A lesson from father to son

"A child learns by repetition," said Oliver Fisher to his son Jacob.

They strolled leisurely down the halls of the police precinct building, each step carrying them a dozen feet or more as guards rushed to keep up. The dizzying speed of the walls and doors approaching and receding didn't seem to bother the pair as they continued their conversation.

"If the child transgresses the law of his parent, the child is corrected. Physical pain, or psychological, is brought to bear as often as the wrong act is repeated, and soon the child learns to associate the two and, normally, to avoid both by doing what the parent has directed."

Jacob nodded in understanding with his father's wisdom, not even feeling the bullets that would have struck him in the back had the wind of his passing not diverted their path ever so slightly.

"Nature," continued Oliver, "has learned the same way - Repetition. The same things have always been done, and nature has learned to play along. Gravity always pulls things down, like charges always repel, energy flows from hot to cold, and the earth orbits around the sun. This is the way things always are. Look in any physics textbook and the definition of all of the so-called "Laws of Nature" are that they are not laws but just carefully codified descriptions of the way things have worked so often that we assume they will always work that way."

Here he stopped both talking and walking, and his son Jacob stood next to him. Before them was an electronically locked door that separated the holding cells from the front lobby. It was a double door, electronically locked and monitored by a closed-circuit camera from the front desk. At the front desk sat Detective Laughlin, manning the position for Officer Redmond who had - still flawlessly acting out his role as the clichèd movie cop - stepped away for a cup of coffee.

"But what you must learn is that nature, like a child, can be re-educated. It is not an easy process but our oldest Mentors and Teachers have studied the way, and...well let me give you an example. Electromagnetic radiation follows the same pattern it always has as it is generated by the lights above, reflects off of our faces, and travels into the lens of the camera up there in the corner. It travels with a certain frequency and it excites the electrons in the camera circuit to move with the same frequency and communicate that frequency to the circuit of the television monitor sitting in front of Detective Laughlin. That monitor emits radiation of the same frequency, affecting his eyes just as they would be affected if the radiation reflected from us had entered his eyes directly. In short, he sees through that monitor exactly what stands in front of this camera. As long as Nature follows its well-learned "laws". But if it were to do something different, our fedora-sporting nemesis may never know the difference. He may even see...

Officer Redmond stared out of the monitor when Detective Laughlin looked up at the sound of the buzzer. The intense expression gazing through the small tv screen still communicated the gravity of the words that were heard over the intercom.

"Detective I need you to get in here right away. There's been a disturbance - it's Fisher. I think you know we'll need all the help we can get."

"Sir, I didn't expect you back so soon!" exclaimed a surprised Laughlin, wondering what could've gone wrong since he left Fisher only a few minutes ago. And something wasn't right about Redmond's voice...Confusedly he began, "and your voice sounds funny, Officer - " but he was cut off by an angry bark from the small speaker.

"Are you going to sit on your lazy ass and argue over this crappy speaker system or are you going to get in here and find out what you did wrong with Fisher?"

Hesitating at first but then remembering the officer's famous temper he bolted from his seat, buzzing the door open as he grabbed his weapon and burst through the unlocked portal, hardly even noticing the two figures that didn't follow him down the hall, but proceeded calmly through the open doorway and out into the lobby. Making sure that the electronic lock secured the door back in place, Jacob Fisher followed his wise old father unnoticed out the front doors of the precinct and onto the sidewalks of a cold forbidding city.

Meanwhile behind them, a confused Detective Laughlin met up with Officer Redmond and the other cops coming the other way, still chasing the escapees. Slow realization dawned - a memory, an image that hadn't registered consciously but now rose from his subconscious like two ghosts watching him rush past in his hurry to correct his mistake - and he said "Officer Redmond, you've been here how long? Then who...who did I just let walk out the front door?"