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It is one thing to merely talk exploratively about a newly discovered principle and to probe its practical potential like one might probe the potential of establishing a spaceport on the moon as a base for reaching out into the galaxy. That too is theoretically possible. The numerous principles that would make this possible have all been discovered. However, it is quite another thing when one is demanded to stand up for the recognized potential and put it into practice. Naturally mankind would gain tremendous advantages the setting up a base on the moon, even if it was for nothing more than to mine its helium-3 resources that are plentiful there, which could meet mankind's energy needs for 100,000 years.
The challenge that Fred put onto the table seemed to be equally complex. The challenge had to be carried in a land that had a reputation to be rigid in its traditions, mysterious, immovable, being laced with inhumanity and horrendous tragedies, and hopeless poverty. That's how I saw India.
Suddenly, our discovered truth that was easily uttered with boasting in conversation, speaking of grand possibilities in future ages, was suddenly put forward by Fred as a challenge for the present. What he suggested appeared like an act of folly, like sticking one's neck above the trenches in times of war, or in my case, into the flow of life in a manner that no one had ever tried before. Fred presented that kind of a challenge. He didn't say this time, as he often did, that shying away from the challenge wasn't an option. Still, he had his ways of making that understood.
Over the years Fred's visits had become fewer. He came seldom now to Ross' coastal surveillance outpost where we all lived. Ross' overgrown log house on a cliff by the sea, near to our own home, had often been our gathering place in the past. But the occasions became fewer over the years. Fred's visits, too, had likewise become fewer and quite rare in the last years. It was hard to consider of them now as a tradition, which they once were. The tradition had ended.
The reason should have been plain to us. There was nothing happening anymore in our neck of the woods. We were no longer the driving force pushing the leading edge of a movement to uplift the world. Those days were gone. Naïve as we once were we had been determined to uplift civilization. How silly of us! We had stopped short and failed and drifted into a rut. And so, in our rut, our life had become dull. Our thinking seemed to have ground to halt, except for that one spark that came with Ross' discovery. We had been stuck in a rut, and we knew it; and then suddenly something bright was on the horizon.
It was plain to see that Fred had kept his distance once our advances that had marked the past where no longer maintained. Perhaps we stopped, because the advances required too much effort. We had let them go. It became evident too late then that if one isn't moving ahead one begins to regress. By the time we realized that it seemed impossible to reverse the trend. Whatever we had achieved had crumbled into dust over the years. Fred was aware of that. A blind man would have noticed that we had gone backwards and regressed even below the level that we started from.
Now something was moving again. Since the days of Ross' discovery something was in the air again, something that seemed surreal in the way it presented itself, but it held a promise for great things.
Fred had been made aware of Ross discovery. He had been concerned of course, with our drifting into a rut, but he too seemed unable to figure out what precisely had caused us to get stuck, and he seemed even more baffled by what was now stirring us up again. Had he sensed that Ross' discovery held the answer to something that had evaded all of us for reasons of not knowing where to find the principle for the next step?
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