Mind to Mind: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective by Don Pendleton Page A
Authors: Don Pendleton
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hell. An
illusion—even an ectopiasmic emanation—would not, one should think,
be able to interact with time-space matter. I could hallucinate an
interaction with myself—even a sexual interaction—but unless I was
in some weird mental warp, some kind of dissociative phenomenon, I
very much doubted that I could hallucinate the biological processes
involved in the disappearance of that cola.
I asked her how she felt.
She smiled, eyes and all, assuring me that
she felt just fine.
I whistled a couple of bars of
"Summertime."
She picked up where I left off, in the same
key, humming softly for a couple more bars.
I made a verbal note that she was now in
physical control of both sides of her body. She seemed a bit
confused by the statement, suggesting that she understood what I
said but could not relate to it. So I said it flat out: "Your
paralysis is gone." She still seemed unable to relate to that, so I
dropped it.
The paralysis was gone, yes, but the aphasia
was not. She seemed quite a bit more alert and mentally responsive
when spoken to than she had shown earlier, at the hospital, but
there was not even an attempt at verbalization. Earlier, in bed,
she'd cried out passionately several times. Except for the brief
humming, she had not otherwise used her voice.
I was trying to deal with
that—trying, you know, to intellectualize the body first of all,
then this body responding normally with only half a brain, then
why the paralysis was gone but the aphasia was not—all the while
realizing that I was trying to deal with an impossibility, anyway.
I mean, if she could resurrect a perfect body like that, why the
hell couldn't she resurrect the whole brain with it—or did she? And
I was not really thinking in terms of a resurrection , anyway, not in the
usual sense. I mean, look, this simply was not the same body.
Pretty good copy, yeah, but the original was lying on a slab at the
morgue. And if it was not a real body, what about that
Coke?
Dammit, it was a real
body. I knew it was. The throat, now— that throat had never been slashed.
It was perfect. On the other hand, the cigarette tattoos had been
reproduced. Why? And if there was voice enough to cry passion and
hum a tune, then why not brain enough to formulate language for
it?
Are you in my place? Can you understand the
mental confusion I was experiencing and the psychical crisis I was
approaching? Here was a flesh-and-blood, living being, an obviously
human being, strolling about my house and raiding my refrigerator
in total contradiction to the known natural laws governing the
situation.
I fired up the computer and loaded in the
designs I'd copied from her living memory and showed them to her.
Then I did a couple of freehand designs with the touch pad, hoping
she would take a turn at it, but she showed no interest in
that.
I took her temperature. It
was within the normal range for Homo
sapiens .
I put her on the bathroom
scale, and everything checked out there too.
I broke out the Polaroid and took several
pictures. They came out beautifully.
I fixed her a sandwich and she ate it. She
also drank a glass of milk and polished off half an apple pie.
Then she took me back to bed and screwed my
brains out again.
I know that this probably
sounds terribly immoral or unethical or perverted or whatever, but
I am asking you to understand my ambivalence in the matter, my
mental confusions, the state of my emotions. There was certainly
no sensation of making love with a ghost or a hallucination,
absolutely not a corpse, and I was as awed as I had a right to be
while at the same time, thoroughly captivated by the sensuality and
passion of my partner in this madness. But it did not seem like
madness. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. I was beautiful. The
whole world was beautiful, and we both were tumbling through it,
locked together in a total interchange of mind and body, fused into
a single entity. For how long I simply could not say. It seemed
endless, timeless.
illusion—even an ectopiasmic emanation—would not, one should think,
be able to interact with time-space matter. I could hallucinate an
interaction with myself—even a sexual interaction—but unless I was
in some weird mental warp, some kind of dissociative phenomenon, I
very much doubted that I could hallucinate the biological processes
involved in the disappearance of that cola.
I asked her how she felt.
She smiled, eyes and all, assuring me that
she felt just fine.
I whistled a couple of bars of
"Summertime."
She picked up where I left off, in the same
key, humming softly for a couple more bars.
I made a verbal note that she was now in
physical control of both sides of her body. She seemed a bit
confused by the statement, suggesting that she understood what I
said but could not relate to it. So I said it flat out: "Your
paralysis is gone." She still seemed unable to relate to that, so I
dropped it.
The paralysis was gone, yes, but the aphasia
was not. She seemed quite a bit more alert and mentally responsive
when spoken to than she had shown earlier, at the hospital, but
there was not even an attempt at verbalization. Earlier, in bed,
she'd cried out passionately several times. Except for the brief
humming, she had not otherwise used her voice.
I was trying to deal with
that—trying, you know, to intellectualize the body first of all,
then this body responding normally with only half a brain, then
why the paralysis was gone but the aphasia was not—all the while
realizing that I was trying to deal with an impossibility, anyway.
I mean, if she could resurrect a perfect body like that, why the
hell couldn't she resurrect the whole brain with it—or did she? And
I was not really thinking in terms of a resurrection , anyway, not in the
usual sense. I mean, look, this simply was not the same body.
Pretty good copy, yeah, but the original was lying on a slab at the
morgue. And if it was not a real body, what about that
Coke?
Dammit, it was a real
body. I knew it was. The throat, now— that throat had never been slashed.
It was perfect. On the other hand, the cigarette tattoos had been
reproduced. Why? And if there was voice enough to cry passion and
hum a tune, then why not brain enough to formulate language for
it?
Are you in my place? Can you understand the
mental confusion I was experiencing and the psychical crisis I was
approaching? Here was a flesh-and-blood, living being, an obviously
human being, strolling about my house and raiding my refrigerator
in total contradiction to the known natural laws governing the
situation.
I fired up the computer and loaded in the
designs I'd copied from her living memory and showed them to her.
Then I did a couple of freehand designs with the touch pad, hoping
she would take a turn at it, but she showed no interest in
that.
I took her temperature. It
was within the normal range for Homo
sapiens .
I put her on the bathroom
scale, and everything checked out there too.
I broke out the Polaroid and took several
pictures. They came out beautifully.
I fixed her a sandwich and she ate it. She
also drank a glass of milk and polished off half an apple pie.
Then she took me back to bed and screwed my
brains out again.
I know that this probably
sounds terribly immoral or unethical or perverted or whatever, but
I am asking you to understand my ambivalence in the matter, my
mental confusions, the state of my emotions. There was certainly
no sensation of making love with a ghost or a hallucination,
absolutely not a corpse, and I was as awed as I had a right to be
while at the same time, thoroughly captivated by the sensuality and
passion of my partner in this madness. But it did not seem like
madness. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. I was beautiful. The
whole world was beautiful, and we both were tumbling through it,
locked together in a total interchange of mind and body, fused into
a single entity. For how long I simply could not say. It seemed
endless, timeless.
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