Chapter 11
Their airport hug was more of an embrace, catching them both off guard.
“Sal, you are my gorgeous genius, Yeeee-haaaaw! Give me another squeeze, I do surely need one!”
Sally loved Shawn in the way he treated her like a woman. Growing up, Sally was more of a designer child, born to professors and, as a result, the proud product of an academic household. Academically gifted, she was never given frilly, little girl toys, and later her parents always insisted scholastic achievement was more important than dresses, dances or boys. As Sally had never experienced anything like true love, it was more of a reason to melt whenever Shawn looked into her eyes.
“Shawn, c’mon, you know we could just keep on holding each other here, but we have a long ride to Ben’s. Then afterwards, if I don’t get you to Waimea before your holy swell hits, your sponsors will fire your butt!”
“Sally, let them shitcan me, then I can keep you in my arms forever!”
Sally grabbed Shawn’s shoulders and playfully pushing him away and turned him towards the airport exit where a sporty lime green 4WD awaited. Just another perfect day in Hawaii, Sally thought as she peeled back the canvas roof for the sunlit two-hour drive to Ben’s mountain hideaway.
“Shawn, we have to rush because we have no way of knowing what eccentric state Ben will be in when we get there. If we’re lucky, and find him focused, then we’ll be done and gone with time to catch dinner along the coast, but if he’s jacked up and all over the map, no telling if we’ll get him to concentrate on your discovery. Our goal today is to share what we have and see if he can explain it. In any case, it’s been a long time since he left Photon and I can’t wait to see him.”
Shawn dunked his Deep Surf daypack into the roof opening, gave Sally one more smooch on the cheek, and jumped in. Sally took the driver’s seat, punched in some GPS coordinates, and turned off the country music station Shawn had just flicked on as she expected he would.
“No silly cowboy songs, we have to talk. I want to brief you, ah, I mean, give you the whole story on Ben and his theories,” Sally started. “Ben lives in the world of the impossible and improbable, which is why he left Photon — no one could keep him on task. His mind is so expansive; he’d begin a project and midway through he was off on a scientific tangent, leaving me or another scientist to finish on their own. He brought brilliance to Photon, but they had a difficult time monetizing it.”
“You have to understand,” Sally continued above the wind rushing by, “there is no one better equipped to help us decipher what you’ve uncovered. We may even find he has studied what you’ve created and taken it much further. Shawn, you may be satisfied with creating cool holograms, but for me, I need to understand the science behind it all.”
They drove for another hour, and as they climbed in altitude, it actually became chilly. Few visitors know the Hawaiian Islands get snow at the higher elevations, but today, thought Shawn, they might even see a little snow for themselves. As they turned off the main highway onto a two-track dirt road they were forced to roll up the windows when Sally said, “Shawn, based on fifty years of confirmed research, most quantum physicists believe that our entire universe is a hologram of sorts, or that our individual consciousness creates our own reality. As Descartes once said, I think, therefore I am, or in translation, the only reason we exist is because we believe we exist.”
Sally was in her comfort zone now, speaking of science and physics, so Shawn, having been here before, put his hat over his eyes while continuing to listen and settled in for the long ride.
“One related notion conceived by two Irish theorists further postulates an infinite number of alternative universes, or what most would call other parallel dimensions, co-existing in the same space as our own. The Irishmen have been able to logically tie the spiritual beliefs of ancient people to the revelations new quantum scientists are bringing to light. All this is why I got into applied physics in the first place. It is absolutely fascinating to think everything around us may be quantum particles swimming around, with only our minds creating the mechanical existence we call our world.”
“And Ben, is he a quantum physicist? Does he believe this too?” Shawn asked as he tried to grab Sally’s leg.
Sally, somewhat annoyed, brushed away his hand and sped up her driving.
“At one time, Ben headed our top-secret research division at Photon. He was Jarrard’s predecessor. Although he was wild with ideas, Ben laid the foundation for all of our current research, including the Sentient project and more. Ben was also the one who enlisted me from my position at Berkeley where I was a research associate studying advanced cloning.”
“Well, I remember you were getting pretty tired of cloning cows, Sally, so it made perfect sense to me you’d accept his job offer, no matter how crazy Ben may have sounded.”
Sally ignored him. “Ben said to me, How would you like to replicate, not just duplicate? Back then, I didn’t understand what he meant, but I was intrigued. But ever since Drake looked at me from inside your hologram, I’m beginning to see what he meant. Anyway, Ben’s intellect had no boundaries, and the lab was too claustrophobic for his spacious thinking. Eventually Photon management and he came to a similar conclusion and his contract was mutually terminated, but not before they awarded him an endowment which will support him for years to come. In return he promised Photon that any discoveries he makes come to them first. While he was never much of a mentor to me in the normal definition of the word, he did teach me to keep my eyes wide and open to realities which exist but we are unable to see.”
Sally then turned to Shawn and said rapidly, “What is truly remarkable Shawn, and maybe this is why I love you — yes, I said it, I do still love you — is that despite all the years of scientific experience Ben and I have between us, it was you that uncovered the means to replicate someone as Ben had hinted to me as a possibility during that interview. Perhaps your intuitive grasp of light made you the catalyst to bring it all together. What is the saying about perspiration and inspiration?”
Shawn could not find the words to answer.
“Oh well, back to Ben” Sally began again. “So after Ben left Photon, we fell out of touch for about two years. I imagined him deeply enjoying his solitude and never seeing him again. Then, one day at the lab, I brought in a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, and before I bit into it, a sliver of paper poked out from between the slices of bread. A note scribbled in Ben’s handwriting gave the GPS coordinates of the location of where we’re now headed. To think, with all the communications technology around us, he puts a message in a sandwich.”
“Thank God you didn’t cut the cheese, Sally. We would have never learned about Ben’s hideout,” Shawn quipped.
“Get serious Shawn. We need to talk to Ben and find out just what’s happening in your holograms.”
Sally peeled Shawn’s hand off her shoulder. “And if you can keep your hands off me long enough, together we might just piece together how a hologram can follow us with its eyes.”