The Quantum Detective sat motionless at the bus stop. She was wrestling with a question that involved multi-dimensional and in fact hyper-dimensional quantum physics, and well . . . grasshoppers. It was both far bigger and much smaller than matters that occupy most people. She knew she was searching for a cosmic needle in a quantum haystack. It was a certain kind of resolution that she was seeking to the very nature of her work, her understanding of the inner workings of the causal realm by which means a far greater ability to manipulate space time is achieved. During that period she was working on a case for the High Priests of Quardook who reside on the Planet of Vulgari in the Plectrum Sector.
The history of Hyper-Dimensional Quantum Physics on planet Earth goes back only one hundred and fifty years or so to the Nineteenth Century, and even though it sounds sort of hard to understand and possibly even boring, it’s not at all boring. This is because Hyper Dimensional Quantum Physics promises to deliver abundant, limitless, clean and, it must be said, essentially “free” energy. For this reason a lot of people are very interested in it right now, including the Quantum Detective who at that very moment was on the bus stop deep in cogitative thought.
The type of energy that can theoretically be produced from an understanding of Hyper Dimensional Quantum Physics is commonly referred to as Zero-Point energy and it was something that the Quantum Detective was quite familiar with, though not so much in the form that could drive machines and space ships. The Quantum Detective was more familiar with the kind of Zero-Point Energy that could be used to peer into any place-time in the space-time continuum without a television set. She called this Zero-point phenomenon NEST which is her acronym for Nowhere-Notime/Everywhere-Everytime/Space-Time.
We will get to the bit about grass hoppers later. To be completely accurate they were actually locusts though some people saw no point in making the distinction. As we shall discover the Quantum Detective wasn’t one of those people.
It was exactly one minute to eleven in the morning and the notoriously hot Sydney sun was blazing down out of a clear blue sky. The Quantum Detective – her name is Anne – tilted her head ever so slightly to one side. She was listening with her inner sense of hearing for a zero-point communication.
The zero-point communication is the basic stock in trade of the quantum detective. It is also the stock in trade of people who can accurately – and some not so accurately – read tea leaves and tell your fortune. Quantum Detectives tend not to operate in quite the same way as those whom we often refer to as fortune tellers but Quantum Detectives are definitely psychic. They have to be do do their job.
The Zero-Point refers to the fact that all times are in reality no-time and every-time ,while all places are nowhere and every-place, and all of this . . .simultaneously. If the first part of the equation isn’t enough to stump most people then the simultaneously bit usually knocks them off their stool pretty smartly. To say that this concept is difficult to grok is one of the great understatements, which is why good Quantum Detectives are hard to find. To make matters even more slippery, if you do understand it then the prospects of making large amounts of moolah are there for the taking. Let us just say that the Quantum Detective, while not in danger of going hungry was not motivated by the accumulation of materia or money. The Quantum Detective’s interests lay, let us say, elsewhere.
The High Priests of Quardook on the Planet of Vulgari in the Plectrum Sector had been doing very nicely for centuries from the fact that they had managed to understand Zero-Point energy well enough to sell tickets to anytime-anyplace for anyone who could afford it. Central to the travel deals they offered was that travelers are not allowed to change anything not listed on the Live Visit List – known generally as the LVL. You would be correct in assuming that this list is voluminously large. In counterpoint to the allowable elements of the Live Visit List there is also a list of strictly prohibited elements and these change in a fluid schematic depending on what you actually do. The reason that the list was changeable is because the Universe is actually a holographic quantum fractal and elements and situations that appear in 3 D space actually emerge from the cohesive totality of everything that is happening in that time flow. Most people think that the world is just sort of “there” but this is absolutely incorrect. The world is continually arising out of the causal realm at every moment, which is why it’s called the causal realm – it’s causing everything to happen -of course! The universe is in fact a giant fractal hologram that fits into itself as it flows out of itself, like a giant cosmic donut. The fact that the High Priests of Vulgari were in control of such technology was one of the wonders of the cosmos, but control it they did to their extraordinary and enormous financial benefit.
Once you Arrived at your space-time destination it was strictly forboten to tamper with anything not on the LVL, or the priests themselves could be wiped out in a fractal time anomaly. And this dear reader is where things often got tricky. Suffice to say that it was not a good idea to attempt to outsmart the High Priests of Quardook by stepping outside the bounds of the LVL, though many foolish souls have tried. None has ever succeeded, for the High Priests had always correctly understood that their ability to continue steady state operations selling lucrative travel to anytime-anyplace was based on the non-negotiable necessity that people not change anything outside the LVL and absolutely did not engage anything on the prohibited list once they arrived at their destination.
Many people incorrectly believe that when we embark on what is commonly referred to as Time Travel we must not disturb anything. But this is erroneous. You can actually change lots of things. You just can’t change things that really matter. Otherwise you can mess up the present to such a degree that you can end up wiping yourself out. Not a good move some might say and yet if you did wipe yourself out in this way you probably wouldn’t really care because you would never know . . .now would you? So why all the fuss? Good question.
Yes is was Anne, the hyper-sensitive and incredibly strong-willed Quantum Detective who was sitting at the bus stop listening, waiting for the zero-point to self organize and emerge from the everything-nothing. She could feel it beginning to formulate into conscious awareness like a magical tingling sensation. It was an interesting something emerging out of the mysterious nothing. But what?
She could feel it, she could sense it . . .and then . . .the bus arrived and she lost her train. Right then, because she was so close to the self organizing emergence of the zero point communication she would have happily given up getting on the bus to tune in. She was close to securing one of the remaining seven keys to NEST – Nowhere-Notime/Everywhere-Everytime/Space-Time and something mysterious to do with grasshoppers, but as it happened Anne was on her way to a very important something which was her son’s graduation.
There was no question in her mind of being late and with great reluctance she broke her concentration to get on the bus, fully intending to get back into Quantum Detective mode once seated inside. But as these things often go no sooner had she sat down than Mad Larry had spotted her from the back of the bus. The Quantum Detective immediately realized she was in a karmic flow and she has long known that the best way to deal with a karmic flow is to go with it.
A karmic flow is like a surf rip and if you struggle against a karmic flow you will quickly become exhausted. Rather than directly oppose the direction of a karmic flow, just like when you are caught in a rip at the beach, the best approach is to let it carry you and swim parallel to the beach, not directly back towards it. This is easy to do when you’re at the beach if you can remember not to panic. Unfortunately when most people are caught in a karmic flow they don’t see a beach or the direction of the flow and what they often do is thrash about, tire themselves out and drown in a sea of misery. The key to handling a karmic flow is to see the direction and then to choose to be in the flow. This is a level of mastery that most people find difficult at least on occasion. A lot of people never get there in a given life time. Eventually as the Quantum Detective knows, everyone will learn to go with the flow. It is all just a matter of time, which is non-existent anyway, so in a very real sense everything is cool.
Mad Larry lumbered up from the back of the bus to the polite but self-assured middle section. As the karmic flow would have it, there was more-or-less no chance not to say hello to Larry. On this day to make matters more unavoidable Mad Larry was feeling sociable, loquacious and on top of it all. Hello Larry she volunteered as non-committal as she could manage. It was not one of those hellos that carry with it the clear message that you want the other person to go away. Anne wasn’t very good at those kinds of hellos. She was if anything, slightly too accommodating. To be sure she was able to create healthy boundaries, but meanness wasn’t something she was given to.
Hello! Expanded Larry, smiling broadly, a couple of rotten teeth on view. Holding up both hands, opening his palms towards her and spreading his fingers wide he asked cryptically Do you know what this is? He was chuckling softly, holding up his hands. . . Anne had decided to choose this expereince in order to go with the karmic flow, and with choice inevitably comes a certain mystery. She blinked in astonishment. Two hands, she said neutrally. Ah! Said Larry dramatically. It looks like two hands doesn’t it? But what is it really? Anne was none the wiser to the inner meaning of Larry’s two hands. I give up. You’re just going to have to tell me.
Larry pulled himself up and looked her right in the eye. This, he said lowering his voice and sounding suddenly quite normal, is two hands . . . with . . . the answer. He raised and lowered his eyebrows quickly in succession to make the point. With . . .the answer. He said again for added emphasis.
Anne was baffled by this rather bizarre tack that Larry was taking. It wasn’t his usual form at all. Larry’s forte was to simply overwhelm with a stream of conscious monologue. A vocal style that many people colourfully refer to as totally random. Larry’s monologues darted about into places unexpected and frequently unknown. His topics covered an incredibly wide range of subject matter, anything could bob up, but there were certain favourite themes. Egyptian scarab beetles received frequent mention, as did the topic of ocean mollusks. The global financial system . . . and a political ideology that frequently extolled the benefits of anarchy. These were certainly not bad things to be talking about, but they unsettled many listeners due to their very randomness; the very apparent unconnected nature of their presentments within his speech.
Today strangely enough Larry was asking questions and waiting for answers. This was odd behavior indeed. None of this had escaped our Quantum Detective’s notice. She was a truly multi-dimensional detective, which means that apart from having a Sherlock Holmes-like grip on the salient facts of the three dimensional world – the world we appear to occupy – she was able as mentioned to perceive multi-dimensionally and integrate that awareness into 3D space and back again within a very respectable time frame. Sometimes she could accomplish this almost immediately. This is an effect of the cascading quantum fractal hologram localised as Anne the Quantum Detective. Although Anne realized that Larry was not in character, she did not, it must be said, understand immediately what he was on about. That would take time.
One of the basic tenets of the Quantum Detective is: everything means something. Everything in 3D space stands for some deeper often hidden meaning. So what and why was Mad Larry right this moment telling her? She decided to give up the direct approach and pretend to be disinterested. She knew Mad Larry was effectively insane because his ego had taken over his awareness. The surest way to get an ego to cooperate is to feign disinterest. As the saying goes – you can do just about anything to a person and they will forgive you. The one thing people can’t handle is being ignored. That’s fine Larry, look I really wanted to get back to reading my book OK?
The falafel is the answer he said. This is my stop. He started moving as if to get off but he couldn’t drag himself away. He desperately wanted to tell her. The falafel of infinity . . .I have to go he said and as he threw himself off the bus he held her eye. Standing now on the footpath he reached into his coat with all the theatricality of a stage magician and pulled out a falafel roll from an inside pocket which he proceeded to take a big bite of. As the bus moved off Anne kept watching him sensing that something momentous was occurring. She watched through the back window as he held up one hand with the fingers open wide . . .and then closed them. He instantly appeared to disappear.
How very odd thought Anne. Odd, strange and peculiar.
The Quantum Detective 