With Xander: Hello There

Xander Cervantes at Studio Claremont (2023)

This project is a long time coming.

I don’t know exactly what form these writing will take. All I know is that it will include some stories from a longer narrative that I am working on, and probably more stories that are not. It’s got to include anecdotes to preserve memories. To paint a complete picture, these stories can’t just be my own. They need to include those of...

his mama Jane,

his sister Sofia,

his grandparents,

his aunts,

his cousin,

his best friend,

his teachers.

There were letters written about Xander and letters written to him. I rewatch the hundreds of short videos to remember the sound of his voice, high pitched and boyish, so warm and charming. I pore through thousands of pictures of Xander, the hope is that by doing so, I will reawaken memories of him, I hope to relive conversations between us. Just the two of us. Father and son. The boys. With Xander.

All the while I remain vigilant, waiting for Xander to sneak a visit to me in my dreams or as a flow of thoughts in the form of comments, questions and observations, streaming to me, in my head as I listen hopefully — do I imagine or do I hear his voice? It doesn’t matter. When I am driving alone, I will keep talking aloud to him, mostly conversing about my day asking about his day. I remind him to (no that's not it), I playfully dare him to prank me, because he is trickster, a little bit Loki, who I believe has pranked me a few times already.

His artwork has got to be a part of this, definitely his artwork, although it’s really more about his creativity. Xander would tell stories that only he could tell, that he did tell, on the spot, rapid fire, because he was a natural storyteller with an expansive imagination.

Xander believed that there has to be portals to other dimensions, if only we could, via science, calculate a way to cross through said portals or maybe just slyly, searching for clues, figure out a way to locate them. His prolific espousal of wild theories to his teachers and classmates, earned Xander a Wacky Scientist Award, in Second Grade. His title was undisputed.

One could dismiss such ideas about magic and interdimensional travel as the overactive imagination of a nine year old boy, but Xander took these ideas seriously. We would come to learn that he had populated one such world, Colorville, with over 150 creatures, and countless details about its geography, the cultures of its people and creatures. Xander was in the midsts of deciphering its rules for magic, because yes, it was a world of high magic. Sometimes Xander would sketch out his portals on a blackboard, on the driveway in blue, and yellow and pink and green chalk. There were doors and swirls and vehicles with travelers, streaking every which way.

I want to believe in Xander’s theories because he is so adamant about them and I miss him like crazy. I know I won’t find a way to travel through portals to mythical realms through rational 21st century science, but hear me out. How 'bout theoretical astrophysics in the age of A.I., infused with wacky science? Maybe.

There was a story circulating early on during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, about a NASA research project in the Antarctic which led to tabloid headlines touting evidence of parallel universes, coming from within the astrophysics community. This claim spread like wildfire and led to a Warholian fifteen minutes (or perhaps 15 million views) across the internet. Really. Really.

It revolved around the ANITA (Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna) Experiment. A research balloon specially equipped by an astrophysicist team from Manoa, Hawaii, set out to listen for the "whispered voice" of tau neutrinos (aka high energy subatomic particles), as they streaked across the cosmos and crashed into the icy surface of a remote region of Antarctica. Here's where it gets interesting. Once the particles were detected by ANITA, some of the tau neutrinos, rather than raining down from the sky, were in defiance of the laws of physics, bursting out of the ground and rocketing into the heavens.

The narrative that caught fire in the tabloids, was that the lead researcher on the project posited a theory that these anomalous neutrinos were evidence of a parallel universe, which runs backwards in time. Wacky science indeed.

Never mind that the astrophysicists community would later chide this "evidence" of parallel unvierses as a sensational, internet viral ready headline that was highly theoretical at best, and that the researcher in question clarified that it was the least likely of other more mundane explanations for the neutrinos behavior. In other words, he kind of threw this theory in for fun.

But this rebuttal didn't arrive until much later, and Xander and I were swept up in the moment. We imagined how in this parallel universe that ran alongside our own, that from their persepctive, we would be the ones who appeared to be traveling backwards in time. We wondered if this universe was in such close proximity to our own, could there be, no, surely there must be a way to travel into it. Could we craft a door or build bridge to it? We agreed that the science to accomplish this was beyond us for now — we'd have to wait for Xander to grow up and become the world's leading quantum physicist. Which is why we'd need a shortcut, a cheat code. If these subatomic ghostly particles could already enter our dimension, why not something bigger? Isn't possible or even likely, that a portal is already out there? If only we knew where, when and how to pass through the nearest of said portals.

“There has got to be a way find them. They’ve got to exist dad,” Xander insisted.

I thought of this as a highly theoretical science meets storytelling game, which we were having fun with, but not Xander. He never gave up on this idea, in fact over the next few years he would return to this idea over and over only with new twists and theories about other dimensions. He believed in this melding of magic and science, as only a nine year old kid could.

Now that he's gone, it's no longer just a game to me. I allow myself to believe in the possibility of inter-dimensional portals in the real world, because, why not? After all Xander and I are both innovative and clever, strategists and storytellers both. If other dimensions exist, there must be a way they could be entered. He fully believed that we could be travelers. If there is a way...

...will you be travelers with us?

Come on.

Let's go.