Love Story: In The Web of Life (16 page)

I went into Bob's Cafe on Main Street to for
dinner and gossip. I sat on a swiveling stool at the counter. The
only other customer was a man with a white beard sitting in a booth
reading a paper over his dinner.

A waitress came over, looked me over carefully,
and said, “what’ll-y-have?"

She was about fifty, grey haired, wearing a
pink, starched waitress uniform, the kind with a little tiara-like
hat, a kind I had not seen since I was in high school. She had a
name badge that said Agnes.

"Can I see a dinner menu?"

"Same menu all day, honey, special tonight is
pork chops."

I looked at the bottom of the menu, and it
said, "Free Wi-Fi for customers."

"You have Wi-Fi," I added.

"We're up-to-date around here," she boasted.
"We even have cell phone service so visitors won't feel
disconnected. You're not from around here, are you?"

"No, I have a little business at the courthouse
tomorrow and then I will visit someone up the hill."

"If you are trying to beat a speeding ticket,
forget it. Judge Jeremiah Cartright, we call him 'The Hanging
Judge,' doesn't have much tolerance for speeders. You might end up
spending the night in jail."

"Where is the jail?" I asked.

"Over in the basement of the annex at the
courthouse, behind the sheriff's office. The main county jail is up
in Pine Mountain, where the county sheriff has his office. They
need it more up there with all the tourists and skiers."

"I'll try to keep out of both places. How long
have you lived here, Agnes?"

"All my life. My great-grandfather had a mining
claim here, and my family has come and gone over the years. I was
raised on a farm down the valley. I seem tied to the place
somehow."

In a few minutes, Agnes brought me my
dinner.

"You must be the fellow from LA that is staying
over at the River View motel."

I was somewhat taken aback, but then I
realized, in this slow season, before the vacationers arrive,
anything was news. Everyone in town probably knew my motel
reservation.

'Lesson number one,' I thought.

"That's right," I said. "I'd better get over
there and check in. See you later, Agnes."

I could tell I was being carefully watched as I
left. As I got in my car, I saw that Agnes was on her cell
phone.

'This is like a police state,' I thought.
'Except the tyranny comes from the rule of boredom. The trial will
give them something to talk about.'

After dinner, I decided to enjoy a walk on this
fine Sierra evening. The late-day yellow sunlight made the green of
the pine trees glow as I walked through the woods on what must have
been a game trail through the brush and manzanita. The forest was
quiet, the birds were having their evening rest, and it was
perfectly still. I smelled the pines and kicked the pinecones lying
in the yellow dirt as I walked. I heard Butte Creek tumbling down
rapids and followed the game trail to the bank. I sat down by an
eddy in the water, caused by a fallen tree and looked into the pool
for small fish, maybe trout. The bottom of the pool was lined with
polished, water-worn pebbles. I noticed a glint of light on one,
which turned brighter as I watched.

Then I heard, "We bring you greetings on
this
evening
as you believe
time to exist."

"Uriel?" I asked.

"Yes, it is our pleasure to talk with you
again."

The glint on the rock got very bright and
turned into an intense blue-white spot, diffusing through ripples
in the water.

"Uriel, get out of there, you will get
wet,"

"Ha-ha-ha....ha," came the reply, a full minute
of infectious laughter.

"You made what you call a joke. Your planet is
one of the few we have explored or studied that has a language that
allows the joke. Tell me another."

I was dumbfounded and thought for a long time
because I don't get exposed to many jokes in my work. Then, I said,
"One time there was a man talking to his young son. He said, 'There
once was this man with a wooden leg named Smith.' His son
interrupted and asked, 'What was the name of the man's other
leg?'"

There was a long pause and then Uriel started
again, "Ha-ha-ha....ha, what was the name of his other leg!
Ha-ha-ha....ha," he went on. "But, It takes much energy for us to
hold onto your location in space-time. We must get on to our reason
for contacting you before we run out of what you would call
time.

"Now that you have some understanding of
space-time, we would like to tell you about a vacuum in your
culture's understanding of human nature. You are actively connected
to other people in space-time and continually share information.
You are communicating, at the subconscious level, with people in
what you call the present, the past, and the future.

"Your people sometimes acknowledge part of this
as
Déjà Vu
. Some people
acknowledge part of this as saying they have 'remembered' past
lives, which should be other lives in space-time, since time is
only an illusion, a coordinate in space-time.

"Your mind is made up of many levels. You have
your conscious mind where you believe your rational thought and
factual information exists. There is also a layer of subconscious
thought and problem solving that generates your ah-ha moments. Your
psychologists, ethnologists, and anthropologists have studied the
subconscious mind in limited areas of culture, behaviors and values
you have learned from being a member of a family, tribe, or gang,
nation or race. Others have studied instinctual behavior, those
wired-in behaviors of you as an animal or biologic
system.

"Your western scientists, unable to think
beyond the limitations of Newton and Einstein's four-dimensional
paradigm, have missed your subconscious connection to other
experiences and learning from other individuals living in other
space-time coordinates. The medical establishment cannot conceive
of the information transfer between your body functions and those
of bodies at other space-time coordinates.

"However, some people on your planet have
created healing practices or pseudo–religions based on subconscious
connections. However, since these ideas don't agree with your
dominant scientific four-dimensional paradigm, the people are often
dismissed as quacks. They are ignored or persecuted by the
establishment.

"The implications of eight-dimensional
space-time are not limited to the narrow area of what you call
space-time."

"Wait a minute. You have just overturned a
couple of centuries of scientific thought. I need more time to
assimilate this, or write it down." I said with some
desperation.

"Don't worry, our friend, this information will
be coming from sources you will encounter. Be open to the ideas as
they come to you. Then, try to think outside the four-dimensional
box."

"Don't leave me hanging here with all these
questions. Give me some examples, please!"

Uriel paused. "I am scanning through space-time
on your planet for examples." After another pause Uriel continued,
"You have on your planet the idea of child prodigies. A child, at
an early age, might go to a piano and start playing melodies and,
with lessons, become very accomplished. Your Mozart might be an
example. He wrote his first opera at an age of eleven. Prodigies
are connected to other individuals in space-time and drawing on
their abilities.

"Your planet has many students who are
attending college at the age of eleven. Many go on to great
accomplishments in their fields, they are born with the ability to
draw on several lifetimes of experience and learning.

"Many students are credited with being gifted,
or 'naturals' who have great acting or vocal abilities. They are
applying many lifetimes of experience.

"In your culture you have the idea of linear
time, and you might say that these unusual children have
past lives
from which they are
drawing experience. Maybe Mozart had been playing the keyboard
instruments for
several lifetimes.
It would be correct to say he is playing the keyboard
instruments in
several simultaneous
lifetimes.

"Some people have incurable fears. A person
might get attacks of anxiety from seeing even a picture of a tiger
and hate cats. They may be drawing on the experience of being
attacked and eaten by a tiger in another life.

"In your medicine, doctors find ailments for
which there is no cure. Suppose there is a man with a painful,
chronic backache. They try medicines and find nothing works. They
do surgeries and it does not work. It could be he is connected to
another person, in another lifetime who died in an accident where
his back was broken. That idea is positively not scientifically
allowable in a four-dimensional paradigm."

"We do not expect you to understand all this
in, how do you say, a flash. Treat it as a hypothesis and see
whether you find data to support it. We leave you now to your
search.

"Ha-ha-ha....ha, what was the name of his other
leg?" he laughed as he faded away.

"Wait!" I shouted, but he was gone.

I sat and stared at the pool for a while as I
tried to grasp what I had just heard. Then, I went back to the
River View motel, sat in a lawn chair, watched the sunset, and
wondered about my life. I had been a mainstream science guy;
believing in the truth of science I was taught. Now, I am caught up
in an obscure idea of space-time, with contacts with spiritual
entities, and events dragging me in directions I didn't plan. I
certainly had put my career in a vulnerable position. Surprisingly,
I was beginning to feel comfortable with it.

I watched the sky grow dark, and then I said,
'Good evening Hesperus.'

****

After leaving the motel on the drive to court,
I had an idea. Why not introduce some false signals into the gossip
grapevine? I stopped by the hardware store. Inside, I could tell
the middle-aged lady behind the cash register knew who I was, and
was watching me carefully as though I might be shoplifting. I
picked up two $4.95 plastic gold panning pans, one red and one
green, and two plastic vials. I paid for them with cash and
wondered what the grapevine would report.

As I walked up the granite steps of the
courthouse, I stopped, turned around and looked out into the square
and thought to myself, 'this place has a different feel than the
courthouses I have been in. Wait, that's a psychic observation.
There is a solemnity about this place instead of the usual hustle
and bustle.'

I entered the courtroom, sat down in the third
row and waited for the session to begin. The clerk called the court
to order and announced the judge.

Judge Cartright appeared, a short, balding,
slightly obese man in his sixties. His jowly face remedied me of
jowly cartoon bears. When he spoke, I knew he was no Yogi bear: he
was firm and his presence emanated control. Ours was the third case
on the docket, after a DUI and disturbing the peace case. The judge
called my case and I went forward, filed my papers and made the
necessary motions. After the defense had done the same, the judge
recessed the court and asked us to join him in chambers.

I introduced myself to the defense counsel,
Dean Buttress, a slight man with a baldpate, hair combed over the
top from the side. His face was puffy and had an alcoholic look. He
was slightly stooped in a rumpled suit. He had a Hitler-style
mustache that wiggled in a funny way when he talked.

In chambers, the judge was very abrupt. "I
don't want you big city lawyers to turn this trial into a circus. I
would prefer you not give interviews to media before or during the
trial. Our economy depends of vacationing families, and we don't
want this to be seen as a place where we lose children. We also
don't want to attract New Age weirdoes. People around here make
their living in the summers and will be inconvenienced by jury
duty. So, I am fast tracking this case to get it over by the
tourist season. I am scheduling the trial for one month from
today."

I had the distinct impression that Judge
Cartright was, indeed, a "hanging judge."

"Any objections.?"

We both said, "No."

"Then, I'll see you both in a month. I don't
want to see any pretrial publicity. I can take care of the Butte
News. Thank you, gentlemen." The judge rose and we both hurried out
of the chambers.

I turned to exchange pleasantries with Mr.
Buttress. He tuned his back and walked away.

I drove to Bob's Cafe for a cup of coffee
before the trip up the hill to Steve Manteo's. Agnes greeted me
with a big smile, as though I was a local now.

"Coffee?"

"Yes," I said as I sat down on the same stool.
"I didn't get sent to jail."

"I put in a good word for you," Agnes
replied.

Then, a cowboy–hat-wearing man in a rusty
pickup drove up. As he came in he said, "Agnes, I just came across
the creek bridge and guess what I saw. Downstream, on the motel
side, where there is that fallen tree, Otis Wilson and Bud Johnson
are panning for gold. That claim belonged to old man Williams' and
he gave up on it years ago."