The Cantor Dimension (7 page)

Max and Brody often watched the old
Star Trek
episodes together and the
Q Continuum
episodes were among his favorites. The
Q Continuum
was an extra-dimensional plane of existence where an omnipotent race of beings lived who possessed extraordinary powers and the ability to manipulate both time and space. Brody was beginning to see why Max might be enamored of Georg Cantor outside of a family connection.

As Max's last name was Cantor, Brody assumed that Georg was an ancestor and that Max was interested in what appeared to be a famous mathematician who he might be related to. Brody read on expecting more about Georg Cantor but instead Max's notes took a bizarre turn.

Germany. Cold, snow, winter. Standing outside of a military compound surrounded by wire fences. I could see a woman, naked under a heavy fur coat. A pasty-faced man in a Nazi uniform had his hand up under the woman's coat. She appeared to be very humiliated. She told him that she wished he would not do this where people could see. He looked at her with dirty lust and she appeared resigned to her position. He said that no one could see but nearby there was a man who resembled Schultz
⁹
of the TV series Hogan's Heroes, who did not appear to be pleased about what his fellow officer was doing.
India. An elephant-drawn vehicle. People were saying that the government had banned large animals in the streets because too many people were being trampled so I knew this would be the last ride. The buggy jolted roughly along the rutted streets. The surrounding sights were both colorful and dirty. The din of the ever-present multitudes echoed painfully in my eardrums. It was not a pleasant experience and I was grateful when the ride ended.

Brody assumed these last two were dreams though he couldn't see why Max would stamp them as being important. It was as if Max were dreaming of other times and places. In any case the dreams were quite strange, not the sort of things Brody dreamed about which usually involved him fumbling his chance with a girl. Brody didn't have good luck with girls so he spent a lot of time thinking about them.

Max's notes went back to following the life of Georg Cantor, this time bringing Einstein into the equation. If Max were going to idolize famous people, at least he chose great scientific and mathematical minds rather than drugged out rock stars.

Albert Einstein as a child, upon seeing a compass for the first time, became fascinated with what caused the needle to move despite the apparent 'empty space,' giving rise to his fascination into the field of physics. Einstein grew up to become one of the greatest pioneers in physics of all time, providing us with the theories of relativity and special relativity which give new definition to the concepts of space and time.
Some of his greatest achievements, however, are in dispute as to whether Einstein should get full credit. One person of note who many believe should share in the credit is mathematician and physicist Henri Poincare, who published an article on relativity before Einstein did.
Poincare was one of Georg Cantor's detractors stating that, "Cantorian set theory should be banished from mathematics once and for all." Poincare also stated that Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers was a disease from which mathematics would eventually be cured.
Einstein was familiar with the works of Poincare, and while Poincare never acknowledged Einstein's work on special relativity, before his death Einstein acknowledged Poincare as being one of the pioneers of relativity. They were both working on the special theory of relativity and publishing papers at the same time so in essence, they were competitors, and controversy exists as to who should get the credit. As other names were also involved in the various scientific and mathematical aspects of the relativity theories, some believe that many names should be given credit rather than just one.
Another contender for credit is Alfred North Whitehead, who put forth a rival doctrine to Einstein's theory of general relativity, which was later discredited. Whitehead wrote the 3-volume Principia Mathematica published from 1910-1913 with co-author Bertrand Russell, which repeatedly cited Cantor's work. Russell described Cantor as being one of the greatest intellects of the nineteenth century, and Cantor had hoped to meet Bertrand Russell in person. While it is unknown as to whether Cantor and Russell ever met, Russell's co-author Whitehead did meet Albert Einstein at Lord Haldane's in London in 1921 where they apparently had a discussion on their theories of relativity.
As a strong connection exists between Cantor, Poincare, Russell, Whitehead, and Einstein, it would not be a stretch to intertwine their various discoveries as Hermann Minkowski did in 1908.

Obviously Max was putting some serious research into Georg Cantor, probably to build a family tree and perhaps link his family to other famous notables as well. Brody could see how this might be important to Max, but not why he'd want to hide it from the police. Max's notes then reverted back into more of the bizarre entries, the types of entries that might interest the police.

In a jewelry store at closing time. Lots of jewelry on the floor, broken and scattered in the aisles. An aborted robbery? I was thinking to pocket some of the unbroken jewelry before leaving, especially the blue stones and green stones.
America in the 1800s. The women were dressed in floor-length skirts with bustles and bows and calico prints. Layers and layers of clothes, plus bonnets. I was telling them how people dressed where I came from and they did not believe me. I wished I had brought some twentieth-century clothing for them to see. Women in slacks and shorts and miniskirts, arms bared and bellies exposed, with low necklines showing cleavage. Wouldn't the ladies of old be outraged! Wouldn't the men be following me forward through the ages to live in this lap of male luxury themselves! I didn't even try to describe our thong bikinis and other such garments that expose women's glorious round buttocks in all their splendor, with nothing but a tiny strip of cloth to cover that secret place that all men seek after. Even the showgirls and the wanton women of that era didn't expose half of what the average woman of today exposes. Had I been able to show them, their expressions would have been priceless! The thought of exposed flesh in such uptight surroundings tugs at my manhood.

Brody was taken aback at this entry dripping with sexual overtones. He had never associated Max with fleshly pleasures. Max seemed somehow above such carnal desires. For Brody, Max had been more of a mentor than an ordinary friend, more the spirit-bound master than the earth-bound man. Naked women just didn't fit the picture.

Brody, however, could easily envision the forbidden pleasures that Max mentioned, the bare cheeks running down the beach on a sultry, summer day, the heavenly orbs that he fervently wished he could grope at this moment, and the hidden paradises waiting to be exposed and explored. Brody read on, growing more fascinated but again, the entries took another bizarre turn.

Someone came at me suddenly. I faced him and he instantly disappeared inches before colliding with me. It happened so fast that I barely got a glimpse of him. I thought I saw a name sewn onto his pocket: Jerry? Jeremy? Jerome? Then the words: 'Get out of here!' I instantly returned to my point of origin.
I was at a TV security monitor watching different areas the way guards do. I flipped channels from an old bum flopped out on a park bench to a sauna room full of naked and near-naked girls. One girl was just about to enter and was peeling off her clothes. Someone chastised me for monitoring the undressing women. I shouldn't interact so I returned to my point of origin.

Brody was sorely disappointed that the entry ended and his mind was drifting more into the realm of girly magazines than Max's non-sensical notes.
Oh Max, dammit! Why couldn't you give more detail? Just when it was starting to get good you revert back to the mumbo-jumbo. Damn you, Max!
Heat surged through Brody's loins but Max was in trouble so Brody kept reading, shoving his lusty thoughts aside as best he could.

The entries were fascinating with their sexual enticements but they didn't explain Max's disappearance, unless of course Max was off somewhere partaking of the sensuous pleasures he was hinting at. Brody was becoming frustrated. He was about to shove the papers aside when he came across something interesting. It was a little closer to home than the previous entries.

Max described an event in which he was in Brody's living room. He recounted it as if he were actually there but Brody couldn't see him. He described Brody's actions in vivid detail: Brody drinking a root beer float, flexing his muscles in front of a mirror, and doodling bicycle tires on the pages of a
Popular Mechanics
magazine. He also mentioned Brody rehanging a picture that had fallen down off the wall.

Brody remembered that particular night in vivid detail. He remembered it because he'd had lunch with Max the following day and Max had been teasing him. "Why were you checking yourself out in front of the mirror last night? Is that what you do when no one's around? Flex your muscles and doodle bicycle tires?"

"You don't know what you're talking about! I don't flex my muscles in front of a mirror!"

"I know you were flexing your muscles last night, and I also know you were drinking a root beer float!"

"So what? You've seen me drink root beer lots of times. You're just a good guesser."

Max chuckled. "If you weren't flexing your muscles and doodling bicycle tires, why would you call me a good guesser?"

"You're full of shit!"

Brody had turned beet red and punched Max in the arm. At the time Brody figured that Max just knew him so well that he could easily figure out what Brody would do behind closed doors. A lucky guess, that's all. Still, it left him with an odd feeling. It wasn't like he did those things
every
night.

The most unsettling part was the mention of Brody rehanging the picture. Brody had never told Max about the picture, and Brody really had rehung a picture that had fallen that very day, something Max couldn't possibly have known about or even guessed at.

Brody read several more of Max's entries in which he described himself "visiting" Brody's and other places. Max always described what he "saw" in vivid detail. There was one entry where Max had spied on Brody's date with Melissa. Everything they had said and done was logged in Max's notebook with perfect accuracy right down to the argument they'd had over what to watch on TV.

Brody had never told Max about his date with Melissa. This invasion into Brody's most private moments angered him and he tried to reconcile this newfound version of Max as some sort of voyeur with the staid friend he'd always known.

No matter what angle he tried, he couldn't reconcile this new Max with his ideal of Max-the-wise-mentor. There was no way Max could have known all this unless he had sophisticated spy equipment such as what Coggins would have. Brody's opinion of Coggins went down a few more notches. Brody was sure that Coggins had corrupted his friend in some way.

Max described several more scenes he couldn't possibly have known about and not all of them were in Brody's apartment. Most were at Brody's job but there was even one in a used book store. That ruled out hidden mikes and cameras. How could Max have known Brody's life so intimately? Was he psychic?

Brody was skeptical about the whole psychic phenomena thing but he knew that Max was a big believer. Brody remembered the many times Max had asked him for details of things he'd done, mundane things that a friend wouldn't normally ask about. Maybe Max was fishing for verification of his own psychic abilities. This didn't upset Brody as much as spy cameras. Psychics reputedly didn't have a lot of control over their abilities so maybe Max wasn't such an ogre after all.

There was obviously a lot about Max that Brody didn't know. Max had always been rather tight-lipped about himself, never volunteering information even to his best friend Brody, but this was ridiculous! Here was a whole side of Max that Brody had never seen or even so much as guessed at. Brody sure hadn't visualized Max as some sort of psychic peeping Tom. No wonder Max wanted to keep these papers a secret.

Part of Brody was losing interest in helping his friend and he was tempted to forget the whole thing and just let Max's fate do whatever it wanted. The other part couldn't stop reading, wondering what else would unfold in Max's secret papers and diaries. Brody caught a break from the peeping Tom entries and went back to Georg Cantor, this time with his genealogy and family connections.

We find another connection between Georg Cantor and Albert Einstein through Cantor's mother Maria Anna Bohm. Maria married Georg's father, who was also named Georg. The senior Georg's full name was Georg Woldemar Cantor, whose father Jakob was from Copenhagen, and whose sister married Josef (aka Joseph) Grimm, a chamber musician for the Royal Court.
Maria's family also included Joseph Bohm, a gifted violinist who was Georg's great-uncle. Joseph Bohm was born in Pest (Budapest), Hungary in 1795. He went on to become a professor at the Vienna Conservatory of Music.
Decades later, David Joseph Bohm, who was born in 1917 in Pennsylvania of a Hungarian father, worked side by side with Albert Einstein at Princeton University. David Bohm was an assistant professor and Einstein taught physics. David's father, whose name was known as Solomon (aka Samuel or Shalom), was born in Munkacs, Hungary.
Munkacs later became part of Transylvania, then fell under Austrian control, was then ceded to Czechoslovakia, after which it became part of the Soviet Union, and was finally ceded to the Ukraine. The place once known as Munkacs, Hungary is now Mukachevo, Ukraine.

Brody wondered if this mention of Transylvania had any connection to the Transylvanian prince in Kent, England. He'd always thought that Transylvania was a mythical place where Dracula and his fellow vampires came swooping out of the mists to suck the blood of beautiful women. He hadn't realized that Transylvania was a real place which had passed through many hands including the Huns (as in Attila the Hun), the Avars, the Ottomans, the Hungarians, the Mongols, and had even been populated with Romany Gypsies.