a shared thought

in a bedroom somewhere there is a child listening to the freeway as she slips into slumber. the child imagines the world outside as it may be. Trees and street-lamps, clouds and stars. the child imagines another child like herself in one of the cars on the freeway.

she is looking out of the rear window up and the same moon with the same halo of clouds wondering if in one of the houses near the edge of the freeway there is a child like her, thinking and dreaming about the same strange world.

from one of the distant stars in the sky another child gazes upward into the vastness of the milky way. she wonders if their are other children somewhere who are looking up at the same sets of stars, sharing her thoughts and weaving the same dreams.

on cognition

Somewhere out there are people who perceive the world far differently than we do. There are people who can see gravity. There are people who do not perceive any separation between their bodies and the world around them. There are even those who here the voice of “God” in their heads as clearly as I can here myself typing right now. From synesthesia to transcendence, there is no limit to what how a mind might make sense of this strange world we are thrown into.

time t revel

A person sits in a chair in the corner. Wires trace along the wall from the person to a machine. Two others sit near by.

Something went wrong a few years ago in the lab. There is still brain activity but it is very abnormal. People can operate almost any piece of equipment with a thought and yet we are still powerless to understand what is going on inside this person’s head.

This one is trapped inside itself. The rest of us are captives of conflict and fear. If we can’t fully decode the human brain how can we ever decode the human heart?

Meanwhile, the person in the corner lives life in reverse. The individual’s body is 57 but the mind is now 53. This will continue for another 53 years, at which point the mind will unteather and split. Part of consciousness will continue backward in time from gametes to parent cells. Another part will drift through the cosmos experiencing the birth and death of a star, the rise and fall of sentience, and the flow of energy from our universe into the next. Then the body will die and all will come to a close.

Dusk. The greenish glow of the machines fills the room with silence.

Shadows of the Wandering Mind

Whenever our mind wonders into the realm of infinite possibility it creates a shadow world. Such a world  exists permanently, from that moment to forever more. I once traveled to one of these shadow worlds myself. I lost consciousness while staring into a very old mirror in the attic. I had been thinking about the past. My old teacher was in my old classroom. She asked me to take my seat. Just like that I was back in the sixth grade. After a while, I realized that the lesson didn’t make sense. My teacher was mixing things up. When I looked at the room more closely I discovered that it was incomplete. Many books lacked definition. Posters were illegible. Colors were somehow wrong, bland. Then I realized that most of the students didn’t quite have face. Yet, they were staring in my direction. I got up out of my seat and backed toward the classroom window. Mrs. Pterin said, “Angie, please return to your seat.” Her face was morphing, perhaps I couldn’t quite remember which of my elementary school teachers were which. I turned toward the window. There was nothing but shifting viscous darkness outside. I began to panic. As the tears began to swell up from behind my eyes, I began to see myself in the glass. I felt someone’s hand on my back. My insides churned and my neck bristled.

I shivered staring at myself in the mirror once again. I suspected that I had just experienced my first lucid dream. It had seemed so real, but how could it be. My father ascended the attic staircase and demanded that I tell him where I had been for the last hour. Apparently my sister had come up looking for me and could not find me anywhere.

I had truly traveled to another place.

Words from the Heart

My best friend Jan was different. They took her away. I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again.

Growing up, we were just like any other kids. We talked about things we liked and things that scared us and things that made us angry. We built forts and had sleep-overs. We played games and laughed. We went to school together and sometimes we had the same teacher.

In fifth grade, Jan tried to call home from our phone. Her parents couldn’t hear her very well. It didn’t seem strange at first. It just seemed like something was wrong with the phone, because I was right there, and I could hear Jan fine.

Later that year, Jan tried to leave a message for me on the answering machine. We got in a really big fight the next day. She was really angry that I hadn’t responded to her message. There was nothing on the answering machine except silence.

We started to do some experiments that week. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t record Jan’s voice. We could both hear it, and so could everybody else, but for some reason, her voice couldn’t be recorded. It was really frustrating.

When we showed Jan’s parents they didn’t believe us a first. Grown-ups can be real jerks when they think they know everything already. Eventually we got them to let us show them. They believed us once they saw for themselves.

Jan’s parents got scared and started talking to professionals. None of them knew what they were doing. Then Dr. Helsbourg came. I saw $ $ in his eyes from the start. He had a case filled with strange spinning devices with lots of knobs and wires. He said, “It seems that your daughter doesn’t use her vocal cords to speak. My sensors indicate elevated levels saratonin of in her brain. She may be using telepathy.”

My parents thanked Dr. Helsbourg and paid him for his services, but indicated to him that they did not wish to perform any further testing. Dr. Helsbourg was furious. He told Jan’s parents that they were wasting on of the greatest discoveries in human history.

Dr. Helsbourg came back the next year. The government was with him. I heard a rumor that they want to weaponize Jan’s telepathic abilities.

I miss you Jan.

Jan breaks out of a government facility years later while I am in high school. She takes me away. I will convince her to use her abilities to make the world a better place. She will never really feel like she belongs with other people, except perhaps with me. Before she dies, she transmits a dream that she has to every member of the human species. It is a dream of peace. We all see it for a time, in our minds eye, then the moment is past.