The Trinity Game

fault.”

“If not for him, there wouldn’t be a story, Kathy. He’s the one who brought it to me in the first place, and I made a commitment in exchange. Beyond off the record, he’s my Deep Throat on this whole thing. When I promise to protect a source, I stick to it.” She looked straight at the veteran news producer. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Shit.” Kathy pressed the remote and the screen went black. “Yes, I would. Damn. You know, the answer will be found. It’ll come out.”

“But not from me.”

Julia was keenly aware of the hypocrisy. She’d already breached her professional ethics by wiring money to Daniel, just as Daniel had breached his by contacting her in the first place.

But when the ethics of your profession conflict with your ethics as a human being, well, then there’s just something wrong with your profession.

Las Vegas, Nevada…

William Lamech sat in the cabin of his private jet, drinking Perrier while his pilot waited for clearance from the control tower. He picked up the Gulfstream’s sat-phone and dialed the number of Vito Carlucci, head of all things profitable and illegal in New Orleans.

“Vito, it’s William. The conversation we had earlier? It’s happening…he surfaced, and he’s heading your way…I’m on the tarmac at McCarran, I’ll be touching down in about four hours. Assemble a team of your very best men. I want them at the Hotel Monteleone in six. We’re going to end this, now.”

He hung up, lifted the receiver again, and punched in the cell number of Samson Turner.

Julia sat across from Anderson Cooper and adjusted the lavaliere mic clipped to her dress as Cooper welcomed her to the show.

“My producer tells me you’ve been looking into the possibility that the Trinity Phenomenon can be explained by quantum physics. But I gotta tell ya,” Cooper chuckled, “we had Leonard Mlodinow on last night, and I still don’t fully understand it.”

Julia laughed along with him. “One thing all the top physicists agree on: Anyone who claims to fully understand quantum physics, doesn’t. But that doesn’t make it completely impenetrable.”

“Can you give us an explanation we can understand, I mean without any parallel universes, anti-matter, or cats that are both alive and dead at the same time?”

“I know, a lot of it seems to run counter to common sense,” said Julia. “But common sense tells us that the sun revolves around the earth. We think we see the sun rise and set, while we’re actually watching the earth rotate on its axis.” She shifted in her chair. “And for most of our history, suggesting that the earth revolves around the sun was heresy, punishable by death. The border between the known and the unknown is always perilous for science. Look at it this way: some animals only see black and white. You might be tempted to think our experience of the universe is more ‘real’ than theirs because we can see the color spectrum. But we only see part of the spectrum, while birds also see UV light. And there’s increasing evidence that birds also ‘see’ the earth’s electromagnetic field. Is their view of the world more ‘true’ than ours?” She smiled. “Luckily, evolution gave us the big brains—”

“Not everyone believes in evolution,” said Cooper.

“Not everyone believes the earth revolves around the sun.” Julia smiled. “Anyway, however we got them, we got the big brains. We use machinery and math and to expand our knowledge of the universe beyond what we can perceive through direct sensory input. And it’s important to note that quantum physics, however strange it seems, is borne out by real-world results in the laboratory. And despite the seeming paradox, there’s no actual physical law forbidding time travel. Physics makes no distinction between past, present, and future. For example, if we look at the Wheeler Delayed Choice Two-Slit Experiment...”

Tim Trinity cupped a hand to his ear playfully. “Hear that? The sound of millions of people changing the channel.” He took a swig from a bottle of Dixie beer. “Hand me the box, will ya?” Daniel passed the pizza box across to him.

They sat on the twin beds in room twenty-three of a motel just outside Waynesboro, Mississippi. The television had to be at least thirty years old and the hue of the picture tube had shifted red, so both Julia and Anderson Cooper looked a little sunburned. But the picture was crisp enough. The truck was hidden behind a Dumpster in back, and Waynesboro was far enough north that nobody would be looking for them here.

This particular motel wasn’t a place where anybody looked for anything. No other rooms were occupied. The mattresses probably predated the television, and the old woman in the office was practically blind.

They’d be safe enough, until morning.

Daniel finished his beer and pulled another from the six-pack and turned his attention back to the set.

Julia was saying, “…so basically, we know quantum physics makes accurate predictions— perfect predictions, in fact—about the world around us. The problem is it describes a world that, when looked at in extreme close-up, seems impossible to reconcile with the large-scale world we see through our eyes. Nevertheless, it is accurate, and in the quantum world it is possible for information to travel backward through time. As Albert Einstein said: The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

“You’re right about one thing. It seems impossible,” said Cooper.

“Yes, because—just as we experience the sun moving around the earth—the nature of time is not accurately described by our experience of time in our everyday lives. Time is not what it seems.”

“And what does this tell us about the Trinity Phenomenon?”

“Tim Trinity is somehow predicting the future, and millions of people have decided that God is behind those predictions. But we don’t really know that. It could just be a strange wrinkle in the quantum world, seeping through into the world we experience. We need to look at the phenomenon from all angles and follow the evidence where it leads, rather than jumping to conclusions.”

“That’s an interesting point,” said Cooper. “It reminds me of something Stephen Hawking said in his most recent book. He said, ‘Quantum physics doesn’t tell us that God doesn’t exist, but it tells us that the existence of God isn’t necessary for the universe to exist as it does.’”

Julia said, “I think the parallel is apt. There might be a God who is behind Trinity’s predictions, but there doesn’t have to be.”

Tim Trinity said, “Julia really wears that dress.”

“Yes,” said Daniel. “Yes, she sure does.”

“You mind if I ask you something personal?” Trinity shook his empty bottle and Daniel handed him a fresh beer.

Daniel smiled. He knew what was coming. “Yes, Tim, I really was celibate all those years.”

“Aside from regular dates with the Palm Sisters, naturally.”

“Goes without saying.” Daniel stared at the red-hued Julia on the television. He said, “There’s a story about a couple of Zen Buddhist monks. One day they leave the monastery and walk into town to buy vegetables. Along the way, there’s a stream they have to wade through, about thigh-deep. At the edge of the water, they come across a beautiful young woman wearing a lovely silk dress. One of the monks offers to carry her across, and she accepts. On the other side, they part ways with the girl and walk on in silence. About five miles down the road, the other monk says, ‘I don’t think it was right, what you did back there. You know we’re not supposed to have contact with women.’ The monk who helped the girl replies, ‘I put the girl down once we crossed the river—why are you still