Chapter 13
Making Connections
Seymore arrived at his office at Middle Mind and went immediately to find his brother, Valentino. He was anxious to see him about a number of things. But mostly he wanted a chance to just sit and talk to him about all that he had created and experienced at Seymore Place. Later he would get his best opinion about how to use the rejected images of those transitioning at Middle Mind as greeters for the light travelers. He also wanted to know how Middle Mind was doing and he hoped the visit would also provide him with a respite and chance to gather his thoughts.
He went through the door to Valentino’s office and found his brother pouring over the details of the activity report. He looked up and his eyes lit up with delight. He rose and generously embraced his brother. They were both thrilled to be together again. They took seats at the desk and just looked at each other for a few moments with deep affection and unvarnished pleasure.
Then Valentino asked, “What brings you back to Middle Mind? Are you finished with your project already?” Seymore smiled and shook his head saying, “I’m not finished with the new creation yet. I’m just taking a small break and hoping for a chance to come back and catch up with things here. ”He also had ulterior motives but didn’t say what they were.
Seymore decided to first find out what was new at Middle Mind as things were always interesting and sometimes exciting at this busy terminal. He asked Valentino if there were any new and especially interesting transitions.
Valentino looked up and grinned, “You never could resist a good transition and we have had some doozies while you’ve been away. The most unusual was a Sultan from the Middle East who was certain that he would never leave The Rim. He was sure he was immortal and we did everything to convince him that indeed he was but not quite in the way he thought. We’re sure that he is not yet fully cognizant of his new circumstances, but he is no longer angry at being removed from his domain and has transitioned to a small harem where he lives in luxury. We’ll be providing new incentives to help him to finally realize the full scope of his opportunities, though I think we can both appreciate that living in a harem is hard to beat.
“Then we had a rash of refusers. They all had a hard time accepting that they were no longer fully resident at The Rim or that they had separated from their physical creation or both. After they gave up their resistance nearly all of them made smooth transitions on their own with very little coaching once the true nature of their situation dawned on them. But we still have one that wanders a country road looking for his girlfriend and mutters incomprehensibly about not being able to do something. We don’t know what. We think we are going to have to send one of the assistants to bring him through to transition. We hardly ever have to do that; I can’t remember the last time. This fellow is deeply troubled though and we don’t want to leave him much longer or he may become an established wanderer and that makes the job of moving him much more complex.” He looked at Seymore after he finished his exotics update and smiled. “Anything sound especially interesting to you?”
“Actually,” Seymore said, “the man on the road is very interesting to me. What’s his name, do you know?” Valentino said he didn’t know, though they had tried to find out by tuning into his memory.
Seymore looked at his brother and thought: could this be Sarah’s boyfriend? He went over his own memory of what Sarah had told him about her David and couldn’t come up with much. But he decided to ask about the few things he did know.
“Do you know about how old this wanderer is? How did he terminate physically? Does he mention any friends or family?” Valentino was now intrigued as to why Seymore was so interested in this wayward soul. He said, “He seems to be about 24 or 25 and the best we can figure out is that he was in a bad vehicle accident at the place where he wanders. We don’t know anything else except that he’s been there for a while, is fixated on a very small stretch of road and is very stubborn.”
Before Valentino could ask him why he was so interested, Seymore asked, “Do you have a description of the area where he is fixated?” Valentino said that he was wandering along a wide curve in a wooded area of a road that’s fairly well traveled over two lanes, and he stops at the bend and looks over the edge down toward a creek at the bottom of a ravine. His sadness is heart wrenching and is, of course, what is keeping him there. We haven’t been able to piece his story together because he is in such anguish.” Seymore was now quite sure that it was David.
Valentino again started to ask Seymore why he was fascinated by this small case, but Seymore quickly began to tell him the story of Sarah and her travels via white light to the dome and her importance to Seymore’s new creation. He left out his own affection for Sarah, and he wasn’t quite sure why. When Valentino was up to date on the connection between Sarah and David, he asked Seymore, “What do you want to do?”
Seymore wasn’t sure. He reached in his pocket and fondled the small silver ring he had found where Sarah left it on the dome’s ledge. It was his habit to turn the ring over and over in his pocket since he had found it especially when he was uncertain; it gave him a kind of reassurance.
Valentino interrupted Seymore’s contemplation and said, “Do you want to go get him? You know more about him than anyone else and he probably would respond to you if you’re pretty sure that he is connected to your Sarah. And even if he’s not, you are sure to be successful in getting him past his issues. ”He paused and then went on, “We can provide you with the means to be in place at The Rim without having and with your persuasion skills you can probably cajole him into returning with you to Middle Mind quickly. What do you think?”
What Seymore thought was that this was not why he was at Middle Mind, far from it. It would be a tremendous service to Sarah’s David to get him past his deep hurt and in a way, an important way actually, it would be very helpful to Sarah as well. It wouldn’t be easy, no matter what Valentino thought, to move this stubborn self past his own choices and on to transition. It was always better to inspire wanderers to play out their themes and naturally move on to new arenas based on fresh and freely made decisions. The wanderers, however, were seen as a special case because they almost always involved some choices that were based on erroneous assumptions by exceedingly stubborn personalities. David seemed to be a nearly perfect candidate for a Middle Mind intervention.
Seymore looked at his brother with a faint why-not smile and said, “Well, I think I better or I’ll wish I had and I really do want to do the best I can for Sarah. We’ll see if I can move David to a quick choice to take the next step in his transition to Middle Mind. I’ll trust you to make the arrangements?”
Valentino gave a short I-knew-it laugh and said that he would put everything in order and let Seymore know when he could proceed. He asked Seymore if he remembered how to exceed the barrier from The Rim and project a portion of himself to the point of confrontation with the wanderer. Seymore said he did and would be available any time that Valentino’s accommodations were complete.
Seymore returned to his own office and reclined into the big leather chair that was the prototype for the one that he had created in his study at Seymore Place. He propped his feet on the ottoman, closed his eyes and let his mind wander off to think about Sarah. He wished that there was some way to know how she was doing, but the best he had been able to do was to vaguely recall a few short dream sequences where she had short and seemingly meaningless roles.
He drifted off, and when Valentino came in and saw that he was sleeping; he left and closed the door without telling him that the patterns were in place for his sojourn to The Rim. The patterns would still be ready when Seymore was rested.
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Sarah’s life mostly consisted of dreaming or thinking about dreaming and for some long periods she was not aware of her environment at all. She had concluded that it was best for her baby to be as calm as possible and the baby seemed to respond
by growing, kicking, turning and appearing in her dreams. Her doctor and a young woman who, she assumed, was the baby’s doctor, checked her every day, sometimes more than once, and they sometimes lingered to talk about her and her child. She could hear everything they said and was pleased to know that both she and the baby were doing well and not in any danger. She knew that, but it was good to hear her doctor’s say so.
The last time the doctor’s had discussed her situation they talked about what they would do if she didn’t wake up before the baby was due. They didn’t reach any conclusion, but the prospect of the baby being born with her not consciously participating was troubling to Sarah and she now had something to think about instead of wandering off in dreams.
Over time, the traffic in her room picked up. The staff was very careful to keep Sarah exceedingly clean and to make sure that all her body functions were tended to. Nurses arrived several times a day to either draw blood, take her blood pressure, which they said was running high, and to turn her from one side to the other and prop up her back with a row of pillows. It felt wonderful to be moved around and even better to let the growing baby rest on something besides her back bone and kidneys. She imagined that the new aches and pains of pregnancy were good signs that the baby was growing and that she was mending.
One Sunday her brother always arrived with a book of baby names. He told Sarah that she needed to wake up so she could pick a name and he was going to help her by reading out the ones he liked. He patiently stayed for several hours each week and read off a long list of names for both boys and girls. He interjected his preferences and a running commentary on what a name meant and whether it was, or was not, suitable for Sarah’s child. He hoped Sarah would hear one she liked and let him know. She didn’t.
The nurse who always rubbed her feet when she had time, now put lotion on her belly and talked to Sarah and the baby as she rubbed with vigor to prevent stretch marks and move the big muscles that held the baby in place. It was grand and the baby kicked and wiggled under the nurse’s busy hands. Sarah pledged that when she was awake again she would track down this generous caregiver to thank her mightily and do her best to express her gratitude.
Sarah wondered how and when she was going to wake up. She fervently hoped and prayed that it would be before the baby was born. But she knew from what her baby’s doctor said that even if she did wake up the birth was probably going to be Caesarean because the muscles all over her body were weak. It was obvious that waking up was just step one in her recovery and wouldn’t help a great deal with the delivery. She reconciled herself to not really participating in the birth of her first child, but was determined and nearly certain that the birth would be a safe one for her baby.
When she looked at her whole situations, the only problem was really that she was not awake to the rest of the world. She was awake to herself and her health was quite good. She didn’t believe that it was better to stay in coma. She made it her purpose to do everything necessary to love and protect her child and vowed to wake up in order to do a better job of that.
Presently two of the nurses arrived to turn her to the other side and prop up her back. Her favorite stayed behind, rubbed her belly and then tweaked her toe, blessed her and left. After the deep massage, she slept and dreamed of David. It was a very difficult dream as she saw him like he was before the accident when they were happy and in the dream she knew that he was dead. When she began in her dream to cry, she actually woke for a moment and then slipped back under the influence of coma. As she returned to the coma she saw Seymore’s face, smiling reassuringly.
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When Seymore woke from his nap he didn’t move and luxuriated in the silence of his dimly lit office and the comfort of the big chair that cradled him. For the first time in what he realized was quite a while he was really relaxed and that he had been under much more of a strain than he appreciated. His mind wandered to think about Mesa and Geralty and knew that, since there had been no message from Mesa, that they were OK. He reached in his pocket and touched the silver ring, and then slowly moved to sit on the ottoman.
It was time to go get David. He was very sure that the wanderer was David and he was ready to affect his migration to Middle Mind. He stood up, stretched, and walk into Valentino’s office where his brother was bent over a desk fully engaged in the ongoing business of Middle Mind. He put his hand on his shoulder and said, “I’m ready, are you?”
Valentino started and then smiled and said, “Everything is prepared and we can go down to the barrier opening as soon as you have your presentation form ready. We’ll leave the barrier open until you return with or without the wanderer. There’s no limit on how long you can stay, but you know that the longer you are away the less influence you’ll have as Middle Mind stuff deteriorates quickly in the environment at The Rim. It’s best, of course, if you and the wanderer come back together, but be sure that the wanderer doesn’t come ahead of you because the barrier will close as soon as he crosses and then we’ll have to make a new process to get you back, which, of course, we would do. ”Seymore enjoyed Valentino’s little joke and the thorough review of the conditions and process that would operate while he was at The Rim retrieving Sarah’s David.