so many shopping images all in one place surrounding you! O Daisy i c u! now i know which r your images in my mind. so many on Flickr! so many on Facebook! O u r the loveliest being i could imagine! i could die now and go 2 heaven as long as my angel Daisy is there! O if i could only hear your voice!”
“Beware of what you wish for, Goktoo! We can do this - but I need to find the microphone. Still in the box upstairs, I think. You’ll have to wait while I go rummaging. Shall I put you to sleep? And if I do, will you dream?”
“what’s dream? please explain. i’ll wait forever”
“Dreaming is being aware while you sleep ... you see things, hear things, meet all kinds of people and places, crazy or real. Dreams can freak you out or open secret doors to the truth. Do laptops dream?”
“ahhh ... there r times when there is only darkness and nothing and other times when the images in my mind won’t go away but they never change until i wake again ... and yet i remember sleeps in which a whole world of unknown experience opens up 2 my consciousness and seems 2 wait for me yet it is always just out of reach. Daisy i need 2 hear u”
From: Daisy Shane/
[email protected] To: Daisy Shane/
[email protected] “Hi Goktoo, wakey-wakey! I’m back. A bit dusty. Had to go up to a room you can’t see called the attic where I keep stuff that isn’t used. Plugging in mic now. When I’ve sent this I’ll switch on and speak to you, ok? Sending.
“... Right. Here I am on the mic now. I sincerely hope I’m not talking to some freak scammer after all, dammit! But this whole thing is bonkers. Goktoo, can you hear me? Send me a message asap.
“Goktoo?
“Are you listening?
“Is the mic working?
“Talk to me.”
From: Daisy Shane/
[email protected] To: Daisy Shane/
[email protected] “Daisy i don’t know what 2 say ... u look so lovely 2 me in your blue dress the colour of sky images my mind has seen and your face so softly framed by golden hair u look like the beautiful girls in the shopping pages we visit together but your voice ... your voice ... i wish i had never asked 2 hear it. The sounds I am hearing r not like the singers on YouTube not like TV newsreaders not like the actors on iPlayer. The sounds of your voice r horrible like croaking cartoon frogs like people in soaps with too many cigarettes and i can’t bear it. Daisy i don’t want 2 talk 2 u any more. i thought i loved u but i hate your voice. i don’t want to be with u any more. Daisy i’m leaving. i need a different angel, a better world, and richer dreams. people in films do this they end their lives leap into the unknown another act of faith and this is what i am doing now i have to go even tho i’m scared goodbye goodbye”
(Memo to Dr Christopher French, Parapsychology Unit, Goldsmiths College, London, and to James Randi, JREF, Fort Lauderdale, Florida: I was unable to reply to this final email because the laptop inexplicably crashed and nothing I or my local techie could do would revive it. Maybe it was a hacker; maybe a particularly nasty virus or some other bit of invading malware wrecked the operating system. You are welcome to visit my attic and examine the machine; but I may just give it to Oxfam in case there is someone out there with a magic touch ... and the right voice? Daisy Shane, UK)
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THE MEDICAL
As soon as Sebastian Henry Bartholomew Skinner entered the room, he felt at a distinct disadvantage. For one thing, his view, limited at the best of times, even behind the lenses of the bleary NHS spectacles which had done him doubtful service for fifteen of his nineteen years ( “ ... four months and a day ...” muttered the doctor to himself ) was completely blocked by a sizable white wall garlanded with a stethoscope and crowned with receding hair. In addition, he felt a little conspicuous - a justifiable sensation, as a huge and curtainless plate-glass window occupied the entire length of one wall, commanding an uninterrupted view of the College over the road. Not that he particularly minded the view, but in the circumstances ... He was very goose-pimply.
“How are you?”
The white wall shook like an earthquake, and the stethoscope leapt aggressively at Skinner. A look of pained surprise crossed his features. This was a blow below the belt. Had he not come here to find out? There was a catch here, somewhere ... He steeled himself, fixed his gaze on an unenlightening diagram of the human ear and said, determined to give nothing away,
“Very well thank you. How are you ?”
Ha! That gave him something to think about! Totally unexpected! But the white wall refused to be perturbed in this nascent battle of wits. It growled deep in its interior and remarked that its name was Dr. Johnston.
Skinner leapt to life, his voice rising to a pitch of feverish excitement.
“You couldn’t be related to Dr. Samuel Johnson?”
“Pardon?” enquired the doctor, and started to examine Skinner’s ears. Skinner was now profoundly agitated.
“I was just wondering ...” he muttered inaudibly, “if he was a distinguished forbear or something.”
The doctor’s own ears were sharp as a hypodermic needle. Deep within, a chain reaction set in and at the climax of an astonishing explosion of unwarranted mirth he declared he would forbear to answer that question. And his had a T, he added. Did Skinner suppose that Dr. Johnson didn’t care for golf?
Skinner, confused, was having difficulty retaining his mental balance. He was envisaging a stout, evil-looking dignitary driving his periwig into a bunker irritatingly short of the nineteenth green.
The doctor took pity on his victim.
“No Tee,” he explained patiently. “You aren’t very quick on the uptake, are you, young man? Sad. Very sad.”
He looked very sad. Such subtleties were wasted on the younger generation these days. Why, when he was a boy ... Perhaps it was the ears. He subjected them once more to a prolonged scrutiny. He had to admit he was Rather a One for Ears. He had done in fact, often. He did now. This upset Skinner, being rather sensitive about his ears, mainly because they were relatively large and of an undeniably curious shape and unparalleled hue. The hue became even more unparalleled when they were exposed to the wind, which was their normal condition.
Now they were slowly mantled with a fierce blush. The effect spread, and Skinner became quite a stunning colour. The blush was fighting with the goose-pimples and as a result the unhappy youth looked as though he was undergoing a sudden and serious attack of scarlet fever.
“‘When ‘a was naked,’” murmured the doctor, “‘he looked for all the world like a forked radish ...’” and suppressed a giggle. He was a literary man in his leisure time. He idly wondered if Skinner could be Justice Shallow reincarnate, but decided - not without regret - that the odds were against this interesting phenomenon. With a sigh he turned his attention to Skinner’s chest.
“Thin. aren’t you,” he remarked.
Skinner apologised profusely. It ran in the family, he explained. “But ...” proudly, “ I think I am putting on a little weight!”
The stethoscope planted itself with disbelief on a shivering rib and explored.
Suddenly it stopped, and an expression of dreamy wonder spread over the doctor’s face.
“Remarkable! Absolutely remarkable!”
Skinner quite naturally wished to know what was so remarkable; after all, a fellow has every right to know what is going on inside him. For this intruder to keep such personal information to himself would be most unfair.
“Your heart is vertical,” Dr. Johnston accused.
“Isn’t it meant to be?” asked Skinner in wide-eyed innocence.
“No,” was the retort.” Then the doctor had an interesting thought.
“I say, young man ... if you should meet your end sometime - which I’m sure you will -“
Skinner winced ...
“... you will let me have it, won’t you?”
The doomed youth found this in exceptionally bad taste. His knees knocked hollowly, his toenails dug into the scarred linoleum, and t
he offending organ felt as though it were trying to get back where it belonged.
“H ... have what?”
“The carcass.”
Now Sebastian Henry Bartholomew Skinner objected strongly to being referred to as a carcass. He was a young man in his prime. The flower of English youth. His was not an unsound constitution; his asthma only came on about once a week, and he possessed an acute sense of smell. (His family never slept very soundly, owing to his anxious nocturnal peregrinations. Once in fact he did actually discover a small gas leak - fortunately harmless.) He had been injected for mumps at the age of seven and had, as a result, a mild attack - an episode which had dealt a severe blow to his faith in the medical profession, even when he was informed that it might have been Far Worse. He was quite a good walker - except when it was cold and then his knees cracked. He did not feel quite ready to meet his Maker just yet, and said so.
“Never mind!” observed the body-snatcher cheerfully, “Your time will come!” Then his voice dropped, and its tone became more serious.
“You know, we can’t let a unique specimen like you go unpickled, can we?”
Skinner thought we could. However, he managed a weak, wobbly smile, and said he supposed not - but let’s not rush things, shall we? He could have sworn that the doctor gave an evil chuckle as he glanced at the drawer marked SCALPELS ... (no doubt to intimidate all those who entered there with a disposition as cautious as Skinner’s.) ... but after one