Upsurge

Copyright © 2005, 2006 by John Teton.

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ISBN-13: 978-0-595-39391-6 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-67702-3 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-83790-8 (ebk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-39391-8 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-67702-9 (cloth)

ISBN-10: 0-595-83790-5 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 03/11/2013

Contents

Preface & Acknowledgments

1

2

3

Upsurge And Appearing Live At The Final Test

Praise For Appearing Live At The Final Test

About The Author

PREFACE & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The notes for Tyler Fox’s unexpected discovery of apparent brainwavelike, low-frequency electromagnetic earthquake precursors on the San Francisco peninsula at the time of the Loma Prieta quake were written months before Stanford University Electrical Engineering Professor Tony Fraser-Smith published his account of having made such a discovery at that time and place, and two years before I first heard of him and his work. Afterwards, however, Prof. Fraser-Smith did play an important role by informing me about the science associated with his findings. I am grateful to him, to Walter Arabasz at the University of Utah, and to all the other scientists who assisted me with my research and reviewed the manuscript. None of them is responsible for any scientific inaccuracies or far-fetched conjectures in this book.

I am much indebted to Michael Ray Allison for his most generous investment of artistic skill in co-designing the book’s cover. Additional helpful sources of research and photographic elements in the design process included John Walker’s Earth and Moon Viewer, NASA, the Space Science Telescope Institute, and the Defense Meteorological Satellites Program.

Deep thanks are due the many who provided comments on the manuscript, especially Jordan Belson, Roger Bradley, Chamys Crane, Lucille Day, Gwen Gordon, Anna Hollenbach, Debo Kotun, Craig Lambert, Margaret Lauer, Gurney Norman, Yoko Ono, Janet Poppendieck, Roberta Pollack Seid, Eric Smith, Tyler Volk, and Robert M. Young. Among others who contributed to the project in various ways are Nancy Teton Gordon, Rhonda Parks Manville, Chuck Matthei, Mari Olson, Susan Pearlson, Fran Setbacken, Laura Sacks, Amartya Sen, Daniel Zwerdling, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

The evolution of Upsurge and Appearing Live at The Final Test has been fueled by the love of my parents, Joseph and Shirley; my children, Sage (who triggered Leanna’s epiphany), Ben, and Zoe; and my wife, Jennifer. My appreciation of them is beyond the scope of thanks.

for

the action-takers

Upsurge

1

Yes, it hurts to leave San Francisco on such a night, but what a stunning way to go. Seen from a window in a 777, there’s no hiding our mass infatuation with the Bay Area, the way we’ve draped diamond-studded silks of light over the curves of her thousand-square-mile landscape. Her beauty’s so intoxicating, we overlook her potential for sudden fits convulsing with the energy of thousands of Hiroshima bombs.

Ah, well—I shouldn’t start off this flight frazzling over our foibles. I’ll have more than enough time this week to think about dealing with earthquakes. Having just launched myself on a round-the-world, highspeed data chase, a moment of centering to get my bearings would be well advised. It’s 8:53 on Christmas Eve, and a few minutes after takeoff, at 12,000 feet and rising, we’ve completed the turn south from San Francisco International, headed toward the equator. I’ll see the sun next rising over Lima, Peru.

Unfortunately, Dr. Fox, your data summary is incomplete.

Great—talking to myself isn’t enough, I’ve got an alter ego horning in. But the point is well-taken: a full report should account for the whereabouts of my mind, which is currently stretching thousands of miles from Berkeley, where I left home in unexpected disarray two hours ago.

All the more reason to sit back and calmly review the mental playback of the whirlwind that flung me into these skies. This is a turning point in my life, no question, intensified by the real possibility that it could mark a turning point for the world as well, at least for the hundreds of millions of us living along earthquake faults. For someone who’s devoted as much dream time and research as I have to the quest of belling seismic monsters, it’s a thrill to get this expedition off the ground. It’s just unfortunate that conditions at home tonight don’t quite allow for unalloyed joy. I have to admit the timing of this trip is less than desirable.

Really? What’s undesirable about leaving your wife pregnant and alone on Christmas Eve with a five-year-old and worries as to the whereabouts of your teenaged daughter?

There’s no call for distress, much less sarcasm. Leanna just left the house less than four hours ago, and Gwen is fine—she’s a rock. The woman grew up on a Wyoming ranch. She’s soldiered on in tougher challenges a hundred times. She’s not due for weeks, I’ll be back in seven days, and if she needs some hands-on reassurance, she’s got Vera right next door—her neighbor, best friend, and midwife. Can’t beat that.

Besides, getting worked up over Leanna’s getting worked up isn’t going to help any of us. The best thing I can do this week to help smooth out matters is to maintain perspective. That’s why I prize this window seat so much—what more thrilling tonic could there be than the sight outside this window?

It is dazzling out there, the millions of lights tucked up against the dark coastal hills. Feels strange to gaze down on that peninsula ridge, en route to Asia, carrying the new magnetoscope three miles over my test site where it all began, knowing that, because of what happened there in one minute in 1989, a small spot in that vast darkness could someday become as famous as Kitty Hawk.

No one who was in the Bay Area at that moment will ever forget it, but my memory for detail has the priceless aid of an historic videotape. Lucky thing I scooped up the old clunky camcorder on the way out the door with Leanna that afternoon—I just thought the ride over the bridge to my lab site would give me some fun daddy-daughter time and a chance to catch up a little on documenting the life of a toddler not yet two years old.

I would like to know where the hell Leanna is right now. When she left the house I was sure she’d be back in an hour or two. I get the part about teenagers having touchy moments, but taking off on Christmas Eve is a bit much. I guess I’m getting a dose of first-child surprise: apparently their spending more time away from you only increases the time you spend with them in your mind. There was a lot less anxiety when Leanna was little and she was under our complete control. She was such an angel back then. I treasure that tape as much for the imagery of her as for what it documented for science, and that’s turned out to be treasure indeed.

Thank God I left the camcorder running on the tripod once we got to the ridge and went about my business, inspecting the old magneto-graph. Such dramatic serenity that fall afternoon: a gorgeous blue sky, the fog bank beginning its celestial cresting at the top of the ridge, everything quiet as heaven except for the sportscasters on the portable radio hyping the World Series and the chirps from Leanna as she mimicked the bobolinks in the cage as I fiddled with the sensors on their heads. I love it where she’s doting on them with her rich blue eyes peeking out from under her bangs, working out the code to declare, Birdies!

In the background you see freeways, bridges, skyscrapers, and homes to millions relishing the San Francisco Bay high, blissfully ignoring our constant vulnerability. I wasn’t thinking about it, that’s for sure, even though I was staring at its calling card without understanding it. You can see the puzzlement in my face, when I notice the spike storm on the graph and the rise in the birds’ pulses of more than fifty beats per minute. Leanna’s flapping her arms, hoping I’ll appreciate her having just shape-shifted into a bobolink, but I’m muttering, What the hell? Then, torn between the signals and Leanna, I go behind the camcorder to capture her spreading her wings over the bay while, second by second, as the real birds get more frenzied, Leanna’s hair starts to stick out from her scalp and her face gets white and worried. Sensing that something is going seriously awry, I reappear in front of the camera, hustling over to grab Leanna, and just as I reach her, we’re shaken off balance. The equipment cabinet and the tripod tumble over, and from the lopsided composition on the tape you can see a squirrel thrown from a tree as cars screech on the freeway. I hide Leanna’s eyes from the sight of the lake sloshing over the rim of the reservoir, as if she’d understand what that meant. Then the sportscasters from Candlestick Park are cut off, and I dread the worst. I’m calming Leanna and myself, hoping Gwen is safe at home, and all the while the old VHS records epic footage of seismicity in action, with 05:04 P.M. 10.17.89 electronically etched into the corner.

When the shaking stops, I take Leanna with me to pick up the camera and begin panning around the area. There’s that dazed guy stumbling out of his car stopped on the road down below, hollering to another driver, Man, did you feel that tingly shock? I thought I was being electrified!—little does he know how far the ripples of that zing will spread. When the baseball guys come back on the air in a panic, shooting me with a fear that maybe Berkeley and Gwen have taken a bigger hit than we did, I shut down the camera so I could get Leanna and me back over the Bay Bridge, not yet realizing the quake had broken it apart.

It’s been a long journey from that day to this. Returning to grad school to molt from biophysics to geophysics, raising money to outfit the site as it took on the name and mission of Geosignal, wrassling with skeptics in the International Geophysical Association, and now flying with this incredible new device right over that same spot of Earth which some day just might be outfitted with a bronze historical marker.

We’re about halfway from San Francisco to San Jose. The site must be right below us on the ridge.

That was weird. Thought I saw a blue flash down there, out of the corner of my eye. Right about where the site is, actually. A soft little burst, a cross between Bunsen burner-blue and the color of that runway light I scrounged from a sympathetic airport supply factory clerk when I was eighteen. Must have been some power line sparking.

Whoops—gotta watch those quickie explanations for unexpected phenomena. Otherwise, how am I any different than the uptight sentries of the IGA who shoo away my evidence for electromagnetic quake precursors? Maybe I should show them some sympathy for their reticence. It’s a trained instinct. With weapons of dismissal and scorn, we academy-groomed samurai stand ready to defend the shogunate of scientific consensus against threats from the unknown. Apparent anomalies indicate nothing more than known phenomena for which we lack sufficient data.

Yeah, but the history of science shows that the presence of mystery causes consensus to grow too rigid for its own good. Solving the mystery of EM quake precursors is going to require some consensus-busting.

But let’s leave blue flashes to some other buster, shall we? How much of that can a guy’s intellectual equilibrium handle? Already today I’ve got enough anomalies on my plate. I can’t afford to get sucked into the mystery of every errant flash of light I see out an airplane window.

And let’s not charge the IGA with attitudinal ossification: it took them more than a decade, but they did finally let me play their main stage for ten minutes this fall, and I’m in no position to sniff at a sign of genuine respect from my peers, no matter how grudging. That gig was a major achievement, which can’t be taken away.

I remember the flutters of the night before, and the pride and advance heat of the spotlight as I read the program again on the desk in the bedroom:

October 17-18

International Geophysics Association

Fall Seismology Session

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

University of California at Berkeley

—beneath which, about half-way down the page, the words I’d waited a decade to read:

GEOMAGNETIC INDICATORS FOR SEISMICITY

Dr. Tyler Fox, Asst. Professor, Dept. of Geophysics

University of California, Berkeley

I remember breathing deeply and quoting the old New Yorker cartoon under my breath, It’s ‘Yipes—grownups’ time. Gwen assured me I’d do fine, and indeed by the time I took the podium the next day, I was in high gear. Whatever theatricality I’d absorbed hanging around the Boston Street Theater when Gwen was still acting I’d put to use many times at various hazardous checkpoints. It helped me convince myself that I was so clearly on the right track that any vegetables thrown at me would be signs of the throwers’ blindness.

Thus pumped, I stepped solo into IGA spotlight, with the creme de la geophysical creme checking me out with pointed, cautious interest. This was not an objective audience. Seismologists can’t be sure how it will affect them if my work bears fruit. It would elevate the whole field of earthquake prediction to unprecedented heights of status and unlock floodgates of funding, but it’s also bound to render certain tradition-bound researchers, as the British say, redundant.

Next to my empty seat on the panel sat Marcial Velasquez, our esteemed, graying department chair, whose brilliance and kindness radiated through his snapping dark eyes to the back of the hall. Our television-anointed department star, Karl Shaeffer, sat smugly enthroned on his other side. At the far end was my bedrock of support in the community of geophysicists, Ivan Kanderian, of Yerevan Polytechnic Institute in Armenia. I was making my case, whether they, I, or the project were ready or not.

I’d rehearsed my riff, alternating roles of researcher and public relations officer, until I thought I could affect smooth confidence. Casual, but expert with an edge. To acquit myself, I just had to get through some six hundred seconds without screwing up.

I hit the sweet spot with that video from the Loma Prieta quake, my lucky break resulting from others’ tragically unlucky break. Up on the big screen I froze a frame showing my humble little ridge lab with the spectacular view, about seven seconds before the shock hit. I’d already explained how I’d been tracking odd growing signals without understanding their significance weeks before the quake, while doing research as a Stanford biophysicist investigating power line effects on animal brains, before I’d ever dreamt of delving into geophysics. I digitally zoomed in on the mag field meter, the frenzied birds, their EEGs, and Leanna’s hair, pointing out that all these electrostatic and geomagnetic effects were documented prior to and throughout the quake—which then unspooled in awesome, horrific splendor.

Zoomed in to the Bay Bridge at one thousand times magnification, my old home VHS camcorder’s low res lines splatted their fat pixels across the screen, but image enhancement enabled everyone to see all too well how a chunk of one of the world’s longest bridges broke in two, dumping a car and its driver like a pinball down the fail chute, and, far worse, how the upper level of the Cypress freeway collapsed, section by section, making a mile-long submarine sandwich of human meat and automobile trimmings, with a few specks leaping over the side. It was strong medicine, sparking gasps from more than a few of my academic brethren.

I then related how I’d gone back to school in Earth Sciences at Cal to get a handle on all this, how I’d determined to search for underground stress-generated signals with liquid helium-cooled superconducting quantum interference devices, and how I’d struggled to put a limited partnership together to finance the Geosignal project by the summer of 1997.

I wrapped it up by projecting slides of the Skyline Ridge test site as it’s equipped today, and of the similar setup Ivan and I have in place at the Armenia site, 100 kilometers northwest of Yerevan. I described our strategy to apply signal-to-noise separation algorithms to lift aberrant signals from the mag field data, to determine whether they might be generated by underground stress, and to secure funding for more sensitive magnetometers to place at fifty sites worldwide, including deep-bore locations undersea in places like the Mariana Trench. In an offhand manner I referred to the recent Skyline recording of a sharp rise at and around 7.7 Hz, the band active prior to the San Francisco quake, and concluded with the observation that the sooner we could adequately monitor and interpret such spikes, the better for the billion people living near earthquake zones.

Marcial called for questions, and someone rose out of the crowd of five hundred to ask, Did you just make a veiled prediction of an imminent quake for the Bay Area?

I replied matter-of-factly, No, I was just pointing out that we have gotten signals which are similar, though not identical, to the ones we’ve already targeted as possible quake precursors. With the right application of technology, we should be able to resolve such uncertainties and to rule out other sources of signal confusion, including satellites, cellular radio, and cosmic radiation. Until we can confirm a precise pattern for quake precursors, we’ll have a judgment call to make weighing alternative explanations for these signals against the risks involved in not alerting millions of people to a potential catastrophe.

Another disembodied voice asked me if it were true that I’ve been studying animal brains in these installations. I informed him—and thus any critics or funders lurking about—that I was using my own funds to look for neurological responses to potential electromagnetic quake precursors, a little curiosity sideline, in the interest of leaving no stone unturned, on account of my background in biophysics and the curious finding that these geomagnetic signals happen to lie in the same band as brain waves. I could feel a skeptical smirk from Karl Shaeffer right through my back, but I forged ahead. After the ‘95 quake in Japan, Motoji Ikeya and his team subjected rats to acoustic emission electromagnetic waves through 500-ton compression of granite, basalt, and marble, and they found enhanced in-vivo noradrenaline levels in the brain. I’m interested in measuring brain wave variations in the field in the run-up to an actual quake. The data I’ve had since Loma Prieta will take on a lot greater significance if similar phenomena occur in another quake.

After Marcial adjourned the session, he nodded to me and said, Nice work, Ty. I told him I appreciated it, and I think he understood how much. I still can’t tell where Marcial stands on all this, but he always finds the time to add a grace note like that to the music of the moment. He remembers how much difference each grain of support means to someone who feels like he’s starting out in geophysics, especially to someone more than twenty years older than everyone else who’s starting out. Especially to someone who clings to the story of Louis Leakey’s ultimate vindication after thirty years of fruitless digging for bones in the Olduvai Gorge as if it were a lifesaver, someone who just wants to contribute something to help solve the mystery of how the world works.

Get a grip, man. Play out the story.

As Marcial turned to the shakers and movers surrounding him, up bounded Ivan. It was such a relief to see him. The guy’s lived in a different hemisphere for most of his forty-two years speaking a language I don’t know, and yet I feel as if he’s been my closest musketeer ally for a lifetime. I relished the refreshing Armenian passion in his post-game wrap-up.

Perrrfect, Tylerovich, excellent! They were bolted!

You mean riveted, I hope.

Bolted, riveted—respected! You’re making headway!

More with some heads than others.

Don’t be nervous about the nervous and the doubters. You can’t grow science without turning up such people. Now what you should pay attention to is this: I’m getting my Japanese friends to apply their new fuzzy logic software to data streams recorded from patients who received magnetoencephalograms during earthquakes.

I’m sure he could read my hesitation like a headline. This scheme was a natural to set off my warning buzzer for things that meet my definition for fuzzy logic, which applies to his oddball predilections for Kirlian photography and telepathy. But I could hardly be disdainful, especially after he’d just displayed such courage backing me on the afternoon’s panel. Plus, I could be generous. Who knew? Maybe he had a good reason to look into this. I donned a lighthearted smile and said, Gee, Ivan, I’m not sure where you’re going with that. Even if humans show greater sensitivity to the precursors than the birds and rabbits, I don’t think people are going to put cranial earthquake warning headgear on their Christmas gift lists.

Humor me, Tylerovich, he barreled on. This is basic science. You said it yourself: brain waves and quake precursors have similar frequency ranges, so it can’t hurt to obtain data that might help us distinguish between them. Besides, the human brain is nature’s most magnificent instrument—we must take advantage of every opportunity to understand it, no?

I’m not sure about every opportunity.

Just tell me you’ll help us access American medical data banks, eh? For old times’ sake.

I put my arm on his shoulder and said, For you, Ivan, almost anything. Even this. I do owe Ivan a lot, though his interest in so-called paranormal phenomena has sometimes made me embarrassed about being associated with him. In weak moments that association has made me doubt the validity of my own work. I’ve often wished he could break free of it, thinking that with his brilliant panache for science, he’s like a guy who could be a Tom Cruise-grade movie star but for an unpredictable facial tic. I admit that for one silly moment today, in the scope’s feverish first few hours of life, I did wonder about the possibility of brain wave artifacts interfering with its display. Plus, there’s no question that his goofy, serendipitous Kirlian experiment did trigger a major design feature for the scope, but those are the harmless sparks of creative thinking. Ivan is investing a lot in psychic research and I doubt he’ll ever find one nugget of valid science in that wasteland. But he sure is a shining light in seismology, and I hope we live to hear applause for his scientific achievements as well as for whatever I might be credited with. I’m certain that in time we’ll emerge triumphant with these signals, but the proving grounds between now and then are rough terrain, and the value of such an intelligent and loyal compadre can’t be overstated. Notwithstanding the clichés of stardom amnesia, if I ever break through to the upper echelon of science, my memory for gratitude will blow people away.

But perhaps we’ll all be blown away. Notice the billboard by the airport?

PREPARE—THE BIG ONE IS COMING REV. 16:16-19

They must have been pretty frightened by earthquakes back in Biblical times.

Right: those dumb primitives. Why, our knowledge is so advanced that here in the Bay Area we’ve built a skyscraper megalopolis of seven million people right on one of the biggest known fault systems in the world in less than a geological eye blink since the magnitude 8.6 quake of 1906. And fault-ridden L.A.—that’s where the really smart kids went for a career in city-planning.

Talk about the need not to know, Dr. Bettelheim. How about the need not to think about what you do know? That may be an ultimate, fatal flaw in the design of the human brain. A species that lets its survival instinct atrophy is headed for fossilhood.

As for not knowing things of importance—soon it will be 10 P.M.: Do you know where your daughter is?

I’ve had a discomfiting rattle in the back of my mind ever since we left, a gnawing sense that if Leanna doesn’t return pretty damned soon, the story of this week could leave earthquake prediction far behind, that even a master blaster shakeup might seem tame compared to whatever Gwen and I might have to deal with. I’ve always loved Leanna’s fiery nature, associating it with the brilliant color and energy of fireworks. Problem is, fire in any form can be unpredictable and dangerous. Being moody at the upper cusp of fifteen is one thing, but Leanna’s hypersen-sitivity to the problems of the outside world has been growing seriously worrisome ever since Thanksgiving. I don’t know where it’s leading her. Or us.

Probably she’s hooked up with a girlfriend somewhere, maybe Candace. That’d be good; Candace can talk her down. I expect that in seven hours Leanna will probably be sulking at home and I’ll be standing on the equator on my cell giving Gwen a few warm strokes and a feel-good told-ya-so. I hope.

There’s the tail end of San Jose—so long, great bay. I wonder if this is what those guys in Apollo 8 felt like when they saw the Earth slip away.

Leanna? Where are you, kiddo?

Max’s leg twitched—he must have drifted off to sleep about ninety seconds ago. He was wiped out after waiting up for me to get back from taking Ty to the airport. It didn’t hurt that I’d started to drift off myself and substitute free-association nonsense for what was supposed to be talking-animal dialogue in the story I was reading to him. Now, except for his rat and the fish in the aquarium, I’m alone in consciousness around here and pretty wiped out myself.

But, while I’m on a bed, I’m not resting. Not mentally. My mind is buzzing with questions about how we’re going to keep it together. I was feeling ragged enough carrying around a seven-pound, minus-three-week-old while cheering up a five-year-old about his father missing Christmas and trying not to get too rattled by the pile of unpaid bills, and now comes the silence of a fifteen-year-old out on her own who knows where? That brat.

Now, now, I should keep an even keel, as Vera would say. Can’t get capsized by life’s little splashes. My husband is ten seconds away by phone, my daughter is undoubtedly just having some fleeting teenage fit, and nothing—not even our faith in Ty’s research—is going to put us out on the street. This is a straightforward case of pregnancy blues. I should recognize that by now, this being the third time around. It’s one of the little aspects of pregnancy that makes me want to tap God politely on the shoulder and say, Hey, Eve ticked you off, not me, and that was way more than seven generations ago!

But, let’s think positively. As Vera says, pregnancy is character-building, Nature’s training for hanging in there. God’s no sadist. (I reserve the right to abandon that opinion during labor.)

Vera’s such a doll. I don’t know what I’d do without her. The first time I met her, when we came to take a look at the house, I knew having such a fine woman as a neighbor would be a major motivation for putting down roots here, but I had no idea how quickly we’d become so close. She’s ten years younger, plus she’s black, and even in Berkeley you don’t find friendships this deep so often between neighbors of different races (or of the same race, for that matter). Even if Leanna and Candace hadn’t grown up together and become tight pals too, I’m sure Vera and I would have clicked. And now, as my nurse-midwife in her third tour of duty with me, she’s become a huge part of my life.

Argh. I was thinking how great it is to have someone next door to commiserate with about living with female high school sophomores and then I remembered that I don’t know where mine is. It must be almost eleven o’clock. I wish I’d called more of Leanna’s friends before it got this late.

Leanna’s teenagehood has heightened my appreciation of what the parents of my students go through, not to mention what I put my own mother through twenty-five years ago—all right, twenty-eight—but I never pulled a stunt like walking out on Christmas Eve. How in blazes did it all get this far?

Let’s work that through. Thesis and evidence. Time to practice what I preach.

I don’t have a thesis. I have an upset stomach and a choked-up throat.

Then, I’d better find a thesis, damn it. I’ve got to understand what’s going on with that girl. When did her fall begin?

The night before Thanksgiving, obviously.

No, that crash was inevitable once the kids got on their crusade. For that, we can thank CNN’s cornucopia of poverty news. I should have forbidden the kids to watch that channel on the Utah bus.

That’s a good attitude for a social studies teacher.

Well, I just wish we had some warnings before they broadcast these traumatic scenes of destitution and starvation to children.

These kids don’t need any warnings. Those who aren’t living it themselves have known about poverty from their first trip downtown to the movies, when they had to step around winos in the gutter. Most of the kids let the CNN story roll off their backs.

And that’s a good thing?

No, but neither is what’s happened to Leanna.

Let’s calm down, get in lesson plan mode. A thoughtful review might help determine what went wrong and what to do about it. Go over the Utah trip. Or maybe even start two nights before that, when