Chapter 19

After class I wandered down to the cafeteria to wait for my next class, because it was now too chilly to sit outside for long. I got coffee, sat at a table, and perused my English Lit text.

But though I appeared to be skimming the book, I wasn’t really comprehending anything. My mind was dancing around this new discovery, trying to put it in a context I could understand.

There were things I needed to learn and now I had a quicker way to learn them. I’d have to come up with a method to peek into the experts’ minds without arousing suspicion. Until I knew more, it would be better to take this slow.

That, somehow, brought me back to the concern I had about becoming a mental voyeur, happening upon people’s hidden secrets and private embarrassments. I would hate if someone were doing that to me. Who’s to say there isn’t already somebody else out there walking around with my capabilities and chanced to look inside my head? I gave a little mental shiver at the thought.

What would life be like if we all had this ability to read everyone’s thoughts and memories? How drastic would the societal change be? Some part of me believed that the ability to keep our thoughts private was one of the things that made society function.

What if the person for whom you worked could see that you didn’t really respect them, or actively disliked them? What if the person to whom you were attracted could suddenly see all your hidden fantasies about them? Would it send them running in the opposite direction, possibly short-circuiting a future relationship that might have turned into love?

On the other hand, it would be really difficult to be a criminal in such a society, because someone, maybe the police, maybe your next-door neighbor, would be able to look in your head and see what you’ve done. I guess the police would be mostly reduced to handing out parking tickets and catching speeders.

Governments would love it because it would be impossible to hide your opposition from the current rulers. Depending on the kind of government you lived under, you could be killed, jailed, exiled just for thinking that the current government had a flaw or might require some changes. The other side of that coin was that, in a democracy, it would now be extremely difficult for candidates to lie to the electorate. We might actually find an honest politician! The problem would be in finding a second one.

What if some bright chemist somewhere came up with a pill that would mask your thoughts from others? That person would become stinking rich for starters, because there would be a huge black market for that kind of protection from open mental trespass. The ability to keep a secret would be a new kind of currency.

I toyed with the idea of writing a science-fiction book with that premise. It had a lot of promise, but I think I’d dread working through the litany of problems that would arise, that it would ultimately be depressing and leave no way out for the people who lived in that fictional world.

I was saved from sinking further down the drain hole by my next class, which would start in a few minutes. A few minutes later found me in the second row, where I could see the instructor, Prof. Calvano, and she could see me. I opened my notebook as she dropped her books on the desk and opened her lecture notes.

“Let’s see,” she said, “where did we end? ... Oh, yes, we were just about to start with Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress. This was part of the assigned reading, so you should all be familiar with the work. Now, let’s figure out what he’s trying to say.”

A voice from the back said, not quite sotto voce, “He’s trying to get laid.” There were some giggles and a few groans.

The instructor said, “You’re not entirely wrong, but I’m asking you to analyze how he’s going about it. You brought it up, so why don’t you start?”

Oops. The wit in the back of the room had just laid himself open and was fumbling for something intelligent to contribute so as not to appear a fool. I smiled, and the instructor caught it and suppressed a smile too. And for that instant I had her focus and grabbed the thread and stepped into her epicenter.

Like the Chem TA, her ‘desk’ was also organized, with explanations of each stanza neatly laid out. I looked over her virtual shoulder and saw how most literary critics had analyzed the various sections of the poem. And as soon as I had done so, I could feel how my understanding of the poem had changed. It was now not just a collection of rhymes in archaic form, it carried a meaning that I had not seen before. I even saw the places where there were opposing schools of thought as to what Marvell had meant in a specific line.

I actually felt a little lightheaded for a moment, as the insight overwhelmed me. I steadied myself and remembered that I was here for a purpose, so I examined the surroundings and looked for the place she stored her memories.

But no doors were to be seen. Was my supposition of how memory was stored and accessed wrong? There had to be a way to bring out facts and ideas that were needed, so where...

I was blank for a moment, then gave myself a mental slap at trying to make every pathway have a door. It was just a hologram, for want of a better word, and each person ‘built’ it in a form with which they were comfortable. I looked around again and noticed that she, unlike others, had an epicenter with built-in shelves and cabinets. That made some kind of twisted sense, I suppose, her life was books and journals and papers, so she would be comfortable storing them in their metaphorical substitute.

The ‘bookshelves’ appeared to contain various reference works for her field, tomes she must have spent years reading, and now as close as old friends. They were here because she referred to them frequently in her mind. In fact, here was the textbook we were using, the Norton Anthology of English Literature. So where were her other memories, her knowledge about other things?

I opened one of the cabinets built in to the ‘wall’. There were several of them, this was just the closest. I needed to prove my thesis, that I could call up any of her memories. I mentally forced myself to amend that to ‘her memories related to the subject’ to remind myself that this shouldn’t devolve into eavesdropping.

I tried to remember the syllabus for the course. I knew we’d do Shakespeare later, but I wanted something less familiar to me. We were going to be reading John Milton’s Paradise Lost next week, if I remembered correctly, so let’s see if I can find that.

I stood in front of the open cabinet and tried to visualize the poet’s name and the specific work. Harder than it sounds, since they’re abstract things and don’t lend themselves to imagery well, but I gave it my best effort.

The cabinet remained inscrutably blank. Okay, no reason to panic, I don’t know how she organizes things, it’s probably somewhere else. I closed this one and opened the next, and repeated the query. Nope, nothing. On to the next. This time something happened, as if the air in front of it shimmered like it were rising from a hot beach or a desert.

I almost cried, it was as if this whole section of English poetry had been poured into my mind. It made my head spin for a moment, as I looked at what I now knew. What she had learned about Milton over the years of studying, reading, teaching it and discussing it with colleagues was now mine.

Suddenly, I felt almost dizzy and knew I had to leave, so I closed the cabinet and stepped out of her epicenter. I was back in my seat now, listening to her talk, and of course I already knew it because I now had that knowledge, too. I forced myself to look at her closely, to see if I could find some external clue that my incursion had affected her in some way, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She was speaking and acting as I had become accustomed to in previous classes.

She was engaging with another student now, who was trying to prove her wrong, that his analysis was correct. She was having none of it. But while they sparred, I thought about the almost physical blow I had felt when I borrowed her knowledge of Marvell, and the greater blow when her knowledge of Milton passed to me. It really was quite staggering and I had felt like I was going to faint.

There was a warning there, I thought. Facts and ideas have to be stored, neurons connected, chemicals involved with short- and long-term memory produced. The mind can assimilate new ideas, store them, but it takes some chemical and electrical energy to do so. When we learn things, we usually learn them slowly, at a pace which won’t tax the mind.

I had done something quite different. I had taken a huge store of detailed knowledge from someone, a store accumulated over many years, a little at a time, and I had moved it en masse from their head to mine! I’m a bit surprised that I didn’t collapse in my chair and fall on the floor. Even now I felt a little dizzy.

There’s always a dark side to every gift. So it seemed that I couldn’t just walk into someone’s mind and vacuum up all their knowledge of their particular field of expertise. If I was going to do this and still retain my health and sanity, I’d have to approach this in a more methodical fashion, taking smaller ‘bites’ so I don’t choke on them.

On the other hand, I now had a much greater appreciation of John Milton’s genius.

Wednesday was my busiest class and activity day, so by the time I got back to the dorm, I was bushed. I was hoping to take a quick nap before I went to eat. On the door I found a note taped. “Carter, Gail wants your bod. Call her.” This, if you’re taking notes, is sophisticated wit in the dorms.

But on the off chance that she really did want my bod, I called her. It had been almost two weeks since I saw her last, both of us busy.

“So he lives after all? I was beginning to have my doubts.”

“Was I supposed to have called you or something, Gail? I’ve been wrapped up in classes and papers. Sorry if I messed up.”

“I’m just pulling your chain, Carter, because it’s so much fun. I was thinking it’s about time for another art history lecture. Truth is I just want to hang out at the museum for awhile and this is a good excuse. I told you I like to do that, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did, and even if you hadn’t I’d probably have figured it out. So when would be good for you?”

“Same day, same time, I think. That works well for me, and I’ve got the weekend to catch up on my class work.”

“Okay, that time works for me, too. I’ll look forward to it.”

“Right. You’d better cram for the quiz. I told you about the quiz, right?”

“I think you may have forgotten to mention it, but I’ll study up. Wouldn’t want the teacher to rap my knuckles with a ruler.”

“See ya Friday.”

It’d do me good to get out of the grind for awhile. She was fun to be around, even if we didn’t have sex, so I really was looking forward to it.

I went off to the food factory and had a quick dinner. I was revising my opinion about institutional food. This had turned out better than I had anticipated. I was pretty sure my expectations had been set by middle and high school lunchrooms, and college dining may have been that bad once, but they’d upped their game as the competition for students and the students’ parents’ money had intensified in recent years. So amenities were important.

I was caught up on all my reading for Thursday’s classes, and a good thing, too, because once I got back to the room I was about ready to drop. So I shrugged my shoulders and said “Why not?” I was asleep within minutes of pulling the blanket up.

I was fortunate in not having any really early classes, and today’s European History class didn’t start till ten, so I had time for a leisurely breakfast and a chance to review the reading and notes.

I thought back to my recent forays into people’s memories. Now that I knew it was possible to pull out most anything I wanted, the temptation to do so was intense. But the physical effect it had had on me made me temper my enthusiasm. I was going to have to force myself to take this knowledge in smaller pieces so as not to overwhelm myself. Maybe once I had done this for awhile I might learn how to take in larger segments, but for now I’d take a more prudent approach.

So I headed off to class a little before time and took up a seat toward the front where I could more easily grab the instructor’s focus. I decided to concentrate on understanding the most recent lecture topic and any related items. Given that it was history, there were probably a lot of those, but we’ll see where this goes.

Our lecturer arrived, opened his old-fashioned leather briefcase, and pulled out several books and his lecture notes. You’d probably know him, as he was one of the savants that the media called for interviews when something important was happening in European politics, so I’ll just make up a name, say, Professor D.

He was probably getting close to retirement, but historians hardly ever retire, they just go on to teach graduate seminars until they become undeniably senile, or keel over dead. He had a few years to go yet, and was still sharp. I wondered idly why he was teaching a first-year class, since the academic stars seldom did that, but some of them liked to do it. Maybe he was one of them.

Today we had advanced to discussing the Thirty Years War in central Europe, its causes and its immediate and long-term effects. He began by talking about the efforts of the Holy Roman Empire to maintain its dominance in the region. When the German Ferdinand II was elected to lead the Empire, he broke one of the conditions of the Peace of Augsburg and demanded that everyone adhere to Catholicism. Large parts of Europe demurred, preferring to keep their own religion. Some of the Bohemian nobility made a statement to that effect by throwing Ferdinand’s official representative out a palace window in Prague. That’s an historian joke, and he smiled at the humor.

He was on a roll now, and there was a lot of facts being thrown at us, so I made myself look particularly rapt and waited for him to glance my way. Teachers are always on the lookout for the students who seem interested. It makes them feel like they’re doing their jobs. And there it is. As soon as I saw him glance in my direction, catching the interest on my face, I felt his connection and was able to walk it up to his epicenter. He looked back toward the room and continued talking.

I think this must be an academic thing, where their epicenters are neat and tidy, everything organized, in its proper place. There was a ‘tabletop’ on which he had neatly arranged his facts, in the order of presentation, and he was methodically cycling through them. Clearly, this was a comfortable subject for him, all extraneous material out of sight, to be summoned as needed.

I looked over his virtual shoulder and saw the details in front of me, and again I felt that sense of exhilaration when I suddenly saw the thing as a whole, how the parts were connected, how this thing affected that, and the terrible result that came about. It really took my breath away, and I could appreciate how a person could get so caught up in the awful inevitability of those decisions.

As before, when I saw the thing laid out, in its framework, I understood it. And not just from the perspective of memorizing a set of facts and when they happened. Now these things were part of a colorful story that had had a lasting effect on history and in the countries in which it had occurred. I stepped out of his epicenter and found, as I listened, it was as if hearing an old story, told many times before, but no less fascinating as a result. As he stated each fact, I found myself thinking, “Oh, yeah, and that caused this other thing to happen, and we know what that meant.”

My mind wandered back to my musing what would happen if everyone could see into anyone else’s mind, how it would have all these societal implications. What if, instead, we had the ability to transfer this depth of knowledge to each student, so that they understood history, and politics, and math, and literature? If they had that level of understanding about the world, would they not become better, more thoughtful citizens and politicians, perhaps helping us to avoid many of the bad decisions we’d taken as a country over past years?

Maybe. But it’s still human nature to look for an edge, to take care of number one. Understanding history and politics won’t turn us all into Mother Theresa. A problem to be solved another time, perhaps.

We were winding up, getting toward the end of the class, and I could see Professor D building up to his grand finale, which would leave his students anxiously waiting for the next installment. But I knew what it was, ‘cause I’d seen it in the facts on the ‘tabletop’ in his epicenter.

He sent us packing with a reading assignment and a warning not to wait till finals before reviewing everything we’d covered so far. Actually a pretty wise admonition.

I had almost two hours before Chem class, so off to lunch, even it I’d already had breakfast recently. While I ate I thought more about my excursion into Professor D’s epicenter. I tried to examine how I felt about assimilating that quantity of information, whether I was feeling any effects from the effort. And I had to confess that I didn’t. I seemed to have internalized it easily, and I couldn’t observe any lasting effects, as I had when I tried to siphon up the contents of Professor Calvano’s knowledge of John Milton, rather than just his poem Paradise Lost.

I looked again at what I’d just learned about the Thirty Years War and it still seemed complete, my understanding of it just as encompassing. I did the same thing for Calvano and Milton. It had been a day, but as I reviewed what I’d learned, it seemed just as fresh, as firmly embedded as if I’d studied it for years. I poked in some corners, looking for obscure details that weren’t covered in the lectures or the text, and found some of those, too.

I might never need those, but they were there, now part of my own memory. This was really quite extraordinary, and made my knees a little weak thinking about it. I wondered what the capacity of the human mind was for facts and concepts. Was there a limit? Could I take in too much information? What would happen to my ability to think for myself if my mind was constantly stumbling over possibly irrelevant facts? Another reason to take this slow. Until I knew for sure.

I read some of the chemistry text, and also reviewed what I’d picked up from the TA, McCarthy, about stoichiometry. It was still there, too, at least to the level that he had understood it. Eventually it was time to go, and I packed up and headed off to the lecture hall.

I won’t bore you with the details here. I was able to get into the instructor’s head and assimilated her understanding of what she was trying to teach us. I’ve gotta say, this sure made learning a lot more fun, and interesting, too. I could now see what got her so excited about chemistry, the beauty that she saw in it, and absorbed some of her enthusiasm for the field. I refrained from trying to absorb too much, because I’d also taken chunks of information from others over the past two days, and I wanted this process to go slow until I mastered it and knew what the limits were.

After the class ended, it was immediately off to the chem laboratory section, where we tried to perform simple experiments that demonstrated what we’d been hearing about in lecture. It was straightforward stuff, the steps all carefully printed out for us, and no real need to peek into the TA’s head. We recorded our observations and results in a notebook and passed them in to be checked by the TA. We’d get them back next week.

I finished early and went off to Psych Club across campus, which wasn’t all that interesting this week, but which allowed me to wind down a bit. And when that was done, I was free for the weekend! Except for reading, class assignments and worrying about final exams which were now uncomfortably close.

I wasn’t particularly worried since I had a pretty good understanding of all that I was supposed to know -- and more. This was, I think, more of a learned response picked up in high school where exams were a constant worry, an ax suspended over your head by a thread.

So I forced myself to relax, did some reading, had a late dinner, and even spent some time writing a long email to Karen, then went to bed.

Larry came in late. I know because he woke me from a sound sleep as he prepared for bed. I hope he was pacing himself, partying only on the weekends.

When I finally woke, I saw it was late. Well, after nine, anyway. But I had nowhere I needed to be, so shower, shave, off to breakfast, and then some reading till it was time to go to the museum. I left enough time to grab a sandwich before I had to leave.

It was quite cool now, cold enough for snow, though we hadn’t had any to speak of yet. Everyone was bundled up, including me. I’d traded in my light jacket for a parka. And gloves. I stood on the steps with my hands in my pockets and waited for her, and wondered if perhaps I should wait inside the entryway, where it was out of the wind. But there she was, right on time. Actually it was hard to tell, because she was bundled up, too, with a quilted winter jacket, a long, colorful scarf around her neck, and a wool knit hat pulled down over her ears. I recognized her because her auburn hair stood out like a signpost.

“How come you didn’t wait inside?” she demanded.

“Creature of habit, I guess. Let’s go in.”

I paid again, and this time we left our things in the cloakroom and got little numbered metal tags with which to redeem them.

“How’s my favorite student?” she asked.

“Glad that he doesn’t have to think about class or reading or assignments for awhile. Are you going to cut me some slack today?”

“Hah! Fat chance. You think you’ve had it hard with your classes? Wait’ll you’ve been through Conlon’s Art History boot camp, mister. You’ll be begging for mercy.”

“Wait, Has the drop date for this class passed yet?”

“Too late, cadet, you’re mine now. Let’s go.”

She led me up to one of the galleries, then slowed when she found what she was looking for.

“Okay, I think we’d just finished with the Baroque period. That faded when people got bored with the same themes in the same style. So by the time that the late Baroque had come around, early 1700s, some French painters started experimenting, messing around with the Baroque ideas, changing this and that, until it finally evolved into its own separate style that they called Rococo.

“Rococo uses lots of scrolling curves, and white and pastel colors. It’s very ornamental and theatrical. It combines asymmetry, gilding, sculpted molding, and trompe-l’œil frescoes, and uses this to give a sense of surprise and the illusion of motion and drama.”

She pointed to a large photograph showing pretty much what she’d just said.

“So this was really new and exciting and it didn’t take long before it had spread from France all over Europe. And it wasn’t just painting and sculpture, either, but also furniture, silverware and glassware, even music, and theater!

“If you look at it, it looks, well, busy. There’s lots going on, lots to keep the eye constantly moving. Even fashion took on some of those elements, and women’s gowns became almost an architectural statement. She couldn’t get into them by herself, but required several ladies maids to assist her in constructing the facade, because that’s what it was.

“Anyway, I digress. Rococo painting in France used a lot of lighthearted treatments of mythological and courtship themes, expressive and delicate brushwork, a relatively light tonal key, and sensuous coloring.”

She pointed out several examples of Rococo painting and I could see what she meant.

“As quickly as people had jumped onto this bandwagon, they just as quickly got bored with it. Or at least the painters did. It got to be a competition to see who could produce the most intricate time-consuming works. And the artist’s expression was lost in the process. So by about 1760 or thereabouts, painters had begun moving on into something called Neoclassicism.

“That was kind of a fallback to the old themes of classical painting, mythical and religious subjects that hearkened back to ancient Rome and Greece. It was, obviously, less busy and fussy, and was considered more pure and inspirational. Come over here.”

She took my arm and led me further into the gallery, stopping at various paintings to point out how this was different from Rococo, yet still retained a few elements of it, like an echo. Once again, I admired the subtlety of her eye to be able to see those things. Because I couldn’t, until she pointed them out to me.

And so the afternoon progressed. Neoclassicism, she said, lingered on for quite a long time, even as it was being supplanted by something called Romanticism, which started around the early 1800s. This was starting to sound a bit familiar to me, as she mentioned several artists whose names I had heard. Though I wouldn’t have been able to identify their styles.

She was so wrapped up in this, completely immersed in it. I could tell that she loved to revisit this stuff, to rediscover her love for it, and I admired her for it. I really hoped that she found a place that would pay her and encourage her, allow her to follow her passion for this. She’d be brilliant once she got into the right situation.

She was trying to win me over with the excitement of what she was seeing for perhaps the hundredth time, talking quietly but intensely of how the art world fractured and coalesced, broke and reformed to produce something new and exciting. I wanted to share that with her, so I peeked into her epicenter to try to grasp the framework and how the styles were related and how they evolved.

She had it laid out like a map, and she was tracing the various artistic movements and I could see representations of each style and where they lived in the timeline. And like Calvano and Professor D, I understood how this all fit together. I thought, this is the mark of a truly dedicated scholar, someone who dives down deep into a subject, observing it, studying it, trying to understand it. She could do this, but only if she eventually found someone who would believe in her, give her a chance to contribute to the field.

I realized that she had stopped talking, and I quickly stepped out and found her looking at me.

“Did I lose you?” she asked.

“No, sorry, I was wrapped up in a comment you made about painters using current events in their art to make statements about injustices and inequality, trying to see that in some of the works you pointed out. Did you ask me something?”

“Well, I wanted to see if I had left you behind in my rambling, but from what you just said, I don’t think I did. Anyway, we’ve been at this for a while, and this might be a good breaking point. Do you want to keep going?”

“I’ll leave it to you. You throw so much at me in these sessions, it really is like a boot camp, there’s so much to learn.”

“Yeah, there is. But you’re doing pretty well picking this stuff up, so a gold star to you. This probably is a good place to stop. I’ll deny it if I’m ever accused of saying it, but there really can be such a thing as too much art.”

“I’m shocked. Shocked, I say! I mean, they could throw you out of the Art Historian’s Union or something if that got out.”

“I trust you to keep my secret. Whaddya want to do? You have someplace to be? No? Something to eat, maybe?”

“Aren’t you full of questions. I guess I could eat something. Let me see how much money I’ve got.” I looked at my wallet. “I guess I’m okay if we don’t get the second bottle of wine. Let’s get our coats and figure out where to go.”

Once again bundled up, we stood outside on the steps and debated the options. She wasn’t in the mood for Italian again, and was iffy about Middle-Eastern.

“What I’d really like,” she said, “is onion rings, and maybe a sandwich. Is that too decadent?”

“Not for me. I like onion rings. What about that diner? What is it, The Parthenon?”

“No, it’s ... oh, right, The Olympus. That’s not too far. They’ll have onion rings.”

So off we went and, once seated back in a corner by ourselves, ordered onion rings for each of us, and we split a turkey club sandwich.

“Have I seduced you over to the dark side yet, Carter? Ready to give up your pursuit of psychology or math or whatever and take up art? You seem to have a pretty good understanding so far.”

“It’s interesting, I’ll admit, but to be really successful at it I’d have to have a better eye and an appreciation for color and design. I lack those, and no amount of study will give them to me. I’ll leave it to those who are better suited to it.”

“Ah, well, I suppose I should look at the bright side. There’ll be one less person competing for the too few jobs available.”

“Glad to do my small part in helping you get a job.”

Our food arrived and she tore into the onion rings with a kind of hedonistic pleasure. It was fun to watch her. I wasn’t that hungry, still digesting lunch, and this would be enough.