BOOK | PRODIGY | Chapter 6

Living in a World of Coincidences

A Story about coincidences

Melissa Glen sat directly behind Liam McShane at the claims Department of Axiom Insurance. They both worked in the medical claims division, under a supervisor named Regina Williams. Liam was a few minutes late that morning. He arrived with a canvas bag at 9:11.

“Another problem in the subway trains,” he told her as he turned on his computer and prepared to work. He took the current book he was reading, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, by David Bohm, out of his bag and laid it on his desk.

“So you’re reading something new?” She asked him briefly.

“You know I am always reading,” he answered. “Just because I’m stuck in here, Doesn’t mean I’m stuck in here. (He pointed to his temple.)”

“What is the book about?”

“About how the universe is connected at a deeper level,” he responded and signed in on his desktop.

He sighed a moment and sat down.

“Some of us are going out tonight after work,” she commented. “You’re welcome to join us.”

“I am not very good with people,” he responded.

His phone began to ring. Then he shook his head. He sneered and let it go to voicemail.

“Is your brother still having that train wreck nightmare?” he asked her.

“Every night,” she responded.

“My offer still stands. I can talk to him. I think I might be able to help him with his nightmare.”

Liam had been going through his own unspoken nighttime turmoil.

“I’ve been trying to get Frank to talk to someone for a long time. Ever since Veronica died, his life has fallen apart.”

“People deal with grief in their own ways,” Liam acknowledged. “I’ve had my own share of grief.”

His phone began to ring again.

“I’ve got to take this phone call.”

Liam lived a solitary life. Since he and his girlfriend Regina had broken up, he spent most of his free time reading. He pursued everything from physics to history to Russian poetry, anything that caught his attention for the moment. One break had come, from his rigid routine, a couple of months earlier. At company expense, he had travelled to Pittsburgh by train for an insurance seminar. He kept a copy of the seminar program next to his computer monitor. The ticket stubs from the train, he had taped to the wall of his cubicle. For what reason he could not have explained.

He had worked at Axiom almost since college. When he couldn’t find work in his field, with his philosophy degree from NYU, he had conceded that it would be difficult for him to find what he wanted. If someone had asked him in his more candid moments, he would have said that he hated claims, but he realised his options were limited. He often called himself an underachiever.

He knew that Melissa liked him. She would always ask him how he was doing. She showed interest in what he was reading. But he was afraid of disappointment and couldn’t bear to see another relationship end.

“I have that book for you,” he told her after his phone call. He reached inside his bag and removed the book titled, The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot. “I think you will especially like the chapter about coincidences.” He reached backwards and handed the book to her. “I’ll think about going out after work with you.”

“It will be fun,” she responded, as she took the book from him.

As had often happened with him, the mention of her brother’s nightmare triggered a memory for Liam. In a moment of recollection, he was sitting again next to the reporter from Virginia. They both were watching the young boy climb up his mother’s lap to look out the window. Liam had felt a strange lump in his stomach as though passing through a dangerous corridor and somehow remaining untouched. He shuddered a moment as his awareness returned to his present circumstances. He thought of Eckardt Tolle, of his philosophy of living in the “now.” He wanted to no longer live in a mundane prison of normalcy, where he felt confined. His supervisor Regina was standing behind them in his cubicle.

“I’ve been standing here almost 5 minutes, Mr McShane. It’s obvious that your mind is not on your work, that you’re somewhere else.” The timbre of her voice betrayed her anger.

“I am sorry. Things distracted me a few moments.”

“This doctors’ office has been calling me and saying that you haven’t returned their calls.”

“I left three messages for them.”

“Do this now,” she handed him a piece of paper.

“I will take care of it right away.”

She returned to her desk and he knew that she must have been keeping a tally of the number of times she had come to his desk.

“She seemed annoyed,” Melissa whispered to him.

“I don’t think she likes me,” he whispered back. “It’s not like it matters in the long run, whether I speak to these doctors. It’s not like we are going to pay them anyway.”

He picked up his phone, set the paper on his desk and dialled.

“Yeah, this is Liam McShane with Axiom Insurance. Yes, I got the billing for the July 11 visit. I still need the narrative report. Also, I don’t think you sent an assignment. Give me at least a week. Yes, sure. Goodbye.” He hung up the phone. “The these jobs, in insurance, in banking, in finance, in 90% of the white-collar offices are totally pointless. It’s just busywork.” He paused. “It would be nice to actually do something important, something life-impacting for a change.” He could sense from her expression that she was in complete agreement with him.

“I don’t want her coming over here again, because we’re talking,” He told her. He grabbed a stack of papers and set them in front of his keyboard.

“Long live useless paper,” he spoke with sarcasm as he lifted them up as an offering from his desktop.

He continued his mundane work until lunchtime. At 12 o’clock, he clocked out and left the office to eat something. Liam had grown accustomed to his routines. He walked the three blocks east to the Chinese restaurant, where he usually ate on Thursdays. For 15 minutes he read his book. For 15 minutes he ate chicken and vegetables. In the final 15 minutes, he took a small notebook from his pocket, as he had been doing for several weeks. He began looking for patterns and started writing down any odd coincidences that he happened to see around him. To his surprise, once he had started this exercise, he had been consistently finding coincidences. He was testing a theory about synchronicity, which had been growing and taking form before his mind’s eye. He believed he would soon have enough evidence to begin a bolder set of tests.

A young mother entered the restaurant with two small girls about four and five. She set the girls at a table near the front windows. One of the girls was wearing a yellow T-shirt that read, “HEAVEN.” Liam watched her fidgeting in her seat. He looked up a moment and he noticed a truck driving past the window with the word “HEAVEN” printed in large letters across its side. He wrote this down in his book as another one of his synchronicities. Every day for the past five weeks he had found at least one. On one extraordinary day, he had found more than 10. The question that kept repeating itself, was whether this was going on when he wasn’t paying attention?

He had always been cognisant of certain patterns in the world. He saw geometry and symmetry almost everywhere, beginning in childhood when he first recognised what shapes were. Triangles and circles and squares all seemed to burst into his consciousness, wherever he looked, even in the natural world. This was long before he learned about numbers and sounds or he understood music or speech. Through this exercise, he was becoming ever more aware of all the rhythms in his life.

He heard the young woman, several times say Amanda to one of the girls. With this name, he remembered his mother, who also shared the name, and who had died. She had once told Liam that his father was in heaven after his father’s early death. As his awareness focused intensely on his own childhood, he shrugged his shoulders and said to himself, “No. My memories are not synchronicity.” He closed the notebook and put it back in his pocket.

“How are you Liam?” a familiar voice startled him. He looked up and saw his old girlfriend Regina, standing near his table.

“So what are you doing here?” She asked him.

“I work near here.”

“My friend works not far from here. I was surprised to see you here.”

She looked over to her table where another woman was sitting. He didn’t recognize the other woman.

“As I am too.”

He looked at his watch and realised he had to get back to work.

“I wish I could talk more,” He told her, “but unfortunately I have to get back to work. I am usually here on Thursdays.”

He stood up from the table, grabbed his book and went to the cashier to pay his bill. He had 10 minutes to get back to the office. He almost ran the three blocks back. He turned around once more to look back and he could see Regina leaving the restaurant with the other young woman. When he returned to his desk, he took out his notebook and wrote in bold letters, “Ran into an old girlfriend, a little like heaven.” He also wrote the date April 6th beneath the words. In his life, April 6 had always had a special meaning for him. It was the day his father had died, the day he received his acceptance letter from NYU and the last day he had spoken to Stephanie Lancaster, his best friend at NYU.

After Liam returned to his desk, after seeing Regina at the Chinese restaurant, he seemed pensive. Melissa watched him as he struggled to return to his daily routines. She even asked him, “How are you doing, Liam? Is everything okay?”

He didn’t respond. He seemed to be lost in his own world.

Then he did the oddest thing. She watched him as he took a blank piece of paper from his desk and a pair of scissors from his drawer. He began to cut the paper into 1 inch wide strips, then he left eight of them lying on the desktop. Then he took the last strip and cut it a second time, laying the half-inch strips aside. Then he began to take each strip and taped them end to end. He put a twist in the last one. He taped the ends of the strips together. Melissa stared at him intensely, saying nothing as she watched. When he also taped the half-inch strips together also with a twist, she finally asked them, “What are you doing? You seem a little upset.”

“I am making Mobius strips,” he responded. “You know what they are?”

“I remember something about them from college.” She paused. “Did something happen at lunch?”

“I am a little upset. I ran into Regina?”

“Why the Mobius strips?”

“It’s topology.”

“I know about topology.”

“Jack Milnor at Stony Brook University has described the universe as a seven-dimensional sphere. Everything is essentially touching everything else, or more precisely like circles intersecting circles. Everything is in stasis if we could see the sphere in all its dimensions. I know that this three-dimensional world we experience every day is only an illusion. It’s like a dream and I just can’t stop the nightmares at three in the morning. I can’t change the structure of the sphere, nor my location in relation to anyone or anything else on it. Look at this piece of paper.” He held it up with both hands. “It has only two dimensions along the edges on each side and a continuous surface, which is both its front and its back. In a truly 3 Dimensional world, how can a two-dimensional object exist? How is that possible?” He tossed it to her. “I feel like my life is a damn Mobius strip. It just keeps coming back in a continuous loop and I can’t fix a thing.”

“You cared about this girl?”

“I thought I loved her. It’s not the first time for me either. I was happy during my senior year at NYU. The greatest year of my life and it all fell apart. Again I’m back on the loop and ready to go through other iterations.” He paused. “I have to work. I’d love to talk to you sometime about topology. Some believe it is the foundation of mathematics. Professor Milnor is a recognised leader in the field. I once considered getting a PhD in mathematics and studying under him at Stony Brook. It now seems a lifetime ago.” He paused again. “speaking of Regina. The other Regina is looking at us. I don’t want her coming back to my cubicle.”

He picked up a stack of papers to begin looking at them. Melissa wished she could help him. She wished that she could help her brother. For the rest of the afternoon, she stopped working periodically to watch and to listen to Liam. He seemed calmer as the afternoon progressed. By 3 o’clock his mood seemed to have improved. He seemed livelier in his discussions with the various providers. She realised, like Liam, she had the same impulse to fix things, but like so many others, she realised hadn’t a clue where to start.