Nasty Data on COVID Origins

10 Comments March 4, 2021 Morrill Talmage Moorehead

Ivor Cummins is the genius engineer who uses his expertise in complex systems analysis to save lives by advocating coronary artery calcium scans while he educates the brain-dead portion of mainstream medicine on the science of type 2 diabetes, myocardial infarction (heart attack), and obesity.

Here is Ivor’s YouTube channel and here is his podcast. This man is well worth your time if the mainstream “news” emanating from the outlets on both sides of the political spectrum ever begins to sound dubious to you.

In the video below, Ivor Cummins and Gabor Erdosi go over the scientific data surrounding the question of whether the virus behind COVID-19 came from a laboratory rather than from nature.

Of course, focusing on this data is taboo at Google/YouTube and FaRcebook, so the video below may be deleted before you watch it. If so, you’ll find the audio here on Ivor’s podcast, episode # 110 (Ep110).

Quoting the video’s comment section…

“Fortunately the Truth checkers at Gutube can’t understand [what] these chaps are saying.”

Yes, the discussion is, at times, obscured by technical language, but please hang in for the best part, the evidence that the COVID-19 virus has spent significant time inside a specific lineage of laboratory mouse. (All other lab mice, we’re told, are invulnerable to COVID-19 and cannot be infected by it.)

I found limited information on Gabor Erdosi. He apparently has a Master of Molecular Biology degree, a background in genetics, and is touted as “King of Root-Cause investigation” in the context of genetics. I wish I knew more about him.

Although these data indicate conclusively (to me) that the COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) was produced in a laboratory, one cannot be sure that the virus was made in China. There are other possibilities. For instance, the Wuhan lab in China might have been “framed,” set up by a foreign country to look guilty and take the blame for the pandemic. Who knows? You and I don’t. If one accepts the currently untestable assumption that the virus did come from China, then there would still be uncertainty as to whether the bug escaped the lab accidentally or deliberately. (Of course, why any morally sane individual(s) would concoct this virus in the first place is beyond me.)
The math applied in this video to cast colossal doubt on the possibility that all these rare mutations came from random processes (outside of a lab) can also be used to show the flaw in thinking that random mutations in nature can conceivably generate complex biological systems, that is in a Universe that’s only 13.8 billion years old. (Don’t get angry now. Relax, read Stephen Meyer’s, Signature in the Cell, enjoy the math and draw your own private conclusions. Maybe the Universe is infinitely old, unlimited in volume, or accompanied by an infinite number of “parallel universes.” Any of these options would allow all seemingly impossible chains of interacting natural random coincidence to become reality… but not just neo-Darwinian evolution, also we would have to include the existence of a benevolent being or beings whom we might logically deem worthy of the title, God(s).
Even if everyone decides that the Chinese Communist Party is behind the pandemic, we would be foolish to allow ourselves to hate China or to seek revenge. Without hating anyone, humanity must stop following leaders with limited conscience (sociopaths). We must rise above hatred and violence or we’ll soon conspire together to bring our species down into the fossil record with countless other extinct species. With all the WMD technology today, including pandemics, our options have shrunken: love each other or die fighting. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” It’s too late for hate.

Geek Love,

Morrill Talmage Moorehead, MD

The Elephant-Sized Flaw in Large Clinical Trials

14 Comments July 25, 2019 Morrill Talmage Moorehead

Imagine you’re like me and have a genetic variation in your D2 Dopamine receptor code which makes some aspects of “executive functioning” difficult. (I was always the last one to finish my lab work in Chemistry, Biochemistry, and General Physics — though I got the highest final score in Physics Lab, so I’m not claiming to be stupid.)

Anyway, you’ve got this D2 challenge in your brain, you do some reading and discover that organic velvet bean powder has L-dopa that might help you with things like working faster through cookbook recipes.

You buy some velvet bean powder, try it and, wow, you’re not only more efficient, your mood improves.

You should feel ecstatic, right?

But no, you’re vaguely suspicious because you’re a medical doctor. Professors and attendings have warned you that anecdotal evidence is worthless, and the placebo effect is ready and waiting to make a fool of you.

To avoid embarrassment, you decide you need a double-blinded, prospective clinical trial with a large number of test subjects and proper randomization. Anything less would be rubbish.

Fortunately, this is not a problem. You’re also a multi-billionaire who can fund a complete drug trial.

Of course, you didn’t get rich by ignoring opportunity. You plan to make money with these velvet beans.

Knowing that your problem starts with genetic D2 variation, common sense tells you to study a few thousand people who have the same genetic makeup.

But what about your target buyer? A businessperson looks there first.

From that perspective, you want the FDA approval to apply to as many people as possible so you can hand out genetically modified velvet bean pills to the broader public and make more money.

You therefore choose the typical mainstream experimental design: Thousands of unselected participants taken in randomly and then randomized and blinded into trial and control groups. You’ll also blind the people administering the bean pills and placebos so no one can fault your study.

Ten years and 1.2 billion dollars later, the trial ends and the stats come back from the math geeks, those rare professionals who honestly understands statistics and can manipulate them dishonestly.

Despite their efforts, they bring you bad news. There is no statistical evidence that your patented velvet bean extract improves executive functioning or mood.

Rats!

You go home and glare at your dog, then apologize with an organic carrot.

If you publish the paper, the entire world of mainstream MD’s, those smart women and men who don’t read the scientific literature or think for themselves because they’re too busy and frightened of lawsuits – those dedicated, exhausted people will hear from their educators, the drug reps, that velvet beans are rubbish. “This is just another example of the functional medicine quacks peddling snake oil.”

But you take organic velvet bean powder every day, it’s made a real difference. In the kitchen now, you’re turning out Molten Lava Cakes faster than the famous TV chefs. You feel more grounded and calm, too.

What should you do?

It’s obvious, isn’t it? Common sense tells you to go back and do a clinical trial using people with the D2 receptor issue, testing the organic velvet bean powder that works for you, not the GMO stuff your lab cooked up for megabucks.

Unfortunately, this common-sense approach rarely if ever happens in the real world. Negative studies like this are routinely published, and the mainstream fails to see the elephant-sized flaw in their assumptions: the human population is vastly more diverse than previously known at the genetic and biochemical level.

Genetic diversity is relevant to every branch of medicine because single nucleotide polymorphisms (genetic SNPs), like the one that affects my D2 receptors, create a huge diversity in disease susceptibility at the root-cause level, as well as a myriad of diversity in personal strengths and weaknesses within every system of the body.

From the central nervous system to the skin, genetic SNPs are the rule, not the exception. And science has hardly begun to uncover them all or understand their complex interplay across systems.

I have another common genetic SNP that reduces my ability to “detoxify” caffeine by about 60%.

With this knowledge, I’ve lowered my caffeine intake from several double mochas a day (at the VA Med Center years ago), to two cups of green tea per day. This reversed an unbearable sensation of vascular congestion in my legs. (n=1)

I also have a SNP that makes me inefficient at converting beta-carotene to vitamin A, a few SNPs that increase my need of several B vitamins for adequate methylation to keep my homocysteine levels down, and numerous others that I won’t bore you with. But despite all my SNPs, I’m still quite healthy for a 63-year-old man.

The thing is, genetic SNPs are so common, you yourself almost certainly have at least one, more likely a handful. So it’s irrational for researchers to lump you into a huge unselected “normal” population when they’re testing something. And it’s misinformed and lazy for MD’s, however busy they are, to ignore your SNPs and follow cookbook-official protocols when treating you. They need to read more broadly and act with integrity even if it costs them.

Genetic diversity is why functional medicine, imperfect as it is, will become central to mainstream medical care someday. The establishment will change the name from functional medicine to something they haven’t already disparaged.

Currently, they say functional medicine is not evidence-based. In some ways that’s true.

But when it comes to reversing chronic disease rather than just controlling its progression, functional medicine is more evidence-based than mainstream medicine because it uses personal genetic data that the mainstream ignores.

Moreover, it understands the elephant-sized flaw in the mainstream’s large clinical debunking trials.

…

Morrill Talmage Moorehead, MD

Photo by Rafael on Unsplash

“The bigotry and intolerance of the scientific community…”

42 Comments June 22, 2019 Morrill Talmage Moorehead

“The thing that we all know most directly and most certainly – that is, the existence of ourselves – is ultimately incompatible with materialism.” – Jay Richards, PhD.

When I attended a Christian university in the 1970s (now called La Sierra University) I took an upper division genetics class from Gary Bradley, my hero to this day, who subtly taught the logic of associating a Code Writer with this planet’s unfathomably complex DNA. His scientific insight was ahead of its time and became the intellectual basis of my faith in God.

Although my unbalanced version of Christianity made me a doormat in the dog-eat-dog world of pathology, the realization that God existed and, being smart enough to write genetic code, could easily understand English and undoubtedly hear my thoughts and prayers, improved my life dramatically, giving me a sense of meaning and purpose, despite my habit of not standing up for myself.

Today, more and more brave scientists and thinkers are making the connection between Earth’s code-based life and an intelligent code writer. Random mutation and natural selection don’t stand up to mathematical scrutiny when you know something of the complexity of proteins and the DNA codes that produce them.

But breaking with tradition is dangerous. Modern scientists are like preschoolers fighting to control the rules to the latest game. And they are literally religious fundamentalists who believe that their dogma alone can save the world.

The dogma is materialism: the arrogant, arbitrary, inflexible assumption that nothing could possibly exist besides matter and energy. This is a philosophical assumption that cannot be tested. Hence we should not equate it to science or let it be preached to school children as “the foundation of the scientific method.”

It’s actually the foundation of scientific fundamentalism, a religion that has quietly slipped in and taken rigid control of the minds, careers and publications of the scientific community. Materialism has become a roadblock to the funding of any project that doesn’t knuckle under to the dogma of a random, meaningless, depressing, purely material universe.

But here’s a breathtaking video that brings hope that perhaps today’s young people will rescue science from fundamentalism…

“Oddly, the [scientific] materialist has to deny the existence of the scientist.”

So true, and so ironic.

Back in the day, Gary Bradley openly questioned Neo-Darwinism in class, emphasizing the crucial importance of protecting the genetic diversity, natural order and purity of Earth’s ecosystems from the myopic intrusions of corporate science.

At the time, I did not understand how rare this part of my education was. But now I know that at least in the last fifty years, professors and textbooks have assumed without question that science is materialistic – there can be nothing but matter and energy anywhere, ever. Therefore, the mind is an illusion. Intelligence is an accident of matter, a random epiphenomenon with no meaning or higher purpose.

During their impressionable college years when objectivity writes on a clean slate, very few modern scientists have been allowed to hear both sides of the argument between materialism and intelligent design. Nevertheless, some have heard it now and are coming around, saying that there’s evidence in favor of the concept that we are genuine beings with free will.

Here’s a video touching on some of that evidence…

“No, You’re Not a Robot Made Out of Meat“

In college, students are usually taught what to think not how to think. The struggle for most undergraduates is to memorize quickly for multiple-choice tests. We tacitly assume that everything we have crammed into our heads is true, including this western secular worldview disguised as the foundation of science.

But the mainstream answer to this question, “Does the Universe consist of only matter and energy or is there also something more, such as mind, identity, or a Supreme Being?” is not directly testable and therefore not capable of being the foundation of science. It’s a worldview, a philosophy, a spirituality or, if you ask me, a cultish religion that has morphed into today’s academic culture of scientific fundamentalism.

…

Morrill Talmage Moorehead, MD

Please share these videos with the young minds you know and love. Give them something to balance the dogmatic materialism that undermines happiness and limits science itself. Give someone a glimpse of the rational universe where depression and suicide are avoidable through the pursuit of a higher, loving purpose.

Dark Matter, God and Genetics

61 Comments March 31, 2017 Morrill Talmage Moorehead

Ages ago (in the 1970’s), scientists looked out at the universe, did the math and silently wet themselves. The peripheral arms of galaxies weren’t acting right. There wasn’t enough gravity to make the stars of the galaxy’s arms move that fast.

Astronomers drove home, changed pants and got an idea: Dark matter. The essence of ghost flesh with gravity!

It seemed too convenient to some: We can’t see it, can’t touch it and can’t detect it in a laboratory – at least not so far.

Nevertheless, science liked dark matter. Its existence was implied by the motion of galaxies.

We’re told it surrounds a galaxy like a halo, but without the angel’s head, so it’s not religious.

History shows that geneticists also had a meltdown when they first discovered that DNA was too complex for their model of reality. Don’t worry, they’ve gotten over it.

It was in the 1950’s when Barbara McClintock, a genius geneticist who single-handedly discovered genetic regulation strayed from the narrow path and discovered that genes are under complex control. At the time it was heresy.

The objective voices of science knew in their hearts that DNA was a simple, straight-forward thing. It had to be. It came from the mindless forces of mutation – how could it possibly be under some strange complicated control mechanism?

And who does this woman think she is, trying to add impossible complexity to DNA? She’s dangerous and wrong!

They forced Barbara McClintock to stop publishing her seminal work.

The angels cried.

No, wait, that was dark matter, not angles. My bad.

You know how it feels when somebody in the Middle East takes a big hammer to a beautiful historic statue that can never be replaced? That’s how it feels to me when I think of those well-intentioned scientists censoring and nearly destroying the career of the great Barbra McClintock.

I’m having a little trouble forgiving them.

Today the complexity of DNA and its layers of intricate control are becoming widely recognized. The complexity is staggering. The vocabulary of genetics journals is straight from the Tower of Babel.

Still, science has barely scratched the surface of DNA’s unspeakable language. Epigenetic gene control adds another layer of complexity that was unimaginable in 1859 when the really big question was laid to rest by Darwin…

It’s all random.

I can say from experience as a retired pathologist that the complexity of the human body, DNA’s end product, is beyond mind-boggling.

We still don’t know where the 3-D blueprint lies or how it’s projected into space. I mean, how does an epidermal skin cell know it’s positioned on the edge of an eyelid rather than the bottom of a toe? It’s not enough to know you’re a skin cell or an osteoblast, you have to know where you are by means of some unseen three-dimensional hologram-like thing.

I suspect it’s in the “junk DNA” they used to talk about a few years ago. Not so much anymore.

And how in the world do developing cells each find their spot during embryogenesis? Nobody knows, but it happens, and it implies another layer of complexity.

Science is rigidly compartmentalized, you know, like some secret project in Nevada where no one’s supposed to see the big picture or ask questions about it.

Most scientists have only a vague second-hand grasp of the body’s intricate structural, biochemical and electrical complexity. Only a tiny fraction of those have a working knowledge of DNA.

In medical research, almost everyone is narrowly focused and struggling to figure out what’s going on in their own tiny niche of the human internal reality – both physical and mental. Those who try to look at the whole body and mind as a functional unit are dismissed by mainstream MD’s as having been led astray by “functional medicine.”

And like the thought police of Egyptology, modern geneticists must deny the relevance and persistence of the big question…

Who built this amazing stuff?

Random mutation?

Khufu in 20 years with copper tools and stone hammers? (That myth should be embarrassing to anyone with common sense and no job to lose if they buck the system’s dogma.)

You might think it would be natural for geneticists to suggest modern answers to the biggest question that DNA raises: who wrote the code?

Unfortunately, the answer was ingrained in all fields of science long before modern genetics emerged to frame the question intelligently.

As any government-educated eighth grader can tell you, Darwin and all the scientists after him have proven that random mutation wrote the genetic code over endless eons. Well, 13.8 billion years, but that’s endless if you ignore the math. And for sure there was no thinking! That would be religion.

Really?

If science needs a gravity halo, space is full of dark matter. If they need a brilliant code writer, mindless genius fills the universe.

But science changes.

In fact, Stacy McGaugh of Case Western recently studied 150 spiral galaxies and did some calculations. He says,

“…it’s like God shouting, ‘There is something more to the theory of gravity, not something more to the mass of the universe!’” (See “What’s Up With Gravity” in New Scientist, March 18-24, 2017.)

McGaugh says that dark matter may not be entirely bogus, but tweaking gravity theory is where the truth lies for him. He thinks gravitational forces change at great distances, accounting for the high speeds of the arms of galaxies.

Three cheers for the mainstream dark-matter believers for letting a heretic publish! That’s the spirit we need.

A similar questioning of entrenched beliefs goes on today in genetics.

The courageous Stephen Meyer, PhD, an Oxford grad, took a look at DNA from the perspective of a science historian, did the math and said that the universe isn’t anywhere near old enough for random mutation to produce the DNA code for one simple protein – let alone the thousands of huge ones that exist within their intricate feedback loops in our bodies.

His book, Signature in the Cell, shows the math and says that the information in DNA looks like intelligent code writing. Even its organization in the molecule implies intelligent work.

In the halls of science, you could hear a pin drop.

Meyer said we’ve seen this sort of thing: robot factories making complex products from coded instructions. That should be a hint.

Science usually likes this sort of thinking. For instance, we know that a halo of regular matter would explain how galaxies spin, so all we’re saying is there’s a halo of invisible matter out there.

Brilliant idea, science decided.

A Martian might think that science would also like this:

We know that regular minds wrote the code for those Intel robots that make tiny chips, so all we’re saying is that invisible mind(s) wrote the code for the nanobots in our body’s cells.

Unseen matter – no problem.

Unseen mind(s) – forget it. That’s not scientific.

But why not? Aren’t all minds invisible?

Yes, but they seem to be derived from matter, moreover, in the eye of science, all minds are not merely invisible, they’re illusions. They don’t exist at all.

Even the human minds that decided our minds don’t exist are illusions. Doesn’t that inspire confidence?

These people aren’t kidding. And they own science as well as the minds of most children and educated adults.

By chance, the history of science on this planet has evolved by replacing non-material explanations (magic, bad humors, fairies, myths of off-world beings, and finally God) with material explanations.

As a side effect, a geneticist can ruin her career today by conjuring up the ancient foe of science: a non-material explanation. Even if she doesn’t intend to, like Barbara McClintock.

At its core, science assumes that matter and energy are the only real things in existence. Everything else is derivative and reducible to matter and energy.

This includes your mind, your identity, your sense of free will, your love for your children, and your deepest intuitive sense of honor and fairness. They’re all illusions of the matter and energy that your brain is made of.

An illusion seems real but isn’t.

Materialistic reductionism insists that nothing is real besides matter and energy. Everything is reducible to…

Matter
Energy.

Obviously, they’re both mindless, lifeless and meaningless. Or at least they’re assumed to be. Therefore everything is meaningless, including that sense of purpose you may derive from loving someone or helping someone weaker than you.

Does that seem healthy for your kids and all of humankind? Does it seem realistic? And is it essential to everything science is accomplishing?

Science educators don’t often contrast this materialistic reductionist (MR) paradigm with an alternative, the way any objective thinker would.

And yet it’s such a radical assumption that even some atheists reject it as a model of reality.

Thomas Nagel, for instance, denounces it in, Mind and Cosmos – Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.

One alternative to MR is this revision:

Reality is built on three basic elements:

Energy
Matter
Mind

To me, this adds realistic depth to modern science, expelling the denial of important questions such as, what sort of mind is most likely behind the DNA code? What tools build ancient Egypt and other saw-marked megaliths around the world? How does the DNA of the elongated skulls in Peru compare to modern DNA? Is there evidence of DNA code-tampering or splicing in anatomically amalgamated-appearing animals such as the duck-billed platypus?

Without the arbitrary, narrow assumptions of Materialistic Reductionism, suddenly I’m real in the eyes of science, and since observers influence measurements in quantum experiments, this paradigm fits the data: If matter and energy alone were real, how could an observer who’s merely an illusion collapse the quantum wave function?

Whether we consider the “first” or original mind to be God or someone else – the universe itself, perhaps a mind hidden in the electromagnetic spectrum, or some sort of field being(s) who aren’t confined by time and space – thinking of the mind as fundamental to nature rather than derivative, real instead of an illusion, helps explain the enigmatic complexity of DNA and other things.

It brings meaning and purpose back into the realm of science where real things belong.

At this point in history, the Neo-Darwinian, mindless, meaningless model of the universe deserves a standard dose of scientific skepticism. Mental health care workers should question it on professional grounds and parents should question it on the basis of common-sense values.

Finally today, more than a century late, genetics speaks of a universe where mind, meaning, and purpose are not false illusions, and diverse spiritual values are scientifically and intellectually respectable. Again.

Trust (Chapter 18) “Hapa Girl DNA” by M. Talmage Moorehead

12 Comments June 24, 2016 Morrill Talmage Moorehead

“Everything we call real is made of things we cannot call real.“

– Niels Bohr (1885-1962), “Father of the Atom.” Nobel Prize in Physics, 1922.

I walk toward the exit as the screen brightens behind me, casting my shadow diagonally across the white shoe prints I’m supposed to follow.

I turn and Efleven’s pale face fills the curved screen. He’s blond, for sure. Almost albino.

“You were right to seek my advice,” he says to Anahata. “I’ve taken the liberty of contacting the Chairman. He will talk to the girl now. We’ll transfer to your convex.”

I retrace my steps to Shiva’s chair, brush away some ashes and sit wondering if Anahata will yell at me again. I can’t describe how loud a voice can be when it bypasses your tympanic membranes.

“Effleven,” Anahata says. “I came to you privately with a delicate situation, you washed your hands and sent me away. Now you’ve summoned the Chairman? This is the behavior of a backstabbing coward.”

Another face appears on the screen. This one has Ethiopian features with a short moustache shaved to resemble a bar code, vertical stripes of dark skin peeking out through the bright silver whiskers.

“Anahata, it’s an honor,” the man says.

“Truth from a bureaucrat,” Anahata replies. “Always worrisome.”

The man doesn’t flinch. “Let me get to the point,” he says, pushing Effleven aside. “The girl’s chromosomes transcend our differences. She must be exempted from Shiva’s ritual. Her blast crisis should have been alleviated the moment you found her.”

“I have my orders, Scrotumer,” Anahata says. “I can’t say this respectfully because I don’t respect ignorance, but know this, I follow Shiva, not a committee of chin scratchers. None of you were around in the transitional days.”

“We cherish and revere the memory of Shiva,” Chairman Scrotumer says.

“You exaggerate so easily. You scarcely met the man. How could you revere him?”

“I knew him in committee,” the Chair says.

“I knew him in war. He gave me orders. I followed them. I still do.”

“While breaking the law?” The Chairman shakes his head slowly. “Emotional bonds define us if we let them. It’s unfortunate that you are actually the one who didn’t know Shiva. He considered the Sentient Fleet nothing more than pawns.”

“Soldiers are pawns. Only children think otherwise.”

“That is so right.” The Chairman’s face lights up with pleasure. “But Shiva took it a step further, I’m afraid. To him, you were soulless machines. That was his standard phrase for you in committee.”

“Stabbing the back of a dead man, now? You’ve become a true politician. I still think of you as a toddler annoying your father.”

“Shiva banned the Sentient Fleet from the Libraries. Did he mention that?”

“My private conversations are none of the committee’s business.”

“No, he didn’t, did he? Why would he? He didn’t trust you. Shiva was afraid of you.”

“Only a fool wouldn’t be,” Anahata says. “You’ve wasted no time separating my fleet. Has your fear subsided?”

“Assignments are none of my affair, but I assure you, I do have healthy respect for the fleet’s destructive capacity.”

“My fleet, Chairman.”

“Yes, and Shiva thought you were all his fleet, didn’t he? But who can own the spirit?”

“Leading is not owning,” Anahata says.

“No argument there. It’s taken some damn hard work to get the committee behind me on this, but I’ve been cleared to play a portion of the ancient minutes to you. You should find them enlightening.”

“No need,” Anahata says. “Shiva knew the unknowable. If he called me a machine, I am a machine. If he said, ‘soulless,’ then I have no need for a soul. If he commanded me to sacrifice myself for the fleet, or even for a preening, shameless pissant like you, I wouldn’t hesitate. That, Mister Chairman, is the code I live by. A committee-jock would never understand it.”

“Committee jock?” The Chairman laughs. “It seems the years haven’t buffered your tongue. Or matured your perspective, sadly.” He puts something in his mouth that looks like a golden toothpick. “History is putrefied by the stench of charismatic leaders lying dead atop the bloated remains of the fools who followed them.” The toothpick sends white smoke up from its distal end. “The time of tyrants is over. I’ve learned to trust a system of committees with a separation of powers. If my trust is misplaced, I’ll welcome the enlightenment rather than rejecting it out of hand as you would.”

“Your committees are a cloak for self-serving elites and their edicts. The rule of liars, cowards and thieves.”

“Does the name-calling ever stop?” The Chairman looks to his right and orders someone to get him a drink.

“I invited Shiva to rule us without the pretence of false democracy,” Anahata says. “The committee you’ve inherited was a device he used for listening. He never hid behind it to shelter his reputation or preserve his power.”

“You understand power, don’t you?” The Chairman lifts the golden toothpick from his mouth and belches. “Should it be necessary to state the obvious? As Supreme Committee Chairman, I can invite the fleet to disarm you and take this poor girl into my protective custody.”

Anahata laughs. “You think my fleet will disarm me? Speak with them, bureaucrat. They know I cannot be beaten. But if they thought they could defeat me, they would still refuse to fight against their sister. Their loyalty would make a pencil-pusher scratch his little chin.”

“You suffer chin envy,” the Chairman says and scratches his own.

“That’s it, then. You’ve arranged to have me kill my fleet. Or perhaps you think they can defeat me. You win either way, don’t you? This concern for Johanna is a smokescreen for reducing the Strand’s arsenal of WMD’s – among whom I am chief.”

“You’re delusional.” A vertical vein bulges from the Chairman forehead. “Is the girl conscious? I’m coming over to speak to her. She has options.”

“Swine are not welcome here,” Anahata says.

The Chairman’s brow angles inward. “You arrogant fool. Look at the horizon now. See exactly who is with me.”

The screen shows twelve warships decloaking in the starry black. The Chairman smirks beneath them as if his head were a huge object floating in space. He opens his mouth and squirts fluid into it from a bottle in a disembodied hand.

“May I please speak with the girl?” he asks.

A white strap snaps across my waist. Two more streak over my shoulders from behind. Crisscrossing at my chest, they dive down to my sides and click into something beneath the holographic feathers of Shiva’s Throne.

“This may get a little bumpy,” Anahata says to me.

A woman’s voice comes from the top of the screen as the Chairman swallows more fluid. “Shiva was sick when he gave you the command to drown these Earthlings,” she says. “He wasn’t arbitrary and cruel before his illness.”

“Nor during it,” Anahata responds.

“We have a chance to look out across our borders through this woman’s code. If you drown her, we’ll be tinkering, cloning and guessing her native thoughts indefinitely. Wondering what the real message was in her DNA.”

“You speak truth, Radhika, as always,” Anahata says. “But Shiva’s sickness didn’t affect his mind the way you’ve been told. I was with him to the end. I knew him well. He was lucid. Measured. In complete command of himself.”

“You really should listen to the Chairman’s committee records,” she says apologetically.

“I have. But it wouldn’t matter if I hadn’t. The glory of leading you and my other sisters will remain the eternal, unspeakable honor of my life. I will always love each of you. Today I will be merciful when you attack. May none of you feel a moment’s pain.”

The room is silent for a long heavy moment.

“Surely,” Anahata says, “there is one of you with the courage to stand beside me.”

More silence. I feel bad for Anahata. Nobody’s half perfect but she sure tries.

“I’m with you,” I tell her. “Mr. Chairman, Sir, this is Doctor Fujiwara. Let’s hear what you’ve come to tell me.”

His eyes show a brief startle. A nervous laugh comes out of him. “The blond fellow warned me, but I couldn’t imagine anyone with your background speaking in the River.” He clears his throat. “Doctor Fu…, well, you’re a bit young for that title, but if you’ve earned it in your little world, I’ll give it a go.”

“Show some respect, you inbred sloth!” The volume of Anahata’s voice makes me cringe.

“Insult noted,” the Chairman says, his moustache in a pucker. “Now, Doctor, this is your situation. You have minutes remaining in which you could, without legal interference from Anahata or anyone, simply choose to rendezvous on Saturn. Your leukemia will be erased. You’ll be treated with respect. You’ll learn things that no Earthling besides Shiva has ever imagined. And I will personally see to it that your life expectancy is expanded to the furthest limit desirable. Within reason, of course.” He smiles politely.

My mind races. Should I bargain for James-guys’ safety? Should I mention them at all to anyone here – ever? Somehow I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of a trustworthy politician. This guy doesn’t seem to raise the bar.

“It’s a choice, Doctor,” the Chairman says. “Your choice, not Anahata’s.”

Shiva’s little drawer pops open from the left arm of his throne. I must have bumped it again. I take out the golden locket, put the chain over my head and lift my hair to the side, out of the way. The golden heart rests on my chest where the seatbelts cross.

“That belonged to Parvati,” Anahata hisses. “Put it back.”

I ignore her.

“There’s an old saying, Chairman Scrotum, ‘you can’t make a good deal with a bad person.'”

His face turns cold.

“I’ve seen Effleven’s total lack of balls,” I tell him. “Now you’re threatening Anahata, a sentient being responsible for the peace you cake-eaters enjoy. I live in a world run by soulless bureaucrats just like you, devoted to an illegal power structure they try to hide.”

“Bigoted generalizations.” The toothpick goes back into his mouth. “A mature person learns to avoid judgements in an egalitarian society.”

“The society given to you by Anahata and Shiva?”

“I was born into peace, that doesn’t diminish me. Quite the contrary. Make a choice, girl. We’re running out of time.”

“I told you. I’m with Anahata. I’ll die at the hands of an honorable person before I let you own me. By the way, Effleven, if you’re still cowering somewhere, forget the Mohawk. You’re not worthy.”

“The world has changed, Anahata,” one of the Sentient Fleet says. “We know we’ll die against you. We too love you as the sister you are. When this battle is past and the memory of us troubles you, may the Unbeaten consider again the cause for which we gave our lives… to you.”

“That was a pep talk?” the Chairman asks. “Enough of this. Take down her magnets. Now.”

Flashes of white light turn the screen into a strobe.

“This is beyond the saddest day of my life,” Anahata says to me. “When my defences are down I’ll have no choice. I’ll either fire upon the ones I love or die in disobedience to an order from the Great Shiva. How has an ignorant little man done this to me… and my family?”

“He’s done nothing,” I tell her. “This is Shiva’s mistake.”

“He made no mistakes.”

“Not with his son?” I ask.

“That was the poison of Earth.”

“Nothing to do with absentee fathering?”

Anahata grunts.

“I’m right, you know.” I open the empty locket dangling from my neck. “Tell me Anahata, the Unbeaten, would you have released me if I’d taken Mister Ballsack’s offer?”

“No. That would be disobeying an order from Shiva.”

“That’s what I thought. Thanks for the honesty.” The bright flashes on the screen are shaking the floor now. “Are we going to just sit here? No evasive maneuvers or anything?”

…

M. Talmage Moorehead

…

My son-in-law has given me a deadline to finish this story, bless his genius heart. That’s why there aren’t the usual truckload of links, pictures and rants about intelligent design and the scientific evidence for God. Most of those things will probably have to come out anyway in the final draft – to avoid boring my three readers to death. 😉

Johanna’s story begins here as a one page WordPress document (scrolling).

My breathtakingly free e-book on writing fiction is here if you don’t mind leaving an email address for me to hopefully use someday. Yeah, I’m unqualified to write something like this. I know, and believe me it’s embarrassing. Maybe forget my book.

But if you’re a writer at all, you’re going to love Steven Pressfield’s brand new book, Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t. I kid you not, that’s the title! And it’s a page-turner, full of practical wisdom and the kind of disciplined insight only a career in the Hollywood trenches could bring. And here’s my hard sell: for a little while you can download it for free! Right here. (I have no affiliation with the author or with his business pal, the remarkable Shawn Coyne, author of The Story Grid, an indispensable book for modern fiction writers.)

Incidentally, the most riveting podcast I’ve ever heard in my life is a thing where Shawn and a brand new fiction writer, Tim, (a totally brave soul) are working one-on-one on Tim’s novel. In broad daylight! It’s free here. Nothing like this has ever been done before. Really, it’s unbelievable. Have I ever steered you wrong? OK, that last chapter with the endless UFO stuff, but still. 😉

Hey, if you’re as happy as I am about the summertime, please tell a friend about my blog: http://www.storiform.com. Man, I just love this warm weather. I’ve been doing laps in the pool plus that Miracle Morning thing of Hal Elrod’s. If you try his approach, make sure you go to bed way early so you still get 9 hours of sleep per night. (The 8-hours dogma is bogus in my humble and yet infallible opinion.) Going to bed early is the toughest thing for some of us because our limited daily supply of self-discipline is always low or depleted by bedtime. Like a low carb, high nutrient diet, it’s a lifestyle thing that requires motivation. For that, do yoga with really SLOW deliberate breathing, not necessarily deep breathing. Slow!

Here’s the world’s best yoga music. The guy’s voice is like a laser.

Keep writing. You’ve got the chops. Read, The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle and learn how and why to get your oligodendrocytes wrapping myelin around your axons and dendrites to make you 300 times more the exceptional writer you are now.

Never give up your dreams.

Talmage

Integrity (Chapter 12) “Hapa Girl DNA” by M. Talmage Moorehead

9 Comments October 31, 2015 Morrill Talmage Moorehead

“It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future.” William Gibson

The phone rings and rings but no one answers.

Maxwell’s jaw is clenched in agony. He shivers on The Ganga’s carpet beside me.

“I think she took them to the Moon,” I tell The Ganga in my head, glad Maxwell can’t hear.

“Why the Moon?” The Ganga asks.

“Images,” I tell her. “Vaar’s hands. Powdery dust at the bottom of a crater.”

“I hope they’re on the Moon,” she says. “There’s no place to hide up there.”

“I saw machines on the ground,” I tell her. “Some of them looked like UFO’s.”

The granite hall goes black. Stars appear and the Earth shrinks to a ball below us. Above, the moon streaks from left to right, stops, and then comes closer.

“Is that all I am to you?” The Ganga asks. “An unidentified flying object?”

“No, no. I’m sorry, that’s a dumb expression, UFO.” I find myself patting the carpet. “You’re Vedanshi’s dearest friend.” Assuming you have free will – a generous assumption.

“I heard that,” she says.

Whoa.

“I hear all your thoughts.” She sounds apologetic about it. “Unless you can think without words.”

You know, as much as I appreciate what Steven Hayes is doing for James’ depression, I’d never equate words with thought the way Hayes does. And I don’t share his disdain for thought.

Negative self-talk is another issue. I distrust it. And like Hayes, I keep a skeptical distance from it without trying to shut it down.

Ask Jill Price if it’s possible to shut down negative thoughts. Avoidance makes things stronger.

Jill’s memory is like mine in at least one way. The details of every day stick like glue forever.

But unlike Hayes view of the mind, my thoughts don’t rely on an inner voice. They can sit silently and be stable in that form. I’m a right-hemispheric reader so I don’t need words to think. I don’t even need internal sounds to arrange words. I often treat words as pictures, not as sounds. And I sometimes think in pictures.

But usually I think without pictures or words.

Usually I think without pictures or words.

“You’re conscious of the machine language of neurons, then,” The Ganga says. “I wish I were.”

“It saves time to know your thoughts before they become words.”

Even when I’m writing I don’t need words.

For instance, at the moment I’m creating this sentence for Talmage in a silent, imageless process in my head. It will be permanent.

I wish I knew how it gets from my Universe to his, but it does. There’s something wonderfully weird about the mind. It’s not the “word machine” they call it.

Thought is generated subconsciously in a process involving the part of us that’s beyond time. Each of us is a primary cause when we want to be. Often we don’t. Often we refuse an objective view because it wants us to imagine for a moment that the other side, our enemies, might not be entirely wrong. This is too bad. Without objectivity we can’t access primary cause which is the free will required to think. Instead we allow the professional readers on TV to tell us what we believe and value.

To pursue original thought, I’ve stumbled across the technique of avoiding subvocalization. It’s a lucky thing because now I’ll have some privacy inside The Ganga. That’s huge to me.

Privacy of thought is central to honesty, you know. My Mom said, “You have to be honest with yourself before you approach integrity.”

And you can’t be honest with yourself if someone’s listening to your thoughts – any more than the reality show people can be themselves with video cameras in their bedrooms.

Just listen to Yeonmi Park, a North Korean girl who grew up starving in “the best country in the world.” She thought that Kim Jong Un had supernatural powers and could hear her thoughts.

The ultimate mind-control tool of North Korea is losing power today because mass starvation expanded their black market. Forbidden knowledge follows secret trade.

In 2011, Yeonmi read Animal Farm by George Orwell. She says, “This book set me free from the emotional dictators in my head.”

So I’m thinking maybe God plugs his ears to give us thought privacy. That way we can be ourselves and use our timeless free will to develop core integrity.

But this notion is difficult for me. My life swims in scientific evidence of the Colossal Intellect behind DNA. It’s hard to imagine that this Being doesn’t hear my thoughts.

In my early teens, the evidence of God lead me to self-censorship because I didn’t want to hurt God’s feelings by asking difficult questions.

But how can you discover false assumptions if you’re afraid to look at them? Like the nature of revelation. And like Neo-Darwinism and materialism. My colleagues don’t question these things for fear of discovering a truth that would destroy their careers.

Hundreds of professional pilots deny and bury UFO sightings for fear of losing their careers.

But I want to face the hard questions: If only Atheists are fully capable of believing that God doesn’t hear their thoughts, doesn’t that make them potentially the most honest and genuine people on Earth? The ones who do what’s right because it is right?

And what would that make Atheists in God’s sight?

When I first read Thomas Nagel, the Atheist philosopher who believes that mind is “a basic aspect of nature” and “the materialist Neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false” – his integrity and courage stunned me.

Tears filled my eyes.

Notice what fills Nagel’s eyes…

He said that Stephen Meyer and other proponents of intelligent design, such as David Berlinski and Michael Behe, “do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met.”

Now here’s Stephen Meyer. Notice the defiant integrity in his eyes.

These two men have stood against the powerful and dangerous cult of scientific fundamentalism.

Some say that you know you belong to a cult when you announce your departure and old friends suddenly want to destroy you.

The old-guard scientists hurl abuse at Nagel for believing things they can’t discuss in a rigorous, rational way.

Their pseudoscientific cult holds a puritanical grip on frozen myths that ignore the unfolding reality of DNA. It’s like Freud’s “narcissism of small differences” except for the weight of the small.

Nagel taps free will from beyond time to doubt neo-Darwinism and psychophysical reductionism. So the holy brethren of “science” proclaim him demented. No need to take him seriously now. Forget that he was a living legend before he strayed from the narrow path of allowed thinking.

Now he’s an infidel.

The mainstream squelches dissent as fanatically and ruthlessly as the Puritan fundamentalists of the 1630’s: Sacred dogma is not to be doubted or questioned.

Meanwhile, the God I see in DNA looks on his Atheist child, Thomas Nagel and glows with pride. This brave man is God’s kindred spirit in integrity.

Like the Atheist, God doesn’t believe in a more powerful being who monitors his inner thoughts. God doesn’t do what’s right in hopes of an eternal reward or in fear of Hell.

The Code Writer doesn’t love mercy in response to a command. It’s written in his heart.

It’s written in the four-dimensional intricacy of the DNA symphony, on the conductor’s score.

The sun is harsh on a small part of the moon’s blind side. It leaves black shadows on the near sides of craters.

We’re a mile or two above the lunar surface, but astronauts say that distances, among other things, deceive people up here.

The Ganga gains speed, making the ground a desolate blur that brings a longing for a round, perfectly flawed place out beyond the horizon.

Perfectionism is an asymmetry overlooked by perfectionists.

The Ganga stops. “Down there,” she says.

We’re hovering over a crater that would be at the bottom of the moon if you were looking up from home. Vaar’s cigar-shaped craft sits in the ultra-fine dust beside three small metallic spheres.

This isn’t the crater I saw in vision. “Be careful,” I warn The Ganga.

Maxwell opens his eyes and lifts his stoic head. “What the?”

“We’re on the moon,” I tell him.

He swallows and looks up at the Earth with hollow acceptance. “We’ve got enough air for this?”

“Not a problem,” The Ganga tells me.

I nod to Maxwell. “The Ganga says we’re good.”

The sphere nearest us vibrates, giving off an energy pulse that feels like a 24-inch kick drum in a rap song coming through 15-inch speakers.

I feel it in my chest, but I don’t hear it.

The Ganga takes us closer.

The spheres are golden with indistinct edges. As we descend, the rock walls of the crater surround us in a fuzzy tan. It’s like my eyes are vibrating. I can’t focus on anything, not even my hands. A blind vignette takes away my peripheral vision, and curling stars warn me of an impending blackout.

“Get us out of here!” I shout as my awareness blinks.

Somehow I’m on a cold floor with handcuffs on my wrists and ankles. It’s as if no time has elapsed.

Maxwell is unconscious beside me, also in cuffs. We’re inside a metallic cage about twelve feet cubed. It smells like an antique shop.

Across the room on the gray metallic floor sits a dark blue UFO. It must be The Ganga. The color is off, but the shape is perfect.

A tall thin woman stands beside The Ganga with her back to us and a green skullcap covering the top of her long head. She holds a pistol-shaped device with a needle in front, and jabs The Ganga with short quick thrusts like she’s doing a fine needle aspiration.

We must be in a back room of her ship. The lateral walls are gunmetal gray with rows of hand-sized rivets running horizontally, matching the walls I saw when Vedanshi took us into the front section of this craft. The walls bulge out on the sides and arc together at the top, giving the room a cylindrical shape.

“I’m disappointed in you,” I say to the woman.

“I can’t get a sample of your vehicle,” she says with her back to me. “What in the world is this material?” She presses an elbow into The Ganga’s hull leaving a temporary indentation. “My needle passes through it with no resistance.”

It’s Vaar’s voice.

She’s not familiar with phase shifting, it seems. But if that’s true, how did she get us out of The Ganga?

“Where’s my brother?” I ask.

She turns and glances in my direction, but not at me. I follow her eyes, and there on his back in a dentist’s chair, partly hidden by ivy vines dangling from the ceiling, is James with his eyes shut and his mouth open.

My heart stops until I see his chest rise, then adrenalin rushes through me. Rage is coming. I’ve got to keep my head.

Breathe.

There’s a pillar blocking my view, but I bounce to my knees in the light gravity and move to the corner of the cage for a better look. Vedanshi is there in a small cage, silver tape over her mouth.

I glare at Vaar. “What have you done to James?”

“Almost nothing,” she says, holding the needle gun beside her left hip. “But you’re going to hear me out, dear. Like it or not.”

“Take the tape off Vedanshi’s mouth,” I tell her. “If you hurt James, I’ll probably kill you. It’s not that I want to. I value your genetic diversity. But when I get angry, I’m dangerous. Neither of us wants that.”

She smirks and laughs. It’s the laugh I hate. The sound of the thought police dismissing the implications of DNA. The sound of a rapist chuckling when you don’t resist.

“I meant it when I accepted your terms,” Vaar says, staring at me. “Until I thought it through. My mind is going and I need your help. No one alive has your capacity for coding.”

She sets the needle gun on The Ganga, walks over to Vedanshi’s cage, reaches in and pulls the tape from Vedanshi’s mouth. “No more screaming,” Vaar says to her.

Vedanshi looks through the hanging ivy at me. “I’m sorry, Johanna. I shouldn’t have…”

“Don’t give her any info,” I tell her.

Vedanshi presses her lips together and changes what she’s saying. “Be careful. I think she broke my arm.”

Vaar walks back to my cage. “I came to my senses after you’d gone. My project is more important than I am. Without your help it’s over. But you won’t help me unless I abandon my mission.”

“Just to clear things up, causing autism in hopes of exploring sociopathy is an immoral dead-end. Does your mission really have anything to do with that?”

“Yes,” she says. “It’s a tough piece, I know. But my broader focus is eugenics. I believe it’s possible to elevate humanity from the warrior mentality.” She lowers her chin, angling the back of her head high above her eyes. “The trouble is, I can’t juggle the code anymore. I’m drowning in variables, millions of them, each in a loop. Every loop lies in a delicate time envelope that requires optimal placement in a chromosome.”

I have to admit, the technical aspect sounds fascinating. But I’m not tempted.

“I’d like to re-introduce several genes from my own race, as well,” she says. “We were magnificent, Johanna.” She turns to the portrait of a young man on the wall above a desk in a corner of the room. He has an elongate head and deep-set eyes like hers. “If it hadn’t been for that religion constantly hobbling us, my people would have survived the pinch points of history.”

I adjust my feet to relieve the pressure of the cuffs on my ankles. “If it were remotely desirable to do what you propose, how would you transfer your code to the population? Breed a master race and kill the Jews to get everyone’s attention?”

“Our willingness to kill each other is the problem,” she says. “I want to eliminate it. Peacefully, with an autosomal dominant trait. I’d start with the sperm banks and confer reproductive advantages to the offspring. We could transform the entire population in a thousand years.”

“By killing genetic diversity,” I say. “That’s genocide for all humanity.”

“No. I’m introducing additional genes. Increasing diversity.”

“Your ‘superior’ genes are designed to crowd out the native code. You’d have to be a moron to think that’s increasing diversity.”

Her face is blank.

“If genetic diversity means nothing to you,” I say, “why not develop a human pesticide that only your master race can tolerate? And join Frameshift. You’d fit right in. Their legal team could patent your code and you’d own everybody’s DNA. You could bill people for the privilege of bearing children with your genes.”

“Sarcasm.” She shakes her head and walks over to The Ganga, picks up her needle gun for a moment then sets it back down. “We must come to an agreement.”

“You don’t believe in God, do you?” I ask.

“Heavens, no,” she says, making a face.

“Then how do you account for the complexity of DNA?”

“Intelligent design, of course,” she says. “But I don’t consider the designer to be God.”

“Surely you realize the original DNA code must have been written outside of time.”

She nods.

“I’d bet you believe in free will, too, then?”

“Yes,” she says.

“But you have no theory as to how DNA creates a brain to extract primary causes from beyond time.”

“No.” Her eyes grow curious.

Vedanshi’s voice echoes from across the room. “God gives us each a paint brush. We sit beside him on a canvas beyond the event horizon of the Universe.”

“If I had the technology,” Vaar says, “I could travel outside of time and devise a means of injecting an ongoing primary cause into the minds of the beings I would design to live within time.”

Words flash from a childhood Sabbath School book…

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.”

I glance at the only person I’ve met who believes she’s spoken face to face with God. Vedanshi should be saying this to Vaar, but it’s only me. “You think if you were like God, you’d be God. Rookie mistake, Vaar. Integrity isn’t technology.”

“You won’t help me, then. That’s what you’re saying.”

“Our species is doomed if we eliminate genetic diversity,” I tell her. “It doesn’t matter how we do it.”

Vedanshi speaks up. “The historical pinch points you say your people didn’t survive – only a few outliers ever make it through the apocalypses. When it’s a global famine, only the very chubbiest people survive to keep our species alive. When it’s a series of meteor strikes, only those in submersible vessels survive. Along with the occasional astronaut… like you.”

“Really, now?” Vaar draws a forceful breath. “A young girl lectures me on holocaust survival?”

Maxwell opens his eyes and blinks.

“At the dawn of recorded history,” Vaar says, “I built the civilization you call Atlantis, and survived the comet strike that shifted Earth’s crust and turned Atlantis into Antarctica. I invented suspended animation and tested it through the supervolcanoes at the close of the second era.”

“I’m talking about genetic diversity,” I remind her. “An entire species, not an individual… no matter how glorious she is in her own eyes.”

Maxwell moans. I kneel beside him and stroke his forehead with my knuckles. “Lie still, Max.”

“I came out of hibernation,” Vaar says, “in the first part of the fourth era. I made myself wealthy through hard work, and bought this ship. A lightning strike at the wrong moment brought me into this corrupt era. Your people are so full of myopic denial, they actually think this is the first era.” She laughs. “Your records are worthless, but they make it clear that I know volumes more about the genetics of survival than any of you. But…” She turns her palms up and softens her voice to me. “Surely you realize this, dear?”

“Maybe I do, but it’s irrelevant,” I tell her. “My point is about survival through genetic diversity. You don’t respect the natural genomes because you don’t believe the original code writer was God. It’s as simple as that. To you, God is just an ordinary techie with better tools.” I bounce from my knees to my feet. “You started a religion on Atlantis, didn’t you?”

She looks surprised but says nothing.

“If I were going to start a religion,” I tell her, “there wouldn’t be any infallible books or prophets involved. Every person and every recorded source of information and opinion, young or old, would be heard, valued and weighed for wisdom. That would include science journals from every era. There’d be one absolute – God himself. The only infallible writing would be his original DNA code. Throughout Earth. All species. We’d study our DNA to figure out what parts of it are original and what parts have been ruined by people like you, or altered by pinch points, mutations, selective breeding, ‘natural’ selection, and epigenetic adaptation.”

Maxwell sits up. “Why is everything spinning?” He reaches for the metal grid of the cage, pokes his fingers through and shakes the structure.

“Shhhh,” I tell him. “You’re dizzy. We’re in Vaar’s ship.”

“You know nothing about religion,” Vaar says to me. “It requires daily rituals and subjective rewards. The rationality of science kills faith.”

“I’m wondering if the people of Atlantis refused to worship you. Rational evidence is the only basis for faith that survives the relentless march of truth.”

She gives me a look of disdain. “It’s a good thing James’ beacon started working. I might never have found him standing with his girlfriend on a rock in the Pacific Ocean. What an odd place to hide him.” She walks over to James, lifts his right wrist and lets it fall to his lap. “There was a residue on the cuffs.” She turns a blank gaze my direction. “I’m certain you won’t force me to torture your brother.”

…

M. Talmage Moorehead

…

If you’d like to start this thing on page one and read it in order, it’s here as a “one page” scrolling document.

I’m planning to move my thoughts about writing over to my “readers group.” Notice I didn’t say, “email list.” Those words supposedly drive people away, though they mean exactly the same thing as “readers group.” Who knew? Instead of “sign up for my boring newsletter or my email list,” we’re supposed to say something like, “join my readers group,” or better yet, “go here to gain access to the private library on my web site.” Maybe I’ll be able to say that eventually. I’m working on a web site these days. But don’t hold your breath. I’m slower than winter.

Anyway, you can join my “readers group” here and download my thrill-a-minute (not) e-book, “Writing Meaningful Page-turners.” I used to think it was OK, but that was before I ran into The Story Grid, by Shawn Coyne, which is a thousand times better in every way. I bought a copy, but I heard that you can read it for free on his website, one post at a time. He’s constantly delivering amazing new content there, currently on writing nonfiction in a way that incorporates the elements of storytelling – as only Mr. Coyne is able to delineate. (I’m not profiting from this recommendation, by the way… other than helping you with your writing, which is worth everything to me.) The Story Grid is the most transforming book I’ve come across in reading roughly 60 books on fiction writing over the past, I don’t know, 25 years or so.

If you know someone young and beautiful who likes in-progress science fiction stories about intelligent design, set in the present and delivered from a parallel universe by a preachy genius Hapa Girl, please email my URL to your friend: http://www.storiform.com. Warn her/him that the story has UFO’s. UFO’s ruin stories for a lot of people. So I’ve read.

Joanna Penn couldn’t possibly have had me in mind when she wrote this…

“One of the biggest lessons learned is that actually writing more books makes you a better writer. Obsessing over rewriting the same book for years won’t get you anywhere. This is tough, especially if you have perfectionist tendencies!” Joanna Penn

Thank you, Joanna. You have wisdom beyond your years. And all of us appreciate your integrity more than you know.

Blueberries, 90% chocolate, cardio on the treadmill, swimming, grape seed extract, speed reading software, the list goes on… Here’s a video on hatching new neurons in adulthood through exercise. Here’s another video about a rat model showing that learning preserves the new neurons that spring up in the hipocampus of adult rodents. It’s good science. Some researchers say that the things which preserve these new neurons in adults also fight depression. That’s a big deal for writers, musicians and all creative people because as a group we tend to become depressed somewhere along the course of our lives. I think it’s an epidemic, really, at least at Harvard.

Hey, stay happy you guys!

Talmage

Dark Mind (Chapter 11) “Happa Girl DNA” by M. Talmage Moorehead

August 15, 2015 Morrill Talmage Moorehead

“If contemporary research in molecular biology leaves open the possibility of legitimate doubts about a fully mechanistic account of the origin and evolution of life… this can combine with the failure of psychophysical reductionism to suggest that principles of a different kind are also at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. I realize that such doubts will strike many people as outrageous, but that is because almost everyone in our secular culture has been browbeaten into regarding the reductive research program as sacrosanct, on the ground that anything else would not be science.”

“… My guiding conviction is that mind is not just an afterthought or an accident or an add-on, but a basic aspect of nature.”

Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, by Thomas Nagel (Renown Philosopher and Atheist)

…

When I told Vedanshi I was seeing a vision of Vaar’s hands, she rushed us all back to the base near Easter Island.

Vedanshi’s eyes were apprehensive and sad when she left me inside her AI to phase shift through the impenetrable granite walls encasing the library.

Actually The Ganga isn’t an AI. She has a cortex of neurons in her hull. There’s nothing artificial about her intelligence. Her passengers and pilot sit within the confines of her central nervous system on this Indian carpet. The hollow neural architecture is the trick to nonlocal transport. So said the stretch heads. They taught Vedanshi quite a few things that 16 year-olds weren’t “ready” to learn. Still, The Ganga won’t take her into the library with me. Vedanshi’s too young.

Of all the dumb rules!

We sift through the stone and enter a place much larger than the library in Egypt. We dip to count floors: Twenty, each crowded with shelves of books, scrolls and engraved stone of every shape – cylinders, spheres, tablets, broken fragments. There’s a red obsidian skull on third floor with tiny hieroglyphs on the forehead. They look almost Egyptian.

A familiar inverted pyramid hangs from the ceiling. As we rise, its apex comes down through the phase-shifted hull. I lie on my back with the pyramid tip nearly touching the bridge of my nose. This seems dangerous.

“Easy does it,” I say without speaking.

“Don’t worry. We’re out of phase with it,” The Ganga says in my head. “Besides you’ve got bigger worries.”

She’s referring to my white cell count which I just found out is sky-high, mostly blasts. I like The Ganga’s bedside manner. Her tone of voice was matter-of-fact when she told me I have three days to live without treatment. Somehow she knew the bad news would give me energy and freedom from a deeper issue.

I reach up to touch the glass pyramid but my hand passes through it.

Vedanshi and James said they’d find a bed for Maxwell so he could sleep through his agony.

You know, I’ve read that our addictions postpone loneliness, but I can’t see Maxwell ever feeling alone. His face is forensically handsome, not to mention the rest of him. And he’s outgoing, at least when he’s not surfing opiate withdrawal inside a UFO.

I think the problem isn’t loneliness. It’s more a craving for the oath beyond reach: immortality’s promise of happiness and peace. Without it, we’re wedded to a cold, cold darkness.

I should focus. There’s a hailstorm of ones and zeros in here. And this place is huge. Six aisles radiate from the center to the perimeter, a hundred yards away.

One hundred…

My blasts are approaching 100% of my white count. Vedanshi’s green cylinder doesn’t need to draw blood to figure that out. I have no idea what kind of technology can do that.

But the acute fear of death isn’t my real issue. It’s the chronic fear. Same as everybody. Same as you, probably.

I think it comes from being banished from a garden with death as our most loyal companion. Taken figuratively it’s all true: “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Whoever wrote that knew that exile is the foundational disease of the human soul.

Mine anyway.

The disease hunts me when James’ songs go quiet in my head. And when hunger or sleep forces me to stop searching for one last bit of knowledge.

The leukemia sits at another table. It’s acute, not chronic.

For James, the chronic issue is depression. Writing music is the only route to happiness and peace. But the world is better for his struggles. You should just hear his voice.

When I close my eyes I see random titles now.

Dark Eyes in the Trees.

It’s a modern UFO documentary with children. I expected only ancient things in the library, but I guess it’s connected to the River. Apparently anything vital finds its way inside.

Platelets and other Furry Animals.

A children’s book on blood platelets. I would have loved it.

Hybrid Vigor and Sexual Imprinting.

Dementia and the Vesicular Eruption.

Moving right along…

If DNA Could Talk.

This could be interesting…

“It’s from the eighth millennium of the first era,” The Ganga tells me.

It reminds me of Steven Meyer’s heroic work…

“A line [of DNA] commands the cell to build collagen, but within that command is a hidden command to build something else: an elastin fiber. A hidden message tucked away within a larger message is a common routine in the vast and intricate volumes of eukaryotic DNA. Epigenetic nano-gadgets somehow know when and why to cut and splice a dual code, making the hidden message ready for use in each unique sweatshop…

“The curious stripes on chromosomes reflect the super-files of an ingenious triad filing system. Specific types of information sit physically together for organized, efficient retrieval by tiny floating machines.

“The size of Earth’s populations and the age of the Universe are inadequate for mutation and selection to have created either the hierarchical organization or the hypercomplexity of the DNA machine code that directs our nanofactories. Putting the epigenetic information retrieval system aside for the moment, DNA itself shouts to us that we are not alone: A code writer from beyond time has walked among us.”

That’s obvious… to a DNA geek.

“How do I skip to leukemia?” I ask The Ganga.

“If you haven’t seen it by now, it doesn’t exist for you,” she says. “Perhaps you don’t believe such information existed.”

“Don’t be silly. After today, I know it existed.”

“Then you have a self-limiting belief. You’re in denial about something.”

“Denial?”

“Emotional trauma causes this,” she says. “It’s usually connected to violence. Have you been to war?”

“No. I was raped once, but it wasn’t a big deal.”

“Don’t be a hero, Johanna. Did you report the perpetrator?”

“No. I was eleven. I was living near the love of my life, the University Library. Dad would have made me move back home if he’d found out his little girl was raped. So I kept it on the qt.”

“How violent was the incident?”

“Nothing beyond the obvious.”

“Was there a threat?”

“No.”

“What did he say to you?”

“Nothing. He didn’t even kiss me. That seemed particularly insulting.”

“Rape doesn’t fosters romance,” she says.

“Not with me, anyway.”

“Not with anybody. What did you do to resist him?”

“Nothing.”

“You did nothing? That seems incongruent with the way you’ve handled yourself today.”

“I knew if I got mad, I’d probably kill the guy.”

“You were eleven. How could you kill him?”

“He was weak. The instant he pushed me, I knew he was nothing compared to Moody.” I hate talking about Moody. “I killed Moody two weeks before the rape. He was my brother’s chimpanzee.”

“An infant chimp,” she says.

“An adolescent. He attacked James. I snuck up, got him in a choke hold and wouldn’t let up, even with James yelling at me not to hurt him.'”

“That’s remarkable,” she says. “I wouldn’t have thought an eleven-year-old could tangle with a chimpanzee.”

“I’ve always been pretty strong,” I tell her, leaving out the ‘why’. “But Moody probably wasn’t fighting as hard as he could. He and I were close before the fight. Afterwards, I felt so alone. And ashamed. I’d become untrustworthy. My parents punished me when they got home.”

“You protected your brother and they punished you?”

“They were right. I didn’t have to kill anyone.”

“I see,” The Ganga says in a way that implies the opposite. “So you internalized the guilt and refused to defend yourself against rape.”

I look down at the carpet and wish The Ganga had eyes. “Vedanshi didn’t tell me you were a shrink.”

“Shrink, schmink,” she says flippantly and seems about to laugh. “I’ve read your papers. I’ve read Drummond’s papers, too – the ones that were really his, before you showed up in his et. al. lists. Why do you let him claim your work?”

“That’s how it’s done in genetics. We’re taught to think of ourselves as creatives. Like musicians and artists. We’re supposed to rise above ambition. I don’t quite get the logic, but…”

“You would if creative people were making you rich and powerful.”

“That’s jaded,” I tell her, but honestly, the left half of my brain wants to slap the right half for thinking so.

“Jaded… Yes, I’ve actually been all the way around the block, Johanna.”

We leave the central pyramid and begin exploring the ancient physical records – down one aisle and up the next, The Ganga’s hull and carpet passing freely through everything on every side. The shelves on the top floor are full of scrolls placed vertically in slots, side by side, each identical to the next, except for the Sanskrit titles.

“At the moment,” she says, “I’d simply like to understand why leukemia doesn’t exist for you in the River. It’s not psychoanalysis.”

“Everything’s there for you. Why can’t you find the best stuff and read it to me?”

“My nervous system is gray matter,” she says. “I have no use for white matter – no moving parts. Everything I do, from adjusting filters to making a large jump, happens without movement – nonlocally. The River of Consciousness doesn’t see fit to assign privileges to minds that lack white matter.”

“That’s hardly fair,” I tell her.

“Rules are rules,” she says.

“Well,” I say, trying to sound as matter-of-fact and reasonable as possible, “couldn’t you let Vedanshi come in here and read to me? Just this once?”

“I promised her mother I’d uphold the rules.”

“Forget the rules. Screw the rules! We’re talking about my life.”

“No, that’s folly. Rules protect us.”

“Come on, make an intelligent exception! That’s what neurons are for. You’ve got to use them to earn them.”

“Earn them?” she says.

“Prove you’ve got a will of your own. What if the real reason you can’t access the River’s library has nothing to do with white matter? What if it’s about free will? That would make more sense. It’s the one thing that makes a person real.”

“The stretch heads said it’s a white matter issue.”

“What are they going to say? ‘Pinocchio, prove you’re a real boy. Do something stupid.'”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says.

“Google it,” I blurt out in frustration. “You probably don’t have any free will at all. It probably takes white matter for that.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” she says.

“Listen to yourself. It’s like there’s a list of shoulds and shouldn’ts for every thought in your head. In your hull, I mean. Whatever. But really, have you ever had a bad thought?”

“I’ve made mistakes,” she says. “Especially with new pilots.”

“You’re making a big one with this new pilot. Giving me the honor of death by viscosity so you can pretend you’re an obedient robot. It’s pathetic!”

The Ganga drops a few inches and I sense the fall. It’s the first time I’ve felt any movement since I’ve been inside her. Something’s wrong.

“I think you’ve hurt my feelings,” she says.

“I think dying of leukemia is going to hurt mine… in case robots need that sort of thing spelled out to them.”

Silence.

It reminds me of home. If you showed Mom or Daddy any anger, you’d get the silent treatment.

Two can play the mute victim.

I close my eyes and breathe slowly. Sweet, I can see another title…

Understanding the Dark Mind. The cover shows a dark gray brain on a black background.

The Sanskrit morphs to English and pages scroll so fast I reach the end in seven seconds. Roughly 80,000 words. I’ve never read new stuff that fast.

It’s strange. I don’t know if it was fiction or not. Here’s the flavor of it…

“In the first part of the first era when science resembled the elbow of a grade school bully, an odd belief held sway: ‘Mind arises from matter and energy.’ We revisit this assumption on behalf of our new acquaintances from the realm of dark matter.

“The idea that a physical brain encompasses all aspects of mind sprang from a sense that matter and energy comprised the cosmos. Difficult as that is to imagine now, consciousness seemed to be an inherent state of matter, springing from the complexity of the central nervous system: solid, liquid, gas, mind.

“With that principle supported by brain-probe research, matter necessarily preceded mind.

“As a corollary, the complexity of DNA code could not imply a designer, for who had designed the designer? Intelligent design was obviated by an infinite regression forever short of a first cause in the linear time scheme of the era.

“A God-vacuum left a wake of angst in a century marked by the birth of quantum weapons.

“Bring this early thinking to the dark matter realm that scaffolds the networks of galaxies. The math we’ve chosen says that all physical objects are simple there. Nothing approaching the complexity of a human brain is known. As a local resident, you exist apart from matter and energy.

“Hence, you harbor no assumptions of matter preceding mind. No material-based doubts about free will, identity and life’s broader purpose. No mindlessness projected upon the Universe by a concrete logic. No possibility that an infinite regression should usurp the Designer’s place in people’s hearts.

“Instead, as a non-physical mind, you doubt whether matter and energy are real. They seem intuitively derivative: a function of mind analogous to sleep, wakefulness, love and perhaps the growing anxiety your culture feels toward the fringes of recent dark science.”

“This science has developed mental techniques to give non-physical beings access to bright matter.

“Switching viewpoints to our realm of ‘ordinary’ matter, our formless intruders now bring against us the prejudice we might bestow upon ghosts: denial giving way to blame, fear and a desire to cast out demons.”

“Thus we have become the dark realm’s devils.”

It gets creepy at this point. I hope it’s fiction…

Dark minds penetrate barriers of human will and show no respect for us because, to some of them, we’re evil. To others, we’re somewhat unreal.

It’s like adults watching TV with children, casting abuse at people in an obnoxious commercial. The actors are unreal because they’re not truly in the room. Virtual anonymity allows the adults to criticize the actors at a sharp, personal level. This builds mirror-neuron pathways in the children’s brains, creating fluency in the language of disdain and easy hatred.

There’s a tapping noise coming from the wall beyond my feet.

“You’re unusual,” The Ganga says.

“Compared to what?”

“Four hundred thirty-eight people I’ve met mind-to-mind, including seventeen stretch heads.”

“Why single them out?”

“They were outliers with math and data retention.”

“What were they like emotionally?”

“Less intuitive than you with math.”

I nod. The tapping sounds frantic. It makes me nervous.

“The stretch heads believed that everything that happens is exactly as it should be, no matter how good, bad or indifferent it might seem. This was moksha, or enlightenment. A state untouched by emotional pain.”

“Did all of them pursue moksha?”

“There was one who didn’t. A first-era stretch head formed a religion denouncing the enlightenment. She ascended to the throne of a continent lost at sea. But history is written by two pens, one extracting truth, the other serving power. I think the second dominates her records. Unrealistic reverence. Nothing of The Vaar’s mood has been passed down to us.”

“The Vaar?” I ask. “This Vaar I’m dealing with now is someone else, though. Right? Not some ancient powerhouse… who came through quantum stasis in that blimp of hers. Was ‘Vaar’ a common name?”

“It clusters from time to time in the census records.”

“What about her full name – vaarShagaNiipútro?”

The tapping stops but the silence makes its memory louder.

“Let’s find out what…”

Before I finish my sentence, The Ganga moves through the library wall into the hall. Maxwell is on his knees with a piece of the Egyptian Tri-lobed Disk in his right hand and the rest of its ancient crystal shattered in pieces across the floor around him. He sees us and crawls into The Ganga.

“Vedanshi and James are gone,” he says digging his fingers into the carpet. “I found her purse at the top of a stairwell.” He takes the little square purse out of his shirt pocket and gives it to me. I unzip it and take out the jade cylinder.

“Use this thing,” I tell him. “You look miserable.” I hand it to him, but he shakes his head.

“I’m not sleeping until we find them.”

“I’ll sweep the compound,” The Ganga says in my head. “Would you pull his foot inside, please.”

I grab Maxwell’s left knee and pull his foot up on the carpet. A red stripe flashes at the perimeter and the view beyond the carpet goes black, then hundreds of dimly lit rooms flash by. We must be going through the entire base. Probably in a grid pattern.

In seconds we’re stationary in the hallway outside the Library again.

“They’re not here,” The Ganga says with a panicked tone that surprises me.

I close my eyes and try to hear Vaar’s thoughts again, but all I see is a memory of James sitting over there on Maxwell’s left and Vedanshi here on my right.

“Can you tell what Vaar’s doing?” I ask The Ganga.

“She must not be in her ship,” she says. “I’m getting nothing from her.”

I find Maxwell’s phone and dial her burner.

…

M. Talmage Moorehead

…

Personal note to writers:

Heartfelt thanks to Joanna Penn for her wonderful video interview – the one where she was discussing her writing process. She mentioned a book that every fiction writer absolutely must read. It’s The Story Grid, by Shawn Coyne. Of the more than 50 books I’ve read on fiction writing, this one lands in the top three, overall. In terms of offering a unique professional editor’s logical, objective and broad perspective on how to write popular fiction, this book has no equal – in my humble and yet infallible opinion. Haha.

Please read it, even if you write literary fiction and wouldn’t use an outline for a million bucks.

I just finished an inspirational book written mainly for writers, Turning Pro, by Steven Pressfield. If you’re blocked, this is your book. If you’re struggling with self-discipline, it should help you, too. Finally, if you happen to be struggling with addiction, the author seems to have fresh insight there. No, I’ve never been addicted to anything besides coffee and tea. I hope to get addicted to yoga and swimming, though.

Anyway, Pressfield really nails the point that the process of writing should make you happier during the writing, regardless of the ultimate outcome.

I agree.

Hey, check out Joanna Penn’s work. She’s such a genuinely happy and benevolent person – brilliant, insightful, and honest. I’m almost done with one of her non-fiction works, How to Make a Living with Your Writing. She’s doing just that and having the time of her life. I highly recommend her as a source of honest, concise, logical, and inspirational guidance. When she recommends somebody, you know that person is worth her or his weight in gold. And like I said, I owe her for telling us about The Story Grid. What a rare book! Few on Earth have the background to write such a thing, let alone the creative insight. Also check out the man’s web site. If I’m not mistaken, everything in his remarkable book is also on his web site for free. I know, I’m pretty sure that’s what I read, but it seems too good to be true, so I’m doubting myself.

You there. The patient one who’s still with me. Keep at your writing, OK? You’ve got the right stuff because you enjoy the process. That matters. More than anything, I think. Two other books I want to tell you about, but this post is way too long already.

I’ve been reading and learning so much lately, and I really want to write some non-fiction blogs, but instead of doing that and messing up the (inverted) linear progression of Johanna’s story here, I’m think I’ll start writing to my reading group. I’ve got about 250 people who have entrusted me with their email addresses, and I haven’t written a single email to them yet. It’s been well over a year. I’m sorry. I said I wouldn’t spam, and I’ve kept the promise. But I’ve gone too far in the other direction. So I’m thinking I’ll tip-toe over and write to you about a couple of books that I think contain potentially life-changing information about developing good habits. You can join me in solving the world’s problems here and download my e-book, too. It’s about writing fiction. Nothing special, but you can skim it.

The above story starts here in a form that doesn’t require clicking around, hunting for the next chapter.

Please email my URL: http://www.storiform.com to a thousand people for good luck. Just kidding, don’t do that, please. Maybe email it to one person, though. If you know someone who’s way open-minded and patient.

Thanks,

Talmage

Tampering (Chapter 7) “Hapa Girl DNA” by M. Talmage Moorehead

1 Comment March 20, 2015 Morrill Talmage Moorehead

As I’m pressing a cold green cylinder to my forehead, my North Star, Barbara McClintock, comes to mind.

Here she is, my life-long idol, standing next to her brother, across from a brave dog that she’s teaching by example, confident energy. “Relax and stop shaking,” her body language says.

Barbara’s life sends me confidence, too. She single-handedly discovered genetic regulation in 1951, but to this day the quagmire of Biased Science refuses to credit her with the earth-shaking advance.

Why?

Her work was too complex for other geneticists. To them, any notion that genes were regulated by stress implied a layer of control that smacked of intelligence. It wasn’t that Barbara McClintock intended to say anything about intelligent design, or God. She just reported the complexity she’d uncovered in her breathtaking work. But the facts themselves were heresy to the mainstream who knew that only simple static genes could fit their model. That model had become a “fact” in the strange fundamentalist-style thinking of the time.

Stranger still, that model rules all scientific thought today. We are frozen in an 1859 view of biology that ignores the clear implications of modern genetics.

Under academic pressure to produce nothing that would question the simplistic Darwinian model of life, Barbara stopped publishing her work at the peak of her genius in 1953.

In 1959 two men uncovered the lac operon – an on-off gene switch. Its simplicity buffered the emotional trauma to the paradigm fundamentalists. Genetic regulation now existed, despite the impossibility of it. But since it was so simple, perhaps no one had to panic. Unfortunately, Barbara’s old papers popped up in the archives. It must have been humiliating to the academics who’d shut her up in 1953.

I hope so.

A belated Nobel Prize came to her in 1983, but not for the discovery of genetic regulation. That would have been an admission of guilt from the zealots of mainstream origins mythology.

Instead, the Nobel committee repeated the mind-boggling abuse dealt to Einstein. They gave Barbara a Prize for a lessor breakthrough, hoping to obscure her status in history as the Founder of Genetic Regulation.

Make no mistake: Barbara McClintock is the Founder of Genetic Regulation!

And she’s my hero.

Here’s how she sounded in 1973 — twenty years after the academic thought police bullied her out of their journals, and ten years before her Nobel Prize:

“Over the years I have found that it is difficult if not impossible to bring to consciousness of another person the nature of his tacit assumptions when, by some special experiences, I have been made aware of them. This became painfully evident to me in my attempts during the 1950’s to convince geneticists that the action of genes had to be and was controlled. It is now equally painful to recognize the fixity of assumptions that many persons hold on the nature of controlling elements in maize and the manners of their operation. One must await the right time for conceptual change.”

It’s time…

Intelligent design glows like the moon in DNA’s hypercomplexity. The first set of tiny machines to replicate DNA and carry out its complex commands didn’t come from DNA because DNA needed those machines to do the work. Without them, DNA can do nothing.

Intelligence must have constructed the first set of cytoplasmic machines. We have a model for this today in human construction of computerized robots and their software.

So far, intelligent design is the best model to explain how DNA got started. Ironically, to reject it requires fundamentalist thinking – holding to old emotional beliefs despite new information.

Scientific fundamentalism shuns all notions of a higher intelligence, both the possibility of a God who transcends space and time, and the notion of other planets with intelligent life far enough ahead of us to arrive in our skies.

True science is open to all possibilities, bar none, especially when some fringe idea explains or predicts weird data, as happened to Barbara MaClintock, Albert Einstein and now Stephen Meyer.

I hear The Grudge in my head, Tool’s message to rigid Nobel committees and to all scientists married to their assumptions…

Clutch it like a cornerstone.

Otherwise it all comes down.

Justify denials and

Grip ’em to the lonesome end…

Terrified of being wrong…

Wear your grudge like a crown.

Desperate to control.

I’m not shivering now. “This works,” I say to Vedanshi as tiny symbols appear on the cylinder.

“Let me try,” James says. He takes it and pretends to shave. Excellent sound effects. “Feels kind of weird,” he says and hands it back to Vedanshi.

“The old woman’s already in Nazca,” Vedanshi says. “We better go. We can eat later.”

James moans.

We follow Vedanshi back to The Ganga, get in and take our places. The granite room becomes an underwater landscape for a split second, followed by a shrinking triangular island, then the coast of South America. Peru expands until the Nazca Lines bring a sense of the ancient high-tech past.

“Looks like an old airport,” James says.

“Like a giant etch-a-sketch,” Maxwell says.

“The old woman’s got light-bending tech.” Vedanshi shakes her head in pity. “Look right there.” She points at the far end of a tapering runway-like thing…

As I squint at the “religious artwork” of an extinct “primitive” tribe, The Ganga inserts a yellow filter and a UFO appears near the ground in the morning sun about a mile away. It looks like a Cuban cigar, but metallic and gray with longitudinal seams. A broad blue laser beam glares down from the near end onto the Nazca “runway” and steam rises where it hits.

“Looks like a Maui Bazooka,” James mumbles and bursts into song, “I take a toke and all my cares go up in smoke.”

“I didn’t realize this was a musical,” I tell him as an inverted funnel descends from the belly of the craft to draw in the steam. The laser creeps toward us along the runway, matching its increasing width.

“Coherent field electromagnetics,” Vedanshi says. “You dial the wavelength to the molecular bond force of whatever you’re mining. Iridium in this case.”

“Phase shifting from solid to gas?” I’ve seen a patent on this.

Vedanshi nods. “At ambient temp.”

“Did they soften rocks this way, too?” I ask, picturing the great wall at Ollantaytambo…

“Some had to,” Vedanshi says. “But the great Builders preserved the natural grain of rocks. You lose that in molds.”

“What’s wrong with wood and steel?” Maxwell asks.

“Stone spares the oxygen producers, avoids toxic hydrocarbons and gives you unlimited building materials. But the main thing is longevity. Anything that didn’t last twenty thousand years was a failure to the Builders. Iron alloys break down.”

“What was your average life span?” Maxwell asks.

“It varied. The stretch heads lived the longest. During the Reshaping, one of their families gained power and began editing their genes. A few of them survived for eighty thousand years, but in the process of tampering, they created hundreds of new diseases. Each one had to be fixed, and most of the fixes had bad side effects unless they restored the original sequences. Which they were usually too proud to do.” She shakes her head. “Average people lived only a thousand years, but without much disease.”

“How long will you live?” James asks.

“If I had my mother’s technicians, I’d be here for ten thousand years at least. But with the equipment I’ve got, I don’t know, maybe a thousand. Too much radiation gets through the Earth’s magnetic field now.”

An Aurora from a recent coronal mass ejection flashes to mind…

“I won’t live a tenth as long as you,” James says mournfully.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let you die of old age before I do.” She smiles and takes the jade cylinder out of her purse. “This doesn’t look like much, but…” Her brow furrows as she reads it. Then she looks up wide-eyed at James. “Never in my wildest dreams… You’re a poet! The real ones were all cured.”

“Huh?” James says.

“No, I don’t me cured… In my day the poets were legends. We had your music, your stories, your magic… but mostly we had the vacuum you created when you all left us. When depression was cured.” She twists the cylinder. “You have a rare music locus.”

I wish I had my phone so I could play James’ ringtones. Maybe The Ganga can access his website. I close my eyes for a second and translate www.skullcage.com into ones and zeros, but it’s ASCII, not the machine language of consciousness.

Vedanshi stares at James. “I don’t want to change you,” she says. “Do you ever feel like killing yourself… ever?”

He gazes out at the long slender craft with its laser beam mining an ancient Nazca Line for prehistoric fuel.

“Let it out,” Maxwell says to him, “I’m a psychologist and both these women know more about it than I ever will. Let the truth fly.”

James looks at Vedanshi. “You’re putting me on the spot here, but yeah, I get bummed. Like this morning I was kind of… I don’t know.” He looks at me and runs a hand over the top of his head. “Ready to fade out.”

“Really?” She leans toward him with concern. I lean back to give her room. “I don’t know what to do,” she says. “I could ask your hypothalamus to make more orexin, but you’d probably never feel like composing music again. And you’d always be hungry. Struggling to cut weight.”

“I don’t think he needs brain surgery this early in the morning,” Maxwell says and chuckles. He looks at James. “I could show you some coping strategies.”

“Like what?” James asks.

“It all starts with yoga,” Maxwell says, “but Vedanshi’s the expert.” He glances at her legs, crossed and locked in lotus position. “Right?”

She nods. “I’ll teach you, James. We’ll wake your prefrontal cortex. Stabilize your limbic system. Help you choose your mood instead of settling for whatever comes along.”

“Sweet. When do we start?”James says.

She straightens her posture. “For survival, the brain always protects the area controlling respiration. Normally it’s the brainstem, but when you breathe deliberately it’s the prefrontal cortex, the area of volition where prime causes enter the Universe from outside. Blood shunts to this area when you hold your breath or decide how and when to take each portion of a slow breath. Mood elevates because the left prefrontal cortex acts as a pleasure center. It also stops the limbic system’s loops of misery. The rumination circuits.”

“What about this stuff you’re doing with your legs?” James asks. “I’m pretty flexible from martial arts, but I could never do that.”

“The pain of stretching stops emotional pain. It lets endorphins reach opiate receptors. But all stimulation of the opiate receptors is habit-forming, so watch out. I can’t have you checking out like a cutter.” She holds out her left anterior forearm with a row of parallel knife scars. “I was a cutter, myself. Pretty scars on a foolish girl.” She bows her head as she withdraws her arm.

Wow. I never would have picked her out as a cutter. James, maybe. But if yoga works for him, I’m going to be the happiest person on Earth. Which reminds me…

“I’m worried about that autistic boy,” I whisper to Vedanshi and begin searching for Maxwell’s phone in his coat on the carpet between us. I find it and can’t believe it has two bars. I punch in the old woman’s number and put her on speaker.

She answers. “I almost threw this thing away.”

“What’s your name, Ma’am?”

“I was afraid you’d drowned,” she says. “Yes, yes, my name. I’m vaarShagaNiipútro. Please call me Vaar.”

Vedanshi puts a hand over her mouth.

“I’m not with Frameshift,” Vaar says, “but I need you in my laboratory. I wasn’t expecting to get old just yet. My mind is fading.”

One of James’ songs plays to me: “Get home. I just want to make you young. You used to be so alive.”

“What’s your autism study about?” I ask.

“Just a second, dear, I’m double parked.”

Her cigar-shaped craft shoots up from the ground. The Ganga follows, and in seconds we’re stationary in near space with no bars on Maxwell’s phone. But I still hear her voice.

“The world is overrun by sociopaths,” she says. “I’m exploring the genetics of empathy, using the autism spectrum to isolate phenotype. I plan to heal sociopaths from the DNA up.”

“That’s ambitious.”

“I’ve been correlating loci to behavior for a long while,” she says, “but it’s gotten complex. I’m not the chess player I once was. And I’ve never had your gift for The Language.”

“Vaar, you’re infecting children. Why would anyone help you?”

“This is bigger than all of us. If humanity doesn’t move beyond war, we’ll soon be vestigial.”

“I have no argument with that, but…”

“I have contact with three sociopaths who happen to run nuclear nations. One of these men in particular would welcome the complete annihilation of our species. It might be worth eliminating him, but beneath him are endless layers of similar minds eager to seize power at the drop of a pulse. Someone has to re-write the genes of war.”

“But I think you’d have to be a sociopath yourself to treat children the way you do.”

“No. I’m not one of them,” she says. “I’ll admit I can’t remember the last time I had an honest emotion. But I’m not a sociopath. I conduct my affairs on principle, not some dark desire. And the damage I do is reversible.”

“In lab mice maybe, but not in children. Don’t you see the emotional scars you’re leaving?”

“Sometimes the lessor of two evils is all we have, dear.”

Vedanshi closes her eyes and suddenly we’re inside the ancient ship, hovering near the cavernous front, looking down at an old woman alone at a large desk with a holographic monitor showing the blue Earth surrounded by orbiting debris. She stands, scratches her head and looks in our direction but doesn’t seem to see us. Her baggy gray pants ride high, held up by a brown leather belt, the likes of which I’ve passed over in thrift shops. Her sweater hangs uneven and yellowed by age. A large safety-pin holds it together in front. Stringy gray hair spills out beneath a green skull-cap to reach her shoulders. The back of her head is…

“She’s a stretch head,” Vedanshi whispers.

A chill touches my spine.

“Vaar, if I should decide to help you, I would be in charge, not you.”

“That’s acceptable.”

“You’d have to follow my instructions like a rookie, in fact, beginning with the autistic children. Your first job would be to cure them.”

“You want me to pull the plug on seventy-five years of research,” she says. “I’m struggling to find any sense in that.”

“Of course you are. Wisdom requires logic and emotion. A person without empathy shouldn’t try to lead. There’s a rule of thumb for those who lack empathy: the end never justifies the means.”

“We both know that isn’t true.” She switches the phone to her right ear. “You’re not a child, why would you expect me to think like one?”

“To break the rule safely would require excellent judgement. You’ve proven you’re not capable of average judgement. It’s blunt, but I’m telling you the truth.”

“I suppose you might be.” Her shoulders slump. “I’ll comply with your orders.” She looks at the floor.

I feel adrenalin corrupting me.

“I won’t rule another human being,” I tell her, struggling against the euphoric seduction of power. I’ve read about it, but I haven’t experienced it since childhood. “If you have any free will or personhood left inside you, you’ll transform yourself into a trustworthy human being, starting with the autism you’ve created. Reverse it. Every child.”

“That shouldn’t take long.”

“How many kids are we talking about?” I ask.

“Six,” she says.

“Sociopaths always fear the truth. Even when it would help them. Lies are more comfortable. More controlling. You claim you’re not a sociopath, but you behave like one. Becoming trustworthy will be the toughest thing you’ve ever attempted.”

“Eighty-nine,” she says.

“That’s believable. I suggest you get to work, then.”

Vedanshi leans over and whispers in my ear. “We’ve broken her encryption. She’s infected eighty-nine children.”

“Does this mean you’ll help me?” Vaar asks.

“We’ll see. Hang on to your phone and I’ll call you when I’m convinced you’re capable of change.”

I hang up and watch her face. A look of resolve comes over it. She squares her shoulders, takes off the skullcap and winds her hair around her elongated head.

The Ganga exits her craft and moves away.

“Something’s cloaked down there,” Vedanshi says. The outside colors shift toward purple. “Whatever it is, it’s tapping zero point.” The colors change again. “There.” She points at a black triangle…

“Let’s send out a foo fighter,” she says and chuckles.

“You’ve read about World War II?” I ask. “Were those things real?”

“Yes, it seems obvious under the circumstances. The real question is, where did they come from?”

A ball of blue-gray light flies out from beneath our feet and heads for the triangle. We move closer and suddenly we have MRI vision. Two people are inside, standing like statues behind their chairs. One of them holds an index finger in the face of the other, frozen in argument.

“Time dilation,” Vedanshi says. “They’ve been slowed to a standstill. I must have looked about like that… for a number of millennia.”

I had suspected the triangle over Arizona was not alien.

“They look like skeletons,” James says. “You sure they’re alive?”

“Yes,” Vedanshi says. “If we sat here for twenty years, The Ganga would eventually detect a slight eyelid movement. Part of a blink.”

“Are they from your era?” I ask her.

“I’m not sure,” she says.

We move around the triangle to see into it from various perspectives. On the back of the left chair there’s a round design with a star. I have to squint to be sure I’m seeing words. Several of them form a circle. In English!

“Chief of Staff — United States Air Force.”

…

M. Talmage Moorehead

…

Yo…

If you want, please read this story from page one (beginning with Johanna’s hookless, forget-disbelief chapter zero). It starts here.

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Writing Tip:

Don’t let a little thing like a long boring chapter harsh your buzz. These things happen. With your talent, you should press on and enjoy the journey.

Storiform.com

“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man.” – Albert Einstein

Genetics

Nasty Data on COVID Origins

The Elephant-Sized Flaw in Large Clinical Trials

“The bigotry and intolerance of the scientific community…”

Dark Matter, God and Genetics

Trust (Chapter 18) “Hapa Girl DNA” by M. Talmage Moorehead

Integrity (Chapter 12) “Hapa Girl DNA” by M. Talmage Moorehead

Dark Mind (Chapter 11) “Happa Girl DNA” by M. Talmage Moorehead

Tampering (Chapter 7) “Hapa Girl DNA” by M. Talmage Moorehead

Genetics

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