Legacy of Heart and Mind...

I wondered if Kaite remembered her mother. I couldn't bring myself to ask. So often, I marveled at my daughter. Her mind seemed as much Kathryn’s legacy as her face, her frame, her movements, the pleasure she took in the smallest of things, the way she saw her world and the way she challenged it.

I’d told Kaite, of course, that Kathryn had been a great scientist and a loving parent. I was honest, if edited, in what I told her. I’d said her mother had worked in the area of neuropsychology. That was respectable enough, and at least part of the truth.

Kaitlyn had never asked many questions, but I supposed some of the older leather-bound texts in her cabinet of curiosities gave her some sense of connection to her mother. I assumed the ancient polygraph more recently aquired evoked similar sentiment. Were these artifacts a sort of surrogate for the memory she’d never had?

My once seemingly incontrovertible choices became more of a burden with each passing year. There was a great deal I longed to Kaite about her mother, but there were enormous risks associated. There was the contradiction. Actually, since Kathryn’s death, I had come to realize there was a great deal even I had not known about my wife and her work. I had come to fear the consequences of not knowing as much as those of awareness.

I knew the basics of her work, of course. Hers had been a quest to map human consciousness and learn to focus it, better utilizing the untapped wealth of our mental potential. Even in the 22nd Century, after all our years on the planet, all our progress, our art, our writings and our cumulative knowledge, the average human used only an estimated 3 to 10 percent of his or her mind. This fact had long fascinated and saddened Kathryn. She studied all she could find on the physical workings of the human brain in order to try to determine exactly what it was that we were failing to exercise. She also studied every psychological model of personality ever conceived. Maps of the brain itself, patterns of behaviors and responses…None of what she found spoke to her key question: What is consciousness itself and how does it work? Is it an onionskin, ever slipping layer upon layer? What controls the shifting? What is at the core and what are the essential differences between inner and outer sheaths? Is consciousness, instead, a hundred or a thousand channels broadcasting at once, and, if so, how do we tune to select which comes in clearer or louder? Do some channels change and some remain constant? Can we control that, or simply control our attention to one or another or a score of the presets?

These and countless other models she tried and rejected. None seemed to fully encompass the mystery of the realm where awareness meets cognition to give rise to intention. Although she never settled upon a single model, she made some discoveries along her journey that proved even more compelling.

Kathryn chanced upon her most cherished line of endeavor on a beautiful, moonlit night in May. She and I were together, young and free, among the lucky ones to feel truly drawn to our intellectual callings and happy with our station in life. On top of that, we were madly in love with one another and all Time stretched before us. I had designed a ring for her, carved it of wax with my own hands, studied the art of metalwork, and clumsily cast my masterpiece. This was the night I would give it to her and ask her to be my wife.

She knew something was afoot. Her eyes sparkled just a bit more than usual and she couldn’t be still. I proposed, she accepted and we held one another for a great space of moments under the dancing shadows of the great old elm by the lake. Then a cloud moved across the moon and the winds sighed to life. The ensuing chill reminded us we both had work to do early the next morning. Such is the life of scientists. Reluctantly, we headed back toward town. The time was between 2 and 3 o’clock in the morning. We were the only ones on the street.

“Jack, did you see that? That’s the third street light that’s gone out just as we’ve gotten to it.”

I'd been unaware, but started watching. Two more went dark in the next few blocks, just as we passed their bases. With each, her excitement grew, along with my agitation. I couldn’t recall how many lights usually went out on an average three a.m.’s stroll home. This seemed somewhat unusual, true, but I thought she was making a bit much of it. Then she stopped walking.

“Kathryn?”

“Give me a minute. I want to try something.”

I stared at her as she stared up at the streetlight just ahead of us. Several minutes passed and I was beginning to lose patience with the love of my life when the light at which she had been staring went out. We looked at one another for a long moment. She returned her willful gaze to the light. It flickered back to life as if on command. She then addressed the next light in the same manner…and the next…then two at once.

She tried to explain to me how she was doing it, but I never grasped it. Fascinated as I was, I must say I resented having my proposal upstaged by those blasted lights. She softened that blow a bit when she presented her theory to me a few days later.

‘I was happier that night than I’ve ever been in my life, absolutely off the charts. I had ten times more thoughts and emotions and plans stirring than I can even begin to describe. That’s when it happened.

Why? We are a collection of electricities. That’s not new information. We’ve known for centuries that nerve communication at the synaptic level occurs via electrical impulses originating in the brain. The brain is the nerve center, the electrical source, and that night my mind was a lightning storm so huge it extended beyond the boundaries of my body. My consciousness affected the lights, altered their state, turning them on and off. Then I concentrated and was actually able to focus that same electrical energy…and I was able to control the lights!

How far could this go, Jack? If we can channel our electicities to control lights, could we build a bridge to reach other minds? Obviously, the complexities of human consciousness are a far cry from the on/off simplicity of those lights, but I think I’m on the right track. We’re all unique networks of neural pathways carrying the same sort of electrical impulses. These networks carry, in essence, our thoughts and intentions, our very being. Right now they are a billion, trillion miles of uncharted territory, but just as a magnet can polarize a piece of metal, making another magnet of it, couldn't we forge pathways into one another’s minds, help open these channels, push or pull gently to reorganize the chaos to form a bridge? It’s got to be just a matter of focusing and then finding your way. I didn’t know where to go with the lights when I started. I just pressed this power I was feeling into them like blind fingers, seeking the structure, the reality, the pathways in them. It became clearer as I explored and eventually I found my way. There’s got to be a way to do that with another person, too. Think of the implications for teaching and for healing, Jack, think…’

She tried to experiment with me, to no great avail. She loved me despite the great disappointment.

Her heart was pure. She wanted to develop this gift, this knowledge, then share it to help others and to unify people. She thought, perhaps, it could even be used to help reach the non-techs and educate them. Not against their will, of course, but perhaps if the knowledge were radiantly available in a friendly, painless format, free of direct contact or the tiresome necessity of study, easy like their machines, then they might not be so repelled. Her dreams of a new level of scientific and artistic collaboration were equally epic in their idealism. The contact of one pure consciousness to another, she felt, would strip away all the barriers and inconveniences inherent in the 3-10 percent human condition we’d theretofore known. She was not so naïve as to be blind to the darker implications of such pursuits, nor to the number of people, both scientific and non, who would oppose her. Still, she was brave and determined enough to continue this illicit, undocumentable aspect of her work in secret, carefully seeking out those who might work with her. I admired her for this and supported her in every way I could.

***<>***

I knew Joshua had become intensely interested in and involved with his mother’s work. Exactly how far she had progressed with his training, I would never know. I was gone a lot during his early years. My absence partially explained the nearly Oedipal obsession he had with everything about his mother, including her work. The two were inseparable. He was always glad to see me, but a lot of the things he and I talked about were things I should already have known about his tastes and his day-to-day habits. I had hoped he could forgive me when he became an adult of science and understood the necessities of our lives. Someone had to serve and care for our ungrateful wards, the nons. Otherwise, supply orders became a tremendous hassle and research slowed to a crawl. Because his mother kept most of her work secret and did not serve the non-techs, there was additional strain on my more open activities to bring in credits enough to feed us and support our endeavors.

I closed my eyed once again and pictured their faces, the great treasure I had lost in the very effort to nurture and hold on to it. If only I could have gotten home half an hour sooner…

Inseparable. I imagined he had been unable to pull himself away from her, even in the face of what must have been tremendous fear. He had probably feared for his mother’s life more than his own, and his love had cost him all his tomorrows. In a thousand nightmare schemes I played out his death. I wanted to know how my son had died. As there had been no body, I held on to the hope it had been a quick vaporization. I hoped, as well, that my little Kaite hadn’t seen it. I was at a loss to explain how she had been the only one to escape. Still, no words could express my gratitude for my daughter’s survival. There was a part of her past I could never share, but I was determined to moderate her present to the best of my abilities.

I had some fears for Kaitlyn’s future. With every passing year, I became more nervous. She was only exposed to Kathryn for a couple years. Surely she had been too young to purposefully hone the skill of directed consciousness, and I certainly never primed that pump, but who could know what traces lingered? She had her mother’s uncanny intuition. Her instincts concerning human nature were unerring and her piercing gaze more than a little disconcerting. I was sure she had no idea how she knew people’s hearts as she did. Some day, would she realize or remember too much and put herself in danger? I thanked God her own intellectual interests seemed to run more to the biological disciplines. That was a decent, respectable direction, one which should not raise too many eyebrows. It would buy us some time.

Unqualified though I was, I had determined I would continue Kathryn’s work so I could help Kaite if she did begin to manifest any disturbing skills or interests. I tried to contact some of Kathryn’s old associates. The ones who would even speak to me knew little more than I. This would be an even more difficult and painful journey than I could have imagined.