Tag: schizophrenia

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TIME MATTERS: CHAPTER 7: Desperately Seeking Subtitles

Einstein smiling next to his famous formula E=mc2

The Einstein lookalike was back in my apartment. That time I opted for a different approach. Instead of confronting him, I quickly shut the door and stayed outside blocking the exit while calling the security guard downstairs. The young guard came up and we entered the apartment. The old man had disappeared again!

We searched the apartment to no avail. Frustrated by the whole thing I asked the guard if he had talked to his superiors about the security tapes.

“Yes sir, I did. I was about to call you. They found nothing on the tapes sir.”

“What about today?” I asked.

“Protocol calls for our company to monitor the tapes closely for 72 hours after an incident like yesterday’s. There hasn’t been anything suspicious recorded at all today. And nobody matching your intruder’s description has entered the building while I’ve been on duty.”

At that moment it occurred to me that there might be something terribly wrong going on in my head. I had a flashback of me watching the movie A Beautiful Mind. You know, the one about the brilliant Dr. John Nash’s schizophrenia. I decided it would better to be alone for a while so, instead of pursuing the intruder matter any further, I thanked the young security guard for his help and dismissed him as politely as I could given my confusion. Once alone in the apartment I felt compelled to do something I can’t explain, even today.

I said out loud: “Ok, you can come out now.”

A dark figure in the balcony lit up a pipe and started walking towards me. The man with the uncanny resemblance to Albert Einstein was once again talking to me in my home.

“Is zat vat you zink zis is Ray? Ein schizophrenic hallucination?”

As soon as he started to speak, a funny thought crossed my mind: If I created this character, why did I give him such a hard to follow speech pattern? His heavy accent had me desperately looking for subtitles to understand him. I did catch the word Ray and asked once again how he knew my name. As soon as the words came out of my mouth I realized the question was academic. If this was indeed all happening in my mind, he would, of course, know everything about me. Duh…

I was half expecting another ‘doofus’ reference but instead ‘Einstein’ walked over to the console table were I kept my snail mail and picked up a letter.

“Ein man schould look for vat is, und not for vat he zinks schould be,” he said showing me the envelope. “I know your name becauze I zaw zeze letters addrezed to you ven I arriffed. Zee zecurity guards today und last night couldn’t zee me becauze zey vere not looking for me. You, on zee other hand, zummoned me. You vere looking for me.”

This guy had me doubting my own doubts. Was it all a figment of my imagination? The whole situation was getting weirder by the minute but I decided to roll with the punches and asked when had I summoned him.

“Ven you schtarted tapping on zee univerze’s informazion field,” he said.

The effort to understand him was giving me a headache. It reminded me of a meme about some people being so hard to understand that is was like trying to pick up a turd by the clean end.

“When the hell did I do that?” I asked wearily.

“Ven you began looking for anzers zat are not currently affailable in your vorld und you schtarted to look for zem in your head. By zee vay ven I zaid zat time is vat clocks meazure, vat I meant vas zat time is merely zomething humans uze to meazure zee days und organise zeir actiffities, it vas not ein attempt to define its nature. Anyvay, your zearch brought me here. Becauze zee door zat leads to zee anzer you zeek is E=mc2.”

“What answer? You sound like Yoda but with normal syntax… and a pretty heavy German accent,” I said.

“Funny you schould menzion zat becauze it zo happens zat zee man who dezigned zee Yoda character uzed his face und mine as models. Zo maybe I schould talk more like zis: Vat time really is, zee anzer you zeek,” he said in a lousy Yoda imitation.

I was about to ask him how he knew that, when all of a sudden the corresponding synapses in my brain came alive and I realized the relationship between the separate messages my subconscious had been sending me.

The Timekeeper’s assertion that what I sought was all about energy, and Einstein’s famous formula E=mc2, in which E stands for energy, was the way to understanding the true nature of time. I started to pace around the apartment trying to put it all together in my mind but the Timekeeper’s “future without time” element was still hanging there with no apparent connection, so I decided to ask ‘Einstein’ himself.

My unconscious pacing had taken me over to the bedroom and when I went back to the living room he was gone. Only the pipe smell lingered…

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 8: Time Out… Sh*t!

Image of a bizarre dream with the Timekeeper crying time out

After searching the apartment and confirming that ‘Einstein’ was really gone I turned on my computer and started the research on the time/energy relationship I was unable to do at the office. Two hours later I found myself at a dead end so I called it quits and went to bed.

I woke up 5 hours later startled after another bizarre dream with the Timekeeper. That time I was playing basketball for an unidentified professional team against Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs. To this day I haven’t found a single reason to explain that particular team’s presence in the dream. Perhaps it was because of their black uniforms… maybe because Duncan was a fellow Caribbean who had retired not that long ago… or that their coach Gregg Popovich had been in my social media feed recently… or maybe it was because they were considered the smartest team in the NBA at the time… I don’t know. Anyway, there was some sort of commotion in the dream. I couldn’t tell what was happening but the Timekeeper was frantically shouting “Time out, time out!”  The weirdness of the whole thing woke me up.

I got out of bed and went straight to the kitchen to brew myself a cup of strong Puerto Rican coffee. It was scalding hot and I burned my tongue with the first sip of the much needed morning infusion. While waiting for the coffee to cool off a bit, I pondered the idea of sharing what was happening with someone I trusted. For me the three obvious options were Gina, Bob and Professor Murdock.

I dismissed the idea of talking to Bob fairly fast. He had a tendency to overreact at times and I didn’t want him thinking his partner had lost his marbles. As for Gina, I wanted to discuss it with her, but talking about what I feared could be a schizophrenic episode with someone I hoped to have a romantic relationship with was definitely not the best approach to win her heart. The Professor was the safest route. It was still too early to call, so I sent him an email saying I had an urgent matter I wanted to run by him, and asking for a good time to stop by his office.

While I was writing, the ol’ professor was checking his email so his answer came fairly fast. He was going to be at his place all day and invited me to stop by any time. The weather forecast called for a rainy day, and dressing up for the office on a day like that was not in the cards. So I showered and put on jeans, tennis shoes and a Notre Dame sweatshirt.

When I got to the agency I ran into Gina who teased me about the attire.

“Well, good morning Mr. ND, aren’t you wearing the YO! Bowl good luck sweatshirt a little early?”

“To tell you the truth I didn’t do it on purpose, but the way they’ve been playing lately, any help is welcome. You know what they say, it’s only weird if it doesn’t work.”

“Did you know that the Michigan Wolverines’ distinctive football helmet was originally worn by the Princeton Tigers?” she asked me.

“What?” I said distractedly.

“Back in the thirties, the Princeton coach wanted his players to look like tigers so he had the helmets painted in orange and black. The unusual forehead wing and stripes were one of the reinforcement patterns used on the leather helmets of the time. He just painted them. They went undefeated and became national champions the very first year they wore them. Maybe that philosophy of ‘it’s only weird if it doesn’t work’ was the reason he took that particular paint job  to the University of Michigan when he became their head coach. Anyway, nowadays when people see the design they think of Michigan but it was Princeton who wore it first… Ray, are you feeling OK? You seem a little scrambled.”

She had this uncanny ability to see right through me. So even though I had decided not to mention anything to her, she opened a window and I jumped right  in.

“I haven’t been sleeping well lately,” I told her. “Very weird dreams,” I added while thinking how to tell her about the ‘Einstein’ visits.

“Want to talk? My 9:00 o’clock  was cancelled, why don’t you walk me to my office and tell me all about it?”

I did. I told her everything except that, in my account, Einstein’s visits occurred in my sleep just like the Timekeeper’s.

“And you think this Timekeeper character is related to Einstein?” she asked after listening the whole story.

“I think so, yes. I know it sounds weird. But it feels like my subconscious is using these characters to help me understand in my sleep the information I seek while awake.”

“The human mind has been known to do stranger things,” she said. “So, the last thing this Timekeeper guy said was ‘time-out’? What does that has to do with Einstein’s E=mc2 formula?

“I don’t know,” I said a little discouraged.

“Did he say ‘time-out’ with a hyphen or ‘time out’, two words?” she asked with a twinkle in her eyes.

“I don’t know, the dream had no captions,” I said sarcastically but apologized immediately. “Sorry, I was just trying to be funny, I know you are trying to help. The context of the dream means that it should be ‘time-out’ with a hyphen, but then this is such a odd character, created by my subconscious, who absurdly happens to be managing an NBA basketball team, so I guess it could also be time out, two words. Where are you going with this?”

“Just wondering, that maybe what the Timekeeper was trying to tell you was to take time… out of the Einstein equation,” she said signaling with her hands the separation between the words ‘time’ and ‘out’ to make it clear she meant eliminating time from the equation and not taking a break from it.

“There’s no time in E=mc2,” I said

“It’s energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared,” she said. “Speed is distance over time.”

“Shit…” was all I could utter at the time.

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 9: Hitting The Wall

Image of the building where the Professor lives during a rainy day

I thanked Gina for the help… and rushed out of her office. The first stop was with my creative team. I had to make sure everything regarding the presentation was on track and that, in the process, they hadn’t strayed away from the concept of the Chronologix piece being a time machine. You know, something to help you manage your time better so you can travel better through time. I checked their work, gave them my input, mentioned I was late for a meeting with Cyril Murdock, a former professor from college, and left.

On the way to the Professor’s I decided to stop by my apartment for a raincoat. It had started to sprinkle and the sky had gotten darker. It was only 10:00 AM but it looked like dusk and it sure seemed like I would be needing way more than just an umbrella to face the music.

Before entering the apartment, I noticed the strange bluish glow at the bottom of the doorway I thought I had seen the night of my first encounter with ‘Einstein’. Once inside I found myself standing in front of a wall of blue light floating in the middle of the living room. It looked like a giant computer screen with formulas, pictures and all sorts of information flowing through it at a fast pace. The wall was translucent and I quickly spotted ‘Einstein’ standing on the other side of it.

“Did you do this?” I asked him fascinated by the scene in front of me.

“I didn’t create it, if zat’s vat you mean,” he said, “but I access it constantly.”

“What is it?” I probed further. By this time I was already talking to ‘Einstein’ as if he was a real person and not a hallucination. My sentiments towards him had evolved rather quickly into those akin to a newfound friendship. Even my ears were growing accustomed to his accent; it didn’t sound so heavy anymore.

“Zis is a phyzical reprezentation of the univerze’s informazion field,” he said. “You’ve been unknovingly scratching its zurface for zee past couple of days. Now it’s time to for you to step into it zee vay I uzed to vay back ven.”

“Wow, you mean I can enter it…” was the last thing I said as I walked into the field of blue light. I woke up on the floor four hours later with a bump on my head and a note in my hand that read:

“Doofus! Don’t you know the meaning of a figure of speech? Don’t ever walk into an unknown field of energy like that. Look up the Akashic records and my gedankenexperiments. And go into E=mc2.”

I was signed simply “A.” followed by a symbol I couldn’t recognize. It looked like a weird “Z”.

I stayed on the floor for what seemed like half an hour listening absentmindedly to the rain outside. A pretty loud thunder got me out of my post-shock daze. I looked at my watch and realized I still had time to see Professor Murdock so I called and told him I was on my way.

It was raining cats and dogs and the traffic was hectic. It took me forever to reach the professor’s abode over at the university district. The place was a small apartment in a brick structure with a mansard roof and classic moldings. I rang the intercom bell and the professor let me in. When I reached his apartment he was waiting for me at the door. I was shivering from the cold rain and he was wearing a warm cardigan with Matthew perched on his shoulder.

“Come in, come in. Would you like some tea?”

“Yes please, I would love some. Hey Matthew how are you,” I said to the pet ferret extending my arm to make a bridge between the professor’s shoulder and mine. Matthew crossed over enthusiastically and decided it was time to closely examine my head of hair.

“You must have a lot in your head,” said the professor.

“Why do you say that?”

“Matthew does the same to me when I’m in a state of deep thought,” he said. “My theory is he can detect the energy we radiate when our brain is hard at work.”

“Matthew, you rascal, you’re a little mutant”, I said to the ferret while stroking the neck area under its chin.

“I wouldn’t go that far. Everything around us is energy, and animals are more in tune with that aspect of reality than we humans. Besides, if Matthew were a mutant then that would make me Professor X,” he said with a smile in obvious reference to the X-Men character from the Marvel comics and movies, “or maybe Professor M…”

The professor brought the tea, I took a sip and the blister on my tongue came ablaze. The professor noticed my grimace and asked if the tea was too hot for me.

“No it’s perfect. It’s just that I have this sore on my tongue that’s been pestering me all day,” I said.

We had tea and chitchatted for a while, literally talking about the day’s weather, before getting to business. I then proceeded to tell him everything about my encounters with ‘Einstein’ and the weird Timekeeper dreams.

“What worries me the most about the whole thing,” he said with a concerned look on his face, “is that you may be right about all this being… let’s not say schizophrenic but… an intense experience created by your mind.”

Then I showed him the note…

 

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 10: The Akashic Records

Image illustrating the concept of the Akashic records

Professor Murdock looked at the handwritten note in silence for a couple of minutes, frowned, took a deep breath and finally told me:

“Raymond, I gather you don’t remember anything from the moment you stepped into the light wall until you woke up on the floor several hours later. It is possible that you might have written this note yourself, very probably while in another state of consciousness.”

“Are you kidding? That’s not even my handwriting.”

“It’s not unprecedented for a different handwriting to show up in this kind of process. I understand you might think it’s unlikely, but penning something unconsciously is not unheard of. It’s called ‘automatic writing’ or psychography and it’s mostly discussed in spiritual circles. The activity is not an accepted scientific fact, but the few scientific minds that have tackled the issue believe that it is a result of the subconscious taking over, and hence classify it as a manifestation of the ideomotor effect.”

“Ideomotor effect?” I asked confused by the technical terminology.

“That’s a psychological phenomenon wherein a person’s thought or mental image brings about a seemingly reflexive or automatic muscular reaction,” said the professor.

“Ok, I’m not sure I follow but, for the sake of argument, let’s say I wrote the note and can’t remember doing it,” I said. “What are the Akashic records and Einstein’s gedankenexperiments? And what in the world is that little Z-looking doodle next to the A in the signature?”

“Let’s start with the last question first. The doodle seems strangely familiar, like I’ve seen it before, but I rather not speculate at this time. Let me check my facts and I’ll get back to you on that one. As for the gedankenexperiments that’s just the German term for thought experiments, or in other words, experiments that are carried out in the mind only. Albert Einstein used them to work out complex ideas.”

“And the Akashic records?” I asked.

“I left that one for last on purpose. First of all you must know that there’s no scientific evidence that the Akashic records are real. They are said to exist in a different dimension and supposedly contain all the knowledge in the universe. Those who believe in them claim that one can access its information through somewhat mysterious, or shall we say, mystical means. It’s a concept present in both the Theosophical and Anthroposophical way of thinking. Interestingly enough, supporters of their existence claim that some of Einstein’s public expressions suggest he was able to tap into this invisible field of information.”

“During his thought experiments?” I asked.

“That would be a fair conclusion, yes.”

“How do believers access the Akashic records? What type of mystical means do they use?”

“They believe the records are accessible all the time,” he said. “To access them one has to enter a higher state of consciousness and clear the mind of  all distractions.”

“That sounds easier said than done.”

“Actually, it might be easier than it sounds if you use directed meditation. First you think about that which you want an answer to. Then get comfortable and ease your mind of all distractions. Focus only on your breathing. By doing so you’ll clear your mind of the stream of thoughts that we tend to entertain constantly. While focused on your breathing, feel yourself becoming one with the universe around you. Once you are fully merged you’ll be connected to the universal field of knowledge and the answer to your question will find its way to you.”

“Just like that, huh. Professor, I’m a Creative Director, my mind is an endless stream of ideas. There’s no way I can shut it down for a minute, much less for the time it would take to do all that. I don’t see how I’m ever going to access those Akashic records?”

I felt a little overwhelmed by the information and the blackout episode had drained me for the day. It was close to 7:00 o’clock in the evening so I started to wrap up my consultation. I thanked the professor for all his help and he took a picture of the note to see if he could decipher the doodle next to the ‘A’ in the signature, and then I left.

Later that night he would call me with his findings on the matter claiming that it couldn’t wait till the morning.

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 11: The Professor Calling

take Image of the Professor calling Ray's iPhone

It was dinnertime, and having being unconscious through lunch I was ravenous, and a pretty nasty headache was creeping up. Before heading home I stopped at a deli near the university and proceeded to devour a hearty Reuben sandwich. I enjoyed being among college students and remember thinking that maybe the professor was right about not delaying my interest in teaching.

I stayed at the deli for a while trying to put my thoughts in order. Gina had opened my eyes regarding the E=mc2 formula.  I needed to take time out of it and see what happened. Also, I had to check out Einstein’s thought experiment approach and the possible access to the mysterious Akashic records. Since what started all this was my search for the true nature of time, my area of inquiry was pretty much defined.

I was very tired and wanted to lie down for a while so I decided to try my luck first with the directed meditation process to access the Akashic records.

Before leaving the place, and out of pure curiosity, I Googled ‘Akashic records’ on my phone. It so happens that Akashic comes from the Sanskrit word Akasha which means sky, space or aether – a term that has been interpreted in some sources as ‘primary substance’. Moreover, I found out the records could also be accessed through dreams.  I wondered if the Timekeeper episodes were a manifestation of that.

Traffic was still slow due to the heavy rains so it took me quite some time to get home. Once in the lobby I asked Alastair, the security guard, to add Gina Caulder and Cyril Murdock to my file as people to call in an emergency. I thought that, being now aware of what was going on, it would be a good idea for security to call them if the need arose.

To my surprise, ‘Einstein” had taken the night off, although I had my doubts when I entered the apartment. The pipe smell had taken residence in my place. I made a mental note to ask my distinguished visitor to refrain from smoking inside my home.

I took a warm shower, settled myself comfortably on the bed and started to go through the directed meditation steps the professor had outlined. Frankly, I couldn’t clear my mind at all. After a while I just gave up and went over to my computer to work on the E=mc2 equation. That’s when the professor’s call got through.

“Raymond, sorry to call you at this time but I felt this shouldn’t wait till morning,” he said before I could even say hello. “I did a quick research and found out the strange looking ‘Z’ in the signature is actually the way Einstein wrote the capital ‘E” when signing. But what worries me the most is that the handwriting on the note matches Einstein’s handwriting,” he said and I could detect a trace of deep concern in his tone.

“Professor, are you telling me this guy is really Einstein?” I asked him getting a little worried. Up until that point I had come to terms with the fact that this character was real somehow. But I hadn’t entertained the idea that he was Einstein himself. How could he be? I started to look for his note but couldn’t find it.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions, your mind is not out of the woods yet. First of all, there have been cases in which a person has been able to channel somebody else’s handwriting. The people who have studied this type of occurrence claim it’s a sign of spiritual channeling.”

“Oh shit, spiritual channeling as in what a medium does?” I asked with disdain.

“Yes, Raymond. The practice of channeling, where a spirit takes over a person’s body for the purpose of communication, has been around for centuries. Channelers, sometimes known as mediums, claim to use what they call ‘spirit guides’, kind life forces who assist them through the course of their spiritual journeys. Many so called mediums are charlatans, granted, but there are documented cases of people who were able to truly access that otherworldly dimension.”

“So now you’re saying I’m a channeler?”

“It’s a possibility, no doubt, but in cases like this, I like to go with the Occam’s razor approach.”

“The simplest explanation tends to be the correct one,” I said.

“That’s right, other things being equal, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex ones. In this case the simpler explanation, I’m sorry to say, is that you’re having a schizophrenic episode. But it could also be that you are channeling Albert Einstein’s spirit in your search for the true nature of time, a topic very dear to him.

“What’s more, in 1917 Albert Einstein added what he called the cosmological constant to his theory of general relativity. I’m not going to go into the details but suffice it to say that later on he abandoned the constant. He called it the ‘biggest blunder’ of his life. Recently, scientists have revived Einstein’s cosmological constant to explain a mysterious force called dark energy. One that seems to be counteracting gravity causing the universe to expand at an accelerating pace. Maybe his channeling through you has something to do with this. You say he claims you summoned him.  Well, maybe he wanted to come back and you were the open door to this dimension.”

“Wow, you’re right, the simplest explanation is that I’m a schizophrenic.”

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 12: Scent of the Phantasm

Image of something resembling a phantasm in the background

It took me forever to fall asleep after the professor’s call. The prospect of suffering from schizophrenia was serious shit. First I thought that the fact I could smell the pipe scent was my way out of that scenario but then I found out that smells could be part of a schizophrenic episode. I actually learned that an olfactory hallucination is called phantosmia and I couldn’t help thinking the term was funny. I had been smelling a phantasm!

Don’t remember falling asleep but it didn’t take long for the stress caused by the professor’s news to wake me up again. The sun hadn’t come up yet, but it was useless trying to go back to sleep. I took my laptop to the balcony but just sat there sipping my coffee. My tongue still hurt, and that was pissing me off, but somehow, without even realizing it, I started a process similar to Einstein’s thought experiments.

While gazing at the still dark cityscape I asked myself how would a world without time look like. To answer that I first had to come up with a working hypothesis of what time was. That’s when I strayed from the pure mind experiment protocol and started writing. Maybe Einstein could do all this stuff in his head but I was no Einstein… obviously.  So, I wrote this down:

Time is the fourth dimension in our space-time continuum. But if time is a dimension, what does it add to the other three? With one dimension we have a line. With two dimensions we have a flat plane. And when we add depth to that plane we have three-dimensional space. What happens to that three-dimensional space when we add the fourth dimension we call time? What are we adding?

I stopped writing and sat back on my chair while the first sunrays of Thursday began to shine behind the buildings across the street. In my mind I started to answer one question after another. If there’s no time there’s no speed because speed is distance over time. If there’s no speed then movement is impossible.

The idea that what time added to the other three dimensions was movement didn’t satisfy me so I kept grilling my mind. What happens when we make movement possible in the universe? Stop, stop, stop, I thought, let’s visualize first the universe without time. A universe without movement…

The images that kept creeping into my mind were caricatures of galaxies, stars and planets just frozen in time, like still pictures. I couldn’t move past that, so I decided to go for a second cup of coffee. On my way to the kitchen I found ‘Einstein’s handwritten note on the floor. I must have dropped it the night before and that’s why I couldn’t find it when talking to the professor. I picked it up and read it again.

“Doofus! Don’t you know the meaning of a figure of speech? Don’t ever walk into a field of energy like that. Look up the Akashic records and my thought experiments. And go into E=mc2.”

The last sentence hit me like a ton of bricks. E=mc2.  Energy.  Energy has frequency.  Frequency is oscillations over time… It was time to take time out of Einstein’s famous equation. I remember seeing the face of the Timekeeper in my mind laughing.

I lost track of time while immersed in the task at hand. My trance-like concentration was interrupted by a call from the office. It was Joann, my senior copywriter, asking at what time I was going to stop by the office. The team wanted to show me the latest Chronologix materials. I told her to email them because I was going to be working from home all day. She suggested a video conference but I didn’t want to interrupt what I as doing so I came up with a lame excuse that I knew wouldn’t win me any brownie points with the team. About an hour and a half later they sent me the materials. I looked at them very quickly, didn’t catch any disasters and sent them an email saying everything looked good.

I worked non-stop until 7:00 PM that Thursday. Even forgot to eat lunch. I remember thinking that it was impossible for all that was happening to be the result of schizophrenia because people with that condition usually have a hard time organizing their thoughts, and, at the time I felt like I was intellectually “in the zone”.

Feeling suddenly famished I went to the fridge, grabbed some leftover Chinese food from like a week before, ate it cold and went to bed without showering.

I collapsed exhausted and slumbered… until the pipe smell woke me up.

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 21: Gina Smells Something Funny

Abstract representation of Gina smelling the pipe tobacco smoke

The knocking seemed to be taking place on a very distant door. Slowly, and I mean very “despacito”, it pulled me back to the world of the living. I got up, shuffled my feet all the way to the door to open it and find Gina standing there with a worried look on her face.

“How did the presentation go?” I mumbled.

“What’re you taking about? It’s Sunday. Ray are you OK? You look worse than yesterday. And what’s that smell?”

“Sorry, lost track of time. You wouldn’t believe what happened after I left last night.” And then it hit me. “Wait, what did you say? What smell?”

“The tobacco stench. Did you start smoking?”

My eyes opened wide and I grinned, “You can smell it?!”

“Jesus Ray, I’m sure your neighbors two floors down can smell it. But it isn’t the typical cigarette odor, it reeks more like pipe tobacco. Oh my God, don’t tell me you’ve picked up pipe smoking.”

“It is the smell of pipe tobacco. How did you know?”

“My grandfather used to smoke pipe and I learned the difference between the smell of cigarettes and the scent of pipe tobacco when I was little. Ray, what’s going on? The security guard downstairs told me they didn’t find anything on the surveillance tapes(1) and that he’s worried about you. When I asked him why he was telling me this he said you had recently added me to the list of people to call in case of emergency and that he thought I should know this. What were they looking for in those tapes? What aren’t you telling me? But please, before you say anything go brush your teeth; it’s past noon but your morning breath is killing me.”

“Sorry, I’ll be right back.”

I went over to the bathroom and from there I asked her where were the kids and to what did I owe the honor of her visit on a Sunday afternoon.

“My sister picked them up after breakfast this morning and something told me that it would be a good idea to check up on you. You didn’t look too well yesterday and as soon as I talked to your Scottish friend downstairs I realized my hunch was right on the money.”

After brushing my teeth I put on a fresh shirt and went back to Gina.

“I thought you didn’t babysit coworkers,” I said with a smirk.

“I was checking up on a friend not a coworker,” she said without missing a beat, as usual. “Now, is there anything you would like to share with me? Something about certain surveillance tapes, perhaps.”

“You better sit down,” I said. “There’s something I didn’t tell you about the dreams. Einstein was never part of them. He’s been visiting me… I know this sounds absolutely crazy. I thought it was all a figment of my imagination until a few minutes ago when you noticed the tobacco smell. He’s the one who’s been smoking pipe during his visits. Well, in his earlier ones, until I told him to stop smoking in here(2). Building security has been checking the surveillance tapes since the first day he showed up. The fact they haven’t found anything in them isn’t the strangest part of the story, the truly bizarre aspect of all this is that nobody but me seems to be able to see, hear or notice the guy. Well, until now that you smelled his pipe smoking.”

“Wow… I don’t know what to say Ray. This is worse than I thought.”

“What do you mean worse…?”

“Well, I thought you might be suffering from exhaustion, or maybe a virus, not that you were having hallucinations. Yesterday you told me that Professor Murdock thought you needed professional help. Was he referring to these Einstein visits? Does he know about it?”

I nodded in the affirmative and went over to my room to pick up Einstein’s handwritten note. When I came back to the living room I handed it to the Gina.

“He gave me this during one of his visits. The professor checked the handwriting and it matches the real Einstein’s. These are not hallucinations Gina. The fact that you can smell the pipe scent is proof of that.”

“Does the professor think that all this is real?” she asked.

“Not exactly…”

“Raymond Young, spit it out.”

“He thinks these encounters might be schizophrenic in nature, and has an explanation for everything that has happened(3). But he hasn’t been in this apartment and thus hasn’t been exposed to the pipe smell.”

“Ok, let’s invite him over and see if he can come up with one,” said Gina.

 

(1) For more details on the surveillance tapes check out Chapter 5: Der Depperte and Chapter 7: Desperately Seeking Subtitles

(2) Read how Ray tells ‘Einstein’ to stop smoking in his apartment  in Chapter 13: A Not So Silent Night

(3) Take a look at Professor Murdock’s explanation in Chapter 10: The Akashic Records and Chapter 11: The Professor Calling

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 22: The Dear Ray Letter

Ray reads Einstein's farewell letter

I tried unsuccessfully to contact the Professor and after a few tries I finally left him a somewhat cryptic voice mail:

“Hi Professor, it’s Ray calling on Sunday at 2:20 in the afternoon, please give me a call as soon as you can. There’s been a new development that you should know about. Come to think of it, it would be better if instead of calling, you could stop by my apartment. I’ll send you the pin. I’m not going anywhere, so anytime will be fine. Thanks.”

“Well, that’s that,” I told Gina, who was getting ready to leave.

“I have to stop by the office to make sure everything’s in place for tomorrow’s Chronologix presentation. Please keep me in the loop. I mean that Ray, whatever’s happening with you is really serious.”

I escorted her to the door and as soon as she was gone I heard his voice again.

“Zat young voman is special to you isn’t sche?”

“Yes she is,” I said smiling.

“I like her, sche’s ein Princetonian. From 1933 to 1955 I vorked at zee Institute for Advanced Schtudies in zee town of Princeton und lectured regularly at zee Univerzity, vich, by zee vay, has produced zirty-zeven Nobel laureates. Mostly phyzicists und mathematicians.”

“She knows you’ve been here. The pipe smell gave you away.”

“Hmm ja, zee lingering scent of pipe tobacco. I uzed to step outzide zee room vere I’d been smoking zo I could reenter it a few minutes later und enjoy zee aroma better. It feels different vile one’s smoking. It is ein rather pleazant smell ven compared to zee very much offenzive cigar und cigarette stench.”

“Forget about the pipe smell. Listen, all this time I’ve made my peace with the fact that you could very well be a figment of my imagination, but now…”

“Relax Ray, I’ve come to zay goodby.”

“What? Why? Where are you going?”

“There’s nothing elze for me to do here. It’s all your doing from now on.”

I was about to ask him what was it that I was supposed to do when he simply raised his hand signaling me to hold my tongue and listen to him.

“I’m not good at farevells zo I vrote you zomething in your compuder. It’s been ein real pleazure knoving you Ray Young. Now if you’ll excuze me I’ll find mein vay to zee door.”

And just like that my strange visitor, the one I had come to believe was truly Albert Einstein, turned around and walked away through the same door Gina had used a few minutes earlier. I stood motionless staring at it for a while, hoping that it was all a joke and that he would come back. I had grown fond of the old man. After a while I slowly turned around and went to my computer. His message was on the screen.

 

Dear Ray:

It will probably be hard for you to accept the true nature of what has transpired here this past week. I know my presence has defied all logic and made you question your own sanity. Everything will become clear in due time and regardless of what others might think in the days to come, rest assured that all will be well in Ray Young’s mind.

You are a creative director, a concept man. Viewing situations from a new or unexpected angle is what you do for a living. Imagination is what fuels your everyday life. As you may know, I believe that imagination is everything. Without it there would be no new inventions or new developments. The raising of new questions, new possibilities, requires creative imagination. Knowledge is what we already know, but imagination is a preview of life’s coming attractions. Unfortunately the establishment many times values knowledge more than it does creativity. It will always fight new ideas that promote change because it feels threatened. It perceives the acceptance of a change in paradigm as an acknowledgement of having being wrong instead of it being part of an evolution process.

During this process you have come up with a new hypothesis for the nature of time. But you’re not a physicist or an astrophysicist, so the establishment will not take your ideas seriously. In the beginning it will ignore you completely. If compelled to acknowledge your ideas then it will ridicule them and try to discredit you.

Remember that when you rattle a cage, the creature inside feels threatened. That’s why some members of the establishment will even call you crazy and disregard your ideas as those of someone who knows nothing about how the universe works. They will say that I must be turning in my grave, but we both know that’s a physical impossibility ;-). They will call you many names and discredit your ideas. But somewhere there’s going to be a young physicist who will come in contact with your concept and think that there might be something there. That physicist will follow the procedures accepted by the establishment, will do the math the way it should be done, discard what doesn’t work, keep what does work and someday that person will present a solid thesis inspired by your story.

It’s been a pleasure working with you Ray, and if anybody tries to make you feel like an unknowledgeable clod, tell them that the true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. Tell them Albert Einstein said so.

 

After reading his message I was convinced I lacked the knowledge of the language needed to express how I felt. I got up and walked zombie-like to the kitchen to get me a cup of much needed java. The canister where I kept the ground coffee was empty so I opened the cupboard where I stored the extra coffee. A small plastic bag was peeking out from behind a new can of a Puerto Rican gourmet brand. Pulled the can out of the cupboard and there it was: a pipe with a bag of tobacco.

I felt nauseous. I heard a knock on the door but the whole room started to spin and I lost consciousness.

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TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 23: Bedside Manners

Image of ghostly figure in hospital room bed

I woke up quite disoriented… on a bed that wasn’t mine… in a room I couldn’t recognize. Professor Murdock was seating by the door reading something on his iPhone. He noticed me waking up and approached the bed.

“Welcome back to the world of the living Raymond. You gave us quite a scare back there.”

“Where am I?”

“St. Joseph’s Hospital.”

“What? Why? I asked still groggy.

“I got your message yesterday asking me to stop by your apartment, but when I arrived nobody answered the door. Figured you had gone out and decided to leave, but as I walked through the lobby I casually mentioned to the security guard that you weren’t in. He found that curious because Ms. Caulder had left just a bit earlier and you hadn’t been through his station after that.

“I told him about the message asking me to stop by and he got worried. Exaggeratedly so, I might add. He asked me in a heavy Scottish accent to accompany him back up to your apartment, and once upstairs he knocked on your door and dialed your phone with no answer to either. He then called somebody to ask for authorization to enter the apartment using what he referred to as ‘the security protocol’. After explaining the situation to whoever was at the other end of the line he got authorized to enter.”

“His name is Alastair. The security guard’s name is Alastair,” I interjected.

“A very nice fellow. A little rough on the edges, but very capable. Anyway, once inside we found you unconscious on the kitchen floor. That’s when Alastair called 911 and we ended up here,” said the Professor gesturing with his arms to show me the hospital room. “The doctor says you need plenty of rest because the whole chain of events was most probably caused by acute exhaustion. They still have to do some tests but that’s the initial prognosis.”

“What do you mean by the whole chain of events?”

The Professor’s answer was delayed by the entrance of Gina and Bob.

“Oh good, you’re back with us,” said Bob. “Sorry it took us so long to get here buddy but the Chronologix presentation kept dragging on an on.”

“That’s usually a good sign in a new business pitch. Good for you guys!” I said.

“Well you know how it is. These things can be very unpredictable. Some times they make you feel like you hit the ball out of the ballpark and then give the assignment to somebody else. So we’ll do all the follow-up antics during the next couple of days and keep our fingers crossed. We’ll know for sure in a week. How are you feeling?” said Bob.

“Dizzy… a bit unfocused… like I’ve been disconnected from reality for ages. How long was I out?”

“Close to 24 hours,” said Gina. “I got here last night after Alastair called…”

“Alastair called you?” I asked surprised.

“Of course he did. You added me to the list of people to call in an emergency. You remember that don’t you? I tend to agree with him that finding you unconscious on the floor of your apartment qualifies as an emergency. Anyway that’s not all he did. He also made sure that the people in the hospital knew that the Professor and I were authorized by you to receive information regarding your medical condition.”

“Wow, I didn’t know he could do that,” I said.

“Which brings me to the point at hand before you two arrived,” said Professor Murdock. “You’re here today Ray because of a whole chain of events that started way before you started seeing this Einstein character.”

“What Einstein character?” asked Bob.

“We’ll explain to you later Bob,” said Gina.

“You had been working very long hours and sleeping poorly for a while,” said the Professor, “and that brought forth an exhaustion induced brief psychotic disorder during which two things happened. First you bought a pipe and some tobacco and started smoking it without any recollection of doing so. That’s what caused the blister on your tongue by the way. Then the pipe smoking served as a trigger for the Einstein hallucinations.”

“So Einstein was never there…” I said with a hint of sadness, “but it all felt so real. It still does…”

“All in your head,” said Gina.

“And speaking of that, I brought something that will make your head feel a lot better,” said Bob as he got a Stanford cap out of a paper bag and placed it on my head. “Don’t you feel a lot smarter now? I figured you would need one after Saturday’s YO! Bowl.”

I took the cap off my head and looked at it while pondering the consequences of my alma mater losing the Notre Dame/Stanford game.(1)

“Thanks for the gesture Bob, I’ll be sure to wear it when I get back to the office,” I said sarcastically.

“I’ll have the cameras ready to go,” said a grinning Bob.

A nurse came in the room and announced that visiting hours would be over in 10 minutes. Gina said something to the nurse that I couldn’t hear and soon after, everybody said their goodbyes and I dozed off again… just to ‘wake up’ almost immediately back in the Anteverse.

 

(1) For the details on the consequences Ray has to face due to Notre Dame losing to Stanford  see CHAPTER 16: Bowl Time Revelations