Falls

The book, Spooky Action at a Distance, by George Musser started off like many books for the layman concerning quantum theory: stories of who disagreed with whom and why and when. He interprets the statements and objections made by Einstein somewhat differently than i’d heard before but mostly it was the same-old same-old. Toward the end of the book, however, he presents a confluence of three mathematical constructs that started from vastly different treatments of physics but converge to a view that our universe could be a zero-dimensional agglomeration of infinitely many points. Each point would have values describing its relationship to every other point. What we perceive as distance across “space,” whether it be across the room or across galaxies, is the result of these values. “Space” is an emergent property according to these constructs but “time” is fundamental. Nonlocality, the speed of light as a limit, the holographic principle, gravity, and quantum mechanics all beautifully emerge from this view. Wow.

Max Tegmark’s book, Our Mathematical Universe, is troubling to me. I’ve always considered that Hugh Everett’s interpretation of quantum physics, a.k.a. the Many Worlds Interpretation, or MWI, is little more than a temporary way to deal with quantum superposition without invoking decoherence until the time when the “real” explanation is found. Tegmark accepts MWI lock, stock, and barrel: an uncountable infinite number of universes have branched off and continue to do so. These universes are separate and parallel and cannot communicate with each other. Ridiculous.

But my thoughts keep returning to Bob, the Grim Creeper. The hell he described sounded as though he was simultaneously experiencing, as he put it, “zillions” of parallel worlds. Not just that, he apparently taps into fatal experiences of people he encounters. Well, fatal in some subset of parallel worlds. I cannot quite get my head around that. It is as ridiculous as the MWI.

And the pills prescribed to him apparently take away this weirdness. I don’t get it. I need to talk with him again.

***

It wasn’t until the following Thursday that i ended up in Berkeley again when a Marla needed a ride to her place on Regent Street. After my usual end-of-ride routine, i set the Lyft app to “Go Online” and drove to Peet’s on Shattuck. I circled the nearby blocks looking for Bob, the Grim Creeper. When that failed, i went to the Staples parking lot on Durant, parked the Prius, and walked over to the trash bin. No blankets, no green bag, no trash, no Bob. It was a bit of a relief since it was kinda scary being around him. I returned to the Prius and tapped the app back to “Online.”

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Weeks went by and my thoughts about Bob diminished. Suddenly, there he was, sitting on the ground near the stoplight as i took the 27th Street off-ramp from 980. I had a passenger, Ravi, on his way to Xolo, a Mexican restaurant on Telegraph. I continued past Bob, excited that i’d found him. After dropping off Ravi, i set the app to “Go Online”, parked my Prius, and walked to the 27th Street off-ramp where Bob was sitting next to his multicolored blankets and meager belongings.

Bob had his eyes closed, holding his head, and when i got close enough i could hear him mutter “Jingle hells. Jingle hells. Jingle hells,” over and over again. My first impulse was to turn around and get away from him but instead i logged into my iPhone, started an audio recording, and then called his name.

“Bob, Bob.”

He looked up with feral fierceness and no indication he remembered me.

“Bob. I’m David. We talked behind Staples in Berkeley.”

He leaped to his feet. “Get the fuck away from me, motherfucker!”

I almost ran.

“It’s OK, Bob. I just want to chat with you a minute or two.”

“You’re dead. Motorcycle messes. Fucking drowned and drowned again. Slipped and went off the waterfall, mashed your fucking brains out on the rocks. [laughs] You’re fucking dead.”

His eyes were scary wild.

“Can you tell me more about the waterfall, Bob?”

“You stupid bastard. You tried crossing the stream like the other guy but you fucking slipped. Fell thousands of feet. Head smashed like an egg. Now get the fuck away from me!”

I backed up about five feet to the curb. “I can bring you something to eat and maybe we can talk some more.”

He suddenly lunged toward me, snarling as he came. Cars were speeding by just behind me. There was nowhere to go so i jumped sideways as he reached me. Our arms tangled momentarily as he caromed off of me. I fell at the curb and Bob fell tumbled into the street. Immediately he was bashed and run over by a blue food delivery truck. A black Honda sedan skidded to a stop just shy of him.

People were getting out of their cars and trucks and calling on their cell phones as i stood there, stunned. Finally, i made my legs move, walked into the street, and kneeled next to him. He was on his back. One leg stuck out to his side oozing blood. A patch of skin was missing from his head where blood flowed rapidly. A little bit of blood was bubbling out of his mouth as he labored to breathe. I pulled out my handkerchief and tried to stanch the flow from his head.

He looked over at me and in a weak choking voice said, “I remember … you. You’re David.”

With that, tears rolled down my face.

“Bob, i’m so sorry, so sorry.”

“No big deal.” He gagged ominously, pathetically. “There’s … lots of me … didn’t get hit. Those me … are fine.”

That was the last thing he said as he grew weaker while we waited for an ambulance. I told the emergency medical team that i was his friend. They let me ride in the ambulance with him. I held his hand while they intubated him and cut his clothes off.

When we reached Highland Hospital, they rolled him away to the O.R. He died there.

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It was in Lesotho, Africa in 1968 when Ashton-Martin Moejane and i reached Maletsunyani Falls on horseback. There wasn’t much water in the stream that plunged 630 feet to a rocky pool below. We dismounted our horses, and tied their reins to a stubby bush. Ashton walked right up to the precipice with no fear. My knees nearly buckled seeing him do that. He turned back toward me.

“We should cross the stream. We can see better there.”

I squatted next to the stream, stuck my right hand in the frigid water, and felt the polished granite streambed. “It’s too slippery, Ashton.”

“It’s okay.” He walked back away from the edge of the waterfall about 25 feet to where the fast-flowing water was only 8 or 10 inches deep and the stream was about 10 feet wide.

“Ashton, if you slip, the water will carry you all the way off.”

Ashton said, “No problem,” as he walked through the stream to the other side. He turned toward me and repeated, “No problem.”

Holding my breath, i followed. Cold water flowed through my jeans and into my boots. Boots! My heart skipped a beat midstream when i realized Ashton was wearing boots with grooved rubber soles while i was wearing slick leather-soled Wellingtons. Somehow i made it without slipping and i started breathing again.

As i approached the edge, i lay stomach-down on the flat granite surface next to the stream and inched my way forward until i could see the pool far, far away at the base of the vertical rock wall. It appeared that all of the cascading water turned to a fine mist and swirled with the winds long before reaching the rocks below.

As we left, i insisted that we walk upstream several hundred feet where the water was slower and crossing less treacherous. Loose rocks made it tricky and we got a bit muddy but we reached the other side without incident. Back at our horses, i emptied water from my boots and changed to dry socks. We then mounted our horses and continued on to the Catholic mission at Semonkong.