15 Minutes Past Sagittarius

There were no windows which opened to the outside world anywhere in the prison, yet even there one could sense that the sun was setting. It wasn’t as easy to block the sounds of the outside community, too, but the warden covered them with elevator music, playing interminably throughout the sterile halls. Intentionally so or not, the hollow music also served to dilute the passions of the inmates. It was the evening prior to Jacob’s execution. This was a twenty first century city, governed by a benevolent aristocracy, and Anna and Brian were there to see to the proper performance of the customs and rituals of the event.

 Brian was Prince of the City. His office was all but fulfilled, his lieutenants having identified, captured, convicted, and imprisoned the monster Jacob; only the execution itself remained. Princess Anna had an equally important function to perform in her capacity as High Priestess. The condemned were offered a last taste of relative freedom and a few hours of normal human experience - as much as could be obtained within the confines of the prison grounds. Indeed, Anna probably originated this tradition; the unity she brought to the city would have been less genuine if it didn’t extend even to death row, and such was the depth of her vision that even the most heinous of human monsters could find no darkness to shield them from her loving gaze.

Whatever the custom’s origin, the damned were indulged their liberty by the temporary transfer of their spirit into another body, and such a thing could only be accomplished with the presence of the Priestess as catalyst. It was more than trivial symbolism that, just as a corrupt soul could be transferred to a healthy host, even so barbaric a thing as an execution could be given a humane skin. The officials and the representatives of the community and the media gathered in the lounge adjacent to the warden’s office before going to meet Jacob for the rituals. The forms of routine were there, but tension betrayed the city’s need for reassurance that the monster had in fact been destroyed.

Brian remarked to Anna, “We’ve never had anyone like Jacob here before. Do you really think the transfer is appropriate for him - I just don’t believe there’s anything human about him at all. It seems too risky.”

Anna answered, “If we don’t reach out to everyone, it’s a little less sincere when we extend to anyone. It’s not ours to judge whether our efforts do or even could bring any good results for another soul.”

 Brian observed that the golden aura about her face gave her a remoteness akin to the Sun - seemingly small in the distance, and yet her light defined everything in the room. Even her eyes were of so transparent a Mediterranean blue that it didn’t always occur to one that they had sight - unless they were caught directly in her gaze and found themselves within the clear depths. The group proceeded solemnly to Jacob’s cell.

Jacob was a serial killer. He wasn’t the ordinary murderer - someone who’s character was weaker than his passions. He wasn’t even the ordinary serial killer. The profile of such monsters is that they’ve sustained some great injury to their psyche, resulting in an emptiness which craves satiation with human blood. They feel a profound lack of intimacy with others, and some demon within them translates that into an issue of Power - never mind that intimacy is of the essence of Beauty. Such wretched souls usually carry some shreds of a normal psyche; it’s voice is too weak to confront their demon directly, but will find some way to signal others - help the police - to recognize their devil and stop him. Jacob didn’t fit the profile. In his late thirties, at first glance one would take him perhaps as a member of some academic community. He had that look of a researcher. In another time he might have found his way into an administrative role at a concentration camp, where he could conduct his experiments of terror on a helpless population. His was no perversion of the beast, but rather of an intellect too abstract, too detached to appreciate any distinction between the hypothetical and the lived experience of his victims. If one found grounds in his particular fascination with doom and dread to speculate that there had indeed been some ancient horror done to a child Jacob, the rational machine which thus developed in compensation was in complete command of the adult psyche.

 And there was only the most remote chance that some fragment of common humanity within him set the wheels in motion for his identification. More likely, he simply got careless, choosing at last a subject with whom he could be connected. Jacob had been administrator at a health club. He’d also taught a yoga class there. In that capacity he’d selected his last target - to all appearances, a healthy, sincere young woman. Master at psychic manipulation, he’d used her fantasies about yoga masters to first tear down her self esteem and then make her utterly dependent upon him to reshape her. With cult-like logic, he’d brought her to willingly participate in a satanic ritual of her own death. The detectives had interviewed Jacob about her simply while gathering background on this latest victim. When they learned from others in her yoga class that she’d had a much more involved relationship with the instructor than he had divulged, they began to examine him more closely, and soon enough became certain that they’d found their killer.

When the prison party approached Jacob, they could see no trace of anxiety in his face. Not exactly amused by the sobriety of the group, it seemed more that his curiosity was aroused by their attitudes, that his intellectual fascination with the human reaction to mortal dread could even include himself as a specimen.

Anna addressed him, “Jacob, you have been condemned by the city. Yet we offer you one last opportunity to live for an hour like a normal man. Do you wish to accept the transfer of your soul into another body?” Anna had that indefinable beauty some few women accomplish which makes it impossible to assign an age to her - she appeared to have the wisdom it takes fifty years to develop, yet there was also something adolescent in her eyes. She makes no demand, yet people behave more decently than their norm in her presence, perhaps because her gaze makes them feel more decent, more beloved.

 Such charm had no effect on Jacob - it doesn’t matter how lovely one might be if another simply lacks the organs of sight. He blinked away his contempt for the word, “normal,” by quipping, “My soul? You still believe in those?” He smirked at the group’s indignation for his disregard of ceremony before confirming, “Yes, I look forward to the transfer.”

 Following protocol, the group walked Jacob to the room where the transfer would take place. Brian showed an inclination to walk ahead, to lead Jacob like he would a whipped dog, but Anna quietly touched his hand, drawing him back to walk alongside the condemned as though he were a peer. Jacob took note of the influence which body language had, both that of Brian and Anna. The procession began, the monster Jacob managing to lead by half a step, Brian to his left, Anna to his right, and the others trailing behind.

The other prisoners lined the corridor outside their cells, witnessing that the damned was indeed receiving his promised right. Normally the hallway had that clean, anemic brightness of whitewashed concrete block, but the thick rows of convicts on each side darkened the passage, giving it the atmosphere of a decaying tunnel beneath some ancient castle.

Passing Winston, Jacob said to him in a matter-of-fact tone, “Look out for strangers - once I’m in the other body, I’m going to seek you out and cut your throat.”

Winston was just another inmate, and had probably done nothing to earn Jacob’s disfavor, or even his notice. Jacob simply selected him with the randomness of a researcher taking an arbitrary rat from a cage on whom to study the psychic effect of impending doom. Winston was quite a large and powerfully built black man who had always possessed confidence in his ability to defend himself. But all the populace knew that Jacob was no ordinary felon, that if he made a threat it was certain to be fulfilled. Even as they shuddered for Winston, they felt personal relief to be passed over.

Anna ushered Jacob into the room where the ritual was to take place. The one who’d offered to be host body was alone in an adjacent room - it offered some measure of privacy to the volunteer in so intimate a procedure that the damned didn’t meet his host prior to the transfer. Brian, the other officials, and the reporters walked around the corner to the observation room on the other side.

 Such was the authenticity of Anna’s priesthood that the damned would usually enter their trance as soon as they stepped into this room - the mere suggestion of what she would accomplish was credible enough of itself to accomplish the task. But, developed and hardened personality that he was, it took longer with Jacob. He looked about the room, noting the feminine taste in the burgundy chair and matching divan. Lavish as they were in so ascetic an environment, they were appropriate to the service of the Priestess, and her furnishings somehow always fit naturally in their setting. After Jacob elected to assume his place reclining on the couch, she took her seat. With a final glance telling her that he was choosing to submit to her spell rather than succumbing to it, he closed his eyes.

 Anna began to chant. Her voice was gentle, timeless, and crystal-clear. It filled the space between them. Imperceptibly, his heart adopted the pace of her tambourine. There was just an anxious moment in which he drowned in the air which had just left her lungs, and her melody dissolved into his bloodstream. Her golden silhouette became orange through his closed eyelids. Jacob entered trance.

Opening his eyes again after an eternal moment, he knew that he had successfully transferred; he was now in the adjacent room. He felt heavy at first - clumsy while his will settled more completely into this host body and learned its coordination. Oddly, his host had been lying on his stomach during the transfer. He felt the presence of his host’s personality, contained and sleeping in a corner of this foreign psyche. The presence was more distinct than Jacob had anticipated, but he dismissed it as simply part of the alien experience. In Anna’s city there was always some altruistic soul with a sense of civic duty and tradition sufficient that he would volunteer to be host. Not a trait which Jacob respected.

 Brian led the gallery back around to Jacob’s door once they’d witnessed the transfer, and opened the door to usher Jacob back out into the hallway. Anna joined them to walk back past the other prisoners who were still in their ranks along the walls, witnesses now to the completion of the rite. The procession maintained the ceremonial dignity of silence, and Jacob hadn’t yet tested his voice in this new body. He took note that the reverence the prisoners accorded Anna now had a touch of awe, a murmur even of fear, seeing what she had accomplished.

In a movement so swift that Brian had to take a second look at its consequences to be certain of what he’d seen, Jacob turned and slashed Winston’s throat as he passed him. As though they’d already accepted the inevitability of this, other than the initial shock there was only minimal reaction among either the procession or the inmates. Winston dropped to his knees, his moan muffled in the gurgle of blood in his trachea.

 Brian motioned silently to a pair of guards to take Winston to the prison clinic for what care could be provided. Anna took note of the depth of Jacob’s darkness. There were no guidelines as to how to respond to a criminal act by someone during the hosting. The transfer was to be of such short duration, and confined within the prison compound, that such a thing simply wasn’t anticipated. It didn’t even evoke Brian’s police instincts. Winston was just an inmate, after all, not someone with citizenship and its concordant rights within the community. In any event, the demands of ritual during this time kept any reaction suppressed - Jacob was in his evening of liberty and would be indulged.

The public formalities observed, the prisoners were for once anxious to return to their cells, and the procession left Jacob alone in his liberty. Had the damned any family or friends, he would be allowed a visit - even a conjugal visit - but Jacob had no such connections, and was free to just prowl about the prison grounds as he wished.

Brian waited in the lounge for Anna to spend her moment with Winston. When she returned, he said, “We’ll never agree about capital punishment. I understand your perspective, that all belong to the One Spirit, and all are valuable to Her in a way that we mortals can’t understand. But surely Jacob is the best example yet that, if indeed we are all One, such an element as he within the Spirit surely contaminates us all, and shouldn’t be suffered to live.”

Anna answered, “I understand your perspective, too, that the ideal should bend its knee to the sometimes harsh realities of this world. I have no argument in defense of his life. It’s not Jacob, but rather the next to be accused who concerns me. Practical justice is decided by men, and so long as that’s true there will always be room for error and corruption to slip in, for the spoken legalisms to conceal mortal judgements based on personal malice, envies, politics, or prejudice. Whatever you argue is accomplished in the execution of the guilty, it seems impossible to balance the death of ten corrupt souls against risking even one innocent. Yet, even if we disagree, I don’t compete during the performance of your office.”

Jacob was acclimating to his host. He began to appreciate the power and grace of this body, and entertained a certain respect for the host who’d developed it. He’d never intended to surrender the body back to its owner. Others among the damned may have also had such fantasies, but their relationship with the body would soon begin to deteriorate - within a few hours they would feel it as a growing sleepiness, and when they awoke they would do so in their own bodies, to wait out their final moments. Such was the cohesion of Jacob’s personality, however, that he had the strength to sustain his integration within his host, probably even through sleep.

It hadn’t occurred to him that the attributes of his host might affect him, and yet the very style with which this body seemed inclined to move impressed him that the influence of body and soul could be reciprocal. He’d intended to resume his old way of life once he’d taken possession of his host. And he would be free of the legal system because the penalties of law applied to his old body, not this, and there’d never been occasion for the government to prepare a response to the theft of a host body.

But he recognized a primitive attitude at some instinctive level within his flesh that he realized would make him different in some way. It wasn’t the personality of his host - he could sense that safely bottled up by the mysteries of the Priestess. No - Jacob began to appreciate that consciousness was bidirectional. There was indeed some spiritual something which could form an affinity for a body, yet was independent of it - not just his restrained host, but Jacob was himself obviously some such thing which had been moved from his old body to this. But there was also that consciousness of an entirely different character which rose up organically from his new genes. As he was only just now integrating within this body, it was quite noticeable to him - an instinctive and powerful awareness, clearly indued with the passions and the motivations of life. In some ways his host body was like himself, except that this flesh had none of that abstract curiosity with which Jacob had so perversely toyed with his victims. No, this consciousness was immediate - too primitive to be self-conscious, but distinctly aware of its own internal needs and the relevance of what it sensed in the environment through which Jacob now strolled. And it felt good to walk - as though it were his feet grabbing the Earth’s skin which powered the planet in its daily spin.

Acutely aware of this unexpected element in the transfer, it was thus less startling that it might have been when Jacob’s thought, searching through this flesh, realized that his host was a tiger. No - a tigress, because she - they - were pregnant. He felt the fetus within himself, felt the instincts which developed and nourished it. Of course he’d assumed that his host would be a man - not that much was ever said or written about the liberty of the damned, but in fact he’d never heard it specified that the condemned would be indulged his freedom in a human body. Past the initial surprise, Jacob felt a wave of respect, even admiration, for the choice the Priestess had made for him. Now he had a label for the instinctive consciousness of his new body. The High Priestess must understand him quite well to blend him into a creature of such power and majesty that she was a law unto herself, that morality was at last dismissed as simply whatever interested him. In the end, his diabolic experiments with people had left him dissatisfied - people bored him with their preoccupations with yesterday and anxieties about tomorrow, with the petty worries about their ties with others - family, friends, work. Now a tigress, he was Nietzsche’s Superman, and all reality was defined in terms of his thought, his fascinations.

 Brian was becoming restless in the lounge. “The transfer should have been over hours ago. I warned you that Jacob was like no other we’ve ever imprisoned here. I don’t think he’s going to surrender his host. It’s past time - we should go find him.”

 Anna said, “The tradition doesn’t allow us to interfere with his liberty.”

 ”And yet the hour of his execution approaches. What will be the consequences if he does not return?”

Anna answered, “The time and your duty are clear. Your law makes no allowance for these circumstances.”

 And so the execution was uneventfully performed on Jacob’s comatose body at the appointed time.

 Jacob stretched out atop the wall next to a guard tower. He looked into the streets below, into the rough, decaying neighborhood around the prison. It occurred to him that he would need to find an abandoned house - somewhere he could deliver his cub, safe from the neighborhood dogs during his hour of vulnerability. He thought contentedly of the days and weeks ahead, of nursing his cub, the life flowing from his breast to its hungry mouth. He looked about for a route down to the street, realizing that he shouldn’t take the leap the tigress would normally accomplish quite easily, for fear of jarring the developing cub too violently.

That last protective impulse jolted Jacob back into a more familiar sense of who he was. He couldn’t resist these maternal instincts, yet they repulsed him even while coursing through his mind. His old self wanted to continue his experiments, to dissect life, yet now he also hungered for experience, and to live. The self-giving instinct of this animal consciousness was something Jacob could not abide. Life had become important - not specifically his life, but life itself, now flowing through him into another. The attitude inhered in the flesh itself, in its genes, and could not be driven out so long as it comprised a living organism. Jacob could not endure becoming such a creature, and so while he still could he chose to let himself drift away, drift to sleep and surrender his host. His revulsion at the feelings that were becoming his outweighed even his certainty that his own body no longer lived. Jacob found it preferable to resign himself and dissipate into nothingness. As if this spirit of darkness could choose to ignore the first rays of sunrise penetrating him at the last.

Brian had stayed with Anna throughout the night, anxious about the outcome of Jacob’s transfer. At dawn they walked to the cafeteria together for breakfast. He said, “As worried as I was about the transfer, it made the execution itself that much easier - my staff was spared having to look into the living eyes of the man they were strapping to the table.”

 Anna had been notably quiet throughout the night. She had probably remained linked in some way to the transfer, so long as it was sustained. Now that it was over, Brian noticed that her skin was becoming luminous again. How lovely she was. Wishing to change to a less formal, more personal conversation with her, he said, “What are you drinking, anyway? You seem to be really enjoying it.”

 Her eyes sparkling and lips straining to conceal wisdom’s mischief, she replied, “Tiger milk.”

Robert C. Flanders

all rights reserved

The Sinkhole
When I walk from the locker room to the exercise floor in my gym, the whirlpool always catches my eye. After finishing the first half of my routine in the weight room I go to the cardio floor to use a couple of machines there, and for the motivation of seeing the ladies on the treadmills. Today my eyes brushed those of a woman I haven’t met before, the contact exchanging invitations for conversations of introduction.
But before we could blink, the radio station being aired broadcast an ad for a cream which ‘enhances the experience,’ and is available at a local adult store. The communication between our eyes was immediately rendered coarse, and vulgar.
Not for the first time, I go to the front desk to ask them to change the station. Well, you either understand the objection to public indecency, or you don’t. I think of the scene from ‘Apocolypse Now’, in which Chef expresses his horror at seeing hundreds of pounds of prime beef being dumped into a vat and boiled down till it turns grey. Georgia’s governor’s office confirms that broadcasts are beyond local control, and my congressmen have all written me that the standards are regulated by the FCC, implying that they have no say, either. Helpless anger in seeing the power of modern communications reducing women to a consumer product, the media teaching generations of girls that forming a family is incidental to their personal fulfillment. No doubt the civilization which replaces ours will deal with this in their turn – it’s happened before. But I’m angry for all, and angry for the damage being done to the woman I would love.

I carry the frustration to my bed. In a dream I see a man’s eyes close to this world, his light disappear into the darkness of an underground river. I have saved her, but not him. His life was in my hand, and I let him slip away.
My role in the dream is the same I played during my career – an EMS lieutenant. I was charged to coordinate the efforts of paramedic teams at several stations scattered around the county, and to that end spent most of my time in the cruiser assigned to me, listening to radio communications and responding to alarms where I deemed it appropriate for an officer to be present.
But in the dream no alarm had been given. I was simply driving newly opened streets to familiarize myself with its landmarks; a strip mall was being built atop the left bank of the road, and an exotic dance club had already opened. But just as I approached the shopping center, a geyser burst out of the pavement directly in front of me. I turned my car sideways and stopped, flipping on the strobes to warn anyone on the road behind.
With amazing speed the asphalt dropped away, seeming to feed an increasing roar. And even while I radioed the dispatcher about the sinkhole, I saw a car approaching from the other side. It’s brakes locked down, but not in time. The car teetered on the edge for a moment as if indecisive, then committed itself to the maelstrom.
Fire Rescue was given the alarm, but their station was several minutes away. What a luxury it is to have time between receiving a call and arriving on scene to get mind and body focused. What a joy it is to feel the power course through me during the emergency run. Assigned responsibility for my fellows, I have the authority, too – the scene and all the roadway to it are mine to command. I absorb the power and responsiveness of my cruiser during the run, and upon arrival the blood has filled my flesh and flushed my mind of all but the task before me. But not this night – I was thrown into the disaster cold. Trained, but not braced for an emergency.
Thankfully it was late night – no other headlights in sight, less chance that others would follow the car into the vortex. Soon enough the police would have the roadway blocked, and be dealing with drivers irritated to have their routines interrupted. Street lamps from the parking lot on the hill gave some illumination, but the bursts from my strobes rendered the scene surreal.
The pavement continued to crumble, the hole broaden. It would be derelict to run onto unstable ground recklessly, so I took the time to fetch the rope from my trunk and tie one end around my waist. Making a loop around a fire hydrant which appeared far enough away from the sinkhole to be secure, I fed myself line, and approached the precipice.
A huge water main had burst, and was spraying toward the opposite bank. The car had sunk to its windows, but I could see a woman being pushed out, helped onto its roof by a man inside. She crawled face down and grasped at the opposite side, struggling to stay atop the slippery roof. The man quickly climbed up beside her.
The torrent had apparently washed itself an outlet under the mall – a whirlpool was becoming defined. A mixed blessing – the water was leveling out in the hole, but the vortex was tugging at the car.
The couple could not hear my shouts over the roar, but as the man scoured frantically around the pit he spotted me descending its side, and tapped the woman’s back to show her that help was at hand. I was near the end of my rope – enough to play out and get me to the car, but no extra.
Looking about for options, I could see several security guards standing on the hill above. They should at least be preventing people in the parking lot from getting too close to the danger, but their backs were to the crowd – they were more an audience to the scene than participants. A cat sat on the curb in front of them, and my glance took in a dog, too, who paced anxiously, as if he already felt the pain from sirens too distant for me to hear. I had no means to gesture for help, as both hands were needed on the rope, but it didn’t matter anyway – the guards couldn’t get from their balcony box to a position to aid any sooner than the firefighters who were on the way. The car was clearly moving toward the whirlpool – all was up to me.
I rappelled away from the wall and thankfully landed hard across the two victims. They grasped my arm just as the car slid away from underneath us. I watched it circle deliberately in the whirlpool and vanish. There was nothing left on the surface but the two people facing me, clutching my right arm. I felt the water pulling their feet toward the whirlpool, turning us all. The free end of the rope was still in my left hand, at the rapelling position behind my back. With just that arm to work with, I struggled to make several turns of the rope around the loop at my waist, all the while trying not to move jerkily, lest I shake the victims loose from the other arm.
I couldn’t hear, and could not turn to see, but I felt the rope being pulled from behind, away from the whirlpool – I knew and trusted that Fire Rescue had arrived. Now I could do no more than serve as the final length, the hook at the end of the rope. Surely a firefighter was securing himself to another line, ladders were being dropped, and we would soon be joined.
I had locked onto the woman hand to wrist, with the man clinging on, but his hands were slipping down my wet arm – he was obviously exhausted. If another rescuer didn’t arrive soon.. I ached to let go my left hand’s grasp on the rope at my back and reach for him, but my body refused, seeming to know that the knot would slip if I did, and I would lose them both.
A bump to my leg told me that a firefighter was behind me, so I finally flung the left arm around to the man. He saw, and plunged for it, but so lethargically that he reached my hand with only one of his own. My fingers were hooked, cramped in their curled position from the rope, but he didn’t have the strength to lock his to mine against the pull of the water. Before the firefighter could lunge for him he slipped away. All that tied me to him were his eyes, and when his feet reached the whirlpool the lids closed in surrender, and he was gone.
Another firefighter reached us, and the two quickly got a line around the woman and worked her up a ladder, getting me out soon after. The woman was walked to my EMS crew at their ambulance. Her hair and clothing were tangled and soiled from the filthy water, but she has survived. Her partner did not.

Robert C. Flanders
all rights reserved

The Short Path
Strange sound - almost like a young woman’s voice calling, “Ja-mey,” very slowly. The notes were drawn out as if passing through a hollow instrument as long as an Alpine horn. There’s no telling whether it originated behind one of the doors down that corridor, or somewhere well beyond the blinds and the hedges on some distant mountain peak outside.
Unsettling. Sometimes you hear moans like that at the dentist’s office while waiting to get your teeth worked on – not calling a name, or any other real word, just an anonymous voice expressing recognition of some remote unpleasantness beyond the cloud of the doctor’s gasses. But I was at the ophthalmologist’s clinic. Must be my mind playing tricks on me, too desperately interpreting the sparse information available to my senses in this sterile, alien environment. It’s just a machine, and my ears only think it’s speaking to me.
Just being in this waiting room shows readiness to admit a weakness to a stranger, readiness to confess to a mere mortal that I have sinned, and to show him the manifestation of that sin in my flesh. But I can’t deny the distortion in my right eye – an astigmatism, I guess it’s called. A line that to my left is smooth and horizontal has a couple of spikes in it to my right eye. It looks strikingly like an electro-cardiogram, as if my inner being were holding a sign before my face, advising me to give more attention to my heart.
“The doctor will see you now,” said the nurse. I suppose she’s a nurse – she’s dressed all in white – but standing in the doorframe guarding the knob she’s reminiscent of a temple virgin charged to be very cautious of whom she allows beyond the veil. Her summons to the doctor stirs that other voice to plead again, “Jam-ey,” but the nurse shows no response.
She ushers me into a room and closes the door behind me. This is no brothel and she will remain a virgin – she’s gone, and I’m left alone to contemplate how these several apparatuses will be applied to my eye. The cell is lit dimly, as if by torchlight. I’ve surrendered myself into the hands of the inquisitors of science now for sure. There’s the doctor’s diploma – Emory University’s ordination of James Boyle as a Doctor of Ophthalmology. Well, if I must do this – and I must, if I’m to continue to drive – at least he’s said to be among the best. I made the appointment despite the recommendation that he’s on the cutting edge of new technologies.
I wonder if doctors are trained to give us these moments to study their implements before making their entrance so that we have time to realize our utter dependence on their mercy and develop the proper reverence. When Dr. Boyle does enter the cell and asks what my problem is, my voice sounds to me like a child’s, pleading, “Forgive me, Doctor, and deliver me of the karma I truly deserve for what I have done, and for what I have failed to do.”
But my neck hair bristles when he stares through his bizarre devices into my eye. My regular optometrist is a woman, and as much as I welcome the proximity of her face to mine during an exam, my flesh quickens for a fight when a man comes nose to nose with me. A woman’s aura is healing and nurturing, but there’s no natural reason to be close enough to another man to smell him.
Mostly to bring myself round to a more civil attitude, I ask him about the watercolor of quite a refined woman on the wall beside his diploma.
“My wife,” he answered, “My mother made this portrait as a wedding gift of how she might mature once we had time together for a family.” He summed the matter up, “My wife died before I could finish medical school. ” There was a finality to his tone, like a mathematician who’s given the complete equation – there was nothing more to the subject.
Again I heard the strange tone, and asked Dr. Boyle, “What is that? It sounds like someone calling a name.” As I was looking in that direction, I glanced over his diploma again, and laughed a little awkwardly, “Like your name, maybe, if your friends call you ‘Jamey.’”
His answer belied Dr. Boyle’s proximity, delayed as if our words had to travel great distances to reach each other. “Only one ever did.” He followed my gaze to the watercolor, studying it to see whether his mother had somehow encoded his private name in the portrait. But he saw nothing, and said, “I don’t hear anything.” Whether he did or not, his every utterance reasserted the protocol of confining conversation to his sphere of professional expertise.
“I think for you,” he said, “I will apply a new technique I’ve been developing, to bring your vision to the same acuity you seem to have in hearing.”
My defenses snapped back in place. Although no such meaning was overt in his words, they somehow projected the pretension for which chiropractors are notorious, that because they are expert in mysteries of the body they are also authoritative in matters of the spirit. – Just listen to me – so cranky that I condemn a whole profession for trying to express the very sensitivity that I complain conventional practitioners lack. So much do I dislike asking anyone for help.
Dr. Boyle ushered me from my cell, down to the end of the hall, and opened its terminating door. Beyond it a wrought iron staircase spiraled up a brick tower. Quite unlike the rest of the clinic, the colors and even the smell were earthen.
By the time we reached the top the combination of the tight circles and the height had made me a bit dizzy, and I hoped that it hadn’t had the same effect on the man to whom I was entrusting my eye. His senses did seem immune when he motioned me into his operating theater. The room could have been in the bell tower of a medieval cathedral; the walls squeezed one’s attention into the only direction still open – straight up toward the spire, and beyond. The tower surely did spear into the heavens, and as I took in the dark leather chair on which I was to recline I couldn’t help speculating that the spire was a lightning rod somehow affixed to the doctor’s apparatus.
It was to be laser surgery. The technique has only been in use for about a decade, and Dr. Boyle is reputed to be among its innovators. In answer to whether it would hurt, he said that it would at worst be uncomfortable, like looking directly into the sun. Not to worry, though – he controlled the light beam so that it would never reach the nerves at the back of my eye and damage them.
The light was indeed very bright. If it weren’t reaching my retina directly, it did stimulate multi-colored flashes. At first they were simple geometric patterns, but they began to merge. The shapes tried to assemble into organic forms, but accelerated through that phase toward a single, all-inclusive white light. And I sensed a wondrous, breathtaking Presence in the light. Quite the opposite of irritating, it was as seductive as being received back into the bliss of my mother’s womb.
Too soon the light receded from me, and Dr. Boyle’s calls grew closer. He said, “I’ve never seen a patient so comfortable during the procedure that he fell asleep. Are you back with me? Well, no matter – rest your eye here for a while before descending to test it against the harsh lights below.” He offered his best approximation of a laugh and added, “Obviously I needn’t suggest you relax.”
I was anxious for him to leave, regarding him like the cherubim guarding the gates of Eden, from which I’d just been expelled. I was drawn irresistibly toward the doctor’s now unsupervised equipment, not unlike one who’s become an addict with his first experience of opium. It could not have been the doctor’s personality I’d sensed because the life had been in the light, and whatever humanity the physician had was beyond it. No – Deity can use anyone, however unenlightened, as an instrument to reach us.
And so I began piddling with the switches on his laser, remembering as best I could the procedure he’d followed. A flickering developed at the end of the probe. But before I could direct it toward my left eye and open it, too, to the clarity I’d known, the spark jumped from the tip onto the cabinet at my side. It expanded in a mist, taking the shape of a woman of translucent white. The same woman as in the portrait so far below, though drained of color – Dr. Boyle’s unnamed wife. And I heard her calling from beyond hope, “Ja-mey.”
In this tiny tower room she was right at hand, but was evidently quite unaware of me. Her call was tearing my heart. And it only grew worse. More sparks from the laser formed into pale silhouettes of children. Her children, or children that could have been hers. I could feel the vapor of which she was formed against my cheek, but she wasn’t quite real – she was the ghost of a life who’d dissipated too soon, and the children spirits of those who’ve never yet been. She had loved a great man, but what she’d needed was simply to live with a good man.
Now the groan was mine, for my voice could not carry to comfort her, nor touch her children. The shapes were lost, merging into a single luminous ball. But now there were dark fractures in what I’d seen as the universal light. Was it I who’d rendered Deity imperfect by seeking spiritual experience like a narcotic?
The light began to break into colors again, and firmer organic forms. I could see people, children in desperate circumstances they might overcome or avoid entirely if only I were there, living among them. How dare I presume to think the world below would be fulfilled if I escaped to dwell up here in the heavens, alone.
There was something in Dr. Boyle’s comment about my hearing – Yes, I seem better fitted to absorb what flows into my ears in the river of time than to have everything presented all at once before my eyes. I chose to descend, to leave the tower for the doctor, in hope that one day he will hear his wife’s call. On the way out the hall I saw the nurse about to enter another door. I gave her a smile to show that I wouldn’t be at all opposed should she invite me in, and follow this very mortal man into the cell to muss up our karma together. It should only take a few generations for us to tidy up.

Robert C Flanders
all rights reserved

The Mathematical Mean

The math professor, Miss Priest, was surely herself a Euclidean Solid – her form appeared sculpted and her features were so classical that when she moved it could be startling, as if seeing an ancient statue come alive. Indeed, movement seemed the only change she ever expressed – her face never showed any emotion, unless one counts such things as curiosity, contemplation, and the occasional flash of intellectual recognition.
Mark admired her from his desk midway in the classroom, but was distracted by the arrival of a new student. The girl was as light-haired as Miss Priest was dark, and her face betrayed the timidity which most people experience upon entering a new environment, especially when late. Mark made certain to draw her attention to the empty desk beside his, and smiled her a welcome when she took it.
The Professor continued her lecture without marking the new student. “Φ (pronounced Phi )is not the mathematical mean, but can be constructed from one.”
The girl whispered to Mark, “What does the ‘mathematical mean’ mean?”
‘What does ‘mean’ mean?’ – Mark toyed with the question in his mind. “It just means ‘average’,” he replied. But his usual playfulness fell under a growing shadow, a sense that this answer was somehow incomplete.
Miss Priest said, “Φ is called a ‘mean’ because it is a ratio, but it can’t be reduced to a simple fraction. In decimal terms it works out to one point six one eight dot dot dot, with the digits right of the decimal repeating infinitely, without a pattern. Thus Φ is an irrational ratio.”
The new girl stifled a giggle.
Mark remarked, “She means what she says quite literally – she has no sense of humor at all. But go ahead and laugh – she won’t be offended because the woman has no emotions whatsoever.”
He blanched, suddenly realizing that Miss Priest was now standing fairly close and looking at him – she very likely overheard his remark. But he dismissed his alarm by reasoning that if what he said was true then she couldn’t resent his characterization any more than the girl’s amusement.
The professor strolled to the chalkboard as if her entire demonstration was choreographed. Drawing the figure, she said, “Take a square ABCD, with sides of x. Now find the midpoint of the side AC – we’ll label it ‘E’. From E draw a line to an opposite vertex of the square, to B. The line EB is the hypotenuse of a right triangle, h, with one side x, and the other one half x. From the Pythagorean theorem we determine that h has length x times the square root of five divided by two. Now, swing the hypotenuse erect from E, above point A…”

“My my,” murmured Mark, “I hadn’t realized that our hypotenuse was limp.”
“..and label that point F. Complete a rectangle by extending BD up to point G, and connecting points F and G.”

Mark studied the movements of the professor’s body while she drew her figure. Amazing, really, that she never got chalk on her clothes during her lectures. As she stretched to draw FG her left side swept quite a pretty arc from heel to wrist, and every pause she made appeared posed.
Miss Priest did the math to show that when x equals one, the line FC has length Φ and the segment FA has length φ (phi, lower case Phi) because for any value of x the ratio of FC to AC is Φ.
Mark recited in his thoughts,”Fee fie fo fum – Reach for the vertex, my Pythagorean mum.”
The professor cocked her head as if trying to identify an unfamiliar noise while continuing,
“What we have constructed is the Golden Rectangle – so called because this is the most aesthetic proportion for a rectangle. From this, Φ is called the Golden Mean. Interestingly, when a square is deducted from this figure, the remaining smaller rectangle will have the same proportions – it will also be a Golden Rectangle.”
The professor marked off the discarded squares with arcs, reflecting “Perhaps Φ delimits the proportion of truth that Plato thought is lost with each successive mirror of Beauty on its downward spiral into our world.”
Miss Priest paused. “Having derived Φ by geometry, we can also find it algebraically. Remember that when x is one, the long side of the Golden Rectangle is Φ, and that the addition to the side of the original square is φ. But Φ is not only φ plus one – φ also happens to be directly related to the reciprocal of Φ. So we can set up an equation for Φ – ‘Find a number Φ which is equal to its reciprocal plus one.’” Developing the equation on the board, she concluded, “..and so by the Quadratic Theorem, Φ equals one plus the square root of five, divided by two, which you’ve seen is the value of Φ in our Golden Rectangle. The other Quadratic root is negative – meaningless as a line length and so cast out.”
“Pythagoras I know, and Euclid I know,” thought Mark, “But who is Quadrat?”
The professor turned, the chalk in her hand a pointer which probed among the students until marking Mark. She appeared puzzled by the humor shining in his eyes, but resumed, “We’ll examine the more exotic qualities of Φ in the next lecture. Now let’s take a break to go over your progress evaluations.”
It was unusual and certainly not required for a professor to provide these reviews, and it spoke well of her intention that each student do his best. She conducted the evaluations individually, letting half the students leave the room while she called the others in alphabetical turn to her desk.
During the initial shuffle Mark overheard Miss Priest telling the new student, “When I was a little girl in Ohio, I used to play along the Chattahoochee River, too.”
Mark protested, “Professor, the Chattahoochee is in Georgia, not Ohio.”
“I know what you mean,” she said with a warning look. “Nothing interesting ever came out of Ohio, so we have to borrow features from other states.”
Mark went outside to take his break with the first group, thinking about her odd remark. “What could that mean? What could she mean by that? What does ‘mean’ mean?”
He mused,”‘What does that mean?’ is asking what thought something is intended to convey. But ‘What did she mean by that?” is more like asking what motivates the thought that was actually expressed, or what effect the idea was intended to produce.
He recalled from logic class that a mean argument is a middle term in a syllogism, uninteresting in itself, but a necessary step between the premises and the conclusion. The hypotenuse that Miss Priest drew in deriving Φ from a square was like that – the hypotenuse itself was discarded once the Golden Rectangle was drawn, but it was needed in the middle stage of construction. “Sometimes ‘mean’ is the intention, and sometimes it’s the technique used to achieve it. Then the hypotenuse was a mean used to derive the Golden ‘Mean’.” Mark sensed that his conclusions were spiraling down toward non-being.
Again Mark panicked, realizing that because his last name belonged in the first half of the alphabet he should have remained with that group for the evaluations. Whatever the professor may think of it, he would regard himself guilty of a serious academic breach if absent when called. He rushed back into the classroom, but fortunately she was counseling the student just before him in the order. She showed no regard for privacy, conducting the interviews at her desk in full hearing of anyone else interested. Still, she meant well by her counsel. Mark took a seat in a quiet corner near the front to be at hand when called.
He noticed a pair of curvy parallel lines drawn on the blackboard. Maybe they were sine waves. “More aesthetic,” Mark thought, “for this professor of polygons to be drawing curves than straight lines.” Then he noticed that the figure could be a quick sketch of a river winding its way – had she reasserted her claim on the Chattahoochee? But it could equally well be the hastily drawn symbol for ‘approximately equal,’ or even the glyph for Aquarius – that was surely Miss Priest’s sign. He could feel the meaning in the mark like a verb in a sentence with subject hidden and object unexpressed.
Then a familiar rascal in his mind whispered that if the bottom wave was flipped, the curves would be become the sketch of a reclining female form. Mark imagined the Golden Rectangle as a horizontal picture frame around a portrait of Miss Priest lounging on a sofa, inadequately draped, of course. “And so our professor is the pi in Phi,” he thought. “Aesthetic indeed – Φ(π) is a sweet function.”
He leisurely painted the curve of her hips in his mind, his brush strokes making them blush pink, when he began to sense a cold scrutiny. The professor had finished the current evaluation, and was studying Mark prior to counseling him. Feeling her attention as a marked presence, he suddenly realized that she was a psychic, and was using that skill now as a guide in how to approach her next interview. Even worse – she was an empath; she hadn’t only been eavesdropping on his thoughts – she was actually experiencing them through him. Her face was becoming sweaty and blotched as it reflected the hormones in his blood. As she examined him, what had simply been his boyish fun in imagining something vaguely naughty looked quite beastly on her. Positively negative. Mark felt violated, nasty – and now she was calling his name. The logical inquiry of Professor Priest was quite mathematical, and mean.

Robert C Flanders
all rights reserved