Dreamtime - Part 2 - Conspiracy - Chapter 5 - Revelation

“If quick, I survive. If not quick, I am lost. This is ‘death’.” ― Sun Tzu

Journal Entry, December 22, 2012

How could so many people have been so wrong? I have spent far too much energy in my life on wanting to be right because I thought it would make for better decisions, better outcomes. I wanted it so much that I’m certain I was right far less than I believed. I call it the “Right Bias”, the tendency to keep an opinion simply because one is believed to be right about most things. This is the danger of being right. To be right about one thing is simply triumph. To be right about everything would be truly prophetic.

 Ethan James, Ph.D.

“Ironically, you're not far from the mark, Brian,” Steven said. “I wondered when I might tell you this, but I had to know I could trust you both.”

Brian and Michio looked at each other with doubt and trepidation.

“You both understand how damaging it can be to a scientist's credibility when findings are released before verification. Once the community shuns you, it's hard to get funding, hard to be taken seriously.”

Brian was the first to respond. “Steven, we've only known you a short while, but you can clearly see that we aren't shunning you. We're only trying to start something, continue the work you started.”

“Yes,” added Michio, “we are seekers of the truth, so all options are on the table … that is until they are proven false. That said, we move things to the edge of the table (to continue the analogy) when they are logically less probable. Look, what I'm saying is this; your ideas are center table stuff. We're doing science; observe, question, hypothesize, predict, test, analyze, theorize, and repeat. We're listening.”

“I'm glad to hear you say that,” Steven said, shifting from foot to foot,  “because what I'm about to tell you is hard to hear, harder to accept, and even crazier to believe. The data I showed you is over thirty years old.”

Brian and Michio gasped in unison.

“This was only the beginning of my research. It took me and my colleagues farther and farther down the rabbit hole until we finally confronted the Queen of Hearts. Since you like analogies, Michio, I'll continue this one. The white rabbit is the visible universe, as far back as photons can be seen after the Big Bang. Are you with me?”

“Yes,” they both replied.

“We have been following the white rabbit for centuries, as technology allowed us to get closer and closer. Then we saw the rabbit disappear, literally. Let me explain. When you consider that the observable universe is much wider than the visible universe and the size of the actual universe is unknown, you can see how we could have missed this. Once we learned that we could detect objects at greater distances via gravitational waves or GWs, as Einstein predicted, our observable universe grew to greater than 90 billion light-years. 

“We kept detecting these massive GWs and wondered why so many. At first we thought it was just black holes colliding or older, massive objects exploding. That was until we started seeing the lights go out. The furthest visible objects started disappearing, gone, always accompanied by another massive GW. No obstruction, no warning. Just gone from the sky. We searched for an explanation, but the simplest explanation had to be true; they just weren't there anymore.”

“OK. I have to say something,” interrupted Brian. “How is this possible?”

“There's-”

“Why haven't we heard about this?”

“Brian, there's more you need to know.” Steven patted his hands in the air. “We had to keep this out of the public until we understood it. We ran the models in simulation after simulation. We calculated the time we had left. We turned over every theory and tried to fit them together in every conceivable outcome. It wasn't until we combined string theory with theoretical neuroscience that the pieces began to snap together.”

Michio sat there shaking his head, a look of horror pasted across his face.

Brian asked, “How mu-” 

“You have to underst-"

“How much time?” Brian raised his voice.

“There's still so much we-”

“How long, godammit?” Brian was yelling now. “How long until it reaches earth?”

“We don't know, Brian.” Steven was yelling too. “We don't know. The rough, early calculations gave us thousands of years, maybe millions. But now that our instruments are more accurate, the process appears to be accelerating.”

“Great, it's in our lifetimes,” Michio guessed.

Steven nodded and tightly closed his eyes.

“Why didn't you tell us before?” Brian voiced with barely a whisper.

“Would you have believed me if I had just come out and said it, put it in an email, sent you a postcard from The Edge of Oblivion, ‘Wish you were here’?” Steven was shaking his head. “This theory was the first flash in the pan. Others worked on the same problem, several teams, and no one could find a single logical explanation for the ‘darkening’.”

“Is that what you're calling it?” Michio asked.

“Good a name as any,” Brian answered and took a deep breath. “So hit us with your best shot. What's the theory?”

“Well, as near as we could determine, there was something out there as big or bigger than the universe consuming entire star systems, and maybe even galaxies, at once. It emitted no light or microwaves, so it resembled dark matter, but it behaved more like a universe-sized black hole. However, even a black hole emits radiation at the event horizon, curves space around its gravity well, and occasionally ‘burps’ streams of energy at its poles. A singularity this size would dwarf the Big Bang, so we threw out that idea.

“Instead, this phenomena produced nothing, actually nothing. None of it made sense, so we tore it all down to the basics - superstring theory and quantum mechanics, specifically quantum entanglement. If particles inside this cloud of dark energy were somehow entangled with those on earth or inside our bodies, we might be able to gather information about its nature and purpose. It was a long shot, a crazy idea, but some of the simulations began to hold. 

“The most promising was one involving quantum entangled strings that vibrated their partner inside the brain stem, stimulating the precise release of chemicals to induce specific dream imagery. The theory assumed that other intelligent life in the universe faced with annihilation would find a way to reach out.”

“Even if they did, what could we do?” asked Michio, “Why us?”

“I reached out to you;” Steven said, raising his palms in surrender, “to understand more about your theories and why our simulations pointed to you.”

“Who are you, Steven Kushner?” Michio finally managed to ask.

Steven shook his head again, “I'm just a philosopher, a scientist, a student of physics and astronomy. I started out as head of a project team at Harvard to advance a theory called Information Philosophy. I was one of the first to join the effort to know the cause of the ‘darkening’ when the first galaxies went out.”

Steven stopped to stare at his hands, and then his eyes went back to the computer monitors. “I look at the Pilars of Creation, the Eagle Nebula, the Sombrero Galaxy, things that seemed so permanent, so perfect and timeless. I always believed they would come to an end, but not like this, not before we even knew how they were formed.”

As they watched the monitors, a short message floated across the screen, “The three of you are needed for your knowledge of theoretical physics. Please check your email.”

Awake. Ethan sat bolt upright from a deep sleep and sank back down slowly, never wanting to get up again. As he quickly began jotting down bits and pieces in the dream journal he kept by his bed, he saw a clear pattern emerge from this and his dreams of the past few months. The conclusion was unmistakable but completely unbelievable. Through his dreams Ethan was being privileged to witness how the earth would end, and he could not believe he had even formed the thoughts in his mind. The veil of secrecy would be lifted. Information in its purest form would be shown simultaneously to all species of life in the Milky Way galaxy. One universal ascension event would gather all light beings into one and expel all opposing dark beings into the void. 

The repeating image he kept seeing in his dream was an immense explosion followed by a collapse, each time bigger and brighter. With each bang there followed a longer period of expansion before a final crunch restarted the cycle. Also with each cycle there appeared a widening veil of darkness and a brighter bang to push the darkness further and further away. The sphere of darkness was not simply the absence of light, but a seemingly living thing that hungered for the light.

The singularities expanding across the universe would reach a critical point of no return and encounter an informational nexus, a choice: rejoin at the center or release themselves upon the multiverse. For Ethan, the greatest question he had ever known was inextricably tied to the destiny of the universe. Would the keepers of information repeat the cycle and share their collective knowledge with those they knew and trusted or would they risk oblivion and take their knowledge with them into the unknown to discover what new dreams may come?

The word “would” sounded in his ears. Ethan realized he was being offered this choice: repeat the cycle or risk oblivion. It occurred to him that he might be acting on the side of chaos if he chose the latter, yet was that not the same spirit of progress that united the globe and inspired the human species to seek the moon and the stars? The safest answer was to repeat and hope that the next generation would be better suited to make the choice. Ethan suspected that time had run out and the final choice was upon his shoulders. 

It seemed fitting that a species so short-lived as human beings would be forced to make this choice, positioned so equally between the moment and eternity. A multi-solar or multi-galactic species would easily choose continuation, and the universe would cease its Bang-Crunch rotation. It is precisely the hope of a more primitive species that it will wish to attain greater advancement in successive iterations. The next generation would become the torchbearers for the foundation laid by it forebears. 

Ethan’s decision was not whether he himself would be reborn, but the universe itself. Was it time to spread the universe unto infinity or should he leave that for another to decide 15 billion years hence? The irony was not lost on him, as he considered his deepest fear - putting his life in the hands of others. The lives of all were now in his and he did not feel right.

All at once, Heng Wei stirred from his meditation and felt enormous pressure building in his head and extreme discomfort behind his eyes. It felt as though a giant hand was pressing into his temples and his brains would squish out his nose. As soon as the sensation lessened, he got up from his bed and rushed to speak to the others, although it was the middle of the night. 

In Cologne, Germany, the Carthusian monks of the Order of Saint Bruno were granted a wing of the Cologne Cathedral to host their New Cologne Charterhouse. After repairs were completed following the Second World War, it was thought that the largest gothic cathedral in the world would retain more Catholic flavor by hosting a thriving community of hermitical monks. The Carthusian order in Germany, with 12 brothers and 19 choir monks, were granted special permission to reside in a remote corner of the massive structure of the Cologne Cathedral. They had not counted on the wave of secularism in Germany that would follow. Thus the Carthusians were largely ignored, just the way they liked it, and mentioned only as an oddity during cathedral tours.

Heng had found the Carthusians with his talented nose because their special brand of radical asceticism had purged them of dreamtime distortion. Their physical discipline of self-denial, manual labor and musical training in various forms of chant had made them immune to societal influences and psychosocial intrusions. They were a perfect western version of their Buddhist counterparts in the east. However, they did love their beer, which they brewed themselves with great religious fervor; being in Germany, they didn't much care for the green liqueur Carthusians were so famous for.

By the time Heng reached the others, he found Carol and Ethan already conversing with Father Friedrich, the Prior of the New Cologne Charterhouse. With them was Brother Grieg, a burly workhorse of a man with a gentle aspect. While the fathers took vows of silence, abstinence, poverty, and obedience, the brothers took different vows and handled the more public nature of maintaining a cloister. Heng chose this group of hermit ascetics because they were virtually invisible to the rest of the world, out of Shan's scope of vision - hiding in plain sight. 

Before he so much as got out a word, Carol addressed him, “We know, Henry. We've all had the same dream, or rather, dreamt about the same thing.”

“The same thing,” repeated Brother Grieg.

“I haven't had a dream,” Heng spoke softly through the pain, “I had a vision and I know who sent it to me. I must go to Italy.”

They all stared blankly at him.

Only Brother Greig responded excitedly, “Italy.”

“Then I guess we're going too,” said Ethan. 

“Where are we going?” Carol wondered allowed, but then decided that she also wanted to know what awaited them at the end of this train ride. Her world had grown with each new destination. A trip to California to meet the man of her dreams. Two weeks on a New Hampshire farm brought some of the happiest moments of her adult life. Eight months in a Carthusian monastery had been the most cleansing, purifying experience a truthspeaker could ask; the choir monks were the most unique and surprising men she had ever met, three of whom accompanied them on this trip along with Prior Friedrich and Brother Grieg.

“We're going to Milan,” Prior Friedrich answered in his thick Bavarian accent, startling Carol, who thought everyone else asleep, “to our brother charterhouse in Duomo di Milan, the second largest gothic cathedral in the world. I have been in contact with them and all of our brothers since you arrived in Cologne. It is not often that visitors to our monastery turn the world on its head. The statutes of our Order are clear, that we must remain in seclusion, unless necessity demands otherwise. I believe the situation has gotten quite necessary. Don't you agree?”

“Yes, Father, I do. But exactly what does this have to do with where we're going?”

“We too have watched the world for centuries. We have prayed, fasted, studied, and kept the faith alive in our hearts. We are not blind to the truths of philosophy, psychology, cosmology, astronomy, and physics. The mind of God holds more than any man can imagine. When you came to us, we knew who sent you. When you offered to teach us a new way, we were ready. Only an open mind empty of arrogance can be taught; only a heart cleansed of pride can accept true generosity of spirit and honest friendship from a stranger.”

“Thank you, Father.” Carol said almost apologetically.

“You ask where we're going. We're on our way to meet the man to whom God has given the gift of wisdom, more than King David and King Solomon in all their glory. He will help us find the way. He will teach us the path of wisdom. He will reveal God's plan in these dark times. He is God's harbinger, the trumpet blast before the gates are opened.”

“The gates are opened,” said Brother Greig, widening his simple, blissful grin. He crossed his arms, leaned back in his seat, and closed his eyes contentedly. In that moment Carol felt the closest thing to envy she had ever known, staring at this man who perfectly embodied joy and patience.

Komsan looked up from his gardening. The pure monotony of his existence was only bearable through the dreamtime voices that coaxed him day and night. His “voices” were not voices in the auditory sense, rather like the rumbling of his stomach or the topographical sense of direction. He also trusted the instincts that allowed him a measure of certainty when judging a future point of intersection with a target. The voices and his instincts offered him a path through the darkness, a perfect opportunity at just the right time to make a kill or perform a task to exact specifications. This was his karma, to lie under perfect cover or camouflage in wait for the ambush, to make the perfect strike. His prowess had earned him the Burmese moniker Ny Ny Kyarr Naat, translated roughly as Panther of the Night.

Over the wall of his cell he heard a conversation between Brother Antonio and Father Francis. They spoke excitedly about the arrival of an important visitor, a Prior from another charterhouse. Komsan could feel the surge of energy building up inside his chest, a cue that his moment was approaching. He began to involuntarily tamp the soil alternately with his hands.

His strike team was always watching for his signal in relatively close proximity. The trust they had built over their years of operation was possibly the only advantage that offered a quantum of chance at defeating the legendary nose of Heng Wei. The thought still sent waves of nausea and beads of sweat across his face and neck. Still, “cat and mouse" was Komsan’s favorite game, a game he never lost.

Ethan stood up from the cramped seating in the five hour train ride from Zurich to Milan and joined his friends on the platform. He had not thought of them that way until just then; he had never thought of anyone that way before Carol. Secrets and isolation prevented him. But what did all that matter now? The world was going to disappear, and he was going to see all of his friends fall before his eyes, betrayed and annihilated by his own deed. For what other choice did he have? What reason could he give for sending his friends into a war billions of years in the making?

“Prior Friedrich,” Ethan called out across the tracks, “We need to talk, but not here. Let's meet up at street level.”

As Ethan turned to face the exit, he saw a man staring at him across the platform not far from Prior Friedrich. The man's eyes flickered to black and then stayed that way. Never before had he seen a distortion change that quickly. The man lunged for Prior Friedrich. Two nearby choir monks moved to restrain him, but the attacker's arms became insubstantial puffs of gray dust. He took three quick strides and brought his reappearing hands up to Prior Friedrich’s head. A shadow fell over the priest as the man's hands pressed into his head and sunk below the skin.

Just as Prior Friedrich closed his eyes to prepare for the assault, Brother Greig bull rushed the assailant, sending him flying through the air to land hard between the tracks, narrowly avoiding contact with the electrified rails. Before he could recover his focus, he stood long enough to see an oncoming train plow straight through him, disintegrating him into a cloud of gray.

Prior Friedrich called aloud, “Oh dear,” before slumping to the floor unconscious. He would have fallen over the edge of the platform had Brother Greig not caught him. They all scanned the crowd quickly for signs of other attackers and signaled the all clear. They gently carried their shepherd and friend to the safety of a waiting car at street level. Ethan closed the car door and sat next to Prior Friedrich to inspect the wound. Carol sat on his opposite side and cradled his head in her arms as the car sped away. 

Ethan found no physical trauma, but he immediately smelled the stink of fear and paralysis. He concentrated intently and attuned his senses to the stricken man's unresponsive body. He felt pressure on his own throat, like a crushing hand, and reflexively reached for it. That's when he felt the dime-sized tarball of dark energy darting around Prior Friedrich's prefrontal cortex, areas associated with working memory and most importantly self-control. He was locked in a monumental struggle for freedom inside his own mind. The dream images were flowing too fast for Ethan to catch them, but they generally centered on Prior Friedrich's personal history and his individual identity. This energy leech was trying to reinvent who he was from deep inside, reinterpret history, insert biases, and replace foundational learning patterns. Ethan needed to act quickly before the leech was successful, but he held hope in the priest's considerable will power.

“Hang on, Friedrich,” he sputtered through gritted teeth. 

Carol found the lock and screamed it in dreamtime, «Foul of the Ball». It stopped the leech’s progress and caused Prior Friedrich to begin convulsing. Ethan held him still and Carol felt the panic in her brain as he fought for the power to breathe. That's when the blow came to her, «Heavy of the Hitter». 

Ethan, who had felt the pressure to his throat, knew what the identifier had to be, «Closer!» He had only to issue the command and be rid of this leech, «That's a good one to have in a pinch!» Immediately, a black ooze spilled out of Prior Friedrich's left ear and evaporated into nothing. The choir monks in the front seats of the car looked back in astonishment when their superior let out a huge gasp for air and color began returning to his face. They sped the car on with greater haste through the historic district, despite the busier than usual evening traffic.

When they arrived at the Duomo di Milan, the basilica was closed to tourists. A Carthusian who called himself Brother Marco received them in the Piazza del Duomo and brought them to the charterhouse common room underground. There they found three visitors, unusual for a Carthusian cloister common room. The laymen sat admiring the late-romantic period murals painted on either side of the chapel, muted for romantic pieces, but beautiful nevertheless. They were the only splash of color in the place, besides the green and gold altar cloth. The three gentlemen looked out of place and clearly felt it, judging by their hunched posture and barely audible whispers.

“Guests of il Duomo,” Brother Marco intoned in his deep Milanese accent, sounding like an ambassador, “allow me to introduce Prior Friedrich Reinhold of the New Cologne Charterhouse. He comes with his assistant, Brother Grieg, three monks of New Cologne Charterhouse, and three laypersons, like yourselves; Dr. Carol Monet, clinical counselor of San Francisco, Dr. Ethan James, professor of psychology at Boston College, and Heng Wei, Theravada Buddhist master of …,” Brother Marco paused and looked at Heng before saying, “Southeast Asia.”

The three men timidly rose together and approached the candle-lighted vestibule adjoining the common room.

“Know these visitors to Milan Charterhouse, also having arrived this evening; Dr. Michio Kaku, author and professor of theoretical physics at City College of New York, Dr. Brian Greene, author and professor of theoretical physics at Columbia University of New York, and Dr. Steven Kuschner, astronomer and researcher of particle physics and colleague at the Institute for Social Research, Goethe University in Frankfurt.” After they all exchanged handshakes and nervous greetings, the focus returned to Brother Marco with looks of disbelief. He bowed and said, “We all have our talents. Please follow me to the refectory and join us for the evening meal.” 

At the table, the group was joined by Father Giorgio Albertini, the Prior of Milan Charterhouse. He introduced himself and thanked Brother Marco for making them all feel welcome. 

“I apologize, for the one who invited you is not to be found,” Prior Giorgio said plainly and without inflection, causing those assembled to look to each other for support, “but I assure you that he is trustworthy. If he is not here, it is because he meant to be absent for this meeting, or at least makes us wait for some greater purpose.”

“Prior Giorgio, may I ask,” spoke Ethan, “do you know where he is? And can you tell us about him and why he has invited us?”

“Yes, you may,” Prior Giorgio said with a curling smile, “No, I do not. At least, I did yesterday. I will tell you all about him, but why he has brought us together at this time only he knows.”

During dinner more groups arrived from the charterhouses of Spain, England, the Netherlands, and France. So many that the refectory could not hold them all, so they gathered in the main sanctuary of the basilica. As their numbers grew, they wasted no opportunity to seek counsel and learn what their brethren knew. A wealth of wisdom and a millennium of dedication was assembled in that church, men of singular mind and determined focus. It was clear to all of them that the events they faced were “end times” in nature, but whose end they could not determine. 

Each of their respective houses had been visited by individuals gifted with dreamtime awareness, a new concept for most of them. However, many of them, with lives steeped in mysticism, had experienced what Saint John of the Cross called the “dark night of the soul”, a journey of the individual through the unknowable paths of divine light. A life of self denial and hermetic asceticism had freed them from the boundaries of spacetime confinement and allowed them to quickly adopt the dreamtime arts. 

The psychologists and physicists spent the next several hours divulging their research with each other and learning what the monks could teach. As the evening drew long and the apparent organizer of this gathering had not yet arrived, members of the assembly began wondering where they were going to rest for the night. Arrangements were made and all those assembled agreed to meet again the following day.

Author's Note

Please be brutal and blunt, but provide constructive criticism. I'm not one to care for niceness concerning my work. The world won't be nice, even if this is my first attempt at writing.