FAUST’S SHADOW: A Twice-Told Tale Read online

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  The next thing I knew someone was lifting my left eyelid with their thumb and flicking a penlight across my pupil. Then they did the same thing to my right eye. I blinked several times before I could focus on the person leaning over me: a beautiful woman with coffee and cream skin and caramel eyes. She said her name was Dr. McGhee and she asked for my name. I liked her lilting Jamaican accent, but for some reason I couldn’t answer her question. She waited another moment, then, in a louder voice, she said I was in the ER at Princeton Hospital and my parents were on their way. She handed me my glasses. I put them on, blinked a few more times and noticed that someone had taken off my jumpsuit tuxedo and replaced it with a baggy hospital gown. I looked out the wide doorway of the examination room and saw several doctors and nurses sitting at their workstations.

  Dr. McGhee, still speaking loudly, asked if I was in any pain. Again, I tried to answer her question, but again I couldn’t talk. So I just shook my head. At that moment a second doctor entered the room: a tired looking, red-haired woman in a hurry. Her name, she said, was Dr. Dowds. She checked my pupils again, as well as the reflexes of my hands, elbows, knees and feet. She asked a few more questions, which I answered with a yes or no shake of my head. Then both doctors stepped into the hallway.

  As I struggled to clear my mind and find my voice I saw my father and mother rushing through the waiting area, followed by my three siblings in their costumes. André stopped for a second at the Admissions Desk, but Jena–her wavy blonde hair awry, her gray-blue eyes distraught, her fair skin and rosy cheeks fairer and rosier–saw me right away and hurried straight to my bedside.

  “Are you okay Johnny?” My mother asked urgently as she caressed my cheek.

  I looked into her anxious eyes and nodded.

  “Feeling better now?” She asked more gently.

  I nodded again.

  My father entered the examination room, followed by Dr. McGhee. They stood at the foot of my bed.

  “André de Penast, Jena Farson: John’s parents,” my father said to the doctor. “How is he? What happened?”

  Aster, Isabel and Michael crowded the doorway so they could hear the doctor’s reply.

  “Johnny was found lying on his back on the sidewalk,” Dr. McGhee explained. “He was unconscious. The EMT’s transported him about half-an-hour ago, and he just woke up. His vitals are normal. He has a bump on the back of his head, but no other bruises and no broken bones. And the scans are clear: there’s no internal bleeding or swelling. So, until we get the results from the tox screen, the preliminary diagnosis is also clear. Your son has suffered a mild concussion–the police think his top hat might have cushioned the blow–and he’s still recovering from the shock.“

  ”Tox screen?” My father inquired.

  “The toxicology report,” Dr. McGhee replied. “We’re testing his blood to see if his Halloween candy was spiked with something. And we’re examining the candy as well.”

  ”Oh no!” Jena exclaimed.

  “We have no indication of tampering,” the Doctor assured her. “We just want to be careful.”

  “Of course,” André said. Then he repeated his previous question: “Does anyone know what happened?”

  “The neighbor who called the police didn’t see Johnny fall,” Dr. McGhee said. “And I’m not sure if Johnny remembers what happened. He hasn’t spoken yet. We got your names and numbers from his cell phone. Is he, by any chance, hard of hearing?”

  “His hearing is fine,” my father replied.

  “Was he attacked?” Aster, the Indian, wondered.

  “The bump on the back of Johnny’s head is consistent with a fall,” the doctor replied, turning toward her. “And the fact that he has no other injuries tends to rule out a mugging, or a hit-and-run accident. I can’t speculate beyond that.”

  “Why isn’t he talking?” Jena asked.

  The doctor turned back to her.

  “Dr. Dowds, the neurologist, believes that Johnny should be able to talk when the shock of the concussion wears off. We’re going to keep him overnight, for observation, and we’ll run a few more tests in the morning. We’d like to rule out any physiological issues that might have caused Johnny to faint, or trip, in the first place. Unless, of course, he can provide us with a simpler explanation.”

  She gave me a broad smile. I gave her a tight one, and a shrug.

  “Did you eat some candy that tasted strange, Johnny?” My mother asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll be right back,” Jena said.

  She stepped out of the room and, when she returned, she held a clipboard with a pen and a form attached. She flipped the form onto its blank side and handed everything to me.

  “Can you write?” Jena asked. “Can you tell us what happened?”

  I looked at the clipboard and paper, thought for a moment, and shrugged again.

  “It’s okay,” my mother said. “Maybe later.”

  Jena and André stepped into the hallway to consult with the doctor. Aster, Isabel and Michael crowded my bedside. My siblings were, of course, the same age as me: eight-years-old going on forty-eight. Aster had auburn hair and Jena’s eyes, while Isabel and Michael had dark hair and Andre’s eyes.

  “Look at him,” Michael, the pirate, said in a tone of mock disgust. “He can’t even walk home without tripping over his own two feet!”

  “Keep quiet, Michael,” Isabel, the flapper, scolded. “Can’t you see he’s in shock?”

  “He ruined our Halloween party and lost all our candy!” Michael complained.

  Aster, the Indian, punched Michael hard, on the shoulder, and he yelped in pain. Jena came back into the room, with a stern look on her face, and ushered all three of them out to the waiting area, while Isabel protested her innocence.

  I sat in my hospital bed and wondered, along with everyone else, what, exactly, had happened to me. I knew that my encounter with the sycamore tree had roused a question from somewhere deep within my subconscious mind, but I couldn’t shape it into words. I’d been struck dumb, as they used to say, by a cosmic vision that I couldn’t process. The closest I came to articulating that question, in the weeks, months and years that followed, was when I stammered the investigative reporter’s mantra in reverse: Why? Where? When? What? Who? An astronomer would have said it was a question of theoretical cosmology; a philosopher would have said it was a question of speculative metaphysics; a poet would have said it was a question of an eight-year-old boy meeting a thirteen-billion-year-old sycamore tree for the first time again.

  In other words, I’d felt the universe extending itself through my mind and I’d felt my mind extending itself through the universe. We were doubles, twins, reflections. We recognized each other, knew each other, became each other–and yet, at the same time, we were so completely alien to one another that we didn’t even have the beginnings of a common language. And when that sudden flash of mutual identification was just as suddenly finished, it left me speechless. I woke in the Emergency Room with the image of a cosmic tree burned into my brain. And while I couldn’t describe the blinding power of that image, or articulate the ineffable question it roused within me, nevertheless I felt possessed by it. So I sat in my hospital bed and struggled with it.

  And I was still struggling with it after my father and siblings had left for home, after I had been admitted to a semi-private room on the second floor of the hospital, and after my mother had settled into the corner armchair for the night. Finally, sometime around midnight, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t rest until I had deciphered the sign of the sycamore, until I had solved the infinite mystery of the universe. I felt the overwhelming urgency of that task as I felt the overwhelming urgency of my eight-year-old heart knocking wildly against my eight-year-old chest. Then, a few minutes later, I fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 3.

  Star Charts

  I still felt a little dazed the following afternoon when my mother drove me home, to her house: a pale gray
, neo-Victorian just a few blocks from my father’s house. My parents had fallen in love after being paired by the Highbrid Protocol–something that happened much more frequently than anyone had ever imagined–and they were a surprisingly happy couple. And yet they continued to live in separate houses. My mother joked that they had an arranged marriage and a deranged household. My father said they liked their shared spaces and their separate spaces and the dynamic kept the relationship fresh. So we all migrated back and forth from one house to the other, and the derangement seemed to work for everyone.

  I walked in the front door, went through the living room and entered the study. I scooped up a pencil and a pad of paper from Jena’s desk and sat down on the carpet.

  I’d already begun my life-long habit of keeping a journal. I automatically reached for my tablet, or for pen and paper, whenever I needed to express my innermost thoughts, record the events of the day, or solve difficult problems. The precisely chosen word, the carefully constructed narrative always seemed to give shape and meaning to my life.

  “Would you like some lunch, Johnny?” Jena inquired as she entered the study.

  The tox screen had come back negative and the doctor said I could eat whatever I wanted. However, my strange hospital breakfast was still sitting on my stomach, so I looked up at my mother and shook my head.

  “Still not talking?” She asked.

  I shook my head again.

  “I’m ready when you are,” she stated calmly.

  Jena always said she combined the outer stoicism of her Danish father with the inner passion of her Irish mother. And, despite the serenity of her words, I could read the worry in her eyes. So I nodded and tried to reassure her with a smile.

  She smiled back, walked over to her desk and sat down.

  Jena was the Director of the Princeton Observatory and the President of the International Astrophysics Association. She was always revising her maps of the universe, and reconfiguring her maps of the multiverse.

  She hit a few keys on her keyboard and studied her screen.

  I bent over the pad of paper and started to write. After scribbling a few sentences I crossed everything out and started again. I wanted to describe the cosmic tree so I could explain it to myself, and to my mother. After several more minutes, and several more false starts, I gave up. I tore off the top sheet and crumpled it into a tight ball. I felt incredibly frustrated. I couldn’t understand why it was so hard to write a few clear words.

  “Can I help?” Jena asked, glancing over the top of her screen.

  I shook my head again, turned to the new blank page and started to sketch the sycamore tree with all its dangling stars, planets, moons, and spheres. I finished my drawing about twenty minutes later and decided to scan it into my journal when I had the chance. Then I stood up, walked over to the map cabinet, opened the top drawer and extracted a large photo-map of the universe. I spread the map out on the carpet and knelt over it.

  I knew the basic story: the earth spins on its axis as it orbits the sun; the sun spins on its axis within the spinning solar system; the solar system spins on a spiral arm of the galaxy; the galaxy spins around a black hole; and galaxies upon galaxies spin, swirl and whirl across the universe in a fantastically complex celestial orrery.

  After studying the map for a few moments, I noticed the stars were beginning to sway, just as they had in the cosmic tree. And I began to feel dizzy again. I planted my fists in the carpet, at the edge of the universe, and struggled to keep myself from tumbling headfirst back into the darkness.

  “Johnny? John!” Jena called, pulling me back toward the light.

  I pushed against the floor with all the strength of my arms and sat back on my heels.

  “Where am I?” I asked.

  “You can talk!” Jena exclaimed, a mixture of joy and fear in her voice.

  She hurried over to me, knelt down and checked my pupils.

  “You’re home, with me,” she said anxiously. “Are you feeling okay? Does your head hurt? Is your vision blurred?”

  “I’m fine,” I said impatiently. “I meant, Where am I?”

  I gestured to the map.

  Jena looked where I was pointing, and sighed, realizing I was disoriented in the universe, not in my own home.

  “And you really are feeling okay?” She asked.

  “Yes. And …?” I insisted, waving at the map.

  “You’re a funny kid, Johnny!” Jena said. “One minute you can’t talk, the next minute you want me to explain the map of the universe!”

  My mother smiled and shook her head.

  “First,” she said, “I’m going to call your father and the neurologist and let them know you’re talking again. Then I’ll explain the map.”

  She stood up, took her cell phone out of her pocket, and made the calls. My father asked to speak with me, and said he was glad to hear my voice. The neurologist told my mother she should bring me in for a check-up later that afternoon. Then Jena closed the door, the blinds and the curtains. The room went dark, except for the glow of her desk screen. She turned the screen around, picked up her wireless keyboard and sat behind me on the rug. When she was settled, she cleared the screen and shifted the background from gray to black. Then she hit a few more keys and a brilliant point of light appeared.

  “The Big Bang exploded 13.73 billion years ago,” she said. “The stars began to ignite about 200 million years later.”

  She hit another key and the brilliant point of light burst out of the screen, forming a holographic plasma cloud that filled half the room. And just as quickly the cloud began to coalesce, forming countless numbers of sparkling stars.

  “A series of phase transitions,” Jena continued, “established the parameters of the possible, the cosmic constants, which define the nature of our universe: the speed of light; the charge of the electron; the rate of radiation; the density of matter; the force of gravity; the power of electro-magnetism, etc. If just one of these numbers were slightly different, our universe would be unrecognizable. And we wouldn’t exist at all.”

  She hit another key and the sparkling holographic projection became even more complex and detailed.

  “This is what our universe looks like today,” she said. “The Virgo Supercluster, over here,” she added, zooming in and using the cursor as a pointer, “is a vast collection of galaxies.”

  She zoomed further in.

  “The Local Group, situated near the edge of the Virgo Supercluster, here, has more than thirty galaxies. We used to think Andromeda was the largest galaxy in our neighborhood, but now we think the Milky Way and Andromeda are roughly equal in size.”

  She zoomed in a third time, focusing on the spiraling swirl of the Milky Way Galaxy.

  “And so, to answer your question, Johnny, the Solar System lies about half-way out from the center of our Galaxy, right here, on what we call the ‘Orion-Cygnus Arm’ of the spiral.”

  She zoomed in a fourth time on the Solar System, then a fifth time on Planet Earth.

  After holding that image for a few seconds she pulled back out again to reveal the entire Milky Way Galaxy. Then she hit another key and the galactic plane rotated until all we could see was the narrow edge of it.

  “When we look up into the night sky,” she continued, “our Galaxy appears as a bright band of stars, because we’re looking at the spiral sideways, and from the inside. In other words, we only see a cross section of the relatively flat spiral. That’s why we call it the ‘Milky Way,’ because it looks like a milky path, or road.”

  She paused and turned my head so she could see my eyes.

  “But you already know all this … don’t you?” She asked.

  I realized she was still concerned about my concussion, and I had to say something to reassure her, so I mentioned our summer vacations in Canada.

  “It reminds me of standing on the dock … with you … at night … up at Loon Lake … and reading the stars,” I said.

  Jena sighed with relief, then she went back
to her keyboard and rotated the galactic plane until the spiral reappeared.

  I studied the spiral for a moment, then asked, “Where’s everything going?”

  “Outward,” my mother replied. “Our universe is expanding. It slowed down about five billion years ago, then sped up again. Nobody is sure why. Something seems to be counteracting the inward pull of gravity. The current theory suggests that our universe is composed of about 4% atoms, 21% dark matter, and 75% dark energy. And it’s all that dark stuff that keeps pushing everything outward, but we really have no idea what or where it is.”

  “Tension in the membrane,” I suggested.

  “Sorry?” Jena said.

  “Maybe dark energy is the tension in the dark-matter-membrane of timespace that’s being stretched. When the outward push of the Big Bang meets the inward pull of gravity, the conflicting forces produce something like cosmic tension, everywhere at the same time, at different strengths, in the fabric of timespace. And since the uneven tensile energy has nowhere to go, then, instead of slowing down the expansion of our universe, it speeds it up. The Big Bang isn’t behind us, it’s right here with us. And, together with the force of gravity, it creates the varying tension in the membrane that slings us along in ripples, or waves.”

  “I like it!” Jena exclaimed. “I’ll see what the models say. I’m glad you’re feeling better, Johnny. You have a brilliant mind.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I replied bashfully.

  I scooted back and nestled against her body. She wrapped her arms around my chest and kissed the top of my head.