Honing The Talent
B Pascal
Chapter 21
When I woke again, it was after twelve, and I hadn’t heard Larry come in. Maybe I’d get to smirk at him for a change. I still wasn’t that hungry, so I sat at the computer and wrote a long email to Karen, telling her about the change in the weather and reminding her of what snow felt like. She’d probably forgotten out there in California. Probably wore tee-shirts every day of the week.
I talked about some of the insights I’d gotten in a few of the subjects I had. The insights were mostly due to my peeking into the instructor’s epicenters and appropriating small segments of their knowledge, but I didn’t mention that. Better that she think that I’m naturally smart.
I talked about a couple of the clubs I’d joined and what was discussed there and some of the questions they’d raised in my mind.
At the end I told her how much I’d been missing her recently and was looking forward to spending a little time with her over Christmas.
I’d spend all day writing her about my life, so I cut it short and sent it off. I could write more tomorrow. Somewhere deep in my head I was comparing her with Gail. I really liked Gail. She was smart and passionate about her calling, gorgeous, sexy, with a quirky sense of humor.
I really wanted to find that same connection I had with Karen, where we occasionally seemed to share a single mind and body. That connection was so profound, so special, that I wanted it with everyone I met. But the fact was that it was rare, and try as I might, I hadn’t found it with Gail. I thought we’d been close once or twice, but it never happened. Having experienced it, I didn’t think I could commit to someone if we didn’t share that.
What if Karen found someone else in California and decided to spend her life with him? Would I be sentenced to a relationship with someone that I would always know was incomplete in some important way?
I could feel myself spiraling downward, worrying myself into a funk, about all the things that might happen. I was saved from my self-pity by the door opening and Larry walking in looking bleary-eyed.
I couldn’t let this pass unremarked. “Well, young man, what have you got to say for yourself?
You’d better have a good excuse coming in at this hour.”
“Leave me alone, Carter. I need to sleep.”
He really did look like shit. I hoped it was just a case of too much alcohol, and decided to leave him be. We’d talk later. I looked at my watch and realized I’d missed lunch, but they always had sandwiches at the grub hub. Another of Larry’s new names for the cafeteria, and his current favorite.
I felt better after a sandwich, pie and coffee, and took a detour to the library. I had my hand-written notes from reading the stuff I’d found on the Internet about psi. Most of it was crap, sensationalist articles about mediums who could talk to the dead, lots of pseudo-science about being able to communicate telepathically over enormous distances, bending teaspoons with the mind, and so on.
Scattered in among those there was the occasional snippet of real science looking to explain well-documented phenomena of apparent mind-reading and attempts to posit a physical basis for that ability. They all ended in dead-ends or with more questions than answers. I thought about it for awhile. We’d had a hundred years or so of trained scientists trying to put a fence around this thing, to decide if there was any real part to it at all or if it was all theatrics and hokum meant to impress the gullible.
Still, amid all that, there was the occasional unexplained ability to do something that wasn’t possible by the average human—read minds, tell the future, influence people or objects. Scientists, as they usually do, waved their hands and dismissed them as data errors if it didn’t fit their conclusion. I wasn’t so sure.
I thought that maybe the approach was wrong, that we were trying to examine the external manifestation of the phenomena, to try to reproduce it. Which, of course, is the standard tried-and-true scientific approach. No credible scientist would try to change that. But I wondered if, when presented evidence suggesting that an individual might sometimes exhibit an extraordinary ability, we might first take a closer look at the individual and try to figure out what made them different.
Did it run in their families, even if it might skip a generation? Were there environmental factors that may have influenced them? Oddities in the diet? Were there any indications of physical trauma in the past, particularly head injuries?
How might we examine the biological processes in the brain of such a person? Were there tests we could run? What would we be looking for?
The more I thought about this, the more questions I came up with. But I thought this might be a fruitful avenue to pursue. The problem is that I had no chemical or biological background, so I wouldn’t know what to look for and how to detect it.
I think I’d made this observation before, that all mental processes are ultimately chemical or biological at their most basic. Memory, reasoning, even twitching an eyelash. They all involved one kind of cell or another, and all operated chemically, biologically or electrically. If I could identify the part of the brain where these abilities lived, maybe I could ultimately figure out what made me different.
Well, I didn’t really need a background in chemistry or biology to read about this, though I’d probably miss some important connections, but at least it would give me a better understanding of what I needed to know more about. Maybe I could cozy up to some savant in biochemistry or cell biology and borrow the knowledge I needed.
In the meantime I finished looking at the references I’d collected on psi research. Fully ninety-five percent of it was bullshit in one way or another, as I’d expected, but better to rule this stuff out first and then pursue other clues. I began by looking through the yearly summaries of psychology research, searching out the ones that included a biological or anatomical component to see if I could identify a common area of the brain that appeared in those papers. It was tedious work.
Eventually I threw up my hands and told myself I’d done enough for one day. Progress would be slow, if there was any progress at all, and I had almost another four years here, so there was time. I packed up, put away the journals I’d been looking at, and headed off to dinner.
Dinner was pretty good. It was taco night at the food factory, so I got a couple of beef and cheese soft tacos and refried beans. I knew it wasn’t ’real’ Mexican food, but it tasted just fine to me.
In the dorm, I found Larry looking semi-human again, and getting ready to go out. “Geez, Larry, after the way you looked this morning, I thought you might take a night off to recuperate.”
“It’s Saturday, Carter, party night. I can’t miss one. I have a reputation to maintain.”
“Larry, I’m not your daddy and I’m not your caretaker, but I’m your roomie and a I’m bit concerned at the pace you keep. Are you up to date with all your assignments? Finals aren’t that far off.”
“Relax, Carter, I’ve read everything, handed in all my work, and I know when stuff’s due. I’ll be fine. You know, you have the opposite problem. You hardly ever party. You need to blow off steam every once in a while. It’s a rule. I read it somewhere.”
“I blew off steam last night. I’m all caught up.”
“Okay, your loss. Tonight’s a big blowout at Sigma house, should be lots of women and even more alcohol. If you change your mind, that’s where I’ll be.”
He gave me a wave as he stepped out the door. I know his family probably made a sizable ’gift’
to the school, but there were still minimum academic standards even for the wealthy. I hoped he was as up-to-date on his work as he said.
But he had made one good point, if indirectly. What was I going to do tonight? I had no problem reading ahead in my classes, but I’d done a lot of that recently and felt I was due a break.
I picked up the copy of the student newspaper that he’d tossed on his bed. Maybe there was a movie or something. In the end I went to a classical concert sponsored by the music department, a famous oboist. Not that I’d be able to tell, since the name meant nothing to me.
But it was actually okay, once I’d relaxed and just let myself flow with it. I even admitted to myself that I liked it. Some part of my mind was saying, “Karen will really like that you’ve done this, maybe think she’s had a positive influence on you and should continue.” So I’ll mention it conversationally the next time I email her.
I’m going to skip ahead here, something I’ll do throughout this chronicle. The usual tedious and boring class-related stuff happens and you can probably predict most of it. I’ll jump forward periodically and just summarize things you might need to know, and I’ll stop and go into detail when it involves something related to figuring out my various talents or things that affect my life in a major way.
So I press the fast-forward button here... « hissssss » and stop. Some schools do their exams after winter break, in mid-January. But —————— does them just before we head home for Christmas, and we have almost a month off before we have to be back for classes. It’s an energy-reducing measure, I’m told, because they don’t have to heat the buildings for almost thirty days in the dead of winter, since there are no students and no classes.
But it’s a stress-inducing measure because we don’t have all that time over the break to study for exams. I was ahead of the game because I’d kept up with my reading, and gone back periodically to review what we’d covered in class, so I had a good handle on what we’d be tested on. But not everyone had done that. I could tell because I could see the stress and panic on people’s faces as I walked the campus.
Larry had come to the same conclusion, a little too late in my opinion, and had forsworn parties till after the break and had his nose buried in his texts. When he’d look up occasionally, there was a look of desperation on his face. Some part of me really wanted to say ’I told you so’ but I thought he’d learn the lesson better by suffering through this. He was smart, so I thought he’d do well enough to pass, but there’d be no Phi Beta Kappa nominations for him this semester.
So over the course of five days plus a couple of days the following week, we suffered through exams. I was up late a couple of nights cramming, just in case, and took a walk around 3 a.m. to clear my head. I was surprised by the number of lighted windows in all the dorms.
The exams themselves I thought were easier than I expected. No, that’s not right. They weren’t easy at all, but I knew the material, plus I had the advantage of having this ’framework’ for each subject in my head so I could see how all the elements affected one another, so the essay questions in particular were easier for me to tackle.
And the facts, the ones that required memorization, like in history, they were embedded in that framework as well, so I only had to look to pick out what was needed.
I left my last exam feeling relieved and also confident. At least I felt that way when I was writing the exam. I’d have to wait to see how they were graded. But it was done, and there was no sense worrying about it till grades came in.
In the dorm, I slept for an hour, then got up and started packing a bag for the trip home. I hadn’t been home since the beginning of the semester, though I’d talked with them on the phone once a week or so. I could almost predict what my mother would be doing between now and when I got home. She’d be planning some big meals where she could interrogate me—in a friendly way—about everything I’d done, who I’d met, what my classes were like, was I eating enough. This was the longest I’d ever been away from home, and I’m sure it was stressful for her.
I reminded myself to quietly ask my sister what mom had been like once she found out that Mindy had a boyfriend. Did she want every detail of what happened, what they talked about, did he try to kiss you, is he smart, does... Well, you get the idea.
The door opened and Larry came in. He dropped his backpack on the desk and flopped on his bed.
“And?” I asked.
“I just want to sleep for a week. I don’t care how I did. I’m exhausted, empty. Depressed.”
“How did you do, you think?”
“I felt okay about most of them, not great, there was a bunch of stuff that was fuzzy that I wasn’t sure about. The calculus, well, I think I was able to plod through it, but it was a struggle. I’ll have to see if I remembered as much as I thought I did. Thanks for helping me with that, by the way. If you hadn’t, I’d be in the running for the lowest exam score in the history of the department.”
“I’m sure you did fine on the calc. The other stuff, well, maybe a little more reading time next semester, and a bit less partying. Might make exams easier.”
“We’ll see. Are you out of here soon?”
“I still gotta finish packing, but yeah, there’s a train this evening that’ll get me in before midnight. You?”
“I’ll sleep here tonight, and Ames will come down to drive me home tomorrow.”
“At least you’ll be traveling on a good night’s sleep.”
“Yeah. Listen, sometime you should come visit. There’s lots of stuff to do. Don’t we have a long weekend in February? I think so, you should come up with me, meet my family.”
“That might be fun. We’ll talk about it when we get back.”
I finished my packing, and called home to let them know when I’d be coming in. I checked the schedule and found I could get a campus bus that went to the train station. Larry was half asleep on his bed when I left. I wished him a good break, found the bus and was at the station fifteen minutes later.
The trip was uneventful, and right on time we pulled into the old familiar station. I grabbed my bags, muscled my way down the narrow steps of the passenger car, and stepped onto the platform.