Dances With Poodles

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hammingbyrd7
hammingbyrd7
1,368 Followers

"After that night, Laura was on her own. She spent her time foraging for food at night, and hiding out in the woods and abandoned, burned-out buildings during the day, all the time playing a deadly game of hide-and-seek with roving paramilitary rape gangs. She would sometimes sit and stare at the book her grandfather had given her. It was one of her favorites from the library, a Russian textbook by Butkov with the title of "Mathematical Physics." But she found she couldn't read it, she just stared at the book, unopened."

"Her grandfather tried to give her something to cling to, something he knew she thought beautiful. But it wasn't enough, Jill, not nearly enough. The beauty of mathematics alone can't be a shield against that kind of horror. Everyone that she had loved had been taken from her. Laura told me they have a saying in Bosnia, 'War's an evil bird, feeding on the dreams of the children.' When Laura was on the run, she began to have nightmares about that bird, fearing it was chasing her, stalking her, determined to eat all her dreams. The nightmares were a horror to her, becoming worse and worse each night through the weeks on the run, until one night, in a nightmare that Laura was deathly afraid would be the last dream she would ever have, the war bird finally caught up with her...."

Laura's dream...

"When I entered the dream I was walking in a forest, Steve, along the banks of a swift, blue river. I was naked but totally unashamed. I was walking on soft, wet grass; cool beneath my feet, much nicer than the bullet-ridden bodies I had to walk across in my other dreams. I tasted the water of the river and it was delicious, clear and pure, much different than the bloodied water I was forced to drink in the other dreams. Strange, I thought, that the war bird would pick such a beautiful place to devour my dreams, for I could feel his presence close by, and I knew that my time of running was over."

"As I walked I came to an enormous stone bridge that crossed the river. It was massive, impossibly large, an eight-lane superhighway kind on bridge, spanning the river in the middle of the forest. And there on the other side was the evil war bird. After weeks of hearing it searching for me in the darkness of my other nightmares, I finally got to see it in the bright sunlight of the forest. It was huge, five story building huge, and jet black. It was shaped somewhat like a grotesque ostrich, with a great serpentine neck and a tiny head holding its tiny, evil brain. It had a huge, spherical belly, covered with black feathers, hugely fat and heavy from all the dreams it had eaten, and I saw in its tiny eyes its great hunger to devour mine."

"In the last instant before the war bird crossed the bridge, Steve, I realized what the bridge was really made of. They were the stones of my hate, great stones of hate mortared together with the guilt of my survival, and the frustration and the hurt of all of my losses. All of my desires to punish, to strike back, to take revenge, sitting there as great stone blocks of hate in the bridge before me, making a path for the war bird. And I felt the presence of a loving God inside of me, giving me a great power and a great choice to make. And I chose God's path, Steve. I turned a white-hot starfire God had given me onto the bridge and into my own mind, burning the bridge and burning away my ability ever to make such stone again. God's fire was within my mind, but I realized in joy it was not a malicious fire, but a refining fire. And I poured the power of that fire into the stone and into my mind. I burned the stone down to its molecules; I burned the stone molecules down to their atoms. I used the starfire to strip the electrons away from the atoms, to fission their nuclei into hydrogen."

"At the end of the dream, the bridge was gone, and I had lost my ability to hate. Even the guilt was gone; I could finally accept in peace that my grandfather gave up his life as a gift for me. The war bird was howling in frustration, for he was far too fat and heavy to fly or swim. I danced in the grass on my side of the river, naked and free. I laughed at the war bird, and mocked him! "Oh, you stupid, evil bird," I cried. "Such an easy choice to make. I've lost my ability to hate, but I've saved my ability to dream and aspire! Such an easy, obvious choice to make! You stupid bird. Oh, you stupid, stupid bird!"

Steve continued, "Laura had that dream, Jill, just before she was rescued by a patrol of U.N. troops. She got lucky in getting her status as a refugee orphan so quickly, and in finding her Aunt Irene here in the U.S... When you first met her in September three years ago on the soccer field, it was less than a month after she had defeated the war bird." Jill sat silently, tears in her eyes, overwhelmed, unable to think of a thing to say. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Laura is a pacifist. Heck, look what she did for Jamie last Christmas. If you're doing something outrageously evil, she might well become furious at your actions. She might use great effort to stop you from what you're doing. But she couldn't hate you, wouldn't want to hurt anything you held dear, as a means to get back at you. You could be the greatest torture in her life, and her greatest desire would be, as she puts it, to join in a dance of forgiveness and re-direction."

"I should know," Steve said quietly, "She offered just such a dance to me. After Laura finished telling me her story in her apartment that night, I started to cry. I felt so ashamed. What kind of a monster had I become? I tried to leave. I couldn't bear for her to look at me. But she physically stopped me from going out the door, pulled me over to the couch instead, saying that I shouldn't drive in this condition, and that she really didn't want me to leave anyway. She piled a whole bunch of cushions in her lap on the couch, and I was soon lying down on them, face up, still crying heavily. Laura was gently holding my head, and my right ear was pressing into her right breast. I couldn't believe she was trusting me enough to do this, after I had just come so close to raping her. But it didn't feel sexual at all. It felt healing. No, more than healing. Healing suggests getting back to a place you once had before an injury. Laura was helping me to become something new, something better. Laura called it re-directing."

"An honor, Steve," Laura said softly, "It's an honor for me to help you re-direct."

"We stayed like that on the couch for more than half the night. Sometimes we talked about our dreams and aspirations. Other times we were just quiet, I listening to the slow beat of Laura's strong heart in my right ear."

"I awoke the next morning on the couch to the smell of frying omelets and toasting bagels. We talked lightly about our schedules for the day, it was clear we had a promise with each other never to talk about the previous night with anyone. I drove her back to school in time for our first classes. I spent the day wondering how to thank her, wondering if I should ask her out. But that felt wrong, like a patient asking his therapist for a date. The very next day after that, I met you. I have so much to thank her for; I never would have won your heart without Laura's help. I love you, Jill. I love you as my wife to be."

"I love you too, Steve. I'm glad you've won my heart, and that I've accepted yours in return. The world isn't quite ready to accept permanent commitments from people as young as we are, but I also think of you as my husband to be. Laura's right, our marriage dance has begun."

Steve and Jill sat quietly on the couch for quite a while, gently holding each other, while Jill slowly absorbed all she had heard. "You don't know what I am. You don't know what I am.," Jill said softly.

"What?" asked Steve.

"Oh, I was just thinking about Laura's remark as she was trying to fend you off. Maybe Laura's grandfather was the first person to guess what Laura truly is."

"What do you mean?"

"Laura and Jamie, and you, of course, are my closest friends. I've been so fascinated by Laura's genius that I've read many biographies about other ones, from Archimedes to James Gleick's book "Genius" about Richard Feynman. None of them came close to achieving what Laura's achieved with so little formal education. Math and spatial relationships are considered right-brain activities. None of the great math geniuses I know of had genius language ability, a left-brain activity. Well, Carl Gauss was good, but not a genius linguist. All the great philosophers of the human condition I know of, Jesus, John Milton, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., they all seem to be left-brain geniuses, with no obvious special math abilities."

"Maybe there are three kinds of geniuses, Steve. The type-A or type-B genius is a one-in-a-million shot, and there are a few thousand of them on the planet now. Very innovative people who discover new ways to look at things, the right-brain type-A people pushing the cutting edge of knowledge, and the left-brain type-B are the people who inspire us with their keen insight into the human condition."

"And maybe, just maybe, there's a type-C genius, a one-in-a-million times a one-in-a-million shot, a one-in-a-trillion shot, a one person in a 100,000 years for the whole planet kind of genius. Someone we don't even have a word for, because we never had one before, at least not in recorded history. The type-C genius has phenomenal math ability augmented by genius language ability, has synergistic genius from both the right and left brain. This type of genius doesn't push cutting edges; the type-C genius creates knowledge light-years away from the cutting edge, and then begs the rest of the world to catch up."

"I don't understand the concept of physically destroying your brain's ability to hate, but I think that's what Laura was literally able to do, honoring, as she would probably put it, the great minds of Jesus, Gandhi, and King."

"I don't understand Laura's papers on quantum reality, but I do know the quantum science community is going absolutely nuts over them. I think Laura is developing the math and experimental physics simultaneously now. Her latest paper in Physics Today is a detailed proposal for something she calls a quantum interface resonance experiment. Laura says she can set the whole thing within a month once she starts her summer program at Cal Tech after July 4th; that the entire experiment is just two interferometers, a few beam splitters, and a modified photo-multiplier."

"Think how insanely aggressive both Cal Tech and Princeton were for Laura to join them with her National Science Foundation scholarship. Both offered to let her write her own description of what a quick doctoral program would be like, with Laura just coming out of high school. Their real passion is the get Laura engaging with their research faculty as quickly as possible. Look how eagerly they agreed to Laura's suggestion that she split her time between the two campuses. Do you realize how unprecedented that is? I think they suspect what I suspect, what Laura's grandfather suspected three years ago, that Laura is a great treasure for the entire planet."

"A treasure we almost lost," said Steve softly, still thinking of Laura's ordeal in Bosnia. "One more insane sniper targeting another innocent child, just one more snap of a twig in the deadly games of hide-and-seek with the paramilitary, and we would have lost her forever, never even realizing the greatness of our loss. How is it possible, Jill? Even with the most insane religious thoughts possible, even with the most bizarre, ethnic hatred possible, even with the most evil nationalistic pride imaginable, how could it be possible to hold an innocent 7-year-old child at play in your gun site, and then pull the trigger? I sometimes have nightmares about it."

Jill softly caressed Steve's head for a long time. His question was unanswerable. She finally said, "Steve, I want you to know my faithfulness to you is unchanged. I forgive you as Laura has forgiven you for the way you acted that night. I will never bring up the issue of that night again, unless you want me to." And then Jill smiled, and said "And you know, this finally explains my warnings from Kathy, the girl you were going out with before me."

"You know Kathy?"

"A little, she hangs out with a very different bunch of kids. We move in very different circles. But Kathy is a nice person."

"Kathy's a very nice person," Steve agreed, "much nicer than I smart enough to appreciate while we were dating. What did she say about me?"

"Not a good press at all, I'm afraid. She kept telling me that you were a taker, and would tend to whine a lot when you didn't get your way. She warned me that the more she tried to open up to intimacy in her dating relationship with you, the more controlling you became. She also said not to be lured by all your money, that you weren't the least bit generous. I kept telling her you weren't like that at all. You are kind and generous with people, playful and affectionate in your love for me, and I don't think I've ever heard you complain about anything. Her warnings and my experience with you were so completely opposite, I wondered for a long time if she were playing some sort of cruel hoax, but she seemed very sincere. She kept saying you would have needed a complete personality transplant to be behaving the way I was describing you."

"Wow. Kathy was making a very accurate observation, Jill. My character has changed a lot. Whenever I feel like whining now, I think of Katja, spending the last moments of her own life trying to comfort her dying sister in her arms, and I think, what God given right do I have to whine about anything? Maybe the only thing Kathy missed is that Laura's master surgeon knife cut deeper than just my personality. Laura, and you, Jill, helped me transplant my dreams, my aspirations. Where my dreams lead, my personality follows. I love you so much, Jill. You've become the better part of me, and the better part of what I dream to become."

"Oh, Steve, I love you dearly too. You are the light of my life, the fire of my loins! And speaking of my loins, here, let me give you your graduation present a few weeks early...."

A month passed, and Jill and Jamie's parents were flying over the Atlantic, off to a second honeymoon in Scotland. The seven young women were camping out in the very large living room of Jill and Jamie's house, sleeping bags and air mattresses arranged throughout the room. They had had an early dinner, showered, and were all in their pajamas. The plan was to perhaps chat for a bit, and then sack out early. Everyone was looking forward to early morning hiking in the nearby national park the next day. Jill was sitting on the floor next to Laura at Laura's sleep site, helping her unpack. Jill had been admiring all the different stuffed animals her friends had brought to sleep with, and she wondered with amusement if Laura had one. But when she looked in Laura's duffel bag, all she saw under the clothes was a thick, somewhat dirty book. She pulled it out to look at it, and was not surprised to see that the author was Butkov. Jill glanced up and noticed Laura was giving her a warm smile.

"You carry it around to honor his memory, don't you? As a way of expressing gratitude..."

"Yes" said Laura, happy that Jill knew her story, and thrilled that her closest friend understood her heart so clearly. "It's the only thing I have from my past life. When I ran from my grandfather's house that night, there was no time even to dress. I was in bare feet and pajamas, just clutching a jacket and that book. Fortunately it was summer! After a month in the woods, the jacket was badly torn, and the pajamas were in shreds. I was effectively naked from the waist down when I was rescued. The Dutch troops were so kind, Jill, with such kind respects to avert their eyes while some made a small room for me by holding up blankets, giving me some privacy to change into some of their spare clothing. That book is the only thing I have left; plus all the memories, of course."

"I'll miss you so," said Jill, after a moment. "In another week you'll be at Cal Tech, 2000 miles away. You are so much a part of my life; you've helped me become what I am in so many ways... I think you even helped me get accepted to Carnegie Mellon."

"Oh? How so?"

"It was somewhat amusing. I was touring their campus last winter, talking to a physics professor in his office. He was very pleasant, attentive, but I could tell it was the end of a long day for him. Our conversation wandered to quantum mechanics. He was surprised I was so versed on all the new breakthroughs. I told him how you and I have practically been living together for the last three years, and his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. He started madly dialing on his phone. In a few minutes, we had almost all the physics and math department professors jammed into his small office with us. It turns out a math professor there was doing a final review on your book "A New Mathematics" for the publishers, and the two departments were going bonkers over it."

"It's stupendous!" this one woman professor kept saying. "Calculus advanced from algebra by embodying the concepts of limits and infinity. This new mathematics is just as major a step, embodying the concepts of self-organization and incomputability."

"It'll be the math of choice for studying self-organizing systems," another professor said. "Quantum interface layers, weather turbulence, biological sciences, stellar and cosmic evolution, economic dynamics, the implications are staggering."

"They especially liked your extensions of Lagrangian formalism, with generalized momentum coordinates, and how you called your new math Boltzmann formalism, with generalized entropy coordinates." Jill then smiled at Laura and said, "The physics professors were asking me about your experimental proposals. I think they forgot that I wasn't you! I tried to tell them all the analogies you told me as best I could. They wanted to know what experimental results you were expecting. Boy, was I on shaky ground! I made a vague explanation on how two interferometers would probably be needed to capture both ends of the interface entanglement.

"But it was your theoretical work they were in love with. "Just three short equations," this one professor said, "proving a self-organizing interface entanglement is computable on the classical side, but must be incomputable on the quantum side due to the counterfactual influences.""

"I quoted you verbatim from the first time you tried to explain this to me: "This is all so obvious! How could you ever hope to compute the effect of what hasn't happened in a self-organizing phenomenon? The beauty of the physics is that all the counterfactuals get absorbed and resolved in the interface layer, resulting in the computability of all classical, immutable processes.""

"Oh, Laura," sighed Jill, "Obvious?! I'm just so glad they didn't push me on explaining your math on this to them. I know what a tensor is, but what your self-enfolding flow tensors are, I have no idea... I made a comment that we were such close friends, I was sure I could get you to Carnegie Mellon as a guest speaker for a talk or two. They were ecstatic! I knew then my acceptance to CMU was a done deal."

"Ha! Amusing indeed... It's so gratifying to delight people with my work, Jill. It brings back memories of my grandfather. Just after New Years when I was 14, I had finished reading the math section of his library, and I kept asking him where the books for the next step were, I wanted to know the answers to how self-organization would be encapsulated into the calculus. We spent half the evening trying to understand each other. He finally realized what I was talking about when I showed him my idea for a feedback contour, and I asked him how I could integrate it."

hammingbyrd7
hammingbyrd7
1,368 Followers