Sherlock in Cheyenne - The Adventure of the Babel Plants - Part Three

Part Three

Hi there, I'm back. Sam somehow got it across to the Air Force what was at stake. My sister is OK, I'm OK. As far as I know, everyone else is OK.

I've been on a date. We went to a baseball game. Then we played chess. I have some algebra to look at. I'm going jogging too. Got TV to watch soon - Twilight Zone, might be pertinent. Plus I'll get out the telescope for a short session with the Moon. Lastly, I'll reread some Sherlock Holmes stories. Tomorrow is a guitar lesson (self-taught.)

Sam's Hobby Shop is no more. Sam left town abruptly. No return of Sherlock Holmes. We really didn't do so badly. I hope the seaside is all he hoped for.

The algebra is almost done. There is a knock at the door. Now no one in this family ever knocks. So a salesman got in the back way? It's possible.

Then I hear - My dear boy, may I come in?

Sherlock Holmes!

Come in! And in came Sherlock Holmes, in a parka with mittens, and snow boots. Good lord, what's the getup?

For winter, though the cold will not adversely affect me, I must seem to be prepared. True enough?

True. (I shook his hand, sans mitten, furiously.) Boy am I glad to see you!

I am glad to be back. We must reunite in any event.

Ah, save the world yet again, I said jovially.

Certainly so, he said seriously, and then he smiled. May I - he gestured toward the armchair.

Of course, of course, it is your chair. Mom wanted to toss it, saying it was ratty looking but I said it was a good reading chair. True enough - for you.

How have you been, my boy?

Well enough. How was the coast?

Never mind the coast, I was in the mountains of Colorado. I ascended a peak not far from the Wyoming border and found a summer cabin. I nary disturbed a mote while there. I smoked in the cabin as I wished. On their wireless I heard that They were countervened. How was it done?

I related how it came about.

You see? We are a team. Your role was indispensable.

I did not pick up on that but related we ought to give thanks to Sam.

Not so fast, my boy. Sam is confined on the base for an indefinite period.

Huh?

He attempted to sell our cure to the Air Force.

Oh, so that explains why he is out of business.

Yes, indeed. Tutor Holmes returns! Shall we resume?

Huh?

I'll have a seat and take a look at the newspaper.

He had sat down and with me sitting on the bed when he looked up at the east window, the only window in the basement, a small one, and high on the wall.

Odd, he said, it’s all stopped.

I looked out the window and couldn't see what he saw. He, as they said in Victorian times, "sprang" from his chair. I rushed for the door.

Outside all was motionless except for us, and we would soon know of others. But we could see no people. I walked two blocks to Buffalo Ridge Road and saw six cars headed north and four going south. None of the cars were occupied.

This was the first "frozen moment" we had noticed. We may have missed ones of a few seconds in duration. But this one was lasting a much longer time. I walked back home. We went downstairs. Mr. Holmes had just gotten started reading and I was on the bed when the door burst open. I recognized the black hair, the black beard.

Ok, who’s the wise guy? he asked. Then with a pistol he shot Mr. Holmes. As an afterthought, he shot me in the head.

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I awoke with a terrible headache. Mr. Holmes was sitting on the edge of the bed.

Interesting, Mr. Holmes said, is it not?

What? Ow!

Head painful?

A shot to the head and I am alive. Is that what you mean by "interesting"?

Yes, good shot, between the eyes.

Good for him, and you?

The bullet had no effect on me. It had a more forceful charge in your case. But I hazard a guess that your headache will be gone straight away and with no lasting ill effects.

So we learn more about this world. In fact, I know the failed assassin.

Do tell.

Yes, he was Mr. Zeegler, a shop teacher at my school.

I doubt it was he. More likely in disguise or a facsimile.

Why not the real thing?

I think They of the Babel plants have in Their employ or by some arrangement those who can do Their bidding.

Robots?

Robots, what are they?

From a more later time, if like him, mostly of use in industry or domestically. They were mostly confined to fiction for a long time.

Why don't you accost Mr. Zeegler tomorrow at school?

Accost? How?

If necessary, use my revolver.

Whatever for?

Mr. Holmes looked at me as if I were a dunce.

No way! I would be out of school! I mean, for crying out loud! I would be in prison!

Come, come no need to become so ruffled. You would not of course be with him in public. Never you mind. I will chat him up. I will be an uncle of yours.

How long have you had that revolver?

From the beginning. I have two, actually. Would you want one? I can always procure more.

Can I see it? (I held out my hand). Ah, Smith and Wesson, 38. No, I can't carry one. Kids in my day didn't need them. Too many questions.

Well, should we be attacked again, I can provide you with arms.

Thanks.

Mr. Holmes interviewed Mr. Zeegler. I had never liked Mr. Zeegler. In shop we built iron mud scrapers, plastic peanuts trays with heat shaping; wood bowls with lathes, and small electronics. It was implied I needed to get a radio kit (he probably got a kickback on every purchase.) I declined; we couldn't afford it. The jerk lowered my grade.

Mr. Holmes thought Mr. Zeegler, the shop teacher, to be harmless. The other Mr. Zeegler was in with Them. He looks to me as Mr. Zeegler because he stands out as a lousy excuse for a teacher. Among all the others at the school I had (and have) nothing but praise, unless they be PE teachers and one science teacher that gave us all electrical shocks. Teachers came with the territory. Teachers were teachers. They got our respect without much quibble. Later, older as I became, as the era evaporated, fewer teachers got respect because of their status.

Winter was coming. Cheyenne is a windy place and wintry winds were awful at times. I hugged the space heater. Mr. Holmes read the newspaper.

Ah, said Mr. Holmes, again our intrepid reporter strikes. Notice how early we again encounter Their projects. It has snowed near Scottsbluff, Nebraska, a great deal. The weather has warmed, and the snow is not melting.

Sherlock in Cheyenne - The Adventure of the Babel Plants - Part Two

Part Two

I had no clue why we were here. I thought I shouldn't change history. But how could I remember and do all I said and did then, or now as it has become? I couldn't possibly duplicate the details. I could refrain from blurting out knowledge of what was to come on a bigger stage. If I were to be here in 1963, would I let JFK get shot? That one event stood out for me. But by then I would be in high school. Here? I mean this house? But also, here, this "here"?

We settled down into an imitative role for me and Mr. Holmes in the armchair. I never sat there. He was always there, if not coming or going, with legs crossed. Dry pipe in his mouth. I did find my volume of Sherlock Holmes stories and gave it to him. So far as I could tell he only glanced at a few pages as he quickly leafed through it. I was usually doing homework. Seventh grade. Mr. Holmes might disappear for days. So if Mom came down to check on me or collect the bedding for the wash, he most often wasn't there.

To school I rode a bus. My best friend, Duane, was on the same bus. The junior high had hundreds of kids. Teachers in suits or sport coats or dresses. The usual - mathematics, physics, chemistry, history, English, social studies, and shop class. Girls had on dresses and didn't take shop. They took home economics. I was definitely interested in girls.

Then one night Mr. Holmes had the local newspaper (we had not taken the paper in the other back-then) spread open on his lap as he sat in his usual place. He always read the newspaper after they got done with it upstairs. I rarely checked the paper.

Ah, said he, here it is, this must be it.

What?

Mr. Holmes, with the newspaper as his source, informed me that two students, boys, at my school had started "to babble" as the reporter for the newspaper put it. The teachers at first thought it was a stunt. A joke. But, no, the boys could not communicate. It's all a babble. They could still write well enough.

What do you mean this is it? Boys that babble. So?

But why? They are in hospital now. They began to babble sometime after lunch. They routinely ate at the cafeteria. See the challenge here?

I said I had recently had lunch at the cafeteria though I often bag it. I have had no ill effects. Hundreds of others eat there too. Just two guys? I fail to recognize a challenge.

I have been thinking we were brought here for this very sort of thing.

I don't follow you.

Someone has poisoned these boys. We are to find out who did it and why and stop them.

Really? Well have at it. I've got a big introductory algebra test tomorrow. Keep me posted. (I thought Mr. Holmes was more than slightly off his nut. He wasn't of course a real tutor. He knew of a math tutor, Dr. Moriarty, but having read Conan Doyle, I wanted no part of Dr. M's instruction. Now wait, could Dr. M be behind the babbling? But Dr. M never figured much in the original stories. He becomes an archenemy in later times like in the recent BBC series. Anyway I hate these wordy problems of algebra - if Henry left 3 hours before Jake left 2 hours behind Sam and Sam lives on the other side of the river and proceeded along a hypotenuse to head off Trudi who walked backwards at 0.5 yd/hr, then where is Henry after a 6-hour lapse?)

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As you can realize, my boy, I have been gaining accounts, whilst in disguise, about what happened at the school. Now the boys can no longer write. Also, a third boy now babbles. The first two boys are faced with isolation from their parents, peers, and everyone else. This aspect is the worst of it.

I agree. Bad deal for them. But you found out more?

To be sure. The boys ate during a different lunch period than you. With so many students they do have two lunch times. The two boys never ate the cafeteria food. They brought their lunches in sacks from home.

Brown bag lunches.

Yes, as you wish. So that they brought from home what made them babble. The third boy had joined them for lunch that day. They indulged in a food exchange.

So from their home came the bad stuff.

Undeniably so.

Is there more?

Oh, yes. I visited the boy's home as a concerned parent and an appreciative one in that the boys, it turns out, eat homegrown food, none of that cafeteria mystery meat or other products for them.

Good show! (I thought I would toss that in but Mr. Holmes was unappreciative.)

The family, said Mr. Holmes, of the two boys live on a ranch on the east edge of town. They raise cattle and have vegetable planters. In one planter was lettuce that the boys had in their sandwiches that babble day. Though I am not well studied in edible plants, I thought the "lettuce" looked not at all regular. I inquired after the source of the plant. The parents said some nice people from a greenhouse had given them some seeds - the seeds for the "lettuce". A newer kind of lettuce, the parents were told. More nutritious, enriched - that sort of thing. All other sources there for the sandwiches, which were usually daily the same, seemed not out of the ordinary. Therefore, I made it known my interest in plants, especially lettuce, and wished to know the whereabouts of this greenhouse. They assured me it was quite isolated, well out in the country, no roads to it. Isolated all round about. I borrowed a horse from them. They said it was a long ride and offered provisions. I, of course, had no need of them.

The greenhouse was operating by itself. No sign of any recent activity by any persons. I entered and found the plants in question. I have returned with eight of them in pots. They are safely boxed in a far corner of your backyard. May I bring them in? I advise you to stay well clear of them.

No problem. I babble enough as it is - so some tell me.

So Mr. Holmes thought the plants contained something that made the boys babble. Perhaps. Anyway, more students and non-students had begun to babble.

Mr. Holmes wanted to set up a chemistry lab there in the basement. I had had a small chemistry set off in the corner. It was mostly forgotten. It had been a Christmas enthusiasm. But Mr. Holmes, once back from Sam's Hobby Shop, Army surplus, Edmund Scientific, and I don't know where else, had assembled a lab with tubing from ceiling to floor and running all along a wall of the basement - the one beyond his chair, actually the west wall.

I told those upstairs that Mr. Holmes was now my chemistry tutor though no chemistry lab courses were offered at the junior high.

Mr. Holmes set to work using parts of some of the plants for analysis. There were four potted plants on the floor near the lab bench that he apparently had no need of. I know he needs no sleep, nevertheless, he worked three days straight on coming up with an antidote for the plant's effect. More people were reported to be babbling.

A manifesto had appeared in the paper from a group claiming to be responsible for the babbling. They said their aim was to rid the planet of all others. Then they could then enjoy the planet all to themselves - as it should be. They were putting the harmful part of the plant into drinking water, food products, and the atmosphere. It might take some months to get the job done, but they could wait.

Mr. Holmes noticed the chemical reactions were running slower than he had experienced in Victorian England. His watch, my watch, and all the clocks around us might be running slower but how could we tell? The molecules and atoms that Mr. Holmes was dealing with in chemistry were like clocks of their own - they had no need of references to timepieces.

After three days, Mr. Holmes realized the game was up. He had not arrived at a cure. I was dimly aware that he was done. I had stayed up nights lately to help. I was no more than an extra pair of hands, but I helped. I was feeling distant from myself, maybe I was babbling a bit. One of my sisters had begun to babble. Maybe I was super tired. I went to bed.

When I got up who knows how many hours later, I didn't feel so hot. Mr. Holmes was gone. On my card table was the diary, open. He had made an entry:

Sorry, my dear boy, it seems I was wrong. They can't be stopped. Of course, the ill effects of the Babel Plant, as the newspaper calls it, can't affect me. All others will be unable to communicate with all others and it will be as if each was forced into their own language. Millions and millions of languages will be in existence. All of them will be alone. The loneliness will be paramount. I am off, to a cottage by the sea. I trust I shall find one. I will gather about me dogs, cats, and so on. I will do philosophy and smoke. And I hate bees.

I read this entry and saw the chemistry lab in the background as I did so. Something was moving in that background. I got up from the card table and went over to a flask on the outer edge of his apparatus. All the residue from concurrent reactions were discharging into the flask. A glass stopcock hadn't been tightly closed by Mr. Holmes. The flask was overflowing. The overflow was running along the tabletop and dripping over the side. There were four Babel plants on the floor near the table's edge. They were the four plants Mr. Holmes had not needed. Two of the plants were untouched by the drip. They looked OK. Two others were getting the drip on them. They were not looking good. They were withered!

I grabbed the flask, sealed it with a rubber stopper and put it in my carrier on the front handlebars of my bike. I went to Sam's Hobby Shop. I didn't know where else to go. Maybe I wasn't thinking too clearly. He was a former airman and had last served at the local airbase, the one out west of town. It had been an Army installation. Anyway, maybe Sam knew where to go.

Sam said they had a lab, not known to many, on the base. He would take it there; he assured me.

I then wanted to get home, to the basement. I wanted Mr. Holmes to be there. Someone to talk to about all this until the End. I got home, no Holmes. Once into bed, I went into a coma.

Sherlock in Cheyenne - The Adventure of the Babel Plants - Part One

(A diary by me, usually much later after the facts)
Part One


I could see myself in the mirror. It was the only one I had in my basement bedroom. It was full-length, not wide, fake wood around it, and it was propped up against a wall. All the walls were concrete. The floor was concrete. Electrical wiring and plumbing pipes were overhead.
But the I in the mirror wasn't me as I am. It is me as I was. I guess about junior high age in Cheyenne, Wyoming in the late 50s, early 60s. So around 14 years old is what I am seeing. But I know I am decades older. I turn to my left to see if the beds are there. One bed. My chest of drawers is there, two drawers. In one drawer there are books, paperback, of course. A card table, a schoolbook and a spiral notebook, and the metal desk lamp with the bending neck. The bulb of the lamp gives off good heat in winter, but it stinks after long use.


I see something else not there before - a space heater, thank god. But also something else - an armchair. Big, plush, old, wide arms, and in a wine color with a faint pattern on it. I never had such a chair. But I am staring at what is in the chair. A person. Familiar looking. Legs crossed. Each of his arms on one of the armrests. Pipe in the mouth, no smoke. He is faintly smiling. He is carefully watching me. Boots, stylish but not polished and not modern.


That's it. Not modern. An old-fashioned cape. Tweed overcoat, jacket, and trousers. The trousers are narrow and come down to a few inches above the heel. All the fabric is faintly brown. The clothes are on someone who looks like a mix of old illustrations and a movie actor. Paget and Basil Rathbone. Sherlock Holmes!


I try a smile. Hello says he. Hello I reply.
I was at the mirror too when I first arrived, said he. I hope you don't mind me here in your chair?
Actually it isn't my chair. I mean it wasn't here before.
Before?
And there was another bed.
Before?
I was here as a boy, as I look now, but I am much older really. There - wherever it is and now I am here which for there where I should be is a "was".
Perhaps you could speak more clearly?
This is a place something like in my past. Physically I am as I was then, decades ago, but I am not a boy. I only have a boy's appearance. Though all of this seems real enough.


I am "Sherlock Holmes?"
Well, you appear to be him. He didn't and doesn't exist, really. He was a character, a great one, very famous, and created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I have a book of Sherlock Holmes stories somewhere around here. Sherlock Holmes was a consulting detective. He solved puzzling crimes. He helped Scotland Yard, though he wasn't fond of them until much later in the stories. And...But you don't seem to understand much of this.


There is, I confess, a faint remembrance of some of what you say.
Do you know Dr. Watson? London? Queen Victoria?
Ah, London and the Queen. Yes, of course. Who is Dr. Watson?
He supposedly wrote about your adventures as a detective and your life together. He lived with you for a time. You shared a very famous address - 221B Baker Street in London.


Can't say I recall such an address.
You, pardon me for saying so, are a work of fiction. But, here you are. May I shake your hand? (Was he a phantom? Was this all witchcraft? A dream? A game? A trick? A sick joke? So the test. A handshake. His grip was firm and confident.)
I am not a ghost, eh?
No you're not. Not less so than I am. But I had a brother, here was another bed, same as mine, metal frame, Army green, a twin-size. Squeaky spring mattress. Upstairs are Mom, two sisters, another brother, I suppose. (We could hear voices and movement above.)


Maybe the other brother is upstairs too. (No, one brother, much younger than me, my two sisters, and Mom. As usual, Dad was at work. He was usually gone in the morning by the time I got up for school and he rarely had supper with us. Always at work.)
May I call you Mr. Holmes?
Apparently I am he, at least to you.
Yeah, I'll go with it. By the way, I am Michael, called Mike, though that is not the name I had then, I mean now.
Well, my dear boy (always referring to me as a boy) shall we get on with it?
What? What it we should be doing?
He had pulled out of a jacket pocket a slipper filled with that dark ghastly pipe tobacco he so favored.
I said - You can't smoke here. I pointed upstairs. Besides they must know me, but I can't imagine they know you. How can we account for your being here? One minute, let me go upstairs and see what's what.
Surely.


Upstairs, all was OK. Brother, sisters, and Mom. Mom was preparing supper, singing as she often did then. Brother playing. Sisters doing homework. A Saturday it was, early Fall.
Back downstairs, Mr. Holmes was examining a typewriter that was shelved on a board resting on two concrete blocks. Above the typewriter was another board on blocks. The typewriter had not been there before. I had not had a typewriter until high school. I couldn't type until then. Also, we didn't live here until I was in high school. This was the last residence we rented before we left town. We were elsewhere, other rentals, while I was in junior high. (Conversation upstairs later was about a mortgage payment. So maybe we don't rent now.)
Mr. Holmes, that is a typewriter. You can type out words on paper with it.
I see the mechanism. They had these in my later days.
So you have a history?
Indeed.
The Sherlock Holmes stories started in the late 1880s and continued into the 1920s, so you would know of typewriters, I suppose.
Yes, but I never employed one.
Nor did your creator, Conan Doyle. Others typed what he wrote.
As I said, you are famous. There are stories, books, and movies about you. There are clubs and societies that think you and Dr. Watson as alive and these groups write and talk about you as if you were real- which you are, I guess, now, here. I... What is this? This!
My dear boy, calm yourself. If there were some brandy about, it would aid you greatly.


I was panting. I felt dizzy. I leaned on Mr. Holmes as he helped me to the bed.
Rest awhile, he said. I'll sit here at the bed's edge. This is all rather a bit disconcerting to you I would say.


A few moments pass. No way to figure it out (not yet anyway though I was going to try and try) and no way out. Anyway I liked my junior high years. But why Sherlock Holmes or almost he, and almost a re-creation of what it had been for me?


I think we are here for a use said Mr. Holmes quietly, calmly.
What? What could it be?
Time will tell. It is getting time for your supper.
Are you joining us?
I have no need of food nor drink. (His supply of tobacco never gave out after he started smoking outdoors. He had money too, a big wad of money, American. If he spent any, it was replenished. I had no such powers. Also, he needed no sleep. He walked a lot at night, without arousing suspicion, or he sat and smoked and thought a great deal. Why here? Why the two of us?)


I told him that I would tell them that he was a tutor - all subjects. And for free, of course. He would be Mr. Holmes to them too. He would have to leave at night.

Mind and Cosmos by Nagel

Part Four, the final one, about Wallace, tick tock polka dot, chess, meaning, and God


PART FOUR

The Chase, Chess
The chase as part of the game can come up short or empty. Persistent avoidance of the chase or the game or failing to come to terms with it is what can shorten circuits of those altered states of the electrons professed to operate in an explanatory mode producing the unexplained like : a stinking "Jesus", self-awareness that madness is just around the corner and the corner is coming at you, moralism as part of a syndrome shouted shamefully loud by tourists in some countries, swallowing almost anything, self-removal of parts of the self, and mathematics about the brain or Mind. The last is the delusion among scientists if left to their own devices. It is a fine madness. The game, they proclaim, is on.

Good show, Sherlock, though your play wasn’t in chess matches. You said Amberley schemed and excelled at chess. In the modern BBC’s "Sherlock" he does play chess with his brother. No outcome is known. To improve in chess or the game mentioned above, it behooves you to carefully consider the game while being aware of your understanding of it. If all is going well, there is zero need of hope. In lesser situations, those that seize the first moves of the game force something to happen. They must do it. The position may not warrant it. Often it is difficult to know where advantage lies. If you want to "win" the game of reality, then the skill to be employed isn’t entirely verbal or written - it has a vital component that is of the Mind, thought of and considered at that level. If you do think about how you are thinking, then you have altered yourself. If you search for the meaning of your position in chess or the other game, you can’t wait for the big problem to solve. You will get small ones, many of them. We are getting into the "opening" for reality, then a "middlegame" that can be extraordinarily complex, and an "endgame"that is more and more simple arithmetic - counting the squares (days) to death.

Meaning? It may be in the stories we tell ourselves. We usually improvise the narratives since we must go around or ignore the involuntaries. Most unwise. You get into should, ought, could and the game gets to : why play? Indeed, is the game enough? It confers enough meaning if you know the meaning of "enough". Your trapped, you rat, you put yourself in the trap. You have forced reality to be your servant. Truth is gone. An exciting falseness can always be found as a substitute.

E-NS traps you. Looks good, leaning on millions and millions of unexamined years. Are they going for a "win" against reality, or shaping reality into a "win"? Maybe a highly unsatisfactory draw will result, a bold advance takes on too much and the consequences of going on are feared. If you can’t have the best moves, then put in play good moves. In play against E-NS, one can, in a sense, play it into time trouble. In chess all may be well thought out, tactics and strategy are fine, but you have a time limit for all of your moves. If you wasted an effort on putting together structure and no sufficient meaning, the game is up. In the game of reality there is more time than the "t" of the equations or the tick-tock of the chess clock.
If you start the game well, you better your chances of a good ending though not necessarily a win. If you blunder, the game will be lost to you. Even more, you are out of the game. Where you went wrong will be beyond you. If you find simplicity of meaning, why must it rather be complexity? Never do you arrive at Ceteris Paribus. You could try to give it over to the computers. Computers play chess, not like human beings do, but computers win. Can computers play the other game and win? They may resort to hypertheory, but the computers don’t know what is hypertheory. We also don’t know what is hypertheory. Match a computer or computers against other computers to aid us in our game(s). Smart though they may be, what if it is a draw? If you want the final answer, use hypertheory. Otherwise, you get informed guesses. If hypertheory is inaccessible to us, the E-NS and Mind are as they always have been. Humankind is flummoxed and Goethe got it more or less correct in that if humankind is accepted as is, we have a worst case scenario, but if humankind could be otherwise, we become more like what we should be. Which will you control - acceptance, could, or should? You always need time to implement control.

Memory, Womb
However you go about it, you will not ignore memory. All is dependent on memory. With memories come space, time, All. So have one memory. Why not have one memory? "Sky is blue". No, you have sky-is-blue. So then, make it "blue". When did you know, remember, have “blue"? At birth? But there is other memory, the fleeting memory of perception. Perception starts at birth? Are we perceiving before birth? In the womb, we perceive? Ask what was your first memory and it might be "blue". But that is a remembering. First perception? You don’t know. Never will. And, someday, sooner or later you will have your last perception and you don’t know what it will be either. Unknown first and last. The incomprehensible, nothing, zero, nada, zipo - from start to finish? No, there is an in-between. Is it of God, angels, devils, planes, trains, automobiles, all of knowledge, experience, effort, triumph, or failure? The in-between of money, toil, and trouble. Warding off death, delaying death? Seizing this and that and having a "good" life? In the womb, perceiving, kicking, moving, we are perceiving before we know who we are. Is the perceiving before consciousness? Certainly we are perceiving before Mind. Fleeting memory is established and we get consciousness, self-consciousness, and Mind.

E-NS does not induce fleeting memory, memory of whatever stripe has no connection to E-NS, which is of structure, not sufficiently of process. There is no connection of it with perception before birth and E-NS will come; if at all, much later. There is a massive die-off of neurons before birth. Neuronally speaking, you are different. Once the excess is done away with, you can get on with birth. At this point, a new stage of existence is entered. Who stays in the womb? Mind isn’t there. It will surmount the involuntary and fancy itself Mind. A critical mass of memories is formed, beyond perception, independent of perception with self-consciousness as a stepping stone. E-NS isn’t in the picture, nor any accidents, nor any lack of meaning. Mind is all about meaning, perhaps the meaning is repressed, suppressed, ignored or thrown away but pattern, sequence, succession are there, be as it may. One can weakly respond and carry it forth and perhaps triumph or be fierce about it and run it into the ground, compromising it immensely. As usual, a better outcome is to go without fanfare or flair and be strong.

Meaning, God
In that meaning (not from it) is God, teleology and so on but not E-NS or atheism or perpetual hopelessness, endless cruelty and what not. What it is not about is repressive, suppressive, subtracting, deleting, and crippling. What it is about is a series of pluses, for example: urbanity, wit, reason, knowledge, sensitivity, ethics, education (in school or otherwise), endurance, play, heroism, sacrifice, and intelligence. What it is, is not is playing to one’s genius, not proclaiming one’s creativity, not rampant egoism. These destroy or lessen Mind and meaning. These activities put them in the service of a lack of acceptance of the involuntary. It may very well be a massive, an impressive, an exciting venture but, it is of itself. Mind, meaning, are rooted in the self for others. Do for them, period.

The meaning for Keats was a reaching out, the arms extended, not able to grasp with them what he wanted, his mind could not have grasped "it". The moonlight bears down but really it is a reflection - on us, meaning or not. Chess play also reflects Mind in an enterprise, combinational and strategic and of simple arithmetic, a game, but Mind plays very many other games. Chess cannot be concluded game after game after game. Mind, unlike chess, has a terminus, a final meaning, not necessarily all encompassing but finally over years, a day, an hour, a second. Idiot savants never got on base, but what lovely transition on the way there. Their minds are too specific without wit and urbanity and more. Finally, there are those who got out of the developmental stage but could not find a sufficient meaning, it slipped away. Some get very concerned with this sufficiency and lose Mind altogether since sufficiency alone is not Mind.

When they ask what is the meaning of this - the slaughter at Newtown, for instance, or they ask otherwise in many similar instances, what is the meaning of "this", usually life, and it was once a serious question but now it is often relegated to snickers and sneers, they are expecting a power, not necessarily God, to take over for them and supply the memories they need to acquire meaning since all meaning resides in each one’s memory. Remember, there is your meaning. For Newtown, as for all atrocities, of one or of millions, sum the memories, isolate one, any amount between one and all. It will never be none. There is no zero memory, zero meaning, or Zero Mind.

Animals can get away with it, not having meaning, by instinct, no thought required. Conscious and nothing more. Eat and be eaten. All without meaning. E-NS is done by instinct, it serves its purpose but never realizes itself, how could being be un-thought? You can think in terms of structure, of process. You can blend them in various proportions. No thought, then no process and since E-NS leaves out thought, actually, it never seriously considers anything other than structure. That is inadequate, wrong. So then, because there is Mind, there is God. How else could it be? God as Process, summed for us, in Mind. Proof of God is the Mind.

So then, no thoughts of God then no God? Atheists triumphant! He isn’t there, how could He be? If not thought, poof! This is the notion of continuity, á la Berkeley, but of a different order perhaps. So if you are not thinking of God, no heaven or hell? If a sudden death, no God for you?

The brain dies. Do you die? Thought ceases? The Mind ceases? No thought of God, ever, then no God. Impossible for God to be. Not thinking of God, now? The no God, now. Did you think of God, once? Then is not there a God? Continuity. If you think no, no God. Then there is no God. If you did not think of Madagascar or Milwaukee or the Marquesas they can’t vanish. But once thought of, in mind, it is. Only what never was thought of, not of brain, thought, Mind is not. That is, what is that is "is not" is nothing. All of something is what is thought of.

If you deny God, heaven, hell, etc. - then gone they are. Nevertheless, all are in, of, Mind if once thought of. You may forget about Him and them, but there they are. Reduce them and Him to phantasms, OK, so they become. Think of them, Mindfully, and they are there, here, anywhere. You have heaven and hell, ah, curse the ill luck, while the atheist has neither. Believe in Me, He said and that is all. Pascal wrote the wager. It should be added to the Bible.

But what of the heathens and the pagans? The atheists deny God. How can having Minds be a proof of God if not thoughts, memories, or ideas of God are of the Minds of heathens and pagans? For them there is no God. Are they not proof of the non-existence of God? Yet no one knows the mind of God. We did, indirectly know the mind of Jesus as we know all other minds indirectly - from what was said and done. The mind of God remains unknown. His intermediary, on good authority, says that Mind can be known. Though very little, for a modern, is authentic in regard to that mind.
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What of the little bird on the thin branch? Poor little thing. Can’t fly now. Dreadfully cold. Dark as dark can be. The wind is strengthening. If the bird thinks of God, what of it? But an atheist reading about the bird thought of God, so, temporarily the atheist "had" God? Recall that the brain is the basis of thought. The brain is not thought, not thinking. Thoughts are the basis of Mind. Mind is not thought. Mind is certainly of thought. Thoughts are certainly of the brain. So, to an atheist it is only a bird.
In our day and age, the little bird is no longer on the branch.
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Tick Tock, Polka Dot
There is not a scientific Mind nor a religious Mind. It can be both, not wholly one or the other. It could be 0 to 100% of scientific intent or 0 to 100% of religious intent. One can be an atheist of a varying degree and that could be a scientific God or you can have a Biblical God and this is a religious God. A polka dot cow is a scientific possibility; it is not a religious cow. Science can make a polka dot cow. God has not. The world as is, is (was) the basis for God. Science goes where it may. You can have any God you want, the scientists can have God or cow. Non-scientists have "only" God, Science doesn’t touch the involuntary. God does, for whence came it? Has he changed them? Carry on regardless, science, without meaning. Religion, with God, has meaning. Carry on scientists, in all your aspects, Godless, meaningless - fad and fashion, "the latest" theory, data and on and on - no meaning ever enters in. You don’t need meaning, be happy, thus as in thrall to science, pick up the pebbles on the beach. You are animals, smart ones, maybe very smart ones but unlike animals, you knew the contrary to instinct, you knew the possibility of God and meaning. The worst of the bunch - you or the animals?

Mind need not be summed, not held hostage by a literal Biblical God, Mind is historical. E-NS is ahistorical, no Mind. God need not be historical, not chained to your time. His is a cosmic time. Mind, too, need not be time "t" of the equations, nor "humanistic time" but for Cosmic Time. The memory of God carries Mind there. Morality? Which time is it? So, then, we are tick-tock, clock on the wall or quantum "time" or Cosmic? Is morality of one of these three? Is it not tick-tock or nothing? Where is Newtonian Cosmic Time? For tick-tock it is horrid and meaningless and so for a quantum clock it is also meaningless. Cosmic Time is filled with meaning.

So if it is the scientific God, maybe 20% meaning will do you. If it is the religious God, there could be that nasty four letter word, h_ll, and if you don’t want to lose Pascal’s wager, better go for the high end. Like as in 80%. But then, what is an 80% of the bet if that is 80% h_ll? It is all in or not even a 99.9% God will do
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Afterword

Beyond your rights as an animal, you may have a need, some do. You want to resist the finite, the limited, an end. You want to cry and who can comfort you? You want understanding, knowledge and where does it lead?
Alfred Russel Wallace knew his needs far better than Darwin, Huxley, and the rest. They had no needs worthy of mention.