Planar Reality

Damien wiped down the seat belt and head and arm rests. Since COVID, getting on a plane required a new ritual. After stowing his backpack, he sat back. Damien became familiar with the arm controls and adjusted the screen. He looked at the flight path. It was formed from a dissipating thread of jet trails, forming the treasure map that led to the dreamed of promised land. He had worked hard to be worthy of the dreams he had once imagined.

Damien watched the people coming into the plane. He remembered his first time overseas. At age 19, Damien had dedicated his life to finding enlightenment, with a personal vow to do his best to help all beings. All his life he had dreamed of going to the old country. The whispers of the ancestors in his blood had pushed him to learn. Their murmurs did not cease until he had pushed himself physically and studied to exhaustion, so fatigue drained him of thought. He realized the depth of what he had to learn. Most importantly, he realized that everything that can be known has not yet been discovered, nor would ever be known. While so many fantasize about leaving their countries of birth, to find the western pure land, his destiny was to return.

Damien was grateful for his life in the New World. He was appreciative of the gifts his ancestors had bequeathed. They had afforded him bountiful privileges. He had been raised as a little infant god. His parents had nourished him in the earthly realm. His mother had specialized in teaching him about the unearthly, angelic realms. Damien remembered how he had to untangle the effects of their innocent errors. He repeatedly chose to guard moral lessons that did not serve to make life easier. He refused to abandon his heartfelt beliefs, even when they were not coherent with current truths. Over his life, they had proved to hold great value. He chose to walk his own path. The road less traveled was not easy.

He had found a partner, Martine, who helped him realize a bespoke lifestyle. Martine had been his anchor. Having her beside him meant his spirit was free to follow the pull of time, that traced the path to simpler beginnings. The combination of luck and his determination had provided him with the opportunity to head an archaeological team. The work had made his reputation. He was on his way to win the prestigious Vega award then to be honoured at a celebration in Greece and begin his research. He was still grieving. Martine had recently died, now he needed to keep carrying on. He felt untethered.

An attractive elderly woman came and sat beside him. She smiled and said, “Slue, whatta ya at.”

Damien was confused. He did a vague translation, as Canadians are prone to do, and politely replied, “Good morning, pleased to meet you.”

She replied, “Where’s ya longs to?”

Damien had no idea what she had said and queried, “Pardon me.”

The lady let out a warm laugh. Damien felt a bubble form around them. The woman constantly chattered in her lilting song like manner, as she fastened her seat buckle, arranged her purse and bag. She explained, “I’m from Noof’nland don’t ya know? I’m just so glad to leave de lolly and slob ice and de Dwy, d’ere de short sudden storms and de fairy storms on mauzy days bringing de nippers, da mosquitoes. I’m off to see my daughter in de old country. She done got married off to a Europee’yin.”

Damien smiled. Her chatter caused Damien’s thoughts to change. In a blink Damien was transported to the land of myth. He felt a spirit rising from the dead. It was Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead and justice. The Lord of Love, King of the Living had established laws, culture and agriculture alongside Isis, his queen and consort. Osiris died and was cut to pieces. Isis reunited him. Their lineage extended to Zeus and Persephone, who produced a son, the underground Chthonic god, Zagreus. The Titans, killed Zagreus, leaving only his heart, which Zeus found and protected. Zeus killed and burned the Titans. From their ashes humanity was born. Dionysius, one of the twice born, associated with the mythical Bennu bird, who rises from the ashes, inherited his body from the Titans and the divine spark of the soul from the heart of Zagreus.

Damien appreciated that this woman held the primal spark that creates a fire within. Homo erectus, modern-day human beings, were the earliest users of fire. This woman melted the very iron in his blood. It crumbled and dissolved, creating simple conditions required for a unique rebirth. Diamonds naturally form when slabs of rock are melted in the molten lava released from earthquakes.

The woman stopped her chatter saying, “Here I’s told you about my daughter dat I’m visiting, and you haven’t said a word.”

Damien replied, “I’m off to a meeting and research.”

“G’wan. I’d be expecting you should tell me about it.”

Damien’s eyes rolled. This lady’s open simplicity was as charming as her speech. He replied. “On his deathbed, my grandfather said that one day I should ride the cable cars in Meteora, Greece. I’m on my way.”

“I just dies at ya,” said the woman. “I’m havin’ to dig to find out more.”

Damien looked at the woman beside him A first encounter with a stranger can unveil the avatar-self. Damien became a character in the James Bond film ‘For your eyes only’ filmed at Meteora, Greece. He introduced himself.

“I am attending a conference, getting awarded a medal and then visiting Meteora where I’ll be doing research at monasteries built on the sandstone conglomerate pillars formed about 60 million years ago. They formed when the seabed shifted upwards by tectonic movement and are shaped by weathering. The pillars are an excellent medium through which history can be speculated.”

Mary nodded, “Fair weather to ya.”

Damien continued. “My name is Damien. I’m a paleontologist. Have you heard about Paul Abell, on Mary Leakey’s team? He uncovered the ‘Laetoli Footprints’ in volcanic ash. The Wonderwerk caves in South Africa, contain ash sediments from Early Stone Age humans two million years ago and the Devil’s trails in Roccafina, Italy demonstrate there are different Neanderthal human species. Myth is no stranger to stories based on messages in the ashes. Some people look for footprints that reveal secret passages and ‘locked room' mysteries. I look for footprints that lead to the history of life forms found in sediments. I’m looking for petrified microscopic organisms called diatoms, to understand climate change. I’ll compare them to the ash of other sites to determine local and global climate changes.”

Mary waved her index finger saying, “Boy, you’re not being a rotter are ye? No being crooked son. Finding wee little animal footprints. Curious. I’m after knowing what you’r saying Buddy.”

Damien laughed. “M’am, let me explain.”

Mary interrupted him. “Oh, will ya call me Mary, like our blessed virgin. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Look! It’s time.”

The stewardess approached offering drinks. “I’ll have a screech,” Mary said. The stewardess looked at her without understanding. “Oh, a rum and orange juice if you please.” Mary clarified, "It makes you whistle like the screeching wind." Damien said, “I’ll have one too please.”

Mary raised her glass, and Damien followed her lead repeating the toast, “Long may your big jib draw.”

Prompted by Mary, Damien explained. “I’m an archeological biochemist. “

Mary asked, “So what is it that drives ya?”

Damien's face had a crooked smile when he realized that this plane was carrying the first of the last of a generation. He answered, “I enjoy combining fact and fiction, data and intuition, to test what I think is possible. When I first saw the horseshoe formation of pillars in Meteora I thought they were tongues of fire. I think they look like a localized ‘Ring of Fire’. Refusing this is like denying that the Earth was once one land mass. Deep, volcanic activity and movements of molten lava, forced the alluvial fan of estuaries upward, creating the ‘Stone Forest.’ ”

Mary said, “A single line can have two hooks.

Damien continued, “Our generation is faced with seemingly impossible challenges. I have been intrigued by ideals. I devote my time and intelligence to develop a diasporic fusion of science and myth. It’s my form of meditation, to gain enlightenment. I respect the connection between the inhabitants, the Earth and the universe and am fascinated by seeking truth.

"I look to connect universal truth, known through science, and personal thought. Religious myths call truth an all-consuming holy fire, known by many names such as Agni the Sanskrit Vedic fire god of Hinduism or the Christian Holy Spirit or Divine consciousness. Truth guards the light of the soul. Have you heard of the concept of Amitabha, the immeasurable light of Buddhism? Amitabha is thought to be liberated in a Western Pure land paradise, however, on many counts, the masses in the West have not attained a higher state of consciousness.

"Enlightenment has seldom been manifested in the actions of those who live in the land of the setting sun. The allure of quick profit and instantaneous gratification often erases ideals. The Land of Bliss is one of the major contributors to exploiting resources, causing unpredictable man made temperature changes that affect global currents and climate changes. Warnings about developing long term sustainable lifestyles have been ignored. Fossil fuels are being depleted, not simply because of population explosions but because of the refusal to act prudently and to develop available alternatives."

Damien had blurted out these thoughts to Mary. She said, “Lord thunderin’ Jesus, this all seems very tingly. Easy b’y. Don’t want to hear some closely guarded secrets and then pay the price.”

Damien chuckled saying, “I am a small cog in the gears of a clockwork universe. I just happen to be close to the hub, where the innocent and weak are protected. At the hub, there is relatively less distance traveled than on the outside of the wheel. It’s Aristotle’s wheel paradox. Measuring time depends on the distance travelled. Zeno’s paradox shows that the infinite space between two finite points forms a series of fractions, that when added together, equal one. Zero once equalled one. At the hub, the observed distance traveled is zero, and there is no time.

“I look at the quantum Zeno effect. In a quantum world, light moves at a constant velocity. At the zero-point, infinite rays of straight-line planar vectors of light, intersect at planes, forming the tangents of a circle. They can merge and connect forming a crazy circle within a circle. Imagine a sponge, with space within space, increasing surface area. This means more connections can be made. The connections form spokes that join to space creating a whole of the emptiness that holds the power of zero.

"On its own, zero represents the void, but behind another cipher, it exponentially increases value. Symbolically, two zeroes join and create two twisted opposites forming a figure eight. It is the sign of infinity and made up of two sine waves. A wave connects points that are attracted to each other, yet always keep their respective distance. Overlapping longitudinal waves of energy moving in one direction, cause horizontal movement of particles, atoms, individuals, the earth and the universe, to move in opposite direction."

Damien stopped his monologue. Mary was staring out the window. “It’s an hour by sun.” The sun was setting. The clouds below were tinged with red. The passengers knew there was a potential risk on this trip. A thin veil of volcanic particulates, spreading from recent eruptions in Iceland, had found its way to them. Inside the plane, an electrostatic charge made the hair on arms stand up. The stench of sulphur made their eyes water.

The stewardess delivered warm damp towels. Mary said, “I’ve got eyes like a caplin goin’ offshore. We’re like fish with bloodshot eyes. Dis cloth will feel good. Da older a crab da tougher its claws, but here we are. Dis is a fine kettle of fish. Don’t you mind. We’ll wait a fair wind and surely, we’ll get one.”

Then the captain announced, “Fasten your seatbelt. Put your seats and tables in the upright position. Place all belongings under your seat. Prepare yourself. We are about to idle and drop beneath the ash cloud.”

Within the minute, the plane dropped. Damien’s stomach lurched. Turbulence shook the plane. It felt like the rivets on the wings were shaken loose. The vertigo caused feelings of dread and awe.

Mary put her hand over his forearm. “There’s devil to pay and no pitch hot. I did not get on this plane to give her the main sheet. Let’s hope we are prepared for this. I intend to have a good trip and get back home!” She started chattering about going to church and being in the choir and began to quietly hum.

Damien observed his feelings. Using what might be considered imagination, he reminded himself to ground. While flying in the air, this required using the valued resources of his mind. He breathed evenly. Using the light seen with his inner eye, he connected to an oasis. It was as real and tangible as any belief gained from witnessing how acrobats leap, grab and spin on an invisible rope. He realized that this was what Mary was doing with her song. He put his hand over hers as the plane shuddered and shook in its descent.

Damien was grateful when the plane leveled out. It reminded him that what is taken for granted is most noticeably grieved when it is removed.

Crisis averted, the captain again spoke, “You can unfasten your seatbelt.”

Mary chatted. “Mind now – we’ve made it through that. Look- here comes the stewardess. I'm ready for some taken up?”

Damien looked at the food trays and realized he was hungry. They ate. Mary said. Yes, b’y that was good. I was just ‘bout gutfounded. Let’s stay where we’re at to ‘till I comes where your at.”

After the meal Damien closed his eyes. He needed to rest. The conference entitled, ‘The Sky's the Limit’, held new meaning. Damien reflected,“We are at the mercy of the forces of nature."

Damien drifted into the hypnagogic state, between wakefulness and sleep. It was here that he pursued what the Dutch used to call ‘a waste of time’. He used these idle hours to scratch the surface of his understanding. Melville described how sailors used the bones of the prized pure white whales, once considered the indomitable monster, to carve scrimshaw that is stained with the ash of fires, gun powder and protective juices. Damien scraped, cleaned and sharpened his tools of thought. He sunk his teeth into knowledge from a broad range of subjects.

The bones, that made his blood swirl, protected the large, developed brain of humans. The brain holds a structural resemblance to the cosmic web of the universe. The brain deals with Nature, the wild leviathan. Nature is a massive beast that cannot be overpowered as it carries storms, with electrical impulses and light. Expanding over infinite distances at light speeds, the indefinite white carries all colours of the spectrum. Damian was to provide options needed to cope with the supernatural and unknown that hides in the black shadows.

Damien was a specialized Internaut, (the French word for internet user). Damien worked outside of the boundaries of any given system. He could question how facts were established. Damien assumed responsibility to establish a change in mindset, to help poorly prepared inhabitants of Earth, connect body, mind and spirit.

He was a quantum mechanical sensor, prepared to transform what many call waste, into sense datum, the immediate objects of perception that often evade the intellectual and material domain. Aware of the circularity in logistics and supply, Damien was ready to redesign, reduce, reuse, renew, repair, recycle and retrieve the beautiful beast, at the source of power. Thoughts, particles and waves of the past are upcycled in the present and create the rippling nature of the galactic glue future through the innate entropy of chaos. They can lead to nightmarish or paradisiacal scenarios. As old information becomes non-functional, he was to postulate what to accept, ignore, forget or abandon, to help remove confusion and establish a dream that the ancients had only began to imagine.

Damien looked into his mind’s eye. He saw through the planes of the light cone formed in a present moment. Damien was part of the Nouvelle vague. He tuned into the frequency of the era. Each era marks their limits of understanding. He was to train the next generation of innovative team players in the technology and applications of artificial intelligence. They needed to untangle from local conditions and continuously create sustainable conditions using what is perceived as real.

He brought them into the hub, where there is a non-zero probability of encountering a lower- energy quantum state. He was headed to the zero point, the singularity of the source, where timeless familiar patterns emerge. In the timeless moment, gliding without movement, in what appears a straight line along a planar cut in the light cone, he could soar through the winds of change.

Damien entered the event horizon, the point of no return in a black hole. Using a force born of the pull of aggregations, beyond the gravity of dark matter, Damien connected to regular matter using weak interactions. A word said here, and action done there, could create the quiet static fuzz of undulating waves that interacted, compounding the effect.

Damien was a well -tuned human instrument who could create the conditions required for quantum tunnelling, not by crashing, but by penetrating matter. Playing evenly timed notes on any instrument creates resultant waves, with natural peaks and troughs, that through interference, generate complex repeatable rhythm signatures. Distortions, symptomatic of fuzzy dark matter, create a force that can open new avenues through what might be seen in the nothing.

Damien was called an intuitive medium. In the one in a billion-chance, Damien established spirit to spirit communication that connects everywhere in the galaxy at once and creates nonlocal portals that open wormholes to the other side of a barrier. He had a vague grasp of how parametrically gathered fractals in abelian and nonabelian space can operate. Damien let ignorance and knowledge, life and death, wisdom and folly meet, then instantly teleport him beyond an illusion of limited perception, beyond predator- prey, parasite- host and symbiotic relationships.

The light cone moves infinitely from any one point, into the past and projects forward into the future that holds eternity. Damien viewed existence as seen from afar on a flat universe. Damian was committed to establishing the beautiful functional, long-standing pillars of theory that could survive the test of time without hurting others or the fragile world.

Damien was to be used as window dressing. He was to model how to collapse the wave function and create the spark, when the particle penetrates through the quantum Zeno effect. The concept had been applied to commerce, where the god Mammon still ruled.

Navigating the virtual world of Decentraland, where consumerism is based on cryptocurrency, depended on marketing and educating the masses on how to move through the chaos of the digitally identified metaverse. Humanity still would need to choose how to follow the inertia generated from the clouds of probability. They could stay neutral, or shift gears in order to face or avoid collisions. The question remained if they were wise enough to choose sustainability.

Damien awoke from his waking dream state. The sun was rising. The light in the east dispersed through the clouds. Resonating alternate pathways of straight rays of light hit each other. The incident light was refracted. A glory, a complete rainbow, shone to the west. It held the shadow of the plane inside. It simultaneously formed a reflection of the glory, with the plane’s shadows going in the opposite directions.

Damien showed Mary who said, “I knows I’m not stun but g’wan, who would have thought such a sight could appear."

They talked about reflections and refractions. Mary said, “Da only thing dat is certain is change. De future is as transient as light bouncing off de water in de clouds. De present will soon enough be a distorted shadow of de past.”

Damien appreciated Mary’s comment. The world was changing at exponential rates. Technology was forming a new kind of spirituality.

The plane was soon going to land. Mary took his arm. “Boy- we’ve been through quite an adventure. How’s about you drop me an email time to time. I’d be wanting to know how you are doing. Lodge your worries on da bridge and tells me ‘ows you’re gettin’ on from time to time.”

Sharing the fear of the plane crashing with Mary, and the charm of her Newfinese, let a new thought penetrate and transform light into matter. Perhaps enlightenment was a dream, but this plane trip had cut a new slice through the light cone. Coordinates were exchanged. Mary said, “You’ll be sure to drop over ’round by and by to be sure. I’m glad to see de future is in such capable hands and I would enjoy hanging on to you.”

Damien smiled when he met Mary’ daughter. He was surprised at how natural it felt when Mary gave him a hug as they parted ways. Her last words were, “Write soon. Fair weather to ya and snow to your heels.”

As Damien got into his taxi, he was thankful that the driver could communicate in broken English. As they drove to the conference center Damien thought about his trip. He seldom bothered talking to someone who sat beside him on a plane, but Mary had drawn him into conversation.

She was lovely. This fellow Canadian, a chip off the Rock, used the charm of the third national language to subtly form a connection. Isolated from the Old and New World, she had learned how to lead others to a sacred space of beauty with her words and actions. She had followed the footprints of individuals who dealt with hardship and adversity. She let the message of her community’s spirit echo and this had shaken his heart and formed the spark of a new flame that lit the way forward.