The Knowing:
"This is American Stories. I’m your host, Moira Dickenson. Thanks for joining us. If you’re just tuning in, I’m speaking with Ben Wilder of Medical Lake, Washington. Three years ago Ben, his wife Cindy, and over five thousand of their family, friends, and neighbors were the unlikely recipients of detailed knowledge of the exact date and manner of their own deaths. That event has become commonly referred to in the media as ‘The Knowing.’ Today’s episode is part of a three-part series in which we follow residents of Medical Lake and how this new knowledge has affected their lives and relationships. Ben, welcome to the program.”
"My pleasure, Moira.”
"Ben, why don’t you take us back to March fifteenth, three years ago: the day you first learned how you would die.”
"Well, it was a Saturday afternoon. My wife, Cindy, and I were walking our dogs along the southern shore of the lake. There was an unseasonably warm wind coming from the west. The dogs started growling and whimpering like they’d seen a cougar or something across the lake. I got the shivers despite the warmth and Cindy turns to me and says, ‘April thirtieth, Ben. April thirtieth, a year from now. A year, Ben!’”
"So, you knew your wife had a year to live—before you realized how long you had?”
"Only because she’d spoken it out loud. I knew mine at the same moment. A date and a method just appeared in my head."
"Please remind our listeners, Ben, what is your specific date?”
"October twenty-third. Sixteen years from now.”
"And the method”
"Drowning.”
"What was that moment like for you? Finding that out?”
"You know when you’ve been waiting a long while to hear some really important news? You’re pretty sure the news isn’t going to be what you’re hoping for, but not knowing and waiting is worse than the outcome.”
"We’ve certainly all experienced that a couple of times.”
"So, you know the relief that comes afterwards—once you finally know. You may not like the outcome, but having an answer, finally, is better than just waiting.”
"You were relieved?”
"Well, I don’t think I would’ve used that word at the moment I found out, but I think, at some level, my caveman brain reacted to having some sort of control over uncertainty. People do really well when they understand a problem facing them—when they have knowledge of how to work something out. The wait was over and I knew about the problem facing me.”
"You were that certain? Didn’t you question what your brain was telling you?”
"No. I mean, I’ve had moments of doubt—I think everyone in town has. But at the moment I found out, I knew it like I know that my own eyes are brown. Besides, having people’s actual deaths happen like clockwork just like they knew they would makes the knowledge more certain.”
“What did you and your wife, Cindy, do when you knew you only had a year together?”
"Quit our jobs. Traveled to places we’d always wanted to see like Machu Picchu, the Grand Canyon, and…Venice.... Sorry.”
"It’s all right. Take your time.”
"It.... It was the happiest year we’d ever had together.”
"Did you and your wife ever try to prevent your deaths?”
"Well, everyone knows now that you can’t. No matter how hard you try.”
"Did you try?”
"No. We agreed not to waste what little time we had.”
"How did your wife die?”
"Lung cancer. It was very quick once our doctor found the tumor. I mean, we were looking for it all along, but she was completely cancer-free until a month before her death date. After that, it was…like someone hit the fast forward button.”
"How did other people react to your wife’s death date?”
"So many people ask me, ‘Did she smoke?’ They don’t realize how that sounds. I guess they get nervous and don’t know what else to say.”
"That’s sounds pretty accurate.”
"I mean, if your mother died of heart disease, I wouldn’t ask you, ‘Was she really fat?’”
"You said your last year with your wife was the happiest you’d ever had together. Tell us about how life was before ‘The Knowing’.”
"Well…about six months before we were…Cindy had…contacted a divorce lawyer. I’m what you could call a recovering workaholic. Cindy and I had drifted apart over the course of several years. I was putting in seventy to eighty hours a week. I was married to my job, not the vibrant, intelligent woman I met after grad school.”
"And ‘The Knowing’ changed that?”
"No, Cindy and I changed that. We could’ve taken the knowledge of our death dates, wished each other luck, and been on our merry ways. But we found ourselves involved in something way bigger than ourselves and way bigger than our petty quarrels and disagreements. I guess we knew we’d do better facing this thing together…just like we’d done when things were good.”
"So you reconciled?”
“We fell in love again!”
“Tell us about that moment.”
“We were in Venice—in the Campo San Barnaba. She was sitting on the steps of a storefront west of the Campanile. I framed her face through my Nikon and asked her, like I was a photojournalist, ‘So, Mrs. Wilder, what do you think of The City of Bridges?’ She gave me this wry smile that she was so good at and said—in perfect deadpan, ‘It’s beautiful. But, it’d be nice to be here with someone I cared about.’ Then she threw her head back and laughed out loud. I dropped the camera—luckily into my lap—and she leaned over and gave me the most passionate kiss I’d had from her in years.”
“That was the moment?”
“Yeah. That was the moment.”
“How did this understandably intense experience help you plan for the sixteen years you have in front of you?”
“It’s made me treat each and every day as if it were that same day back in Venice. As if—since I can’t share them with Cindy now—I want to revel in each one so I can give these days like they were beautiful gifts to her when I do see her again.”
“Wow! That sounds like a good plan for anyone’s life.”
“Absolutely! My death date has become almost like a goal for me. It’s like a deadline—get it?—or an appointment that I can mark on a calendar and plan ahead for. I can pin it down and deal with it, whereas I couldn’t before. I behave totally differently towards other people. I have knowledge of something that they never will.”
“That sounds very much like knowing the time and manner of your own death empowers you.”
“Exactly! I’ve stopped just going through life, working at a job I despise because I’m looking forward to retirement and then really living. Since I know how much time I’ve got, I can spend time really living right now! Think about those people who’ve been told they only have a few months to live: they start going through their bucket lists.”
“Gosh! How many sitcoms and movies have been made about that sort of thing?”
“Yeah! The supposedly terminal main character goes and tells his family, friends, and co-workers exactly what he thinks about them, only to find out he really isn’t going to die. He realizes he’s been more honest about his feelings than ever before. He’s told his boss and his brother-in-law that they’re jerks. He’s told his old flame from high school that he’s still in love with her. He was only holding back because he didn’t think there was this big countdown timer on his life. There’s always been a big countdown timer!”
“Fascinating! Well, that’s all the time we have today. My guest has been Ben Wilder, resident of Medical Lake, Washington and recipient of what’s being called, ‘The Knowing.’ Ben, thanks for speaking with us.”
“Thanks for having me.”
“Please tune in next time when we’ll be speaking with Dr. Visha Narang, a resident of Medical Lake, Washington and physicist at Gonzaga University in nearby Spokane. She’ll be sharing her own experiences, as well as her in-depth research into the causes and effects of ‘The Knowing.’ I’m your host, Moira Dickenson, and this has been American Stories.”
***
“We’re back. I’m Moira Dickenson and this is American Stories. Thanks so much for joining us. Today’s segment is the second installment of our in-depth look at the inland northwestern town of Medical Lake, Washington. Its five thousand residents were made privy to the date and manner of their own deaths—a phenomenon that’s become referred to as ‘The Knowing.’ Our guest today is Dr. Visha Narang, a physicist at Gonzaga University and resident of Medical Lake. I caught up with Dr. Narang at her university office in nearby Spokane. The physics department is on the second floor of Gonzaga’s Crosby Center, overlooking the Quad and the infamous ‘Wall’ which graduating seniors cover with farewell graffiti each year.”
“Hi Moira! Come on in.”
“Hello, Dr. Narang.”
“Please, call me Visha and have a seat. Let me move those papers for you.”
“Thank you. Visha, we’re going to ask you some different types of questions this time. Why don’t you start by telling us about why you’re one of the only working adults in Medical Lake who still hasn’t quit her job?”
“Ha! That’s not entirely true. There are a few emergency personnel who’ve stayed on to protect out-of-town-ers from getting hurt.”
“What about the school teachers?”
“Well, none of the teachers actually live in Medical Lake and, consequently, weren’t subject to ‘The Knowing.’ Since they don’t know how long they have, they didn’t feel liberated enough to quit their jobs. The only educator who was a Medical Lake resident was the Assistant Principal at the Middle School. She walked off the job the day The Knowing occurred and headed for Florida where I’ve heard she’s spending her remaining days as a singer in a night club.”
“But not you. Why?”
“I just thought it’d be better if I spent the ample years I have contributing to science.”
“No bucket list for you?”
“Ha! No. I was working on my bucket list long before ‘The Knowing.’”
“And how many years do you have?”
“Oh, yes, my death date! I have sixty-three years, after which I will die from heart failure at the ripe old age of ninety-five.”
“And how are you spending those sixty-three years?”
“I want to study the root causes and effects of ‘The Knowing.’ Where did it come from? Radiation from Hanford? An undetected solar flare? What does it tell us about our place in space/time? Did the event link the reality that we inhabit now with the reality that will inevitably move us to another plane or dimension of existence? Do these realities exist simultaneously and the event was merely a crossed radio frequency that tuned us all in to that heretofore unknown broadcast? Could we recreate it somehow? This work will contribute to a myriad of other science disciplines: Psychology, Neurology, Sociology, Biology, Physics, and a host of others.”
“It sounds as if Philosophy should be in there too.”
“Perhaps. Maybe this is just the first step in an ‘evolution of consciousness.’ Are we on the threshold of moving past a simply linear existence, to a higher, non-linear one?”
“To demonstrate her research, Dr. Narang takes me to a casino north of town and shows me a Pachinko machine. The game looks a lot like a slot machine but instead of rotating dials with fruit, the lever dispenses hundreds of tiny sliver balls. The game’s front is a disc-shaped board and the balls tumble down through a series of little pegs as they approach a drain-like hole in the bottom. I ask the doctor how this game ties into her studies over the cacophony of slot machines and video poker.
“So, Visha, these games are—what—Japanese? I see Japanese characters across the top.”
“Yes, Pachinko is wildly popular in Japan.”
“The object of the game is to shoot the balls through with just the right amount of force so they go into other holes located throughout the board, which give the player points for more balls or a cash payment.”
“Look, Moira: the falling balls and the amount of time it takes for them to drop through the pegs are like people and how long their lives take to elapse.”
“She pulls the lever and a little ball shoots up the left hand side of the machine.”
“You see? That one? He’s having a longer life than his peers. See how he bumps around on the pegs, taking his time?”
“Oh, yes, I see. The doctor shoots another ball.”
“Then there’s that one. He slid straight down the side and went right into the chute. A life cut tragically too short.”
“Maybe he was a smoker?”
“Maybe. Let’s see this one—Oh! He had a brush with death before his final day came. He slid by the bottom hole without going in. He rolled back up the curve before coming down again and finally into the chute.”
“How does this relate to Medical Lake, Visha?”
“Individual balls are easy to pick out the paths by themselves and see their timing. But when there are a lot of other balls dropping through the pegs...”
“Dr. Narang takes the handle of the machine and rapidly pumps it, making dozens of silver balls rocket into the machine where they tumble and bounce against each other on the way down.”
“...their movement is further impacted than it would have been by just the pegs alone. It’s as if the residents of Medical Lake were isolated from their peers so they alone could see their life paths clearly.”
“Fascinating!”
“This is the crux of my theory: have the residents of Medical Lake been shot through the machine, as it were—shot through life—as individuals, totally isolated from the influences of others?”
“Isolated in more ways than one.”
“Yes, indeed! Perhaps it is the communal manner that our lives progress among those of others that makes it impossible to know how long we have. Have the lives of these residents been displaced somehow? And, more importantly, is it for better or for worse?”
“Would the death dates of the Medical Lake residents be different if ‘The Knowing’ had never occurred? Are the dates determined because no other lives are acting upon theirs—because they’re isolated?”
“No. They’ve merely had their wave function collapsed by the presence of an observer.”
“Come again?”
“The passage of their lives—of our lives, I should say—can be likened to entangled photons that have been sent through the so-called Double Slit Experiment. Entangled photons are inextricably linked to each other. One traveling in one direction meets an interferometer and begins a horizontal spin pattern; at the exact same moment, its twin will execute the opposite spin pattern without being exposed to an interferometer and will even predict that behavior despite differences in the time of detection.”
“They mirror each other’s behavior, instantaneously, despite being separated?’
“They could be separated by the distance of galaxies and the mirroring is still instantaneous—it isn’t just instantaneous, it is superluminal!”
“Superluminal? You mean faster than the speed of light?”
“Exactly!”
“I asked Dr. Narang what her feelings were on March fifteenth three years ago—the day she experienced ‘The Knowing.’ We’re standing outside in the parking lot of the casino. There’s a warm westerly wind coming from the Columbia River Basin making it seem like summer is still holding on to this early autumn afternoon.”
“My moment of the ‘The Knowing’ can be described the same way I first experienced enlightenment. As a young woman at the University of Cambridge, I was sitting in a lecture on world religions. The professor was attempting to explain to a very diverse student body the concept of Buddhist enlightenment. In my twenties I had fallen away from my Buddhist faith as a scientist and as an Indian woman in the West. The professor used a very compelling exercise on us. He asked us to concentrate on our first thoughts and feelings at the precise moment he asked us his next question. Then he said, ‘What are you?’ I remember feeling a nanosecond of nothingness, like a blank sheet of paper. For an instant, I had no idea how to answer. What was I? Was I supposed to answer that I was an Indian? A student? A woman? A human being? It made the concept of no-mind—of giving your conscious self away to the vastness of the universe—suddenly palpable. I went back to temple the next day; I hadn’t been in over a decade. That was what ‘The Knowing’ was like for me.”
“Thank you for speaking with us today, Visha.”
“My pleasure, Moira.”
“You’ve been listening to American Stories, I’m your host, Moira Dickinson. My guest today has been Gonzaga University’s Dr. Visha Narang and her own personal account of ‘The Knowing’ in her home of Medical Lake, Washington. Next time I’ll be speaking with two brothers whose own experiences with ‘The Knowing’ are more intertwined than any other residents of Medical Lake. We do hope you’ll join us.”
*
“Thanks for listening, I’m Moira Dickinson and this is American Stories. Today’s segment is the third and final episode in which we interview residents of the town of Medical Lake, Washington. The over five thousand residents of this inland northwest town experienced an unknown phenomenon that gave them the knowledge of the exact date and manner of their deaths. This event, so-called ‘The Knowing’ happened exactly three years ago today. I’m joined today by brothers Mike and Lucas Shelby. These young men have a particularly unique situation in an already unique experience. Michael, Lucas, welcome to the program.”
“Thanks, Moira.”
“Pleased to be here.”
“Mike, why don’t we start with you? Please tell our listeners about yourself and your experience with ‘The Knowing.’”
“Sure thing. ‘The Knowing’ is like getting this movie scene playing out in your head. It feels like déjà vu, but it’s, y’know, your own death. It’s so real! Almost so real that I thought it was actually happening.
“So three years ago on March fifteenth Lucas and I were at the firing range. Probably the worst place we could’ve been when we found out I was going to accidentally get shot. The movie scene was made even more real by the smell of the gunpowder and the sounds of the firing range—the shots going off—pop! Pop! Pop! The rattle of the shells hitting the concrete. I seriously thought I was getting shot right then and there!”
“And you, Lucas? What was it like for you?”
“Mike’s right. It is like watching a movie of your own death. I could see myself as an old man—eighty-three years old—and I die of a brain aneurism. I was so distracted that I accidentally swung the muzzle of my Glock up-range. Right at Mike.”
“Which made Mike’s vision seem all the more real? Right?”
“Right.”
“And tell us, Mike, when will this accidental gunshot take place?”
“Seven years from now.”
“Let our listeners know how that gunshot is going to happen.”
“I’m going to do it.”
“You’re going to do it, Lucas?”
“Yes. In seven years, Mike and I will be cleaning our guns our hunting cabin. Mine will be loaded and go off in my hand and shoot Mike through his right temple. Kill him instantly.”
“Have you tried to stop it?”
“So many times. We tried selling our guns, but the sales would fall through. Lucas buried them once, but the next day they were back in the safe, covered in dirt, but back in the safe. I’ve tried throwing them in the trash, but the garbage company would always leave them on the curb. Then Lucas tried to commit suicide.”
“Tell us about that, Lucas. About the day you decided to try and avoid shooting your brother by taking your own life.”
“I couldn’t bear being the one who killed my big brother. I figured I could spare him if I took myself out of the picture. One day I just stepped into traffic.”
“And then what happened?”
“The cars just swerved around me. They honked and called me nasty names, but not one even came close to hitting me.”
“After Lucas tried that, we finally realized that we couldn’t stop it—no one could. Those specific dates we saw in our heads that day? Those dates have been ‘assigned’ to us. It’s like…we can’t die.”
“How has that affected your relationship?”
“Well, if anybody is going to accidentally shoot me, I’d want it to be my own brother. I’ve had a lot of time to think about that. And we’ve both spent a lot of time preparing ourselves and our families for the event. We’ve been busy making sure Lucas’ life after the shooting won’t be…won’t be as awful as it would’ve been if things had been…I don’t know…if things had played out—”
“Like it would be for other people with no prior knowledge? Normal?”
“Yeah, normal is a good word for it.”
“It’s made Mike and me closer because we know what we’re going to have to go through together.”
“But just because we’re unlucky enough to be tied up in this crappy accident doesn’t mean we can’t be Carpe Diem about the time we have.”
“And what have you two been doing with the time you have?”
“Skydiving!”
“Drag racing—Lucas will tell you that he’s the faster one.”
“I am faster! We also do bungee jumping!”
“Now, both of you also competed in this past year’s X-Games, didn’t you?”
“Yup. Michael is second in the nation in motocross and I’m on the backup team for Olympic snowboarding.”
“That’s pretty impressive considering you’ve only been competing for two years.”
“Well, when you know you can’t die, your confidence in your abilities tends to rise.”
“Yeah, you can concentrate completely on your technique when all the fear is gone.”
“Do you do any other high-risk activities?”
“Like making toast in the bathtub?”
“Aww, man! I should’ve tried that one! So much better than playing in traffic.”
“Our hunting trips have gotten more interesting. I took on a mountain lion last November. Took nothing with me but my Swiss Army knife.”
“Let’s talk about hunting, Mike. Specifically, the cabin on your parents’ property you and Lucas took me to. Could we go there now?”
“Oh yeah. It’s just a short walk out the back of the house.”
“Mike and Lucas’s hunting cabin at the back of their parents’ property in the woods north of Medical Lake. As the three of us walk through the woods, we come upon a small, one room log structure built in the salt-box style. A large covered front porch overhangs the front door, which faces southeast. A large river stone chimney rises from the middle of the north wall. A weathered pair of elk antlers are mounted under the peak of the roof.”
“Watch your step on the porch here, Moira. Have to replace those boards this season.”
“So, Mike, this is the cabin where you’re going to accidentally be shot?”
“Can anything you know for certain is going to happen really be called an accident? Yeah, this is the place.”
“Lucas, I see a lot of pictures of you and Mike and your parents. Not the usual decorations for a man cave.”
“Yeah, we started putting those in here last year.”
“And this wreath here on the mantle? Tell me about this, Mike.”
“That’s Lucas’s prayer wreath. You see these ribbons and cards and flowers we’ve woven into the branches?”
“What are those?”
“Those are from our family and friends telling Lucas how much they love him.”
“It reminds me of the crosses and wreaths that people place by the side of the road where a fatal accident occurred.”
“Yeah, like a memorial wreath.”
“But it’s for Lucas and not you, Mike?”
“Right.”
“Wouldn’t the memorial be for the person who dies?”
“Oh, I don’t need it. Lucas needs it.”
“Why is that, Lucas?”
“The best day since learning that I was going to shoot my brother was when we made the situation our own. We both were avoiding the cabin like it was infected or something after learning what was going to happen. Once we accepted the fact that we couldn’t change it, we decided to spruce the cabin up—make it a nicer place to die.”
“I put the pictures of the family in here. I want to see them when I go. The cards and flowers and stuff started flooding in from everyone for Lucas after they heard the news, so we decided to put them in here.”
“I guess you could say we took charge. We made the cabin and the situation ours.”
“Love you, little bro.”
“Love you too, Mike.”
“Mike, Lucas, thanks so much for sharing your experience with our listeners today.”
“Thanks for having us.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“I’m Moira Dickinson and this has been American Stories. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the program, please let us know at the station’s website, where you can find transcripts of the shows, as well as more in-depth interviews with our four guests. American Stories is a production of KYTT, Seattle, and is funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as listeners like you. Please join us next Sunday as American Stories explores the ever-increasing presence of robots in retirement homes. We do hope you’ll join us and thanks for your support.”