Frequent Flyers
By Bryant Rogers
Jerry was beginning to get very tired sitting by the professor on the plane, and of having nothing to do. He contemplated pulling his cellphone out of his pocket again, but he had just gotten off of a confrontation with the stewardess regarding his usage of his phone and he could tell she was still eyeing him from down the aisle. What is the use of having an Airplane Mode on your phone, thought Jerry, if I can’t use my phone on the plane?
He considered this for a moment and then thought to ask the professor. “Excuse me, Professor Bluntstache?” The professor glanced up from the book he was reading and shifted his eyebrow at Jerry. (As anyone would do after being disturbed while reading a good book) Jerry took a sip from his bottled water and cleared his throat. “I was just wondering, why can’t I use my phone if there is an Airplane Mode? It doesn’t make sense to me that she wouldn’t let me use it.” The professor sighed. Then he withdrew the folded up piece of orange paper he had been using for a bookmark and placed it back into the book to mark his space. He then closed the book and proceeded to devote his attention to Jerry’s confusion.
“Think, for a moment Mr. Wrigley. That, perhaps when the stewardess came over and requested that you please ‘turn that off’ she was referencing that Silversun Pickups song you had blasting over the Captain’s announcement.
“It’s my ringtone.” Jerry replied sinking down in his chair and sliding his phone out of his pocket. “Alright, vibrate mode.” He glanced back up at the professor, “Hey, that’s a nice peach tie.”
The Professor responded with a dirty look. “It isn’t ‘peach’ Jerry, it’s ‘Champagne’.
Jerry scoffed, “Whatever ‘Champagne’, it’s generally the same color. I mean, you can recognize the color in general. This caught the professor’s attention.
“What do you mean in general, Jerry?”
“You know, like, how we understand things in our minds. We have general ideas.”
“You really think so Jerry? You don’t think that everything exists as an individual?
“What do you mean professor?”
“Oh, well let me explain.” The Professor began smiling.” You say that you have a general notion on the color of this tie. This color, Champagne, or ‘peach’ to you, is forever stored within your memory right? And whenever you come across this color again, you remember it as ‘Champagne’ or ‘peach’ and you instantly knowledge of this color, correct?”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess.” Jerry responded indecisively.
“Alright then Jerry” The Professor paused.” I want you to raise your hand. Jerry raised his hand. And the stewardess walked over to the two of them. “Oh, I am so sorry dear.” The professor explained. “We’re just conducting a little experiment.” He turned back to Jerry. “Okay. Now Jerry, I want you to close your eyes and try to hold the color of this tie in your mind as long as you can. As soon as the image disappears from your mind I want you to put your hand down, understand?” Jerry seemed a bit confused, but he complied. He concentrated heavily on the tie for a moment and closed his eyes. To his surprise the image of the tie had disappeared almost instantly. He pulled his hand back down and then looked at the professor in astonishment awaiting an explanation. “The reason that the color disappeared so quickly Jerry is that colors are qualities learned from experience. There exists no general concept of colors in our mind that we can create without prior experience of that concept. Oh, let’s try another example” The professor was now getting excited and had the attention of the stewardess as well. “Okay, we will continue to use this tie.” He began to unfasten his tie and loosen it from around his neck. He then hands the tie to the stewardess. By this time the people seated across from us and behind us are now in observance and are also anticipating the professor’s lecture. “Please, don’t be afraid to pass it around. Now, I want you guys to explain to me what this tie is. Go ahead, anyone.” The tie is handed to Jerry.
“Well Professor, the tie is champagne. It’s cotton, so it’s soft. And it’s a tie; it goes around your neck. I don’t see how you can tell me I don’t already know what a tie is. I recognize it right now.” An older gentleman sitting behind Jerry agreed with him. “Yeah, I think the boy is right. I have had to tie a tie for over 75 years; I think I can recognize a tie when I see one. “
The Professor could barely contain his excitement. “Ahh, yes. But can you recognize one when you can’t see it.” He grabs his tie from the woman sitting in the row in front of theirs and shoves it into his jacket pocket. “Now when you think of a tie, what do you think of?”
“Your tie.” The stewardess answers.
“Yes!” the Professor cries. “But now, let’s say I don’t want you to describe my tie, I want you to describe tie in general. Just tell me one thing about ties that you can know that doesn’t come from experiencing it.” Everyone was silent. “Oh, come on. None of you can tell me what tie is without experience? “He began to chuckle “How about dog? Who can tell me what dog is.
The older man was beginning to get irritated and wanted to shut the professor up. “A dog is a canine.”
“And wouldn’t you say that a canine is just classification of dog based on experience of species, genus, and family?” The older man’s face began to turn red and he shrugged. I don’t want a dog, I just want dog. Can anyone describe to me dog. If you close your eyes can you picture dog? Don’t picture a specific type of dog; don’t picture a neighbor’s dog, or your mother’s dog, just dog. No? And yet if I say, I have a dog, you all know what that is. It’s because of experience. Everything outside the mind is an individual, nothing can be found in general. All knowledge of the world, the physical world, is through the understanding of concepts and sensations throughout the apparent world.” The small crowd of people listening began clapping as the Professor finished and the stewardess made it a note to receive his business card, with his personal number on the back.
Jerry smiled impressed. “Did you really just give the stewardess your cellphone number Professor? The Professor smiled at Jerry and nodded.
“Why yes, Jerry, I did and I am sure she’ll call me. I—“The plane began to shake from turbulence and the Jerry froze. “Are you alright, Jerry?” He laughed as Jerry began peering down the aisles, observing the other passengers and flight attendants.
“Did you feel that?” Another shake occurred. “There! There it is again Professor! I think something’s wrong with the plane. We should tell the pilot.” Jerry made a notion towards the cockpit.
The Professor chuckled. “Jerry, it’s just some mild turbulence, we’re on a plane, it’s nothing but a random, unpredictable motion that occurs at the boundary between layers of air moving at different speeds. Relax, I believe they are about to show a film in a moment, that will take your mind off of it.”
Jerry crawled over the professor to peak out of the window. “Is everything okay out there?”
“I can assure you Jerry; there are no gremlins or anything on this plane.” Jerry gave the Professor a confused look. “Never mind, just watch the movie.” He handed Jerry the pair of headphones attached to the back of the seat in front of him. “Terminator Salvation? Why must they ruin all of the classics?”
“No Professor, this movie is awesome. Christian Bale plays this dude named John Connor, and he has to stop these robots from destroying the world, it’s totally bad ass. And there is this dude named Marcus, but he’s a robot, but he doesn’t know that. That’s him.” Jerry pointed towards the screen. “But yeah, they make him into a robot, but he thinks he’s a human. Then he blows up! And they find out he’s a cyborg and they’re like ‘woah we gotta destroy this thing’ but he’s like ‘no, I’m human’. Then he helps them save the day and they fight Arnold Schwarzenegger and it’s epic and then John is about to die and Marcus is like ‘no I’m a cyborg, give him my heart’ and he sacrifices himself for John and then it ends.”
The Professor gave Jerry and irritated look and turned off the screen in front of him. “Thank you, Jerry, for ruining the entire film for me before the opening credits were even done. Probably for the better, I can’t see how a Terminator film could possibly be okay without any time-travel involved.
“Time-Travel is boring, no one cares about that anymore, it’s all about cool effects and loud explosions professor. And most time-travel movies suck anyway. Name one good time-travel movie.”
Without hesitation the Professor responded, “I can name five that I’ve watched within the last week: Back to the Future, Planet of the Apes, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Slaughterhouse Five, and Donnie Darko.”
Jerry thought for a moment, and then asked “Who are Bill and Ted?”
The Professor reached his hand over and slapped Jerry across the nose, almost like one would do to a puppy that had just finished leaving a surprise in one of your favorite shoes. “For God’s sake Jerry, what the hell did you learn in college? If you’re going to be my assistant you need to educate yourself.”
Jerry apologized, “Sorry Professor, I didn’t realize time-travel movies meant that much to you.”
The older man behind them, still listening in after the tie conversation, murmured under his breath to his wife, “I bet this quack believes in time-travel too.” The Professor, of course heard this, and assumed it to be a challenge.
“Well actually…” The Professor replied, rather loudly. “Time-travel is incredibly possible, highly unlikely, but possible nonetheless. The problem with time-travel is, it can destroy all of physics. But yeah, it’s perfectly possible. You see, my ignorant friend,” The Professor turned in his chair to face to old man. “There was this guy, named Gerald Feinberg, and he came up with this idea of something called a tachyon. The tachyon is a hypothetical massless particle that is capable of moving faster than light.” The older man tried to ignore the professor, but he had already regained the attention of all the nearby passengers. “Now, I’m not saying that I can prove time-travel is real, but I will certainly say that you cannot prove that it is not. And if tachyons do exist, which again, we cannot prove that they don’t. Then yes, it would be possible to send these particles backwards through time, faster than the speed of light. No one knows where a scientific theory will lead until that theory is developed and tested.”
Everyone was once again becoming entranced by the Professor’s mini lecture. The older man’s wife was now curious and was listening to the Professor speak.“ Excuse me.” She cut in. “Do you really believe that just because this Gerald Feinberg man says that some particle thing called a tachyon moves faster than light, that it’s true?”
“Why not? The Professor responded. “Einstein had no idea, when he presented his equation for E = mc2, that it would lead the creation of an atomic bomb. Do you by any chance know what a proton is?”
The woman seemed a bit offended and embarrassed and didn’t say anything. When it became apparent that she actually didn’t know what a proton was the Professor felt ashamed. “Can anyone please help this woman with a definition of a proton?” A cute girl sitting two rows down from them raised her hand while looking back in her seat. Jerry had noticed her when he was boarding. “A proton is a positively charged, subatomic particle that is located in the nucleus of an atom.” She said, peering over the back of her seat, her eyes fixated on the Professor and Jerry.
“Perfect, that was an excellent answer dear.” The Professor waved at her in a congratulatory manner. “Now miss, do you really believe that just because some man named Ernest Rutherford, who happens to be the father of physics, came up with this idea that there are particles called protons formed inside of an atom’s nucleus, that it’s true?” The girl smiled and nodded her head. “Can’t this argument be made for anything? Isn’t it true that everything we learn is simply an idea that someone else had and then shared the experience?” He went back to his tie. “Recall earlier that I stated that this tie’s color was champagne. Now, I am sure that this color is champagne. In fact…” He motioned to one of the flight attendants listening. “May I please borrow a bottle for this experiment?” The flight attendant handed the Professor a small champagne bottle. “As you can all see, this tie is remarkably similar in color to this bottle of champagne. We all get the same sensations from these two colors, correct?”
Jerry paused. “What do you mean by sensations Professor?”
“Excellent question Jerry, my boy. What I mean by sensations is that we all have the same understanding that when we look at this bottle of champagne, or this tie, we recognize the same color. Does anyone dispute this?” No one said anything. “Alright, but isn’t believable that we aren’t all recognizing the same color?” There was a mutual moment of confusion between everyone. “What I mean is, isn’t it believable that we all understand this tie as champagne because when we recognize this sensation from seeing this color we are told its champagne color. Let me simplify my example a bit. What color is the sky?”
“The sky is blue” said a toddler sitting across the aisle from The Professor and Jerry.
“Oh, he’s an observant one.” The Professor said smiling over towards the child’s mother. “Our friend here is correct, the sky is blue. Or, at least we all recognize the sensation of color that we get from viewing the sky as a shade of blue. But what if my blue sensation was your eyes recognized as green? He pointed back to his tie. What if what you recognize as champagne is more like tickle me pink to my friend, Jerry, here.” Jerry’s face began to turn red. “What I am trying to get at is not all of us see things the same way. Everything is about perception.” The Pilot announced that they would be landing soon, once again everyone congratulated the Professor on successfully turning their quiet plane ride from Denver International to a full out seminar on consciousness. Jerry was surprised to see that even the older man and his wife had thanked the Professor for sparking things up on the flight. The Professor sat back in his chair and set his head back. “Are you happy Jerry?”
Jerry was yet again confused. “What do you mean Professor?”
The Professor smiled as he held up the book he had begun reading when the originally boarded the plane. “You kept me from finishing my book.”