Denton grinned. “Take that, Moriarty!”
Consider: A star is nothing if not a war between the strong nuclear force and gravity. The intense fuel of the star wants to explode, expand outward. But gravity is working in exactly the opposite direction, forcing the star’s energy down into itself.
Gevorah (restriction, judgment) is the gravitational force. Gravity is its embodiment. And chesed (love, expansion) is the nuclear force—light. So there is a lesson for us in the stars, you see? Gravity and light must dance together, expansion and contraction, in balance, just like judgment and mercy. This is the dance of the spheres, of life.
If gevorah and chesed have an equivalent in the physical realm, then so do good and evil. This is where the most critical aspect of my work has been done. I have found the physical correspondences of good and evil. The energy patterns of matter in the higher dimension, the fifth dimension, cannot be understood without them.
The Midrash says that for every blade of grass there is an angel who has the sole task of leaning over it and whispering, “Grow, grow.” This is not far from the truth, although it would be more accurate to say that there is also a demon leaning over it saying, “Die, die.” The life impulse and the death impulse: both exist in equal measure.
It is all there in my equation, the equation. Indeed, when my work becomes public there will be a revolution in the sciences such has not been seen since Galileo first trained a telescope at the stars. This is why the work must not be allowed to perish in this place.
But back to the point. At the subatomic level we can get close to a glimpse of the true nature of physical matter—energy. It is at this level that we find
[Notation: Further pages of this entry missing]
…
Nearly all of my work for the past ten years has been concerned in some way with the fifth dimension. By exploring the three dimensions of space scientists can only learn what and where. The fourth dimension of time allows us to learn when. But the fifth dimension… the fifth dimension will tell us why.
To visualize the fifth dimension first visualize one dimension by itself, North–South, a line one atom wide. By adding a second dimension, East–West, every atom on the North–South line is repeated again and again for every atom in the East–West dimension, forming a flat plane. The entire flat plane of North–South and East–West is multiplied again and again for every atom of Up–Down, making a cube. And when you add the dimension of time, every atom of three-dimensional space in that cube exists anew for each microsecond of time. This room I am sitting in, this chair—it is not the same room and the same chair as it was a second ago, and it will not be the same a second from now. Thus it stands to reason that in the fifth dimension every atom of three-dimensional space in each microsecond of time exists over and over and over again—but repeated in what? What is the fifth axis?
According to kabbalists, the fifth dimension is the dimension of good and evil. To me it is the spiritual dimension, the dimension of meaning. The fifth dimension is: every atom of three-dimensional space in each microsecond of time connected to every other atom of three-dimensional space in each microsecond of time. In other words, the fifth dimension is the living pattern. It is the dimension of interconnection, of relationships, a tapestry of cause and effect.
If we could read the fifth dimension we would be able to see the pattern that leads up to every action. And if we could trace back every thread of that pattern, back and back, we would be able to identify every cause of that effect, and the causes of the causes, and the causes of the causes of the causes, back and back until all causes merge into a single cause at the start of time.
We would be able to answer the question “Why?”—not only for every individual action, but for the start of life itself.
…
While deep in meditation, on a night just before things changed forever in Brezeziny, I had a vision. I saw a ladder, Jacob’s ladder. From the rungs of the ladder hung entire universes. To the right, the ladder grew increasingly bright until the end of the continuum was pure light. To the left, the ladder grew darker and darker until the end was so black it could only be described as the utter absence of light. Our own universe was exactly in the middle of the ladder, hanging from the middle rung. An angel pointed to it and said, “Only from here may souls escape.”
Then I saw the ladder reshape itself until it was a wheel, a wheel of fire that was round like a globe and divided into four segments. Then it changed again, this time into the figure of a man, a man made of stars, of universes. The head of the man was bathed in solid light and his feet vanished into darkness. At the center of the man was the navel and an umbilicus of light and energy grew there, shooting up, up, into someplace beyond the material, even beyond the fifth dimension.
When I came back to myself, I knew I had been given a gift. Even in science, there is an iron veil between what we can learn—the facts of our own cage of space-time—and what lies beyond. We are utterly cut off from knowing the Other except, perhaps, in such dreams.
But now that I have experienced Auschwitz I can only wonder, my Lord G-d, if this is the middle of the ladder, if our own world is in the center and to one side lie heavens and to the other lie hells, then how bad must Hell be?
6
Distance is not in heaven as it is here. Here is a limited distance and therefore measurable. There is it limitless and therefore immeasurable.
6.1. Jill Talcott
Jill wasn’t sleeping anymore. Nate wasn’t, either. He had bruised circles under his eyes. On his olive-colored skin the circles were purple and sage, which she found herself staring at sometimes, marveling over the way the desert colors contrasted against his thick black lashes, like a midnight sunset.
Things could not be better. Most of the staff were on summer vacation and the physics department had received a large grant from Microsoft. Everyone was congratulating Grover and Chalmers: Grover because the quantum computer was the reason for Microsoft’s generosity, Chalmers because he held the check. This kept both of them off her back. There was lots of talk about the Udub’s physics program becoming world-class. Jill smirked to herself and continued her subterranean journeys to the basement lab. If they only knew.
Knew this: that the one-minus-one was the most important thing that had happened to science, ever. And it was hers, all hers.
She and Nate went over to her house, late every afternoon, to check and log the control group. It amused her that they would pull up to the curb in that unassuming neighborhood, where programmers in jeans or marketing types in Dockers were arriving home for the day. And she and Nate, toting her briefcase and his laptop, getting out like normal people and opening up the door to her little house, no one giving them the slightest glance. Some days she laughed out loud.
She tried to remain objective, tried not to allow herself to project too much on the subjects or anticipate results. But there was no denying that altering the one-minus-one had an effect on the subjects in the basement lab. Their mates in the control group at home, the mice and the virus and fruit, appeared normal when considered in their own right, but in comparison with their twins in the lab they were… dimmer somehow, as if existing in slow motion or with great apathy.
The lab mice were glossy and racing around, rising up on their hind legs and sniffing, copulating almost continually, even male on male when she and Nate separated the sexes to give the poor females a break. The virus was flourishing so rampantly they’d added more dishes. The original cultures in the lab were now in three dishes each, compared to the single dish at Jill’s house. The fruit refused to decay.