The Flex of the Thumb (17 page)

During his first two days back on campus, Vano went to classes and spent a little time browsing in the campus book store. Most of his time, though, was spent on the quad in deepest
hooommm
. For reasons unclear, the primate house experience had precipitated a fiery orange event which was nearly tactile. Molten layers of lava were tiered along the sky, encircling the campus. A deep rumbling seemed to quiver the firmament.

Occasionally, he was joined by Oboe Meel, but very little conversation passed between them. Once Oboe spoke of his new office and another time he said something about philosophy tests, but Vano was in far too deep to respond. He thought of Dr. Hicks' words: “This is turning you into a non-entity.” But maybe it was a different entity.

On the third day, Vano returned to the dorm room where he sat at Arnold Beeker's desk. He entered some data on Arnold's computer and watched the words as they formed on the monitor screen:

The Jane Fonda Workout Book

Thin Thighs in Thirty Days

Looking Out for Number One

The Late, Great Planet Earth

If You aren't Worth it, Who Is
?

The Girl Who Fell from her Harness

How to Pick up Girls

The Clouds Go Right On

The Wendy Dilemma

In deep, Vano stared at the screen. He stared at the monitor against a backdrop of bubbling orange flares. The room began to vibrate, but it wasn't scary; he sat in utter passivity.

Then suddenly, the monitor cleared itself, one line at a time, until the screen was blank. It remained blank for 30 seconds. Then, in place of Vano's entries, a new one appeared, squarely in the center of the screen:

Evolution

Vano stared on, thinking of Revuelto's flexible thumb lecture. He deleted the word
evolution,
then made another entry of his own, once again taking care to center it:

The Flexible Thumb

Still locked down ever so deep on deep, Vano was prepared to wait with ultra patience. After 30 seconds, the monitor cleared again and the
evolution
entry made another appearance. Vano couldn't help thinking to himself,
we are blended with the entire electromagnetic spectrum. We are the waves and we are the particles
. Way on down inside, deepest and sublime, Vano stared at the screen for two hours.

Then Arnold Beeker entered the room. “I've just been over at the union,” he announced. “The spelunking club is organizing its first outing.”

Vano didn't reply. He continued staring at the screen.

Arnold was wearing a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He lay back on his bed and began cleaning chin pimples with a Stridex medicated pad. “I've been doing some thinking,” he disclosed. “I think gravity may be the key to the whole thing.”

It took several seconds before Vano was able to turn his attention in Arnold's direction. “You're still fascinated with
ultimate hooommm,
aren't you?”

“Who wouldn't be? Professor Revuelto wrote a manuscript last year about folds in the earth. It hasn't been published yet, so if anyone wanted to read it, they'd have to borrow it from him.”

“How do you know about Professor Revuelto's manuscript?” asked Vano.

“It's the kind of thing I know about, Vano. See, Revuelto has this theory that there are folds in the earth that can possibly lead to different planes of existence. If you pass through one of the folds, you might wake up three days later on the other side of the globe, or even on another planet. But you wouldn't know how you got there.”

Vano smiled. “When the book is published, I would enjoy reading it.”

“
If
it gets published might be more like it.” Arnold was fidgeting with the blue and gold Rubik's cube which served him as a paperweight. He said, “I'm afraid Revuelto is on the wrong track, to tell you the truth. What he calls folds in the earth may only be weak spots in the earth's gravitational field. The fissures are extremely narrow, maybe no wider than a pane of glass.”

“It's a real nice theory, Arnold.”

“That's what I mean when I say gravity may be the key to everything.”

It took Vano a considerable while to formulate his response, and even then he wasn't sure it was on the subject: “
Ultimate hooommm
may mean particle people existence or belonging to the Federation,” he said. “It might mean becoming blended with the entire electromagnetic spectrum.”

“That's just the point,” Arnold continued. “You can't talk about the electromagnetic spectrum without talking about gravity. If you have a black hole, it means the gravitational force is so strong that not even light can escape from it.”

Vano didn't answer. Arnold got up from his bed so he could have a look over his roommate's shoulder. “Are you running a program?”

“No.”

“What's this entry? How did you make this entry?”

It took some time. Eventually Vano explained, “I didn't enter it. The entry I made was just a list of book titles. More or less.”

“You don't even have an active program. An entry can't just appear all by itself.”

Vano told him, “The book titles just disappeared, like they erased themselves. Then the word
evolution
took their place.”

“But I'm telling you this can't be. This is just the program manager because there's no active program. This had to come from somewhere.”

Vano's long pause came as the preamble to his response: “I think it was the particle people.”

Arnold sat down on the closest chair. “I'll say this for you, Vano, when you get a theory you stay with it. I'm going to take some notes, so please don't go too fast.”

“I never go fast,” Vano reminded him. “The last thing the particle people told me was that I would not have a complete understanding of existence until I knew
ultimate hooommm
. When they said it to me, I didn't understand, but now I do. I think.”

Even though he was writing furiously, Arnold didn't welcome the yawning delay which interrupted Vano's discourse. “Well don't stop now.”

Vano needed a deep breath first. “The ego mode is just a stage of evolutionary development. It's just as primitive to the particle people as apes learning to walk upright and use their hands is to us. The particle mode is a much higher plane of evolution. In a way, it might be the supreme plane of evolution because it more or less completes a circle, back to the atoms and particles the world began with. I'm not sure about that part. But the particle mode and
ultimate hooommm
are the same thing; that's the part I've got figured out.”

“Then why didn't they just tell you that the particle mode was the same thing as
ultimate hooommm
?”

This answer too, was a long time coming. “I think they didn't want to encourage me to strive for
ultimate hooommm
. If it works on the same principle as regular
hooommm,
the harder you try to get in it the less success you have.
Hooommm
is something you just have to let happen to you.”

Arnold Beeker was trying to grow a mustache. He fingered the few scraggly hairs which bothered his upper lip before saying, “So tell me this. What good does it do to know that the particle mode is a high plane of evolution? It takes millions of years to pass from one evolutionary phase to another.”

No answer was forthcoming, so Arnold continued, “Let's say the human race advances to the particle mode four million years from now. We'll never see it, so what's the good of knowing it? No offense, Vano, I'm not putting down your theory.”

Vano smiled. “No offense. I think it would be possible to achieve
ultimate hooommm
in our lifetime. The reason I think so is because some of the particle people had their origins on planets where the ego mode prevails. I sometimes think even I myself have been at the threshold, those times when the earth seems to wobble on its axis. It would probably take an extremely deep
hooommm
and a perfect set of conditions.”

The suddenly-energized Arnold Beeker was on his feet again. “If we're going to talk conditions, then what we need is data. Are you with me, Vano?”

“I don't think so,” Vano replied politely.

Arnold began pacing while wringing his hands. “I'm talking about the manuscript! If Revuelto's manuscript locates what he calls folds in the earth, we might be able to plug them into the right computer program and find out if they are really gravitational weak spots. Now do you see what I mean?”

Vano said quietly, “I think you're saying they might be points of unusual electromagnetic activity.”

“Exactly.” This had the feeling of a finer adventure even than exploring caves.

Vano asked him, “If we had Professor Revuelto's manuscript, where could we find the computer program we need?”

“Crevecouer wrote one that surveys gravitational force fields throughout our solar system. That might be too limited, but maybe worth a try.”

“How do you know about the Crevecouer program?”

“Vano, that's the kind of stuff I know about. Revuelto would never loan me his manuscript, though. I told him his theory about folds in the earth was off the track; I don't think he likes me.”

“Maybe he would loan it to me,” Vano offered.

“Well, you could always ask him,” said Arnold.

“That's true. I could always ask him.”

Oboe Meel's move from his own quarters to the academic dean's office positioned him to make two pleasant discoveries. To begin with, the office was so spacious that he could mount his dart board effectively. And in the second place, the new office, with floor-to-ceiling glass on the south and the west, provided a ready-made basking
ambience
.

It didn't take Oboe long to learn that he could avail himself of both pleasures at once. Bathing in refracted sunlight, he eased himself into his overstuffed chair. From this semi-recline, he could still launch darts at the target across the room. The only downside was retrieving the darts.

Today's target happened to be his new philosophy unit test, which consisted of two questions:

1.
Which is real: the blowfish inflated or deflated
?

2.
Let's say a meteor falls in a forest and crushes a slug to smithereens. What about that
?

He decided to determine the test's right answers by throwing darts at it. When he threw the first dart, it went straight down to lodge in the carpet, a few inches from his chair leg. “Okay, so it's been a long time,” he muttered. “All this means is that I'm a little rusty.”

He threw the second dart, which missed the test but stuck in the wall. Encouraged by this improvement, Oboe stood up so as to try a behind-the-back toss. The dart missed the wall entirely and sailed through the open office doorway. Professor Revuelto happened to be passing in the hall. The dart embedded itself securely in Revuelto's right temple.

He winced with pain but continued walking. He went straight to the office of the campus nurse. Nurse Berry was astonished when she got a look at Revuelto and his dart. “How did this ever happen?”

“I wish I knew.”

The nurse eyeballed the dart from several angles. “There's probably a perfect puncture wound there,” she declared. “There isn't much I can do for you. You'll need to go to the hospital for a tetanus shot.”

“Naturally,” said Revuelto irritably.

He decided to teach his class first, though, even with the dart sticking out of his head. As he spoke to the students he began to feel numb, almost like he was hooked up to an anaesthetic drip. He commenced to conjugate verbs at the blackboard, before he remembered that this was anthropology; he hadn't taught conversational Spanish in 20 years.

Adding to his disorientation was the vision of Mary Thorne. Leaning forward and crossing her legs in her front row seat. Her breasts were fairly spilling out of her yellow halter top. Short of breath, Revuelto instructed the class to to open the text to page 104 in order to begin reading the next chapter independently. He moved as carefully as possible in Mary's direction to ask her if she needed individual help.

As soon as Revuelto leaned over Mary's desk, his view inside the halter top was nearly total; his breathing difficulties intensified. For her part, Mary found Revuelto repellent. He was sweating and drooling. His breathing was so labored he sounded like he was trying to blow up a stubborn balloon.
And what about that stupid dart in his head
?

Sitting across from Mary was Rita Lieberman. Rita knew that Revuelto had no true educational objective in mind, but was maneuvering for a close-up look at Mary's melons. This knowledge filled Rita with resentment. Taking the six-inch nail file swiftly from her purse, she prepared to stab Mary with it. She plunged the nail file downward in a powerful backhand arc, but it stabbed into the professor by mistake. It penetrated one and one-half inches into the
rhomboideus major
muscle next to his shoulder blade.

Revuelto stood up straight before he turned white. With the dart in his temple and the nail file in his back, he ground his teeth together to keep from screaming.

Once again, he walked rapidly to Nurse Berry's office. The pain was excruciating and his head was swimming. Nurse Berry could offer him no new advice. She said, “This doesn't change a thing. You'll still have to go to the hospital for a tetanus shot.”

Revuelto drove to the hospital emergency room. The E. R. nurse, a muscle-bound female with hairy forearms, was named Ms. Greve. Revuelto handed his note from Nurse Berry to her.

“This tetanus shot will have to be in your rear end,” Nurse Greve informed Revuelto. “Drop your trousers.”