Mind to Mind: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (11 page)

These same gentlemen tell
us, however, that the atom is not an object, not really; what it
is, really, is a "field" of electrical energy, possessing mass and
charge. Mass means weight. Charge means polarity, like negative and
positive. There are so many of these atomic fields in your body
that the total number must be expressed in mathematical shorthand.
It is usually given as 5 x 10
²⁵
—or 10 raised to the 25th power times 5. The 25th power of 10
is 1 followed by 25 zeroes. What this all comes to, as it would be
written in the U.S., is 50 septillions. In case you are curious
about that number, the progression goes thousands, millions,
billions, trillions, quadrillions, quintillions, sextillions,
septillions.

But it is not like
counting from one through seven; these astronomical numbers use a
much higher order of magnitude. A million, for example, is a
thousand thousands; a billion is a thousand millions; and so on,
raising each step on the order of "thousands of." Thus one million
is one thousandth of a billion, a billion is one thousandth of a
trillion, and so on. A septillion is a very large number, and you
have to count it out fifty times to call roll on the atoms of your
body. Don't try it, though; you don't have that much time. If you
could count one atom per second for 24 hours a day without pause,
it would require nearly 1.6 quintillion years to complete the task.
This universe has been here for only about 15 billion years, so if
you'd started counting atoms to stuff into your body at the very
moment of the big bang, you would have now gathered something like
.000000009 percent of the total required, maybe enough to start a
toenail. Of course, you'd have had to sort and classify them while
you counted, work out the complex molecular arrangements and all
that good stuff, so I doubt that you could handle one per second. I
mean, you can't just scoop them up and drop them in the sack. You
and I weigh out at about one trillion highly specialized cells
each, with roughly 50 trillion atoms per cell, and the speciality
of each cell is determined by the intricate arrangement of those
50 trillion atoms.

I hope you don't think
that I'm just trying to dazzle you with my footwork here. The point
I am hoping to make is that we do, you and I, inhabit a splendidly
ordered reality. But it is so
large
, in relation to us, that we
are cast into the position of trying to apprehend the Milky Way
from the interior of a cell within the belly of a flea somewhere in
North America. It would seem impossible that we could do that.
Impossible or no, we seem to be doing it. We do it, I believe,
because there is some sort of marvelous linkage between the brain
we use and the "brain" that uses us. I can no more hypothesize the
dimensions or the complexities of that universal "brain" than
could some thinker inside the flea examine the Constitution of the
United States, nor can I rationally equate my standing under
universal law as something similar to First Amendment protections
for the being within the flea. The orator in the belly of the flea
might thump the podium and declare himself protected by the
American Constitution, but the U.S. Supreme Court has trouble
enough deciding the issues of this larger reality; it can hardly be
expected to concern itself or to even be aware of the world within
the flea.

And yet the same universal
laws that regulate the life of the flea regulate also the lives of
you and me. The same atomic fields, the same organization into
living cells—the same
logic
pervades this creation from the biggest to the
littlest of things. I call that order and purpose, and I respect
it.

I do not pretend to
understand what is happening here. I am awed that I can even be
aware that my perspective is somewhat analogous to that from within
the flea, even more awed to realize that I am connected somehow,
and involved somehow, in this stupendous process called
existence.

Just remember, though,
that I give you that from the belly of the flea.

Chapter Fifteen:
Wherewith

We had a lot to "skull," all right. But first
things just simply had to come first. We purchased a few
necessities from a shop in the lobby, then drove around to our
room. It was very nice, spacious, overlooking the interior
courtyard with its pool and water gardens, but neither of us was in
much of a mood to appreciate that. We showered together and toweled
each other dry, then I put that neat little package on the bed and
massaged her to sleep. Took all of two or three minutes.

I was pretty well shelled out, too, but I
did not want to go to sleep. Well, I'll be honest...I was afraid to
go to sleep. Afraid to let the guard down, I guess. And I
definitely wanted to keep an eye on Alison. So I shaved and put my
shorts on and took the vigil in a chair near the patio door, began
reaching for some logic.

Several things had to be
considered, and they had to be scrutinized very closely. First of
all, Jane's body. Was she moving it around? If so, how? Not by any
usual mode of transportation, for sure. I did not even like to
think about it but had to. Would have been far simpler and much
more comfortable if we'd found that corpse where it was supposed to
be, but even that would have been difficult enough. I would have
been faced primarily with a materialization phenomenon. As it were,
I had to find a way to deal with teleportation
plus
reintegration of a departed
personality with a corpse. And that really bothered me. I had done
some parapsychological research on the first bother,
teleportation, nearly a year earlier, with entirely negative
results. Not that there are not a few authenticated cases in the
official literature of parapsychology. All the experts seem to
agree that it
does
occur. But they all also disagree on all of the officially
advanced explanations as to
how
it occurs—and these run from bioplasmic theories
to multidimensional manifolds and quantum lattices. Very esoteric
stuff and hotly contested.

Even more bothersome is
the question of carnal reintegration. Official parapsychology
won't touch it. You have to go to religious "miracles" to get even
close to that one. If you read the Christian Bible, then you know
that Jesus did a neat reintegration job on Lazarus. And it seems
that later he did one on himself. It is not all that remarkable in
theology. Trouble is, these are all examples of divine
intervention, and I hardly think that would apply to this
case.

That all means absolutely
nothing, of course, when you are confronted with the phenomenon in
direct experience. It just
is
. You have to accept that it is.
But it does help to have at least some shadow of understanding if
you do not wish to feel like Alice in Wonderland. I had not the
merest shadow of understanding in this situation.

And you hardly know where
to begin. A disembodied spirit I can deal with—intellectually, at
least. A lifeless corpse I can deal with. Put the two together; I
cannot deal with that, not even if they belonged together before
"death" occurred. And the thinking mind waffles. Is she really
dead? Was there a mistake, a mix-up, and is poor confused Jane
still really alive and well and merely seeking comfort as anyone
would in the circumstances? If so, how did she get to Malibu—and
how did she even know to go to Malibu? And how did she then get
from Malibu to East L.A., my place to Alison's, wearing nothing but
a damp towel and at the speed of light? How could so many
professional people—from doctors and nurses to hard-boiled cops—be
party to such a monstrous error?

So you tell the thinking
mind to settle down and accept the facts. Jane died. Her body was
transported from the hospital to the morgue, which share the same
grounds, and the transfer was duly recorded. Time of receipt at the
morgue was 4:22
P.M.
An official autopsy order is filed, and the body is placed in
cold storage. About twelve hours later the body is in my bed at
Malibu; it is apparently physically healed, very much alive, and
the resident personality is obviously the same Jane Doe. So one
can only state that Jane Doe was there. She made love to me with
overwhelming ardor. She ate and drank, walked about the house, left
a message on my computer, took a shower, zipped over for a quick
visit with Alison, then physically vanished.

How did she do that?

And where is the body now?
What has she done with it—or what had
it
done with
her
? Is it parked somewhere or
is
she
parked
somewhere? And if either is parked, parked where? What is the time
limit on the meter?

So much for Jane's body. I was left right
where I started: nowhere.

Next item: Jane's personality. With all the
other magic afoot here, why is she still aphasic? Why hasn't she
just behaved herself and gone along with the other spirits,
wherever that is? What does she want from me (other than what she
already got)? What can I do for her now? Is she dangerous?

Yeah, still nowhere.

So: Vicky Victoria. Is there a connection
there? In the file of incredible credibilities, could it be pure
coincidence that she is the spitting image of Jane Doe...even to
the aphasia? If wishes were fishes...

Vicky is ten years old.
Her aphasia is congenital, according to her adoptive mother who
has had her since shortly after birth. Jane is somewhere in the
frame of twenty-five to thirty; her aphasia can be explained as the
result of recent injury—but who the hell knows if that is true? If
someone bashed Vicky twenty years from now, wouldn't the same
presumption be made if no one was there to tell the truth? What the
hell could
this
mean?

Why was I so uncomfortable with that
adorable ten-year-old on my lap? I am not a pedophile. I had never
felt that particular type of discomfort with a child. I did not
make the "invasion scenario" in that respect until the incident
with Alison in the car moments later. Thinking back, I had
actually seen nothing in Vicky to warrant such a scenario; I had
only felt a psychological discomfort I later linked to the
incident involving Alison. Was the discomfort simply a natural
movement of psyche caused by some unconscious linkage within my own
mind between Jane and Vicky—as innocent, perhaps, as similarity of
physical appearance?

Right: another nowhere.

And I did not know where
to go from there. My instincts were telling me to bail out, get
away. I did not like the "feel" to any of this. Yet I felt
compulsively drawn to the situation, challenged by it, emotionally
involved with all of the principals. Jim Cochran was a longtime
friend. Not the type you hang out with or even keep in touch with
between cases. But a friend in spirit. I liked the guy. His
emotional involvement in the situation involved me also, even if
that was all there was to it. But there was more than that. I liked
that little family. I liked the mother and I liked the kids. I was
emotionally involved there too.

I had to admit that I was emotionally
involved with Jane Doe too. The emotion had begun with her. Only
later did it spread to include Jim and his family. I was also
intellectually involved. I really wanted to know what the hell was
going down here.

Alison? Yes, I was
involved with Alison. But not in a way that also involved this
case, not essentially. Alison was a supernumerary in this case,
only incidentally attached to it. Wasn't she? Well...she
had
been, until the
incident in the car. And possibly I was reading more into that than
it deserved. I had
reacted
to a situation, not analyzed it. People quite
commonly deviate their eyes to one side or the other in normal
reaction to everyday situations. You can even tell which side of
the brain a person is thinking with if you ask a question and watch
the eyes. An intellectual exercise will usually send the eyes
rightward; an emotional one, leftward. Alison had been through a
disturbing afternoon. She was beat. She relaxed in the car, lapsed
into a wakeful right-brain state, avoiding the necessity to
intellectually deal with a vexing problem—and that was all that I
slapped her out of. Could be. Except that I had
felt...

I shivered in the memory
of what I had felt at that moment. I was at an intellectual dead
end myself—emotional as well, probably; fully ensconced in
nowhere.

So I picked up Jane's
graphics and began studying them. I don't know how long I was
engrossed with that—I mean, ten minutes, twenty minutes, who knows?
I guess I had fallen more into a right-brain mode with only a
background left-brain monitor. That is natural. I was dealing with
shapes and forms, spatialities, patterns. Anytime you concentrate
the attention on designs, the balance of power swings to the right
without any conscious decision to do that. Which is why mandalas
and various geometric patterns help in reaching meditative states.
Meditation is a right-brain exercise except for that five percent
of the population whose hemispheres are reversed. That is true of
some left-handed people. If you are a leftie and write with the
hand inverted—that is, turned back toward the body—then you are
lateralized like the rest of us. But if you write with the left
hand noninverted—hand straight, pointed toward the top of the
paper—then your hemispheres are lateralized opposite to most
people, with verbal abilities oriented right, spatial left. The
same is true if you write with an inverted right hand. So if either
of these cases apply to you, you are among the five percent to whom
the left-right orientations apply reversely. I don't know that this
has any particular significance in the workaday world; I note it
here in case a few of you are confused by the eye-deviation matter
mentioned just above.