Dark Matter

When asked if he employed some paranormal technique in choosing his investments, Morgan always winked and answered it never hurt to bet on a good hunch.

At the moment, the Institute’s crowning gem, its self-proclaimed Brain Trust—a secret circle within what was already a circumspect community—held court in one of several glass-enclosed conference rooms. A teak sideboard from the Jaipur region of India lay loaded down with pastries and gourmet coffee. An ornate tapestry of a White Tara, the female Buddha worshipped in Tibet, added to the room’s tranquil atmosphere. Around an antique oval table carved in the traditional Tibetan style sat five famous, as well as infamous, academic figures.

At the head of the table, Morgan sat with steepled fingers pressed against his mouth as he leaned back in the soft leather chair. He wore a perfectly tailored Armani suit in a shade of gray that complimented his silver hair and pale blue eyes. As always, he played moderator for today’s topic of choice: Does God play dice with the universe?

The question, originally asked and answered by Einstein in the negative, had inspired one member, Gonzague de Rozières, or Zag as he was called, to publish a provocative article entitled Dark Matter and Free Will in the most recent issue of Journal of Parapsychology. Morgan had signed on to the article, bringing on the ire of one particular member of their sacred circle.

“Dark matter, dark energy, I don’t care what you want to call it, the concept has nothing to do with free will, the soul, the color of your aura or any other mumbo jumbo that you, Zag, want to legitimize with some slight-of-hand quantum equations.”

The challenge came from the cosmologist of the group, Dr. Theodore Fields. Theodore—never Ted or Teddy—was the group’s resident skeptic. At the moment, the man’s receding hairline did a nice job of displaying his furrowed brow. Zag never brought out the best in the man.

Theodore’s penchant for colorful bow ties—today’s was a splashy red-and-yellow-striped number—seemed to magnify rather than update his age. Despite Theodore’s valiant attempt, there was nothing cool or modern about the dumpy figure tossing verbal grenades from across the table, which made absolutely no difference to those who coveted his company. The man was a certified genius in physics.

“Once again, Theodore, you seemed to have missed the point.”

The challenge came from the article’s author and the group’s more colorful personality. Zag, the youngest member of the Brain Trust, never tired of waving the psi flag before Theodore’s nose.

“Really?” Theodore replied, acid in his voice. “And here I was certain you didn’t make a point, at all. Not a valid one, in any case.”

“Oh, come now. I was quite clever in citing your own take on the uncertainty principle to validate my thesis,” Zag replied silkily.

Morgan held back a smile. In the world of quantum physics, the location of a particle can never be discussed with a hundred percent certainty. Rather it can be discussed only in terms of probabilities. And while a Google search of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and free will would yield over a hundred thousand hits, it was the mathematical dexterity Zag used, manipulating Field’s own equations, that made his take truly unique, worthy of publication in a peer-reviewed journal and bearing the Institute’s name with Morgan as a coauthor.

The younger man reminded Morgan of himself during his early years: self-made, fearless in establishing his dominance in the field of parapsychology. There was even a slight physical resemblance. Both men possessed a shock of white hair; Morgan’s the product of age, Zag’s, a credit to his stylist.

Morgan had never seen hair so white-blond it was almost translucent. And the fashion eccentricities didn’t stop at his hair color or the occasional eyeliner. Last week, Zag had shown up wearing a leather kilt.

But then, given the company he kept, rock stars and Oscar winners, the choice in wardrobe was hardly surprising. His suit today was a patchwork of suede dyed in shades of brown, making the man’s near-colorless eyes appear almost beige. Like Morgan, he was popular with the ladies. Only his broken nose prevented his delicate features from being too pretty.

Morgan always claimed it was Zag’s seminal work in auras that had granted him the keys to the Brain Trust. But there was also the matter of money. Zag’s corporation, Halo Industries, made even Morgan’s vast fortune appear modest. Even now, work was being done on a new underground laboratory, courtesy of Halo Industries, one to rival any used by the government for its supersecret black projects.

“If all the laws of physics are set,” Zag continued, “then from the moment of the big bang, everything is predetermined. How you act, how you think, even if you should want spaghetti for dinner, these are just atomic interactions—in your brain, in your body. At a fundamental level, even people interacting are just atoms interacting.”

“But even as you yourself point out in the article, the laws of physics are not set. Under quantum physics, the world is full of uncertainties.”

This soft lob came from Martha Ozbek, considered by many as Theodore Fields’s opposite number in academia. An anthropologist by training, she had developed an expertise in psychic artifacts and the paranormal. Her recent book, How To Find Self, a tome discussing man’s unique relationship with the paranormal over the centuries, had remained on the New York Times bestseller list for half a dozen weeks.

While cagey in revealing her own beliefs, she was a fervent advocate for the paranormal, often coming to Zag’s defense in these clashes. She’d had the privilege to work with the likes of Thelma Moss, a parapsychologist known for her work in Kirlian photography, photographs that purportedly supplied tangible proof of supernatural auras. To Martha, the belief in the paranormal dated as far back as the cave drawings in France, and therefore, was a legitimate area of study for an anthropologist.

Martha herself was worthy of a little study. At almost sixty, she could still catch a man’s eyes. She favored flowing caftans in colors that accented her bright blue eyes and short platinum hair. Recently, there’d been rumors of a talk show.

Zag held up his hands and smiled. “That’s right, Martha. The world is full of uncertainties. Anything is possible. In quantum physics, all outcomes are merely a matter of probability, which opens the door for free will. Come on, Theodore, you can’t tell me it’s not at least worth discussing?”

“It’s worth discussing about as much as it is worth pondering the question do pigs fly?” Theodore scoffed. “You’re trying to use quantum mechanics as the scientific basis for free will. And there is no scientific basis for free will. You can’t observe it, you can’t measure it, you can’t study it.”

Martha placed a calming hand on Theodore’s. “And yet, before Galileo, we didn’t know the equation for the relationship between velocity and acceleration. Perhaps, Theodore, we merely do not yet know the equation to study free will.”

Theodore grimaced. “Don’t you see what he’s trying to do? If you buy his argument, you can use quantum mechanics to legitimize anything—even his kiddie camps for pseudopsychics.”

Zag leaned back in his chair, enjoying the moment—the great Theodore Fields losing his cool. It seemed to happen more and more these days. And Zag was just getting started.

“Is that how you see the Halo-effect schools? Kiddie camps for pseudopsychic ability?”

“Or worse,” Theodore said.

Zag grinned. “Oh, please, Theodore. Don’t hold back.”

“I can understand bamboozling some rich asshole who wants to cultivate some fantasy that his child is special. But this recent addition of working with autistic children at these schools—really, Zag, it’s too much. You tell their poor, desperate parents that their children are unique rather than disabled, that you can help them develop their unusual gifts, milking them with that hope.”

“But they are unique, Theodore,” Zag continued coolly. “I’ve been working with autistic children since graduate school. I’ve seen these children do incredible things. You want to put them in a box and drug them, I see them as an evolutionary next step in brain development. My work is to try and use psychic tools to access their potential.”

“Psychic tools? What is a psychic tool? Oh, wait!” Theodore reached for an empty space on the table and held up his hand as if holding something. “Here it is! My psychic tool!”

Morgan held up a hand. “Enough, gentlemen. While I enjoy your verbal sparring, I believe we were discussing Zag’s unorthodox use of the uncertainty principle. Lionel?” Morgan asked, reaching out to the group’s resident mathematician and referee, who was sitting between Theodore and Zag. “Do you want to chime in here?”

Dr. Lionel Cable had recently been recognized for his seminal work in algebraic topology. A compact man of African American descent, he had a prominent scar in the middle of his forehead caused by a childhood accident. He was the most recent recipient of the Fields Medal, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for mathematics and the only cool head in the room.

He didn’t hesitate to step in. “It is true that the uncertainty principle can be misused. Since Einstein, we’ve been trying to apply quantum physics on the cosmic scale. We have no idea if these principles are even relevant at the macro level.”

“We don’t know being the salient point, Lionel,” Martha argued. “So why run from the discussion? During the eighteenth century, the French Academy of Science denied the existence of meteorites. Museum curators all over Europe threw out their collections of meteorites for fear of appearing backward. Stones falling from the sky? It smacked too much of religion—the hand of God and all that. Once it was the church persecuting theorists, now it’s science? Well, I for one refuse to be bullied from discussing the topic at hand.”

Morgan turned to Lionel. “Isn’t the macro level merely the summation of what happens on the molecular level?”

“Wonderful,” Theodore said. “You make up a law and then find a way to apply it broadly. That’s great science. Did we read the same article, people?” He looked around the table, sounding almost desperate. “The man quoted Edgar Cayce and Madam Blavatsky!”

Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet, was possibly the best-known American psychic. He was also responsible for some of the more controversial theories about the lost city of Atlantis—a favorite topic of Zag’s and another one of Theodore’s pet peeves.

“Cayce believed that the Atlanteans had a great crystal that allowed its people to focus their extraordinary abilities to achieve fantastical things. Helena Blavatsky claimed that Atlanteans invented airplanes and grew extraterrestrial wheat,” Theodore continued, his face growing ever more florid. “Atlantis is fodder for Disney, for God’s sake, not science. Is this the kind of hogwash you want to sign your name to, Morgan? I can’t believe it was published in a peer review journal.”

“Both Cayce and Blavatsky were mentioned as historical context only,” Zag said.

“Or to keep the tabloids interested,” Theodore countered. “The man feeds these ridiculous rumors that he is some kind of descendant from Atlanteans who escaped in aircrafts before their own big bang.”

“I actually found Zag’s discussion on Atlantis quite fascinating,” Lionel said, again acting as mediator. “I don’t believe anyone has ever postulated the possibility that it was in attempting to isolate dark matter that the Atlanteans caused their destruction.”

“Well, then, perhaps you don’t read enough science fiction,” Theodore added.

“Then there’s the idea of the Atlantean crystal,” Lionel continued. “It’s somewhat reminiscent of Morgan’s psychic artifact, the Eye of Athena. I believe it was your point to connect the two, Zag?”

But before Zag could answer, Theodore threw up his hands. “Now it’s back to psychic artifacts? More mumbo jumbo!”

The crystal, the Eye of Athena, had been an ongoing topic of conversation with the Brain Trust. Ten months ago, it had made the headlines as part of a collection of psychic artifacts confiscated after the murder of David Gospel. The man, a local real-estate mogul, had accumulated quite the collection—most of it obtained on the black market, of course. And while many of the artifacts had been authenticated by their own Martha and colleagues, the Eye of Athena had turned out to be a fraud.

Soon thereafter, Morgan began discussing the crystal, artfully dangling the possibility that he’d gotten his hands on the real deal. Thus far, Morgan had refused to produce it, talking about the Eye of Athena only in the theoretical, claiming his interest in the artifact had been brought on by the recent headlines and his own history with the stone.

It was a facile explanation. Morgan’s lover, Estelle Fegaris, the mother of his only child, had been obsessed with the Eye. Some said the crystal had even cost her her life.

“The comparison seems more than plausible,” Martha mused. “The theory is that the Eye works on the brain, helping to enhance certain psychic abilities…facilitating what Zag refers to as brain evolution. I believe Cayce made similar claims for the Atlantean crystal.” She turned her attention back to Zag. “You suggest, of course, that the artifacts are related. But do you also believe that the crystals actually are dark matter?”