The Infinite Loop: 2-17-2012

The Infinite Loop: 2-17-2012




information comes in bits, discrete units.it can not bedestroyed. when you erase files from the computer they are not destroyed rather are transferred to another environment.
The position and velocity of molecules in space is information. The information is inaccessible because it's stored with too many degrees of freedom, information that is hitting are inaccessible is called entropy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9tY&feature=g-all-f&context=G2ed94a0FAAAAAAAAFAA


You must not do you must undo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzXDJJloBc&feature=uploademail

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWXpPGL55No&feature=g-vrec&context=G2d34095RVAAAAAAAAAA
the thing that you are is without form.

Should we erase painful memories?

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/31/should_we_erase_painful_memories/



conciousness is all there is in the universe. information in the brain gets mixed up with information outside the brain. when the body dies, the information or conscioness that was in the body is preserved outside of the body.



Reincarnation is just atomic recycling. For example, if one particle, such as an electron, is switching from one quantum state to another, it may be the same as if a bit is changed from one value (0, say) to the other (1). A single bit suffices to describe a single quantum switch of a given particle. As the universe appears to be composed of elementary particles whose behavior can be completely described by the quantum switches they undergo, that implies that the universe as a whole can be described by bits. Every state is information, and every change of state is a change in information (requiring the manipulation of one or more bits). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics


Our judgments color the way we see. We cannot know truth through judgment. Willingness to let go of judgment reveals our habitual ways of thinking, so we can choose to let go of that thinking and see through a purified mind. That allows us to see purely.

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The Gladiator 10/12/2010 -

Dark, so dark in here, darker than the deeds which thoughts provoked, the deeds of a monster, the deeds which did this to me. Surely it must be the mind of a monster. But what kind of mind is that. Is it different from yours and mine? We each possess a mind, or is it that are we each possessed by one. What difference does it make, for what are we if not our mind, if not a mind? A mind, what is it then? Is it that thing we think we are, or does it hide us from that. On the surface it conducts our behavior “appropriately”, while down in the foul depths, far from human inspection, it runs amuck. Down there murderous, unmitigated rage mixes with desires, uncontrollable, and insatiable. Down there, in the pestilent places we never speak about, the brain secretes thoughts like bile from the liver. Yet the thoughts unlike the brain from which they drip are not mine, rather they pass through me. Me, what is it?


It is the answer to this question to which I have devoted my professional career. My reputation as a researcher is that of being as radical as rampageous. Fortunato on the other hand is considered to be as meticulous as he is pedestrian. Mercilessly berating his graduate students with the necessity of meticulousness. Whittling away at them, bringing them inexorably to his level. For scientists without imagination what else remains but organization and orthodoxy, skills which could be acquired by a janitor. Where Fortunato spent his career building devices for dissecting brains, I spent mine discovering what a mind really is. What Fortunato and those of his ilk will never understand is that a brain cannot comprehend the mind. And I say the mind for as I have shown, there is only one. But before I present my data let me tell you something of how this came to be. As you will quickly see I'm unlike any other scientist. Whereas most scientists build walls to separate their personal lives from their scientific research, my life, my personality, myself is inexorably woven within the fabric of my research. To understand one you must understand the other, neither stands on its own.

I was a sickly single child, bed ridden until the age of six. Unable to attend school I was afforded the finest tutors which my able and generous parents could produce. After the hours attended by the tutors I spent many more studying by myself. That at such an early age I can concentrate for such long periods of time is considered remarkable. But it could have just as easily and more factually termed a disorder. But the disorder of a finely honed scientific mind is a disorder nonetheless. Fortunato should have been so lucky. Where my rational mind was impeccable and unconstrained by personal or institutional inhibitions, my emotional mind was feeble.

Unable to play or associate with other children, I spent a solitary childhood alone with my mind and the dreams it made up, becoming socially awkward and an interpersonal misfit in the process. I took great delight in playing with a wooden gladiator set which I designed and constructed myself. I constructed miniatures of all the gladiator types, the Thracian, the retiarius, all of them. I played for hours with them, indeed it was the only non-sleeping diversion to my studies.

It wasn't the excess devotion to my studies that concerned my parents, rather it was the excess solitude, indeed solitude seeking nature of my existence. So, they enrolled me when health permitted at age 10 into an advanced charter private school. I disdained it intensely. My abilities far exceeded the school's reputation and I was considered an incongruity by fellow students and teachers as well. My response was to return home from school sequester myself in my closed room and study in the near dark. Only the light from the computer screen would spot the room. I continued in this manner for may years. By the time I entered preparatory school I was lonely, suspicious of others, and frightened. Despite my advanced intellect I had not a clue as to the spring from which these disturbed feelings flowed. Indeed I was scarcely aware that I had them at all. There was always a gnawing in my stomach what they call butterflies, day by day, hour by hour, constantly, there. I of course lacking a frame of reference didn't realize that I was different in this regard. In fact it seemed to me that all was as it should be. I had loving parents who provided me a good home with the best of comforts. When they were there I wanted to be with them. When they were busy as they often were, I sought solace in my solitude. So, for one such as me who was so frightened to be among peers, to be even outside, indeed frightened to be anything alone it was a terrible irony that at the age of 16 I suddenly discovered to my dismay that I one day that I really was alone, all alone.



I received the news that my parents had been killed in an automobile accident by e-mail. An e-mail, how contemptuous life can be, that I the most impersonal of persons found that to be too impersonal. The sudden death of my parents was the greatest disaster that could befall me. Suddenness and shock swarmed over me as I was possessed with feelings that I had not been emotionally vocabulary to begin to understand. So, to bring familiarity back to my life I summoned my rational mind to do what it always did. Concentrate, I went into my dark room and studied by the faintest light of the computer screen. Again my powers of concentration I attribute not so much to devotion as to disorder. Until then I had known the love of my parents. I returned each night from a world in which I was scorned to their total acceptance. I had success in my studies along with failures to find any friends, but until that moment I had never known true deep heartbreak. My loving parents, the only ones who loved and accepted me were gone. Suddenly I was no one's son. I would have aunts and uncles arriving soon to fend for me, but I would never again be a son.

It was this realization that crept into my rational mind and slowly strangled it after many hours, so that I could concentrate no more. I looked up and stared for a long time at the desktop, thoughtless. Indeed I have never spent so much time without holding a thought in my brain either before or since. Not a single thought, consider the significance of that if you will. Without the circumstances I could never have accomplished it. But in my deep anguish thoughtlessness came naturally. Indeed it was the only thing that could come. My only regret is that I could not hold it. Against my will feelings returned like a synonymy to my mind and flushed through my body in streams and I wept until my sides hurt. I was 16 years old and it was the first time I had ever cried.

This emotional experience wasn't simply new to me, it was incomprehensible. It was not of the round of the rational mind, nor was I emotionally repaired. But there was something beyond the unfamiliar, beyond the sheer trauma, something which my rational mind cannot explain either. It was something that I could not see but was in the room with me, something that was closing in on me.

I dried my eyes on my sleeve and looked around my familiar room in 360°. But about it there was something definitely unfamiliar. As usual the only light in the room was that of my desktop. Now the light from the computer screen though frail, could always illuminate the entire room, even the walls when it was he only source of light. But for some reason on this occasion could not even illuminate the walls within. I cannot trust my senses to explain the events which occurred next as they occurred seemingly outside of space and time. I can only report what they seemed to perceive. I say perceive, but it is a misnomer, for I did not really perceive anything. Nor is it correct to say that I perceived nothing. It is more correct to say that I perceived nothing there. Indeed I became aware of reality in our entirely new and hereto for unappreciated manner. Before this moment I perceived reality for what I believe was there. But now I was becoming aware of what wasn't there. Like Buonarroti who, “ saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” But there was no angel in the marble, there was only what was, being swallowed up by what wasn't. This inverse reality I was wholly unequipped to deal with and I was beginning to panic.

I massaged my eyes and examined my room again, but I still could not see the walls. I knew very well where the door was and I focused my eyes in that direction, but I could not see it, it was just too dark. The light from the desktop emanated in a half circle of definite radius beyond which there once was a door and the rest of the world. But I could not see any light beyond the aforementioned radius, nor can I safely conclude that the rest of the universe was, "out there". Now my burgeoning sense of panic exploded as I became acquainted with

another previously unknown emotion, stark raving terror.

Now you will not suppose that because of my diminutive stature that I frightened easily and you would be wrong. I had been stoic in the face of bullying my entire life. But this was unknown, indeed I was unsure that anything really was the matter. I approached the rim of the darkness with my hands out in the manner of a man in a dark room looking for the lights. I extended my hands and lost them in the darkness to the elbows. Terror struck I withdrew my arms and threw myself back into the chair immediately. Now it was confirmed there was something very very seriously the matter. Either it was with me or something outside of me. Of course there is nothing outside of me, but I did not know it yet. I resolved to bury myself again in my studies. I was sure that a few more hours studying and all would return to normal. Perhaps I was miss perceiving things. Perhaps I would study a few more hours and all would be right, perhaps even my parents would come home and my mother would walk through my bedroom door, breaking the seal of darkness that enveloped me within, revealing that all was well and this is but a terrible nightmare. But terror prevented me from turning my back to the darkness there. So, I held my computer screen in front of me and pointed it towards the door, but light did not reach to there. The light from the computer screen went no farther than it did when it was on the desk.

As I have said these sensations and my feelings regarding them I cannot explain. They are outside of space and time. But when the semicircle of light began to shrink I felt as would a scuba diver watching the jaws of a great white shark opening and coming toward him. Trapped, as the shark came ever closer and challenged all that I had previously assumed to be true. Was reality here inside the semicircle of light, or out there in the darkness beyond. Perhaps the scuba diver would have similar such thoughts.

Can darkness really be carved out the light I wondered. I would soon know the answer for the darkness was nipping at carpet at my toes. Then I heard a familiar voice calling my name. It wasn't my mother and was my aunt who broke the darkness. She  entered the room followed closely by my uncle. They came and threw her arms around me. My aunt and uncle were familiar and the familiarity allowed me to remember reality, my reality.

 My aunt stayed with me for nearly a year until I was ready to attend university.

Based on my preparatory education I entered university as a graduate student specializing in neurophysiology of the brain, although I had no interest whatever in the neurophysiology of the brain. Fortunato was my PhD advisor. I was aware from the moment we met that I was greatly his superior. Perhaps it was only an assumption which later proved to be true. In any event Fortunato was an extraordinarily ordinary scientist with a jaundiced eye for genius and I was a genius. It seemed a perfect match for me, for as I predicted he was unable to control me, leaving me the freedom to do as I please. And what pleased me to do was the same thing that I had always done even as I play with my miniature gladiators. I continued to ask the childhood questions that Fortunato had probably never asked. Why do we live, what happens when we die.

"I think therefore I am," what does it mean, what is a thought. On the cusp of entering graduate school I continued to ask these silly childhood questions. Ultimately I sought to know what consciousness is. At the time consciousness theory was not a formal discipline. So, I chose to study neurophysiology of the brain because I thought it to be the closest discipline which could supply my answers while being, "academically acceptable.

To say that I excelled in graduate school as I had in preparatory school is an understatement. I was by far the best student they had ever seen, and I knew it. By now you have heard this familiar refrain several times. That among my peers I had none. You will not suppose me boastful anymore than you would call me modest. My scientific mind demands accuracy only. I do not appreciate modesty anymore or any less than boastfulness, genuine or otherwise. Suffice it to say that when I did graduate I was the best of the best, you can ask anyone there and they will tell you. And it was there in graduate school that I first broke ground into consciousness theory. My dissertation on xxx is still considered seminal and was the first in the field we now call consciousness theory.


After graduating I took the position of my choice at the University at the age of just 21. Now the University of my choice was that from which I had recently graduated. Usually this is a problem since the hiring of one of its own is considered academically incestuous. But in my case the exception was made at once. Officially I was a professor of neurobiology, but I would be the first consciousness theorists.


Fortunato of course was, despite his modest accomplishments, already a tenured professor. Given that I had outwitted him constantly when I was a graduate student, now that I was an associate professor I expected little trouble from the likes of him. It seems that to the very degree to which I had grown to be a feeble man in an attenuated frame, in matters of the intellect I had been overly compensated. And with so much success often comes certain arrogance. I do not defend this, I simply mention it factually. Fortunato was not of my caliber. Indeed he was the lesser of many others who were not of my caliber.


My dissertation had made studies of consciousness respectable, and some researchers were doing studies of it, but I alone was developing a theory of consciousness. I alone had the foresight to make conjectures and the ability to prove them. While I developed my consciousness theory Fortunato kept busy building machines for the three-dimensional mapping of the brain, digital dissection or masturbation if you will. I find such things are boring and beneath me. I mention it now only as a prerequisite to what is below, and I will not discuss them further. Let me rather tell you about my work. I concentrated not on technological gimmicks, rather on theoretical substance. My theory was as advanced as the questions get answered was basic. My research centered among the most basic of questions, questions we all asked as a child until outgrowing them. When child (save possibly for Fortunato) has not asked himself, what am I?

When I was still a young child I used to play a game which could be called, "what am I?" I would look at my foot and ask myself, am I a foot? If I cut off my foot however I am still me. So, I am not a foot. Then I would look at my hand and ask am I hand. Then arriving at the same conclusion we move on to other parts of my body. The object of the game was to whittle away at the things that I am not, to reveal that which I am. Like Buonarroti who, “ saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” But I never set him free, at least not as a child. But I did turn the childhood question into a research question and today we call that, "thing that I am," consciousness.

 What of it then, what am I? Am I my thoughts, those things the brain secretes like bile from the liver? Am I a single thought, does a single thought comprise consciousness, certainly not? So, what is it that makes me, me and furthermore is different than that which makes you, you? The answer arrived to me one drizzly chilly night as I stared at long length into a hot fireplace. For it occurred to me then that as I stared at the fire I never saw the same flame twice. You can never look at the same flame twice and that's what I am, I am like the flame. I am like the flame and so are you. Namely the thing that makes me, me and you and you is like the flame, continuous but ephemeral and like a flame it eventually burns out. Since we are conscious when the synapses of our brain firing I decided to define consciousness in this way. Only certain kinds or patterns of information give rise to consciousness.(24.18) to be sure. But consciousness is nothing more than a unity of all the separate active circuits at that moment. So, consciousness is a function of time. This is important.

Other researchers carried the topic from there. Since all this synaptic firing is contained within the well defined neural network of the brain they conjectured that consciousness is confined to the organ as well. This I knew to be false instantly, but it is a reasonable conjecture, conclusion even for lesser researchers. The reason that the conclusion is so believable is because it seems to be so utterly true. The earth after all does seem to be flat to an ant traversing its surface.

As I said I knew assertion to be false instantly, I could even see how to do the theoretical work instantly. Now if one's theory is correct then one need never perform an experiment. Indeed experiments are for those who do not trust their own theory, or were incapable of understanding the theory of another. Fortunato could no sooner understand my theory than he could develop one superior to it.

So, once I had completed my theoretical calculations to show that consciousness was not contained within the body I designed a device by which to test the theory that experimentalists would accept. I did not mind designing the machine, but I did not want to build it. For this I felt it was suitable to downsource to Fortunato. But in addition to his seething jealousy of my talents he had already sided with those "flat earth theorists". This afforded me infinite distress; because even though I had designed it I could know better build it then I could repair a computer. For such things lesser minds could spend more time to become specialists. This was my dilemma, to lower myself to ask Fortunato to do the task which was beneath me. As I said it was arrogant, but not to a fault. I was sure of my results and the truth of my conjecture, I just needed this machine built. The issue was simply to convince Fortunato to do it. Furthermore despite my copious theoretical calculations since gaining acclaim for my PhD dissertation, I had failed until now to publish a paper. Publish or perish, even I was not above it. So, with the pressure on, as they say, I sought out Fortunato.

I surmised that Fortunato was his own comfortable speaking to me as I to him, although for diametrically opposite reasons. So, I was surprised when he agreed to build it for me. I say surprised, but it was really something a little different, it was surprised with something more, something which I could not identify at the time. Indeed so diffuse was it that it’s light fell upon me only in hindsight. It was something like, regret.

As expected Fortunato completed the device in time for me to select subjects and collect data. I still remember the day when I first saw it. Fortunato called me with exceeding alacrity and told me I could come to see it at my convenience. The device was worn over the head, it looked in every manner like one of the old virtual reality helmets. Fortunato was extremely deferential and excited as he explained the device to me. I got the feeling he was bragging not to show off, rather seeking my approval. I can't say that I was impressed, but I was certainly relieved and thank him for his trouble. I had the helmet in my hand and the only thing remaining to do was to calibrate and synchronize the settings. Fortunato had graciously offered to find one of his graduate students and bring it to my office when he was done, but it being late on a Friday at afternoon I volunteered to let him calibrate it on me. "Oh no, oh no, not you," he protested. "The graduate student, let it be calibrated on the graduate student, then I will bring it to your office or your mailbox personally." "Nonsense I replied, I am right here and it's past four o'clock." "This is beneath you Harrison," he shrilled. But I was strangely feeling guilty imagining that I had made him work late for several weeks and now that he seemed to have found his place I actually was beginning to feel bad for him. "Look, let's just do it," I said putting it on my head. "No, no, no", I could hear him say as he physically removed the device from my head and took it from me. We moved it in such a way as to leave me a slight cut on my chin. This would have enraged me, but all owing to the frail nature of my physique and Fortunato's grotesque apologies I overlooked it. But I remained in him, "Now this is getting ridiculous. You said you're graduate student won't be back for an hour and it will only take us 15 min. to do this. Now I insist that we do this immediately." With that there was a long pause and Fortunato at last yielded.

Finally, I thought as a slipped the helmet over my head and reclined back in the leather chair. The calibration consisted of setting up an infinite feedback loop. I connected a video camera to the device goggles and videotaped myself videotaping myself. The entire procedure took barely a minute and was hardly worth all the fuss Fortunato made of it. I should have been irritated, but I was pleased to have the device at my disposal now, and thanked Fortunato for it. The next step was now to randomize some subjects and collect the data. But for purposes of completeness and fairness I should describe this device now. In short it was a machine which was inexorably being constructed by all of mankind ever since the idea was first proposed by Alan Turing hundreds of years ago, namely that of preserving the consciousness of an animate person within the confines of an inanimate structure. I cannot claim sole credit for design of the device since as has been mentioned, it has been underway for centuries. Progress escaped researchers until they capitulated in their efforts with electronic micro circuitry and began human synapses and nerve fiber. In desperation some researchers even cloned entire human brains. Indeed there were farms of such brains and a great scandal arose. But none of these brains were anymore conscious than a calculator.

On a related note, to this day of brain transplant has yet to be successful. Although many results with the organ being successfully transplanted, it no longer remains conscious after the procedure. What is the nature of this failure? If one were to transplant a heart in such a way that the tissues and cells survived perfectly some researchers would consider the procedure successful even if the heart did not beat. I have little in common with the likes of them.

Science is dominated by orthodoxy, the practice persists to the present day. But in addition to my superior abilities I have in my arsenal of concrete experience on which to draw, data which cannot be collected or displayed in the laboratory. I remembered my night surrounded by the darkness. The night my parents died and I waited alone in my room for my aunt and uncle to arrive. That night I was surrounded by darkness beyond dark, which I have tried to explain. But there was something else out there in the dark, something that I was undeniably aware of, something conscious. It was a dark malevolent consciousness but it was conscious just the same and I had experienced it. Now an Orthodox scientist would never allow his personal experience to influence his scientific judgment, even when that is the best scientific judgment available. But I did allow myself to," feel it as they say." And what I felt was that consciousness is something other than just electricity.

Where there is consciousness there is electricity, but where there is electricity there is not necessarily consciousness. Therefore electricity is a necessary component, indeed a byproduct of consciousness.

This then was my working hypothesis. Fortunato for his part contributed by succeeding in building a device which had escaped his predecessors for hundreds of years a thousand even, if you go all the way back to Alan Turing who first proposed it. His machine would make a digital image of the subject's brain including the patterns of synaptic activity. From this we should be able to exactly reconstruct all of the brain functions, including those functions which created consciousness. The subject war the device would have his consciousness exactly replicated and contained within it even after removing it. It was not too trivial a matter.

The experiment was as my calculations predicted. Namely that consciousness left a residual electrical footprint. But from the footprint alone one could not recover the entire beast.

Of course it will not escape you that it remains to say exactly where it comes from. So, it was with a sense of incompleteness and ambivalence that I published my paper on “The Induced Electrical Effects of Consciousness.” With that I had widened my acclaim, save my job, and bent my former nemesis Fortunato to my will. But I had fallen short of my purpose. In fact I demonstrated that my own definition of consciousness, firing of synapses across hemispheres, to be lacking and in short I knew less about consciousness than I did when I began as a graduate student nearly 10 years ago.

I was still young, perhaps 25 or 26, and hopeful. Hope is perpetual with youth; the young have hope even where there is no cause for it. I was no different. For me hold came with striking blue eyes and strawberry red hair and answered to the name Amanda. Amanda came to my office one drizzly day as I considered my above described predicament and it was as if someone suddenly turned on the sun. Until now my narrative has contained personal events but no romantic ones yet in that respect it has been entirely inclusive.

I had never given it much thought, my lack of female companionship that is. I had never thought my lack of companionship in general to be any kind of issue. Yet I was in clear denial.

I had been for all of my life clumsy and awkward in social situations, but to expose myself to the risk of a heart break was unthinkable. Such a thing would be impossible to recover from. So, the combination of fear and clumsiness conspired to keep me far from such things. Amanda hadn't even completely entered the room and she changed all that.

It was the scent of an undeniably beautiful young woman that made me look up from my desk. And there was Amanda coming toward me, dressed with a longsleeved white blouse which was tucked neatly into a skirt, just tight enough to reveal the outline of the thighs of what must be a delicious young lap. She walked up to my desk and introduced herself and I replied with stunned silence.

She informed me that she was a graduate student in search of a major professor. Was it really time for me to have graduate students I'm mused. When I finally found my tongue I told her that I was still relatively new to the department and had never had a graduate student before. What I really meant was that I had no friends, that I didn't like people and they didn't like me, that she wouldn't like me. And so I actually did my best to dissuade her. I couldn't resist leaving the door halfway open however, telling her that she left, "if you are unable to find major professor please come see me and we will revisit the matter." She left with such a bright smile that there was no need for lights in the room.

I could not stop thinking about her for the rest of the day. Nor did it occur to me that I had never thought of anyone or anything outside of my work for such a period of time. This was unusual, amazing even. But I had done everything in my power to dissuade her so; I shouldn't be surprised that she didn't return.

I was still absorbed in her as I walked past a motorcycle shop and another odd thought, and impulse really; I was going to buy a motorbike. Now this was ridiculous on the face of it. I had always criticized motorcycle riders as reckless even more so in the wet slippery environment of the University, where it rains more than 60% of the time. But I knew I could afford one so I walked in on two feet and rode out on a motorcycle.

I can't say what it was that made me make such a drastic break with normality. Was it the strong influence of the site and sent of Amanda, was I suddenly at long last so weary of my dreary existence that I took action to alter it. I cannot say. But it was an interesting relationship that I was unknowingly about to undertake.

You see the motorcycle was physically the antithesis to me. Where I was weak and awkward the motorbike was powerful and sleek. I was afraid of the beast. It seemed that if I even looked at the throttle it would yank me uncontrollably down the street against my will. Finally I had met something that I had to adjust to rather than it to me, and that thing was a machine. But in surprisingly little time to adjust to it I did, becoming familiar with its sounds and feels. I learned to anticipate the turn and lean with the machine, feeling myself more and more at one with it, until we were not man and machine, but a single being, part man and part machine. Getting on and off the bike is much like going in between consciousness and unconsciousness. When I was riding it the singular man beast was alive and when I got off it that beast simply systems ceased to exist until I rode it again. I wondered if I could learn to adjust to the machine would it be possible to do the same with Amanda.

Amanda was now officially my graduate student. I was not supposed to have any romantic attraction to her nor did I exhibit any to the best of my knowledge. But I could hardly breathe and had heart palpations when she drew near. This was hardly objective. The only objective observation I could make was that her mathematics was weak, perhaps too weak to be a graduate student. This made a difference to me anymore then the policy precluding professors from being romantically involved with their students. The practice was as forbidden as it was universal. No, no, was to be with Amanda, to be near enough to touch her without touching her. Like the motorcycle Amanda aroused feelings and sensations unknown to me and to this day unexplainable. Unlike the motorcycle however I could not adjust to her, could not read her mannerisms. Was she being flirtatious or was it just my imagination, should I make my intentions known or keep my distance. Unlike anything else that I was accustomed to there was no reasoning it out. Nor did I have friends with whom to consult. I was as friendless as an adult as it was as a child. In fact I was the same friendless child. It was becoming painfully obvious that if I was going to know whether or not Amanda could be mine, then I would have to take a chance.

Yes I would have to take the chance one way or another. Thoughts of Amanda were taking up huge blocks of my day and I was accomplishing no science. Beyond that I simply couldn't bear the torture any longer. And yet I was a coward. In fact it was she who was the aggressor. I suppose there was really no other way. I was asking adequate at romance as I was a genius as a scientist.

It all happened very simply. We were in the lab alone together when either by accident or on purpose she dropped a beaker. Now the laboratory floors are rubber so there was no danger of it breaking, but together we rushed to catch it before it hit. Instead it bounced with a mutter thud against the will rubber matting. She laughed a girlish little left that take everything else she did lit up the room. She was the only light in my life. We reached for the beaker together and for the first time I touched the softness that was her hands. I paused to look at them, they were small even with respect to my own and her fingers long and perfectly sculpted. I examined them enraptured and unexpectedly I felt her soft kiss on my cheek. That could easily have been the finest moment of my life. Then she stood up smiling and laughing replaced the beaker on the counter as if nothing had happened just as other graduate students arrived.

I will divulge my brief relationship with Amanda, or was it a lengthy one? I don't know, but I shall divulge only as much as it is pertinent to the main discourse. Indeed I am incapable of divulging anymore it being of such a personal nature and I being such an impersonal one. But our relationship did go on, I'm just not sure anymore for how long.

I remember after that first kiss looking forward to a conference at one of the universities where the weather was warm. I had been so distracted by Amanda that I hadn't even a new paper to present, fortunately for me an older one was more than adequate. I imagined that after the conference Amanda and I could spend the week they're going to the beach in the day and making love in our room at night. I had never had sex before, and though I was thoroughly un knowledgeable on the subject it seemed like something that can be picked up on the spot. So, it was in good spirits that I straddled my motorcycle for the ride south to the beaches warm weather and Amanda. But it was not to be. For and I still don't know how this happened, but I had just gotten on my bike when a car crashed into the car parked in front of me, pining me and my bike to the car parked behind me. The pain was as excruciating as a shock. The whole incident seemed to materialize on top of me. Where did this car come from, how was it taken so unaware? Now my leg was pinned above the left knee and I could think of nothing, nothing not even Amanda I could think of nothing save the pain until I went unconscious.

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. I because of my superior capabilities, or perhaps only for my life experiences, for I must be factual and include this possibility, am able to take the view from above. I can see the forest without being blinded by the trees.


It seems unnatural that one such as I could be out done by likes of Fortunato. But it appears to be so, that slave in intellect be the master of treachery.



The loop only to, only to begin again. I see all so completely now  and it is dark, so dark in here.



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Harold Bauer gulped more than sipped his brandy. It was the most expensive they had. The door opened when a young couple came in bringing the cold and drizzle in with them. When the door shut leaving them out again, Harold wished the memories, the guilt could be so easily kept outside as well. It was raining that night too. He still remembered the hum of the old Mercedes-Benz electric as it stopped with a jerk at the curb to let him out. Those old cars sat too low to the ground making it difficult to get out without pushing himself up from the seat with his arms. Not like the maglev cars they had now, that you could just float right up to the door and get out without having to get up to straighten your legs. In those days the cars were old and he was young, but today it was the cars that were new while he was old. With that shift of perspective laboring with youthful legs to lift his fitbody out of the car didn't seem so bad. Yes he was a young man then, but even then Harry was very very old. He was sitting right here in the same restaurant, just 27 years old with a PhD and all of his tomorrows in front of him. Now all of his tomorrows are yesterday's and he sits waiting for another young man to come through the same door with another answer to the same question. He and Harry were both 50 years older. To him it was the end of a life, but for Harry it had just been only a second. Harry had lived hundreds of lifetimes and would perhaps live a 1000 more, that is what Harold was waiting to know. Waiting for, anticipating, another young man with his tomorrows in front of him to come through the door of his favorite restaurant and deliver the same message to a slightly different decrepit old man.