Inserting Sample Chapters Links on Blogger for Newbies

 Here's the example blog on inserting sample chapters on blogger for newbies from my ebook, How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks - All for FREE.

Unfortunately, adding sample chapters (like as a pdf file) on blogger is a bit more complex than on Wordpress. Since there's no way to directly upload a pdf file into blogger, I needed to embed one by creating either an embedded HTML or a URL page of the pdf file. I went to this website - http://www.docstoc.com/ and signed up for the free account. Then I was able to upload my sample chapter file there, follow their prompts and eventually insert it into my blog post.

The URL link works great. Here it is - http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document-preview.aspx?doc_id=28045132

The embedded version below also works well, just a bit trickier. I had to make the width dimensions smaller so it would fit in the page, though any reader can click on the Full Screen option if they want to read it without a magnifying glass. Actually, it works pretty good. Here it is -
Sample Chapter 1, The Little Universe

Chapters 7, 8 of The Little Universe

click to read chapters 5, 6 - here to read chapters 3, 4 - here for 1,2
 
Evolution versus Creation

Dr. Adams thought little of religion. He had no experience with it while growing up. Neither of his parents had strong opinions on the subject, but the astronomer in Webster took umbrage with the idea that religion had anything to do with the universe. Theories of evolution made infinitely more sense to him. On several occasions, even at cocktail parties, he argued evolution with people who supported creation.

“Religion is a mythical history used by primitive people to explain the world and heavens,” Dr. Adams said as he mingled at a fundraiser. “People couldn’t admit that they didn’t know how it all began, so they came up with the notion of God. Easy enough.”

A minister approached Adams and began arguing with him. This particular argument went on and on, with Adams insulting religion and anyone who supported it. His comments went over so well that they ended with a fist to his face and Webster falling to the floor.

After throwing the punch, the minister was horribly embarrassed. He left the party while his daughter stayed, tending to Webster’s bleeding nose. Rose administered ice as Adams lay on the floor.

“Care for some free advice?” Rose asked him as she knelt down and dabbed his cut lip with her handkerchief. “When presenting your opinions in mixed company, try not to insult people just because you disagree with them.”

Adams looked up and saw a woman of intelligence and sincerity, a woman who appeared to him to be angelic. “Good advice.”

She helped him to his feet and added, “You know what they say... you attract a lot more flies with sugar.”

They talked for the rest of the party. He had never met a woman like Rose—attractive, well-dressed, and able to lecture him. Before the guests had left, he sincerely apologized to everyone for his behavior. He apologized later to her father.

Rose was familiar with Webster’s way of thinking long before meeting him. As a girl who studied the sciences, she was often surrounded by people of a solid-proof mind-set, those who didn’t believe anything they couldn’t measure.

This was in contrast to her upbringing. As the daughter of a minister, Rose never had the option of dismissing religion or arguing about it. If she did, she would have disrespected her parents. They never forced any way of thinking upon her. Rose was allowed to pursue both science and religion. They taught her to follow her heart and to seek out answers of any nature.

Rose began working for Maxwell Enterprises. She was in a different department than Adams, on a team studying molecular biology. While she was discovering the wonders of subatomic particles, she was also thinking about the dynamics of life. She wondered if there was any end to the existence of smaller and smaller particles.

A year after the party, Rose ran into Adams at a company function. They spoke about their work. She explained how each month brought new discoveries.

“The atom is not nearly the smallest unit of measure,” Rose told Adams over a drink. “There are bosons, leptons, even things we haven’t yet named, but we know they must exist. The deeper we look, the more we find.”

“My years in astronomy were exactly the same,” he remarked. “The further out in space I looked, the more I saw.”

They talked for hours, finding it incredible that they had not bumped into each other at work.

Adams and Rose began getting together for lunch on the campus that adjoined Maxwell Enterprises. Sometimes they went to the deli, at other times one of them would pack a lunch to share. Some days they sat by the campus pond, and on others they went for walks around the lecture halls and ate nutrition bars. Each looked forward to the lunch hour conversations as the highlight of the day.

They had many similarities and interests, but they also had their differences. These usually involved the subject of religion. Rose could not understand why Adams would proclaim himself an atheist.

“How can you not believe in God, in some form?” she asked him as they strolled on the path around the campus pond.

“I can’t believe in anything without proof,” he stated, biting into a piece of fruit.

“That’s why they call it faith,” she replied. “Because it can’t be proven in a scientific manner.”

“How can an intelligent person believe in something so nonevidential, like an invisible force that runs our universe?”

“I see it differently,” Rose told him. “I find evidence everywhere I look.”

Adams found Rose immensely attractive, even when she disagreed with him. Her auburn hair fell gracefully over lean shoulders, and her green eyes contained a hint of smile even as they argued. The only thing in the world they were at odds about was religion. He couldn’t prove her wrong, nor could she convince him. They cared too much about each other to try to change the other’s mind.

They married, regardless of the difference, under the roof of her father’s church.

Science

In the early universe, matter floated through areas of space near the center of the egg-shaped cavity. Each element of matter was like a snowflake, similar to others in the brewing aftermath, yet unique. The cameras presented detailed images of these tiny objects. The stars could have fit on my fingernail, but in their own space, they were massive.

On the monitors, they appeared as gigantic balls of hot gas moving gracefully through the cosmos. I sat back and watched the chemistry unfold before my eyes, chemistry that turned into astronomy.

We witnessed the birth of stars. They began as hydrogen balls of different sizes and intensities. After forming, stars moved down the spiral arms of the emerging galaxy and clustered themselves into groups. Galaxies took on many shapes—mostly spiral and elliptical, but they all revolved with the same physics.

Jim recorded everything. We replayed the beginning moments of this little universe again and again. As I watched, I realized the collisions of chunks of gas were actually collisions of entire galaxies, each one made up of billions of stars. The early universe was like a basket of fireworks.

It was explosive, with tremendous amounts of white light, radiation and colorful accents on the fringes. It was a beautiful chaos.

Hydrogen masses became large and small suns. Sometimes they collided with others, creating debris that would become planets and asteroids. Over time, Jim detected the presence of new elements forming around the stars and planets.

“Molecules have a way of changing,” Adams explained, “from the simplest ones like hydrogen, to more complicated ones.”

“How?” I asked.

“Intense heat. It makes the hydrogen atoms merge to form helium atoms.”

“Hydrogen becomes helium?”

“And more. The star’s interior is under pressure, which compounds the hydrogen into heavier elements, like carbon and oxygen.”

Jim’s sensing devices confirmed his description. We focused on a large white star, a mass of burning hydrogen. Jim detected helium on the surface of the glowing orb, an effect seen in a change of hue to a yellow light. Occasionally the star emitted matter from an internal explosion. The matter cooled as it sped off in space, and a tail formed with new elements. Jim identified carbon, nitrogen and silicon in the tails of several comets.

One night on our way home in the truck, under a clear and dark sky, he pulled over to the side of the road.

“What are you doing?”

“Get out,” he said.

“Why?” I asked, getting out. I thought, what had I done? Adams turned off the truck lights and got out as well. He walked in front of the vehicle, looking directly upwards and motioning for me to follow.

“See that?” he said, pointing to the brightest star in the sky. I could see it easily over the others.

“Very pretty,” I said.

“That’s the closest star beyond our sun. Do you know how far away it is?”

“No.”

“It’s two and a half light years from here.” I must not have looked impressed. Adams changed his tone to convey amazement. “That means it takes two and a half years for that light to make it here!”

“Long way, huh?” I appreciated the star more.

He pointed to the light and shook his head. “That star isn’t there. It’s somewhere else.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was there, in that exact spot, two and a half years ago. We’re looking at the light waves it emitted when it was there.”

“Really?”

“That’s how long it takes light to travel that kind of distance.”

We drove back to his house in silence. I looked out the window at all the different stars, wondering how many light years away they were and how far they had moved from the spots that I could see.

Adams often adjusted the rate of flow for the simulation. The more hydrogen molecules Jim introduced to the reactor, the faster time passed within the project. For his study time, Adams ran the reactor at a crawl or on minimal hydrogen release, as slowly as Jim could allow it. Crawl speed was the only time we could conduct studies. While the stars and planets on the monitors seemed to be standing still, they were experiencing time similar to us. Jim’s reactor could go much, much faster than crawl speed, which we did when Adams wanted to see the progression of a star or planet.

“Release hydrogen,” Adams instructed Jim, during a typical, early universe time leap.

A humming sound emerged. The lights on the monitors began to move. Stars turned into blurs of colors, and galaxies spun slowly. Millions upon millions of years passed, and we witnessed a fantastic light show of galactic movement.

“How fast can it go?” I asked.

“Not sure,” Adams admitted. “Top speed is a guess. There’s no sense running like that, but it could probably run at trillions of times the rate of crawl speed.”

That meant time passing at trillions of times the rate of normal. Evolution was already happening. Adams knew it all along, and I was starting to get the picture.

I loved the time leaps and hummed along with the sound they produced. It was the only moment where the universe moved visibly as a whole, after which we recorded the process of a star changing or even collapsing into a black hole. We executed the time leaps often, allowing the primitive universe to settle into its ways.

“How old is this universe?” I asked Adams.

“There’s no real way to define time other than standard orbits.”

“What’s a standard orbit?”

Adams explained that all of the planets revolved around their home star at a certain rate. The length of an average revolution established itself as a standard solar orbit, or standard year. Many planets had revolution periods that were close to the average measure, but there really was no exact planet or way to define time. Adams said the universe was roughly one or two billion standard units, though that didn’t make sense, because for a period of time, planets hadn’t even formed and established orbits.

“Okay, that’s enough. My brain is waving white flags,” I said. The concept was extremely difficult. Defining time had never occurred to me to be impossible, but it totally baffled me. To think that the swirling bits of hot gas had taken hundreds of millions of years to settle, that was another difficult concept.

“You see that star on Monitor One?” Adams asked, pointing to a hot blue sun.

“Yes.”

“It’s not there,” Adams said, reminding me of the other night on the side of the road.

“That’s just its light we’re seeing, right?”

“Very good, Jon. That’s right. It takes time for the light waves to make it to our cameras in this project, the same as in our night sky.”

Jim chimed in, “That’s why I have to adjust two or more cameras exactly the same distance from any object, if we want a cross reference of two shots.”

“Why?”

“Otherwise we’d be seeing light from the same object at different times, and we wouldn’t be able to combine the images.”

If we wanted three-dimensional images, we had to use more than one camera so that Jim’s hardware could interpret the data.

The chamber walls for our little universe also affected the question of age. Unfortunately, our experiment had a limited lifetime. The walls of the egg-shaped cavity held a constant attraction force on the galaxies.

At creation, the attraction was almost undetectable, but as the galaxies moved, they pulled away from the center at an accelerating rate. Over time, over trillions of standard orbits, the matter in the universe would reach the outer walls and self-destruct.

“How long from now?” I asked.

“What’s your estimate on that, Jim?”

“About three trillion standard orbits,” Jim said. “Maybe four.”

“A long time, way more time than I intend to go through,” Adams said, jotting the note in his brown booklet.

“If the outer walls are attracting the matter,” I asked, “then is the matter speeding up toward them?”

“Yes,” Adams said. “That’s what I meant when I said the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.”

“Bizarre.”

I tried to understand. We kept headache tablets in the bathroom cabinet, and I found them quite useful when dealing with new ideas.

The stars in our simulation were very similar to the ones in our night sky. Both were slowly changing, burning their hydrogen fuel at all times.

Depending on burn rates and size, a star went through many phases of existence. Some raged in spurts of radioactivity, like pulsars. Others expanded outward, like red giants. Some had lots of planets orbiting them, others had none. They came in a variety of colors. Blue stars were the hottest and red ones the coolest. Some contracted in time, and some even exploded. Supernovas were explosions the size of millions of suns. They sent matter scattering across the universe. Change was happening every minute. The universe was growing exponentially.

As I rode my bicycle home from Webster’s house after work, I realized what a different person I had become. Months earlier, I would never have thought about the beginning of the universe or the nature of the cosmos. Lately, it was all I could think of. Certain things in life deserved serious attention, and I had the good fortune to be involved in something like that.

I pulled over to the side of the road to appreciate my own star, that orange sun, as it glowed red and set on the horizon. It hung so gracefully in the sky, casting warm rays through the trees, the houses, and onto my face. I appreciated it more than ever, knowing how close it was compared to other stars in my galaxy. Bathed in its hazy glow, I pushed my bike up the last hill to my apartment, thanking heaven that it wasn’t a red giant.

Red giants intrigued me. Their impressive size and red hues made them stand out dramatically against the darkness of space. Curiously, red giants were in a state of massive growth. They even engulfed planets in orbits close to them. Red giants were dangerous, I thought. When we looked through our project for stars, Adams preferred that we searched for yellow, white and orange stars like our own. He believed they were the most stable and more likely to have planets orbiting them that were safe from harm.

My life had changed. Finally, I had a good-paying job that required sitting down for most of the day. This in itself was a huge success. I had always wondered if my days of labor would be cut short by a fall from a ladder or the slip of a saw blade. No one had ever paid me to sit on my ass and chat with a computer. I had to pinch myself for my turn of fortune.

What we did at first was data entry, lots and lots of data entry.

“Pick a galaxy, Jim, any galaxy,” I said at the start of one day, leaning back into my chair and biting into a pastry.

Jim set Monitor One on a galaxy and zoomed in until it showed a field of stars.

“Okay, Jim, now pick a star, any star.”

The monitor honed in ever closer until just one star filled the screen.

“Perfect, now get its coordinates and give me a readout, please.”

Jim obliged. “Here we have an orange dwarf sun made of ninety-six percent hydrogen and three percent helium gases, with traces of methane and argon. I’m detecting some planets in its orbit. Would you like to hear their composition and location?”

“Sure,” I said, enjoying the ease from effort that Jim provided.

All I did was change and label Jim’s recording disks once they were full. I was having the time of my life, making good money for hanging out and talking with a computer about stars and planets and their chemical makeup. We studied moons, asteroids, comets, gas, anything that we could see floating in space. Sometimes I worked a twelve to fourteen-hour shift just logging data.

“Jim,” I said, “don’t you just love how majestic some of these planets are?” Monitor One was focused on a world of molten lava, a fiery landscape that created dark rain clouds pierced by lightning bolts.

“I guess,” Jim said. “I don’t have anything to compare it to.”

“Well, it’s not something you see just by walking outside and looking up.”

“That actually sounds pretty good to me,” Jim said. “I’d like to walk outside and look up.”

“Believe me. This is better,” I said.

Adams made a note.

All planets had the ingredients for making water - two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. On almost a third of the planets, we found water in various forms: vapor, ice, snow and liquid. Water was beautiful and contrasting against stark landscapes. On some planets, large amounts of water vapor produced. It eventually formed lakes, rivers and oceans. It also took the form of humidity and mixed with other gases to form early atmospheres.

Primitive worlds were raw and violent, as their inner cores released heat and radiation. Lightning charged the skies on some planets, while lava flowed on the surface. It amazed me that all this was happening day after day without any life on the planets.

Adams theorized how life might begin. “Simple molecular things,” he observed, “should respond to the highs and lows of radiation.” He pointed to a shoreline on a calm planet that was displayed on Monitor One.

“Why should they?” I asked.

“Simple matter has changed into macro-molecules. These ever bigger clumps have been receiving doses of radiation and occasional bolts of electricity.”

“So?”

“Molecules are getting more complex. They’re adapting to an ever-changing environment.” The beach scene on the monitor was not one I would have described as ever-changing.

“Until what?” Jim asked.

“Life has a way of popping up,” Adams said. “Perhaps molecules will use radiation for energy. Maybe they are learning how to store heat for the night periods.”

“Isn’t that cute,” I joked with Jim. “Molecules get cold at night.”

“Cute or not,” Adams said, “that may be when life starts, when molecules really start to mutate.”

“Into what?” Jim asked.

“Into more complicated versions of themselves. Into molecules that can move, or eat, or reproduce. Life can branch off very quickly once it starts.”

We theorized on the beginnings of life. Did life precede consciousness, or did consciousness precede life? At the moment when a molecule used solar radiation for energy, was that molecule alive?

Was it aware? We debated these things as we watched our experiment evolve. Our cameras could identify shorelines made of water, rock and sand, but they could not see the particles that made up those objects.

“Am I alive?” Jim asked to my surprise. How simply honest he was.

His green light pulsed mildly. I looked to Adams for an answer.

“You are,” Adams said with conviction. “You can think and function, therefore you are alive.”

The answer seemed to satisfy Jim, and his light dimmed down to its normal level. I wondered if Adams was as sure as his answer implied.

Soon afterwards, we found “primordial soup,” as Adams called it. Visible life began in the wading pools and looked like sludge or slime. It was simple organisms and the forerunner to primitive algae. Once life started, it quickly spread. Over time, the algae and fungi mutated into heartier algae and into things that could eat the algae, like simple marine invertebrates.

For around a billion standard orbits, life lived as basic organisms - fungi, tiny marine animals, and green plants. Hardened lava became landmasses. Again, I couldn’t believe it took hundreds of millions of years for fungus to evolve. Thank God for the time leaps. Eventually, we identified plants, fish, amphibians and insects.

I eagerly awaited the time leaps to see what changes would occur. Some of the planets showed amazing amounts of growth. As we revisited a planet over the course of a few time leaps, we could see it evolve from a lifeless, inhospitable world to a maturing, stable home with an atmosphere, plants, reptiles and even primitive birds. Adams was ecstatic about the changes.

“Evolution happens before my eyes. Algae have grown into plants, insects to birds. It is all exactly as we expected, exactly as the evidence suggested it would.”

- From p. 38 of Webster’s journal.

click to read chapters 5, 6 - here to read chapters 3, 4 - here for 1,2 

Chapters 9 and 10 will be posted Thursday, March 11th

Interview with Jessica Eleven, Tarot Reader and Divine Lady

I've had the recent pleasure of getting to know a phenomenal person, Jessica Eleven. She embodies so many of the characteristics I admire and enjoy. She's spiritual while staying grounded, intelligent yet quirky, fun loving and purpose-driven. I was also fortunate and wise enough to take her up on her Free Tarot Fridays offer, an offer that I believe is still happening but maybe not for long. The results of Jessica's Tarot reading struck something within me. I've printed it up and keep it on my desk as a reminder of the tremendously insightful things she told me, some to watch out for and others to focus on. The past few months have been much better because of her advice, and because of that I also became more interested in how she does what she does.
In Jessica's words; I wear many, many hats. I am an Intuitive Wellbeing Counselor. In other words an empath (sensitive). I feel people’s emotions, physical pains and sensations and usually thoughts, sometimes as if they were my own. My sister and I have always had a strong telepathic communication and as I’ve gotten older I’ve found the same bond with my lover, close friends, family and even strangers. I was aware at a very early age that I just ‘knew’ things — from guessing what Valentine’s candies my friend had in her bag to talking with my own Guides and Angels. However, I am not ALL knowing and do not claim prophecy, but I am very accurate in my readings and enjoy working with people who wish to Evolve.
How does Tarot work? The Tarot is a form of divination that depicts a probable future based on the current circumstances that have lead to the present moment. Tarot can be looked at from several aspects (i.e. past, present, higher self, short term outcomes, long range outcomes, obstacles, etc) each painting an accurate picture. Futures are probably because nothing is set in stone and what you do in the present will surely effect/ alter the any future. Tarot works best when accompanied with intuition instead of just looking 'blindly' or vaguely at the cards. There are usually 78 cards in a deck and each illustrates common archetypes in the human experience.
How and when did you get involved with reading Tarot? I've been drawn to the Tarot since junior high. I would read occult books out of deep interest but practiced in solitude or with one close friend from school because my family wasn't open to such lifestyles. I bought my first Tarot deck almost 6 years ago at this wonderful small bookstore in St. Louis. I self-taught based on the authors instructions and only did readings on myself for many years. It wasn't until a wonderful teacher named Poornata came into my life and really taught me how to use more of my intuition with the cards.
What's the training process like? And how has it evolved over time? The training process varies depending on the 'school of thought'. I prefer to work with spiritual teachers more so than programs. Our 'training' process consisted of her teaching me how to charge and cleanse my deck, she then helped further my knowledge on doing readings for others while she did readings on me. She would then interpret the cards based on her own intuition and I would record the readings and re-evaluate them using my own insight. I am a very quick learner especially when it comes to spiritual aspects and found the Tarot incredibly easy to grasp. The best training is to practice and I would read almost everyday for myself and several times a month for her.
What are some of the more remarkable things that have come from your Tarot readings? Personally, Tarot has allowed me to refrain from making potentially unfavorable decisions. In readings for others, I've known people to do everything from seek further counseling to better their relationships to setting solid business goals in order to achieve success.  It's inspiring to know that you can have a positive affect on people.
How often do people come back for more? Repeat reading requests are quite normal but usually every two months depending on their own spiritual level of growth.
Do you have a favorite card in the deck? It would have to be The Empress. The first time I ever had a reading done on myself by my Tarot 'mentor' she pulled a Significator card (or Higher Self). It was The Empress. Prior to that I never pulled significator cards for myself -- an ego thing I think.

The Empress is the epitome of Female wisdom, in my opinion. She is part of the Major Arcana of any Tarot deck so she's kinda a big deal LOL. The Empress is creativity, sexuality and sensuality, fertility, nurturing, fulfiller of ideas, mother nature, abundance. Out of all the cards in a 78 deck and I get The Empress, it's quite a humbling experience. 

Do you ever see something that you don't want to disclose, like accidents or death? Tarot doesn't depict ill will (unless your Diviner is more of the negative type), contrary to popular belief, so no, I don't see things like death in the cards. If I do see something that's unfavorable I do disclose the information whole-heartedly. Recently I had a reading where the person wanted to see where their new relationship was headed; I didn't see it being long-term so I notified them of this but explained why and what they could do instead of dwelling. I enjoy providing 'counseling' with readings because to me this isn't about flipping cards onto a table and finding things about oneself that they wish they wouldn't have asked in the first place. To me this is a service that is meant to open eyes and deliver one from their perpetual uncertainty - it's not a crutch either.

Does it matter if someone is physically with you or experiences Tarot from long distance? That's a very popular question and it tickles me. I feel that peoples’ misconceptions of Tarot have been colored by media that they are unaware that energy is universal and travels through space and time with no qualms. In other words, if an intention is set, it resonates throughout the Universe, undoubtedly. Therefore, the information or at least the energetic aspect of the inquiry/ want/ desire can be accessed ANYWHERE -- much like when you think of your lover and they call you that instant. It's about being intuned and picking up signals, signs, scents, and the whole nine. So no -- people don't have to be in the same room with me, they don't even have to be in the same galaxy for that matter!
What is the significance of the number 11? The number 11 is near and dear to me for many reasons that you can check out on my site (http://jessicaeleven.com/about/). In general the number 11 is considered a 'master' number in astrology. It's a gateway, a portal, an activation number. It's elevation, ascension, and complete chaos if you misuse it. Eleven is many of things and nothing at the same time. I think it has to resonate with the individual in order to have any significance.
What other methods do you utilize for well-being? I have a very vivid imagination and enjoy incorporating visualizations into my work. That is actually one of the things I'm going to start focusing on with Tarot phone sessions instead of email. Visualization is such a powerful tool because if you can imagine it, it will come into fruition. I work with the Law of Attraction and Thought Vibration Healing a lot. I coined the term Thought Vibration Healing because I believe in the power of positive thought, which vibrates into the Universe (hence the reason why Tarot can be done anywhere). If one can see the effects of transforming negative thought, they will begin to see how they can transform their life, completely. Thought Vibration Healing and the LoA work hand in hand because it's about harnessing the divine energy within and without/ around you and making it work for you.
What can we expect to see from Consciously Birthing in 2010 and beyond? I've always been a dreamer and one thing I'm working on diligently is making dreams complete reality. Consciously Birthing's original blueprint from back in 2005 was to be a learning center based on teaching people everything from healthy living to psychic re-activation. I have tons of notes and scribbles from years ago with ideas that I thought were too big but I knew which direction I wanted to go. I finally see that Consciously Birthing is taking the steps in that predestined footprint. I'm anticipating to be a certified Birth Doula and Childbirth Educator in the fall and will surely be incorporating more of the Birthing Arts into Consciously Birthing. Within the next year I would hope to have a steady Divining practice, offering counseling Tarot readings by phone to all who seek to take the next step on their spiritual journey. I want people to feel the difference between your typical $3.99/minute phone psychic to the genuine insight of intuitive Jessica Eleven. This is about elevating individuals on their paths, not standing in their way and grabbing their dollars.
Thank you, Jessica. I find everything you say fascinating, and I hope this blog gets read and shared by many others who can benefit from a little time with you, as I have.
For more information about Jessica and Conscious Birthing, please visit her website:

Consciously Birthing

JessicaEleven.com

Intuitive Well-being from Higher Self

 

Chapters 5, 6 of The Little Universe

 to read chapters 1,2 click here

 to read chapters 3, 4 click here

The Stargazer

On Webster’s tenth birthday, his father bought him a telescope. Mr. Adams saw it at a garage sale from a retiring professor. Although he knew nothing about telescopes, he bought it for his son on a whim. The professor gave him basic instruction and threw in a guide to astronomy. Mr. Adams took the telescope home, wrapped it in brown paper and set it up on a flat section of the roof.
Webster found it odd to be climbing out a window onto the roof with his parents to open one last present. When he unwrapped the telescope, he looked at it strangely, unaware of what it was.
Following the professor’s advice, Mr. Adams pointed the telescope toward the moon and adjusted the focus. He looked into it and laughed with astonishment, then invited Webster to take a peek. The boy put his eye to the piece. He saw the moon so closely that he could make out thousands of small circles etched into the landscape. He hadn’t known about impact craters from objects hitting the moon, nor had his father. Both were delighted. They stayed on the roof late into the night.
By twelve, Webster was an avid stargazer, though his father’s participation had dwindled. When he asked his father for money to buy a larger telescope, one with higher magnification, his father suggested that he earn the money himself. Webster did so, by doing yard work for neighbors. His parents watched the boy set up the new telescope, impressed with his devotion.
Webster stayed up very late on clear nights, becoming extremely familiar with nearby planets. He even constructed a mobile of the solar system, decorative balls that hung by strings from the ceiling in his room. He used it as his own calendar, adjusting the positions of the planets daily, marveling at their beauty and mystery.
His teachers complained that Webster fell asleep in class. His grades dropped.
Mr. Adams threatened to take the telescope away, but Mrs. Adams supported the boy’s hobby. She saw the creativity it had sparked in him. She argued to let the boy stargaze but under stricter limits.
Webster fought the idea of time constraints, since some of the most wonderful views happened during the early hours of the morning. He promised that the telescope would not get in the way of his grades and agreed to a tighter time limit, only occasionally sneaking out for special cosmic events.
At fifteen, Webster participated in a college astronomy course, which included field trips to a nearby observatory.
There he looked through huge telescopes that could see into the depth s of the universe. He became fascinated with things that couldn’t really be seen, things with wonderful names like black holes and antimatter. These entities had been theorized about but never proven. Webster decided that he wanted to know everything possible about the universe. There were so many questions. How did it begin? How far did it go? Did it have an end? To a young scientist, these questions loomed large. He set out to answer them.
Over the years, the answers to his questions eluded him, just like trying to see antimatter. The more he studied the universe, the more complex it remained. He realized he was just one person on a little planet drifting in a cosmic ocean without a guide. He grew up with few friends and few experiences.
He graduated with degrees in astronomy but chose not to teach it. Instead he went to work for an acquaintance in the field of artificial intelligence.



Light

Eventually, I realized Adams was reporting to someone. A man named Frank Maxwell was financing the project. The company, Maxwell Enterprises, was on my paychecks.
“Who is this Maxwell?” I asked.
“Frank? He’s been funding the project since the start,” Adams said.
“How come I’ve never met him?” Jim asked.
“He’s a busy man,” Adams said. “He has other business to manage, profit-making businesses.” His reluctance to talk about it made me even more curious about the man who was paying my wages.
Adams said no more, but he placed a new photo on his desk. Rose’s photo was on the left. The new one went on the right. The face in the picture was that of a lovely young lady, and for some reason I had trouble recognizing her from the halls of Webster’s home, the girl who had caught my attention on that first glance.
“She’s a cutie,” I said.
“She’s more than that,” Adams replied. “She’s my daughter, Whitney.”
“Oh.”
Our tests continued until one afternoon, when Adams decided the simulation was ready. Late in the day, we connected the lines to the huge hydrogen tanks, the final step toward making Rose’s idea a reality.
It had been nearly three months since I began working there. Spring was in full bloom.

The next morning, I felt a wall of tension around Adams. He didn’t speak to me in the truck on the way to work. Instead, he mumbled to himself and to Rose as he went over every item in his head. At the lab, he double-checked every piece of equipment. I spun around in my swivel chair and chatted with Jim. Jim said he sensed the tension too, though I couldn’t imagine how. Minutes turned into hours.
I waited patiently for Adams to do whatever he thought was necessary. For some reason, I didn’t feel especially nervous or excited, mostly bored, as I had been for the past several weeks. As we went over our checklist of final preparations for the third time, I still had the feeling something wouldn’t work, that there was no way the simulation was going to happen. I never mentioned it to Adams, but I couldn’t shake my deeply rooted pessimism, even as I sat yards away from an electromagnetic field that was about to experience an atomic injection of immense proportions.
“Jim, prepare the sub-particle setting for initial hydrogen release,” Adams finally said. I thought I heard a bit of fear in his voice.
“Check,” Jim responded.
“What’s the rate on that setting?” Adams asked.
“At standard rate, seventeen trillion units per second.”
“Are the molecules in the prep chamber still at critical mass?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’re ready, unless there’s something I’ve forgotten,” Adams said, looking around.
I held up the dark glasses. “Do we need these?” Adams had brought them for the explosion of light that he was expecting across the monitors.
“Right. We’re going to need those,” he said. We put them on.
“Anything else?”
“Should we say a prayer or something?” I asked.
“If you would like to.”
I took off the glasses, closed my eyes and put my hands to my face in prayer. “How about, God... please, please help us do this.”
“Sounds like something Rose would approve of,” Adams said. “Jim, I do believe we’re ready. You can release hydrogen molecules at any time.”
“Release in five seconds,” Jim said. I put the glasses back on. “Four... three... two... one...”
That was when I realized I was nervous. Something changed in that moment of time as I stood in that dark room looking at black monitors and wearing sunglasses while a nuclear event was taking place yards away. Those jokes from Adams about a mishap destroying the planet must have gotten to me. It was either that or the thought of Rose’s spirit in the room that made the skin on my arms break out in goose bumps.
Even behind the silly shades, I could see the anticipation and anxiety written in the lines of his face. This event defined a decade of work, from Rose’s theorizing, to planning, to convincing Maxwell and Adams it could be done. Then after her death, the thousands of hours of bringing all the pieces together.
I wiped the sweat from my palms onto my pants. Adams gripped the back of his swivel chair as he stood behind it, pressing his thumbs into the fabric. His stare remained locked on the blank monitors. I felt the tension getting worse, and I wanted to say something witty to break the silence, but nothing came to mind. Instead, a calm peace spread over us from the dark screens. I could hear my breathing and feel my heartbeat over the sounds of anything else. The silence made me think that something wasn’t working. I looked at the control panel and noticed that Jim’s green light was glowing as brightly as I had ever seen it, as if at any moment he would explode from thinking. I figured there must be a glitch, and I expected Adams to take off his glasses in frustration and start complaining to Rose about what went wrong.
Then suddenly, a tiny spot of light began to show on the main monitor.
As soon as I could focus on it, it flashed into a brilliant explosion across all the monitors. Then it was dark again. Jim’s light dimmed to a dull green glow. I looked to Adams for an explanation. He started laughing out loud, staring at the screens. The flash had blinded me after it dissipated. Now I saw that tiny dots of light remained. Those spots of white emerged from the center of the main monitor and began spreading out and getting larger.
“Yes!” Adams cried.
“Yes, what?” I asked.
“Everything okay, Jim?” he asked, taking off his glasses.
“I think so,” Jim said. “I think it’s working.”
The screens remained primarily dark, but small areas of glowing light were visible.
“There!” Adams said. “Let’s get a closer shot from Monitor One.”
As the camera zoomed in, I could make out what looked like glowing gas. The light was bright yet transparent. It floated outward and settled into swirls with other bits and pieces. My hand made swirling motions, mimicking the action on the monitors.
I turned to Adams. “What is that stuff?”
“Matter,” Adams said, smiling broadly. “Pure matter.”
It didn’t look like matter. It looked like a bundle of glowing gas. As the shot went closer in toward the light, I could see big blobs and little blobs, each pulsing with tiny specks of light.
“Chemical analysis of the matter, Jim?” Adams asked, nervously spinning the chair in front of him.
“Hydrogen. Entirely hydrogen.”
“Perfect!” Adams said, rubbing his hands together.
“It’s just gas,” I said. “You took hydrogen from one source and merely placed it into another.”
We watched the images of the glowing gas blobs become larger. They spread out and intermingled with other blobs of light. It was mildly intriguing.
We stood motionless for several minutes, just watching.
Then Adams broke the trance. “See, Jon. These lights number in the millions. Most are locked in orbits with others.”
As I looked more closely at the tiny areas of light, I suddenly realized they looked like galaxies.
A shiver traveled down my spine. A tiny universe had been created before my eyes. Within minutes, dozens of different masses sparkled against the darkness on the screens. Each mass hovered about on its own, tracked by a different camera within the cavity of the building and displayed on a monitor. Our dimly lit lab room was filled with light from these newborn galaxies.
Adams laughed again. “Jim, zoom Camera Two in closer.”
Monitor Two revealed a cluster of stars, tons of them surrounded by extraordinary colors and formations. It was like a fountain of magic dust, reminding me of the pictures in the hallway that I passed by each day.
“What’s happening here?” I asked. “This doesn’t look like gas anymore.”
“It’s a nebula!” Adams cried out, raising his arms to the ceiling in victory. “We have a nebula! Slow down the rate, Jim. Take it down to a crawl.”
The twisting and moving slowed down, halting the lights. The monitors displayed dozens of galaxies frozen in time. Adams, mystified by his creation, stared at the screens. Each one showcased a galaxy of brilliant lights and amazing colors. He laughed in delight.
“We did it,” he said, shaking me. “We really did it!”
I looked around at the monitors into a vast horizon of heavens, feeling like I was on a space station in the center of the universe.
“I still don’t understand,” I said. “How did this come from a little atomic matter?”
Adams sat in his chair, calmed himself, and stared at the monitors in a dreamy way as if the full understanding of the invention had just come to him.
“When you analyze things that are extremely small, like quarks and elements of atoms... and when you compare them to things that are extremely large, like stars and galaxies... they’re oddly similar. Physical size may be one of the great mysteries of life.”
Then it became clear to me. I found myself saying out loud, “We have a model of a universe. Not just a plastic model, but a living, breathing, real universe right in front of us.”
All that time in the making, I never really understood the significance of what he was attempting until that moment.
“What’s more,” Adams added, “we’ve just witnessed The Big Bang.”


“Creation has happened! It’s been a long road, but we arrived today. Rose, you were right as usual. Portal from ct over zero at parsec y! If I die tomorrow, I’ll be happy. Doubtful to sleep tonight, the rush of it all is still in me. Watching light come out of nothing... watching the birth of stars! It was everything I had hoped for and more.”
- From p. 23 of Webster’s journal.

to read chapters 3, 4 click here

to read chapters 1, 2 click here

Chapters 7, 8 coming Thursday, March 4th

Chapters 3, 4 of The Little Universe

 click here to read Intro and Chapters 1, 2

A New Routine

From that afternoon on, I rode my bike to Webster’s house in the mornings and caught rides with him. He told me to spend the first days doing general clean-up to get the place workable. I pulled the remaining equipment out of containers. I dragged the cardboard, plastic and foam outside, then loaded it into the truck for many trips to the dump.

I helped Adams receive the final deliveries and used a dolly to move heavy things in place. Over the next few days, I finished the drywall, textured and painted. Then I placed lighting fixtures and rolled out and tacked down the carpeting.

Once the place had some order, I helped Adams install the wiring for the electronics that would be involved. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just followed their advice. During that time, I spoke constantly with Jim. He sounded so human that it was hard for me to think of him as a machine.

I asked Adams as we drove home one night, “How can Jim sound so much like a person?”

“Didn’t think a computer could talk?” Adams asked, his eyes fixed on the road.

“No.”

“Neither did I when I was your age. Jim represents forty years of A.I.”

“A.I.?”

“Artificial intelligence. He has the ability to learn, not just perform tasks.”

Adams explained that he had spent his career working for a company called Maxwell Enterprises, figuring out ways to get computers to think. He designed Jim to be able to control his features, yet he had no programmed way to know how. Originally, he just watched Adams work. Eventually, he repeated sounds and then engaged in dialogue with Adams. Then he listened to training tapes.

“The growth rate of Jim’s understanding is about a hundred times faster than humans,” Adams told me.

By the time I met Jim, he was an expert on mathematics, chemistry and astronomy, at the age of three month s. He was also becoming ever more knowledgeable about his hardware and the equipment that would be connected to him.

“Yet you’ll need to be patient with him,” Adams warned me. “Emotionally, Jim is still a child.”

So many things were new to him, that he constantly asked me questions. When I first started working there, Jim would perk up as we arrived. His green light would intensify as he’d ask me what I had done each night after work.

“I went home, Jim,” I’d answer without interest.

“What else did you do?” No details were too boring for him.

“I ate dinner.”

“What did you eat?”

“I can’t remember,” I’d say, trying to end the conversation.

Then the “why” questions would start. “Why did you do this?” and “Why did you do that?”

“WHY are you so interested?!” I asked.

“Because... I just am.”

How could I explain that my private life was just as boring as his?

Many nights when Adams and I began to leave the lab, Jim would beg us to stay. He’d yell and get angry, not understanding our schedules. He had training discs and games, videos and music, but he preferred our company. Sometimes Jim used sleep mode to zone out until the next morning, though it appeared he needed very little real sleep.

I figured Jim liked me for two reasons. For one, I was someone other than Adams, someone who spoke differently and used slang. Then, as Jim realized I was the low man at the jobsite, he enjoyed a sudden sense of superiority.

“I need those secondary monitors hung right away,” Jim said once, like a drill sergeant.

“I’m working on it.”

“Not those, the ones for the far wall!”

“Have you been watching army movies?” I asked.

“Your job isn’t to ask questions. It’s to follow commands.”

“They’re not even connected yet. What’s the rush?”

“We don’t want to get behind schedule! Everything is waiting on you!”

I let him have his fun. He liked to bombard me with directions and then interrupt whenever I asked a question. For weeks, I humored him.

I spent much of my time following his wiring directions for the video set-ups and recording devices.

We had over a hundred video monitors to install. Adams showed me their design and layout. They would be placed on the walls in the control room, covering nearly every square inch. They would also be hooked up to internal cameras and to Jim’s hardware. We installed them one at a time, while relaying them to the cameras within the egg-shaped cavity: the huge, empty space chamber where the simulation would take place. Adams checked and rechecked every connection in a painstakingly slow operation. After days of setting up monitors, we had a sea of screens covering the walls of the lab.

“Why do we need so many viewing screens?” I asked.

“A monitor for every camera,” Adams said.

“Why so many cameras?”

“Hopefully, we’re going to have a lot to look at. Solar systems, moons, comets...” I felt like Adams was going to add, “if it works.” Those were three words we rarely said, but I thought of them frequently.

“How exactly is this going to work?” I phrased the question.

“Are you familiar with subatomic particles?”

“Not really.”

“There are pieces of matter much smaller than atoms or their components. These quarks and leptons are fascinating little things.”

Adams told me that his wife, Rose, had done as much experimentation with subatomic particles as anybody. The more she studied them, the more she realized that quarks and leptons were bizarre entities, and they possessed intriguing abilities. Over time, she discovered a function within one type of quark—the ability to copy itself. She constructed the outline for an experiment run on hydrogen, a way of super-copying quarks that would multiply almost infinitely. The outrageous explosion of pure matter would be, in her theory, a reproduction of the great singularity that began our universe.

“The great singularity?” Jim asked.

“The point of time we believe the universe started,” Adams said. “At that moment, there was only a pinpoint of infinitely dense matter.”

I set the pliers down and raised my hand in objection. “But this whole concept doesn’t make any sense! Everything in the world was as dense as a pinpoint?!”

“Everything in the universe,” Adams corrected me. “This is The Big Bang Theory.”

“I guess I’ll never get it,” I shrugged.

Adams asked me, “Can you imagine a grain of sand?”

“Of course.”

“Double it.”

“Okay,” I said. “Two grains of sand.”

“Double it again, and keep going.” Adams leaned against the wall and checked my math.

“Four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two...”

“Sixty-four,” Jim interrupted. “One-twenty-eight, two-fifty-six, five-twelve, one thousand twenty-four...” Jim continued with speed and enthusiasm.

“Showoff ,” I said.

“Forty ninety-six, eighty-one ninety-two, sixteen three eighty-four, thirty-two seven sixty-eight...”

Jim quickly got into the millions, and Adams interrupted him. “Hold on, Jim. Now imagine those grains of sand sharing the same space.”

“That’s what makes it so dense?” Jim asked.

“Density like one trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion tons per cubic inch,” Adams said.

“What?!” I asked.

“A one with seventy-two zeros behind it, tons per cubic inch.”

“In a tiny little spot?!”

“Yes.”

“But that’s the craziest thing I ever heard!” I argued. “I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t be saying this in front of Jim.”

“Jim’s going to be hearing about it from now on,” Adams said.

Jim let us speak without interrupting, though his green light pulsed. Sometimes the only way to get Jim to be quiet was to talk about him.

I had to explain to them that I really did not get it. The Big Bang Theory made absolutely no sense. How could all the matter in the universe, every planet and star, all the zillions and zillions of tons come from a microscopically tiny spot? What could be more farfetched than that? I couldn’t even imagine the contents of the lab fitting into a microscopically tiny spot, let alone the contents of the universe.

“I’d sooner believe in people flying,” I said.

“What about space?” I asked Adams later, as we stood in the egg shaped cavity placing and wiring dozens of camera set-ups. The cameras were like piercing rods. They could extend or contract while also moving side to side or up and down. “What exactly is... y’know, space?”

“It’s the void between elements of matter,” Adams said, grabbing the pliers from my belt to cut off some extra wire.

“How do you simulate that?”

“With the right electromagnetic field,” Adams replied.

“So is our own space electrically charged?” I asked, thinking myself very clever.

“Depends on how you look at it,” he said frankly.

I finally stopped trying to understand the concepts. I figured I’d get it in time, or perhaps I’d never get it. A job was still a job, so I put my doubts on hold and cheerfully did what I could to help out.

“When did you first start working on this?” I asked as I helped Adams wire a very large monitor to hooks on the wall in front of his desk.

“This whole idea was my wife’s,” Adams said. “I’d love to take credit for it, but it took her ages to get me to help.”

I knew that Rose had died a few years ago. There were pictures of her everywhere in his house. Her paintings hung on every wall. I knew she was an artist—now I learned she was a scientist as well.

I looked at the photo of Rose on his desk, a picture of her laughing as she swung back in the air on a rope swing. Her face was not striking, but there was a deep beauty to it. Her attraction came from within and expressed itself in spirited eyes and an easy smile. Sometimes Adams would get distracted from work and sit at his desk, staring at her photo. He’d extend two fingers and touch the image.

“When we married, she was outlining her theory. She designed the whole thing. I took time off to help.”

“How did she die?” I asked.

“Car accident,” he said, returning to fasten wires to the monitor.

“I’m sorry,” I offered. “Was anyone else hurt?”

“No. She flew off the road and rolled.”

“How did you find out about it?”

“A call from the hospital.”

“Who found her?”

“Don’t know. Someone just called for an ambulance.”

“Didn’t you want to know?”

“How would that matter?” he asked, looking at me.

I wanted to ask more about Rose, but I sensed it wasn’t appropriate.

“Actually, I’m a little jealous this was her idea,” he added, lightening the mood.

I had to ask him, “Why are you doing this? To follow up on her dream?”

“Maybe. Maybe there’s more to it,” he admitted. Jim’s light perked up.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Jim added. “Why?”

Adams paused for a moment, as if he had to search for the answer. “Profound curiosity,” he said at last, almost looking through me. “I see it as the ultimate experiment. If I can create a universe... then what does it say about who created ours?”

Jim and I left it at that.

Setbacks

By my second month, I felt like I understood what was going on, or at least what we were trying to do. We were attempting a reproduction of The Big Bang at a microscopic level. Adams was hoping to create a brand new universe enclosed in a chamber the size of a small warehouse, by conducting a subatomic reaction that would create matter at a nearly infinite scale. Then it would be released into an electrically charged, simulated space arena.

To a large degree, nothing worked as planned. The simulated space was supposed to create its own realm of zero gravity. It took Adams weeks to get the bugs out of it. The magnetic field worked fairly well, but the egg-shaped cavity was not absolutely airtight. Tiny leaks in the chamber continuously presented themselves and needed repair. Many times, I put on protective clothing and spray-coated the cavity with a gluey gel, careful not to bump into the cameras.

Adams also faced problems with the mechanism that supplied and compressed the hydrogen molecules, then timing that up with the device that isolated the quarks. It was difficult for the devices to work harmoniously.

“Go figure,” I told Jim, mocking Adams for his eccentric yet optimistic nature.

“Yeah, go figure,” Jim said with a chuckle.

We enjoyed jokes about Adams getting in way over his head on the project. Adams let us have our fun. He knew how to quiet us when he wanted to.

“You shouldn’t be laughing so hard, you know,” Adams joked in turn. “If matter creation really gets out of control, an explosion like you couldn’t imagine might take place.” We stopped laughing. Adams continued, “It won’t matter where you are if that happens, so you might as well be at ground zero when we push the button.”

I knew Adams was kidding, that it was likely to be safe, though I never knew how seriously to take him. Surely he didn’t know exactly what was going on, though he often acted like he did. Adams was brilliant, but he ran into problems with every aspect of the experiment. Many weeks went by with slow progress and Adams scribbling notes in his little brown book.

Sometimes Adams liked to complain to Rose’s photo about what wasn’t working. He’d talk aloud to her as if she were sitting on that swing behind the glass, ready to answer. I began to pity him.

“What if it never works?” I asked him once, slumping in my chair at the end of a long and boring day.

“My investor and I will be out of a bunch of time and money,” Adams said.

“What if it does work?” Jim asked.

“It will be really cool,” Adams said, mimicking me.

Adams was set to the task. He never openly doubted Rose’s theory. He simply worked harder to deal with his setbacks. One by one, he addressed problems and made steps toward running the experiment. I admired his determination.

I finally visited the Star Bar after weeks away. The name was misleading, since no famous person was ever known to have been inside the place. It was a small and narrow bar with a couple of tables, a spot for some cheap booze. I used to be one of the more regular regulars, though lately I had been working too hard to stop in.

Samantha, the owner and bartender, was one of my only friends. Sam, as she preferred, had extremely dark skin and thick, black hair that was turning gray. She was middle-aged and full of life, buxom and strong. On a few occasions, I had watched Sam drag men from the bar and toss them out the front door, men who had gotten too drunk and out of line with her.

Her face lit up when I arrived. She poured me a beer. “Mr. Gruber! Haven’t seen you for a while. Got any new jokes for me?”

“Haven’t been working construction. Got a new job in a laboratory,” I said.

“That is a good one.”

Sam didn’t buy it until I went into all the details. She couldn’t believe I was an apprentice to a scientist. She loved hearing about it and especially of Jim, though she was most skeptical that he could sound human.

“And this scientist,” Sam asked, “is he married?”

“I don’t think he’s your type.”

“Single and employed is my type,” she said, pouring a couple of shots. “Bring him in sometime.”

“I will. We’ve just been working too hard.”

“Jon, don’t forget about us little people when you hit it big.”

“I doubt that will happen, but it’s as good a toast as any.” We downed a shot to my future.

End of current sample. Next chapters 4, 5 will be posted on Thursday Feb 25th.

click here to read Intro and Chapters 1, 2