Centaurs (Parallel Worlds) Read online

  "Could very well be, so since it’s your idea maybe you got an answer."

  "I just might." Nicole said after thinking for a moment. "I wish, though, that I could have a cigarette right now."

  "Same here, a wish that can be easily granted." Martin floated over to a small gym bag, opened it with two pseudo hands and took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and gave them to Nicole, who had by then floated out to the living room and sat by the fireplace.

  She took out a cigarette for each and lit both up. "Gosh, it feels great after ten years of abstinence. How come you got them?"

  "It was the result of a weak moment a week ago." Martin blew smoke with pleasure. "And now I don’t give a damn about any possible ill effect of smoking on me, not an iota of guilt as I did last week when I lit one up, nor any concern about you either."

  "I’m just as happy about it. It’s odd, though, for me to exist as a disembodied blob, smoking through a nonexistent mouth and lungs while holding a cigarette with an imaginary hand."

  "Yeah, the thought just crossed my mind as well. And even stranger is the fact that we’re doing that while in the next room lie two dead bodies that used to house our minds. And here we are, having been turned into ethereal entities from what we know for sure so far, smoking and talking like nothing's changed."

  "That was well put, I mean about what we’d turned into. In fact, what you said about showing no reflection in the mirror as you passed by it also makes me think that we are communicating mentally rather than verbally."

  "Makes sense. Like reading each other’s mind?"

  "I doubt it. It’s more like sending thoughts to one another in a way that I don’t yet understand. Call it mind-talking if you wish, but it’s a silent communication mode just between the two of us."

  "Interesting idea. Then you think that the outside world is oblivious to our existence? I mean once we leave this room, or if anyone comes in?"

  "Except for the burning cigarettes and the smoke we’re blowing. Hmmm…." Nicole mumbled as she floated over to the outside door and then, to his amazement, suddenly vanishing. A moment later she reappeared, popping back in through the brick wall by the balcony door.

  "Jesus," Martin exclaimed. "What was that all about?"

  Nicole chuckled. "You’d called me a scientist and told me to think like one. So I did, thinking through the few evident facts that we are aware of, so I just ran a test to verify another one. First and foremost is the fact that we no longer possess a corporeal, physical existence, and that we'd been turned into two strange looking blobs of energy. Would you agree with that?"

  "Of course. A realization which should’ve driven us both instantly insane, yet quite surprisingly we remain calm and rational."

  "I didn’t think about that but you’re right. Anyway, despite turning into two ghostly apparitions we can still function as human beings do by retaining all of our previous sensory abilities—seeing, hearing, touching, and feeling. All of which we can turn on and off at will, even enjoy a smoke like we just did. We can also move around without any problem, which made me wonder about what we’d turned into in this disembodied state of ours. That’s why I left the room through the glass door without opening it, then returned through solid masonry."

  "Which means that in this shape we can walk through brick and glass walls? This is getting stranger by the moment."

  "Even more so was the fact that once outside, in the freezing storm that's howling out there, I could easily turn the frosty cold feeling off. It was an excellent beginning for our search for answers about why and how we became two such bizarre beings."

  "I’m sure that if we talk this through like we always do when we are confronted with something complex, we’ll be able to come up with answers and conclusions."

  "Very much the way I see it but I feel very uncomfortable sitting here next to a room where our dead old bodies are lying stretched out while we talk about why they are in such a state."

  "I feel the same way. So what should we do?"

  "Leave here."

  "That’s crazy. What about all our stuff?"

  "Come on Marty, in the condition that we’re in none of our old material world exists any more—not our money, clothes, personal belongings, or anything else."

  "So we just leave it all here as though we’d never existed? Yes, I guess we'll have to do that. Where would you like us to go?"

  "To our apartment in Washington DC, where we’ll feel more comfortable while discussing everything that we need to."

  "I’d like that, but how do we get there with the airports being shut down?"

  "By wishing ourselves to be over there, just as we learned to move around in here initially."

  "You mean think about the apartment and express a wish to be there? Not a bad idea, even if it's three thousand miles from here."

  "I doubt that distance makes a difference as long as we know exactly where it is that we want to get to and are familiar with it. Besides, it’s another important test that we should perform."

  "And what if we’re wrong?"

  "Then we’ll go out in a blaze of glory."

  "Yeah, so let’s do it."

  They extended hand-like appendages to one another and wished themselves to translocate themselves into their apartment across the country. Despite their almost certain knowledge that they could do it, they were startled to find themselves in their living room a mere second later.

  "Amazing," Martin mumbled as they broke contact with each other.

  "It sure is." Nicole responded, then looked at the clock over the mantle in the living room. "And it took no time at all to get here despite the huge distance and bad weather."

  "Neither of which seems to affect us adversely in any way."

  "So it is. And, quite surprising, you were able to grab the cigarettes and bring them with you."

  "I don’t know what possessed me to do that, but I’m glad that I did."

  "Which tells us that there are many more abilities that we possess which we don’t know about yet. Like speaking into each other’s mind without any need to verbalize our words."

  "Then let’s sit on the couch and get going on trying to explore them."

  "Sounds reasonable." Nicole said after lighting another cigarette. "Let’s start by talking about the big lightening display that went on while we made love."

  "I agree because I know it for a fact that we were hit by one of these bolts. And the reason I know there’s a connection is that just as we climaxed I felt as though I was hit by something on my back."

  "Must’ve been at the same moment that the room shook like we were in the midst of an earthquake, but I wasn’t aware that you were hit until now. How sure are you about it?"

  "Totally, which I confirmed when I looked at the window and found a tiny hole on top of it—in a direct line to where my head was positioned at the time. It was a new hole because I could easily smell the burn odor around it."

  "And what conclusions did you reach as a result of your discovery?"

  "None except more of a puzzle since, rather than killing us outright, the ray of lightening didn’t have any adverse effect on either of us."

  "Aside from ending up as floating spheres."

  "That’s what I meant. Got any ideas why this insanity happened?"

  "I haven’t got a clue…." Nicole stopped. "Oh, God, yes I do. In fact, I'm suddenly sure about what happened and why we’d turned out the way we did."

  "Then please explain it to me."

  "It’s kind of complicated, so let’s reason it out by starting at the moment you were hit by the lightening."

  "Which should’ve killed us both but didn't."

  "True, and you would’ve been correct if you weren’t the unique person that you are."

  "Unique in what way?"

  "To understand that you need to go back in time quite a bit. Remember the colossal storm that had raged while you were having your final brain surgery?"

  "Oh, shit. Another storm an
d a lightening strike?"

  "Exactly, except that this particular one was absolutely random."

  "Are you saying that the second one was not?"

  "I’m beginning to think so. Anyway, let’s get back to the first one."

  "Sure. A gigantic bolt of lightening hit the hospital and blew out all the fuses but it took just a few seconds before the emergency power kicked in so it didn’t do me or anyone else any harm."

  "Not quite. Imagine yourself during the surgery with your skull cracked open while kept alive by life support and monitoring equipment to which you were hooked up by multiple wires, each with an electrode at it’s end."

  Martin understood immediately. "My God. The huge power surge that flowed into and through my body must've created havoc with my mind."

  "Not havoc—repair and fulfillment. What it did was fuse all your brain lobes into a single entity, which changed you from the simple genius that you used to be into a superman."

  "What makes you say that I was a genius?"

  "Because I had a chance to peak into your service record once, and found out that your Intelligence Quotient was nearly two-hundred."

  "I never knew that, nor ever cared about my IQ. But if that’s what it was then yours had to have been on the same level or around it because you were always smarter than me. Okay, so let’s assume that it was, what makes you say that I had turned into a superman as the result of the lightening strike?"

  "Because, just like I did with your military record, I looked at your medical file in the hospital and compared your head X-rays from before and after the surgery. It didn’t take any medical knowledge for me to see that your brain had become a solid organ and that it must’ve had to do with your being hit by lightening. So I did a lot of research afterward and found that such an occurrence, based on a theory that a lot of scientists espouse, would turn a person into a superman."

  "Then why didn’t my doctor talk to me about it before you saw the X-rays?"

  "Because, since everything seemed okay with you he wasn’t too concerned about viewing the X-rays right away and then skipped doing it altogether, which was why he never knew that I’d removed them."

  "That was quite negligent of him, wouldn’t you say?"

  "Not really. At the time things were heating up considerably in Vietnam and new, highly complicated head injury cases flooded hospitals all over the country. So since you seemed to do okay he forgot about you and went to his next case."

  "Okay, I can understand that. But why did you remove the X-rays from my file, and what did you do with them?"

  "I burnt them because I was afraid that they’d turn you into a Guinea Pig if anyone found out about it."

  "I'll accept your theory for the moment, but I’d still like to understand all about the process that you’re talking about, which had turned me into a superman."

  "Sure. Remember the twenty-eighty theory?"

  "Yes. Except that from my long years of dealing with humanity I feel that it’s more in the range of the five to ninety five level."

  "I agree. Now tell me your understanding of it."

  "The theory I was taught was that at some stage in their evolution process Homo-Sapiens had lost their ability to use their original, full mental capacity. The fact is that most people nowadays can barely use less than five percent of their mental capacity, while a tiny minority such as we used to be can occasionally use up to twenty percent. The idea is that it didn’t happen by accident but because the old primevals believed that overly intelligent children were so dangerous to their own society that they had to be eliminated. Hell, even today no one appreciates anyone too bright, let alone then."

  "There’s another theory that many scientists are fond of, that however way that our mental capacity may have been bred out of us, part of it still resides within our brain, isolated and locked behind a mental gate that can’t be opened. This notion is supported by bizarre changes that occur in people with serious brain injuries, none of whom had ever survived as rational beings capable of explaining any details of this phenomenon. The assertion is that these people had had their mental blocks opened slightly, and that some day they’ll find a person who has had all sections of his brain merge to become as one."

  "Which is why you destroyed my X-rays? I’ve heard the theory myself so I’m not surprised by your knowledge since you’d researched this subject. Is that what happened to my brain when the lightening struck the hospital and cracked open my mental door?"

  "It was the electric charge that caused it when it passed through all many electrodes attached all over your body."

  "What’s the difference between that and getting electrocuted by someone's design or by accident?"

  "Think about chemistry, anatomy, and electricity."

  "And the interface between these elements within our bodies?"

  "Yes, but particularly near and around the brain. First let me point to you the basic components of a battery, which is a storage device that's designed to convert chemical energy into electricity. It consists of a solution connected to positive and negative electrodes, which remain dormant until the circuit is closed and then it creates a spark that cranks the engine with a tremendous force. So, even though it doesn’t look it, our brain contains a thick mixture of chemicals, one of which is ribonucleic acid, the RNA, which controls all of the brain memory cells. We know that much about how our brain functions, but little about how the other elements within it would respond to one another if all were cranked up by an electrical jolt in the right places. That’s what happened to you when the lightening force entered your head—all in the right locations. Which had apparently activated everything stored within your mind."

  "Why are you emphasizing and differentiating between the mind and brain?"

  "The brain comprises of living matter embedded in our skulls, which is stationary as a car or flashlight battery. But the mind is the power that's produced by this battery—a forceful entity that is made of pure energy which for still uncertain reasons had been reduced to a trickle of its original capacity."

  "And I received the spark that connected all my brain lobes and activated the full power that’s been lost to humanity for millions of years?"

  "Maybe not exactly the way that I had just described it but something akin to it must have occurred, which unleashed the powers that the ancients used to attribute to their Gods."

  "You’re kidding."

  "Not at all. The fusing gave you the power of precognition, telekinesis, telepathy, mind reading, teleportation as we’d just done, and other mental powers the existence of which has never been proven. However, the most important power you’d acquired is the knowledge of your complete racial and genetic memories."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Observe a deer giving birth and you’ll find that the fawn knows what to do to survive the instant it’s born. It isn’t just an animalistic self preservation instinct but a knowledge imprinted on its mind while in its mother’s womb, of all their line’s experiences from day immemorial."

  "You’re talking about animals, Nikki. Humans are different."

  "No quite. The fact is that during the war in the Pacific soldiers who were marooned on deserted islands survived by reverting to a feral existence, producing stone age tools and stalking prey much the same way as our ancestors did eons ago. The reason why they were able to do so was that they drew their knowledge from old skills imprinted on their minds by ancient hunters during the pre-dawn of humanity—a talent Homo Sapien had lost when it no longer needed it. Just as it must have lost the ability to use its mind as a tool to heal itself and do some other strange things."

  "But if I’d acquired all these abilities in addition to all of my racial and a lifetime of memories, it requires an enormous storage capacity that could hardly fit the size of what my mind obviously is."

  Nicole considered the problem. "It’s a valid question, and you just put me on the right track to answer it when you talked about storage. Since our minds
are composed of pure energy think for a moment about a computer, which is more your bailiwick than it had ever been mine."

  "Are you saying that our minds are set up like a super computer’s hard disk? That actually makes a lot of sense because such disks, small as they are, can contain layers of trillions upon trillions of informational electrical impulses, all of which are accessible at will on an instant recall basis once you learn how to do it."

  "Exactly. A fact that I guess enables me to draw on such information to come up with all these answers."

  "Which suddenly explains why, after my operation, my mind became so much sharper than it was before, and I could remember minute details of things that occurred far in my past. It also explains why my speed reading ability, which used to be average after I took the course, increased many-folds."

  "Exactly."

  "And now you also possess all this information and abilities, not just me?"

  "Which was of great help to both of us so far and in the future in figuring things out."

  "I’m glad you pointed me in the right direction. And now that I’m aware of it, the thought had just occurred to me that the way our minds are made they can contain this huge amount of information and abilities in an area even smaller than a ping-pong ball."

  "Interesting concept. You think the reason our minds are shaped as they are, which is basically quite close to a human head, was to give us a certain level of comfort?"

  "I’m sure of it, which should be easy to ascertain so give me a minute to test it." Martin did not wait for her to respond as he concentrated on his shape and ordered it to reduce itself to its minimal existence size.