Kybalion

Chapter 1:

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. So they all said. Well before I had decided to embark upon a course of study at university, --well before I had even the first and faintest inkling of any dream to one day traverse the stars, --it was a well established and forgone conclusion among both the scientific luminaries, past and present, and in the minds of their adulating public, that mankind, --through sheer might of his own ingenuity and determination, --had encompassed the whole of the cosmos within his mind. Its structure, its movements, its composition, --all very well explained by the fields of both physics and mathematics as expressed in the groundbreakingly tidy equations wrestled from countless nibs of chalk as they scrawled across the blackboard with ecstatic ferocity. These had been the essential precursors to everything we believed. These were the much-reverenced shoulders upon whose immensity stood a gratefully indebted humanity.

For all his striving, man had rewarded himself with the imminent prospect of interplanetary travel and the colonization of new worlds, --the realization of an ancient dream, one first dreamt in the minds of primitive man, newly emancipated by the gift of reason from his nearest primate relations, who must have gazed up into the heavens and marveled in awestruck wonder at the beautiful vastness of it all. The advent of science, however, awakened in him an audacious thirst for its mastery.

What had begun with a nervous yet patriotic verve and then culminated in that most victorious of small steps, now burned with an unbridled optimism that mankind might at long last prove himself the master of all worlds, and not just his own.

Boston, MA:

Every day, the brave and monolithic edifice of MIT that skirted the shore of the Charles River always greeted me with the same austerity made implicit by its laconic motto, mens et manus. I remember thinking there was a certain audacity in that phrase, an intimation that whatsoever the mind of man could imagine could likewise be wrought by his hands.

Within those hallowed halls, ones unperturbed by the liberal elitism and smugly belittling hubris of neighboring Harvard, competent minds like ours were turned loosed upon the boundaries of science and possibility itself, assaulting them with the dauntless spirit of inquisition and an insistence that whatever secrets the universe might still hold in occluded darkness would be rendered apparent by the incisive blade of illumination.

I had begun my studies there with my best friend from high school some years ago, and together our enjoined dream was to parlay our education there into a resolution to the still unresolved problem of interplanetary travel, --specifically that of manned flight over the great distances of space. Together we had worked toward degrees in in nuclear physics with a focus on thermodynamics and had undertaken as the subject of our undergraduate theses continued research into the reduction of the energy coefficient of nuclear power, believing then that such an enhancement might prove essential to its viability as the best interplanetary fuel source. We believed in the necessity of our work, and though goaded in part by the dream of having our own names engraved upon the pantheon of scientific luminaries, we knew also that the exploration and conquest of space held the key to survival on earth.

It was impossible to ignore the warning signs. Moore's law had predicted our present condition back in 1975 when it posited the exponential increase of informational capacity, --a capacity whose increased requirements for raw materials and energy had taken on a particularly grim specter ever since. The great challenge, --one which everyone felt, and not simply the scientific community of which my friend and I were a part, --was that of a simple math equation: at what point did the material demands for man's technology exceed his resources? It was a question on everyone's mind to one extent or another, and to those of us possessed of both the inclination and the ability to understand the true nature of that equation, we knew that the continued progress of the human species as we knew it depended upon our ability to mine the vast bounty of space for those most precious resources. To do so was a necessary goal, an existentially critical one, --the first and most important step towards the conquest of the heavens. But first we had to get there on the strength of what scarcity we had at present, reserves of which were dwindling with each passing day. We were in a race against the clock, and we all knew it.

The best estimates predicted we had somewhere between thirty and forty years, give or take, before the we reached the decisive tipping point where the material demands of our technology began growing too fast to support continued experimentation of the kind that would make the achievement of that most critical goal possible. After that, it was only a matter of time before the lights began to go out, one by one, and then there could be no prediction of if or when the achievement of that most critical goal would ever happen. Rather than being all but guarantees by the steady advance of science, we would be reduced to a dependence on some kind of unprecedented and incongruent discovery, a black swan event, to provide the missing link and liberate us from the inevitable and accelerating downward spiral into final collapse.

In a sense, we found ourselves motivated by both the tantalizing impulse for discovery and the urgency created by the fear we all understood. Still, for the moment, it was easier to fixate upon the more optimistic of the two and while at university, --or at least among the circles I traveled in, --it was common enough for conversations during study groups and labs to lapse into excited speculation of what could be out there?, --ideas first and doubtlessly cultivated and brought to their fever pitch within our minds by the futurist myths and fictions of our childhood. Serious as disputes over which was the superior between Star Trek and Star Wars were, the scintillating prospect of a near future approximating their prophetic visions was a sufficiently congenial armistice between the two camps, and supplied the forward energy and motivation for the completion of our studies.

We were to be the generation whose outstretched hand would dip over the horizon of those who had come before us, and secure that which they had long foreseen. We could feel it, taste it even. Everyone knew it would be us, --it had to be us, --and the world waited with bated breath for the first reports that the great and infinite void having at long last succumbed to an emphatic statement of semaphoric conquest.

That was, until everything fell apart. In what seemed like a matter of days, the world came apart at the seams and optimism descended into an aimless chaos.

It's hard to describe the sensation of watching the world collapse around you. The closest approximation my friends and I could come up with at the time was that it was like the scenes you see on the news after a tornado rips through a town and leaves everything an eerily unrecognizable shambles in its wake.

For us, the tornado was the controversial discovery of one of the professors at our university, Dr. Darwin Lux, a once boy wonder and pride of the very school at which he had most recently taught. Some of my graduate level colleagues even claimed to have assisted him in the proofs for his hypothesis. And as for the town which the cyclone upended, well... that was us, --all of us, --everyone. It was difficult to say how it had all happened, and different theories and versions of events abounded. I guess it depended how closely you had watched the news and the several, though certainly contentious, interviews Dr. Lux gave. He was impossible to miss, and seemingly everyone was in a state of frenzied agitation. Every day, someone found some new way in which Dr. Lux's hypothesis that space, rather than the long-presumed vacuum, was, in reality, constituted of what he had termed hyperdensity, challenged some other long-established assumption pertaining to the nature of the cosmos.

It really was that profound, --that earth-shattering, --and just like the footage you see on the news, you see that some find the ability to express their agony immediately, wailing towards the unforgiving heavens as they sift through the wreckage of their former life, hoping against hope that some small fragment of it might be found intact. Most, however, simply stand around in a disbelieving daze, the reality and gravity of the situation remaining incomprehensible to them. I wondered if their eyes were even adjusted to the disaster, or if instead their mind projected some prior sense of normalcy onto the scene like some kind of computer glitch.

Perhaps it was for the best that I belonged to the latter group. I spent the days, weeks, and months afterwards holed up in my one-room apartment, at times silently ruminating upon the consequences of Dr. Lux's discovery, though most often sitting at my third floor window looking out aimlessly at a world I no longer understood. I avoided the news as best I could, --the reports of alarming spikes in suicide were the hardest to watch, --and eventually all interest in anything beyond my own thoughts all but evaporated.

From that window, I watched the world below me descend into varying states of madness. People that I had known and thought intelligent and sane, --people that I had studied with and had considered to be of a higher intelligence than myself, --abandoned their studies and joined the campus protest du jour, most often directed toward some grand yet only vaguely articulated conspiracy claiming that everything you know is a lie. It was hard to disagree with them. My roommate and best friend had been one of these, and having been uncharacteristically overcome with an appetite for destruction, had been among those who exploits had boiled over into the firebombing of Dr. Lux's office with crudely made molotov cocktails after he had been accused of being a traitor to his profession and the destroyer of their futures. The simple truth was that not everyone would allow themselves to live in Dr. Lux's world, finding it either too stultifying, depressing, or intolerably claustrophobic.

Though perhaps, more than anything, the hardest part the reconciliation to the fact that many of the programs, --both public and private, --which had promised them employment upon their graduation, --programs which for decades had boasted the highest pedigree and esteem within their respective field, --had either received notice of their termination or significant downsizing as they scrambled to repurpose themselves in light of Dr. Lux's discovery. In any event, the fact remained that countless positions had been vacated with no intention of seeing them filled, at least until the world found a way to recalibrate itself and martial its resources in another, newer direction.

This was not universally true, of course, as several industries saw a seemingly miraculous windfall of interest and investment, --I thought I remembered hearing that a Japanese rail company had attracted some significant interest along with my own university's electromagnetism program. Before his arrest, my roommate had mentioned in passing some sort of joint venture between the two.

Off campus, however, things were even worse. The stock market responded poorly to the uncertainty, and layoffs were rampant. All over the world, cities erupted into riots as disillusioned hoards reacted to a vague sense of betrayal and of having been deceived. It didn't seem to matter that those in power were just as stunned. It was enough that they felt lied to and acted out demanding answers from whoever they, the amorphous entity onto which was projected a vague yet absolutely certain and singular responsibility, were. And in the midst of this chaos, opportunists of every kind flocked to its various hot spots. Looters to the streets; news channels of every stripe and following breathlessly reporting on the latest developments; and politicians claiming to be the anointed instrument of the vox populi gravitating toward every camera lens and microphone they could find, concealing their demagoguery behind a facade of earnestness and concern.

In time, things settled into some new semblance of normal, but duller and less ambitious. In the recent years, the imminent hope of mankind being liberated from their mundane prison had managed to lend some buoyancy to the world, sustaining the belief in a solution to the problem of scarcity. Deserts were expanding, new technologies for energy had proven less effective than first imagined, and now paled in comparison for the demands of increasingly modern world.

In the aftermath of Dr. Lux's discovery, these existential concerns had reached a fever pitch, to the point where the rationing measures enacted on most everything enjoyed popular support, and the riots were quelled by the onset of martial law. There were several protests in the beginning, some even becoming dangerously violent, but those had died down into only the public ravings of the mad, a disturbance which was dealt with alarming swiftness and efficiency. Crime increased, and most people, --if they were not already so inclined, --became accustomed to remaining almost exclusively inside whether out of a sense fear or a general and pervasive melancholy.

Unexempt from the latter sentiment myself, it was several months before I ventured outside, --perhaps there something about the first hints of autumn calling me to emerge from my premature hibernation, or simply that the blanket of low hanging gray was sympathetic to my mood. It was strange walking around campus for the first time since everything changed. The desertion of the place was unsettling. By now, usually the grounds were teeming with chattering students, --freshmen bravely standing out from the rest on account of their wide-eyed nativete.

I walked inadvertently, as if by ingrained habit, westward across Killian Court, passing before the imposing form of the great dome to my right, before turning north onto Massachusetts Ave towards Vassar on whose corner was a collection of buildings which had been home to a great many of my classes and labs. It felt strange to approach its great facade while not burdened with a great stack of books crammed into my backpack, an accessory which, for the majority of my life, had accompanied me much like a hobo's bundle, carrying within it those most necessary of essentials.

Now, my hands were in my pockets and my feet aimlessly and distractedly kicked the minuscule pebbles of road grit that had been washed up on the sidewalk by passing cars. Apart from these, however, the city was conspicuously quiet, and the campus resembled something closer to a ghost town. The hands which had so diligently labored to bend the world to their animating minds had suddenly faltered, wavering uncharacteristically upon a newly discovered uncertainty.

I gravitated towards the building where Dr. Lux had maintained his offices over the years, but what was now just a yawning black hole in the side of the building where the window used to be, a blackened sunburst outlining the violence of the explosion. I could not be certain as to why, but I needed to see the place for myself, --in a way, the epicenter of it all. Somehow, amidst the forbidding presence of ribbons of crime scene tape, there was a part of me that foolishly imagined that Dr. Lux would also be there, as he had often been, haunting the halls and diligently burning the midnight oil, as only one obsessed with his work is able.

But it was all dark now, hollowed out, and deserted. I looked up at it for a time, uncertain how to feel about it, but knowing intuitively that it represented with a certain poetic justice everything that had happened. The longer I looked up at it, however, I began to feel the irresistible curiosity to see the room for myself, --up close. It was a curiosity which grew steadily into an urge, until, looking furtively around, I reached out for the yellow tape which surrounded the building, and lifting it, slipped beneath and dashed up the steps.

Washington, DC:

Dr. Lux sat fidgeting in a chair, waiting. Patience had never been his strong suit, and to have his precious time so thoroughly wasted by elected bureaucrats, military brass from across the river at the Pentagon, and representatives of the more clandestine branches of government from Langley bothered him exceedingly. They were, to a man, --at least by his estimation, --irritatingly small-minded and hopelessly daft. Trained by their various professions, however, they carried themselves with an invincible arrogance, a trait backstopped only by their thoroughly evidenced license to impose themselves at will and without fear of reprisal.

So wait he must, alone in the darkened room, with only the myriad thoughts and concerns which multiplied by the day in his mind to keep him company.

He knew he was in trouble. The only question was how much, and perhaps even more importantly, how much did his own idiosyncratic knowledge of his theory necessitate the perpetuation of his admittedly tenuous position.

Had he known that his theory would have been received so poorly, he thought now, in hindsight, that he might not have undertaken its consideration. And yet, as was the case in every other aspect of his life, once his mind alighted upon an idea, there was no impeding its investigation until a conclusive answer was reached. He knew, even as he first imagined the idea of hyperdensity almost a decade prior how revolutionary it had the power to be, --if it were true. Moreover, he knew there would be no sense circulating such a theory among his colleagues and various acquaintances from the global scientific community before he had definitive proof of viability.

He was glad now that he had taken the precaution of relying entirely on notebooks for his calculations and stored them in a securely locked vault prior to its publishing. He had imagined the usual suspects, --popular Hollywood and media darlings whose first love was fame and not real science, --would eviscerate him on their various in an attempt to protect their own egos but they had always been of little concern to him. They knew little and understood even less.

It was the resistance he had received from his closest colleagues, however, that had disheartened him the most and transformed him from a man well-regarded in his field of electromagnetism to a pariah, and then finally, on hostile terms with his government. He had been in Washington several times since his theory had first been published, --a feat only achieved due to his honorary editorial position and monthly syndicated column for one of the most respected journals in the country, The Final Frontier, a copy of which containing the now infamous article lay on the table in front of him.

Picking it up, he thumbed hastily to the appropriate page and read the headline again: Deep Sea, Deep Space - How A Trip to Israel Changed My Mind About Everything.

"...and it's still changed," he muttered grumpily to himself, his lip curling into defiant expression.

Just then the door of the room banged open and a parade of various officials poured into the room, each carrying the accoutrements particular to their profession. Elected officials in expensive suits paid for by donor money, military brass in expensive uniforms paid for by the citizenry, and NASA scientists who didn't seem to care where their clothes came from. The only one in the room looking perhaps as nervous as himself was his longtime friend and astronaut, Lt. Carl Newman, by whose unwitting cooperation he had secured the final confirmation for his theory.

Dr. Lux stood respectfully as they entered and waited until gestured to by the ranking representative from the Pentagon to resume his seat. The others did likewise and opened their various files accordingly as if preparing for a deposition.

"Did I do anything illegal?" Dr. Lux asked flippantly, folding his arms in front of him, but careful not to address the question to anyone in particular.

"As I've told you before, that's not why you're here," the representative from the Pentagon reminded him. "But I don't need to remind you that what you did was irresponsible and detrimental to national security. As far as we can tell, you collaborated with no-one else, apart from Lt. Newman, and you exposed no classified material, --on the technicality of course that had we known about your research, it would have been classified immediately. As it stands, you're being held as a liability to the state and we expect your full and complete cooperation. As you well know, --as everyone in this room well knows, --the race for supremacy in space is an essential one, one we have spend decades! fighting for, so what you decide to do from here on out will decide how things go for you. We've already gotten calls from every country in the world saying they have independently confirmed your initial findings, replicating your experiment down to its most precise detail. This leaves us exceedingly vulnerable. Fortunately for us, it also means everyone else has likewise been exposed. Which is why our task at hand now is to once again impose our superiority in this new world which you have so foolishly awakened us all to."

Several heads around the table nodded in agreement.

"We're going to need all your research, --every laptop, every algorithm, every formula, every calculation, every model, every device, every scrap of paper you ever wiped your ass with," interjected a bald man with a conspicuously Neanderthaloid brow and jaw to match, he black suit and tie betraying his allegiance to Langley. "We've already confiscated your phone and your phone records so don't bother with those."

"As I've told you before, you have everything there is to have -- the fire in my office took the rest," Dr. Lux reminded, doing his best to maintain his composure, his thin lips pursed together in agitation and annoyance.

"I find that hard to believe," replied the bald man incredulously, leaning forward on his elbows so that his great bulk loomed imposingly over Dr. Lux.

"Believe whatever you want, that's the truth. Go ahead and pick through the ashes if you like. I certainly won't stand in your way."

"Now, Dr. Lux," interjected a third man in the waning years of middle age, attempting to restore a sense of decorum to the proceedings, "I hope you can appreciate the predicament your theory..."

"Law," corrected Dr. Lux. "Unlike the previous vacuum theory, --which was never proven, because it couldn't be, --thanks to your confirmation, we now know that hyperdensity has been proven, which makes it a scientific law."

"Fine, law, I hope you can appreciate the predicament your law has created from a governance standpoint. All of us in this room are familiar with the constraints which will be imposed upon us in the next thirty years if we are not able to mine other planets for resources. As our friends over at NASA were able to point out, the good news is that, based on the implications your law has on the calculation of distance, those resources have never been closer -- and everyone will be in a mad dash to lay claim to them. The bad news, is that they have never been less obtainable than they are now. Gentlemen, the clock is running out, and the people will lose patience long before that time expires. They will not tolerate the necessary restrictions we've implemented forever, --you can count on that. So whatever you do, figure it out. I'll be submitting a plan from each of you on how to handle this crisis to the President by the end of next week, so don't disappoint. Now if you'll excuse me, I have another meeting to get to."

The room went silent for a moment until Dr. Lux asked if that meant that the meeting had adjourned. They all concluded that it had, and rose amidst a shuffling of papers as they were returned to their portfolios. Nearing the doorway, the representative from the Pentagon stopped Dr. Lux and jabbing a finger into his chest, cornered him once all the others had left.

"The media have already been told that you've been arrested, so don't think we can't just make you disappear if you don't cooperate. You got us into this mess, so by God you're going to help is get out of it."

"So I am under arrest, then," Dr. Lux answered.

"Don't think of it as under arrest. Think of it as undercover if it makes you feel any better. Either way, you work for us now."

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