Authors: Joshua V. Scher
Here & There (78 page)
96.
Paula Block, “Infant Science.”
Seattle Times,
March 6, 2005
http://o.staging.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/infant-science-a-uw-couple-leads-our-new-thinking-about-babies-amazing-minds/
.
99.
Is this appropriate? Or am I kicking a hornet’s nest? Must reconsider this entire section.
100.
Nor do I want for the source to become a Department “asset” . . . Am I saying too much with this as well? Will the Department troll through every mental facility I ever walked into and try to find out who I went to so they can conscript them as a resource for other projects? I don’t want to risk exposing _____ but I can’t include any further discoveries without an explanation as to how I arrived at this. A cover story might only raise eyebrows and inquiries, and I doubt anyone would buy my having broken the code as an option.
*
*
These were scribbled in the margins—obviously my mother’s handwriting.
I read them three times. She broke the rules. She admitted it. The question is, did they see it? Did the Department know?
I still haven’t left the house. No food for a while. Can’t go out. Can’t trust a delivery guy, that’s for sure. If a Department stooge could dress up like a tourist, I’m sure they could impersonate a delivery dude. Man can go without food for a while anyhow, drinking water from the bathroom tap. Jesus fasted for forty days in the desert. Just him and the devil. Me, I got my mom to keep me company.
Fasting focuses your mind. You see things more clearly. Isn’t that why all those religious prophets and holy men did it? Course they all came back saying they saw visions of angels, and God and Satan.
I’m not hallucinating. I mean, yeah, you could’ve maybe convinced me that I might be dreaming things up with my little visitor. Especially since he hasn’t come back. But I did not imagine my mom’s margin notes. They’re right there. I see them.
Proceed with caution.
Is this what happened? She crossed a line, and it ended up being a point of no return? Is this when she started hiding her report? I always had imagined she kind of just went and hid it here toward the end, in a last ditch effort. But maybe she stowed the majority of it there and kept stopping in to add another file, another chapter.
That’s an even bigger risk, though, with a greater chance of being followed. And I’m still pretty much going with the Department never found it. They never knew about my Dad’s studio. Maybe she handed in a dummy report.
Then why are they still following me?
Especially if they disappeared her.
There’s a chance, then, that they didn’t. She disappeared. Never handed in a report, and no sign of it in the house. Now they’re desperate to get their hands on it, to find out what happened with
The Reidier Test
. And to figure out what happened with her.
Still, they could’ve found out about her little indiscretion without having read the report. Maybe they nanobotted her house, read her communiqués. And followed her.
Like they’re following me.
No way for me to know really. Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
Proceed with caution.
A note to herself? A message to me?
How am I going to get out of here? My sanctuary has become an oubliette. I’m not even hungry anymore.
103.
See
pages 35
-
37
for a more detailed analysis.
104.
SD card was found lodged behind three-ring binder mechanism in Reidier Notebook #7. Notebook was dropped while being removed from trunk. To date, no other memory sticks have been found in any other notebook.
Source of video footage is unknown. It’s not Departmental NB footage. Have to assume it’s Reidier’s own recording. Method unclear. Device unclear, but apparently some sort of hidden camera around chest level.
105.
Beimini
®
Corp is an LLC incorporated in the Cayman Islands on September 9, 1999. It’s owned by the Bettencourt family, who are also the largest stakeholder in the L’Oréal Group cosmetic and beauty company. It’s unclear what service this corporation performs, what product it creates, or how much interaction and overlap there is between the two companies.
106.
See
footnote 90
.
107.
Beimini = Bimini!! It’s a different spelling. Bimini, of course, is a chain of islands located fifty-three miles due east of Miami. It’s the westernmost district of the Bahamas. It is also, however, the alleged location of the mythical Fountain of Youth.
Bimini comes from Taino, the Native American Language of the Caribbean. It’s derived from
Bibi
, mother, and
Mini
, waters. The Mother of Many Waters. It is the pre-Columbian name for what is now known as Florida.
Allegedly, in the sixteenth century, Ponce de León learned of Bimini and the restorative powers of its waters from the inhabitants of Puerto Rico. He had grown tired of material wealth and led an expedition to find it, discovering Florida in the process.
*
*
Hilary neglects to mention that Ponce never found the Fountain of Youth. The fact is that, even though he might have heard of the Fountain and even set out looking for it, he never mentioned it in any of his writings. Ponce’s name wasn’t even associated with the story until after his death. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo in his
Historia General y Natural de las Indias
alleges
that
Ponce de León set out in search of the magic waters of Bimini in order to cure his impotence. That would explain Ponce’s own muteness on the subject.
109.
Often referred to as Bee Orchids due to a resemblance to the furry bodies of bees.
111.
Due to the stationary medium shot and the quality of the visual, it is presumed that the recording was shot on standard camera from behind a one-way glass. Judging from the placement of Rear Admiral Wisecup and Director Pierce (they are sitting at angles that provide a ¾ shot of their back and profile) it seems likely that they were both aware of the recording in progress, as opposed to Reidier who was sitting facing the mirror/camera.
112.
Especially if one keeps in mind that the story coincides with Reidier’s discovery and inoculation of the nanobots. It simultaneously validates Reidier’s actions and tracks their transformation into trespassers in their own home.
*
*
Providence, Day 2
: Professor Bertram Malle has all but been erased from the annals of Brown University as well. There’s a record of him, sure. He used to teach here. For a bit, then he left. Did some promising work with robotics, neurology, and amputees and paraplegics. A couple of papers published and on file, an article or two about him in the alumni magazine. That’s it, though.
Same with Clyde Palmore. He’s a professor emeritus for the Engineering Department. However, his house has been locked up and winterized for what appears to be a while. According to Brown, he’s on an extended sabbatical working in Haiti on low-cost, earthquake-proof construction adapted from Incan architecture.
0 for 2. On the underwhelming side, at least I ran into an old classmate who was up here peddling some new play of his to the Theater Department. Yay nostalgia. I’d have better luck getting lunch with Professor Carberry at Josiah’s and discussing the finer points of psycho-ceramics. Crackpots seem to be quickly becoming my specialty.
115.
Anaxagoras
*
*
A pre-Socratic philosopher (400s BC). I don’t think he has anything to do with the philosopher’s stone reference seeing as how that was more of an alchemy thing. (As for black stone, onyx is the best I came up with.) Apparently he developed the precursor to atomic theory and something about the philosophy of the mind and the
nous
, which is some sort of ordering force in the universe that shaped the cosmos themselves. I don’t get it either. However, I did find out that he had the nickname Mr. Mind, so there’s that fun little tidbit. Either that or he’s a character on a Syfy Network show.
116.
All things were together . . . In everything there is a share of everything.
Omnipresence of ingredients
*
According to the research of Daniel Chamovitz, PhD in Genetics and Director of the Manna Center for Plant Biosciences, when scientists were mapping the DNA sequence of arabidopsis (a plant within the mustard family), they found BRCA genes (hereditary breast cancer genes), CFTR (cystic fibrosis genes), and series genes tied to hearing impairments. Plants carrying the codes of human diseases. All things
are
together . . .
Blueprints, blueprints, blueprints. Plants with breast cancer and hearing issues. Everything is in everything.
*
Hilary included the above deciphered section. I did a little digging. It’s an Anaxagoras quotation. Basically, the guy argued that, when a warm liquid cools, while it seems like the hot liquid becomes cold, the hot ceases to exist and the cold comes into being, that what is really happening is that both states were present in the original mixture, both hot and cold, just one trait was brought out and the other suppressed, nothing disappears into nothing because at its kernel nature, everything is in everything at all times. All things are part of the same thing, the same seminal fluid ultimately dissociates, and from an imperceptible state, grows into hair, flesh, bone, nail. For how can hair come from that which is not hair? Black is white and white is black. At least this is how some anonymous scholar describes it in Gregory of Nazianzus’s work.
The “omnipresence of ingredients” isn’t Anaxagoras, per se. It’s an analysis. Probably Reidier’s own note or racing. All quarks are fungible, I guess.
117.
In everything there is a share of everything except
nous
, but there are some things in which
nous
, too, is present.
*
Primum movens.
Prime mover.
* Once again, more Anaxagoras. The new element being the whole
nous
thing. This is the first, the alpha, that which started all things. The
nous
preserves the order of the cosmos. It set it into rotation, revolving from a small region, then more, then still more. The
nous
ordered the revolution that which was and that which will be, as everything spun off from this initial mover. From the spin of the quark to the spiral of a galaxy.
Where some might classify the
nous
as God, others would simply call it the soul. It is understanding. It is the mind itself. Sense. Reason. Thought. The Greeks called it
voυς
. It is essense. It is us. What makes us who we are—our signature pattern.
And it is nature itself.
We are the same, or so Reidier thought. And that’s the direction he started to spin in. At least as far as I can tell. Neither Hilary, nor Reidier, thought to elaborate at all as to the significance of these Classic ramblings.
Not to mention the numbers. What’s up with the numbers? I keep trying to focus, pay attention, draw out the clue(s), but yeah, no patterns, no secrets that I can see, other than the ones harried Hilary has already mined out.
118.
Pages 377
-
378
(ritualization of brushing our teeth).
120.
There are none so blind as they who will not see.