Stephen Hawking Interview, Exclusive and Unfiltered

Interview: Silence of Daydream reproduced from Times in Mykonos (1999)

A thin bearded man sits waiting at the waterfront of Treasure Island, near the Voulgaris harbor of Mykonos. Behind him a jewel of archetype island; the lighthouse invented by Robert Louis Stevenson's grandfather glistens as purified water filters around it. On each side, a son of thunder.

The pirate Mermelekas has finally returned to his well, to his little church, his locker. Barba Lefkas. Fisher King. Captain Whitebeard. Agio ghost of John Paul Jones and his hands. Drowned in something. Whose body was not found. Secret love of Magdalene Blackbeard, Mando Mavrogenis. Goddess Lady Illuminati of every seven sins sea voyage of his Enlightenment.

He looks for her. But doesn't know her new name. He asks Lidya, a seller of purple, a mystic of Delos and the cosmic circle. Have you not heard? she answers the ghost of Jones. Your Lady Mando did elope long ago, long ago with Josef, the carpenter of Nazareth. He asks bronze Tassos, shepherd monk corsair and beehive tomb guardian, beyond the automobile graveyards and the desolate mines. What do you know of the grail? The very jaws of death and hades? He passes Pierro's, thirsty as Ikaros, and asks Aris, Vangelis - and Vangelio - for a little water.

Heavy, out of breath. He looks for Mando, the mark upon her forehead. And for the metal seal of his ancient well once visited by Paul of Tarsus. Salt in the Mykonian wind, our eyes water. Kore of Elysium and Serge of Haiti help pay for our winding journey through Sesame streets. Like a clockmaker's windmill going round, to the sounds of Piccini's harps. Beyond Carolina. Up to Matoyianni, Long John Street. Weather-Eye John. Bloody John. Skullbones. Billy Bonis fancy. While Roberto of Venice watches on with Doe, Bo, Uno and Pete the plumber doing our Cairo Working.

"Mr. Smith," the white beard cries out in a deep and spooky voice.

"Our earth, sir," his drunken gunner answers with his right hand to his forehead. Jack hits the bottom line of midsummer dreams. Within the ruins of grail castle, Ken's t-shirt knights and Sir Lion Zealot, Richard Coeur de Lion of the North, guard against the sexist lies of Attila, the pirate slave monger. In the hills above, Golden Jason and his people remember Craig, Paul Newman's nine muses, Aphrodite's child, Madonna's wedding dress, the Cardinal and CNN princess. Yehudi's Winston Churchill weekends. Rolling Stones visits. Turkey town(c) delights. Like a Derpappa landscape of perpendicular realities with a Minas touch, massively parallel.

Because the sixth seal is no longer in its place.

It was a limited offer. Like the robed children, Gitchin and Noman, on a warm morning beach. Discontinued. Like the naked old stranger who measured the sea with a cubit of light each Saturday evening. Withdrawn. Like Bobby in a deep-sea sub, Danny in a wheelchair. Danny and John. The mysterious round object so obviously connected to an antiquated Mykonian well system for so many generations is now gone. Missing from the waterfront castle gate. Fisher King. (P)sarras. Island of the Holy Grail. The grail fragment is no longer in its place. Don't look for it anymore. The dreaded 'Out of Time' signal has finally arrived. And now the terrible sword: What becomes of the sixth seal? The One of Israel gets it. Kyrios. Whose mind melts steel. Looks like you reach hell lure.

Seal of the living atom. Secret heirloom of Mykonos. NeoPlatonic relic. Made to be trampled on as the seal of Christ's tomb. It is taken into the heart of ALSOS, to the largest nuclear appliance on earth. The small disk grid of metallic deuterium would now be burned to the nuclei, hotter than the sun, to produce a field of neutrino energy for the next thousand years and more. RDS (Real-Time Defense System). Hard disk target assembly. The rising of ALSOS. More terrible than the fall of Atlantis.

ZEVS (Zero Emission Vehicle Systems).

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: If you were not able to see the Mykonos waterfront seal in its original state, it is now featured close-up in the (1990s) Rolling Stones music video clip Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Other than that, don't look for the seal anymore because - Baby, baby, baby, you're "Out of Time."

***

Publisher's Note:

Last August I received a phone call. My friend, the (s)tar reporter of this publication, JewPeter shouting into my ear, announcing to me that he is on the boat to Samos to meet Professor Stephen Hawking. "Hawking who?" I asked. "Don't you know the black hole man? The guy in the wheelchair?"

That's how it started. A whole week of shouting into my ears "We've got an interview with Hawking", "I spoke with the guy", "Hawking speaks to Times in Mykonos", "Buyin Air in Mykonos?", "Going Fishin' in Mykonos?"

Later I learned that the greatest physicist on earth did answer some questions. To be precise, one question from "Times in Mykonos". In total he answered only four questions and Peter spent a whole year to have this report done. zzzzz.

To be twice precise, the day before the printing of this issue I had to spend an afternoon with him (not Hawking, Peter I mean) so he could complete the text.

He told me that for every question Hawking needed more than ten minutes to reply through his wheelchair computer. And you think that's slow. Well, ask me. If the guy is slow, what about you? How long did it take you to get to read this anyway?

***

"Someone wants to see you," says the young woman to the man in the water at his natural alter of sharp, unhewn rock. Clean black razor. Beyond the Furnace Islands. She does not know quite what she is doing in this place or why she is compelled to speak telepathically as she does to the strange man in the water. Strange feeling. Fisher King. Strange coincidence. "Someone wants to see you," she repeats without knowing quite where she is.

"Cover your head, your face," shouts the man in the water. "The ground you are walking on is radioactive."

She quickly obeys and steps back onto the wooden bridge. Around the man in the open sea cave, the spring water boils. Radium, cobalt. Binary fission, fully awake. Razor. Black hoses. No beginning, no end, seamless loop. Hotter than the sun. Beyond the Furnace Islands.

The Ancient of Days, Zeu-Dias, sits at court with the elements; floats naked in his lotus womb. One sits forever so that being may exist. Around him is a hot watery mushroom; a steaming jet of radioactivity in a boiling sea cave. Fisher King. Rare life forms surround his hidden throne. "Who is it?" he asks the young woman out of his place of dark cloud.

"Stephen," she replies telepathically. "Stephen Hawking." She waves to the strange man in the dark steaming water and walks away from the radioactive sea cave, soon to forget its exact location. And what has just happened.

Stephen needs help, Zeu-Dias thinks to himself. He looks out toward the land of Zeu-Dias, that land of milk and honey. Raiser. He thinks of the lost children of Zeu-Dias. Their new meat gods. They laugh at me - my son messiah - and call us juice, he thinks. Why don't they just leave us alone? Now Stephen needs our JewPeter(c) key. Are Paul's thugs after him again?

Binary fission, fully awake. Raiser. One self, three persons, slowly emerging from the natural atomic vat. Beyond the Furnace Islands. Little Boy to the left. Foreign Fat Man to the right. Straight ahead, the Magic Child. Black Raiser. With an outstretched arm and a strong right hand. Remember me? Remember the future? Tell them who I am, Moses. Introduce me to the gang, Moe. Zeu-Dias emerging from his fiery vat. One self, three persons...

***

"Do you believe in God?" one of the TV reporters asked Stephen Hawking in 1998 at the 2nd Samos Meeting on Cosmology, Geometry and Relativity.

After a long silence of daydream, Hawking's computer finally began to speak: "I make it a rule not to answer that particular question," he said. "But if I get to know you better, someday maybe we can talk more about it..."

***

The tourist atmosphere of Samos took on a mysterious new tone with the arrival of Stephen Hawking and his elite team of nuclear scientists. Black briefcases, notebook computers. Only a handful could grasp Relativity math. Outdoor cafes and restaurants were swarming with FBI. Spies and beach blankets. Everyone was buyin' air, going fishin' they said: binary fission.

In the 1940s Albert Einstein shocked the scientific community when he warned the White House of a secret Nazi atomic factory capable of making nuclear weapons. Fifty years after Hitler's war and Hiroshima, that pile factory was still nowhere to be found by the Allies.

In 1998 Stephen Hawking upset the on-line world when he warned of a Turkish atomic factory in the Aegean capable of making nuclear weapons. Independent researchers insisted Turkey intended to use structural components of the same secret underground factory used by Berlin in the 1940s. The rising of ALSOS.

***

"Do you find yourself paralyzed in your dreams?" another TV reporter asked Stephen Hawking.

Hawking's computer replied: "No I don't. I move freely in my dreams. My handicap is not even noticeable."

***

The rising of ALSOS. Forced shutdown 1945. An atomic reactor buried below the ground of the ancient land of mythos. Largest in the world, in mint condition. Ten million slaves died to keep a secret. Jewish toil beneath Greek soil. Designed by IG Farben fugitives. Outcast Krupp gang members of 'Pen Strohs' wanted by the law for over fifty years. The worst pirates to ever roam the earth. Unfit to stand trial. They own crazy clinics. Offshore summer homes near Cyprus and Palestine.

Their sign: Barbarossa leather and a Crowley tattoo serpent called 'Nodes.' Not an artist's impression. 'Nodes' is straight from the textbooks. Of zoology. Winged platyhelminth, the flatworm of human hemorrhage. Virgin blood through the mouth. Infectious. Resistant to radioactivity. So full of it, they'll tell you so. First chance they get. Mark of the beast on the hand. First-damned on the Day of Rotunder. The rising of ALSOS. Forced shutdown 1945. More terrible than the fall of Atlantis. Greatest weapon in the history of human industry, hotter than the sun. Now under new management. Street makers. Heart breakers. We also do parking lots.

***

"Do you think it will truly be possible to produce a theory of everything? A unified field theory that will explain all that exists in a simple equation which can be printed on a kid's t-shirt? How would that change man's place in the universe?" I asked Stephen Hawking for "Times in Mykonos" (after presenting him with a t-shirt containing Greek letters).

"I give it a fifty-fifty chance," Hawking answered. "I said so twenty years ago and I still have the same outlook. I think there's a fifty-fifty possibility that the unified field theory will be discovered within our lifetime."

***

The rising of ALSOS. Object of the Uncertainty Principle. Now you see it. Now you don't.

The last question Professor Hawking answered was a purely technical one, related to hard disks and target assemblies. Beyond the scope of this report.

The 'sarras tradition of Mycone was finally broken. The integrety of man's subconscious wellspring was finally compromised. The ancient hand-made seal was finally removed from the castle gate. The world's first breech block. In its place, a red fire hydrant. Post nuclear. Symbol of 'Deaf Soul' and the coming of world dictatorship. For turkey town(c) was not making a Berlin bomb, but black radium hoses - the death ray - on the streets. Chadwick's neutron beam (1930s) in the basements of Embassy Avenue. Target strip of metal in your currency/card. Binary fission, fully awake. Place of pure marble. Do not say water. "Honey, why are both taps hot?" No answer. It rains indoors. Downstairs, thunder and rain.

***
Publisher's Epilog: So we did make him write it. And after I asked him to close it with an epilog, he told me scratching his zzzz, "You opened it, you close it."

So I'm here my friends not knowing what to say, being in a very hard place to describe the whole atmosphere which I didn't experience. Until now? The hotel was nice. Everyone was happy.
Hawking's wheelchair started rolling and he disappeared behind the backs of his people. (Acupuncture technicians, internet plumbers, geometry hair dressers).

Sorry we didn't have an ordinary bomb story for you. But read again Hawking's work and maybe you'll discover in it some very deep secrets of people's history, man's own existence.

A few weeks after the publication of this interview, a major earthquake struck Turkey near the Sea of Marmara, sinking portions of a city and a Turkish naval base below the water.

Place of pure marble. Do not say water. The rising of ALSOS. More terrible than the fall of Atlantis.