Haggopian and Other Stories

James, snapping his fingers: “And there you have it! Their thoughts are incompatible with ours, or at best only marginally readable. Can we explain ourselves to sea snakes or gibbons? No of course not! Likewise their purpose—their messages—come unclear, distorted, and misunderstood by us.”

Jason: “You admit it, then? That we are being influenced by that thing in the globe?”

James: “Is there any need to admit what was obvious to me from the start? It is why we are here; to enable our observers to discover to what degree we are influenced. For after all, we are the guinea pigs—the ones with enhanced psychic senses—whereas they are merely…observers.”

NOTE: In this James was only partly right. I was not lacking in certain psychic sensitivities myself; not as intense as James’s or Jason’s, true, but certainly I had experienced and was still experiencing something of the lens’s peculiar influence, a sort of mental confusion—as had the Dervishes in the Iraqi desert, to the extent that prolonged exposure was probably responsible for their madness. It was not our intention, however, to allow so grave a deterioration in our subjects; the experiment could be brought to a close at any time. No, our main interest lay in whatever other properties the lens might or might not possess.

• • •

James, continuing: “So then, shall we work together rather than continue to constantly needle each other?”

Jason: “If I have needled it was only or mainly in riposte. And I think I’ll sleep on the idea of working together. Perhaps someone will advise me in that regard.”

James: “Your…relatives?”

Jason: “Perhaps. My mother was clairvoyant, and my brother…was my twin. We were all three in a traffic accident. I saw it coming but could do nothing about it. In the moment of their deaths…maybe something transferred to me. It strikes me as possible that they had seen it coming, too. As to why that may be relevant to our current situation: I have been experiencing similar feelings of imminence.”

James: “You are worried that you’re going to die?”

Jason: “I feel…a sense of transference, metamorphosis—as if I were about to take flight!”

James, nodding: “Light-headedness. I can feel it, too—the pressure of my thoughts.”

Jason: “Ah yes, thoughts! Which reminds me of something you said earlier. On that same subject, tell me if you will how you intend to exchange thoughts with alien Beings who could be billions of light years away? That is, assuming the speed of light to be the ultimate reach of material things.”

James: “But you have supplied the answer to your own question! Thought is not material. It may take time and myriad small electrical impulses to cogitate, but once a thought is set free it exists everywhere. The lens amplifies thoughts, directs them and makes them accessible. But a thought in itself, in its immanence, is as far ranging as the entire universe!”

Jason: “Accessible, but not understandable?”

James, nodding: “Hence the confusion, our confusion. We are less than successful at comprehending the incomprehensible, the mental emanations of minds that think in a great many more dimensions than our pitiful three.”

Jason, tiredly now: “Well anyway, let’s sleep on it…”

• • •

But of course the observers must sleep too. We were taking the watch in shifts; that night it was the turn of our psychiatric specialist and myself. The technician slept as best possible on a couch in a room adjacent. It was not the best of times for my mental processes; I was feeling the strain; indeed, the thought had crossed my mind that despite the strength and thickness of the cell’s walls I, too, was in close proximity to the lens.

The lens:

Three inches across, a scalloped, faceted disc of what appeared to be smoky quartz. Its constituent elements had not been analysed for fear of damaging its as yet unknown properties. It seemed inactive; had never shown any kind of activity; might as well have been some not especially elegant paperweight.

I asked my companion of the night watch for her thoughts on the subject.

“The lens?” She brought the object in its glass bubble into focus on one of the screens. “I find it…disturbing.”

“Its looks, shape, opacity?”

“Its presence.”

She meant its proximity, of course. “Do you feel in any way…confused?”

She smiled. “Tiredness, that’s all. Leading to a perfectly natural lack of concentration.” Which confirmed what I had suspected…

• • •

James, his eyes hollow, red-rimmed: “Well, we’ve slept on it—myself, badly. And frankly, I have had enough of this so-called experiment. I suggest we put our minds to it, see or experience what we see or experience, and however it goes we call it a day and demand to be out of here. As far as I am concerned they can keep their money. I know what I know, and that must suffice.”

Jason, cooking breakfast, his voice far-distant: “I dreamed of dinosaurs; herds of them, thousands of them, stampeding.”