Mind Webs - An Infinity Of Loving

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1:57Short stories from the worlds of Spikens and Stitch. From Ten Tomorrow's, a collection edited by Roger Hellwood. This is David Gerald's, an infinity of loving. Once, she surprised him in the shower by climbing in with him.

2:58Once he surprised her with a spray can of shaving leather and they made love laughing in the form. Once they sat and looked at each other across the dinner table and forgot to eat. Once, she leaned over to him and kissed him gently on the ice. Once they went swimming at three in the morning without bathing suits and after they had dried each other off, they fell asleep in each other's arms. Or, to put it another way, they were in love, young and in love. And in that they were lucky for consider the odds against it. Consider, for example, how slim the chances were that this particular boy should meet this particular girl in this particular place and at this particular time, and most important of all, that each should be in a receptive state of mind allowing them to respond favorably to each other. Consider the alternate possibilities. Suppose he had stopped at the post office first. He would have arrived at the laundromat 10 minutes after she had already left. Or, suppose he had remembered for once to bring change. Or that the change machine was not out of order.

3:59He would have had no reason to speak to her. And consider, if she had not had trouble with her car that morning, necessitating hasty call to the automobile club emergency road service, she would have already been finished to most of her chores, including her laundry. Or, if she had not just cashed a check that afternoon, she wouldn't have had the change he asked for. Or consider what factors went into his choice of that particular laundromat, or her choice of that particular college to attend, or his choice of that particular city to live in. Or consider the factors that allowed them both to be born in circumstances that were neither chronologically nor geographically opposed to their meeting and falling in love. Consider, most of all, the mere fact that he should so delight in her, and be able to delight her and return that special sense of attraction which each held for the other. And that special sense of sharing which enveloped them both. Consider the fact that they fitted.

5:01Consider how lucky they were. Of course, if it were not these two individuals meeting, then perhaps it would have been some other combination. There might have been some other girl that he could have loved historically. There might have been some other man that she could have loved so completely, but there wasn't. There was he, and there was she, and there was each other. An individual is unique, existing only once and never again duplicated as a special flicker of personality that flashes briefly in the long darkness of nonexistent scrawling with its own particular radiance only for a bit before vanishing back into the nothingness. That this individual and that individual should both flicker into existence at just the right time and just the right place. Well, that was a source of delight and amazement and continual surprise to both of them. It was the fact that they were so right for each other, the fact that they fitted so well, they could not believe how lucky they were.

6:04And lucky they were indeed. After all, consider how many people there are who never really will know what it is to love. This love was a good love. It was honest, it was true, and best of all. There were no hooks in it. It existed not because it had to, but because it wanted to. For once, once, and need were the same thing. It was a beautiful love that they were young and attractive, only enhanced its beauty, but if they had not been so favored, it still would have been beautiful. Consider the great variety of possible human couplings that this could have been. He old and she young, she old and he young, he black and she white, she black and he white. He born a female and she a male, or both born as males, or both as females, or one of them deformed or crippled or retarded. Consider the infinite number of combinations. Had it been any of these, it still wouldn't have lessened the beauty of what they shared.

7:05It would have only made it more difficult for her, rather, to comprehend. But this was the ideal combination. Easy to understand. Easier still be on BSF. He was handsome with face, not chiseled, but sculptured as in fine wood, clear skin, even features short nose, brown hair, hints of lighter plant. At eyes so deeply blue that they were luminous, yes, he was slightly vain about his features and his body too, which was adequate though, not as immediately striking. He was trim, not skinny, but neither well muscled. He was strong and beautiful in his own all together way. He had confidence in himself, he had a voice like soft velvet, and he had a mind that concerned itself with its surroundings. He acted upon life almost as much as it acted upon him, but he had been favored by fate, was apparent. He had been favored more than anybody had any right to be. He knew it, and he was pleased by it. He had become accustomed to things working the way he expected.

8:05And that was his biggest fault. She, high as she had air so red it glowed like silk in the sunlight. Eyes so green, blue-green really, they flared like jewels deep and mysterious. Her skin was so wonderfully fair that she wore little or no makeup at all, when she seemed to glow from within. She was afraid of the world just a little bit, and its complexity. There were things out there that were hostile. They could hurt her if she was careless. So she admired him because of his self-confidence and his ability to do all those things. She couldn't, her eyes showed it, and because she worshipped him so she delighted in doing things for him that he couldn't, things that she could do, things that would let her fill in the gaps, and together the two of them could be his one. To her, he was almost too good to be true. She watched him shamelessly and dressing and caressing him with her eyes, and he realized this and he couldn't believe it.

9:08But any girl, woman, could so thoroughly immerse herself in his life was an overpowering joy. It was a confirmation that there was indeed something lovable in him. It was what he needed to be complete. She was too good to lose, and they too good to ever risk hurting. He went out of his way to do little things for her, and those little things made her laugh even more. One can't be loved until one is first lovable, and that each love the other so much made them both more lovable. And so they opened themselves to each other. He opened himself for the first time, and so did she, created their mutual fantasies. Because he trusted her so fully, because she trusted him, because of what they shared together, they were creative in their love-making, and that very creativeness, which would have shocked them and any other partner, delighted to ease, pleases them to even greater heights.

10:09They were curious about each other's bodies, and they satisfied that curiosity. They wanted to delight each other, and they did that too. They moved and touched with a joyous, laughing lust. And finally, finally came that moment when she whispered. I feel like I'm on the edge of death. That ultimate ecstasy when emotions become too great to be exposed. When words alone can't control the joy, can't communicate it. At that point, even beyond gasp, some giggles when only tears can release the overpowering intensity of happiness. I don't believe it. I'm so happy. I'm crying. He couldn't answer her because he was crying too. He held her tight, and they cried together, and they laughed at the silliness of it all, and their tears lingled on each other's cheeks. The next timely cry, it was for a left front-tired blown-out while traveling at 70 miles an hour

11:11in the far left lane of the freeway. The cry alert, swerves, get it, bumpety bumps, greets across three lanes, narrowly missing the pickup truck. A maniacal cultist in his band of followers mascored seven people in the suburban home. The police fired into a crowd of demonstrating students killing three of them. A famous rock star died of an accidental overdose of drugs, and a week later, a presidential candidate was assassinated. Perhaps the two of them had been directly touched by some of these incidents, perhaps not. It didn't make much difference. At times, we're such that no one could long ignore the one recurring fact of human fragility, that all men are perpetually on the edge of death. I watched him how close he was to death, how close they both were. Suppose that pickup truck had been just a little faster, suppose they had been visiting the Laurel Canyon, suppose they had turned out for the demonstration, or even for the political rally, how close would the bullet have come?

12:12So he cried at the unfairness of it all, trapped in life, they were thus condemned to death. The dreadful inevitability of a chilled is flesh, and may be unable to speak. She asked him what was the matter, and he said, I can't explain, I can't say. Is it something I've done? Oh dear, please let me show your tears. He shook his head and no, but she kept asking, so at last he whispered, it's death, I'm afraid of it. Oh no, no. Death isn't to be feared, it's to be accepted. I know, I know, but it's not just my own death I fear, it's the death of us, the death of our love, and of that she felt the chill, although she did not yet know why she should feel so. He explained, were two people, two. Sooner or later one of us will die, and the other will be alone,

13:12and I can't bear that thought, I can't bear the thought of me without you, or the thought of you without me, I don't want to hurt you, ever. He cried again, great evening sobs, she cried too, for she could not stand to see him in such sorrow. Perhaps it was a foolish thing to cry over, perhaps not. A terrible part about love is that it is always doomed, always, even if it should last a lifetime, and has to end with death. At last she kissed away his tears and whispered, but my love, that's what makes it so precious, because it's so impermanent, because it can only happen once. But we must be happy about it, we have each other now, and that we have this happiness, and that nobody will ever be able to take it away from us. This love is always. But it's not, it's not, it's only for a little while,

14:15and then time that themable thief will steal it from us, and it's not enough. Why couldn't it last forever? Why shouldn't it? Why should we have to grow old? Well, I still love you after years of watching your beautiful body decay. Will you still love me when I'm withered and wasted? Will we learn to hate each other because the familiar actions will have become so boring, but they're contemptuous. Will death be only a blessed release from a painful binding? Or will it be have parting that destroys us? We could die tomorrow, either one of us or both. An accident could rob us of our future, we could beat you to even a vat. Oh, I had loved you, but we're doomed to sorrow. And the materials flowed again, because in the nights alone, we're only the two of them in that big bed with only each other. Forever, seemed like such an incredible vastness,

15:16a long, long emptiness. How lucky it was that the two of them should have found each other, when all the other possibilities were just as likely. How lucky that both of them should be so right for each other. They both cried that night in each other's arms. They were young, and the young are always likely foolish, it gives a flavor of whimsy and zest to their love-making, which to the old can only remember an envy. There was an innocent scent, naive-tay, that only the young, and the young at heart can experience. But always after that night, at one eternal end of where nights, always it seemed as if their love-making had an air of urgency about it, as if this might be the last time that they would hold each other, the last time that they would be able to look longingly into each other's eyes, and be immersed in that beautiful impensity of emotion. They were so very much in love.

16:17There was an alternative to sorrow, and in that they were lucky too, for this was the age when the secret had been unlocked, and the answer was there for the asking. He brought up the subject first, scared and very cautious. It was very interesting? No, no. It'll bring us even closer together. The impensity of our love will never die out. She wanted to, because he wanted to, and she wanted to place in. Then, as she listened and studied, she can't understand what was required and what would happen, and she began to want it for herself too. She realized his reasons were wanting to take the step, and she began to feel the same. It would let her love in even more intensely than forever. So she said, yes, her reasons were selfish, so were his. They both wanted to preserve something delicate, something flowering. They wanted to freeze that perfect and ultimate moment and stretch it from here to infinity.

17:21Wide-eyed and innocent, they were too much in love. What happened was this. First, they gave her sodium pentatol to put her to sleep, and after she'd fallen asleep, they gave her another anesthetic to local one. They lowered her body temperature and put her in an ice bath. They shaved part of her head and peeled back a portion of her scalp. Carefully, they cut a hole in her skull, and they implanted the device. It was a thing of colloidal plastics. They'd been grown layer by layer in a process that was part photographic, acting, part chemical engineering, and overall some alkindo organic growth. The device was powered by ions that it took from the red blood cells, which passed through it, and it modified the electrical impulses of the brain, the which it was attached. One of the output leads went directly to the pleasure center. They sewed up her skull, and they brought her temperature back to normal, and they then wheeled her into the recovery room. Then they did the same thing to him.

18:22The devices were identical in function. They were little computers with dual coated transceivers tuned to each other. Each one took information from certain sections of the brain. Each one had outputs to certain others, notably the pleasure center. The devices were two halves of the same circuit. They gathered information, they coated it, and they exchanged it. The effect on the lovers was telepathic. No, empathic. But tiny plastic monitors tuned them to each other's rhythms, made them incomplete without each other. There were adjustments to be made, of course. Her glandular rhythms were not the same as his. His emotional cycles were not always compatible with hers. Sometimes they had headaches. When this happened, they had to go back to the doctors. The master computer would be patched into their circuit, and the problems would be analyzed. The big machine knew their special code frequencies, and could reprogram each device into more careful alignment with the other.

19:22This process of reprogramming and adjustment went on for many months. But they didn't mind. Their love was total. It was ecstasy, unlimited. They were closely together, then they had ever been before. Now they were tuned to each other. They were ready to take the next step. They returned to the doctors, and they were strapped to tables. Needles were put into their arms, and into their legs, plastic tubes, fed into their lungs, and into their bladder. Wires were connected to their heads, and the various parts of their bodies. But they knew nothing of this, or they had already fallen asleep. A sleep. A sleep in the timeless world of light, and color modeled in music and structure, to complex to follow. It was a fluorescent world of yes, and no, of existences and non-existences, intense glowing planes against ultimate blackness, references without textures.

20:23Had there been eyes to see it, they would have slid maddeningly across the glimmering surfaces. The colors world and changed. Somewhere monetary circuit triggered, and somewhere else another circuit began a laborious process of uniting the two entities as one. The body is breathed regularly, slowly, with a steadiness that no impulse could have originated. The chemical balances were perfect. They had to be full machines to function. Bit by bit, two souls were joining. Two flickering consciousnesses were becoming closer than any two had ever been before. He was becoming she, and she was becoming he. They would be one person, sharing two bodies, and if these two bodies died, they would exist without them in the mind of the computer, or they would find new bodies. What the important thing was that they would never be a part.

21:28Never. A single tear welled up in his right eye, a matching tear appeared in her left. A technician noticed who wiped them away, but whether they were tears of joy or unhappiness, not one would ever know what these two. Long after the adventure had been forgotten, long after their bodies and the bodies of the doctors who administered to them that crumbled into dust, they still endured. The two of them lived as the flux of patterns within a mighty complex. Their existences were fantastically more varied than any living human being. Could have conceived. Their wonder was bright, and their love was intense, and endless. They were not alone. There were others hundreds, thousands, millions of others all of all may chosen not to die, but to live on in this curious, glittering web. But these two were special,

22:29not because they were among the first, but because they were curiously different from the rest. For one thing, explained the master technician, those apprentices in a fire-removed century. For one thing, these two patterns are identical. They act, react, and respond in unison to every imaginable impulse or set of impulses. For that reason, we're sure that their only monetary patterns maintained in a matrix as a control for all the other patterns. Certainly, it makes no sense to duplicate any single individual as way. There's no purpose for it, but there is a purpose for monitors and self-comparsing controls. This year, we expect at least three million patterns to be here after matrices. We have to keep our transmission errors below one in every one-bellion bets. That's why these monetary patterns are so important. One of the first things you learned in information theory

23:30is that information held in starage stands to the K. But the whole purpose of the hereafter matrices is to prevent the K of the personality patterns of the individuals within. We use these two monetary patterns for that purpose. The master technician, Drondon, lost in his lesson and unaware of the vast changes that had come about in the world. He was only a victim of a two, not a master. He perceived himself as a floating silver sphere. That was his identity module, a sensory device, which did his traveling for him. The students were lesser modules, colored to show their status and identity. The bodies, if any, were removed elsewhere, floating in weightless tanks of nutrients. The interface between man and machine had become so total that it no longer existed. Man and machine were two parts of the same entity, a vast, many-faceted bean.

24:31The range of possible experiences for the human mind had become unlimited. This was a world where sex was an electronic experience programmed for maximum impact. Love was unnecessary. This was a world where electronic callepathy allowed all minds to be one. Love was a perversion. This was a world where bodies were only inefficient storage units to be replaced as soon as possible. Love was a psychosis. Physical coupling no longer existed. Mental coupling had been forgotten and pair bonding wasn't a known process. In his glorious reach for Godhood, man had been liberated from his body. And with it, he had been liberated from all the bloody animal experiences that went with it. Love was unknown.

25:34But these are human patterns, aren't they? Asked in apprentice. Aren't they aware? They're pseudo-human patterns, correct or the master? But I understand what you're asking. Yes, they're aware, but it's a theta-2 awareness, a false awareness. Originally, these two patterns had been tied together with a comparison and correction circuit that is they monitored each other in the adjusted continually. But we eliminated that centuries ago and also removed some of the memory inconsistencies which had been allowed to appear in each. We couldn't erase the crystals completely, of course, but we could reprogram them. Now, instead of each pattern looking at the other, they look only at themselves. In each thinks it's seeing its opposite number. So you see, they aren't really aware at all. And even if they were, they wouldn't mind.

26:36After all, they're happy, aren't they? From the book Ten Tomorrow, a sedative by Roger L. Wood, a bethuis, an infinity of loving, written by David Gerald. Joining us for the reading was the lowest walker. I'm Michael Hanson, technical production for Mindwebs by Leslie Hilsenoff. Mindwebs comes to you from WHA Radio and Madison, a service of University of Wisconsin Extension.