goal from another space-time.

  I thought of Tina and could feel her love through space. I recalled our time at Rocky Butte and could feel her love from that space-time. I also felt that she was worried.

  I felt Tina's vibration change from worried to joy: Dan must have called her and told her that I was safe and on my way home.

  I thought of Uriel and his task and dreams-come-true now remitted to me: love, marriage, and new job, fulfilling future; possibly a vine covered cottage, with a white picket fence, and a Golden Retriever.

  I glided on wings of gratitude.

  ****

  When I neared CrystalAire about 6:00, I found I had a thousand feet to spare. I radioed Dan.

  "I'm about a mile out, can I do a high speed pass?"

  "Go ahead, everyone with any sense is on the ground."

  A high-speed pass is similar to a victory lap in auto racing. A mile off the end of the runway, I went into a steep dive, sped up to one hundred ten miles per hour, leveled off a few feet above the ground and, flashed by four people waving at the runway side. I pulled up into a steep 2g climb, coasting up to fifteen hundred feet, and circled to land. I rolled to near my trailer, stopped, popped the canopy open, jumped out, and ran behind another trailer to pee.

  Back at my sailplane, Dan who quickly examined my flight recorder data to see that I had done as intended met me.

  "Looks great, congratulations!"

  Tina appeared with two six packs of beer and a, surprisingly tearful, giant kiss and hug.

  We all drank beer while I savored the retelling of one of the great tales of flying.

  Tina clung to my arm.

  As we walked to the mobile home after the celebration at the field, I stopped several times and held Tina in a loving embrace. I was having difficulty in staying in my body, feeling that I could simply soar away, without that big thing I left tied down at the airfield.

  "I need to get grounded!" I laughed grinning at Tina.

  Tina replied, "I have just the thing." She steered me up the stairs to the deck of the mobile home, and pushed me into the love–seat on the porch.

  In what seemed only a second, she reappeared with an ice bucket with a very fine bottle of champagne, and two flutes. "You do the honors," she said as she thrust the bottle into my hands, and then held out the two flutes.

  "Pop!" it went and I quickly poured the foam that happens opening champagne at high altitude.

  Tina giggled in delight as I filled both glasses.

  I was only being held down from flying away by the weight of the bottle. We one arm hugged for a long time as our glasses and spirits bubbled.

  "A toast!" I said. "To you, love of my life! My guiding spirit through a most important period of change in my life! To your love and companionship I will cherish the rest of my days."

  We hugged and cried in joy. Then, cried some more.

  Tina pushed me away, and held up her glass. "And to you, love of my life who perfectly compliments me and has expanded my horizon and taught me the delight of adventure that I look forward to sharing with you for the rest of my life."

  We hugged and cried some more.

  "I've got to sit down," I said.

  "Me too."

  We both sipped our champagne and dried our eyes.

  After a long pause, when I could again speak, I said. "We should get married?"

  Tina put down her glass, took mine, and then took both my hands in hers and said, "I think we just did."

  We celebrated everything that night.

  ****

  A month later, after a round of celebratory receptions and parties thrown by our associates and friends, Tina, Elise, and I flew to Sacramento, rented a car and drove to Steve and Georgia's. Tina and I stayed in the guest cottage. The next morning we all drove a few miles away to a site on the top of a hill. A Native American medicine wheel, a large circle of large stones containing a smaller circle of smaller stones was sculpted on the ground. A flat–topped darkly–speckled granite boulder was in the center. Four radial lines of stones aligned with the four compass directions joined the center and the circles.

  Steve took his place in the center while we waited outside the wheel. Tina and Elise on the South side, Georgia and I on the North. Steve stood on a round, and did a short magic ritual opening the circle with the spirits of the four directions. Then, Elise and Georgia escorted us to the center.

  Tina and I both noticed an intense spark of light coming from one of the crystals of mica in the boulder under Steve. Tina pointed at it and glanced at me questioningly and then smiled. I replied with a nod.

  After a brief ceremony in which we exchanged rings, Steve pronounced us Husband and Wife.

  We walked to the shade of a nearby tree, and Georgia produced a bottle of champagne for teary-eyed toasts and hugs. After a while, Tina said, "Was that spark of light on the boulder Uriel?"

  With delight I said, "You heard and saw him! That's fantastic. Did anyone else see or hear Uriel?'

  Only Tina replied, "I didn't exactly hear him. I felt an amazing feeling of love, happiness, and congratulations, all mixed up together. I also had the feeling he, or they, were laughing about something. A leg? There was something about touch."

  I hugged her with delight. "The leg thing is reference to a bad joke I'll tell you later. Uriel was saying, 'We will be in touch.'"

/>   We went back to celebrating with our dear friends. After a few minutes, Tina led me away from the others and made me stand on the granite boulder at the center of the circle.

  "One more thing," she said, "Read what I had engraved inside your ring."

  I took my wedding ring off and read the inscription:

  Pour le Me'rite.

  ****

  Appendix:

  CANDICE'S EIGHT-DIMENSIONAL MOVIE

  (Including Equations)

  Film: Cast: Narrator and historical and contemporary characters.

  The show opens with a real person, a commentator who is a well known physics professor (having appeared in PBS scientific programs) who sets up the idea that we will learn how to calculate distances in spacetime and explore other concepts of space and time.

  In the first scene we have an animated character, Pythagoras who is a Greek, in a toga, being asked by a Nero-looking character to calculate the distance (d) from the entrance in a Greek temple to the farthest corner. He measures the distance from the door of the temple to the back wall (x) and then measures the distance from there to the corner (y) and then the animation shows him calculating the hypotenuse of the triangle, mumbling his famous formula, 'the square of the hypotenuse is the sum of the squares of the two sides.' He scratches out a formula in the dirt on the ground:

  (d)2= (x)2 + (y)2 and continues mumbling to himself."

  Then, he decides to calculate the distance from the door to the top of the wall in the far corner. He scratches his head, and then he measures the distance up the wall (z) and then adds it to his formula,

  (d)2= (x)2 + (y)2+ (z)2

  and then dances around in delight.

  Another character who has modern dress, a baggy sweater, tennis shoes and wild hair comes in. It is Einstein. He tells Pythagoras that if we put the temple on a big chariot traveling at a speed of (v), we can calculate the distance from the door now the upper corner where it will be (t) later. All we have to do is add one more term to Pythagoras' formula:

  (d)2= (x)2 + (y)2+ (z)2+ (vt)2.

  Cut to the temple sitting on a giant chariot. Einstein hits the horse on the rump and it charges off. We see a line connecting the door of the temple before it started moving stretching to the corner of the moving temple as it moves away.

  Pythagoras says, "That is interesting, but who would ever do anything with that?"

  Einstein is seen scratching his head as the scene fades.

  The commentator then adds:

  "That is about how far we can go visualizing spacetime. There was no evolutionary advantage for our species to evolve with the ability to visualize more dimensions than we can see. Quite a bit after the time of Pythagoras, mathematicians decided their equations didn't have to limited by what they could see. They can have equations that describe any number of dimensions and geometries. Einstein's mathematics teacher at his college, Herman Minkowski, liked to play around with a higher number of dimensions than four. One of his sets of higher dimensions is now called complex eight-dimensional Minkowski space, which we will call eight-space for short. Mathematicians like to name things after their originators. Pythagoras's theorem is named after Mr. Pythagoras, for instance.

  "Like many things in mathematics, the idea of eight-space lay around unused for years. After the turn of this century, a mathematician found eight-space could be used to explain many mysteries in physics and expand the field to explain some no-no topics such as ESP. Until this new explanation came along, most physicists would write you off as crank if you even mentioned ESP, because there was no scientific explanation for it. All psychic phenomena were considered the product of ignorance, superstition, and unscientific thinking. Few credible scientists would touch the subject for fear of being ostracized by their peers.

  "Knowledge of eight-space may change the way we think about many things, so lets explore it further. We have to first address the idea of the word 'complex' in eight space, the idea of complex numbers. If you went to k-12 school in the last decade, you know all about complex numbers. However, chances are your parents and surely your grandparents don't know about them In 1545 an Italian mathematician, Geroiamo Cardano was trying to solve an equation but nothing worked. Lets let Geroiamo explain."

  Switch to another animation. Our character, Geroiamo, is dressed like the men we see in Shakespearian plays, wearing puffy sleeved shirts, pantaloons, tight pants, pointed toe shoes.

  Geroiamo is sitting at a table scribbling away on equations. He keeps muttering and swearing, wadding up his paper and throwing it on the floor, starting over. His cleaning lady comes in to clean up and asks him why he is making this mess. He explains that he is trying to solve this equation, and he keeps ending with an impossible number, the square root of minus one.

  The cleaning lady picks up a piece of paper, unwads it and stares at it for a minute. "You mean this number here, minus one that looks as though it is under a table or awning?"

  "Yes,'" says Geroiamo. "There can be no number that, if multiplied by itself, can make a minus one. A minus times a minus is always a plus."

  The cleaning lady looks at the paper and says, "But the number is right here. Why don't you simply call it a number and stop making such a mess."

  We see Geroiamo showing his equations to friends. They all laugh derisively and ridicule him for only being able to solve the equation with a fictitious or imaginary numbers. They say, "Who will ever do anything with that?"

  The commentator returns and says:

  "As Geroiamo found the imaginary numbers convenient to solve problems, other mathematicians found it convenient to use them. After a while, certainly by the start of the nineteenth century, nobody thought anything bad about using imaginary numbers. Engineers used them in designing and analyzing bridges.

  This brings us to Einstein in the early twentieth century:"

  In the animation, we see a child Einstein working on a formula. Old Pythagoras is looking over his shoulder. He says, "You are only twelve years old, do you think you can prove my theorem in a new way?" Einstein hands Pythagoras the paper and Pythagoras reads it a while, and then dances around joyfully saying,

  "He did it! He did it! It has been a thousand years since anyone did anything original to prove my theorem. But who will ever do anything with that?"

  The commentator returns and says, "In 1901 Einstein submitted his doctoral dissertation, an early paper on his theory of relativity. Here, we see what happened."

  A young Einstein, recognizable by his not-yet wild grey hair, walks, in a dejected slumping mode, into a room where there is a professor, identifiable by his academic robe.

  "Why so glum?" asks the professor.

  "Professor Minkowski, my doctoral dissertation on the theory of relativity was rejected because it was too far out. Those old fossils want me to write a paper on old stuff that they will be comfortable with."

  Minkowski says, "I read your paper and thought it was quite good. I think you should make time an imaginary number so your theory will fit with other new stuff going on physics."

  Then, we see Geroiamo walk in saying, "Good suggestion, imaginary numbers can be used to solve all kinds of problems."

  Einstein replies, "In all due respect, I don't like imaginary numbers. I don't know how to visualize them, and particularly imaginary time, and that is how I think."

  Minkowski adds, "That's one of the differences between working in math and physics. Mathematics doesn't need to relate to anything you can see. Physics, especially among the old guys on your dissertation committee, has to relate to something you can measure. Your relativity theory doesn't have any experiments to go with it. Why don't you dust off that old paper you did about the size of atoms."

  Einstein replies, "That paper has a great amount of measurement data. That should satisfy the old goats."

  The commentator returns:

  "In 1905, Einstein was awarded his doctorate. Around that time, he was working on a paper about mass and energy:"

  We s
ee Einstein in a baggy sweatshirt and tennis shoes with his wild uncombed hair. He is scribbling on paper, scratching his head, pulling his hair, getting up and walking around in a circle.

  Pythagoras in is toga walks in and asks, "What is the problem?"

  Einstein says, "I am working on a paper about inertia, mass, and energy, and can't get the right formula."

  "Why don't you use my old one that you proved as a kid?" advised Pythagoras. He goes to the blackboard and writes:

  (d)2= (x)2 + (y)2

  Einstein says, "Yes, but I think I will use the one with the four dimensions plus a time dimension.

  He goes to the blackboard and writes one more term:

  (d)2= (x)2 + (y)2+ (z)2+ (vt)2

  Einstein scratches his head and says, "If I replace dimensions x, y, z with symbols that mean momentum, mumble, mumble, mumble."

  Einstein fills the blackboard with symbols, erases, writes again and finally steps back.

  (E/c)2= (Mc)2 + (p1)2+ (p2)2+ (p3)2

  He steps back and says, 'The p's are momentum: if the mass isn't moving we can make those zero and then reduce the equation to:

  E=Mc2

  Who will ever do anything with that?" he questions.

  The commentator returns and says, "That's the way Physics and Mathematics are. People create or discover things that may not be of much use in their time. Sometimes much later it gets used. Remember, in 1905 when Einstein came up with this famous formula, most people rode in horse-drawn buggies and the airplane had not been invented.