Going Out

She and Charlotte are in the double bed together. Luke’s under a blanket on the pullout bed. They’ve had pizza and Charlotte’s told them her news: she’s not going to India. It’s warm and comfortable in the bed, which is why they’re both there. No one wanted the sofa, plus Luke seemed very attached to the pullout bed.

‘I was just running away, really. I mean, that’s the only reason I was ever going to go. I still want to run away, of course, but I’m doing a pretty good job of that with you and Luke. I thought . . .’

‘Well, you don’t want to go home, do you? Maybe we could just keep on running, together. We’ll have to look after the van until Chan comes back anyway. It could be like The Adventures of the Orange Bus or something.’

‘We’ll have to go back to Essex at some point, though,’ Julie says, smiling.

‘That’s a yes, isn’t it?’ She semi-squeals in the darkness. ‘You’re so cool, babe.’

‘Yeah, well, we’ll have to see what Luke thinks. I think he wants to go home.’

‘About quarter to seven or something. Wei said he’d see you both at seven.’

At seven o’clock, Julie and Luke are standing outside a room on the second floor. Luke’s wearing his space-suit and Julie’s carrying a blanket for Wei’s window because the curtains in this hotel are quite thin, and the sun’s coming up. Julie feels tired and achy. She knows Luke didn’t sleep well either; she heard him sighing and fidgeting all night in the little pullout bed. It must have been strange for him sleeping in a different bed for the second time ever.

It’s quiet and dark in the corridor. Wei’s door looks like all the others. Julie stands there for a few seconds just looking at it, not able to believe that there’s a person behind it who has claimed to be able to make Luke’s dream come true. Everything’s so quiet and still. Is this all a big mistake? Julie’s hands are sweaty. She knows that after she knocks on this door nothing’s going to be the same again, ever.

She knocks, and for a few moments nothing happens. Then she hears a man’s voice saying to hang on a minute and that he’s coming. Her heart thumps at the sound of the voice and she feels the uncomfortable tickle of adrenaline in her stomach. She almost wants to be sick. This is him. This is it.

‘Hello,’ he says warmly. ‘Hey, I like the space-suit. You must be Luke.’ He offers his hand, and Luke takes it uncertainly. ‘And you are Julie?’

Julie takes his hand. ‘Yes. You must be Wei. Thanks for agreeing to see Luke. It’s so . . .’

‘I’ll have to take him back,’ Julie says. ‘Are you sure you want to see me first?’

When Julie gets back, Wei’s left his door ajar. ‘Come in, come in,’ he says enthusiastically. ‘Sit.’

Julie comes in and sits at the small table by the window, where Wei is pointing. There’s another chair facing it and Julie wonders whether Wei’s set up this arrangement specially for his meeting with Luke. It’s very tidy in here and there’s no smell of stale cigarette smoke like in the rooms upstairs. This room smells of coconut oil and, very slightly, of earth. Wei seems to have personalised his room in a few small ways: the TV is covered with a scarf, and one of the pillows on the bed has a different pillowcase from the others, with thin pastel stripes. On the wall by the bed, there’s a picture of a small boy who looks like he could be Wei’s son. Wei himself is tall and angular, dressed in a black polo-neck jumper and loose black trousers. He seems like a pop star or a politician and Julie feels slightly awed by him. There’s nothing Crystal Ball about him at all, which she didn’t expect. She gets comfortable on the chair, then Wei explains that he wants to help her and that Luke told him about her ‘problems’.

‘OK,’ she says, uncertainly. ‘Thanks. I’m not sure how you’ll be able to help, though. I may be a bit of a lost cause.’ She laughs nervously. She hadn’t expected this. She thought he’d want to talk about Luke – that’s why they’re all here, after all.

This is very direct. How does he know this? Luke must have told him a lot. Still, there’s only one answer. ‘Yes,’ Julie says. ‘Well, maybe slightly less now.’

Wei rests one of his arms on the table. ‘Well, I’m pleased to hear that,’ he says, smiling. ‘How was your journey?’

‘Of course. I mean, if a journey to Wales could cure fear, you wouldn’t be able to get here, there’d be so many people coming.’

Wei frowns. ‘Do you think so? Most people don’t do very simple things they could do to conquer their fears. It’s as if they actually like their fears and want to nurture them and care for them.’ He tries to cross his legs but they don’t seem to fit under the table properly. He looks at Julie. ‘Still, I can already see that you are too clever. That’s one big problem we have to overcome.’

‘Yes. Oh.’ Wei laughs. He seems uncomfortable on the chair and pushes it further away from the small table and then manages to cross his legs. Then he clasps his hands together and balances them on his knee. ‘So anyway, you are generally afraid, yes? Is that a fair statement?’

‘Yes.’ Julie’s tracing the pattern in the false wood on the small table in front of her. ‘That’s a fair statement.’

‘Sort of.’ She looks up, uncertain about how to explain everything but suddenly feeling she has to; that if this man thinks he can help her, she should at least tell him the truth. Truth is a problem, though. Does Julie even know what the truth is? She knows what she feels, at least. She could try that. ‘I think I’m just as scared of losing control,’ she says. ‘I mean – I am terrified of death, but it was only recently that the absolute finality of death dawned on me. Before that I was still terrified of everything, so it can’t just be death.’

‘So it’s control, and it’s death?’ As Wei says this, he raises his hand and holds up first one, then two fingers, as if he needs to count these items.

‘Yeah.’ Julie stops examining the table and puts her hands in her lap. Her palms are sweaty.

Julie tells Wei about how she can’t eat prepared food like sandwiches or pizza – even though she managed a pizza last night, she still waited an hour in fear that the acid was going to kick in – and how she also can’t stand the idea of natural foods, because they might have earth on them, and she’s scared of E. coli and dirt and fungus and fertilisers and cancer. Then she explains all her travel phobias: the way she feels about planes, trains and boats; then she tells Wei about her fear of the weather, bacteria and freak accidents in general. He nods enthusiastically while she talks. Then he laughs.

‘No, but I try to be. Like if I only eat heavily processed foods, I’m controlling what goes in me, and I know I don’t have a very healthy diet but at least I control it. If I do that, I can’t be killed by someone else’s mistake, or sabotage, or by a rogue spore in some clump of earth.’

‘Well, I haven’t exactly overcome anything, but . . .’ She tells him about the flood she drove through, and how excited she felt, and how different that was for her.

‘My friend who came on the journey with Luke and me – Charlotte; you know her, I think – she was due to leave the country, but now she’s staying so she can travel around with me and maybe Luke if he gets healed and doesn’t want to go home afterwards.’

‘I hope so. I’m not so good with roads, but there’s always more than one way to get somewhere. And if I hadn’t been on the small roads, I’d never have been able to drive through the flood.’

Wei stands up and walks across the room, with his back to Julie. She can see him counting on his fingers again. ‘So you have two good friends, you’re on an exciting journey, and you are healthy. But you are still afraid.’

He turns around and looks at her. ‘Julie, if somebody did put LSD in your sandwich, what’s the worst thing that could happen?’

‘Well, that’s good.’ He pauses and looks at the blanket covering the window. Julie gets the impression he would actually like to look out of the window at the dawn but the blanket is there ready for when Luke comes and there’s no sunlight coming through it at all. He stops looking at the blanket and looks back at Julie. ‘But still, these things don’t usually kill you. So, it terrifies you because it’s not your choice. But you accept that some people take it and have fun?’

‘Yes, but some people take it to have fun and then try to fly by jumping off a bridge or something. That terrifies me.’

Wei starts walking back towards the table. ‘Look, these drugs don’t change your whole mind, they just confuse it. You are still the essential person inside, just a little bit muddled. You would never get so muddled that you’d kill yourself. You want to live so much. A drug would never make you stop wanting to live. The feeling’s too dominant in you.’ He sits down and crosses his legs again. ‘Julie, I want to ask you: what would you actually do if there was LSD in your sandwich?’

Julie’s embarrassed. Her fear sounds so stupid when he puts it like that. Terrifying still but totally stupid. How does her mind come up with these things? Mind you, people do spike other people all the time. Once, in The Edge, someone’s ex-girlfriend came in with another guy and got an E in her Pepsi. Julie’s fears are grounded in some sort of reality. She stares at the table again, trying to think how to answer. She can’t lie; there’s only one response to Wei’s question.

‘OK, well, I suppose if I was driving, I’d pull over. But I’d be scared that I’d start hallucinating and there’d be monsters on the road and it would be dark and I’d go mad . . .’

‘Tell myself they’re not real, maybe. Put the radio on. Keep drinking fluids. Have a cigarette. Maybe I’d phone someone and get them to pick me up. But what if I couldn’t remember their number or I thought my phone was crawling with insects or something? Mind you, you don’t really get acid that strong, do you? I’ve heard people at work talking about it. In fact, some of the people I used to work with would do acid and other drugs then go out clubbing – or even come into work. So, logically, I wouldn’t get completely out of it. I’d be able to do something, like phone for help. Or, I could phone for help as soon as it kicked in, before it got too bad. Then my friend would pick me up, and I’d get them to call a doctor to give me a sedative. Or, I suppose if I really was so out of it that I couldn’t phone anyone, then I’d just have to sit it out. Anyway, hopefully I’d just be sedated and wake up OK, and then in the morning I’d call the police and report what had happened.’

‘If surviving is the worst thing that can happen to you, I don’t think you have much to worry about. I think you need to think through the ways you’d cope if some of these things happened, and not just stop at the idea of you panicking. Assume that once you’ve panicked for a while, you’d have to do something else, and work through the scenario until you either survive or you don’t. Most times you will. Who cares if you get a little sick, or a little muddled . . . You’ve survived! Not that I’m recommending you eat packaged sandwiches – they really are horrible.’ He laughs. ‘But you could if you wanted to. It’s so unlikely that you’d get one that someone had deliberately put LSD into anyway . . .’

‘I don’t know about that. Oh, dear. I, uh . . . I have a bit of a problem with probability,’ Julie says, knowing she’s probably about to really piss Wei off, but not able to stop herself. ‘It’s that whole quantum-physics thing where you have infinite possibility and infinite universes, and therefore everything has a probability value of one. In a sense the probability of getting acid in my sandwich is the same as not getting it, and it would be just my luck to be stuck in the scenario where it happened. If there were infinite universes, I just know I’d be stuck in the one where everything goes wrong.’

‘Explain this idea of infinite possibility.’ He makes this sound like an order.

‘OK,’ Julie says nervously. ‘It’s basically the idea that every known outcome to every possible event not only exists but actually happens somewhere, in a parallel universe or another world. The probability of anything happening therefore simply has a value of one, because if you accept multiple universes and infinite outcomes, everything possible actually happens. In that sense everything exists: millions of versions of this conversation, millions of outcomes of the throw of a pair of dice, square circles, zombies, God and the devil . . . They all exist somewhere. In some universe somewhere, when you asked me to come into the room before, I instantly turned into a lemon. In another, I tripped and fell, in another I went off with Luke and never came back. You’ve probably heard those ideas before. It’s all to do with wave-function . . . I’d better not explain that bit, it gets a bit complicated.’

‘OK, OK,’ says Wei, smiling. He sighs. ‘So it’s just as likely that you’ll get acid in your sandwich as it is that you’ll turn into a lemon. I have heard about this before, although not phrased in exactly the same way, but I see how it works. It’s connected with that unfortunate cat, isn’t it?’

For some reason Julie thinks of the mice she saw in the pet shop last week. ‘Yes. It’s a thought experiment – there’s no real cat and no real box, of course. In the thought experiment the cat is sealed in the box with some radioactive material and some cyanide. There’s a fifty per cent chance that the radioactive material will break down and start a chain reaction that releases the cyanide. So the question is this: is the cat alive or dead while the box is sealed? Since you can’t observe the cat, you can’t know. Therefore the cat is in a “superposition” of the alive and dead states as long as the box is closed, and only becomes actually dead or alive when you open the box to make the observation. Until you look at it, the cat is both dead and alive, or fifty per cent alive, both of which are impossible. Nothing can be alive and dead at the same time; and there isn’t a state between life and death. Schrödinger’s thesis was a paradox that he used to illustrate problems with the way quantum theory treated the observation of atoms. The cat must be alive or dead. It can’t be alive and dead, or fifty per cent alive, which is what the experiment suggests.’

Julie suddenly thinks about Luke, and about how he’s been sealed in his box for so long. Before he left his room, was he alive, dead or fifty per cent alive? Or was he some sort of paradox, a trick, or something imaginary like a number you make up because it answers your impossible question? If something’s not there you invent it. If you don’t have an answer, you make one up. Is Luke imaginary? Is his life – full of narrative and perfect fiction – just imaginary?

‘So it can be neither alive nor dead anyway.’ Wei smiles. ‘Or even fifty per cent alive. And if the cyanide is imaginary it can’t kill anything, can it? And you think you are like the cat. You always think you are going to be killed by imaginary cyanide.’ He shakes his head. ‘So, do you believe in all this quantum theory?’

‘What? Oh, do I believe in quantum theory? Well, not really. I accept the possibility of it being there, but it doesn’t actually mean anything, apart from the fact that probability is a stupid concept. It never works, and bookmakers are sometimes wrong, but not often, and you can cut a pack of cards fifty times and get the same card every time, particularly if you’re cheating. Probability can only ever truly be considered in the context of infinity, because once you start talking about probability, you have to consider infinite outcomes, which makes it all a bit tricky. That’s all I was trying to say. Infinity always creates its own paradoxes. In fact, if you had infinite possibility and infinite universes one of the possibilities would have to be that infinite possibility doesn’t exist. That would cancel the others out.’

She sighs. ‘Anyway, the point is that I still believe in weird things happening and no one’s going to use probability theories to convince me otherwise, because once you start talking about probability, you have to accept that anything’s as likely as anything else, including stuff that’s a lot weirder than the weird thing you were worried about in the first place.’

Wei gets up again and walks around silently for a few moments. ‘For someone so clever, you are not the wisest person in the world, are you?’ he says eventually. ‘You are right but you’re not using this knowledge you have. You have to get to the point where you do not do these calculations in your conscious mind. Let your spirit handle chance and probability and calculation – those decisions you make in milliseconds are usually the best ones; for example when you “automatically” swerve out of the way when someone steps in front of your car. As you know, when you do that, your brain does thousands of calculations to do with distance and time and velocity and so on, and you are not even conscious of those calculations. If you knew the joy of playing sport you’d know that your mind is able to calculate the effects gravity has on a ball. When you fall in love, you have to let your internal world handle that. Your unconscious mind – or your spirit – makes wonderful calculations. You should not override it all the time.’

Wei turns, looks at Julie then sits in his chair again. ‘Anyway, going back to our discussion, then: whatever happens to you, there are two possible outcomes, apart from the infinite ones where you turn yourself into a die, throw yourself a billion times and come up with the number six every time.’ He laughs. ‘You must realise that, in your predicament, when you have too much fear, even the infinite outcomes boil down to two basic ones. Essentially, you’ll either survive, or you won’t. Even the Schrödinger experiment demonstrates that. There really is no such thing as being fifty per cent alive. You accept that?’

‘What about all the other – I’m tempted to say infinite – possibilities? There are many ideas about the afterlife, and there are notions of reincarnation, or there’s what I believe: that your spirit lives on in life and in nature. Many cultures believe that there is an afterlife. In fact, millions of people all around the world believe it. There are so many different versions of the afterlife.’ Wei laughs. ‘The one thing there couldn’t be is nothingness.’

‘Come on, Julie. Nothingness cannot “be”. Therefore it cannot exist. Use your own logic.’ He smiles. ‘You like using your logic. Come on. Infinity might have problems but it is more believable than nothingness. We use our being to contemplate infinity, because it exists. It is the concept of existence, multiplied to the highest factor. It is absolute being. But how can we contemplate non-being? Have you heard the phrase nature abhors a void? Of course you have. You should look to nature for some of your answers. Nature is all about being. Even death leads to life in nature. You shouldn’t need me to tell you these things.’

Julie smiles. ‘OK, but I’m still scared of dying. I know it’s selfish but I don’t want to make way for new life right now. I just want to carry on being me for a long time, at least until I’m very old.’

Wei sighs. ‘People who have had near-death experiences say it’s nothing to be scared of, you know. They see wonderful lights, happiness.’

‘I know. But isn’t that actually just some hallucination to do with the optic nerve closing down or something?’

‘Is it? I heard of an experiment in which it was proven that the person’s spirit was able to float above the body, or at least move outside it in some way, because people reported seeing objects that were placed in the room outside the range of vision anyone would have at ground level. In fact, the human spirit is a well-travelled thing, if you believe all the accounts. Ghosts, spirit guides, shamanic flight, dreams. If your spirit can travel, surely it can live on after death?’

Wei smiles. ‘I believe life is good and life has meaning. Look, my words aren’t going to instantly cure you – as you can see, I don’t work like that. But you can create for yourself a better sense of well-being if you simply ask yourself: “What’s the worst that could happen?” and realise that only in rare circumstances will it be death, and even if it is, so what? If death’s the worst thing that can happen, you can cope with it! You are a strong, beautiful woman, Julie. Do you really think death will be the end of you? Of course not. And even if it was, which I doubt, and there was no heaven or any sort of spirit world or afterlife, it still wouldn’t be, because you will leave behind some wonderful things: maybe some children, or some ideas. Perhaps a nice garden, or a beautiful picture, or a song you made up. These are the important things. But you can’t create these things, or live life, when you are so scared.’

Julie sighs. ‘I know. You’re right. It just might take a while for me to accept that.’

‘Look, Luke’s going to be waiting for you to collect him, so unfortunately our time is up, but I have enjoyed talking to you.’ Wei gets up and walks over to his bedside table, from which he takes two pieces of yellow paper. One of them is blank. He gives it to Julie, along with a pencil. ‘I have prepared some guidelines that I think will help you. I think you’ll find these are the only reasonable precautions you’ll need to take to keep healthy, which is all you’re really worried about, so you can go on your journey, and have fun with your friends, and do your strange maths. Some of these are from the Tao, but most are things your grandparents could tell you, in that they’re just common sense. And Julie, do not be afraid of illness – you will be ill, then you will get well, and you may read a wonderful book while you are in bed. Illness can be a blessing.’

For the next couple of minutes, Wei recites a list which Julie writes down. Then he gives her the other piece of paper, which has something from the book of Chuang Tzu written on it that he tells her to read later. When she leaves, she has the excerpt from Chuang Tzu, and the following list:

Wash food before preparing it

Wash your hands before eating or preparing food

Keep cold food cold and hot food hot (never eat reheated rice)

Look each way twice before crossing the road

Be kind to people, animals, plants and the earth

Relax like a baby does, and you will not be harmed

Learn First Aid

Follow the Highway Code

Exercise regularly

If you have a problem, make a journey; you will find the answer

Stop thinking about infinity

Chapter 46