The Big Dark Sky (87)
During the last hour of their journey, as though inspired by the banshee shrieking of the wind and the harried rain clattering across the roof, Ganesh Patel began to regale Kenny and Leigh Ann with true stories of synchronicity, incredible and meaningful and sometimes spooky coincidences that suggested a mysterious structure to the world. If at first it seemed he drifted to the subject with no more intention than he might have arrived at a discussion of a recent popular film, it soon became apparent that he was preparing his companions for some situation he suspected might lie ahead of them this night.
“A century ago,” Ganesh said, “Werner Heisenberg, a physicist perhaps as great as Einstein, finished the calculations that confirm the theory of quantum mechanics. It’s the only fundamental theory of the structure of reality that has never been proven wrong. All of our advanced technology—cell phones, the internet, computers—is based on quantum mechanics. It works. Yet no one understands how it can be true or why it works. At the subatomic level, on the quantum level, nothing is certain, reality is tenuous. The particles and waves from which reality is woven don’t behave by any rules. At the deepest level, all matter—reality itself—appears as fragile as a spider’s web. There is even evidence—plenty of it—that reality on the quantum level behaves differently when it is studied from when it is not, suggesting that mere human observation can affect it.”
From the back seat, Leigh Ann said, “Here comes Carl.”
“Carl who?” Kenny asked.
“Mr. Synchronicity,” Leigh Ann said. “Like how we met at the Eldorado club.”
“I knew the word but not where it comes from,” Kenny said.
Ganesh said, “Carl Jung. He theorized, among other things, that mind and matter are entwined, that as individuals and as a community of minds, we can affect reality, even unconsciously create it. He felt that incredible coincidences proved it. You know about Tutankhamen?”
Kenny said, “Boy king of Egypt way back when.”
“In early 1922, the famed archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen. This was the biggest news story in the world, with excited speculation that a curse would bring death to whoever disturbed the mummified pharaoh. While still in Egypt, Carnarvon, who had funded the search, fell ill from an insect bite and died at two o’clock in the morning on April fifth.”
“Interesting coincidence, but not incredible,” Kenny said.
Ganesh held up one hand. “There’s more, and it suggests that tens of thousands of people, focused on the same expectation, can unwittingly affect reality and make that expectation come to pass. At the precise moment of Lord Carnarvon’s death, all the lights in Cairo failed. And also at the same instant, in London, his dog howled and dropped dead.”
Leigh Ann said, “I don’t like stories about dogs dying.”
“Who does?” Ganesh agreed. “Here’s one without a dog. It’s a weird coincidence that suggests we possess a sense of the strange order hidden inside quantum chaos, but we can’t grasp how it will manifest. Dr. Jeffrey Smith, a Stanford University professor, suffered a heart attack. After recovering, he asked a psychic named Elizabeth Steen when he would die. She cited a date in April 1969. Later, she predicted a devastating seismic event in San Francisco for that same day, which led to media stories and a major earthquake scare. On the fateful date, the quake didn’t happen, and Dr. Smith didn’t pass away—but the psychic, Ms. Steen, died of a stroke.”
“All this death stuff is creeping me out,” Kenny said just as they entered a swale in the roadway and wings of water flared up on both sides of the Suburban, causing him to think of the River Styx and the land of the dead that was said to lie beyond it, which was unfortunately how his mind worked when he was stressed.
“Synchronicity isn’t just about death,” Ganesh said.
“But what does all this mean?” Kenny asked.
“And why,” Leigh Ann wondered, “do I have the feeling it has something to do with why we’re here?”
Ganesh said, “Here’s one that’ll make you feel better. On March 1, 1950, the fifteen members of the choir at the West Side Baptist Church in Beatrice, Nebraska, were scheduled for choir practice at seven thirty in the evening. None had ever been late. That evening, every one of them was late, each for a different reason—and two minutes after they should have gathered there, the church was obliterated in a gas explosion that would have killed them all.”
Kenny said, “Ah. So whatever we’re rushing toward, there’s a chance we’ll survive it.”
“Being an optimist,” Ganesh said, “I believe so. But on the quantum level, there’s no certainty. Here’s another one where the pattern is inscrutable. There was a man named Anthony Clancy of Dublin, Ireland, who was born on the seventh day of the week, seventh day of the month, in the seventh month of the year, in the seventh year of the century, 1907, the seventh child of a seventh child, with seven brothers—which is a total of seven sevens. On his twenty-seventh birthday, at a racetrack, Anthony saw a horse in the seventh race. Horse number seven was named Seventh Heaven, with a handicap of seven stone, and the odds were seven to one. Clancy bet seventy-seven pounds on Seventh Heaven—and it came in seventh.”
Leigh Ann laughed, and Kenny said, “Sounds to me like all of this means nothing at all.”