Phase Shift (29 page)

"Molly teaches Pseudo-archaeology at the
university," he says. "Her classes are standing room only. Every
semester. Which only goes to prove she's usually a little more
eloquent than this."

A hockey game plays on a projector
screen behind the bar while too loud eighties' rock plays above the
murmur of the crowd. The corner table was chosen as a strategic
move on our part. The positioning of the table, coupled with the
rows of booths between us and the speakers, has a dampening effect
on the music, enough so we barely have to raise our voices to be
heard. Josef continues the introductory repartee, going on about
how he hoped the chicken wings and tempura vegetables we ordered
would come quickly and how lecturing always made him feel hungrier
than either sex or weed. As far as I'm concerned, that's just too
much information. I feel my cheeks grow hot as I blush again. Josef
laughs and blows a cloud of blue-grey smoke across the table. I
nudge my chair a little closer to Palmer's.

At last the drinks arrive. I take
a sip from the tall glass and gaze nervously over the rim at Josef.
He's grinning at me again. When I return my drink to the table, I
make a concerted effort to place the glass directly in the centre
of the napkin with which it was served. The action helps to busy my
hands and gives me something to look at besides his gleaming
black-brown eyes, which are currently molesting me about the
chest.

Josef takes a long sip of his beer. "So," he
says when he comes up for air, "Pseudo-archaeology, eh?"

I nod.

"And yet you persist in calling
yourself a scientist?" He baits.

I'm not in the mood for a debate
right now. I've had to defend my position so many times in the past
to the pure science geeks at the university, what I say next comes
out as if on autopilot. "A social scientist, yes. I don't see why
it should be considered any less of a science because it's social."
Josef leans in a little closer.

Josef looks at Palmer and smiles. "I like this
girl, Paulie. She's a keeper, this one is," he says proudly
patronizing. Palmer looks at me nervously. Under normal
circumstances, I might leap at the fact he's called me a girl, but
not tonight. Tonight I have more pressing issues on my mind than PC
semantics

Josef turns his attention back to
me and says, "Tell me, Molly, I've found those with a keen interest
in Pseudo-science are either skeptics or believers. I'm curious:
which one are you?"

Where is he going with this line
of questioning? I answer him, looking for an opportunity to swing
the conversation toward my own agenda. "I don't really know," I
tell him. It’s the truth. Up until this week, my take on the
discipline has always been cut and dried and safe: until I've been
given the opportunity to examine the evidence first hand, I choose
to remain coolly objective. But now that I've actually seen the
evidence? Now that I've actually been to Gaia and practically
witnessed a case of spontaneous human combustion?

"Science
supposes its practitioners to have an open mind," I say. "Having
said that, I think it behooves me as a scientist to remain
skeptical in my findings until such time as the truth presents
itself." Under ordinary circumstances, I might relish the
opportunity to spar Pseudo-science with Josef Schliemann.
The
Josef Schliemann.
But today I have neither the energy nor the desire to do so. I want
the getting-to-know-you-phase of the conversation over with so we
can get down to business. "I think I want to believe? But at heart?
I'm definitely a show-me-the-evidence kind of
person."

"A fence-sitter, eh?" He takes another swallow
of his beer. "Well, they say opposites attract. Paulie, I know, is
a die-hard skeptic from way back when—"

"I don't know anymore, Joey," Palmer tells
him. "Thanks to Molly, I'm thinking of climbing the fence
myself."

I look at Palmer and smile. He replies with a
quick hand squeeze of support. I look back to Josef.

"That's love for you, eh?" he says to Palmer
with a calculated tip of his glass.

"What about you, Josef? How do you
see yourself fitting into this dichotomy of yours?" He looks at me
dumbfounded, as if he'd never been asked to quantify his beliefs.
"Are you a believer, Josef?" My voice sounds more confident, more
flirtatious than I'd thought possible, given the
situation.

Josef leans in close, balances his
elbow on the table, chin in hand. "What do you think, Professor
McBride?"

I squint at him as if scrutinizing, as if the
contents of his mind were written in small type on his forehead.
"I've read your work. You're meticulous. You present both sides of
an argument but you rarely weigh in either for or
against

"If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say you
present as a fence-sitter, you'd have to be."

"How do you figure?"

"If you weigh in for, if you claim
the weird stuff is true, you ally yourself with the religious
right—your primary audience—but you alienate yourself from the
scientific community. If you debunk the weird stuff, especially the
biblical stuff, you could alienate the believers as well as the
would-be, sometimes or maybe believers. You retain the respect of
the scientific community, but—"

"That and a dollar will maybe buy
you a cup of coffee," Josef says. He pauses and then plasters a
huge grin on his face. "You see? I knew we'd be simpatico, from the
moment I lay eyes on you.

“Well argued." He takes another
drag of his cigarette, chases it with a swig of his beer.
"Incorrect, but well argued."

"I don't understand."

"I am neither fence-sitter, de-bunker, nor
believer. To say I'm indifferent would be an over-statement." He
looks as me for a moment as I try to gauge his sincerity. "Quite
frankly, I couldn't care less if aliens exist, or if the Knights
Templar are alive and well and harbouring the chalice of Jesus. In
truth, none of it impacts my life, so what does it matter to
me?"

Stab me in the heart of my
beliefs, why don’t you. "You're joking, right?"

He makes me wait for his answer as he takes a
slow sip of his drink. At last he shakes his head and says, "No
joke."

He’s having one on on me, he has to
be.

I don’t know why, but I take his
bait. "But you used to study Anthropology, right? Anthropology's
the study of culture, religion, and belief systems, all very
non-scientific concepts—"

"Studied as impartial observers, not as
participants—"

"But Anthropologists frequently take part in
ritual, be it seeking spiritual guidance in sweat lodges, taking
peyote, passing the peace-pipe—"

"Participation in ritual is far different than
subscribing to a system of belief."

People dance nearby as if
celebrating, smug in the notion there will always be a tomorrow. I
wish I could feel that way again. I wish I could take back the
events of the past few weeks and go back to feeling blissful in my
ignorance.

"So you're saying you don't subscribe to a
system of belief?"

"I believe that people believe in the media.
As long as it's broadcast on the air or spelled out in print,
people will believe. It's my bread and butter, what's taken care of
me so far."

"Okay, then," I say, ignoring the
condescension I read in his voice, "What about this?" I reach into
my purse and throw my trump card on the table, a newspaper article
clipped from a tabloid, small piece of folded newsprint. He picks
it up, unfolds it, and takes a quick glance. "You had a very
definite opinion then," I tell him.

"Ah! Future glimpse man," he says as if
remembering it fondly. I chance a look at Palmer. He seems amused,
eager to see how Josef will paint himself out of the corner I've
built for him.

"Future Glimpse Man," I confirm. "So what?
This guy comes to you and tells you—"

Josef shakes his head. "No, no, no. With
Future Glimpse Man it was the reporter who contacted
me."

"Okay, so the reporter contacts
you, and says what? That this guy saw a building materialize in the
middle of his wheat field? And you say what? It's a glimpse into
the future? How do you come to that realization?"

"With the case of Future Glimpse
Man the reporter asked me if I thought it could have been a glimpse
into the future and I said, 'Why not?'. That explanation is a good
as any other."

"But don't you have to subscribe
to some belief system in order to come to the realization what that
man saw was actually a look at the future rather than a
hallucination?"

"The bottom line is who’s to say
what that farmer actually saw. And who really cares? The media
contacted me, I gave them their quote, the cheque's in the mail.
Unless you have another theory as to what happened—"

"I do, actually."

"You do what?"

"I have another theory."

"What? About Future Glimpse Man?"

I nod.

"Go ahead," Josef says, challenging me with a
smile. "Don't keep us waiting, then." He reclines slightly in his
chair and folds his hands over his stomach.

"Okay," I say, launching into the
speech I'd been practicing from the moment I left the house this
afternoon. "What if what Future Glimpse Man saw was not an actual
glimpse into the future, but a glimpse into another dimension;
another world; another Earth?"

Josef stares at me
expressionlessly at first, but then he launches into a large smile.
He points while he speaks. "You put her up to this, didn't you,
Paulie?"

"Forget it," I practically bark.
"If you're not going to at least pretend to have an open mind..." I
collect the article, stop it from see-sawing back and forth on the
table, balanced on the crease of the fold. The paper sounds crisp.
It crackles like fire as I crumple it into the palm of my hand. I
should leave. I should gather my sweater, my purse, the stupid
article and go.

Screw Josef Schliemann.

Whatever made me think I could save the world?
I'm no hero.

"Okay, okay," Josef says, practically a
chuckle, "I'm listening, really, I am, ears and mind wide
open."

The weight of Palmer's hand on my thigh
re-draws my focus. I look at him and he smiles, squeezes my leg,
brings me back to the here and now. It's his face, the sparkle in
his eye he reserves only for me, that gives me the strength to
forge on.

"What your farmer saw was the making for
disaster.

"What happened there? On the other
planet? On Gaia? Was the equivalent of what would happen here if a
large portion of a busy office building simply vanished. Because it
would be missing a large portion of its structure, the building
would collapse. Think twin towers on 9-11. When the missing section
rematerialized, it would lack footing and collapse onto the rubble
of the rest of the building. For the Gaians? For the people on the
other world? It would constitute a disaster on the same magnitude
as a Richter-breaking earthquake."

I wait for
someone else to say something. Palmer sits in his chair watching
Josef. He squeezes my thigh, two quick pulses—
Good work
, it
says.

“Okay, so this…Gaia, was it? What exactly is
it?” Josef asks.

“Another world. Another Earth, both occupying
the same space-time as ours.”

“Uh huh,” he says.

“But the membrane separating the two worlds is
growing thin, so thin, in fact that we can see through it and into
their world and they into ours,” I say.

Josef sits, body motionless save
for the forefinger on his right hand rubbing his chin. After a
moment, he breaks the silence. "I'll say it again, Paulie: I like
this girl. She's a kidder, this one is."

"I'm serious," I say.

"Paulie put you up to this, didn't
he?"

"You'd rather believe a worm hole
opened up in the middle of a wheat field and gave this guy a glance
into the future, than in the possibility of Gaia's existence?" I
was right. I should have left when I crumpled the
article.

"Why not?" the man asks. "When one theory is
just as implausible as the next?

"Look, my name is on one theory,
yours is on the other. Which one am I most likely to
support?"

"What about this?" Banking on the fact that,
since Stanley, the power's truly been depleted, I toss the
soot-blackened modulator onto the table.

Palmer noticeably stiffens in his chair.
Upping the ante with the modulator wasn't in the game
plan.

Schliemann examines the device, seemingly more
concerned with the sooty-residue it leaves on his finger-pads than
with the actual artifact. When he's done, he places it back on the
table, laces his fingers behind his head and says, "A bangle.
Sloppy craftsmanship, if you ask me.

"What is it?"

"Irrefutable evidence of Gaia's
existence."

He's unimpressed.

"It's a phase modulator, a device
which allows one to travel between the two worlds." Still he looks
at me expressionless. "Gaia is real. I've seen it. And you would
still rather believe..." I have to stop, to take a breath. My heart
tightens. I can't complete the sentence.