Chapter Thirty-Three
ALEXANDER
1
Alexander awoke to the sounds of autumn tranquillity of Sydney Harbour. The morning sun streamed in through his wide-open, balcony sliding doors and bathed his bed with warm light. He kicked off the doona and lay there, spreadeagled naked, and soaked up the warmth of the morning. It was Saturday, May 7, 2005. The phone rang. He rolled over, picked it up from the side table and put it to his ear.
‘Hello?’
‘Good morning, Alex. How is my favourite son?’
‘Morning, mother. I am your only son.’
‘How are you sweetheart? I’m so excited about our lunch today. Are we still on? Meet you at high noon at the Cosmo?’
‘That’s the plan. It will be nice to see you. It’s been, what, three days?’
‘Dinner at home doesn’t count, Alex, you know that. Did you get any sleep last night?’
‘I got a bit, but my brain is still racing.’ He scanned around his bedroom and grimaced as he looked at his Mac on the desk in the corner. ‘The work is making me mad, mum. I think that I am going to lose my mind.’
‘Well, it was you that chose to do genetics, Alex. No one made you do it.’
‘I know …’
‘Besides, if that bitch, Mimi, didn’t make you go mad, nothing will.’
‘I already asked you, mum, please don’t call her that.’
‘That’s right, OK, I’m sorry … but she was a bitch! You’re the one who called her ‘Meme’, not me. Anyway, let us not spoil our day, shall we? How did you go with your thesis last night?’
‘How didn’t I go, you mean.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Why don’t you forget about it this morning and think about our lunch. Rest is very important in hard work, Alex, and a correct balance is the only way to ensure an optimum result.’
‘I’ll take that on board, mother, and I’ll see you at twelve. I love you.’
‘Till then, Alex. I love you too.’
He flipped closed his phone, placed it back on the bedside table and sprang out of bed. He put on a pair of pyjama pants and stepped out onto the spacious balcony of his splendid, eleventh-floor, two-bedroom, Darling Point apartment. He did this every morning. He scanned his city, the harbour, the bridge and the Opera House. He sensed the ‘vibe’ of the morning, while taking a couple of deep breaths, then picked up a pair of powerful binoculars and zoomed into the Cruising Yacht Club marina just down the road and checked if his old university mate, Marko, happened to be there messing about with his boat.
He couldn’t see Marko on his boat so he stepped back into his apartment and wandered into the kitchen, past the Mac to which he gave a nasty scowl, to his coffee machine to brew his morning’s two mugs of coffee. With the mug in his hand, he sat in front of his computer and switched it on. His thesis appeared on the screen. It was titled, Possible Functions Of Non-coding DNA. The first sentence read, Non-coding DNA, or junk DNA, the term coined by Susumu Ohno in 1972, makes up over 98 percent of all DNA and has a largely unknown function. He began to feel nausea at the pit of his stomach so he put the Mac back to sleep.
He had been working on his thesis for eighteen months. He had compiled all the work from all the researchers, read it and reread it and organised it into a semblance of order, but he didn’t feel happy. There was something wrong with all of it. He felt that the mass of research buried in his hard drive amounted to one big zero, one big pile of junk, just like the junk DNA they were studying. He felt, as well, that this whole waste of time was a symptom of a bigger sickness, a sickness of the whole body of academia, which was caused by the struggle for funding and fame. Alex perceived it as a dog-eat-dog-stab-yourcolleague-in-the-back-and-steal-his-work kind of academic insanity. And they were all fighting over the same thing, junk DNA, and no one had a clue. The evidence of that fact was plain, and it was all right there in front of him, on his ‘bloody Mac’.
As he finished his coffee, he glanced at the kitchen clock. It was 10.00am as he closed the door to his bathroom and proceeded to take his shower. He showered quickly, about five minutes, dried himself, stepped out of his bathroom and went to his bedroom where he picked up his jeans and yesterday’s T-shirt, off the carpet, and dressed himself. Just as he slipped his T-shirt over his head, something strange caught his eye. It was the time on his bedside radio. It said, 11.06am. His face screwed up in surprise. He picked up his phone, which was lying next to the radio, and flipped it open to look at the time. It also said 11.06am. He walked into the kitchen and looked at the clock on the wall, which now said 11.07am. A shiver of fear flushed down his spine. He sat on a kitchen stool as he felt the rush of a fear-induced mind spin distort his vision.
2
Later, at the Cosmopolitan Restaurant in Double Bay,
‘You’re late, Alex, where have you been? It’s quarter past twelve and when are you going to buy some new clothes?’
‘So sorry, mum, but you won’t believe what just happened to me, and I have no explanation for it.’
‘It wasn’t that Mimi again, was it? Be careful with her, Alex, she …’
‘It wasn’t Mimi, mum. It’s all over between us. It has been for months. It was something completely different, something really bizarre. I might be losing my mind.’
His mother, whose name was Jikita, laughed out loud,
‘I might not know much, but I know my son, and he is not losing his mind. Let’s order before we begin to starve to death. I’m having the matzo dumpling soup and the Vienna schnitzels, how about you?’
‘I’ll go with that, and I might be losing my mind … or something. I may have had a blackout in the shower this morning, mother. It lasted for exactly one hour. But the whole bizarre thing about it is that it just doesn’t make any sense.’
‘My poor boy, you have been working too hard. Chicken soup always helps, no matter what the ailment. Where is that Sofia?’
Jikita scanned the restaurant for her favourite waitress. She had known Sofia for two years by then and they had become quite good friends, in the fashion that a waitress may become a friend to an elegant, wealthy lady who frequents the restaurant where she works. Sofia spotted her from the other side of the restaurant and came over.
‘How do you do, madam. It is a pleasure to see you again.’ Sofia was Lebanese and spoke her novice version of English with a seductive French accent. She was quite petite and, as Alexander noticed immediately, stunningly attractive. Her perfect, slender figure was partially concealed by her uniform, but he noticed it all the same a moment later when she stepped away to attend to another table. He nearly fell off his chair taking a look at her when her back was turned.
‘This is my son, Sofia. His name is Alexander.’
She looked at him and came quite close to him as she introduced herself.
‘Hello, I am Sofia and I am from Lebanon.’
‘Er, hi, Sofia, I’m Alex. It’s nice to meet you.’
He looked into her deep-brown eyes, which were full of warmth and emotion, and instantly became spellbound. There was something about this girl, something special and very attractive. His mother noticed the chemistry instantly and like the schemer she was, she began to hatch a plan, a plan that involved the acquisition of Sofia’s phone number and permission for Alex to use it.
As they were having their soup, and between moments of distraction when Alex tracked Sofia around the restaurant, he told his mum about the strange time anomaly that occurred to him during his shower.
‘I lost an hour in an instant. It’s as if I blacked out, but I don’t think I did because I can remember the whole shower, and nothing happened. I mean, if I had blacked out, especially for a whole hour, I should have woken up on the floor with the water running all over me. If I had been under the shower for an hour, my skin would have looked like a prune. Maybe I sleepwalked? People sleepwalk. Maybe I went to sleep, turned off the shower, did something for an hour, then got back into the shower, turned it back on, woke up and finished having my shower. When I came out, it was an hour later.’
‘Your soup’s getting cold, sweetheart. Isn’t Sofia a lovely girl? You know what I think; I think I should invite her to lunch on one of her days off. Wouldn’t that be a nice idea?’
‘There’s no way I had a blackout. I don’t have blackouts. I don’t sleepwalk and I remember my whole shower. Nothing happened. It’s like my whole apartment, the whole bloody world, jumped one hour into the future while I was having my shower.’
‘Here she comes. I’m going to ask her for her number.’
‘So, if I assume that I didn’t black out and go into some kind of sleepwalk, what other possibility could there be? This is what I’ve got to focus on after I finish my lunch here with you, mother, I must focus on some other possibility.’
Sofia came over to remove the soup plates. Jikita asked her,
‘Sweetheart, how many years have I known you?’
‘Two years, madam.’
‘You know, I think it’s time I invited you to lunch at my home, what do you think?’
‘Oh, madam, I would be honoured.’
‘That’s it then. If you give me your number, I’ll call you and we’ll have a lovely, relaxing lunch, and you can tell me all about yourself.’
‘Thank you, madam, I look forward to it already, with anticipation.’
A few moments later, Sofia brought over the main courses. She also brought a napkin with her phone number written on it, which she gave to Jikita.
After they had eaten their Vienna schnitzels and a nice round of dessert, followed by some coffee, Jikita insisted that she ‘take care’ of the check. As they rose to leave, Jikita walked out of the restaurant by the way which took them past Sofia who was attending to another table. She thanked her for the service. As Alex walked past her, behind his mother, he whispered into her ear from behind,
‘Is it all right if I call you sometime?’
Sophia didn’t turn around or speak; she just waved her hand in a fashion that indicated to him that it would be okay to call her. No one saw the smug smile that appeared on Jikita’s face as they stepped out into Knox Street.
3
Alexander’s favourite professor at Sydney University was Prof. Lloyd. No one ever called him by his surname because hardly anyone knew it. Lloyd had been involved with Sydney Uni, off and on, for most of his life, not because he needed the money, Lloyd was loaded enough to buy the whole university a couple of times over, not even because he had a passion for genetics, which he did, but because he loved the stimulation of being surrounded by academic youth. He loved everything about campus life, but especially he loved his students. During his lectures he carried a five-foot-long, wooden ruler, which he used as a pointer. The ruler also had another function. Prof. Lloyd liked to keep his students on their toes by occasionally springing on them a surprise question. It could come at any time and be asked of anyone. If Prof. Lloyd asked you a question and you didn’t know the answer, you knew what to expect. You had to stand up and walk down to the front of the lecture theatre. There, right in front of a couple of hundred of your fellow students, you had to bend over and receive your punishment, which was a light tap on your backside with Prof. Lloyd’s long ruler. The Prof, which is what the students usually called him, performed his punishment without inflicting actual humiliation on his student. It was always done in the best of humour and it was not uncommon that a student occasionally purposefully gave an incorrect answer just so he could spend the rest of his life retelling the story of how he too was honoured by one of Prof. Lloyd’s punishments. It is true to say that the students all shared a deep and respectful love for their Prof.
Alexander, who was now twenty-nine years old, had been under Prof. Lloyd’s tutelage for his whole university career. Through their association over the years, the two men had become the best of friends. Their age difference, Lloyd was fifty-six years old, didn’t seem to matter. Besides a passion for genetics, both men shared a number of other traits. They were both obscenely wealthy as both were fortunate inheritors of generations’ worth of astute business practice. They also both had a total contempt for any kind of artificiality. Life was too important to be wasted on ‘bullshit and its monodimensional, clone purveyors’. That was probably the reason why they both liked to dress a little scruffy. They both felt, deep inside, that a ‘poncy getup’ was simply intended to conceal the ‘crap underneath’. As academics, their whole lives were devoted to uncovering hidden truths and bringing them out into the open.
Lloyd lived in his parents’ old house in Wunulla Road, Point Piper. The house was situated on the Rose Bay side. There was a jetty at the back of the house and a custombuilt slipway for his pride and joy, the Compass 28, named Mecca, which he built by hand out of Huon Pine, for the hull, and Queensland Beech, for the deck.
Lloyd lived with his ravishing wife, Eva, who came from a Hungarian migrant family. He met Eva when he was a student at Sydney University. They had two sons, Leon and Russel, who were both agriculture students and who both preferred the life on the sprawling, family cotton farm, which was situated near Warren in western New South Wales.
Lloyd’s style of sailing was not the live-aboard-for-months type. He found that kind of lifestyle too restricting. He preferred day and overnight sails. A couple of times a year he planned longer trips, lasting perhaps one or maybe two weeks. His one-week trips usually took him to The Hawkesbury. On his two-week trips he liked to sail up to Port Stephens and hang out up there. He particularly liked to be up there for the ‘gathering of salts’ for the New-Years-Eve celebrations in Oyster Bay. The yachties built bonfires all around the bay and, with their yachts anchored in the middle, celebrated the coming of the New Year sitting around the fires, spinning the biggest sailing yarns they could think up. Alex regularly sailed with Lloyd and had been to Port Stephens with him on one occasion.
4
It was 8.00am on Sunday, May 8, 2005. Lloyd already had his boat in the water, tied up to the jetty, and was tinkering with things when his phone rang. He took it out of his pocket, flipped it open and said,
‘It’s your money.’
‘Hi, Lloyd, it’s Alex. Have I called too early?’
‘Alex, this isn’t early. What’s up?’
‘I need to speak to you. Something bizarre happened to me yesterday and I need to bounce it off someone.’
‘Bizarre you say. I like bizarre. But hey, this isn’t another one of your female conundrums is it? I’m not your Dorothy Dix, you know. It’s not about that Mimi friend of yours is it?’
‘What the hell, Lloyd, have you been talking to my mother? No! Mimi is history, thank God. She found another bloke, some guy with his own jet, I think, and disappeared off the face of the Earth with him. This is more like weird sci-fi, mate, and I need to run it past someone to see what they think. But it can wait if you’re busy.’
‘I’m just setting up for a day sail with Eva. We plan to sail around the harbour all day and have lunch at Doyle’s. I’m towing the dinghy. Why don’t you come with us and tell me your tale during the sail.’
‘That sounds great, Lloyd, but are you sure it wouldn’t be imposing?’
‘Nonsense, we’d love to have you. Come on over. We’ll wait for you.’
‘How’s half an hour sound?’
‘Perfect, Alex, perfect.’
5
A light southwester filled Mecca’s red sails as Lloyd silently glided her out of Rose Bay. Alex sat on the foredeck and immersed himself in the magic of the crisp, clear morning of the autumn day. Eva, who looked positively stunning in her faded-blue, Levi Daisy Dukes and one of Lloyd’s old shirts, was below making the coffees and some tasty sandwiches for them all. Lloyd set a heading towards Manly, past The Heads where he intended to check out the swell because he was considering taking Mecca outside for an hour or two. If there was too much swell, he wasn’t going to bother because he just didn’t feel like rolling around that day. As it turned out it was flat as a lake, so they jibed to starboard, unfurled the spinnaker and headed out to sea.
After they had their coffees and sandwiches, and were all sitting together in the cockpit behind the dodger, Lloyd asked,
‘So, what was it that you wanted to talk to us about, Alex?’
Alex described his strange time-anomaly incident in great detail. He ended his description with,
‘This has to be the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me.’ ‘I have never heard of any such thing before,’ Eva replied.
‘Neither have I,’ Lloyd added. Alex continued,
‘So, I’ve come to the point of considering possibilities and I don’t intend to limit myself only to things that might sound rational, no, I intend to explore the irrational as well.’
‘Good idea, Alex. We both know that yesterday’s irrational is often tomorrow’s rational. You’ve obviously had some thoughts on the matter, what have you come up with?’
‘Well, Lloyd, firstly I have decided to isolate the phenomenon and pretend that it is real and that it can happen. Now I intend to think of ways that it possibly could happen. What we are dealing with here is time, non-linear time, and that takes us into the world of Einstein’s general theory of relativity and his field equations and …’ Eva suddenly butted in, mid Alexander’s sentence.
‘Sorry, Alex, but I just had a thought.’
Both men looked at Eva. Alex politely invited her to speak.
‘Well, Alex, Lloyd and I both know how you’ve been struggling with your thesis. God knows you couldn’t have chosen a more difficult topic. I mean, junk DNA, give me a break. But I had this thought. We only understand two percent of the human genome, right?’ Both men nodded. ‘We have not got a clue what the other ninety-eight percent is for, right?’ Both men nodded again and began to smile. ‘Well, DNA exists in the space-time continuum, just like everything else, so do you think that the ninety-eight percent might have something to do with the living organism’s existence in time?’
There was a stunned silence. Both men’s jaws dropped open as they first looked at Eva, then at each other. Eva smiled a semi-embarrassed smile and said, ‘What? … What did I say? … Did I say something?’ Suddenly Alex exploded into a burst of laughter.
‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh … my … God!’
‘What?’ Eva asked again grinning from ear to ear.
‘Eva,’ Lloyd announced, ‘you may have just won yourself the Nobel Prize. That was possibly the most pertinent question asked in science in the whole bloody third millennium.’
‘Oh, it couldn’t have been that good … could it?’ Alex began to rave.
‘This changes everything. I have to restart my thesis from scratch. God, I have to look into general relativity. God, what if all that junk DNA is like a time clock for the organism, like a groove in a record, which plays the organism through time. What if the morphing of the organism through time, which we call aging, is all programmed in the junk DNA?’
Lloyd added,
‘Imagine if the junk DNA actually programs us into the specific window of time in history, like it programs some kind of a harmonic time sequence between two points of linear time, which we call birth and death. What if it allows us to exist in the time that we exist in because all our cells resonate with the … ahh … time-harmonic of the timecontinuum around us?’
‘I think you boys are going to need another mug of coffee. I wonder if I can make better coffee now that I have my Nobel Prize?’
They sailed in a north-easterly direction for about an hour, the whole time maintaining an average speed of six knots under the spinnaker. A couple of miles east of Fairy Bower, they pulled in the kite, came about and tacked back into the south-wester with Mecca hard heeled over and still maintaining a steady five knots, perfectly balanced, requiring only two fingers on the tiller to maintain her heading.
They dropped the pick in Watson’s Bay at 12.30pm and putted through all the moored boats in the tiny dinghy in good time for their one o’clock booking in Doyle’s restaurant. They sat down at one of the outside tables, in the sun, and ordered three Lord Nelsons.
‘The John Dory is on special,’ announced Eva reading the menu.
‘I’ll go with that,’ said Alex.
‘I like my Barra,’ said Lloyd.
As they drank their beer, soaked up the sun and enjoyed the placid atmosphere of the bay, Lloyd commented,
‘You know, Alex, if the junk DNA was connected with time, and if for some reason a small section of it was missing, or damaged, or inactive, that could explain how a person might experience an instant jump into the future.’
‘There’s so much to think about,’ Alex replied, ‘that I don’t know where to begin.’
‘But at least it has given you a whole new approach to your thesis, hasn’t it?’ Eva added.
‘That it has, Eva my dear, that it has … thanks to you.’
…….