Love Story: In The Web of Life Ken Renshaw (the best novels to read TXT) 📖

Steve got up and got a glass of iced tea fromthe table and raised it in a toast, "I'll drink tothat."

Over lunch we chatted about living in themountains and desert, the wildlife we saw, the aesthetics of such alife. I told them about being raised in the woods in the smallnorthern California logging town, and how the gossip grapevineworked, as it did in Rocky Butte. We got talking about college, andI told him about the Garabedian brothers.

"When I was in upper division, my third andfourth years of engineering school, I took some classes with a pairof identical twins, Erin and Eric Garabedian. They were reallysmart and could have been straight-A students by themselves. Inthat school, it was really hard to get A's. You had to study reallyhard and do seemingly endless assignments of problem sets to getgood grades. Erin and Eric had a great advantage, they could studytogether, divide the problems sets of solving equations or doingengineering calculations requiring a lot of time. It seemed that ifeach of them studied half of the material they both knew all of it.When they took exams, they purposely sat far apart, and asked forthe instructor to take note, because they would usually get thesame score and miss the same problems: they didn't want to beaccused of cheating.

"Somehow they psychically communicated. Theycould synchronize their thinking."

Steve smiled and said, "It doesn't seem unusualto me–that's what I would expect from twins. It is a very highbandwidth case, though."

"Bandwidth?" I asked.

"The electrical signals of the nerves in theparts of our brains where we process sensory data are of a very lowfrequency, a few cycles per second, a tenth or twentieth of thefrequency on our power lines, sixty cycles. When I remote sense, Ilisten to recorded sounds through earphones to help me slow mybrainwaves down to bellow five cycles. Information comes veryslowly at those frequencies. Follow me and I will showyou.'

I followed Steve into an office off his livingroom. He changed some connections on his PC and thensaid,

"Ten or fifteen years ago all our PCscommunicated over dial-up phone lines. I have my PC connected tothe low bandwidth telephone line that comes all the way out herefrom Rocky Butte. I am going to load the web page from The RockyButte News."

We watched as for about two minutes as theimage of the newspaper web page loaded. First, with vague imagesand then text, then with the images gradually filling in andeventually becoming sharp and clear.

"This is how my usual remote sensing works. Atfirst, there are only vague outlines and sparse sensoryinformation. As time goes on, the pictures and sensory data fill inwith more detail. I might spend a half hour 'loading a page,' so tospeak. Remote sensors have to be trained and disciplined to notjump to conclusions about what is coming in. There is a lot of roomfor error if you do.

"I can't talk about my Government work, but Ican give you a made-up example that shows the process. For a taskthey might give me a photo of somebody of interest, call him Mr. X.And I would go into meditation and report what I sensed. It mightgo like this, working with a guide to help steer me:

Me: 'an open place, no trees around.Northwestern part of US.'

Guide: 'A little closer on theplace.'

Me: 'somewhere people visit for naturalwonders. A feeling of great devastation from fire. Many peoplestanding around, waiting for something, sense of excitement,standing on a path of boards.'

Guide: 'Is the excitement about thefire?'

Me: 'No the fire was before, nature isrepairing itself.'

Guide: 'Go back to the people. What are theylooking at?'

Me: 'some kind of white dome. White stuffcoming out of the dome.'

Guide: 'What can they smell?'

Me: 'Not a pleasant smell, some kind ofchemical.'

Guide: 'What can they hear?'

Me: 'Hissing and chugging sound. People talkingexcitedly.'

Guide: 'What kind of movement do theysee?'

Me: 'Something white squirting from the dome,erratic.'

Guide: 'What kind of structures or buildingscan people see?'

Me: 'There is something big and old behind thepeople.'

"If we continued on, I would gatherincreasingly detailed information. If we stopped right here, what Isensed may be of use to an intelligence analyst. If he hadinformation from other sources that Mr. X had rented a car inJackson Hole, Wyoming the day before, and entered YellowstoneNational Park that morning, he might conclude that Mr. X was at theviewing area for the geyser 'Old Faithful.' With time, I might havebeen able to tell that it was 'Old Faithful' and the intelligenceanalyst could have used that information to verify the car rentaland park entrance information.

"With my communication with Lucy, I didn'treally have much detailed information. I knew where she was,geographically, knew she was very cold and sad, and that she wasinside something made of logs. I didn't see any pictures. It wasmore like part of a 140 character tweet than a webpicture."

Steve changed the connection to the PC andimmediately the Rocky Butte News web page appeared.

"I am glad I have this satellite link now. Itis thousands of times faster that the dial-up circuit."

"Steve," I said, "Let's go back outside. I'dlike to bounce some ideas off you."

We rejoined Georgia who was sitting on thedeck, reading a book,

"Are you familiar with the mathematicianCandice Montgomery's work on eight-dimensional spaces?"

Steve replied, "Yes, I have looked at herpapers and talked to her. Although I am not an expert onmathematical subjects, her thesis sounds good to me. I have to say:birds don't need ornithology or aerodynamics to fly; they simply doit. People doing remote sensing don't need eight-dimensional space:we believe in the phenomenon because of personal experience. We arenot the audience for Dr. Montgomery's papers."

I paused for a minute and then said, "I thoughtI would present a little bit of it in the trial to refute anyexperts they might produce saying that there is no scientificevidence that remote sensing is real. The jury doesn't have tounderstand the theory. They only have to believe Dr. Montgomeryknows what she is talking about. It is important to have thescientific viewpoint in the record for reference in othertrials.

"I will make the jury believe what you do isreal and, parenthetically, has a scientific basis.