by Mark Thomas
Principal Staff Writer
THE WORLDS WE PERCEIVE: AND THOSE WE CANNOT
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is. Infinite.” (William Blake)
There’s a world out there we’re unable to see. Unaided, anyway. Objects, matter, beings, hidden from us because they don’t reflect light.
Could you be the first? To perceive a world outside the range of human vision? Like an overlay – one world on top of the other. Neither aware - unable to interact.
Scary thought. More intrigue than you were after.
Turning, you peer down a neon corridor lined with buildings nearly to orbit. The pavement like a micro-electronic circuit board. Strange glow, the inverse of luminosity. From your right a pedestrian flyer forces you back to the buildings.
Spinning, you follow it to the end of the grid then duck when another drops almost on top of you not even sure you needed to duck.
Just sight?
Blind to your world, you start groping for something to touch or hold onto. One can close their eyes and imagine a sightless existence. This is different. What you’re seeing is unimaginable. Shimmering facades. Aerial vehicles. An electronic substrate, electric and unnatural.
“Here. I’ve got you.”
Suddenly, a girl’s voice. Her hand on your wrist guiding you to what looks like an office. But just before it, an iron railing pitted with rust. In your mind grows an image of the 3-flats down from your house.
“Is this…?”
“…Steps. Come on – sit for a while.”
After finding your way to the porch, you look across at yet another vehicle – this one lifting off and climbing. And others in a traffic stream above moving into and out of the city.
Turning, you’re hit with a disturbing revelation. The girl – the steps and railings – the buildings and features of your world. Nothing. Gone. Visual data blocked - no longer finding its way in for processing into a mental construct.
“Get lost?”
“I’m not blind. I had eye surgery, and just took the bandages off. And something really weird has happened.”
Again, she takes your arm.
“Would you like me to call someone, or help you get home?”
Home. Though that may be your best option, you turn back to the downtown thinking you’d like to explore this. See more. Learn more. You’ve just become aware of something profound in theoretical physics and cosmology… or you’re hallucinating your ass off on the ibuprofen. Possibly as profound but even less likely you’d be the first.
“Hey.”
“I’m okay. I just… can we sit for a while?”
“Sure.”
Forcing a smile in her direction, you’re pulled away to yet another flyer dropping to this weird electronic pavement. And watch the doors lift. And men climb out. Odd silhouettes – blurred – featureless. Your eyes still adjusting.
Expecting them to mingle in with the others passing into downtown, you’re taken aback when they turn and look right at you – aware you’re watching – able to see them. After quick words between them, they turn and take off.
But how? Who are they? If they can see you – see into your world – what might they be doing? Grabbing the railing, you start to get up.
“Change your mind?”
“Yes. Sort of. But not home. Can you take me that way?”
“You want to go downtown?”
“Please.”
Moments on, you’re walking to the sounds of your world but visually perceiving another. There’s something ahead. Something you need to find out. But no longer is this just scientific curiosity. You’re a situational investigator plodding into the unknown.
And your concerns over where this will lead have fallen far behind your curiosity.
REALITY MACHINES: OUR ENGINES OF CREATION
“We do not wait for Earth to shift or skies to clear, we draw the second horizon right in here. (Author Unknown)
Image by StockCake
You spend the next twenty minutes trying to disguise your reactions to what you see going on around you. Your companion, Mars is sweet. Seemingly unthreatened by you and your constant ducking from the flyers or following them as they rise to the building tops. It’s hardly surprising when she tells you she’s a psych major at NYU.
Besides the entertainment value, you’re probably providing her a great topic for her master’s thesis.
But really? With all of this, you’re baffled. Not just by the architecture. The technology is everywhere - woven into everything. Part of everything. Fluid – moving and constantly changing.
But you’ve lost the men who saw you. And somehow, you know they’re important for you and for your world if they’re entering it – conceivably tampering with it.
Stopped at an intersection, you turn and scan. Buildings – storefronts. Not alien. The same city – the same street you’ve walked. Just glowing with this odd, reverse illumination and a century or two upgrade. The avenues and intersections. Everything in its place but glossed over in time.
“Mars, could we go sit somewhere?”
“There’s a coffee shop across the street.”
Turning to the corner of 52nd, you see it, but it’s not the coffee shop where you spent your afternoons working until your eyes failed, nailing a lid on your career. The luminous sign moving out away from the glass reads LogTEK 52. A Networking Café.
“That’s fine. I just need to slow this down to think.”
“Sure.”
After crossing, you’re inside sitting at the ledge on a stool Mars had to guide you to with a cup she placed into your hands.
All around are the sounds of the coffee shop you remember. But what you see are people in oval pods of virtual screens – working – studying. Even the windows looking out are electric with streaming videos and adverts appearing then disappearing. Travel destinations – tech gear – fashion.
“What are you seeing?”
Turning back, you’re faced with how you could ever relate this. How without scaring her off.
“I’m not sure how to explain it.”
“Jason, I watched you all the way here. I’m not afraid. And I don’t think you’re delusional. Or dangerous. Maybe if you shared it. Just take a chance and trust.”
After a sip – organising your thoughts about what you believe has happened at least to you - not this overlapping world – but your ability to perceive it, you decide to chance it. Trust. Not something you’re historically good at, but right now you’re finding reason for heightened flexibility.
Mars is smart. Also, sensitive. So, you decide to start with the experimental surgery, the human eye and evolutionary biology. Holding back the physics and your still-developing theory for what this is and how it came about.
“We don’t see in three spatial dimensions. Our brains construct our visual environment from reflected light that reaches our eyes. We see in one dimension. Overwise we’d see in the dark, right?”
“I guess.”
“What about the matter that doesn’t interact with light? Doesn’t reflect.”
Staring ahead at the constantly changing window display, you wait – assuming she’s already putting together where you’re going with this.
“Don’t stop.”
From there, you go into the surgery - the experiment that was to save your eyesight and what happened two hours ago when you took the bandages off.
Ready to dive into your dark matter dark energy hypothesis and how you’re augmented retinas have granted you access to wavelengths hidden from normal human vision, you stop when an aerial flyer drops down from above and hovers outside.
Blinding lights – deep blue and flashing.
With an arm over your eyes, you peer out at the men in the front looking right at you. Unmistakenly the same guys. Right now, it’s hard to imagine this going anywhere good.
“What Jason?”
Nearly diving from the stool, you take her hand, pull her away from the ledge and start for the counter. Bumping into tables and patrons you can’t see, you begin yelling for everyone to get out - Fire! Emergency! Natural gas leak! - hoping like hell they kept the same architectural layout as your old Starbucks.
“Jason?!”
“The exit onto 52nd! Is it still there?!”
“Yes, but…”
“…Please! Help me get everyone out!”
Recognising how freaked you are, she takes your hand and together you start for the back yelling for everyone to make for the exits.
Once outside, you’re sent down to the pavement when the café explodes out nailing you with a blast of heat - showering you with masonry and hot glass.
With sirens and alarms – people yelling, you flip onto your back and look at the LogTEK 52 Cafe – not a sign of the explosion.
It’s here that it hits you. Your suspicion. They have found a way into your world. Tampering with it - manipulating it – who knows what else. And they’ve even developed weapons they can use in it. And you’ve become, simply by seeing into theirs a threat.
With the sirens, police and ambulances closing in, you stand and grab Mars – pulling her to her feet.
“Are you kidding me?!”
“Wishing you’d gone to class?”
“And miss your explanation for what just happened?!”
Liking her even more, you start scanning the nutty electronic avenues looking for the best escape route – giving in to her pulling you down the side street into an ordinary, baryonic matter cab that you can’t see.
Where she’s taking you? Who knows or cares? What matters most now is staying alive long enough to explain this – lucidly. To Mars of course but also to others.
WHAT IS FUNDAMENTAL: THE KNOWNS AND THE UNKNOWNS
“The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard Loom weaves flowers and leaves.” (Ada Lovelace)
Image by StockCake
In the cab you spend time going over the basics of your theory. Light matter – dark matter. Electromagnetism – dark energy. Existing together but unable to interact. Our universe, 10^80 elementary particles clumping together over billions of years into stars and galaxies – planets and people who built things.
That’s light matter. That’s baryonic. That’s the stuff of our experience.
But what if the dark matter did the same thing? And there’s a connection like an attractive force between the dark matter particles and the light ones. Possibly separated by that still-debated variable – time.
That would explain the overlap. And the similarities. Worlds on top of worlds. Cities on top of cities. Even buildings and streets one on top of the other.
“We can’t see dark matter.”
“What?”
“Or dark energy. But we know they exist from their effects. The spiralling of galaxies – movement of stars and all that.”
“I went to help some blind guy – almost got blown up by invisible torpedoes, and you want to talk theoretical astrophysics in a cab?! During our escape?!”
“Listen.”
“Think so?”
Giving her a moment to breathe and stabilise, (actually telling her ‘Breathe – stabilise - breathe -stabilise’) you launch into your theory trying to sound rational. Which you are, but also trying not to tell her you are.
She’s a psych major. Doing that is, according to Psychology Today, equivalent to saying ‘please, I need help.’ Also, there’s almost getting her blown up in a coffee shop. Which may have relieved you of the requirement that you plead your sanity.
Anyway… after a wonderfully lucid explanation diving deep into theoretical astrophysics, never once mentioning your saneness, you stop at the tricky part. Telling her…
“I can see into that world. I’m seeing it.”
For a long moment, she’s quiet. And you’re sure this is not the time to add the part about the bad guys who through some future dark matter/energy breakthroughs are able to see into our world and have even constructed inter-dimensional weapons.
“Okay. So, I believe you. Or… I’m trying to. Then… who fired the cosmic missiles into the Starbucks?”
Damn. That was going so well.
Stuck now for a way out, you’re forced to reveal the part you’re 100% certain is going to send her packing. But ironically, does the opposite.
After leaning forward and giving the driver new directions – telling him to take you to her campus, she turns to you and takes your hand.
“You saved us back there. All of us.”
“Well… in a way. But I’m also the reason you almost got killed.”
“Yeah… true. You know… You may have left that part out.”
“Think so?”
“I would have.”
Looking at her – unable to see her face or expression, you’re suddenly drawing an image. Her voice and sensitive nature. Compassion. Witty even when stressed or afraid. An odd appreciation comes from this. How the blind find their way in this maze. How they find friendships – even mates.
Squeezing her hand, you give her a nod and a smile then lean back and turn to the window – and again peer out at a world only you can see. There but hidden. Maybe dangerous, but maybe not. Like Mars, who you can’t see at all – maybe filled with sweetness.
THE MIND AS A MECHANISM: OUR MACHINERY OF SURVIVAL
“Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. You pour water into a cup; it becomes the cup.” (Bruce Lee)
Image by StockCake
Thinking back to the more philosophically sound things your mother said while home-schooling you and your sister, there’s one that seems to have found its way into fierce relevance. Recently.
She would say, at all opportune moments that you should hope for the best but prepare for the worst - especially when circumstances appear to be hinting at chaos.
Slipping now through the markets along Union Square after a sprint through the NYU campus finding Mars’ student ID rejected at the Health Sciences library and at the psychology building, dodging the grey suit dark glasses guys stationed literally everywhere, it’s unimaginable the woman never went on to become a world leader or Pulitzer Prize recipient.
The question, however, for how one could plan for something like this - being on the run from agents or whatever in two dimensions is a bit more complex and conceivably above even your mother’s pay grade.
After a quick stop in REI and a quicker one in a Sunglass Hut, you’re back out on the Avenue blending in. Jeans – hiking boots – Fleeces. All chi-chi North Face and Patagonia. Perfect for NYU. And all paid for with cash. God bless Mars for her secret addiction to action films. Then mention the gifted writers preparing us for times such as these.
Now, at the corner of Johnson and Vermont, with you again marvelling at the architecture and aerial mass transit loop, she pulls you into a bookstore, through the stacks then downstairs to a customer resource computer where she chases away a couple of undergrads and jumps immediately on the net.
“The lab. The experiment. Where? And who conducted it?”
“Columbia. The program is the Quest Biotech in Optogenetics Research Initiative.”
“Do you know who funded it?”
“No. Why?”
“Because governments like ours often outsource their more controversial projects. Usually to universities so they can hide from oversight.”
“Great.”
Hearing you dispirited for the first time since you met, she stops typing and sends a hand to your cheek
“You’re scared.”
“Yeah. A bit. Go on though. Continue.”
For the next hour, you work together – Mars searching the internet with you supplying everything you can about the scientists and doctors – the macular degeneration that sent you there and all the documents they had you sign.
She finds nothing on the program but does find a research paper by the lead scientist, Dr Andrea Martino from 10 years ago in which he described advanced retina replacement using a hybrid approach of wireless microchips, gene therapies and stem cells.
She says he called it the PROBE Implant System. A Bionic Eye that uses photovoltaic implants. That instead of replacing the retina, he suggested inserting tiny microchips that would bypass dead photoreceptors feeding electrical signals to the optic nerve.
It’s when she traces Martino’s implant system to a research institute here in New York, she stops reading.
“What?”
“DARPA. He went to work for the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency just after applying for his patent. From there he and his company – everything falls off the grid.”
“Why would they…? Military applications?”
After a long, excruciating silence, Mars grabs her notes, closes out the computer and takes your hand. “Or they knew.”
Suddenly, this has all taken a weird turn when it was already plenty weird. Or perhaps for you and for her, it’s just become more real.
You’re quiet on the way to the stairs and out onto the street. Unsurprisingly anxious. With the sweet part finding her hand in yours on the way to the restaurant feeling oddly lucky. Lucky in a way you never imagined in a life where work defined you, and sight gave you details without meaning.
HONOUR & VIRTUE: THE COMPLEMENTS OF DECISION THEORY
“Time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions.” (TS Eliot)
Image by StockCake
In the restaurant you listen to Mars argue passionately about how she’ll get you to Europe or South America. That you’ll find someone to reverse the operation. She has ideas for how to get money. How you’ll use Travel debit cards. How she’ll change her hair like Marie did in the Bourne Identity – and how you’ll manage as her blind companion.
Throughout, you’re quiet but also quietly accepting what you’ve wandered into. What you haven’t had time to until now. Faced with deteriorating vision – blindness, you were sent to a last hope opportunity by an ophthalmologist who had no idea.
You’re a guinea pig for miliary research. A hazard to anyone near you. The futility seems inescapable. And you’re aware, now that you’ve had time to think, of the danger you’ve placed Mars in. And that there’s truly only one decision for you now.
“I’m going back.”
“No… Where? To that hospital?!”
“We can’t travel. They know everything about us. Our passports – credit cards. You didn’t sign on for this. I did.”
“Jason…”
“…Don’t. This is going to be my life. I don’t know if I can do anything about that. What I can do is give you back yours. That I have to do. And I need for you to respect my decision. And accept it.”
This next part is even harder. Lying. Telling her you’re not afraid. That you’re suddenly seeing this as an opportunity. An adventure. Hell, who doesn’t want to be an interdimensional spy in a whacked out sci-fi episode? Maybe put on a mission to save the world from dark matter invaders rather than just another blind guy.
Walking out onto the street, you begin looking more closely at the world you’ll live in. Opening to it – noting the advances. Thinking more like an academic than an involuntary conscript in some macabre sci-fi thriller.
After a short cab ride, you’re at Columbia walking slowly for the Medical Centre awed by the achievements of a race so advanced but separated by physics.
Imagining how this happened – how it could have happened. Matter – energy. Particles – forces. The elements of our universe forming independently but also connected through some quantum process we’re only on the cusp of understanding. Something so elemental or fundamental but…
Stopping mid thought, you begin scanning your surroundings. The campus - the buildings: Bigger – newer. But the same. The same layout. Additions here - there, but still identifiable. The above ground transit system. A new tech added later. The professors and students walking the same paths but wrapped in their advanced wearable tech.
Then thinking back to your trek along the Boulevard: the streets and buildings – modernised but the same. The tech café - your go-to coffee shop when your apartment felt tight. The same. Only separated by…
“…Time.”
“What?”
Turning while following a stream of aerial flyers, you’re drawing a different version of physics and our universe. Of what you’ve been given access to for a very specific reason by people who certainly did know. Answering why they’re anxious to reclaim you.
“Alternate worlds? Or the same world.”
“What are you saying?”
“Listen to me. What if dark matter and dark energy are the same stuff – ordinary matter and electromagnetism but separated by time? The variable that still baffles us more than any other.”
“I don’t understand. You’re seeing into the future?”
“Think about it. We can’t see stars from beyond the boundary of our visible universe, because they’re moving away from us faster than the speed of light. The light they emit hasn’t reached our eyes. Can never reach our eyes. But we know they’re there. It would be the same for matter and the light it reflects.”
With Mars preparing to deliver her next question, to your right you find a pair of men moving for you from the steps of a building. Ahead, a flyer descends and the doors open.
Turning back, you spot another couple moving at you from the roundabout. And like in the coffee shop, it’s your turn again to play saviour. But his time with an advantage.
You know this university. You’d know your way through it blind. And though modernised, the layouts in universities even over centuries seldom change.
“Come on.”
“What?! Tell me what you see.”
“On the way.”
Running hand in hand with Mars along Adams, you dip into the Student Union, cross the foyer and are soon dropping down steps to the campus bar.
Once in through the double doors, you make your way to the back then out into the corridor passing offices, the campus bookstore and student newspaper then into the tunnel leading to a rear exit and loading dock.
Halfway along, the glass doors ahead explode sending you left into the fitness centre skirting the equipment then into the Men’s locker room.
Now in a ring of lockers, Mars takes you by the hand and pulls you along the benches to the maintenance room in the back. In through the door, down a long corridor to a turn where Mars stops suddenly and holds you.
And you’re again faced with accepting your position – your value to both sides in this. And the nearly non-existent probability you could every manage to escape.
REVISITING THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF TIME AND SPACE
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Creeps in this petty pace from day to day. To the last syllable of recorded time…” (William Shakespeare – Macbeth)
Image by StockCake
Three weeks have passed since that first day when you were taken into custody by federal agents assigned to the DARPA program - after evading agents from a future time.
And you were told the truth of your position and importance to your government and world. To assess the future. Find out how much further they’ve taken this technology. Beyond sight to interaction and the manipulation of matter. With hopes you’ll help them determine what changes they’ve made and are intending to make here in our time. And why.
How ironic that you joked with Mars that day in the coffee shop about being an interdimensional spy – and how you were looking forward to doing your part.
Groggy, fading in and out of the sedation for the memory download, another of DARPA’s seemingly endless technological leaps, you’re immersed in images. Like episodic memory reels. Emotion filled moments from your past. Autobiographical life segments flowing smoothly through an Interface into a digital medium for reconstruction and analysis.
And questions regarding your observations from the moment you woke in your flat and removed the bandages. The theories you had and the ones you discarded. The brainstorming with Mars while you moved through the landscape of your adventure.
With each question, you hear your own thoughts – memories playing in your head. The download running through your mind taking you into a theatre or classroom – a student at one of your own lectures.
‘Imagine a source or object that reflects light just ahead but moving away at the speed of light. Even if moving – as you are – following it at the same velocity, you would never see it. The light would never reach your eyes.
‘From observation we call it dark. Dark matter and dark energy. But they’re only dark in the same sense tomorrow is invisible to and untouchable by us today.
‘That, I believe is what time is or does. All pasts and futures exist. Separated by increments of time.’
“And the implants and augmented retinas we gave you?”
“Like a telescope, I think, they give one the ability to close the gap. See the light reflected from sources and surfaces of our world but further ahead.’
“Now I need you to think back to the coffee shop – and the men from this future who observed you. Their capabilities and what you believe they’re doing to our world.”
Again, you feel the haze come over you as the new suggestion stimulates yet more for the memory transfer. What you were sent in to find out about those in the future who already possess this technology. But have extended it to interaction and the manipulation of matter.
And again, you hear your own thoughts – answering – describing what you saw and what you believe they’re doing. Guiding our world’s progress. Politics – technologies.
Altruistically? Or for their benefit. Perhaps correcting their present by changing ours.
THE QUESTION OF PURPOSE: WHEN THE FUTURE IS KNOWN
“If man discovered his future was set and unchangeable, his principal goal would become to disprove his future was set and unchangeable.” (Mark Thomas)
Image by StockCake
Now six weeks on, you’ve come to know the hospital and staff – the scientists and doctors and the agents there to protect you. It’s an existence. Not one you signed onto but one you’ve decided to accept.
It’s Friday, and Mars just arrived. She comes every day after her last class. You take walks – talk and tell each other stories of your pasts and dreams. And you plan great adventures and quiet times alone.
The dark wrap arounds you wear to kill the sensory overload are a bother. Knowing there’s a world going on around you only you can see. 120 years ahead according to the scientists from the advances you’ve described. Architecture – technologies. Transport. A sci-fi writer’s dream.
It’s a struggle at times to keep from peering into it. Living on the promises they make of your next excursion. Your next mission.
For the past six weeks you’ve been consigned to a life inside. The unknowns are still out there, and having tendered your commitment, it’s assumed you’re even more of a threat to future beings who may be with you right now and always.
Even the DARPA guys can’t guarantee they’re not observing, listening – even our minds may be open to them.
The vulnerability from that is disarming. Questioning your thoughts and decisions.
Today you’re being allowed outside for one hour without your escorts. Whether it was your commitment – gaining their trust, or something else. Maybe compassion. Guilt perhaps for the way you were conscripted.
It’d be nice to believe that. So, you decide to believe it.
Walking now with Mars arm-in-arm away from the medical centre for the roundabout you stop at the curb and reach your hand to her face and move in close. Odd how you’ve gained something by losing something. How beautiful she is. How lucky the blind.
And how excited you are about today.
“You have the tickets?”
“And the debit cards. And I packed us. Our suitcases are in the first cab.”
“Are they following?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Ah… trust.”
After a breath, she leans in and kisses you. A passionate kiss before grasping your hand, turning and taking off for the taxi queue like a bat out of hell – stopping long enough to drop your phones into a bin.
Where you’ll go? Were you allowed to go? Was it arranged by those ahead now seeing you as a victim no longer a threat - wishing to grant you what they’ve conquered? Seeing it all, the future, past and present as changeable? A condition critical for our sense of purpose?
Climbing into the cab all you can think is how nice It’d be nice to believe that. So, you decide to believe it.
Mark Thomas
