The Novel's and Stories of Raymond Walker

Ah NO. What do mean no? Ken asked and I stood there milking a moment of triumph. I mean i am not going to tell you that astrology is a load of shit.

He looked at me like an idiot he was still smiling but I saw the look of incredulity in his eye. I am going to tell you that the stars foretell our futures for real. He laughed but I could see a look of concern creeping into his features, I think he thought that I had finally lost it.

But, he said then stopped. I raised my chin to encourage him to continue. I was brimming over so impressed with myself. I rarely bum myself up too much as it usually ends in ridicule and i know that my faciination for astrology has already made me an object of ridicule more than once but I was going to be the one with a shiny new doctorate and was going to cure mankind's ills in a single easy stroke. To my credit, i have never once said that i believe in astrology, what astronomer does after all. But that did not change my facination for it. I read my horoscope everyday and had even on occ asion had worked out my full chart but i still did not believe. But in the same way that i was facinated with time travel and alternae universes, the idea compelled me despite the fact that I did not believe in it.

So you think astrology does predict the future now? He was looking at me as though I had gone off my rocker and left the mechanism behind.

I do and I can prove it.

What that stuff? The stuff that you showed me on the chart, that just means that there is a slight correlation between actual happenings and astrology.

There is no way that is proof. I was getting riled now, partially because I thought that I could not see what he meant and therefore I was stupid or because he was playing me for a big laugh at the end. You idiot, I was expecting but at no point did he say that.

I was looking forward to this for ken was in a corner as unbeliever that I had just presented the truth to and he thought that he had the upper hand (pretty understandably I thought) but I was prepared for all, for everything that he could throw at me and more.

I think I have said before that I say I am right only when I know I am. Otherwise I would have said something like well I think I am right but someone may prove me otherwise or I am pretty much right until someone discovers something else that proves me wrong.

Watch any program on the television about ancient history and they tell you that this is the case Well the three great pyramids are tombs, for example was said and they meant it thirty years ago now we wonder. What if cheops just usurped the great pyramid to make himself look like a mightly ruler but in actual fact it was a temple or observatory as has been mooted.

Watch one from ten years ago, twenty, thirty and they will be different. Knowledge grows and gathers especially with the easy forms of communication that we have these days like the net. But I still feel sure that in thirty years time that they will still know that I was right but they will have improved upon my realisations and in a hundred years time my name will have even been forgotten except by a few pub quiz enthusiasts. When they are ask their question. Who was the original person that proved predestination?

Was it Todd Anderson? she will ask in a querulous voice high pitched as she is not sure that she is right even though at the ages equivalent of university but also because she does not want to seem like a geek to her friends who she hopes do not see her such but actually have ever since the very first day they met her.

But Todd, don't be so fucking stupid, the marks didn't even collide and for that matter you told me some were millions of miles away. You have not decided to take an excess of those sleeping pills have you. I notice again that he has barely touched his wine. This is very unusual indeed, even when he is pontificating on something he knows to be true and right he still has his wine, in abundance most of the time.

I could see that ken was thinking that this was not going his way but could not tell if that was just the thing of the moment or if he was growing worried about his position.

While he was still looking at me as though I was mad I laughed and drew the tracery away replacing it with another marked out in the same way.

It took me about five seconds to get it placed correctly and then i stood back to let him view the wonder of my devising. I felt like pulling a bow and saying ta da. I don't think that he realised for a second or two exactly what he was looking at but ken is a smart guy of course he's going to get it and we will solve the problems of humankind or at least make them a little easier.

Ken stands there gazing at the tracery and before he is done i decide to make it easier for him. Under the tracery i place the star chart with the signs of the zodiac and the notes on it and there he can see that everything is exact. Every point coincides perfectly, every event hits the conjunction exactly.

This cant be right, is the first thing that he says still gazing down rapt at the chart before him. It doesn't seem possible.

What has changed between these charts and the last ones for they look very similar to me but that on these everything seems to coincide whereas on the others they were a long way out. There must be something wrong here.

Actually you were making the same assumption as i was and we start out with the basis that astronomy has answers and knowlege astrology is rubbish despite the fact that many very intellegent people have put great store in it. So you are right and my original map was to prove as you say that the stars do not guide our fate and that was my intention, to prove that very thing to all the people who religiously follow thier horroscopes and even plan thier days around what thier horoscope says. Do you know that i knew a girl once that put such store in thiese things that she decided not to see somethat she had a date with and she found fantastic clever and funny just becasue her horoscope said it would not work. A very silly thing to do in my opinion and strangely a very bright girl. Who knows if it was right or if it wrong as coincidences also apply. Just because your horoscope predicts something does not mean that it isnt true since by the law of averages it will be right every once in a while but normally completely wrong.

But that is something that that girl will never know as she did not wait to find out. Even though the fellow seemed great he could have turned out to be a horror or a buffoon and just by the law of averages it predicted correctly, alternatively it could have been one of those times that it was completely wrong and she has just passed up on the love of her life.

Anyway never mind that, what i had just proved was that astrology is wrong except in a small percentage of cases where pure luck dictates that it must be right. This is what i wished to prove and i had done it efficiently and beyond a shred of a doubt. I used only the most accurate of star maps, they are easily available now and had used the worked out signs of perhaps the greatest astrologer that had ever lived and i sat down pleased with mysef that i had proved my point.

Yetr i had a quiet night ahead of me. I normally spend an hour or so on the phone to Jasmine but it just so happened that she was out that night with her work. and so i had time on my hands that i decided to fill up with a bit of television or reading but as luck would have it there was nothing on the television and the book i had picked up was doing nothing for me being rather well written but terminally dull and so i went outside and was looking up at the stars, you remember it being a cold but rather clear night a week or so ago. I stood there for quite a while and then sat on the bench and watched the consolations wheeling in the sky. I had put on a fleece and taken a glass of warmed wine with me and so i did not feel too cold though it was a bit of a chilly night.

Anyway that does not matter, i said pulling myself together again. I had disappeared as i was saying it into the reverie of that night. Just drinking my wine and watching the stars move. I had been thinking the whole time something i can so rarely not do and i remembered reading a history book about queen elizabeth the firsts rule. A mainly good rule it is thought historicly though i have wondered if only because she ruled for so long compared to other monarchs of her time that it was stability that helped more than anything. I remembered being particularly taken with the parts that mentioned her alchemist/scientist, dr john dee. I remebered something that i forgotten, perhaps on purpose.

Ken interupted, what you forgot something on purpose?

Well yes i think i did, though i could not say that for sure. Remember me telling you how much i had admired Dee? You know how good my memory is?

Ken nodded. You know i remember almost everything that i have seen or read. It is not perfect but it is rare that i forget something. I do on occasion for no reason whatsoever other than i have forgotten it but there are other things that i chose to ignore or forget as they do not fit with my ideas or view of the world. I suspect i made a decision to forget or perhaps i just forgot. Ken interrupted me then obviously impatient and wishing for me to get to my point something that sometimes it takes me far to long to do. Oh for goodness sake tell me why rather than covering all the bases and tell me why you have changed your mind about the star chart.

Sorry i am terrible for that i know. As i am talking i think of something else and side track myself i do it so often. Ken coughed then. Ah sorry i said and continued. Well to cut it short i remembered from that history book that most of the people of note in the queen elizabeths realm thought John Dee nothing other than a charlatan. I know that her privy council did so as did the other master of the realm walsingham. I had made myelf forget as i admired the man so much is all i can imagine. But when i remembered that night i decided to look farther back and use the original zodiac signs and thier dates and purposes. I tried to find the earliest possible charts but many of them were Chinese and not only could I not read them but they had strange ideas of the skies. And the phases of the moon and planets. I do not mean to fault them for these were ancient star maps but were not accurate enough for my purposes nor could i decipher most of them even with the internet involved. I tried the Mayans as i remember reading so many books about them and they seemed to know even of sunspots but their star maps are fantasy only and then i though t of the person who had changed the world; not Copernicus though in his way he did but Galileo who using Pythagorean methods had measured the distance between the stars. Where they stood in the night sky of his time and reverted to the works of the Hermes trisgemesiestus that John Dee followed.

I used his as opposed to Dee's ideas of the zodiac and then extrapolated the data forward in time for though it may have been fifteen hundred years beforehand and no one is truly sure who he was it seems that he had astrology down pat missing nothing of the patterns in the sky. When I used the time interval and his zodiacal image then you get the second map. I sighed letting out my breath for it seemed to me I had been recounting this for so long.

I lifted my wine glass and took a long draught and waited for Ken to say something.

He looked at me with a rather bored and slack expression that he wares when he is thinking. He transfers his gaze back to the map with the tracery above it. and then back to me. So, and tell me if I am wrong. You have the means to predict the future?

I do. I do not know yet fully understand how it works and I have noticed that it is only influenced by people. For example you can see the cross where the holocost began but you cannot see the asteroid hitting the earth sixty five millions of years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs. It seems to take into account only what humans have experienced. Even then it seems to take into account only what many humans have experienced and not just ones or twos but then I would have to know the person or couples exact birth date and time to know exactly wither that is true or not. I was going to try it with me and mary, simply because I thought that i knew the exact time and date of our births, I didn't know anyone else's offhand.

So what happened when you tried it with you and mary?

Well to be honest the result was alright but vague and not as clear as i had hoped but then when i called my mother to check that i had got the time correct, obviously i knew the date it turns out i had not as she didnt know it.

I couldnt as i do not know the time of my birth, my mother was sedated as her labour was talking so long. It needs to be pretty exact.

Well then Mary on her own? I did ask her but she said she could not remember, I suspect that she just wanted to annoy me, you know how she can be.

Well she has every right to be.

I did not say that she had , i just said that you know how she can be. You know i do not fault her for us splitting up.

Ken just nodded obviously annoyed that i had even tried to suggest that marys awkwardness is what had split us apart.

Jasmine then?

No i never even asked. She would just think i was silly for even suggesting such a thing. I am not there to prove it to her the way i can prove it to you and she would just htink that i was being silly or winding her up.

But you said that your in love with this girl? Well you should be able to ask her anything.

She doesnt know when she was born.

Are you kidding is she some kind of alien?

perhaps she was like me and does not know.

Tdd, i might not be able to follow your star charts and calculations in seconds the way you do but i am not supid.

He looked offended and the breath went out of me a little as he never had treated me as though i was not as smart as he was, in fact as i said earlier he always gave me credit for being smarter than i was.

Sorry todd, that was not fair, but though you are good at many things you are not a good liar. You did ask her. I assume that she told you her exact date of birth?

He nodded, shaking his head afterwards as though there was something wrong. I could not be sure but i thought i saw a tear rise in his eye.

So what is it Todd, surely it cant be that bad?

Ok, por me another glass of that rather fine wine you are feeding me. Let us talk of other things for a minute or two and then i'll tell you. It is not an easy thing to deal with and worse have no idea what I am going to do about it.

Just what is that wine anyway. Its great not so rich that it is overpowering but so full bodied that you can feel it the whole way down into my stomach. Warm and comfortable. Oh its a new australian shiraz i got in the supermarket. It was reduced in price and so bought a couple of bottles thinking to give it a try.

Even as we are talking about inanities i was trying to think of what the problem may be. He really did seem very upset but then todd was the kind of person whos emotions got the better of him quite often. He had a great empathy for most things though sometimes was so busy in his own world that he never noticed pain in others but when he did he reacted more than most men would and was not at times ashamed of having tears streaming down his face. Especialy at times when he was thinking about his father or his children but sometimes even when talking of someone that he had never met and thier trials, of whichever sort that they had faced. I saw that even as we talked of the wine and who's new CD was good or bad and even indifferent that still he had a tear at his eye. I did not mention it, i did not wish to set him in that mode until he was ready to go there and obviously he was not yet. After a while we lapsed into a kind of silence broken only with sips from our wine glasses and the odd comment. I noticed that he had finished his and said would you like another?

Its a bit early he said and i stopped amazed bfore he continued for stupid questions. Just pour and i will tell you, i am as well just getting it out of the road. Perhaps you can help solve the problem for me. Oh know i said, i really dont want to be involved remember that i am friends with Mary as well.

Oh there is no problem there and i am glad that you are but you will seee what i mean when i get to it.

16. Todd. It grows darker.

He started with a long sigh as though he did not wish to think about it anymore never mind talk about it but continued anyway because he knew that he must.

You have the same kind of mind as me, he started. I wish i thought but i really just nodded in his direction.

You thought exactly the same thing as me. If i could not do it on myself or Mary then the most obvious person is Jassie. When i spoke to her the other night and told her what i was doing not only was she sceptical but wondered why i was wasting my time on such a thing. Well i explained a little of it and told her it was just an exersize in mathematics that may be useful in plotting the course of the plutoids. They were planets after all in the broadest sense of the word. THis she could understand and after after a short lecture in the sillyness of astrology she gave me her time of birth. I was able to plot it on the good star chart that included the plutoids that we know about for i suspect that there are quite a few more that we have not discovered yet. He stopped and laughed, you do know, he continued that i use the royal we in the broadest sense of the idea, for what i mean is really real astronomers. I interupted for a second and said but you are a real astronomer. He shook his head and continued. Well thank you for saying so but i was once a physicist that dbbled in in astrophysics and astronomy but i was never a real astronomer.. I liked watching the stars, i was interested in both the theory and the ficytion of it. remember me telling you about my love for science fiction when i was young. But i was not at anytime a real astronomer. A knowlege able amatuer at best is all you could say.

I interupted again, but that fellow professor simpson told me that your theory of gravitic cohesion was the idea that most astrophysicists and astromers take as fact these days.

Todd just sook his head again and said, he is being kind, it really is just a theory. NOnethe less, i said.

He just shook his head again, his over long hair flapped aound his face each time that he did this.

Anyway back to the revelation nhe said. I plotted her star chart using all the new information that we have and though more accurate than all thos produced up till now they are still not perfect as there may well be other plutoids out there and i may have gussed thae trajectory of the theorised gas giant incorrectly. But all the information that cam out looked sound. It suggests she will be a bight girl and she is i can assure you. It suggests many things most of which you neither need to know nor wish to know let me just tell you that it is pretty accurate.

So you can tell the future then?

Well yes in a way, once I have done many more tests checks and calibrations. All of those may well be thrown into disarray by the discovery of another plutoid but they will still remain nearly right. I think I have proved the existence of a further large gas giant with out actually proving it if you see what I mean. All these calculations would not work out without it.

But what if its not there. What if there are two or more real planets. Well then all I have come up with would be rubbish.

Except that you saw the star map and the tracery and almost every major event involving people was so close to the astrological projection that it is unlikely that I am wrong by very much if at all.

I did notice on the second map that almost everyone of your white crosses coincided with an event.

But yes an event involving people. There is nothing even close for the likes of an earthquake on the ocean floor, yet they can be far more devastating than many on land but because we cannot see them they matter little to us. I marked the one in Chile a few years ago as obvious. Many people lost their lives yet it was caused by another deep sea quake that hurt no one as far as I know. Maybe some poor fisherman but other than that nothing. Yet as you can see I showed him pointing at the star chart with the tracery on top of it. The tracery looking a little wine stained now in certain places. Yet the deep sea quake was almost double the power of one on land but only the one on land shows up.

So it is human pain or pleasure that shows?

Really I am unsure of what it shows other than it is only affected by people. Something that is cataclysmic like a sun spot or volcano erupting in the arctic means nothing to this system as it does not affect people. Perhaps it does show up in someway but if it does I have not figured it out yet.

So what are you going to do about it?

What do you mean do about it? I have no idea how to calculate those things in, in fact it was simple luck and me being persistent and having a bit to much time on my hands that got me this far.

I didn't mean that, what I meant was that you have proved predestination. In fact in a small way you have proved the existence of god.

God?

Well yes of course . If our future is written in the stars then someone planned it that way, I can believe in everything being arbitrary until the plan is sat in front of me and you just put it there. If the plan is made then something put that plan in place.

Instead of walking up and down he fell backwards into a seat and seemed to slump.

You know i never even thought of that. I honestly did not expect it to work and then as the calculations got clocer to the events i was so obsessed with trying to perfect the formulae that i never thought of the consequences. Yes it is likely to cause a big revival in religion even i suppose. People will do nothing and the stars will say they agree with them and that will be thier fate. If someone knows when they will die what is there to strive for. Society could well fall apart.

Do you not think that you are being a little dramatic there.

Well i suppose i am but i have not thought that part of it through. And you are right i suppose it does prove the existance of god. I have never been a believer you know.

Oh yes i know only to well, you are very polite about it but you always make it obvious that you disbelieve.

Really i thought i made it plain that i disbelieved the teachings of the worlds religons not a disbelif in god. For though i do not believe there is a god on the evidence available to me, i am perfectly aware that i could be proved wrong. Maybe you have mixed up the two for i certainly do not believe in the god s that the worlds religions foist upon us. I have always thought that if there is a god then we would and could not understand it enough to fully know its abilities or what it expected of us.

In fact though i have not thought upon it until this time, should a god exist that has made the universe and perhaps countless more universes, galaxies, solar systems and all the wonders that are there to be seen in the night sky and countless more that we cannot see then my first thought is that we, i mean, people small are we are cannot comprehend its plan. It really is not worth thinking about. Or rather it is worth thinking about but not until we have more time.

Anyway you do understand what i am saying about inevitability and predestination.

Ok I've got you I said, though to be honest I was still struggling with it a little. But I did now what he meant. generally.

Ok so you get that for individuals or couples or even small groups of people it is reasonably accurate, I estimate plus/minus fifteen to eighteen percent inaccurate. For large groups of people that reduces to eight and even as low as 3.5 percent inaccurate. Therefore the larger the numbers of people involved the more accurate it becomes. So if I was to predict a car crash for a guy driving home from work on his own I have a greater than seventy five percent chance of it being right but if I was to predict for example a cruise ship sinking with five thousand people onboard the accuracy increases to more than ninety three percent. Look at this for example I say pointing at a white cross that intersects exactly. This is Syria, today and thousands upon thousands have died and the accuracy is nearly ninety eight percent. the margin of error less than two. Obviously there is a plutoid that we do not know of yet affecting my calculations or perhaps my guesses on the gas giant are wrong. I am pretty sure if we could see all the bodies in the sky then I could make that nearly one hundred percent. Remember I have invented the gas giant but if this is all right which it looks as though it is then I can tell them where to find it.

I am just looking at him my mind reeling with figures and a more important thought that is just pushing its way into my head.

You're with me so far?

Just, I said, though I think I was pushing it at the time as my head was full to bursting and getting worse by the minute. Even the wine was not dulling my senses enough to comprehend the profundity of it.

So I did Jassie's.

Jassie? Oh sorry Todd, Jasmine you mean? I was still thinking through what you said.

Oh no worries, I have had weeks to accept what I was coming up with, of course it is going to take you some time. Wine to go with that thought he asked standing?

Most definitely I replied still coming to terms with his hypothesis. He must be wrong, he's got to be. I did not have his problem with the divine though slowly but surely over the years I had lost my faith in god. There had been no major event or epiphany that had turned me from him, in fact I had mainly been rather lucky in life, which you would assume would bring you closer to your maker rather than estrange you.

I always thought I had made all my decisions by myself, some were good, some were not so good but they were my decisions and I lived with them. So I suppose some unnoticed time along the way to today he had just left my thoughts. I think the only time I thought of him was when Todd was convincing us all that he did not exist. I now realise from what he said that he never spoke out against there being a god for not even someone like him could prove or disprove the existence of a god. He spoke out only against religions, I remember him saying now that he he does not believe in the Christian god told of in the old and new testaments but qualifying this, he said, but these are tales told by men and what man can know a god. But now I suppose that he has proved that god is out there and does exist. There is a certain Irony in this an atheist proving the existence of god.

He could be wrong but I know he is not. Oh yes he is strange at times, anally retentive, weird, suffering from some weird psychological complaint yes, oh yes, to all those, but he never miscalculates. When Sheila and I first got together with Todd and Mary down at the pub he just seemed complete normal but as time passed I came to think of him as some kind of machine. I went down to play the pub quiz with him one night and I was late my work got in the road as usual. Most of the teams had four or five people in them and one had eight. Yet he was winning on his own and reasonably easily. He explained to me that they had only done the subjects that he knew about, his lead would soon vanish when sport came on and television. All the television questions are about soap operas he explained and I know nothing about them. As far as sport goes if i can answer one question then i will be surprised, it must be only because it made the news.

As long as its books, history, films, science or music I can hold my own.

Over the years we have all realised that he is not a machine in fact he is probably more human than the rest of us, he is far more liberal and considerate. He believes that rehabilitation can work and that drug addicts need help not condemnation. His calculating mind just fascinates me. I know I am making myself sound stupid here but I am a smart guy. I went to college got my degree and am doing well in life. We had a competition a few times, me sitting with a calculator and he working just sitting on the sofa in the pub with his head back and eyes shut listening to the calculation that he had to make. He could do it quicker in his head than I could with a calculator. I asked him how he did that and he said I just see it in my head and am able to calculate it with a piece of lined paper and a pencil.

But you did not have them.

He laughed, no but they are in my head. I scribble it down and work it out in my head. You think I am good at these things then you should have seen my father. He could do the same thing and far more quickly than me. I used to watch him fascinated, he did it so quickly. Far better than I and he did not visualise it as i do, it was for him just a simple mental calculation. He laughed again, i suspect that it was all the effort of working out the prices on the horses or dogs that he betted on every day yet it was an impressive skill none the less.