A Mind's Eye Reader

III

IIIWE'D GONE OUT FOR A few weeks. Ate a lot of pizza and sandwiches. Saw some movies in the balcony. Made out in my car, usually. But the talking was what kept me coming back.

She was pretty widely read, and could quote a lot of things. We ended up meeting at the library and picking out books for each other, speed-reading through them in quiet. She would pick out a book and I'd nod in those quiet stacks to tell her I'd read it or not. If I hadn't, she'd hand it to me. If not, she'd pick out another nearby that would have something to do with that subject - and sometimes take me over to another section of the library to pick out a related book. Of course, that would be baffling until I finally got to where the author picked up the thought - or I'd wind up checking it out when we left so we could discuss it later.

And I'd take her out to one of the sandwich shops in town. Often we'd go over to the city park and talk over the ideas in those books.

After it had gotten dark, I'd drive her in my old 50-something, four-door Chevy to some secluded spot where we would get out, scoot the front bench seat forward, and make-out in the back seat for awhile. When our glands were suitably spent, we could get back to serious discussion.

I'd rigged some RV lights inside, as well as curtains to keep moths and lookie-loo's at bay. Our own private island of intellectual discussion, regardless of the world at large.

Of course, the floorboards and back window shelf had stacks of books we would read and discuss and refer to during our night-time rendezvous. (I did install a 12-volt Marine clock that had a quiet alarm to give us time to make ourselves presentable and be back by our parents' set curfew times.)

Heri started with Ayn Rand's "Anthem", which led to Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles", and led to Blish's "Cities in Flight", led to Burroughs' "Mars" series, to his "Tarzan" series, to Kipling's short stories, to Doyle's adventures and then his mysteries, then Leigh Brackett, Dashiell Hammett, Carolyn Wells, G. K. Chesterton, E. B. Smith, which led to E. E. Smith, and last to Andre Norton's "All Cats are Gray."

Heri brought this point up and left me stumped. "Remember what you asked about entropy and past lives? I think I've stumbled onto a worse one."

I was, of course, all ears by this time.

She continued, "Thought itself is an energy, and so there is nothing such as 'losing your thought' or 'losing track' of your thinking. Thoughts come and go and they never disappear. They have to simply transmute."

I bought in. "Memories were transmuted, but then senility isn't the end of them, as they'd have to go somewhere. I remember Nap Hill said once that thoughts were contagious and spread like flu - that they were stored as 'habits' in some 'universal intelligence' and could be tapped. That then ties to a bunch of New Thought authors, as well as Edison and Einstein. Their concepts of an over-arching storage system for ideas..."

Heri took this all in like a fish to water. "Of course! But take this one further - what if beings actually lived in this stuff? If Bristol's 'belief is father to fact' is correct, then we might have mysterious beings who live in that 'ether' stream or field and manipulate our own physical universe to store thought through our bodies."

I was silent for awhile. "Of course, you know that this is unprovable, even science fiction."

She looked off in the distance, beyond the curtains of our little yellow 12-volt-lit world. "I know. Like past lives. But it doesn't matter. Belief is all that matters. Take these tremendously insane social customs we are following here and now. There's no real use for them, other than as 'grease' to fit the various parts together. The dull follow them like sheep in a pasture, and the too-brilliant ignore them. In both cases, and everything in between, they only deal with this one limited universe we physically live in, and actually just this subset of culture in this hemisphere. Not universal at all."

I reached over the front seat to the pizza box, handing back her drink while I pulled the box and my own drink back over. "This is really making me hungry."

Heri smiled at all this. "Like our 'exercise' earlier wasn't enough, already." She sipped her cool drink of ice-diluted soft drink whose carbonated fizz had long since fizzed away.

I offered her the last piece of pizza, but she shook her head, lost in more advanced thought. So I finished that piece too and shoved the empty box back into the front seat.

Her frown was as cute as her smile, and she was frowning now. "Beings who live in that other universe who may be or are controlling our thoughts in this one. If I am right, and our own cultural reactions mirror those, then this could explain some of the weird coincidences and disappearances. Particularly of certain free thinkers, and societies of the gifted."

At that point, the alarm sounded, and we had minutes to get our musses un-mussed, and then the interior lights turned out, the curtains back in place and us returned to the front seat and traveling back to our local so-called civilization.

After Heri got the pizza box into the back, with her legs and feet curled under her, she leaned against me on the bench seat, .

I'd long ago learned to drive with my left arm in order to leave my right free. And to appreciate the advantage of old cars with bench seats instead of the more modern buckets.

Heri pulled my right arm over her shoulder, and held onto it with her own right. "Just hold me, Sol." Then nuzzled her head against my shoulder with her left arm draped across my thigh.

Life was good in these moments.

Even though we were returning from our mind-bending flights of discussion to an uncertain world of nutty emotions and now-you-gotta's that made no sense and couldn't be disputed in any court.