Love Story: In The Web of Life

telephone. The timing of scenes was made in theediting room."
"OK," I said, "time is an illusion in movies.What has that to do with reality?"
"Let's switch the metaphor," continued Uriel,"On your planet, there is something that we are amazed by, it iscalled YouTube. People make videos of something of interest tothem, then add keywords, and upload it to 'the cloud' of allYouTube videos. 'The cloud' is not in a single physical space. Asin the movie I described before; the video may have had only theillusion of time. Anyone can search for the videos by keywords orby the address and watch them. YouTube is a space-time system whereyou can watch a video taken at a give place, such as a corner nearthe World Trade Center, which is the spatial dimension, and at aparticular time, nine o'clock on September 11, 2001, the timedimension."
"I understand about YouTube," I said, "and Iguess it is a space-time system."
"That is the way reality works!" Uriel said."Think of what you call reality as something like YouTube. Letscall it R-Tube. Everything that someone thought was important is inthe, let us say, R-cloud."
I said to myself, 'I must be logical andscientific about this. I had a patent case involving the Internetone time.
The videos on YouTube exist physically. Theyare data bits on servers distributed around the world in datacenters.'
"Uriel." I said, "Where is the R-cloud inphysical reality?"
"This is where the metaphor breaks down.Time does not really exist: it is only acoordinate in space-time. The physical thingshappening are not stored, they are all happening as what you wouldcall 'at once.' For example, at the space coordinates you know onyour planet as 40° 42' 45" N / 74° 0' 54" W, you are at the NewYork location of the World Trade Center. At the earth timecoordinate, nine o'clock on September 11, 2001, the building isbeing destroyed. Change the earth time coordinate to August 12,1964, and the World Trade Center is under construction. At thosecoordinates, everything is going on according to what youunderstand as your four-dimensional scientific laws of physics–whatyou are taught in your universities.
"Reality as you knowit exists is an eight-dimensional space-time. Thefirst four coordinates pertain to the four-dimensional scientificlaws of physics. 'Information' exists in eight-dimensions. Thoseeight-dimensions include the four of physics.
"Using the YouTube metaphor, one might say thatthe physical stuff in the video, as it is taken, obeys the laws ofphysics. If the video is of a cat doing something cute, everythingin the scene obeys the laws of physics, for instance gravity,according to four-dimensional space-time. The video that isuploaded to the YouTube cloud is information. You can turn the pictureupside–down and have the cat fall upward in that video. The videocat doesn't have to obey the laws of physics.
"We realize this is all very new to you. Youneed to find out about eight-dimensional physics, known on yourplanet as 'complex eight–dimensionalMinkowski space.'" Uriel's voice trailed off. Thespark of light on the boulder disappeared.
"Wait!" I said. It was too late. 'Why is hetelling me all this?' I wondered.
I was confused, bewildered. I went back intothe kitchen and poured myself another brandy. Back out to thepatio, Hesperus had everyone organized in space-time. Iwasn't.
The first light of dawn was just breaking whenI awoke, still musing about my contact with Uriel, wondering why Iwas involved in this, pondering the scientific logic of the wholecontact. I made a cup of coffee, put on my parka, and started awalk out into the desert to clear my head.
It had been cold during the night, and all thecacti and sagebrush were covered by a fine coat of silvery frost,glittering in the first rays of the dawn sunlight. I scared up along–eared rabbit that dashed away in jagged hops. The sun came upsuddenly, and I felt the heat on my face. Frost evaporated. The newday was here. My head cleared as I viewed the hundred miles ofdesert to the North. Sunlight on the dark buttes and distantmountains spread down from the peaks to the valleys.
California City is eighty miles to the North,at the southern foot of the Sierras. In land area it is the thirdlargest city in California, a dream of a developer in the 1960s,and boom years for Southern California. During that time,developers were buying worthless tracks of desert land, subdividingthem, grading grids of roads, advertising, and selling lots on thepromised it was the site of the next land boon. California City waslaid out with streets, cul-de-sacs, a lake, and 52,000 lots in itsmaster plan. It didn't boom. Some bought lots and then sold them toother suckers. Many lots are now in estates of the departed, withthe beneficiaries having no idea what to do with them. Today fewerthan 15,000 people live there, mostly employed by the decliningEdwards Air Force Base, or at the nearby privately–operated prison,which is having trouble making ends meet. California City should beconsidered a tourist spot, a modern wonder, a ruin of giganticproportions, not of crumbling buildings, but a ruin of lost dreams,gullibility, and greed.
These lost–dream developments are sometimes aglider pilot's salvation as a landing spot in an otherwisevegetation–covered landscape. One time, I landed in a one-mile longstreet, bulldozed out of the raw desert, fifty yards wide. A 747could land there, but none ever have.
I had no dream for the day. Soaring wouldn't beany good today; my recent love interest sounded as if she wasdumping me because of my 'superior logic,' my legal career was onhold. I felt like a California City lot.
Back from my walk, I had breakfast, read theNew York Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times on my iPad.The news didn't lift my spirits. I thought I would walk over to theoffice at the airport, find someone to talk to, and do some 'hangarflying,' reminiscing about past flights.
Nobody was flying yet on this quiet day. I leftmy trailer and began walking down the edge of the empty unpavedsection of the runway; the part used only in emergencies whenpilots decided to abort takeoffs. Desert sand was mixed withlimestone rocks, and along the edge of the runway, opportunisticyellow flowers, the size of a thumbnail, were taking