Surfing Chance - Chapter 1

All things break. In Mona Vale, slightly north of Sydney, Chance was experiencing the frustration of entropy for the very first time. Removing the red plastic bucket from the first sand tower of his castle and seeing it already trickling down was one of the first memories of Tiberius Chance. His mother was watching him, without intervening. After several failed experiments, Chance took his small paddle board and decided to try his luck in the small waves of the shallow blue waters. This was one of the happiest memories of Chance.

When Chance turned five, his mother got a job offer in Ohio, US and they needed to move out of Australia to a whole new continent, again. Chance was born in Okinawa and his parents separated when he was just three years old. When watching cool older surfers on the beaches of Mona Vale, he would always think that his father is just like them. Sadly, with time, his curiosity turned into anger towards his missing father.

There was a lot of blame to go around, because Chance hated Ohio. His mother encouraged Chance to keep a journal documenting the things he really likes about the new place in which he was living in. In school, Chance discovered that Ohio was quite famous for the fact that 25 NASA astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, were from there. Chance used to joke around that no wonder why people wanted to run away as far away from this place as they could. In school, Chance was flirting with the idea of going into astrophysics, but once he got to see Carl Sagan's Cosmos series, he was completely hooked. That was his passing of the event horizon. The point of no return.

Chance met his future fiancé, Linda, in college and they got engaged soon after. Linda was studying engineering and Chance was more of a theoretical physics kind of guy, but he always felt like they'd make a great exploration team. After graduation, Linda got a job offer from General Motors. She was excited for it. Chance – not so much. He did not show it, but this was the beginning of his first serious adult frustration.

Chance began to feel more and more trapped into a life that is not of his choosing. Linda was pragmatic. A company like General Motors offers stability, career growth opportunities and even a decent parent leave package that they might later need with Chance, or so she thought. It was the perfect foundation, upon which to build a family. She crafted a perfect design in which she figured out every single detail down to what mortgage to choose. The only flaw in her design was Chance's breaking mind. Divided between following Linda, like he followed his mother on her journey from continent to continent. The other part of Chance's mind felt like Linda's career choice meant no more space exploration, no more teamwork. His relationship began to decay… and as usual, when faced with frustration, Chance's instinct was to flee.

…

Chance was standing inside a stone window of the Church tower. In a few minutes he'd have to go downstairs and get married to Linda in the chapel. Crushed under the illusion of this terrible burden, he felt like the giant Atlas overwhelmed by the weight of his own inner world.

"Are you ready? How are you feeling?", asked the pastor that just walked in, in a slightly sheepish voice.

"No. I decided not to go through with it. This is a bad idea. It is not my life that is unfolding before me if I choose this future."

"Ah… well, it is your choice to make. I am just worried about that poor lady that you are about to leave broken hearted."

"There is no other way. She is not the same anymore… I know it. I knew it even before today. I was just trying to not see it", said Chance.

"You are trying to run away from something. Are you being completely honest with yourself? Is this what you truly feel that you need to do?"

"I am a scientist at heart. I belong in exploration and space faring. My dream is beyond crazy, but it takes a crazy dream to achieve an impossible goal.", said Chance gazing towards the horizon, his voice turning hollow as if the words themselves were not meant for the dialogue but for a long-postponed pep talk.

"What is your dream?"

"Our universe. Its neither finite nor infinite. Do you know this? It started with the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago, a giant explosion that created our universe with matter, space and time. The waves of that explosion are still moving further away from the epicenter. More so, this tablecloth-like universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. The universe is becoming bigger, faster. What I am interested in, is that thin borderline… the expansion wave of our universe. I want to see it. No… better yet, I want to surf it, all the way onto the other side. This is my dream."

"The fact that our universe is majestic, is of no surprise to me. Even so, there is one thing that I have to warn you about. No matter how far you go… even if you cross this cosmic edge, it is impossible to run from your own self."

He paused. As if to let these deep thoughts sink in and he was glaring into the eyes of Chance, as if he knew his whole life story. The pastor continued.

"Any object that you see, a tree, a flower, a black hole, passed through your eyes, your optic nerve, your brain and that 'pure' information is contaminated by your own perception. It is muddied by your already existing thoughts. You see a black hole and you say it looks like a giant cauldron. It is impossible to separate yourself completely from the knowledge you collect. There will always be this filter. You cannot outrun yourself."

"You are way too smart to be a Pastor."

"I am at the place where I am needed. Guiding the lost sheep.", said the Pastor while taking out a pack of cigarettes from his inner robe pocket and offering it to Chance.

…

"All things break.", was the quote that Chance decided to start his first lecture with. He became a PHD candidate at Tokyo University. His recovery after the failed wedding was helped by his thirst for adventure and this took the form of applying for jobs in Japan. He closed the deal and moved to a small apartment in Tokyo by mid-September.

"… the law of entropy dictates that if you build a sandcastle on a beach, once finished, it will immediately start its decay process. Fragments of sand will get dried out and start trickling down. It is certain, given enough time, that your sandcastle will completely disappear. It is impossible for you to leave your sandcastle, and for it to spontaneously grow more complex. The law of entropy, or the law of chaos, states that there are more ways for particles to get disordered, than for them to get ordered. This is the second law of thermodynamics."

"What if you protect your castle from getting ruined?" asked Ira, an exchange student from Bangalore.

"Any kind of human intervention is equivalent to energy. Energy being inserted into a system, can contribute to a longer lasting equilibrium. Without the investment of outside energy, any system will decay. Say you have a car and for 20 years you leave it in the dessert. What will happen to your car? Probably it will be full of bees and insects; sun will burn through the paint and the windows will break. At the same time, a Pink Cadillac that is more than 50 years old can be in top shape today with proper maintenance.", answered Chance.

"You are saying that all things in our universe decay. What about life on Earth? How did matter spontaneously become more organized out of a disorganized state?" asked James.

"The question of how life on Earth appeared is a tricky one. Some argue that it is a pocket of order in an otherwise spontaneous cosmos. There was one scientist that argued that humans and animals are no more than a means to an end, a way for energy to be dissipated more efficiently than without it. In other words, humans are not breaking the second law of thermodynamics, but we are just riding its wave. We consume plants that collect solar energy and we emit body heat in a way that plants can't. Nonetheless, these are just theories and ideas. The statistical reality of it is that our universe is a very elegant one. In the sense that human life and intelligent life for that matter is a product of a very delicate arrangement of laws. Against all odds."

The University of Tokyo is a melting pot of cultures with students from different countries coming in as either exchange or visiting students to join their Japanese peers. It is not that uncommon for people working in the field of astronomy to bundle up together irrespective of their nationality. Even the latest image of a blackhole, was a collaboration of scientists collecting data at observatories located in 8 different countries, including one at the South Pole. Chance felt in his heart, that part of his mission was to keep this movement going. To inspire the young. To help promote intercultural understanding and the idea that humanity needs to be united in knowledge seeking to achieve a common goal.

…

Chance went to rest after a hard first day. He did not even have the energy to go through his full pre-sleep ritual and fell asleep on his couch with his university attire on. In his shallow dream state, he started to wonder through various memories and he lingered at the discussion he had with the Pastor. In his dream, Chance saw the Pastor figure transform into a different God-like alien entity that looked like the Orion nebula. Glowing and pulsating like one big magenta heart. The talking entity was more than just a dream and it addressed Chance with unusual familiarity:

"You followed your dream and now you are here, in Japan. The place where your real journey must begin. I congratulate you, Tiberius."

"Don't patronize me. Stephen Hawking did not need to venture inside a blackhole in order to produce valuable knowledge about them. Exploration can take many forms."

"Don't be a fool. It was not my intention to be ironic. I am talking about the real thing. The expansion wave of the cosmos. Do you still intend to pursue it?"

"Oh, that. It is part of who I am… I am a surfer at heart. The expansion wave is most epic wave in existence. I am destined to ride it. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object."

"Tiberius, you were born for greatness that your mind cannot yet conceive of. I will open up your potential by sharing with you a small part of my own power and you will be able to bend the laws of physics in the ways that will allow you to go there. At the end of everything."

Chance woke up. The last thing that he remembered after waking up was a buzzing sound on his upper arm. He knew that the message in the dream has something to do with getting a tattoo and bending laws of physics. He needed to give it a try.

The law of gravity. Even if the complexity of his art was not great, he wanted to work with a reliable craftsman. The artist that he chose was an old man, that was recommended to him by a reddit page. The old man was said to have served as the Yakuza go to, back in the 1970s.

His artwork was full body landscapes with Koi fish, tigers or dragons. Chance set an appointment. What harm can come of it?

…

Six months have passed and the tattoo scar has completely healed. As with every skill, fairly intense practice was needed. The side effects included light nausea and vertigo that he needed to adapt to. The inner ear and stomach were a problem, as can be testified by all astronauts that ever went to space. Imponderability, levitation and downright flight were some of the things that Chance succeeded in. He knew he could do more and this was troubling him. The answer that he sought was right there, in front of him. He had a full classroom of unconventional thinkers that he could brainstorm with. Chance was secretive about his mission, but soon enough, this secret would prove hard to keep…

It was end of January and the students had two weeks off to prepare for the semester exam on Astrophysics. Chance planned a holiday to Portugal, where he'd spend a few days in a small surf village just outside Faro. The plan was to test out his skill level in breaking the law of gravity.

His dark indigo surfboard had a small golden sun on the lower upper side. Once the darkness set, there were no more surfers around. He heard a whistle in the distance but decided to ignore it. The moon had risen and it was full and white like a soft mozzarella ball. Chance dove deeper into the sea, away from the shore. His arms were sore from paddling and his chest and ribcage were getting sore.

The currents were stronger out in the open. He got on the board, pushed by the wind onto a slightly bigger wave. The board was smoothly riding the crest and accelerating in the direction of the shore. Chance used the keyword that he invented to act as a kind of switch for the activation of his newly mastered skill.

"Break!"

The moon mass started to increase, gradually, and the wave that Chance was riding started to rise to tsunami proportions. This was the what the final stage of gravity law mastering looked like. Exhilarated, full of adrenaline, but he still found the inner serenity to unbreak this abnormal moon phenomenon and restore things back to normal before the wave reached the shore. It would be terrible to flood an entire village just for the sake of a small experiment. The wave returned to its regular size and so did the moon. Few lucky photographers just got the shots of their life and were already bedazzling their followers with evidence of this unique phenomenon. The news of this was about to break out, and Chance did not realize the damage that he just caused. Oblivious to the side-effects and still enjoying the thrill of it all, Chance was on his board nearing the shore and pondering upon what just happened. Ecstatic and eager, the only thought that he could conjure now was: "Yes! This is it. What law of physics should I tattoo next?"