Our Tragic Universe (25 page)

‘Couldn’t you have done that before you got here? I’ve got to go through to radiology now. I’ve already seen a nurse.’

Josh said, ‘I had to tell Meg what happened.’

‘And you couldn’t have done that inside? Whatever. Come on. We’ve got to go.’

As I got up I remembered the change Peter had given me.

‘I brought this from your dad,’ I said, giving it to Christopher. ‘For the machine.’

‘That’s a lot of use now.’

The radiology waiting room was at the end of a long red line painted on the floor. There were only three other people there. There was a shrivelled man in a wheelchair, who looked dead already, and a mother with a boy of about eleven. The mother and boy were called through almost immediately, and we were left with the shrivelled man.

Christopher was holding his paperwork in his good hand, which was shaking.

‘How are you feeling?’ Josh asked him. His voice echoed in the big empty space. Everything was different shades of blue, and one of the lights flickered.

‘Shit,’ he said.

Josh shrugged, and leaned across him to pick up a magazine that had been lying at a strange angle on the wood-veneer table.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Christopher said loudly, dropping his paperwork. The shrivelled man stirred in his wheelchair.

‘What?’ Josh said.

‘My hand. God. Be more careful.’

I bent down and picked up the papers Christopher had dropped.

‘I think we should try to keep the noise down,’ I said.

Josh got up and took the magazine over to the other side of the room, where there was a disorderly pile of magazines on an identical table. He added the magazine he’d picked up to this pile, counted the items in it and then straightened it. Then he looked at it again and made the magazines into two piles. I watched him concentrate as he did this, oblivious to Christopher sighing and rolling his eyes. When the magazines looked neat and symmetrical he came back. We all sat in silence until Christopher was called in for his X-ray.

‘You OK?’ I said to Josh, when Christopher had gone.

‘Yeah. I’ve been trying to think of hospital jokes to lighten the mood,’ he said. ‘All I could remember is one my analyst told me, which is kind of sick. Thought I’d better not tell Christopher, but …’

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘OK. Mary and John are patients in a mental hospital. One day they’re walking by the swimming pool, and John, who can’t swim, throws himself in the deep end and waits to drown. Mary jumps in and rescues him. The doctor sees what Mary has done, and decides she is safe to be released, since her heroic act shows she’s mentally stable. He calls her into his office and says, “Well, there’s some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you’re being released. You saved a man’s life and it’s quite clear you’re ready to enter society again. But I’m afraid there’s bad news too. The man you saved, John, hanged himself shortly after the incident in the swimming pool and is now dead. I’m so sorry.” “Oh,” Mary said, “he didn’t hang himself. I hung him up to dry.” See? I told you it was sick.’

When I’d finished laughing, I said, ‘Why did your analyst tell you that?’

‘She tells a lot of jokes and stories,’ Josh said. ‘I’m supposed to reflect on them.’

‘So what did you learn from this story?’

‘I think I learned that there’s more than one way of seeing your actions.’

‘Or, I guess, other people’s actions.’

‘Yeah. So what did you think of all the science in the Kelsey Newman book? I was pretty impressed by it. I’ve got the original Frank Tipler book too. It’s all there. The science, I mean. It
makes a lot of sense, although in the Tipler book there’s a slightly disconcerting description of exactly how humans would have to colonise the whole universe before the Omega Point could be of any use. On page forty-eight he talks about test-tube babies being born from artificial wombs and being brought up by robot nannies in other galaxies. This surely would be a universe full of maladjusted psychos. Or already is, if he’s right. They’ll be the ones running things, of course.’

I smiled. Josh always remembered what page something was on. I’d learned a lot about Josh’s relationship with numbers when I’d snuck him onto a Zeb Ross retreat for free a few years ago, just before our flirtation had begun. I used to do an afternoon session on the mathematics of narrative, where we looked first at unity, then pairing, then incidences of the number three in fairy tales and myths, then Jung’s theory of quaternity and so on. Josh had an encyclopaedic knowledge of instances of any number in almost anything, and had added much to the discussions, including an incredible list of threes that began with the Three Little Pigs, and ended, after about fifty other items, with the Three Wise Men. He’d even talked about the meanings of the threes in Tarot cards: the Threes of Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles. It was only much later that I discovered that he was using his knowledge of threes as a stalling device: a way of avoiding getting to the discussion of sixes.

After 9/11, Uri Geller put forward a theory that the attack had been cosmically connected with the number 11 because, for example, the Twin Towers looked like the number 11, New York was the 11th state added to the union, and flight number 11 had 92 people on board and 9 + 2 = 11. He even put a list on the relevant page of his website of significant people whose
names had eleven letters, which included Tutankhamen, Harry Potter, Nostradamus and Josef Stalin. Josh had written a long blog about how you could choose any number and do this kind of idiotic thing with it, just as you could predict or confirm just about anything you wanted, with any text, if you followed the principles of the Bible Code. Josh could be a real sceptic when he wanted to be, which made his belief in aliens and sea monsters all the more interesting.

‘What do you think about Newman’s ideas, though?’ I said now.

‘I think that apart from the robot nannies it’s very exciting. It makes a lot of sense. And I guess it is comforting too.’

‘Because of your mum?’

‘Yeah, but also because it means I’m not as mad as I thought I was. Lots of things that I’ve always believed in are possible in Newman’s system, even probable, and completely consistent with the laws of physics. It proves the universe
was
designed – by human beings. How cool is that?’

I kind of shrugged. Before Newman came along Josh had thought, with the astronomer Fred Hoyle, that human DNA came not from evolution but from outer space.

‘The Omega Point makes sense of everything,’ Josh said. ‘Every supposedly irrational thing I’ve ever come across: ghosts, telepathy, magic, astrology, reincarnation, Tarot, morphic resonance; they are all totally rational in Newman’s universe. If we’re already beyond the end of time, and living in this Second World in a never-ending afterlife, then everything makes sense. If every possible scenario exists in the mind of the Omega Point, then of course you’d see ghosts and monsters from time to time. It would mean that the universe, run on the physics of
Energia
,
rather than matter, would be capable of a lot more than we ever thought. If the future has already happened, or, at least, if it’s possible to compute, then of course you can predict it. If we are all conscious within the same system, and we all in some way share consciousness with the Omega Point, and therefore each other, then why wouldn’t you be able to know what someone else is thinking sometimes?
Energia
is something you can do magic with. Why not? Doing magic in this system would be just like putting a shortcut on a desktop.’

Josh was always collecting evidence for magic and telepathy. He was very fond of B, and when we’d stayed in the flat he’d become interested in the way she seemed to know when someone was coming home. It was catching: Peter and I – and even Christopher, for a while – all became interested as well. At first we hypothesised that B heard the cars coming and believed her hearing to be extraordinary, especially as we all had to park down a side-street about a hundred yards from the flat. But she even picked up on people walking home. One time Peter was returning from London on the train and although he was supposed to let us know what time his train was due in so that someone could collect him, he decided to walk back from the station instead. About three minutes before he arrived, B started running around the flat, looking out of windows and wagging her tail, before ending up at the front door with her favourite ball in her mouth just as Peter turned his key in the lock. Each time something like this happened, the people who were in the flat would try to convince the person who’d just arrived that B had known they were coming. It was hard to believe when you were the person arriving, but hard not to when you saw her deliberately go through her preparations for
greeting someone minutes before it would be possible to hear their footsteps, or their cough, or even smell them. Josh knew all about Rupert Sheldrake’s experiments to find out if dogs really do know when people are coming home. Sheldrake argued that the universe has morphic fields, and morphic resonance, which involve memories being stored not in an individual, but outside, along with everyone else’s. This, if true, would enable telepathy, among other things, since if a person’s thoughts are not kept in their head, but outside in a collective space, then anyone can access them. I never admitted it, and I was sure there was a more conventionally scientific explanation for it, but B was so telepathic – or something – that on a walk if I even thought the word ‘squirrel’ she’d be off after it. If I thought to myself, ‘Perhaps we’ll go past the pet shop and get beef sticks later,’ then B would seem to start anticipating it, and would pull in that direction. Sheldrake’s theories also, Josh said, accounted for why I found it easier to do my crossword on a Thursday than I did on the Sunday it was published. By the Thursday, he said, so many people would have got the answers that they’d be the morphic resonance equivalent of neon, glowing from some nearby dimension. By Thursday I’d be simply plucking the answers out of the air. Josh ended up keeping a detailed record of B’s telepathy and sent the results to Sheldrake, although I never found out what he made of them, if anything.

‘So why isn’t everyone doing magic and predicting the future if it’s all possible?’ I said.

‘I think because we’re encouraged to believe it’s not possible. Maybe the Omega Point stops people. That bit I’m not quite sure about.’

‘And why are there so many frauds out there pretending to bend spoons? Why is it that every stage magician you see is so obviously not doing real magic? If it was out there, I’m sure people would be doing it. You’d see people doing it. People would really bend spoons.’

‘Maybe the people who really do it, do it quietly. Also, I think the wrong type of person senses that there’s more power out there than they’ve been given access to, and so they pretend they’ve got it. Again, I’m not sure. But I’m very intrigued by this Second World, and I think it has the potential to answer a lot of these questions. Kelsey Newman is coming to Totnes to speak, by the way, so I’m going to ask about all of this. I thought you might want to come. Even to tell me what’s wrong with what he says back. You could be my devil’s advocate or something.’

‘I saw the poster in the café,’ I said. ‘Why’s he coming to Totnes?’

‘He’s been before. He’s connected to Dartington in some way. I saw him last time he came; that was how I found out about his theories.’

I sighed. ‘Oh, well, at least Kelsey Newman doesn’t tell you that you have to pay money into his foundation or sign up for his website. He doesn’t have a range of clothing, or jewellery that “might bring you luck”.’

‘You’re really down on these people today,’ Josh said. ‘More than usual.’

‘Oh – I’m doing this feature for the paper on New Age self-help books. My editor thought it was a good idea after he saw my review of Newman. I had no real idea about just how much crap there is out there. You know what I don’t understand? Say there was a mysterious life force, or energy, or Qi, or
Energia
,
or whatever in the universe that meant you could heal people or tell the future. Say you found out how to use it. Surely you’d be a very enlightened person, in tune with everything, and you wouldn’t need to flog books to the public about it? If you did write a book about harmony with the universe, surely you’d give it away for free? Or you’d at least write it and be done with it – not churn out another ten books on the same subject because your publisher’s putting pressure on you because there’s such a market for your bullshit. In fact, if you were in harmony with the universe you’d probably write brilliant novels or something, or paint great pictures – not write self-help books. I read this book on cosmic ordering that has clearly earned the author more money than he’s got from cosmic ordering, which just goes to show. And none of these people can write a sentence.’

‘Ouch,’ Josh said. ‘You’re right, of course. But I do think all of that is just there to distract you from the real stuff.’

‘What, as in a conspiracy?’

‘Not necessarily. Just that you’re always going to see fraudsters and tricksters out there on the street, peddling what they’ve got, because there’s no other way for them to live. If you could do real magic you wouldn’t need to have a stage show, I assume. Or write a book about it. You’d live quietly in a cottage somewhere and no one would know. Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there: think of genes, for example, or sound waves. And for every hundred terrible books on Tarot or poltergeists, there’s one good one that does expand your understanding of the world somehow. You just have to know where to find it.’