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Storms: Chapter 8© 2000 GT <gt@dreamsmith.org> The stairs were a lot longer than Chester had expected. He recalled the large hill the mansion sat on, and the big stainless steel garage door he'd found at the foot of the hill once while taking a walk around the place. For some reason, it seemed a lot longer descending down these narrow, claustrophobic stairs than it had just walking down the hill. He looked up at the ceiling and pondered the tons of earth hanging over his head. He could feel the pressure. It made no sense, but standing there, he could definitely feel it. They reached the bottom, and Vincent opened the thick, metal door leading into his lab. "You'll love it," he predicted, then added in a funny accent, "I gots me some cool toys..." They stepped into the lab. "This is the control room," Vincent announced. "That's the main computer," he said, pointing to what looked to Chester more like a row of washing machines that someone forgot to put doors on. It took an entire wall. "Here's the main terminal," he added, pointing to what Chester would have guessed was the computer, with its glowing monitor, keyboard and mouse. He gazed at the screen but failed to recognize anything. If there wasn't a little start button in the bottom left corner or an apple in the top left, Chester was lost. "It runs Unix," Vincent added unhelpfully. Chester spent the next minute trying to puzzle out the reference to running eunuchs while Vincent pointed out the printer and the whiteboard covered in equations. As he looked around, he noticed a plaque hanging on the wall over the computer.
"Gee, as a physicist, I would think you'd be a fan of gravity," Chester commented. "Hah!" Vincent waved the thought aside. "Laws are limiting. The mediocre scientist studies nature to find and catalogue the limits. The true Scientist studies nature to learn the limits, so that he may learn how to cheat them. Give me time, and I'll find gravity's foil." "When you succeed in learning to float about the lab like a balloon, be sure to let me know. But for now, let's continue with the tour." "Right!" Vincent went to the door on the opposite side of the lab from whence they entered. This door was also metal, and it had a small window, a slit really, to look through. "You can watch what's going on through here while staying safely behind it. It's lead, of course." "Umm, you're playing with radioactive stuff?" "Just a bit," Vincent grinned. "Honestly, we could conduct a test and leave the door wide open. You'd get less of a dose of radiation than from an X-ray machine. But I run a lot of tests. Getting repeatedly X-rayed on a daily basis would probably not be a good idea. Come on, let's see where all the action is." They stepped into the next room. It was a lot bigger, as in you could park a couple of eighteen-wheelers in this room side by side. Most of it was taken up by a large piece of hideously expensive looking equipment, about the size of the trailer from one of those eighteen-wheelers. "My very own particle accelerator," Vincent said lovingly. He then pointed to a refrigerator-sized box nearby and added, "I have two, actually, but the little one doesn't have the oomph I need for my experiments. It gets used, though. Let me show you! Actually, let me explain it first, so you'll know what you're looking at." He walked over to a set of cabinets along the near wall and pulled out a small container marked, 'DANGER: RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS'. He grabbed a pair of forceps and walked over to a small platform surrounded by some odd coils of some sort. There was a small metal sphere on the platform. It looked like something had drilled a hole halfway through it. He picked up the sphere with the forceps and tossed it into the container, then carefully sealed it. "Umm, what's the sphere made of?" Chester asked. "Iron," Vincent said. "I'll explain it all in a second." "Umm, iron isn't radioactive." "Not usually, no. It's a bit irradiated by the time I'm done with it, though. About the same danger level as the low-level stuff hospitals have to dispose of regularly. In fact, I contract with the same disposal firm most of the hospitals around here use. They stop by once a month and collect my used pellets." "Okay, so why are we irradiating small iron pellets? I know everyone need a hobby, but have you considered photography?" "Ha ha. Okay, here's how it works." Vincent grabbed a fresh iron sphere out of the cabinet and placed it on the platform. "Okay, everything's in place. Well, sort of. The sphere, you'll notice, is not in line with the beams from the accelerators." Chester hadn't noticed, but he let that pass. "I could raise the platform, but there'd be no way I could position it with the accuracy I need. Instead, we levitate it into position using the electromagnets," Vincent explained, gesturing at the coils. "With this, I can accurately position the ball. Very accurately. A hydrogen atom is wider than my margin of error." Chester whistled appreciatively. "Can you program it to shoot golf balls that accurately?" "Yes, actually, I could, but I doubt they'd let me bring all this equipment to the club." "Pity," Chester sighed. "Now, where was I?" Vincent thought aloud. "Levitating your iron balls," Chester prodded helpfully. "Right! The computer does a countdown during the experiment. The electromagnets kick in right after the count of 'five', and the sphere is in position by the time the count reaches 'four', at which time these coils here kick in and generate the secondary field. Hmm, how to explain the secondary field..." "Without using math, hopefully," Chester wished. Vincent looked disappointed. "Alas, in modern physics, the types of things we deal with can only be spoken of unambiguously in the language of mathematics. Any names we attach to fundamental properties of matter are pure fiction, like when talking about the 'color' of quarks. It has nothing to do with color." "Actually, when I took your physics class, I remember us talking about the amount of 'strangeness' and 'charm' certain particles had." "Yes, exactly," Vincent beamed. "You still remember all that? I still think they should have called the T and B quarks Truth and Beauty. Top and Bottom are so mundane." "Or sick," added Chester. "Hmm?" Vincent looked confused. "Nevermind. We've got to get you out of the lab more," Chester noted. "You were about to come up with a brilliant, simple, easy to understand bit of technobabble so the poor guy with no Ph.D. can figure out what your secondary field does. Even if it's pure fiction and doesn't really explain anything." "Right! Umm. Okay. It's like this. You know how polarization works?" "Sure..." Chester said hesitantly. "It's sort of like that. This is kind of like a polarizing field. The quantum wave function gets polarized a particular way. Actually, that's confusing, you're likely to take that literally. It isn't literally polarized, I'm just using that as an analogy." "It's schmolarized," Chester suggested. Vincent laughed. "Yes, good, I like that. Okay, so we schmolarize the wave functions of all the matter in the sphere. Actually, the secondary field just sets up the conditions for schmolarization. It's the smaller accelerator that fires the beam that actually schmolarizes the matter. That beam fires at the count of 'three'. At first, only the atoms at the impact point schmolarize, but over the next couple of seconds, the reaction moves through the entire sphere. At the count of 'one', the coils in front of the big accelerator create another schmolarization field, rotated ninety degrees from the first. Finally, the big accelerator fires. The particle stream is schmolarized as it passes through the field. It then passes through the iron sphere harmlessly, since the matter in the sphere is schmolarized ninety degrees from the matter in the particle stream. The particle stream passes through the iron sphere as if it wasn't there and hits this target on the wall here." Vincent pointed to a thick lead slab affixed to the wall. There was a hole in it near the center. "Ah, the hole then is from one of your successful tests," Chester observed. "Umm, no, not actually," Vincent admitted. "That was from a test firing with no target, and one screwed up test. What I've described to you is what should happen, according to my equations and calculations. What invariably does happen is the target gets nailed. Except for once, but that was because the sphere was out of place. Don't know how it happened, but some fluke ended up putting the sphere about twenty centimeters from where it was supposed to be, so of course the particle stream missed entirely. I was really excited when I watched and saw no impact, but rather disappointed when I came in and found the sphere had simply been levitated to the wrong place." Vincent sighed. "I was bummed for a week. I was so sure at first, and so happy to have finally made it happen, I can't begin to describe how elated I was. Then to have everything dashed a scant few second later by the simple fact that I'd placed the sphere wrong..." Vincent looked to be trying to bore a hole in the target on the wall with his eyes. "I've never been more pissed off in my life. The computer got a new monitor shortly thereafter. New printer, too. I've always heard that when you smash two pieces of equipment together, the more expensive item is the one that breaks, but apparently if you do it hard enough, they both do. At least, that's what my experiments show." Chester and Vincent stood in silence for a while. Finally Chester asked, "So, why do you think it doesn't work?" "That's the sixty-four thousand dollar question," Vincent said. "You're dating yourself," Chester observed. "And underrating the question," Vincent added. "I'd gladly pay sixty-four million for the answer. Heck, more than that. Every last penny I have." "Vincent, just how much land do you own?" "Chester, my friend, it's not the acres, it's the area. Location, location, location. Next time we're downtown, I'll point out some of my sky-scrapers. But you probably own more acres than I do. Or, 'owned', I should say. I still can't believe you sold it all. You have some smart investments to put that cash into, or are you letting inflation eat it all away? I know some people you can talk to that -" "Vincent, thanks, but another time. You were going to show me your experiments." "Ah yes. Let's fire this baby up." They returned to the control room. Vincent pulled two things that looked like goggles out of his desk, but they were completely opaque. Chester examined them as Vincent tapped on the keyboard. "What are these for?" he asked. "Protection for your eyes," Vincent explained. "If you look through the slit, you'll actually be able to see the particle beam hit the target with these on. Without them, it would probably burn a hole in your retina. Heck, if you're not wearing them, the flash will likely knock you out, even if you're not looking through the slit. It'll overload and stun your optic nerve." "Well, they told me in shop class that it's always important to wear your safety goggles. I always thought it was to protect your eyes from flying objects, though." "It is," Vincent confirmed, "it's just in this case the flying objects are photons." He tapped the keyboard once more, and the computer's synthesized female announced, "Ten." Vincent added, "Get ready." "Nine," the computer agreed. Chester walked over ("Eight.") and looked through the slit in the door. ("Seven.") He brought the goggles in his hand up to his face ("Six.") but held them below his eyes. He wanted to see the sphere levitate. He'd always loved magnets as a kid. Of everything Vincent had described, that sounded the coolest. Magnets were a kind of magic. "Five." He heard the electromagnet's coils kick in, and the iron sphere lifted into the air, coming to rest at the point where the aim of the two particle beams intersected. "Cool," he commented appreciatively. "Four." He heard Vincent behind him. He looked back to see Vincent putting his goggles on as he watched over Chester's right shoulder. "Three." Chester saw the smaller accelerator fire. He couldn't really see the stream of particles coming from it, but he thought he saw something happen to the sphere. A momentary wavering, like a mirage. Just as he was putting his goggles on, he noticed something else as well. "Umm, Vincent, what's with the second sphere?" "What?!" Vincent yelled. He whipped off his goggles and looked. "Two." There it was, hovering in the air, about twenty centimeters from the first sphere, directly opposite the smaller accelerator. Twin spheres hung in the air, looking perfectly identical. "Of course!" Vincent breathed in a barely audible whisper. "One." Chester was about to ask what he meant by that when he heard Vincent's goggles clatter to the floor, dropped from his utterly limp fingers. He turned, pulling up his own goggles, to see Vincent staring at the balls with a look of pure astonishment and rapture on his face. He doubted Vincent could even hear the countdown. "Fire." Chester's shoulder took Vincent square in the chest as he tackled him. A brilliant white light flooded the room as they fell together to the floor. The light was so bright that neither of them could see it. Pain lanced through their heads, like two white-hot pokers had been shoved through each of their eye-sockets simultaneously. They screamed in unison and passed out before they hit the floor. ***** Chester woke up. He was in literally blinding pain. He reached up to his face so he could grab whatever was jammed into his eye-sockets and pull it out, but there was nothing there. Nothing to pull out. He began to cry. He was wailing like a baby and he couldn't stop himself. He wanted to pluck out his eyeballs and shove ice cubes into the sockets, for surely there must be some way to put out the fire he felt burning in his head behind his eyes. After a short eon, he regained control of his breathing, and he stopped wailing, although he couldn't stifle the occasional sob. He began to feel around himself. He felt Vincent lying on the floor next to him. "Vincent!" he cried. "Wake up! I can't see! Can you see?! Wake up!" He shook Vincent roughly, but Vincent remained stubbornly unconscious. Chester began crawling. Eventually, he bumped into the wall. He put his hands against it and slowly used it to stand up. Then he began walking along it, still leaning on it somewhat, until he reached the door to the lab. He felt around for the doorknob. When he finally found it, he turned it and pushed open the door. He fell into the space beyond. He felt around until he found the bottom stair. Then he began crawling up. The stairs had seemed long on the way down. Chester had no idea how long they seemed on the way back up. He lost track of time completely. There was just this long eternal now, through which he climbed, had always climbed, would always climb. Tears dripped on his hands and arms as he climbed. He sobbed and climbed. The narrow stairs were his whole life and his entire reality. He lost track of why he was climbing or what would happen if he stopped. He lost track of what stopping meant. Climbing was his one and only thought. He didn't keep going out of any grim determination or overwhelming willpower, he kept going because he couldn't think of anything else. The thought of stopping was simply too far beyond his mental capacity. He reached the top step and hit a door. This confused him. It was beyond his comprehension. There was supposed to be another step. That's how it worked. There was always another step. He remained motionless, except for his shaking, while the reality of the situation sunk in. The spell he had been under began to dissipate, and rational thought resumed. He began standing up, using the door now as he had used the wall before. Again he groped for a doorknob, but found it almost immediately this time. He opened the door and walked through it. He stopped for a minute and concentrated, remembering the details of the layout of Vincent's home. The study should be down the hall to the left, he thought. There's a telephone on the desk in the study. On the right side of the desk. He began walking, slowly, with his hands extended like antennae. He imagined he could feel the objects around him, as he always did when walking through a dark but familiar room. He felt the walls beside him, felt the doors as his passed them. Finally, he reached the door to the study. He reached out and grabbed the doorknob without groping. He opened the door and went in. He walked over to the desk and grabbed for the telephone. He got it right on the second attempt, but he lost his balance and fell to the floor. Lying on the floor, he heard the telephone next to him, humming a dial tone. He sat up, reached for it, and picked it up. He placed the receiver back on the base unit before it started making that horrible racket that lets you know your phone is off the hook. With the receiver still on, he felt the face of the unit until his right hand was on the buttons. He pictured the phone in his mind, trying to remember the layout of the buttons. They were opposite of the normal layout found on adding machines and computer keyboards, he recalled, to prevent people with ten-key skill from dialing too fast when touch-tone phones were first introduced. Funny how these anachronisms stay with us, he thought. With the layout firmly in mind, he picked up the receiver and started dialing. Third row, third column, 'nine'. First row, first column, 'one'. And 'one' once again. A voice appeared at the other end. Chester began sobbing. Between his sobs, he explained that he was blind. No, not normally blind, there'd been an accident. He was blind and his friend was unconscious and he wouldn't wake up, damn him, he'd left him alone and blind to grope his way through the house and the stairs that went on and on, upwards forever but were not a stairway to heaven, just a new and different hell. They asked him questions and he answered but he later didn't remember the answers or the questions. He just talked and cried and sobbed and yelled until he was too tired to hold the phone any longer. They continued to ask him questions, trying to keep him on the line, talking, but he no longer understood them. The pain behind his eyes was intense, but it seemed to be fading, becoming more distant. The voices became more distant. His body became more distant. The spirit of gravity had been slain; weightless, Chester drifted away from the world. ***** Chester woke up. He felt her feline tongue licking his face. He could not see, but he smelled the Mara, and felt the African soil beneath his paws. He wanted to open his eyes, but she was licking them. He imagined the feel of sandpaper across his eyes and decided to keep them shut. Against bare skin, a cat's tongue is rough, but it felt so good as it brushed through his fur. He purred. Eventually, she stopped, and he opened his eyes and sat up. It was day, but it was dark. The storm raged around them. They seemed to occupy a dry spot in the center of the raging storm. Occasional strokes of lightning hurt his tender eyes, and he blinked tears from them after every flash. But there was no rain and no wind where he stood, and even the sounds of thunder seemed muted here. She sat before him, gazing thoughtfully into his eyes, and he stared back into hers. He could see his own reflection in her eyes; he was a cheetah, like her. It suddenly occurred to him that he was probably dreaming, but that didn't seem important right now. Nevertheless, he was always the curious cat. "Am I dreaming, or is this real?" he asked her. "Yes," she replied enigmatically. She kept a straight face, but he could tell by the way her tail twitched that she was amused. "'Yes' to which?" "The first, certainly, the second, I suppose as well." Chester didn't like that answer. "How could that be?" "What does it mean for something to be real?" she inquired. "It is something you can see and hear, touch and feel, no? Do you not see the Mara? Do you not hear the thunder? Do you not feel the earth beneath your paws? Can you argue that they are not a part of your reality?" "My reality, perhaps, but I'm talking about reality." "Whose?" she asked. "Everyone's!" he exclaimed. "Ah, some sort of reality other than the one you and I experience," she hypothesized. "Rather the one we both experience," he corrected. "But I experience my reality, and you experience yours, and you just claimed certain features of your reality were not part of your hypothetical other reality, so it cannot be either." It suddenly occurred to Chester that he was arguing metaphysics with a cat. But he pressed on, "One assumes that my experiences of the world, my 'reality' if you want to call it that, are caused by some external world, and your experiences are likewise. It is that external reality of which I speak." "So there is some third reality other than yours and mine," she restated. "Yes," he said. "Prove it," she challenged, with a smug look on her face. "I can't, obviously," he admitted. "Anything I see or hear, any evidence I may claim to witness, is of course a part of my 'reality', and the same for you. But I can infer its existence, based on the commonalities in our experiences." A look of deep thought crossed her face. Then she ventured, "So there is some reality beyond my immediate experience." "Yes," he said. "But since I can only know my own experience, I have no real contact with it." "I suppose," he hedged. Her troubled look evaporated, and she replied brightly, "Then it's irrelevant! What you say may or may not be true, but it matters not a whit to us. We live in our realities, and those are the realities within which we must operate. If there is some independent, unproveable reality somewhere which we cannot contact or interact with in any way, what difference does it make?" "I wouldn't go that far," he protested. "Hey, do you want me to scratch your face off?" she threatened menacingly. "No!" he replied hastily. "Why not?" she asked. "It would hurt, I should think!" "Even though this is a dream?" she pressed. He recalled previous experiences in his dreams. "Yes, even so." "That, my love, is reality. Your pain is real, regardless of its source. Your senses are real, regardless of what causes them. I know of no other sensible way to define it." He chuckled. "Well, since it's based on the senses, it's sensible by definition." "Just so," she replied, stomping a paw firmly against the soil to make her point. They watched the rain fall, outside their circle of calm. After a while, Chester added, "I still think I'm right." "It's part of your job to decide what is or isn't right for you," she replied. Chester opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it mutely. He decided to let that one go -- he wasn't in the mood for another argument, and particularly not one about the relativity of truth with a cat who threatened to scratch your face off if you didn't agree with her. Ah, the perils of feline philosophy... Watch it, monkey-boy, she thought. He chuckled. They sat quietly on the Mara and watched the storm. Gradually, Chester's thoughts returned to the world; the real world, despite what his dreamtime companion might say. The storm seemed to get darker and more menacing. He could hear the wind howling outside their circle. Lightning sliced angrily through the sky. The ground vibrated in tune with the thunder. "Am I blind?" he asked. "No," she replied. "What about Vincent?" She looked off into the distance. "Vincent sees more clearly than he's ever seen before. The truth he sees dances before his mind, so bright and dazzling that he sees nothing else. But his brain is gravely wounded. I do not know if it can ever heal." "So that's it? There's nothing to be done for it?" Chester sighed dejectedly. "There's always something to be done. Fate rules only where we do not assert our own sovereignty." While awake, Chester could barely ever remember his dreams. But while he was dreaming, he always recalled previous dreams with crystal clarity. "Umm, didn't you say last week that even the gods are helpless before Fate?" "I lied," she said. "We get pestered too much if we admit otherwise." They watched in silence for another minute. Finally, Chester asked a question that had been rolling around his head for some time. "Are you Gaia?" She looked completely surprised by the question. "Of course I am. Aren't you?" ***** Chester woke up. Tears streamed out of his eyes as he blinked furiously. The light was painful, but he could see. As he continued to blink, details began to focus. He was lying on a gurney. There were people nearby, talking. The room was relatively large and open. There were some people sitting in chairs against the wall. A large set of double doors slid open automatically as several paramedics came in, pushing another gurney. He could see an ambulance parked outside the doors. Ah, he thought as it all fell together and he realized where he was. He wondered how long it had been since they'd wheeled him in. Not too long, or they'd have stuffed him in a room by now, but obviously not just this second or there'd be people fussing over him attempting to figure out what was wrong with him. Or had they done that in the ambulance? He couldn't remember. He sat up. This apparently was some sort of cue, for a nurse was immediately next to him with a hand on his chest. "Just lie down a moment, sir. I need to ask you a few questions. Let's start with your name." Chester allowed himself to be lowered to the gurney as he answered, "My name is Chester Harrison." "Where do you live? Is it around here?" she asked, with a curious tone in her voice. It almost sounded like a line, spoken in a bar between two strangers sounding out their prospects for the evening. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn't had sex in over three years. He'd spent most of that time in the wilderness, where dating prospects were few and far between. Embarrassed, he quickly squelched that line of thought. "Umm, I don't really live anywhere at the moment. I'm between homes." "Really? Interesting. Your passport says you're from Kenya." Chester looked surprised, then somewhat annoyed. "If you have my passport, you already know who I am and where I'm from! What's with the twenty questions?" "I just wanted to see if you knew," she replied, smiling. Chester sighed. "Listen, I'm fine. Where's Vincent?" She glanced down a hallway. "The doctor took your friend to a room. Apparently he's more serious than you. He didn't show any signs of consciousness, and the doctor looked pretty worried after doing the light-in-the-eye thing." The light-in-the-eye thing. Chester looked a little more carefully as the woman. Girl, actually. He couldn't imagine she was eighteen yet. She looked like she'd fit in on any high school cheerleader team. "Are you a nurse?" he asked. She giggled. "Actually, I'm a volunteer. I just help out from time to time. My name's Debbie. Debbie Phillips." "Umm, maybe I should talk to an actual nurse or doctor." "I thought you said you were fine," she pointed out. But she turned and called over he shoulder, "Marcy! We got a live one!" A nurse behind the front counter shot Debbie a disapproving look, but came out and walked over to Chester. "May I have your name, sir?" "I already did that," Debbie interjected. "He's fine. His name is Chester, and he's from Kenya." Chester tried to ignore the way she'd said that. He reminded himself that he was quite literally twice her age. "Do you mind letting the patient answer the questions?" she scolded. "You're not even supposed to be working in here. Go make some beds or something." She turned back to Chester. "Chester Harrison, by any chance?" "Yes, why?" "I just got off the phone with the University. According to them, you're listed as Professor Dee's next-of-kin." "I am?" Chester was surprised. "You are. Why, does he have other, closer relatives?" "Actually, we're not related, we're just old friends. But to answer your question, no, I guess not. He doesn't really have any living relatives." She nodded. "Well, he's declared you his relative, so you're to be considered as such for visiting purposes and such. You might want to contact his lawyer, though, to see where things stand otherwise, in case any tough decisions need to be made." "Wait a minute, he's going to be all right, isn't he?" Her face was expressionless. "That's up to the doctor to say. I have no idea. I'm just saying it might be a good idea to find these things out beforehand, so you'll know if and when you need to." "Can I see him?" Chester asked hopefully. "Not yet. As far as I know, he's still unconscious, and the doctor is still running tests. We'll let you know when you can see him." She went back behind the counter and pulled out a box, grabbing something out of it. "Since you're his declared relative, I don't suppose he'd mind if you used this," she added, handing Chester Vincent's cellphone. The box also contained Vincent's wallet, watch, palm computer, pen, keys, comb, Swiss army knife, various coins, and a polished iron sphere. She shoved the box towards him as well. "Now, I'm sorry, but I have other things to attend to. Your friend is being taken care of, and you appear to be fine. If you want to talk to a doctor, take a number and have a seat. Otherwise, go home, we'll call you when we have news." Chester left the hospital in a daze. He wasn't sure where to go. He was about to hail a cab when he saw a pharmacy just a couple blocks down the street. His headache was fading, but still painful. He decided he could use some aspirin. He started walking. His mind raced, a million thoughts running through it in a blur. He didn't notice Debbie follow him out of the hospital and down the street. |
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