Aura

Cupertino, California

October 5^th

12:03 pm

The bathtub water runs while I sit there, pondering.

There is a part of me that is very spontaneous.

A few years ago, I was in Mexico on vacation, at Acapulco. Among other things, Acapulco was famous for its high cliffs at La Quebrada, where divers would come to jump into the cold blue water and rocks below. We had been driving by when Kelly, my girlfriend at the time, had decided that she wanted to see the place, so we had pulled over, stopped in the sand, and walked over to watch a couple of divers. This was when the place was underdeveloped, and you could actually go up to the edge of the cliff and look below.

It was off season, so there was only one other tourist there. He saw Kelly and I watching the divers, and recognizing us as fellow Americans, came over to say hello. He was an older gentleman, probably about 50, with a white fringe of curly hair about his head and a deeply mottled and red nose, and I remember being the most struck by the plaid green and black beach shorts that he wore.

He nodded at the divers, and then looked at us. "Isn't it amazing to see them dive? I've watched it on TV but it's not quite the same thing."

Kelly and I had been there for a while, watching the two divers do their thing. There was a definite pattern -- they would go up to the edge of the cliff and watch the tide intently, and at the right moment in an explosion of motion they would dive. It was hard to imagine what it would feel like.

"Yes, it's very impressive," said Kelly, as she watched the divers walk around in the sun, their golden skin glistening in the sun.

Almost to myself, as if I was thinking, I said, "It's just a question of cycle time."

Kelly rolled her eyes. We were in that ending stage of the relationship, and this had manifested itself by a gradual and escalating tendency on her part to insult me. "Right, cycles. Please. These people train at this."

I was irritated, partly by her statement, but mostly by her tone of voice. We had just shared a week together in a vacation that I had planned and put together, and I had so desperately hoped that this trip to Mexico would bring us closer together, but instead it had just convinced me of the futility of the relationship. "Train them to fall? It's only gravity."

"Talk is cheap," Kelly said. She launched into an old irritation of hers, something that we had been over hundreds of times before. "Why can't you just admit that people can do things that you can't?"

"I have no problem admitting it, if it's something that I can't do. But I can fall as well as they can."

She rolled her eyes again. "Right, Peter. Whatever. Jesus."

I gave her a cold look, and, on the spur of the moment, I said, "Fine. I'll show you." I unbuttoned my shirt and gave it to her.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asked.

The old man had been pretended to not be hearing our conversation, but now he had a concerned look on his face. "You're just joking, right?"

"Nope," I said. I took off my sandals.

Kelly shook her head and said, "He's just kidding."

The old man started to stammer, "I hope so. This is dangerous. People die doing this."

I shrugged at him. "I've been watching them. It's all a question of timing."

I slowly walked over to the cliff and stood on the edge. The dive at Acapulco is extremely high, over a hundred feet, and there are many avenues for injury. The divers must be sure to jump at least 10 feet from the cliff in order to have a fair safety margin. Hitting the water wrong can break a limb or worse. Jumping at the wrong time will cause a diver to hit when the water level is too low, which is dangerous; but the jump is so high, and the fall so long, that you can't just jump when it looks right. It is, as I told Kelly, a question of timing. When I had been watching the divers previously, I had been trying to benchmark when they jumped, and eventually I had determined that they waited until the water was descending and had just uncovered... that rock.

I don't think that Kelly thought that I was going to jump, even while I was walking to the edge, because she didn't ask me to stop.

Everything during that moment stays with me to this day, engraved with the chisels of adrenaline and emotion. I remember the feel of the warm sand and the tiny points of pain from the shells as I walked along, barefoot. I recall Kelly's expression, completely disbelieving and disgusted, and the way that the salty breeze caressed her hair, and the sound and form of the seagulls as they circled about, looking for food. The two divers were standing off to the side, drying off, droplets of water still on their skin, and they looked at me as if I was a crazy gringo, but if I wanted to kill myself, what did they care?

I reached the end of the cliff, and stood, and contemplated for one second, content in the fact that no matter what happened in the next ten seconds, I was a man. My heart beat rapidly as I watched the water recede... and then: I dived.

There was nothing quite like it -- it was like I was suspended in the air, and instead of obeying the normal dictates of gravity, the rest of the world, in fealty to the power of my self-will, decided to slowly adjust the course of the universe and grudgingly slide upwards towards me until... with a splash and a rush of foam, I found myself submerged in the chilly ocean water, tasting the salt, my skin tingling from the impact.

It was, without a doubt, the best experience of my life.

I navigated through the chill water, managed to avoid scraping myself on the rocks, and made my way up the small trail to Kelly. Oddly enough, my stupid stunt made the rest of the vacation slightly better, but it was too little, too late -- it ended as soon as we got back to the States. However, the key lesson that I learned about myself was this: I will do extreme things on the spur of a moment, especially when a woman is involved.

So, I was sitting in the bathtub, and while I was against suicide on all grounds, I realized that having a knife in my hand was a dangerous situation, because all it would take is one incorrect thread of thought that convinced me for five seconds -- just one flawed argument convincing me of the certainty of the afterlife, or one solipistic viewpoint convincing me that it didn't matter how long I lived, anyways -- and I might say, "Oh, what the hell, let's see what happens," and then that would be the end of it. But, while I realized that I was in a dangerous situation, I didn't have the energy or the motivation to change it.

When a disciple of a famous Zen Master had been dying, he had received a message from his master, and his master comforted his disciple by mentioning that his death "which is endless is as a snowflake dissolving in the pure air." My end would a more little more painful than that, at least temorarily, but after a few minutes I wouldn't be remembering -- or thinking -- anything at all.

I wanted to sleep. No, I didn't want to sleep, because then I would wake up. I wanted to not be thinking.

I tried to imagine what would happen with my body after my death. My body would decay, the atoms would gradually disperse and my essence would be spread over the world at large, much like the molecules of atmosphere that I had breathed had been, in turn, been shared with many others throughout the world. Really, the difference between the atoms of my body and the atoms of my breath was only a question of time, a blip in geological terms that approximated to the same thing: zero.

Which meant that the distinction between myself and the rest of the world really approximated into nothing, with my body being a transient shell of particles that were just temporarily going the same direction, and

I am the world and the world is me

and my blood is running out to the sea

the hot water is all used up, but I don't care, because the difference between hot water and cold water

was just a question of time, hot water always turning into cold, which in geological eras

approximated to zero.

fetal position

we enter the world in the fetal position,

so there was symmetry, after all...

and, anyway it didn't matter if the water was now freezing cold,

I was just water myself, since humans were almost all water anyway, the difference

approximating to zero

The droplets landed on me and rolled over and flowed down my closed eyes and hair and mouth, and I sat there, not thinking, barriers down between me and everything else

cold water pours down

the universe does not think

it only exists

if it all approximates to zero anyway,

did it make a difference when the rounding happened?

I opened my eyes

and blinked

and when I blinked suddenly I was in a different universe.

I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and felt a strange background buzzing in my head that reminded me of whenever I walked under power lines, and everything felt different...

Monitor started trying to get my attention, great resounding clicks echoing like the gunshots to my mind. CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.

"What."

You have tapped into the Overnet. You are in extreme danger. It is very easy for you to destroy yourself at this point, since you are unacquainted with the power available.

Now I could feel the power, the potential, and I wanted to ignore the Monitor and try to use it. I felt like I could do anything.

It will be very seductive. Please do not do anything rash before I can work with you. Most die at this stage.

That picqued my interest. "Like who?"

There is time for that later. What I want you to do now is put out any thought of using these powers in any active form. You should concentrate on your perceptions, on seeing the world around you and sensing the things that happen at all levels.

"What do you want me to try, then?"

We should go to an area where you can observe other people.

It sounded a little discongruous, coming from Monitor, but without demur I took a quick look at the weather outside, took a light coat from the closet, and then walked outside without a definite goal in mind, but once I was outside I decided to take the five minute walk to a park that was near to my house.

Monitor was silent, and I was left alone with my faults. Even now I could still feel the power of the Overnet available, like the strumming that high-energy power lines do to my nervous system. If it hadn't been for Monitor, I would have tried to use it, somehow.

I reached the park after a brief walk, and chose one of the faded blue benches. I sat down.

"Okay, now what?" I asked Monitor.

There is a mother with a child walking in your direction. Please observe them.

I looked at the mother closely, and saw the obvious. She seemed to be a not-atypical stay at home mom, slightly overweight, frazzled long brown hair tied up with a red rubber band, with a baggy sweatshirt from a local college and faded blue sweat pants with the canonical white baby stains on them. She was pushing a dark blue stroller with one hand while talking on a cell phone.

"What am I looking for?" I asked Monitor.

I do not want to bias or prejudice your observations.

Okay. I observed her, again, but only saw what I had seen before. I tried relaxing, not looking at her directly, but did not see anything additional other than what I would have seen anyway.

"No luck," I told Monitor. "What exactly am I looking for?"

The information from the Overnet is perceived in a number of different ways, and is dependent on the metaphors that you use when processing information. However, the information in question often evidences itself as a faint glow surrounding the individual in question.

"Like an aura?" I asked.

That would be an accurate description.

So I once again looked at her, tried to examine every little detail, and then decided that I was getting lost in the details. I looked at her, started clearing my mind and just trying to see her, not the composition of the physical facets that made her up, got distracted thinking about the interconnections between all living things when...

"Huh. That was interesting. Maybe I did see something."

Please describe what you saw.

"I saw a sort of greenish glow around her, very faint, almost like a mist than a glow of some sort. Around her head it was tinged gray or black."

You observed correctly. The mother has a brain tumor, which will evidence itself symptomatically in two to three months.

"Why did I see this? I don't understand."

The Overnet provides you with access to a large array of sensory devices that can obtain information about almost anything on your planet. For now, you will only have the capability of sensing the crudest and most elementary pieces of information, and this may be displayed to you in a number of different ways. The Overnet is trying to find the symbols with which to communicate with you.

"Okay, I'll take your word for it."

Let us observe some more individuals.

“Wait a second.”

I walked up to the mother. My parents had been very strict, and somehow had managed to infuse into me at an early age that power bears responsibility. I knew something that might help this woman, yet did she want that information? And how could I present it in a way that she would listen? And was I even sure of any of this, that I wasn’t just crazy, the Monitor a hallucination? I was right behind her, and without thinking about what I was going to say, said, “Excuse me, ma’am?”

She stopped, and turned around, and looked at me, backing off slightly; I had suddenly changed from low threat “normal looking man sitting on the bench” to a higher threat “man who is trying to talk with me,” and she was wary and I knew that she would avoid me in the park hereafter.

“I know this sounds strange, but I had to say this,” I said, making it up in my mind, trying to cast the message to be exactly the right strength, “but I have a sister that looks exactly like you, and she had several months of headaches and everything until she finally discovered that she had a brain tumor, and I just wanted you to be careful,” and as I was saying it I realized that I had blown it, probably, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Thanks, I’ll do this,” she said, and as I watched her aura it flared brightly, and I knew somehow that she was lying, but that she would recall this conversation in a couple of months when she realized that she was having lots of headaches, and that maybe I hadn’t saved her but then again maybe I had.

And that was probably the best that I could do.

I let her, and walked around for the next hour or two, observing individuals and trying to discern their auras, talking with Monitor about it when I was away from everyone so that they wouldn't think that I was some crazy person talking to myself. It was like tapping into the Overnet for the first time; there was an odd mental knack that had to be acquired that was extremely tricky and almost self-contradictory, but once first achieved, it became significantly easier with practice. As the sun started to set and the sky turned orange, I had gotten facile enough with it that it was almost automatic. I would walk along, look at someone, and see their aura without consciously trying to obtain that information.

You are learning this extremely quickly.

"It comes naturally to me, I think. What next?"

Now I will teach you how to change the world, not just perceive it.