Luke Looks for Answers

Chapter 1

A Scientific Conversation

(Author's Note: This is part of a series of stories that follow the JOA characters after May, 2005. The preceding story was WINTER JOURNEYS. This particular story focuses on Luke. The main things that have happened to him since May are that he has been sharing Joan's meetings with God, and he has been intimate once with Grace)

(Belated Disclaimer: I have no ownership rights in JOA. My only purpose in writing this story is to have fun and maybe share it)

"Luke! Oh, Luke!"

I recognized Glynis' voice down the hallway even before turning around to answer. Her voice had always had that flute-like quality, and somehow my own name seemed to particularly bring it out.

She was standing about ten yards away, trying to keep a fix on me among the crowd of students. It was the mad dash between classes. She probably would have pressed through to me if it weren't for her -- condition.

Unfortunately I wasn't the only person to hear her call. Behind me I heard a girl remark cattily: "Well! Looks like some boys DO make passes at girls who wear glasses."

"She's married," I said in Glynis' defense. We had broken up a long time ago, but I still didn't like hearing her ridiculed.

"Did that happen before or after she got knocked up?"

I gave up on that, realizing I was being naïve. The whole school probably knew that the smartest girl in the senior class had gotten herself pregnant. Students who were jealous of the former distinction could relieve their feelings by rubbing in the latter.

I pressed through the crowd to Glynis, tuning out everybody else.

"Hi," she said. "I heard you went to Harvard over the Christmas holidays."

"Yeah."

"We'd love to hear about it." We, of course, meant Friedmann and herself. "Could you pay us a visit tonight?"

I thought. It was Friday, and during the fall Grace had spent Friday nights as our house, ostensibly discussing homework, but actually comparing notes with Joan and me about recent encounters with God. But we hadn't gotten back on the schedule since Christmas holidays, which had been unusually hectic this year. Besides, Joan wanted some "quality time" with Adam now that he was in the secret as well. "Sure, I'm free. Where?"

"We're, uh, staying with my parents," she said with some embarrassment. I gathered that there was a big story behind that. The Figliolis probably weren't too happy to have Friedmann moving in, but they wanted the pair to be free to concentrate on school and keep up their excellent GPAs, not be distracted by looking for lodging and worrying about rent.

"I won't be intruding on the Sabbath meal, will I?" Dating two Jewish girls in a row had got me quite familiar with the timing of the rituals.

"No, we aren't that observant. And my parents are attending a big wedding in Baltimore."

"OK."

I was careful to mention the invitation to Grace in the biology closet, to avoid misunderstanding. She teased me about wanting to keep two girls on a string, but clearly she saw that there was no point in getting jealous of a woman who was married and pregnant, particular since the woman's mate was going to be on the scene himself. "I'll probably spend the evening exchanging Emails with your cousins," Grace said, referring to the farming family with whom she had worked over the holidays. "The adoption's about to go through. Once it does, you'll have a new relative."

"Yeah, I hope he turns out more normal than the rest of us."

"What's so good about normal?"

Maybe nothing, I thought. But if Glynis were more normal, maybe they'd pick on her less.

As I drove up to the Figlioli house I noticed some snow flurries coming down. I didn't pay much attention to that. It had also snowed in December and it had not come to much. I parked in their driveway and walked up to the door. It was answered by Friedmann.

"Hi, Luke. Come in, man." He raised his arm for a high-five and I slapped it. It made my wrist hurt afterward. Glynis came in from a back room. We walked up and hesitated, not sure exactly how to greet each other.

"Aww, go ahead and kiss," said Friedmann. "We're all friends here.

Feeling awkward about kissing my friend's wife, I stood about a foot away, careful of her stomach, and leaned forward. She duplicated the gesture and we exchanged a peck. However minor the contact, it did trigger some memories of how we used to date two years ago. But I was sure that I had never felt for Glynis the way I felt for Grace now.

"So, what was Harvard like?" asked Friedmann as we settled into chairs.

I tried describing the buildings of the campus, but after a while Glynis interrupted. "I think he meant what were the people like?"

"Oh. I didn't see too many; it was already Christmas vacation. There was one guy who showed me around; he was from England and didn't want the expense of flying there and back. He was also working on a string theory project."

"Cool!" exclaimed Friedmann. "Did he tell you about any new developments?"

"Um, I'm afraid not. He wasn't on the cutting edge. He was working on a computer graphics program that would help visualize higher dimensions."

"That's cool enough," said Friedmann. "Did he give you a copy?"

"No, it required access to the university mainframe."

Friemann said a rude word.

"You must excuse my husband," Glynis said with mock formality, though in fact I had yet to hear her refer to him by his first name. "He's obsessed with string theory."

"I don't mind," I said. "The student told me that if I did some research on my own in the next couple of months, and if it impressed his professors, it would increase my chances at getting in."

"Wonderful!" asked Friedmann. "But there are other reasons to pursue the theory. It's the Theory of Everything. Once we understand it, who knows what power we might have?"

"We don't know that it's the theory of everything," objected Glynis. "There's been lots of times when people thought they had everything explained. Newton's particles, atoms, electrons and protons, quarks, and now it's strings."

It was, I thought, a purely intellectual quarrel between the two. It was like a card-playing couple who tried to cream each other at bridge, but did not let that temporary rivalry undermine their fundamental love for each other. Though, for them and for me, the subject of the quarrel was a lot more important than a game of bridge.

"How do we know strings aren't the end of the line?" demanded Friedmann.

"Because there are too many variations in the theory," said Glynis. "I think we'll know when we find the correct theory, because it will provide a simple explanation for everything, and every other theory will turn out to be flawed."

"It may never be that simple," objected Friedmann. "I've heard of a theory called the anthropic principle. It says lots of theories are possible, and for each possible theory there's a universe built on the theory. We look around in ours, and wonder how it got that way. What we're seeing are the laws that led to our existence. If there was a universe where gravity wasn't strong enough to hold a planet together, or hydrogen and oxygen didn't go together to make water, we wouldn't be there, so we don't see those particular laws. "

"Could we ever see the other universes?" asked Glynis.

"Nope, because the other universes wouldn't have light in our sense."

"It doesn't make much sense to theorize about something you can never see," mused Glynis. "What do you think, Luke?"

It suddenly dawned on me that I had access to the right answer. I couldn't see if those other universes existed, but I knew Somebody who could. The problem was, I couldn't mention the Someone to the others, unless I did it very carefully.

"Einstein talked a lot about God," I said slowly. " 'God is subtle but not malicious'. 'God doesn't play dice with the universe' . So maybe God could give us answers."

Glynis stared, and Friedmann giggled. "We don't know exactly what Einstein meant by God, but it was probably something pretty abstract. Not something like a stranger on a bus, offering to tell us a secret."

Glynis nodded, "We shouldn't anthropomorphize too much. That's why our religion forbids making a "graven image" of God."

I dropped that approach in a hurry. When Joan first told me about her divine visits, I couldn't reconcile the idea of a Cute-Boy-God with the Creator of the Universe. I still couldn't; I simply put them in separate compartments and believed in them both. If Glynis and Friedmann were ever to be brought into the secret, I would need divine help, as Joan had when she told us.

While I was casting about for a way to change the subject, my cell phone rang (the fanfare from 2001). "Hello?"

"Luke? Are you all right?" Mom's voice.

"Sure, Mom. I'm visiting Glynis and Friedmann. What's wrong?"

"Better look outside."

The family had their blinds drawn, and besides my back was to them. I moved the blinds aside and saw what Mom was talking about. The flurries I had seen earlier had built into a major snowstorm. "Oh, crap."

"That's one way of putting it," Mom said dryly. "I don't want you driving in that with less than a year's practice."

I felt an odd sensation in my ribs; Glynis had come to look over my shoulder, and her belly was pressing into my back. "Don't worry, Luke; you can stay with us. I better call my parents and see what they're doing."

"You heard?" I asked Mom.

"Yes, thank them and accept their offer."

Glynis came back from her room a minute later. "Mom and Dad don't want to risk a drive either. They're staying with a friend in Baltimore. That means everything's working out. You can stay in their room, Luke."

"Um, I'd rather not intrude that much. I'll just stretch out on that couch, when the time comes."

"It's still early," Friedmann said.

We tried to get back to the scientific discussion. The main question now was whether another universe could be deduced, even if it were not visible. I thought yes (after all, I had seen a ghost -- Judith -- that definitely followed different laws). Friedmann thought no, and Glynis was undecided, challenging both of us to convince her. As time passed, the discussion got more esoteric, we got wearier, and that conversation got sillier. I remember somebody saying "For a difference to be a difference, it must make a difference", after which somebody else said "It sounds like it IS time for bed."

I decided to take off my shoes, socks, and jacket and otherwise keep my clothes on for the night. Glynis fetched me a blanket in case the chill from outside got in. After that, she and Friedmann retreated to her room. It struck me as odd for a boy and girl my age to openly get in bed together, but of course they WERE married. I wondered what they would do there and hastily decided that it was none of my business.

It took some time for me to get to sleep, since neither my clothes nor the couch were particularly comfortable. But finally I nodded off, and started a journey into dreamland.

TBC