Chapter 2

            In those days I was quite the runner, and that morning found me in baggy shorts and a garish orange Princeton T-shirt, loping alongside the two-lane country road that fed into Alexander Street. Rows of young cornstalks, about two feet high, rippled on either side of the road. Traffic was almost nonexistent – it was an early Saturday morning. As I pounded along, crunching gravel with my battered cross-trainers, I took deep breaths of the sweet spring air and remembered those priceless moments from my childhood when all was sensory experience, when I marveled at the rich complexity and startling beauty of the immense world that surrounded me. I wished I could capture that feeling and live with it always.

            Eventually the sunny cornfields were replaced by towering trees, dripping shade, and I was back in Princeton. I hopped from the road to a sidewalk, passed Prospect Street and the eating clubs, and headed deeper into town. Soon I was turning right onto Porter and climbing the wooden steps of the sprawling Victorian duplex where I lived. I had pulled a chain from around my neck and almost had my key in the door when I realized a man was standing in the shadows of the wrap-around porch.

            “Professor Goddard?” he asked.

            “Oops, you scared me!” I said, almost dropping the key.

            “I’m sorry. Are you Emily Goddard?”

            He was tall and thin, with an oval face and a very thin mustache. Not bad looking, but he was dressed like a bureaucrat, in a gray suit and dull blue tie. He carried a brown portfolio under his arm. He didn’t look like a threat, so I relaxed. That was my first mistake.

            I was pretty good at mistakes. Not professionally, mind you. As an associate professor of anthropology, I’d developed a fairly sharp reputation   But my personal life was a shambles, and sometimes it seemed I was cursed, that I purposely stumbled from one stupid situation to another. The latest example being Max Sellars. I’d broken up with Max just two weeks before. We had met at UCLA and had engaged in an on-again off-again relationship that in time became our normal routine. Then, after a few years, it all went sour. What had started out looking like a life partnership turned into a bitter psychological wrestling match. But that disaster was finally behind me. Thoughts of Max were the furthest thing from my mind as I stared at the guy in the gray suit. Yes, I was certain, he was a fed.

            “I’m Emily Goddard,” I admitted. “And you? You’re not from the IRS, are you?”

            His throat rumbled a little, a kind of bureaucrat’s laugh. He extended his hand.

            “No, my name is Frank Devereaux. I’m with the White House staff.”

            As we shook hands, I felt a little dizzy. I wanted to say something clever, like, Wow, that tax problem must be worse than I thought. But I just nodded.

            “Do you have a few minutes to talk?” he asked. I now glanced down toward the street and saw a sleek black sedan, with a military driver and another suit. No doubt his ride.

            You’re probably wondering what one of the President’s Men wanted with me. I’ll tell you, but be patient. This story is a bit involved. And I’m not as young as I used to be. I tend to digress, to wander off the primrose path, sniffing the flowers and daydreaming. But I’ll try to behave.

            I had been at Princeton for eight years. I was one of those anthropologists who lived for fieldwork. Every summer I’d head off on an adventure, to study a tribe or a clan or a family in some far-off land. Cultural anthro was my field, and folklore/mythology was my specialty. I did a lot of my work in the Middle East and North Africa. This had something to do with my background, which I’ll get to eventually. My classes were small – eight to ten sharp young men and women – and I didn’t lecture, I conducted “preceptorials.” Little seminars really. My students and I would usually sit together around a table and work on the issues. I had them write lots of papers. They may have hated this part, but we all loved the discussions. We would talk for hours about folklore traditions, about how such beliefs developed and how they affected – and were affected by – behavior and social structures. Anyway, I published my research, and got some attention, and promotions followed. I looked forward to making full professor – any year now! But the best part was the fieldwork. If I could spend nine months of the year in the Middle East and three in the classroom, instead of the other way around, I would have been in heaven.

            Mr. Frank Devereaux of the Executive Branch showed me a suitably impressive identification card, and being the patsy that I am, I invited him into the living room of my home. I sat in a wingback chair and he sat on the couch. I was embarrassed to be all sweaty and smelly, and here he was, a White House official, but he didn’t seem to mind. I even offered to go shower before we talked, but he wanted to get right to business. He took a manila folder from his portfolio and laid it on the coffee table between us.

            “Professor – ”

            “Emmy, please. That’s what my friends call me. You are a friend, aren’t you?”

            He almost smiled.

            “Emmy. I have an important favor to ask. On behalf of my employer.” He didn’t have to say who that was. “We have a bit of a problem that needs to be resolved. We could use your help.”

            I leaned forward, partly out of intense interest, and partly to get that damp T-shirt off my breasts. He may have been a government bureaucrat, but he was still a guy.

            “I’ll try my best,” I said. “What’s the problem, and how can I help?”

            Four hours later, we were sitting side-by-side on a government Lear jet, winging down the coast toward Washington, D.C. and Andrews Air Force Base.

            What the hell are you doing, Em? I wondered, as I sipped a root beer and listened to Frank Devereaux talking about his childhood memories of Lafayette, Louisiana. You have classes tomorrow. You can’t just up and leave!

            But I guess I was ripe for it. Among other things, it would help me put the breakup with Max behind me. I asked myself: Then why are you thinking about him? Not that Max didn’t have his good points. He was incredibly intelligent, and a gentle, persistent lover. But he was also a control freak, and he wanted to rule me like he ruled his classes. Max Sellars taught theoretical physics in arguably the best physics department in the country. He saw himself destined for a Nobel Prize. Maybe he would snare one someday. Who knows?

            The reason I was thinking about him was that conversation we’d had at PJ’s Pancake House. Over a dimpled brown acre of blueberry waffles, he told me about “multiple dimensions” – how quantum physics required that there be many unseen dimensions in our world. It wasn’t just a science-fiction concept, he insisted. None of the math would work without an array of hidden dimensions beyond the three spatial ones we experience in our lives.

So what does that mean for us, I asked Max. Can we visit these extra dimensions. Does anyone live there? He laughed and said, “We all live there! We just can’t see it all.” We are more complicated beings in a world of many dimensions, just like a three-dimensional cube is more complex than a two-dimensional square on a piece of paper, which in turn is more intricate than a simple line of one dimension. Well, I asked, can anything or anyone hide in these extra dimensions, so we couldn’t see them in our normal world? Max frowned and was silent for a moment. “I suppose it’s possible,” he said.

Then, after filling my head full of multiple dimensions, he told me about “multiple universes.” There were several theories here. One was that right after the Big Bang, space-time expanded at varying rates in different places, creating “bubble universes” that may have their own natural laws, and that may sometimes collide with one another. Any theory, based on quantum concepts, says that every choice in the universe creates two new universes, one based on the choice taken and the other on the choice not taken. So there are an infinite number of universes, and wormholes and other phenomena may create portals allowing us to move from one universe to another.

            Why was I thinking of all this 30,000 feet above Delaware? We’ll get to that.

            I looked over at Mr. Frank Devereaux of the Executive Branch. His eyes were closed and he was dozing. I thought about what he had said to me to get me on this plane. A lot of circumlocutions and bureaucratese, but three solid things:

            One: “The President is aware of your expertise in Middle Eastern folklore.”

Two: “He would like your counsel on an important issue.”

            Three: “It’s a national security matter.”

            Well, all right, if you put it that way…. So I’d packed a bag. I had no specific information, but my mind had raced ahead to try to fill in the gaps. I had a notion, but I didn’t dare believe it.
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