Klee had a hand in many pots, and it quickly became clear that the mathematical theory of quantum gravity was only one part of a larger quest, including technological success and allegedly, possibly, the finding of an actual holy grail, a search that allegedly extended to a large property of Klee’s in Hawaii. Now everyone was telling me that he employed a psychic guru woman named Ellie, who regularly analysed ideas and scientific questions of interest to the group. She ranked results in a blind test, and it was said, at least by Michael, that Klee often based his decisions on them. I would see some of this process in action later on. Ellie was allegedly a reincarnation of an ancient Buddhist teacher and Quantum Gravity itself might, or might not be, connected to other quests.
Michael, thankfully, focused on the mathematical quest, although this necessarily involved an extremely heretical reinterpretation of religious texts. He studied Kaballah. The lost ancient knowledge was pure mathematical Truth, and a grail of enlightenment was, as often the case for a scientist, our understanding of this Truth, and nothing more or nothing less. Philosophically, we tended to agree on this. But Michael was caught up, somehow, in the wild, arbitrary myths that were followed by the people around him. Maybe the entire enterprise of QGR was a ruse of the CIA, and I was a guinea pig. After all, I was a targeted individual. What did I really know.
Michael told me that the psychic, Ellie, had started following him around, finding him far more interesting than the rest. Indeed, I thought he was far more interesting myself, but then I had known him for around fourteen years. He was a little like a small child from the Mahabarata, full of mad hopes and dream.
Maybe, who knew, the QGR team were mainly grail treasure hunters, masqerading as the CIA, or the CIA masquerading as the Illuminati, or scientologists, or the Illuminati masqerading as holy grail treasure hunters. Whatever the story was, and I would never really be told, these were all real possibilities, and there were probably spies from various camps on the QGR premises, at least electronically, which was enough to make one wonder about the narrative.
I felt it was not one’s place to question an adult’s personal beliefs, whether or not I collaborated with them on a scientific project, and whether or not they were my friends. So I watched and listened silently and respectfully, as Michael and Ray openly analysed a psychically channeled script containing geometric figures, Viking runes and a single English word: Bakersfield. Everyone claimed the text had been written down by a child in the family, ten years earlier, long, long before Klee’s group had come across Michael Rios, who was from Bakersfield.
I had only recently arrived in America. Of course this sounded like a convenient fraud, to entrap both Michael and me, in different ways, in a highly gendered vision of reality, wherein Michael was a holy vessel and Marni presumably a convenient female prophet sidekick. But the thing is, as you will see in the end, truth is always more spectacular than fiction.
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“Now Michael was telling Ray to pull out the bible and read a certain passage, as they continued to discuss their translation of the rune prophecy and place it in the context of Hebrew prophecy. He had chosen the passage from Revelations, knowing I would recognise it as the one I had quoted to him on the PhysicsForums ten years earlier, when we had first begun to glimpse the theory of quantum gravity.
It is a matter of duty for many to demolish the modern Church, in its corruption and hunger for temporal power. We could see plainly that it might be demolished by mathematical Truth, hiding in the ancient origins of religious myth. Because inside the recent Jordan algebra gravity papers sat the Star of David itself, shining at the heart of quantum gravity. This was not merely a new atheistic crusade, but rather the ultimate heresy, and we were all compelled to follow it.
A rich thread of philosophical thought amongst quantum gravity theorists of our ilk came from the Kabbalistic observations. There was no denying the mathematical fact: the Star of David sat there plainly on the page, summarising the structure of classical algebras. At its centre sat the seventy two names of God, otherwise known in mathematics as the roots of the e6 lattice. In the professional literature, it was called the Magic Star. Michael would speak often about his study of ancient Hebrew prophecies, which were considered by him as potentially real prophecies for the near future, for the unavoidable time of the apocalypse, which was also an undeniable scientific prediction, given the state of the world.
Maybe he just wanted to know my thoughts ...”