The Ghost: Adventures of a Young Scientist

By Lloyd Sparks

A young scientist and his friends are introduced to the frightening array of alternate universes when he creates a device that can open a doorway between dimensions. He learns that very small events can change how the world operates in very powerful and terrifying ways. Lost in a wilderness of parallel worlds and on the verge of despair, he finally discovers the key to finding his way home.

When he finally makes it back, he vows to never leave the safety and comfort of his home universe again. He soon discovers, however, that the world of the human brain can be just as scary when he creates a machine that can read minds.

After peering into the private thoughts and deepest longings of his close friends, he decides to destroy his creation only to discover how badly he needs it to fight the most horrifying menace of all-the ghost of a dead evil genius alive in cyberspace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 25, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595882496

Lloyd Sparks

Lloyd Sparks is a best-selling author of science adventure novels and winner of Writer’s Digest’s Best New Author of 2006, category Young Adult Fiction. He is best known for his work in fiction reflecting a well traveled and widely diverse background of experience. Dr. Sparks lives in Massachusetts.

Book preview

The Ghost

Adventures of a Young Scientist

Copyright © 2007 by Lloyd Albert Sparks, Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-43926-3 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-88249-6 (ebk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-43926-8 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-88249-8 (ebk)

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

EPILOGUE

For Amy, for not dying.

Everything in this book is true, except that parts that aren’t.

Everybody in this book is real, except the people who aren’t.

Everything in this book really happened, except the parts that didn’t.

PROLOGUE

In the previous book, Monsters, I tell of how I accidentally make a dinosaur by mixing frog DNA with a hen’s egg. It was hard to feel sorry for a creature stuck in a universe where it doesn’t belong … until it happened to me.

CHAPTER 1

If you travel back in time, what happens to the stuff that occupies the space you get sent to?

When Scottie beams Captain Kirk and Spock down to the surface of a planet, what happens to the air filling the space they materialize in?

I suppose every scientist thinks about time travel at some point in his life. Creating a dinosaur had started me thinking about how a person might go back in time. It wasn’t long before I realized how little I understood about the basics of time and space. My math teacher, Mr. Whitmore, once mentioned that he could work out relativity, Einstein’s famous concept, expressed as E=mc². I did a little reading on it and found it fascinating.

The Special Theory of Relativity isn’t that hard to understand. When you realize that the speed of light is constant and it can travel two different distances in the same time if one object is moving relative to another, it becomes obvious. Time has to slow down for the object that is moving faster.

Einstein’s General Theory is quite a bit harder. When I’m thinking about stuff, sometimes it helps to listen to music or shoot baskets or play pool. Or do some boring, repetitive task. I finally got it while I was nailing together about a hundred air vent screens for my dad (a little building project from work) and listening to the Association, one of my favorite groups. Jim Yester was crooning about how life is no fair at all when it hit me. Mass and energy warp space and time just by their presence. We perceive gravity as a force, but it is actually just the effect of mass-energy on space-time.

A famous scientist once said that the real universe is not only weirder than we imagine; it is weirder than we can imagine. That’s why we can often express reality mathematically even though we can’t grock it. (If you don’t grock grock, you need to read Heinlein. We scientists love Heinlein. And Asimov.)

I decided I needed more mathematics to explore time travel.

If the Vancouver Science Museum has a fault, it is that they don’t do much with mathematics. Maybe it’s just too abstract. Or maybe it’s because mathematicians tend to view any practical use of mathematics with utter contempt. They almost seem to consider it an insult to point out practical uses for their equations. Edward Teller, the famous Hungarian atomic physicist was a prime example.

Teller was asked to develop the hydrogen bomb shortly after the War. Seeing the destructive use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, he refused. He had been against the use of the A-bomb all along even while he was working on it, but the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians hardened his resolve. The American government tried to jail him, but the wave of opposition that ended government in America ensured that he remained a free man. Now he, along with some Russian guy named Sakharov, is famous for his work in astrophysics and black holes. But they are both more famous for not cooperating with the government to make atomic weapons. An inspiration to us all!

I asked Mr. Whitmore where I might learn about the mathematics I needed to understand space-time. For once, Mr. Whitmore was stumped. He had taught me geometry and introduced me to trigonometry (which I had been using for my bomber kites without knowing it). He taught me a little about calculus, the mathematics of change. I understand what a ‘limit’ is and a ‘derivative.’ He introduced me to chaos theory, which is really about what happens at the edge of chaos. I knew about fractals. But that pretty much exhausted his trove of knowledge.

One thing I know about mathematicians is that they usually aren’t American. I can’t think of a single famous American mathematician, but I can think of several Hungarians. The only Hungarian I know is Dr. Kovacs at the Museum. I decided to give him a call.

Dr. Kovacs? I began as he picked up the phone.

Speaking. Is this Dr. Sparks? he answered. (I love it when they call me that!)

Hi. It’s me. Say, you’re Hungarian, aren’t you?

Yes. I was born in Hungary.

Well, I heard that a lot of the best mathematicians in the world are Hungarian.

Yes. That is correct. Mathematics has been very popular in Hungary for over a hundred years, he said. "It’s all because of one middle school teacher, Lipot

Feher. He was such a good teacher that many of his students went on to become the greatest mathematicians of the Twentieth Century. Without Hungarian mathematicians, Einstein would never have been able to work out his theories. There would be no atomic energy, no space flight, and no computers. The biggest technological breakthroughs of the Twentieth Century are all thanks to Hungarian mathematicians, most of whom had the same middle school teacher."

That was astounding. One junior high math teacher gave us the Twentieth Century!

I was wondering, how could I meet some mathematicians? I mean real, world-class mathematicians who work on theoretical physics. You know. Relativity and stuff.

Dr. Kovacs thought for a moment. I know a few people who know some prominent mathematicians. Not just Hungarians, of course. I could make a few calls if you like.

Thanks a lot, Dr. Kovacs. I’d really appreciate it, I said.

So you’re getting interested in mathematics, eh? he said. Great stuff!Nice and safe! No monsters in mathematics.

Yeah, I agreed. Nice and safe. Call me if you find anybody I can talk to. Bye.

I will. Goodbye, Dr. Sparks, and we hung up the phones.

Over the next few days nothing much happened out of the ordinary. I was reading about how Einstein had been searching for the Grand Unification Theory, a theory that would reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics. I didn’t understand quantum mechanics, so I asked Mr. Whitmore about it one day after school.

Mr. Whitmore took me down to the chemistry classroom and, after rummaging around in some drawers, pulled out a prism. He shined a light through the prism, creating a spectrum of colors on the wall. Then he held up a piece of cardboard with a slit in it and shined a light through it. It created series of lines on the wall. See how the prism separates the different frequencies of light into discrete colors? Each color has its own wavelength. See how when light is shined through a slit, it splits into separate lines?

I nodded my head.

Quantum theory says that energy has to travel in discrete packets. The energy can only have one level or another and nothing in between. When the electrons are excited, they jump to outer orbits. When they fall back, they release a photon in a discrete wavelength of light. There is no room in between for a gradual shift. They jump, but they don’t slide.

I told Mr. Whitmore that I understood what I was looking at but didn’t see why it should be that way.

Neither did Einstein. But that is the way it is, understand it or not. It means that the relativity equations should predict quantum behavior in large bodies like stars, but they don’t. Relativity works for very large things and quantum mechanics works for very small things, and here we are halfway in between and unable to reconcile the two.

Have you ever thought about it? I asked.

Oh, yes. From time to time I wonder about it, Mr. Whitmore said, gazing off out the window. Some people are working on an idea called ‘string theory’ which might eventually bring the two together in some grand Theory of Everything.

What’s ‘string theory’? I asked.

I don’t really know much about it, but it involves dimensions beyond the four we live in. Every time I read something about it, they seem to be changing the number of dimensions necessary for the theory to work, he answered. Maybe they’ll get it worked out eventually.

You mean, like a fifth dimension? A parallel universe?

Mr. Whitmore’s eyes twinkled under his bushy eyebrows. "Don’t get too much of your science from The Twilight Zone,’" he chided with a smile. But they are talking about a lot more than five dimensions. And sometimes less. I read something about how the equations work best in a universe with negative three dimensions.

Negative three dimensions?!

Mathematicians don’t care anything about experiential reality, Mr. Whit-more reminded me.

The world really is weirder than we can imagine. If only because mathematicians live in it.

CHAPTER 2

Back home later that night we were just sitting down to dinner when the doorbell rang.

Who could that be? wondered Mom, carrying a platter of roast beef to the table. Would you get that please, Lloyd?

Sure, Mom, I said and jumped up to answer the door.

I opened the door and there stood an old man in a rumpled grey suit with messy grey hair, thick black-rimmed glasses and carrying a beat-up old suitcase.

My mind is open! he announced with a smile and walked right in!

Who is it? called Mom from the kitchen.

I am Paul Erdos, he said, walking right into our dinning room and sticking out his hand in greeting. My Mom and Dad shook his hand, their mouths open. My, what a fine little tribe of epsilons! he said looking around the table. What are we having for dinner?

Roast beef, Mr. Air-dish, said Mom, not knowing what else to do. Won’t you pull up a chair while I set another place?

Koszonom szepen, said Mr. Erdos. "That’s how we say thank you in Hungarian. And please call me Uncle Paul."

To what do we owe this honor? asked Dad, starting to recover from the shock of a total stranger walking in and sitting down to dinner.

Our mutual friend, Laszlo Kovacs, informed me that there was a bright young mathematician with some problems he is working on. I came by to help, explained Uncle Paul. Which of these fine epsilons—that’s what Uncle Paul called children—is Lloyd?

That would be me, Mr. Erdos, I said.

Uncle Paul, he corrected. Or Pali Bacsi, if you like.

Pali Bacsi, I repeated carefully.

Well! He said with a broad smile. Dig in everyone! You can’t do mathematics on an empty stomach. And we ate dinner.

Uncle Paul did most of the talking during dinner. The only topic was numbers. Especially prime numbers. It was way over our heads, but his enthusiasm was infectious. And he was so nice! When we finished, Mom brought coffee and cleared the table. Everyone got up and left the dining room, but Uncle Paul just stayed where he was and turned to me to get down to business. The business of mathematics!

So. What are you working on?