“Do you know what the difference is between probability and certainty is?” The young lady standing outside the Starbucks was young, maybe in her late teens, early twenties. She seemed harmless and since she was easy on the eyes, worth spending a few extra seconds with.
I sipped my iced latte and answered, “Probability is the odds that something will happen. Certainty is when those odds are 100% every time, no exception. Like the probability that I’ll be struck by lightning in the next 32 seconds is very, very low, but it could happen whereas if I drop my car keys they will always hit the ground, no matter what.” She smiled as if she had heard that question before and I had just make a rookie mistake or exposed my queen in chess.
“Both those things are true in the confined space of the 4 dimensions we experience. But what if I told you that science has not only located a 5th dimension but that 5th dimension is malleable. It can be manipulated. Made to run forwards and backwards, up and down, inside and out. It makes everything a certainty and everything a probability of zero, or 100 percent if you know what you’re doing.
I expected her to ask for a donation to her yogi, or Zen master any second. I was raising my hand to cut the conversation short when she smiled and slid a coin across the table. It had an outer ring in silver and an inner circle of gold. I gave her a puzzled look. “the outer ring represents the world as we want others to see it, the 3 dimensions plus time. The inner circle represents the new fifth dimension, one where possibility and probability collide. If Freud were a theoretical physicist he’d refer to the two rings as the persona, and the Id. If you turn the Id counter clockwise you lessen the effect of the practical, precise and measured world.“ She reached forward and slid it closer to me, then spun on her heels and disappeared out the store door.
The coin had no markings on it, nothing to line up or anything to indicate where to begin. I held the coin and holding it firm in one hand twisted the inner part to the left, about a quarter turn. It turned effortlessly. I tried to turn it back but it would not budge. Counter clockwise only. Looking around I didn’t see anything different. The trees were still green, my keys still hit the ground as Newton predicted and I had yet to be hit by lightning. I finished my latte and headed for the office a few blocks west.
Half way to the office, I pulled out the coin again and gave it another quarter turn, then I flipped the coin over and tried to turn it back. Only counter clockwise no matter which face was up. Getting bored I gave the coin about 3 or 4 full turns. If lightning could strike me in this narrow sidewalk in this urban canyon, more power to it. When I got to the office, I couldn’t find my swipe card to get the security door open. No one at the security desk recognized who I was so I walked out of there before the cops were called. Looking around I watched a leaf fall from a nearby tree, only it fell so slowly, in about twice the normal time – taking a minute instead of 3 seconds to fall. I pulled the coin out of my pocket and gave it several more turns than dropped my car keys. They’re falling still.