A Time Away

A Time Away
By Thomas Kraemer

© 2018 by the author

Arvin Li stood at the apex of the triangular cantilevered deck, projected out into the black moonless night.  He liked the feeling of edge standing here.  The space so enormous it had no shape, the stars so far, beyond all life’s measure.  No dimensions, just possibilities.   Sounds filtered in from somewhere, but whether below or above or any direction he couldn’t tell.  He came here often when the structure of his existence began to press on him. He could escape here, but only to gain a brief perspective.  When he did, his mind could breathe a little. 

Arvin was a student of physics, struggling to complete his degree.  Physics was not a means to an end with Arvin. It was the allure of the fundamental and ultimate truth, discovery through heroic ingenuity tested by monumental experiment.   He wanted desperately to be part of the quest, right now, not just study it.  But he was hopelessly stuck, mired, enmeshed in a froth of mathematical details and his own insights, or at least he thought they were insights, but maybe they were just illusions after all.  Like his feeling right now of projecting outside a structure he never really could escape. 

This feeling of entrapment overcame him. He’d failed, fallen behind, neglected duties and commitments.  His adviser, never really supportive, had begun suggesting he consider a career in a “less challenging” profession, feigning doe-eyed sympathy.  The son-of-a-bitch. 

Arvin smelled trouble ahead and a rising bass-tone panic told him he needed to break out of this trap.  His confinements were creating a reactive and withering state of mind that wasn’t responding well to stresses external or internal.  He was beyond telling how much stress was self-imposed vs imposed upon him, and he knew it.   He knew himself well enough for that.  He knew also that he was close to buckling toward self-destruction despite the steeliness he presented outwardly.  What he didn’t know was what to do about it. 

“Go climb a rock, Arvie.” said his jolly roommate Bruno.  “Want to get away from it all, get a perspective? Get on top of things and look down.  They say you need to think your way up a rock climb.  That’ll get your nose out of your own mental navel.”  And get you out of this dorm room, Bruno thought.  Arvin’s funk was chafing Bruno’s bouncy nature. 

“Yeah that’s a good idea Bruno boy. I’ll think about it.” And he did.  But a rock was not what he wanted to climb.  He wanted perspective on what was consuming him, not the fields and streams.  He needed to get higher, and farther.  He needed a trip.  An air trip!  And it snapped into focus. An air trip where he could look down on the past as well as the panorama.  On time as well as space.  He wanted to fly over Geneva and drop down from the sky into the greatest experimental apparatus ever built, the Large Hadron Collider.  He wanted to get inside its 27-km long circular tunnel buried beneath France and Switzerland where atomic particles had caromed near lightspeed so he could feel it’s enormity.  He’d come to know an awful lot about the LHC.  He’d studied its experiments ad excrutiatus as they added the last few stupendous tendons to the magnificent architecture of fundamental physics called with wry understatement the standard model.  Just the huge physical enormity and intricacy of the complex of instruments was beyond awe.  The leviathan-scale tunnel, so large you could barely see the curvature when inside it. And the detection instruments – five stories high, filled top to bottom with a glittering vast 3-D filigree of hand-crafted electronics, all buried deep in the ground. All this had been assembled and tuned by coordinated teams of thousands upon thousands of scientists and engineers from nearly every nation.  It had been the last gasp of big science. Arvin had an unnerving sense of discoveries that might be just over the next threshold, if ever the great apparatus was started up again.  If he only could get a better perspective on it, his gut told him, he might glimpse something that would drive him onward.  Maybe just physically walking around inside it and talking with the people who had made it run might loosen some of his internal kinks.  Well, maybe not.  But maybe it would at least jerk his mind free from his current morass. 

Fortunately, he had the means to afford this kind of escape.  Vacation trips could not be made as lightly as when his dad was young and carefree, in the flagrancy era.   He tore a mental rip, putting everything oppressing him out of mind and starting a session with the travel bot.  First part of the trip would be getting to the east coast and then sailing.  He could book a train to Manhattan, which had transformed the vestiges of its old seaport into the travel port of choice for Europe, then sail for Caen and its airport where he could book a seat on an aeroplane (named for the gracefully light aircraft of yore) that would fly him high over France and on to Geneva.  Caen had become the hub for air travel into Europe for travelers from America.  Most people didn’t travel by air any more, certainly not to cross the ocean.  Nothing but liquid fuels can propel a transoceanic aircraft efficiently and reliably, and the world had painfully learned the true high cost of liquid fuels.  The cartels cleverly covered up the mounting costs for a good while by feigning holdbacks to drive the price up, following periods of breakneck extraction on borrowed money and borrowed time.  After a few years the market finally caught up with what was happening as the smiling curve of eternal fossil extraction turned downward to frown, and prices erupted upward as the supply wells choked.  The up and down disruptions from that episode, as well as other resource shortage fiascos, created economic scars that never could go away.  That was the end of the flagrancy era.  Easy energy was all gone.

Arvin booked his flight from Caen into Geneva vainly trying to suppress a spreading grin. He cast his lot and confirmed the extravagant purchase. This would be his ascension into the airy heights that would get him the perspective he needed. That day he talked with one of the profs who had connections with the remnants of the scientific team who still were hanging around Geneva because they loved the place, to make some connections that might help him get access to the ruins.  It turned out there was someone he could meet, a local Geneva artist, who would be travelling home at the same time and he got himself booked on the same sailing ship for the ocean passage.  But first, he had to cross America by rail.  

The train terminal did not enhance Arvin’s feelings of expansiveness.  Efficient it was, but none of the travelers mincing their way through the small corridors had a glow of a beckoning future radiating from uplifted gazes that morning.  The rail systems were all new and some of the smartest systems around.  Energy costs going nearly vertical on the J-curve made energy-optimizing information technology more valuable by the day.  All trains were electrified, propelled by distributed power sources dotting the route, which shared their power with local stationary users.  The whole system was optimized with real-time feedback from all power users.  Like everything else post-flagrancy, down-building to get this system in place hadn’t happened quite according to plan.  It was still a patchwork mess caused by local resistance in many areas not on the main transport routes.  Various catastrophes and deliberate sabotage and even several local pitched battles broke out. But eventually, when it became increasingly clear there was no other way, the people worked together to make these adaptive systems just adequately reliable. Transportation and communication created communities, as they always have.  Telecommunications systems saw a similar lurching pattern of increased sophistication, now on the downward sloping side of the energy hump driven by less and less energy instead of more and more. The continuing momentum of info tech innovation, driven further by the energy crunch, brought down their costs.

Arvin mostly curled up and slept on his overland journey through post-flagrant America, as if the general feeling of depression that blanketed the land were seeping into him, and his feeling fed off the dull visual cues and general social suspicion and confusion.  He felt good though in a miasmatic kind of way, felt like he was leaving things behind, swimming away, forgetting, in preparation for a sea change. 

The new ocean liners were technical marvels, but in no way gleaming.  This was new territory for Arvin, as he’d never departed the shores of America.  These were sailing vessels.  Tall carbon composite masts and cross-beams graced their profiles, hung with rolled up carbon composite sails.  All the rigging of old-time sailboats was replaced by thin nanotube lines retracted and extended by processor-controlled spools and gear.  Small propellers with solar electric drive provided flexibility and stability.  But unlike the crowded trains, these ships provided passengers breezy decks designed for expansive views and social events. 

Arvin had never been a social butterfly, but the freedom of escape made him expansive.  So on the morning of first day out he strolled into the buzz of conversation on the breeze deck, thinking he would just expose himself and see what would happen.  He wasn’t the sort who easily sidled up to women without a very good pretext, but there was something disarming about the traveler leaning on the rail, gazing into the blue expanse of sea and sky.  She had a look of sincere childish wonder that few adults have but Arvin had learned to spot, since it reflected a deep well in his own nature.  And she fit the description of the contact he was supposed to meet.

“Which one is bluer?” he tried, nodding at the horizon, blue above and blue below.  He wondered how stupid it sounded.

“Well, neither is blue, stalwart fellow traveler,” she said, sensing his insecurity.  “Neither a bottle of air nor a bottle of water reflects blue light.  It’s how they scatter sunlight when you are looking a long way through a whole lot of them. The other colors just disappear.” 

To a physics student, this suggested instant kismet.  But he’d learned to resist the impulse to gush.  So he tried to think of himself as a suave lunkhead like Errol Flynn, which he’d found sometimes helped bring up the right words for this kind of occasion.  “That’s not true of your blue eyes, though. They’re too thin to scatter much light, but they do scatter my thoughts.”  She held him in suspense for a long moment, then apparently concluded he was an insecure lunkhead but harmless, so she cocked her head and turned away, back to the sea.  But she didn’t walk away.

He stood softly for a few moments (which was also learned behavior), and then: “Are you some kind of scientist or something?  Most people don’t know why the sky is blue.”

“No, I’m some kind of artist, or something.  I studied the physics of light because I made light sculptures for a while.  What about you?” 

He’d noticed just a slight accent.  French maybe.  And that she didn’t want to talk about herself, but didn’t seem to mind him hanging around.  So she must be travelling alone.  “I’m a struggling student.  Physics.”

“Going to study in Europe?”

“No, I’m running away.”

“You don’t look like any kind of refugee I’ve ever seen.  Mind if I ask what you are running away from?”

“Everything.  Or maybe just myself.  For one thing, that’s what I hope to find out.”

A silent, intense dance of emotions on her face and glimmering behind her eyes arrested him.  For a moment, there was a hush as he rose in her continuing estimation. Then it clicked. “You wouldn’t be Mr. Li, would you?”

“The very same. And now you know I’m a fugitive from the unknown. Please tell me about yourself.” And they retreated to the saloon, Arvin feeling suddenly free and smitten.    

Over the next few days, Arvin learned that Jill led a group of artists who lived on Lake Geneva, surviving in the political tolerance of Switzerland and supported by crumbs from patrons among the Geneva tres riche.  They did performance art as well as making sculptures, and played the role of court jesters, toying with the boundaries of tolerance for the various regimes that had gained power in post-flagrant Europe.  He grabbed the table top on the breeze deck one morning when Jill told him that her troupe was trying to get the Swiss and French regimes to allow them to salvage and repurpose the old LHC, which had been shut down when CERN was disbanded shortly after the crash. 

“What do you want to do with it?” he asked.

“Oh, not sure.  It just seems that it would be uplifting if we could not let it rot.  It’s not the same world as when it was built, but that doesn’t mean we should accept dereliction.  We want to build on what was left.”

“This is a fantastic coincidence! I’m so glad you live in Geneva! I’m coming over to try to learn more about how that LHC was built, who built it, what really motivated them, understand better what they really accomplished.  I want to get a perspective on it.  Re-purposing it – that’s fantastic. Do you think maybe you can make some kind of art from the remains of the machine?” he said. 

“Yes, of course!  We’ve had many discussions around café tables about all kinds of ideas.  We’re also thinking we could make something just fun of it.  Skate board, bicycle races in the big tunnel.  That sort of thing.  I don’t like those ‘fun’ ideas,” she added, noting his wince.  “We need to pay tribute to the grandness of it.  So much of is monumental, the ideas, the enormous scale of each intricately crafted apparatus, and the monumental thinking. I think the immense circularity in itself of the ring is something beautiful.  It’s unique, the size of this perfect circle, a tribute to perfection!  And you can walk straight in it for as long as you want and you keep coming back to the same place.  It’s an idea that resonates with me and I want to use the tunnel to make an exploration of that idea.”  She looked into his eyes for any hint of sympathy, feeling vulnerable about revealing this half-formed idea.

“I want to create an experience where you think you move straight forward,” she explained, “but inescapably come back to where you were, and when you re-arrive it’s different because of the experience you’ve had, the changes in you. A lot of art is like that, right, but how often do we have this perfect huge circle to take advantage of for its representation of that idea?  I’ve been making some preliminary designs where patterns painted on the walls, and projecting tiles, as they appear to change in passing, and the way they are colored, make a traveler feel the tunnel is really straight, and expanding and contracting, and changing in other ways.  After a complete loop, the traveler now understands the cues are telling her she needs to back up, stop and think, to understand the space she is in, not just trust the first mental construct.  And the goal is to give her a little push toward the realization that to go forward she needs to step back from what confronts her on her journey instead of just reacting to it.  I’ve been working on this.  I have some preliminary designs.  I haven’t discussed it much. “

“Yeah, I can tell.  I can tell,” gushed Arvin, forgetting himself.  It’s like your thoughts are breaking like waves right in front of me.  I feel like it’s a real privilege.” He thought she might take this gush as insincere, but it was clear from her look that his tone and manner inspired her confidence.  “I really like talking with you,” he said, thinking how stupid that must sound but once again the feeling behind it somehow broke through.  “Me too” she beamed.  By the time they arrived in Caen they were finishing each other’s sentences.  And Arvin was thinking about art almost as much as physics, but even more about Jill.

The Pan Europa flights were often delayed by weather.  To get an economically competitive flight, the planes these days had to be very light in relation to wingspan and covered in super-efficient solar cells.  They only flew during the day, and many were delayed by severe or very cloudy weather.  The customers who would fly would put up with it.  For Arvin, it was because he wanted the perspective of altitude over the LHC location, seeing it in relation to the mountains and Lake Geneva and the city and the political border.   The LHC tube showed no visible trace on the surface, of course, but he’d memorized its location on several topographic maps, air photos, and political maps so his memory served nearly as well as when the GPS was publicly available. The sun set through a summer haze over the glowing lake as they came to earth.  As they taxied he laughed about the political border between France and Switzerland passing right through the LHC because it seemed so insignificant.  But then he grimaced, remembering that nothing crossed borders casually anymore in Europe, not even high-speed protons in a buried pipe. 

Arvin was surprised at how easily he fell in with the motley pan-Europeans who met Jill at their arrival in Geneva.  He’d expected this to be a lonely trip.  Right from the airport they descended on their local haunt, a basement café where the quips, queries and quotes flowed faster than the in-house brew.  This group was not well regarded by the Swiss authorities, most of whom owed their jobs to the new austerity order that swept through governments in Europe during the big crash time.  Their agitation for spending public funds to re-purpose the LHC, and other artistic endeavors had earned them only reconnaissance by the police, as a potential source of fines that would be paid by their rich patrons. The situation got worse as Jill’s flair for publicity collided with the local government’s focus on getting back to “the old quiet ways”. Some of the more vicious reactionaries began attacks on the group, associating them with the globalized elites who sunk useless money into buying up art works and flying them away.  Conspiracy theories circulated.

Arvin’s new friends were at first much more interested in his American-ness than any ideas he might have.  They seemed surprised that an American would listen quietly to their ideas, just listen intently, and even seemed to appreciate their humor. Surprising, but not very interesting, and they quickly went back to the flow of their own speculations on everything under the sun and far beyond.  As always, a debate ensued, sometimes multiple debates carried on in parallel in different languages.  Finally, during a rare lull, Arvin spoke up to suggest repurposing the LHC to perform a physics experiment.  The heightened impact of his words after their prior sparseness created a sudden hush, quickly filled in by a rush of laughter.  It made the idea sound kind of absurd even to Arvin then, given what a lost cause the LHC’s original purpose had become.  He joined the laughter, acknowledging the apparent absurdity.  “It’s not art, of course, but it would be a statement, what is left from the old days of reckless spending can be repurposed in the continuing search for scientific truth.  I have some ideas…” he began, tentatively.  But he was shot down by a Frenchman wielding blade-sharp English: “You would take us back through the same shit pot for another dunking?  Aren’t you sick of this smell?  Your re-purpose is the same purpose.  You never give up on it!”  Although his knees rose under the table, Arvin forced himself to simulate calmness. “My purpose is the same as yours: to find the truth,” which he tried to dish up with what he hoped was a charming smile.  This led to a very long discussion of the meaning of truth.  Arvin could see this was as much a way of defusing the eye-locked sputtering fuse ignited between his questioner and him as it was, increasingly over the course of several hours, a pretext to stay and continue the flow of good beverage.  He felt lucky to fall in with such a basically good-natured and truly philosophical lot. 

Jill seemed content to observe the affray, trying not to show how much she was focused on Arvin’s reactions.  Most of the participants considered her the leader of the group. Her knowledge and renown for the impact of her art gave her presence.  After a while Jill began quietly to question Arvin about what sort of experiment he had in mind. 

Arvin started to explain some of the ideas he’d begun thinking about on his trip.  He thought about the basic principles of the original LHC experiments.  He realized they were perfectly in alignment with the whole gestalt of the flagrancy era.  They threw enormous amounts of energy into flinging massive particles at each other, and then analyzed the resulting debris for information on the interactions at the highest energies.  These provided wonderful insights into the nature of matter and energy but were won only at great expense.  Arvin thought there might be more subtle approaches where instead of brute force, fine-tuning feedback and adaptiveness could be used, focusing energy better into very small areas of very high intensity.  Jill was entranced by the rapid flow of ideas that welled out of him and his ability to put them into plain language.  But these were ideas he’d been mulling and stirring for some time, so they seemed authoritative as they marched out in ready formation.  During his mulling, it occurred to Arvin that little massless photons, not massive protons, just might be able to carry energy into subatomic structures with better focus than big fat hadrons like protons.  Indeed, in searching the archives through an internet connection, he’d found theoretical papers from the early 21^st century, very near the collapse point of the flagrancy era, suggesting the possibility of something very similar in the form of laser-induced nuclear reactions.  The focused photons would be pushed through the electrons and on into the nucleus.  Like injecting a drug into the atom rather than firing a shotgun at it. Arvin’s fuzzy idea was that it might be possible to build a wave guide inside the LHC circle that would allow resonant pileups of laser-generated coherent photons resulting in extremely large local energy intensities and photon numbers at a concentrated location, after multiple trips around the ring.   

Arvin had spent a good deal of his time during the trip over mulling these ideas, checking their practicality, and convinced himself that there might be something there worth exploring.  There were more uncertainties than not, and his calculations were based on many assumptions, but after calculating all the ways he knew how, he’d convinced himself his approach could yield new information and wasn’t just a symbolic gesture.  The next step was to find collaborators.  He’d managed to establish some contacts before leaving for Europe, but only established interest in talking about physics, European beer and the old LHC.  He made a few visits to scientists who had stayed around Geneva and brought up the idea of repurposing the facility, which uniformly resulted in rolling of eyes and a condescending explanation that the political situation was an unmovable object in the path of any such idea.  When he then brought up his ideas about electromagnetic resonance and laser enhancement for nuclear experiments, it was so far from the mainstream or anything that seemed practical that the condescension now took the form of either a scowl or a blank stare. 

“Well, this is giving me a perspective,” he thought, “but not exactly the way I wanted.” The dead end feeling it gave him made him look forward to his lively exchanges with the artist café crowd.  They at least believed in something: themselves, if nothing else, and devil knew why but he had an undercurrent of feeling that they could help him.  It would be worthwhile to try explaining his ideas to them.  It would be a good exercise for him and maybe help clarify in his own mind by explaining those ideas to someone with a different, way different, background.  He was surprised at how receptive a small group became during his first tentative stabs at describing the experiment he wanted to set up in the tunnel.  They didn’t understand the physics very well, but they loved his colorful light-wave analogies.  They were attracted by the aura of respectability that such an approach might have. The elegance of cascading, resonating light waves in the tube could shed light like a work of art.  The contagion of excitement spread through the group and it broke into several discussions in rising intonations.  He tried to avoid thinking of it as “getting his hooks into them,” but the phrase kept ringing in his mind as he began to think of this small group as collaborators, maybe drawing in some of their patrons’ influence. 

He convinced them it was important to get into the tunnel to reconnoiter.  He had several good reasons, mainly to see how much damage had been done and how much repair would be needed, to figure out the effort needed to build his wave guides and other equipment.  He was learning to go with his feelings and just felt it was important to walk in that tunnel.  Arvin had inquired, before starting his trip, with the Swiss government, who was handed ownership by the departing CERN, about the possibility of visiting the old CERN HQ and looking over the equipment left behind.  The bureaucrats could not even tell him if maintenance was being done to prevent decay, or what had been removed – the whole LHC seemed to be generally forgotten by official bureaucracy after being permanently closed over a decade ago. Arvin asked general questions of one of the local former physicists who had worked at LHC about its condition and learned that the entrance points were locked up tight but was assured there was no monitoring system to detect intrusions.  No one seemed to really care about it.

Jill’s natural authority with the artist group served as the organizing force for the expedition. A character named Claude, a lithe and shadowy thin figure who wasn’t one of those caught up in the brief excitement over Arvin’s ideas, was drawn in now by the prospect of covert adventure.  His normally dull gaze emitted a low spark of enthusiasm from under his bushy brows as he began participating in their regular discussions in a sheltered corner of the cafe. After Arvin complained about the lack of a good set of plans for the original construction, Claude turned up with a nearly complete set of as-built drawings, which he said he’d found by “very crafty surfing” on web bases that were not commonly known.  Arvin dived in to the plans and discovered the entry point to use: a shaft to the ALICE large ion collision experiment detector 56 meters underground.  It looked like the most direct way to access the tunnel itself from the surface.  And its entry point was surrounded by several disused buildings that would provide cover.   

Not far outside Geneva, Arvin and Jill took a breezy bicycle ride to look over the entrance shaft.  Seen from outside, it was behind a nondescript locked door on a building surrounded by a security fence.  There were no signs of any kind.  The building surfaces and grounds were worn and neglected, but no structural deterioration evident.  They planned an intrusion.  On the night of the 18^th, they would break into the shaft and climb down the ladder, if there was still a ladder there. 

The night was crystal clear, cold, still and silent. The group rode out on bicycles with minimal lighting and stashed the bikes in some high brush about a kilometer from the facility. The only “haul” they’d need to bring back was photographs and notes.  There was a sharpness in the air, and the terse verbal exchanges as they walked to the locked facility were whispered.  A few cuts in the fence and then cutting the chain on the door were all they needed to get inside. 

They found the shaft entrance inside by the light of their headlamps and started down the ladder after testing the strength of the first step.  The tunnel was eerily intact.  Nothing had been inside it since it was closed down, not even dust from the outside.  It almost seemed swept clean to welcome guests.  Arvin’s panicky feeling ebbed away soon as he began walking through the tunnel.  The entire ring was uniformly in impeccable order, as if standing at permanent attention in respect to the heroic efforts of the scientists who had built it.  To Arvin, this impression was worth the whole effort, regardless of the value of a thorough reconnaissance. He busied himself with photographs and measurements. 

Going by dead reckoning, the two were rounding the final two hundred meters when a flaring light blinded them.  “Arretez!” a harsh voice shouted accompanied by a thunder of boots on the tunnel floor which froze them in place.  “Vous enfreignez la loi!  You are breaking the law!”  Rough hands pushed them and thrust manacles on their arms, as a troop of five tactical gendarmes descended on them.  They had followed them down the shaft and waited for their return to the shaft.  “Identifiez-vous!  Who are you!”

“Mais nous sommes des artistes, monsieur. But we are artists, sir!” purred Jill, suggesting with a tone a superiority that might create an exception.  A suggestion that was not accepted.  “Marche!”

After a long, slow drive to a detention facility, the pair were seated, in separate rooms, for questioning.  “My name is inspector Clouteau of the Surete. We know who you are and what you were doing.  What we don’t know is why.  Would you like us to speculate?  Or would you like to try to convince us of your lofty motivations for transgressing the law, entering France illegally and damaging the property of the government?”  This was a question to which the right answer was not immediately apparent. 

Jill had to resist reminding the inspector that the LHC was not French government property, and its ownership was in legal limbo after the effective dissolution of the EU since no one had wanted to own it, until the present moment it seemed.  She attempted a charm offensive which of course fell flat on the leaden sensibility of this representative of the law. The inspector insinuated that one of their own had betrayed them, and Jill knew who immediately. But it turned out that Claude was also mildly infected by the group’s bonhomie and had testified of no evil intent on the group’s part.  

Backed against the wall, Arvin felt an impulsive need to make a statement, to challenge the structure constraining him at this moment regardless of consequences.  Jill noticed his agitation.  He began, with a throaty flourish: “Monsieur Inspector.”  Jill shot him a warning glance. Arvin interpreted her glance as meaning “Don’t even try speaking French, Arvin,” which was not what she meant but would have been good advice.  Arvin continued in English: “I am a student of physics, and I have come here from America to better understand the failure of this magnificent scientific enterprise that has been left to rot in your country.  I claim the right as a student of science to explore this facility which has been foolishly cast aside by your government.”  Before he could continue, a brief explosion of guttural laughter escaped the inspector, followed by a narrow-eyed glare.  “If you have such lofty motives, Mr. Li, why did you not bother to apply to the authorities for permission to visit the facility?”  “I made inquiries, exhaustive inquiries, to every department I thought might have information about the LHC, and I could find no one who could help me!”  “We have no record of such inquiries,” said the inspector softly. “I am not surprised,” retorted Arvin, summoning up his own glare.  “That is enough,” proclaimed the inspector as he closed his notebook with a snap. “You will be placed into custody until we determine the final disposition of your case,” and made no further eye contact.

Jill and Arvin were left alone together in the interrogation room.  A heavy silence settled in.  After a time their glances met, and Jill opened with “Well, my friend, I hope this gives you the perspective you wanted!  Do you feel outside of your structured life now?” 

“I’m sorry, Jill.  Maybe I’ve gone a little too far and I’m sorry for dragging you along.” 

Jill was offended, and erupted with “Who do you think you are?  You are a guest here.  I am leading this action!  Don’t you remember all our discussions?  You think this is just your thing!  I’ll tell you, my friend: You haven’t gone far enough in looking for your perspective.  You need to take another step or two back and look at yourself, not only against your structured little life, but think about the people who make your life what it is.  Try looking at this from someone else’s perspective, not just your own. Merde!”

The final “Merde!” felt like a bucket of it dumped on his shoulders.  As he was led away to his own cell, he was puzzling at his own gut-wrenching reaction as well as Jill’s words.  He knew she was right.  He felt so grateful to her but so humiliated.  He’d come here to find perspective and had found an expert on it, ready to push more of it at his beleaguered brain than he could stand.  She was taking up a lot of the space in his thoughts. 

They were held incommunicado for three days, allowing Arvin to reflect and ponder his recent experiences. He’d gained a perspective alright, enough to question what his life meant. His devotion to seeking truths of the physical universe began to seem a little simple, and maybe not so unselfish as he fancied.  He’d always prided himself on that devotion, rather than achieving recognition and awards. He’d felt that his pursuits were a higher calling than the motivation for status and recognition that motivated nearly everyone he’d encountered in science. But his encounters with his new comrades in Europe and their hopes and dreams and crushing disappointments made him want to be a part of their striving.  Theirs were different truths and maybe deeper, certainly murkier, to him at least. It seemed to him now there were many mysteries worth thinking about and many quests worth pursuing besides those that had consumed him.  The deep insights of physics, gained at huge expense and effort and revealing wonderful and awful things, began to feel like just scratching the surface.  Something in the back of his mind told him there were greater depths to plumb.  And he wanted to learn from Jill and her ways of seeing through deceptions and through him. 

Arvin would stay with this group, for now, reaching inward instead of outward.  He’d gain nothing by retracing his steps back to where he came from. He could live by his wits and crumbs of patronage as they did. He felt better grounded by engaging with the vagabond minds around him now, and that staying might lead him to things of great value their minds had forged in their struggles to transcend with their imaginations.  These were the eternal dissidents, those he’d disparaged as “artistic types” who had always seemed to him so superficial and self-centered and easy to dismiss. Here they were still, beyond the flagrancy era.  They came into focus for him, emerging from the fuzzy background of his former disdain. They were as smart and crafty in their quest to understand the reality that shapes our world as were the scientists he admired.  There would be no dramatic attempt to try out Arvin’s ideas about low-energy nuclear experiments in the LHC ring, at least not any time soon.  In the meantime, he would stay here with his new friends, pondering, speculating, arguing.  There would be time.      

         Jill laughed off her anger and spent her three days’ down time in confinement sketching new ideas and plans after the gendarmes were good enough to supply her with pencil and paper.  After determining that Jill and Arvin were harmless and their caper a folly in the eyes of the authorities, they were released with a warning not to return to France without a very good reason.  The gendarmes were good enough to drive Jill and Arvin back to Geneva, providing them with the necessary authority to cross back into Switzerland at the border.  They were deposited on the waterfront in view of the jet d’eau fountain, which still flew for a few minutes each day.  Finally, with the release, a first kiss.