kroth: the slant

2: the experiment

From my viewpoint in the front passenger seat, facing the monotonous flow of the motorway landscape, it was quite hard to believe in the approach of any world-shaking event; and yet, Uncle Vic had hinted that the result of the Boone demo might – just might – show up as important in the annals of science. A breakthrough of some sort, maybe; but, I thought, probably not sensational – not immediately. The sort of thing that starts by forcing changes in theory which then has an effect on technology which in turn, eventually, alters everyday life; hardly an overnight process. Not likely to plunge anybody's life into immediate chaos. But on the other hand – nowadays there was always the media frenzy to take into account. Journalists might whip it up into the big story of the season. In which case, goodbye to my idea of a quiet holiday….
    I said out loud: “This experiment we're going to see.... You said something about it possibly making history….”
    A playful smirk spread across Vic's profile.
    “You're too young to remember this, but there used to be a series on TV called The Saint.”
    “I've heard of it,” I said.
    Reen said from the back seat, “Always liked Roger Moore, I did. Nice soft-spoken man, biffing the baddies.”
    “And quite often he got biffed back, didn't he?” amplified Vic. “Amazing, how often he got knocked on the head without suffering concussion. And how many times the baddies captured him and could easily have killed him, except....” He glanced at me. “Except....”
    “It would have put an end to the series,” I finished for him.
    “Precisely. You get the point, I see. And it's the same in the never-ending saga of scientific issues. The good old themes crop up again and again only to get knocked, but not fatally, on the head.”
    “You're trying to tell me that nothing's going to get biffed permanently on this trip.”
    “Well, after all, it would be such a pity to kill off this kind of dispute by settling it. A pity for all concerned. Think how sad it would be, for example, if homeopathy – which is unscientific because no one knows why it should work – were accepted by the medical profession merely on the footling grounds that it does work. A pity for the medicos who could no longer sneer, a pity for the homeopathic crowd who could no longer whinge about the establishment, and a pity for condottieri like me who would no longer be able to blast away first on one side of the dispute and then on the other.”
    “Like if they found the Loch Ness Monster.... end of mystery.”
    “Quite! There you've picked an even better example! The press would enjoy one short field day and then, forever and ever, no more pantomime ding-dong oh-yes-it's-real, oh-no-it-isn't. The Monster would become familiar. What a tragic end to a richly productive saga.” He tut-tutted, giving his head a solemn shake.
    A voice from the back of the car: “Come on, Vic, I bet you wouldn't pass up the opportunity, if Nessie emerged from the loch and posed for you.”
    “Trust you, Reen, to see through my pretensions. Yes, I admit, I couldn't afford to miss a genuine monster. However, as far as tomorrow's experiment is concerned, I doubt there'll be much to get excited about.”

                                                  *

We checked into the Rolvenden Hotel, Kensington. Reen went out shopping and Vic set about collecting some notes and photocopies; he told me he was headed for Imperial College library. “A bit of research,” he explained, clicking a briefcase shut.
    “Rather last-minute research,” I remarked.
    “Like last-minute revision. Nice and fresh in the mind.”
    “Ha,” I said, “you wouldn't catch me relying on last-minute revision! A mug's game. Still, you know your business,” I added, remembering that Vic didn't have my phobia about stress. On the contrary, he thrived on it.
    “And judging by your success in exams, you know your business, so now you can enjoy your reward! Don't paint the town red,” he grinned. “Early start tomorrow.”
    He had explained to me that “The Experiment” was scheduled for 10 a.m., so that if anything big were to happen it would be in good time for the evening news. Calling 10 a.m. an “early start” was a typical Vic dig at teenage habits, but I was far from resenting this. I followed him out of his room and gazed appreciatively into mine. It looked as though I was going to be left to my own devices for the afternoon, and that's just how I wanted things to be.
    I told him: “I'll have a flop, a read, a stroll, and then, guess what, I'll…. go and eat some scones at tea time,” I declared. “The town will stay unpainted, at least by me.”
    “Ah, what it is to be young!” sighed Vic, and left.
    I didn't care whether he thought it funny or not – I was grateful for the opportunity to rest and just be me. Anyhow, teenagers are reputed to be lazy, so why fight it? But as I relaxed on the bed, my thoughts wandered, not always keeping to holiday things. They began to flow as if in a dream-jumble, mingling my own affairs with public events that should not have anything to do with me. For some reason I was ceasing to believe in my holiday. In fact I could almost sense “holiday” slip from my grasp and make a dash for the horizon, so I tried to steer my thoughts around to prevent its escape. What, I demanded, was I worried about?
    It was, I admitted, just possible that what I was going to witness tomorrow might involve some stress. But surely it would be other people's stress, not mine. I would see to that. It was up to me, how much I got involved in Vic's schemes. He wasn't demanding anything of me. And after what I had gone through the last year or so, even if he did demand something, I was entitled to be selfish and to refuse. Not that I seriously regarded Vic as the problem. Life was the problem. So –
    Any bothersome events that came my way, I'd shunt them aside for someone else to deal with. Fair enough, eh? By adopting this attitude I was avoiding the alternative, which was to crack up. Thus by being “selfish”, by looking after myself, I was sparing the world the nuisance of having to look after me. Thanks to this enlightened attitude on my part, society would not have to accommodate yet another problem teenager.
    Therefore – no worries, as the Aussies say; here was I, stretched on the bed in my hotel room, with some reading matter within reach and a bedside lamp behind me, and downstairs a restaurant to which I could go down whenever I wished and spread butter and jam on some scones and read my book while sipping tea. A heaven to treasure up in case history is made and I can never be cosily bored again.

                                                 *

I love hotel breakfasts; I reckon I ate more bacon and sausage and toast and marmalade than did Vic and Reen put together. Reen reminisced about her childhood on the Isle of Man and the breakfasts she had then (her parents ran a guest house). While we talked about food, Vic sat lost in thought.
    Reen waxed nostalgic about her childhood and said how much she would love to go and live on the Isle again. Vic shook himself a bit in sudden surprise and said:
    “You never told me that before.”
    “Yes I did, Vic, loads of times. Could we ever do it, do you think? Move back there?”
    “Maybe, someday.”
    “You look a bit put out, dear,” she said, placing a hand on his arm.
    “Only that if you really have mentioned it so often, I am sorry I have taken no notice. The fact is I just can't remember. So I must have ignored you. I must not have been listening.”
    “Don't look so uncomfortable,” she reassured, squeezing his arm. “Men don't listen; they're not built that way. At least you're sorry.”
    What with all this, we finished breakfast without having chatted at all about what we were going to see at ten o'clock. Then it was time to get a move on. Reen waved us goodbye; I don't know whether she could have obtained an invitation to The Experiment if she had been interested – anyhow she definitely wasn't. “I can think of better ways to spend a day in London,” she said.
    “So can I,” said Vic. “See you later.”

Imperial College, South Kensington, London

    In contrast to yesterday, the weather was fine though breezy, and not too hot for London in June. I enjoyed the short drive to Imperial College. This was the first time I had seen the place, and I liked its spacious, modern look as Vic and I threaded our way along concrete walkways past big glass windows. But our first destination turned out to be rather cramped: a surprisingly small room in the Department of Metallurgy.
    It was nothing like the lecture theatre I had expected from once having seen a famous painting of Faraday performing experiments in public. It looked like a cross between an office and a laboratory, crowded with about a dozen people besides Vic and me. I didn't feel like asking questions; I felt heavily out of my depth.
    I heard some chatter but it wasn't loud. A shortish, tanned, bald man in a blue jacket was supervising four younger men working in pairs as they disconnected some leads and began to lift machinery off tables. The blue-jacketed man was in turn watched by others as we all trooped out, following the men carrying the stuff. The procession turned a corner and went through a door and now we indeed were in a proper-sized lecture room, able to seat hundreds. The Faraday type scene after all. Except that the audience was thinly scattered; perhaps twenty-five or so.
    In a very low tone Vic explained to me: “Checking for fraud.” He nodded at the blue-jacketed man who was standing over the machinery while others connected it all up again and examined it. “That's Professor Glover; he's a total skeptic, or he thinks he is. Not a real skeptic like me.” Vic's voice had sunk to a murmur; I strained to hear.
    In an attempt at conversation I, too, murmured: “Not many around yet.”
    “There won't be. Matt insists on playing it down.”
    “Matt? Matt Boone?”
    “Yes. Nervous lad. He wants – he insists – on just a few key figures present. Ah - here he comes now.”
    A scrawny, gangling youngster of about my own age had made an entrance accompanied by a couple who I guessed were his parents. Several people immediately converged on him. As he greeted them he looked subdued, with a slouchy, droop-shouldered posture – until he caught sight of Vic. He then straightened and waved. He detached himself from the group that had clustered about him and came towards us.
    “Glad you could get here, Mr Chandler,” he said to my uncle in a tone of great respect.
    “Glad you could, too, Matthew! I wasn't absolutely sure you would! This is my nephew, Duncan Weemys.”
    The youngster nodded to me and said, “Hope you enjoy the circus.” Switching his attention back to Vic: “I'm not happy with all this, Mr Chandler. I didn't want to come.”
    “The pressure of being a celebrity,” said Vic lightly.
    “I hope for a final result today,” the boy went on.
    “I can't promise to give you any breaks, you know that, Matthew.”
    “I know that, Mr Chandler. That's why I trust you. Oh, well, I'd better get back to work. Mears and Glover are watching to see you don't pass anything to me.”
    “They know better than that, Matthew. Besides, cheating would be impossible. It's not that sort of test.”
    When the lad had gone back to the group of scientists, and Vic and I had sat down in one of the middle rows of seats, I asked: “What kind of test is it?” By this time I was seriously regretting my ignorance. If I had paid proper attention in advance, right from the beginning, to what this was all going to be about, I would – I now realized – be enjoying it much more. However, I could still hope to keep sufficiently on track to have a chance of appreciating the show.
    “It's actually a series of three tests,” Vic explained. “All to do with affecting scientific instruments remotely. Boone is trying to demonstrate, under controlled conditions, that he can use PK to deflect the needle of a gaussmeter, the needle of a Geiger counter and the scale of an electronic precision balance.”
    With a jolt of surprise I realized that the experiment had already started. I had expected an introductory speech from someone, but no, there was no showmanship here at all. This was a businesslike gathering restricted to people who were in the know. It was now obvious that there wasn't going to be anything much to see, as far as the science itself was concerned. Then, by a sudden long link of ideas, I remembered something different yet in a way comparable – some astrophotos Vic had once showed me, consisting of “before” and “after” pictures of the expanding remains of a supernova. The differences had been small, just a slight increase in size of the shell of luminosity from one still to the next. But, wow, when you related it to the distance and the size of the thing, the fact that you could see any change at all in real time – well, it was enough to boggle the mind. The evidence itself was un-dramatic; what it implied was very dramatic indeed.
    “Here comes Mears,” Vic nudged me.
    “Erm – ” said I.
    “Haven't I mentioned him? Zeb Mears from the SPR.”
    A slightly overweight man had detached himself from the group around Boone and strode into the row in front of us. He sat down and turned, to confront us with his thick glasses, wild curly hair and thick parted lips, panting a little. “Well,” he murmured, “look who's in at the death. Might turn out to be a good morning's work, I'd say, eh, Vic? No one can say we haven't been thorough. Yes, reckon we may prove something today.”
    “What if we do?” asked Vic, provocatively.
    “You mean, people won't take any notice?”
    “I mean, what if it's only marginal?”
    I sensed these two were old rivals, if not enemies. The SPR – Society for Psychical Research – must have an axe to grind, and Vic was trying to blunt it.
    “Ha,” said Mears in a “gotcha” tone, “what then of the widely admitted point, that it only takes one successful breakage to destroy a scientific law?”
    “That's the case if you're being hierarchical about it. But what if reality isn't hierarchical? A majoritarian or coherentist structure could keep orthodox science as the mainstream whatever happens today, leaving your 'Paranormal' as mere froth.”
    “Pah! The 'froth' as you call it would soon start chipping away at the mainstream!”
    “Chip away, like in the Sorites – ”
    “Forget your Greek paradoxes. This isn't a game.”
    “Oh, you reckon not?” smiled Vic. “I often feel I might as well be a sports correspondent.”
    Mears turned away, with a sniffy expression, but then he turned back for just a moment with a look of triumph as one of the instruments honked BEEEEP and the whole room stiffened to attention.
    “The Geiger counter! It has registered.”
    I heard some cheers. There was jostling up front. People were striving to look at the readings. I heard someone call, “Try it again, Matt!” – and then I heard a second, confirmatory wail of the Geiger.
    I sat frozenly thinking: The Saint has been given his final knock on the head.
    Then, without knowing why, I shivered.
    Vic was patting Zeb Mears on the shoulder, “There you go. Congratulations. History made.”
    Mears, however, did not gloat. He did not respond at all to the congratulations; instead, he moved fast along the row of seats, kicking at some of them in his haste.
    It gave me something to say, something to shake my thoughts out of their paralysis. “Look at him,” I said to Vic; “he's leaving the room.”
    “Who? Mears? Yes, I dare say he wants to make sure he gets his own version out first.... But old Zeb's a neurotic; really there's no point in hurrying now. Come on, let's congratulate Matthew. And while I'm about it I had better review the setup. Then – back to the Rolvenden for lunch.”
    Vic made notes as he talked to the staff and to the star of the show, while I stood around dazedly, aware that something big had happened but not sure of my personal reaction. Matt Boone was responding in monosyllables to all the congratulations and the high frequency of excited discussion; I didn't blame him at all for withdrawing into his shell. I caught his eye, gave him a thumbs-up sign and he grinned wryly back at me. It was as if he had read the thought behind my gesture: good luck, mate, you'll need it. I left it at that. Imagining myself in his shoes, I retreated to give him space, or what would have been space if the rest of the mob had done likewise.
    Eventually, the gathering began to disperse and Vic and I joined the drift towards the door. As soon as we stepped outside the building, cameras flashed in our faces. Vic was thronged by half a dozen reporters. “Mr Chandler, do you have a statement?” “What's the verdict, Mr Chandler?”
    “You people aren't supposed to be here, you know.”
    One woman said tartly, “They said no reporters at the meeting. They said nothing about no reporters afterwards!”
    “Mr Chandler, can you tell us if Matt Boone has disproved the laws of physics?” asked a bespectacled young man.
    “Ask him when he comes out,” Vic evaded.
    “Come on, Mr Chandler, you know he hates talking to us!”
    Vic threw out phrases: “You'll hear from me later today.... Positive result.... Yes, I said, a positive result.... Er, that's all I intend to say at this stage.”