Ghost, page 20
To avoid conversation, he has come at the last minute, hurrying through the hallways and corridors. He looks around quickly, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. A dozen people, he should think. After much insisting by the Society that the attendance be minimized “so as not to interfere with the intentionality force,” the joint demonstration committee has invited only four members of the university, four members of the Society, and one newspaper reporter. In addition, a couple of graduate students from the physics department have arrived with odd-looking antennae to probe for “unexpected” electromagnetic emissions. Evidently having some fun with the occasion, the students have worn extra-long white lab coats, which drag on the floor as they pace the perimeter of the room with their equipment. Sitting in the front row is Sheila Pillbeam, watching everything like a hawk.
“Good. David is here,” says Ronald. “I hope you’re up to this, David.”
“I had a light lunch,” says David, with a touch of sarcasm. But he likes Ronald and holds his gaze for a few moments and smiles, trying to reassure him of his friendly intentions. Poor Ronald Mickleweed. A brilliant and decent man, who has been challenged and defamed and sucked into this quagmire only because he was kind enough to answer David’s questions. For the occasion, Ronald has worn a jacket and tie, but David can see that he is uncomfortable as he fidgets with the computer and tries to loosen his collar. Ronald would be far happier in his laboratory, making synthetic compounds or whatever he does there. And in two years, he’ll be blind. David feels a wave of sympathy flooding over him. He wishes he could do something to relieve Ronald, to please him, but events are now beyond his control. Is he mistaken, or is everyone staring at him, as they did in the Salinas Room? He takes a deep breath to steady himself and can smell that familiar odor of chalk dust and musty old wood—the classroom must be a century old. And there, outside the window, is the grand clock tower of the university, like an old soldier. A warm breeze flows through the open window. How strange to be here, as if walking in a dream.
“Mr. Kurzweil has arrived.”
A rotund little wheezing man, the reporter waddles over to David and asks to interview him. No interviews, please, says David. His words are always distorted.
The reporter wrinkles up his face. “No interviews? What’s the point, Mr. Kurzweil? Well, at least tell me one thing. Do you feel like a guinea pig?” He stares at David with fascination, his stubby fingers holding a pen to his notebook.
A guinea pig! Is that what he is? “I’m here for myself,” says David. “I’m not here for anyone else.”
The reporter nods and copies down David’s words. He remains standing near the front of the room with his notebook out, wheezing and sweating and studying each person in the room. Then he takes a small camera from his pocket and photographs the R box, which is mounted on a lab table next to the blackboard. On the blackboard itself is a tangled vine of an equation, next to which are the words DO NOT ERASE, OR ELSE.
“This is quite the scene,” says the reporter, smiling mischievously.
“Would you like to examine the R box?” Ronald asks Dr. Tettlebeim.
“I’ve already examined it,” says Dr. Tettlebeim, who is wearing a checked suit and vest despite the warm weather, with a yellow carnation in his lapel. He takes off his spectacles and scowls at Ronald. “It’s very similar to the ones we use.”
“But you approve of it?”
“You seem anxious, Professor Mickleweed.”
“I’m only anxious to make sure that there will be no disagreements about procedural matters.”
The reporter is scribbling at high speed, taking delight in the repartee between the principal antagonists. Then he puts down his notebook and motions for David and Professor Mickleweed and Dr. Tettlebeim to pose together for a picture.
“I’d rather not be in a picture,” says David.
“You haven’t been very cooperative, Mr. Kurzweil,” says the reporter. “I’m just doing my job. I have a responsibility to my readers.”
“Well, I don’t want my picture taken,” says David.
“Be a good sport,” says Dr. Tettlebeim, putting his arm around David and gently pulling him in. “You’ve got to be in the picture. Theresa wants you in the picture.”
The reporter’s flash goes off. Giving David an apologetic look, he puts away his camera.
Now the graduate students approach David, their white lab coats dragging on the floor. They pass their wires and coils over David as if he were a magnet lying on the lab table. They do the same with Dr. Tettlebeim.
“You won’t find any electromagnetic emissions from either of us,” says Dr. Tettlebeim. “The intentionality force does not operate in this dimension.”
One of the students struggles to stifle a laugh. “We’re looking for tricks,” says the other student.
“Magicians and frauds do tricks,” Dr. Tettlebeim says softly.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for the Society,” Ms. Gaignard says to David. The two of them have sat down together in the cramped desks. Despite all that has happened, David still feels a warmth toward her. She’s dressed as she was the first day he met her, with a smart tapered jacket over a white blouse, immaculate. A tiny gold SSW pin gleams on her collar. Touching David lightly on the shoulder, she whispers to him. “These people think they know everything. It’s such a waste, isn’t it. All that education. We probably went to some of the same schools. You would think they wouldn’t have such closed minds.” She pauses, waiting for him to respond. “What do you want out of this, David? I know what everyone else wants.”
He doesn’t know what he wants. But he feels that a heavy pendulum has been set swinging, and he cannot stand in its way. Since April 23, a momentum has picked him up and carried him along to wherever it is going. Some kind of fissure opened up that late afternoon, some discontinuity. Something changed in him. Is that why people are staring at him? This morning, Ellen called to wish him good luck. That’s all she said. He wanted to speak to her, to plead with her, but she hung up. Good luck with what? he wondered. With what does he need good luck?
“I want my life back,” he says to Ms. Gaignard.
“I don’t think you want your life back. In any case, you can’t get your life back. You’re in another place now. Just remember this. All these people here, that’s not what it’s about. It’s a personal experience.”
“Don’t you think all of us are making fools of ourselves?” says David.
“Possibly,” says Theresa Gaignard with a smile. “But it’s a great day for the Society. We’re getting a hearing from people who…well, you know. I try to pretend that it doesn’t matter, but it does. My husband is here, the first time he’s traveled with me for years.” She points to the back of the room, where a diminutive man sits reading a newspaper. David notices that there are tears in her eyes. “I know that he supports me, but…now he’s finally here. We’ve been married for nineteen years.”
David is about to say something to her—she has opened herself up to him and he wants her to know he has listened—when he is summoned.
“Mr. Kurzweil, it’s beginning.”
He takes his place near the R box. It’s a little larger than the black boxes he’s seen before, shiny and metallic. It looks comical in a way, with its gray cable trailing off to the computer like the long tail of a rodent. In a sudden flash, he remembers sitting in this room as a student decades ago, early in the morning, far too early, when an earthquake shook the building. While the students fled to the exits, the professor continued to write equations on the blackboard.
Bach’s “Well Tempered Clavier” begins chopping the air.
David attempts to concentrate on the box. He hears someone cough. People shuffle their feet. How can he possibly concentrate under these conditions? And this time the fugue is making him nervous. Why is he doing this? They are all making fools of themselves. He stares at the box, and he feels his heart beating. Perhaps there is no intentionality force. But there is himself. And he has a secret. He’s been searching for something. That is his secret. It is a pearl that he holds close to his heart. Even when he was a boy, he was searching for something. The searching itself creates a crack in the wall. Someone is coughing again. No, a wheeze. The wheezing reporter, no doubt. It’s a sound that starts out as low thunder, becomes an automobile putting on its brakes, and ends like the high squeal of a boiling teakettle. David imagines an orchestra of wheezers, each with a different musical pitch and rhythm. There are high-note wheezers and low-note wheezers. There are fast wheezers and slow wheezers. Symphonies for wheezes would be written. The conductor of such an orchestra would be a great wheezing man himself, standing high on his platform and pointing his baton at each wheezer when it was his turn.
“The period is finished,” says Ronald. He walks to the computer printer. David can see Ronald’s hands shaking. For a few moments Ronald studies the results. “Nothing,” he says. Dr. Tettlebeim frowns and looks at the printout himself. This must be a momentous occasion for Dr. Tettlebeim, David thinks; all that he believes in is being scrutinized and judged at this moment. His hands also are shaking, although he seems to control his demeanor, his blue eyes hold steady. But his hands shake, the slight visible tremor from the seething that must be inside of him.
“Dr. Tettlebeim, do you agree with Professor Mickleweed’s assessment of the results?” asks the reporter.
“Yes and no,” says Dr. Tettlebeim. He takes off his spectacles. “We are looking for patterns, not just relative numbers of zeroes and ones. The intentionality force sometimes produces patterns. I want to display the numbers in a matrix of columns and rows.” How composed he is, despite the seething inside of him.
“That’s ridiculous,” says Ronald. “There are too many possibilities.” He looks over at Arthur Petit, who throws up his hands in frustration.
“Let’s try rows repeating every one hundred numbers and every two hundred numbers,” murmurs Dr. Tettlebeim. “Just those two displays. That’s not a large number of possibilities, is it, Professor Mickleweed? Is two a large number?”
“What’s going on?” asks the reporter.
“Why are we talking about this?” moans Professor Petit. “The test has been done.”
“We’ll do Dr. Tettlebeim’s two displays,” says Ronald, “and finish this thing.” Ronald types something into the computer, and the printer begins chattering again. Between pages, it pauses and gulps, as if taking a breath. Page by page, Ronald squints at the output. “No patterns that I see,” he says. “But this whole exercise is arbitrary.” He hands the paper to Dr. Tettlebeim, who studies it without expression. Ronald passes the printout around the room.
“I don’t see any patterns,” says Professor Petit. “Just a hodgepodge of zeroes and ones, what you’d expect from a random number generator.” Professor Petit slaps the printout down on Professor Gilchrist’s desk. “Do you see a pattern, Elaine?”
“You act like I’m on the other side,” Professor Gilchrist says. She flips through the pages. “I don’t understand any of this. I never did well in science.”
The reporter ponders the printout, shaking his head in confusion.
“That’s the one hundred by three hundred,” says Ronald. “Now, we’ll do the two hundred by one hundred and fifty. Then we’ll be done.” Ronald types, and the printer clucks.
Dr. Tettlebeim picks up the new ouput and puts on his spectacles. He places the four pages in a square. For a few moments, his eyes rove over the picture. Then a smile creeps to his lips. “Yes,” he says. “There it is.”
“It’s a random fluctuation,” says Ronald, looking at the picture.
“No, it’s not,” says Dr. Tettlebeim. “It’s the intentionality force.”
“Show me,” says David, and Dr. Tettlebeim points to a region toward the bottom right of the rectangle of numbers. There, amid a random sea of zeroes and ones, is a jagged circle, its perimeter formed of ones, its interior nearly all zeroes. Not a perfect circle, but a pretty good circle, clear enough to stand out from the erratic jumble around it. Oddly, David feels a little triumph. Not that he was concentrating on anything other than the reporter’s wheezing, but he’d rather have an effect than no effect at all. Yet it all seems so remote to him, so far from that feeling of power and magic that sometimes comes over him.
“There’s been no adequate control experiment,” says Professor Petit. “Nothing has been proved here.” He turns and looks at Sheila Pillbeam as a guilty child looks at a parent. Ms. Pillbeam has taken out her cell phone and is whispering into it.
“It’s a random fluctuation,” says Ronald. He puts his hand on the arm of the reporter to get his attention.
“I have no idea what a random fluctuation is,” says the reporter, “but I sure do see a circle.”
“We have received a message from the second world,” says Dr. Tettlebeim. “But what does it mean?”
“Well, that’s really something,” says the reporter, smiling and writing everything down. “Professor Mickleweed, do you know what it means? You’re the scientist.”
“It doesn’t mean shit, pardon the French, because there’s no message to begin with,” shouts Ronald. “This circle is a chance occurrence. It’s an accident. It’s like finding a face in the clouds.” To David, it seems strange to hear Ronald shouting, something that should never happen, like an equation that contradicts itself.
“Professor Mickleweed, you should accept evidence when it is placed in front of your eyes,” says Ms. Gaignard. “Joseph, come look at this.”
“Mr. Kurzweil, would you like to comment?”
David sits down and closes his eyes.
MR. KURZWEIL, WOULD YOU LIKE TO COMMENT?
And what would he say if he did offer a comment to the obnoxious reporter who just now snapped his picture when he asked him not to? Whatever he says, the reporter will twist it into a story to titillate his readers. The truth is that he was concentrating on a symphony of wheezes, not on the box. That’s what he should tell him. Let them think what they want. He can indeed affect the box—he’s pretty sure of that now—but the effect is not so trivial as to appear in an odd sequence of zeroes and ones. He feels powerful, although he doesn’t understand the nature of his power, and he looks up to speak to the reporter about the symphony of wheezes, but he’s no longer there. The wheezer has gone. So has Ronald. Dr. Tettlebeim is gone. Ms. Gaignard and her husband are gone. In fact, the classroom is empty. On the floor, beneath his feet, is the curled-up gray tail of the R box.
In the hallway outside the classroom, he sees a man sweeping the floor. The man has long hair gathered into a ponytail, dark glasses, a sleeveless black T-shirt. While sweeping, he smokes a cigarette.
“It was a hot one today,” the man says to David. He offers David a cigarette. With a wave of his hand, David declines. The man exhales through his curled lips, flicks some ashes on the floor, and sweeps the ashes up in his dustpan.
“Did you see a bunch of people coming out of this room just now?” David asks.
“Folks come and go down this hallway all the time,” says the janitor.
“There would have been about a dozen people,” says David.
“What do they look like?” says the janitor.
“I can’t tell you what they look like,” David says in frustration. “A few people wore jackets and ties. There were several professors. A newspaper reporter with cameras and notebooks. A couple of students with long white lab coats. A dozen people. You couldn’t have missed them.”
The janitor gives David a quizzical look and smiles, showing yellow smoker’s teeth. He’s one of those people who have learned how to talk while keeping a cigarette clamped between their lips. He couldn’t be more than forty years old. Seeming in no hurry, he moves slowly down the corridor with his broom and dustpan, sweeping in long sideways strokes.
“A dozen people, you say,” remarks the janitor. “They all came out at once?”
“I don’t know if they all came at once,” says David. “They were all in that room a few minutes ago, and now they’re all gone. They must have come out within a minute or two of one another.”
“Maybe I did see some people in the hall,” says the janitor. “I don’t know about the white lab coats and the cameras and whatnot. People are coming through here all the time, on their way somewhere, to the restrooms down the hall, or down to the courtyard, or who knows where. It makes it hard to clean up, you know.”
“When did you see them?” David asks.
“When did I see them? That would be hard to say.” The janitor takes another long drag from his cigarette. “You know, it’s not easy to find a place where you can smoke these days.”
The light is getting dim. David looks down the corridor and cannot see the end of it.
“I’ve got an idea,” says the janitor. “Why don’t we just wait here for a few minutes. In my experience, you have a meeting like you were describing, somebody always forgets something, a book or a coat or whatnot, and they come back to the room to pick up what they forgot.”
David hesitates and looks at his watch. He needs to return to the mortuary.
“I can see you’re in a rush,” says the janitor. “Let’s sit here for fifteen minutes. I’ll bet that somebody shows up. I’ve got some folding chairs in the closet over there.”
David follows the janitor to the closet across the hall, where he pulls out a couple of striped lawn chairs, and they sit down.
“You a professor here?” asks the janitor, taking another cigarette out of his pocket.
“No,” says David. “I work in a mortuary.”
“Wow. Dead people. No problem, man.”
“Do you work by yourself?”
“Yep. I like it that way. People talk your ear off. Yak yak. I like it quiet. You married?”
“Divorced.”
“Yeah, I’ve been there.”
David looks at his watch. Six minutes have gone by. It’s crazy, sitting here waiting for somebody to come back. But everyone disappeared so suddenly. The obnoxious reporter asked him a question, and then everyone was gone. Somehow, he must have dozed off for a few minutes.
