“But?”
Noki reached out and took Adam by the hand, brought him close and kissed him gently.
“Let me guide you.”
Noki touched him on the temples, just as he had done to her to initiate their first mind journeys. She thought for the moment that he would be better able to understand; to grasp what she would show him. She did, and he did.
“You have only to ask, and the answer will be revealed. The answer to everything. Just not in the physical world but here, where all things are possible. Anything and everything else within the mind of the infinite we can know. Of that which can be known, and which needs to be known. When there are no minds there, are no needs, and the infinite dies.”
Noki paused.
“Only our own minds can curb our knowledge. If you expand your mind beyond the physical bounds of the brain, then you may know the infinite.”
“How do you know…”
“I have been to the end of my lifetime and yours, and I have journeyed back to the first living cell that came into existence on this planet. I have lived every life of every living organism that has ever existed on this planet. I have seen our lives, lived our lives together with the children we will bear, and seen their lives too. It is glorious, it is … a miracle. And God has allowed us to be the first.”
Adam watched, understanding almost nothing. When Noki touched him, gently and tenderly, he understood everything.
“Come with me. Come with me now. Here time has no meaning and there are no boundaries or limits to what we can know, what we can experience.”
Adam looked at Noki and smiled. What a woman, what a divine creature she is. Brave and fearless; an explorer of the infinite. What will I learn from her? How will I come to understand her?”
“Come Adam. All you need do is ask. Let us have our first lifetime together, but this time I will know what you know, and feel what you feel. When our children are born, we will know them too.”
“I…”
Noki interrupted, feeling she couldn’t convey her pure joy and contentment.
“And, just so you know.”
“Yes?”
“The sex is truly heavenly.”
***
“While we’re inside our minds, we can know the vastness of the Universe. We can experience it and, on some level, be conscious of it. But taking it back to our world, our physical world when we are not coupled, joined as one? This we cannot do. We must leave behind in the Infinite, that which is infinite. The two cannot occupy the same space. It’s almost thus by definition.”
“Then, how does this help us? What good does this skill do for us to solve any problem we have here in the physical world we actually inhabit?”
“Plenty, but you mustn’t confuse the experience of the infinite as relevant to the experience of the finite. They’re two vastly different realities, both unique and fulfilling, but fundamentally distinct.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like the difference between that which is of Man, and that which is of God.”
“Is it?”
“That question doesn’t have to be answered. It is irrelevant. What I just said is a metaphor for that distinction, not an attempt at an explanation of the distinction itself. Do you remember the passage from the New Testament which says, ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s’?”
“Yes, Matthew 22:21. So?”
“Think about that distinction. This is the same, even if contextually it is a little different. Still, it is close. You have always said that there is no argument between science and religion that is not caused by one or the other purposefully. So too there is no conflict between the finite and the infinite. Most in this world can only live in one realm, the finite. It’s how they are defined, and how they define themselves. Think about it. We, for whatever reason, can experience both. We can because we think we can and have developed the tools. Don’t you see what a miracle this is? What a blessing it is? Accept it as such; it should be enough. Just don’t get caught up in causality, at least for now. God, nature, whatever. It’s real. Maybe we can ease up on who/what/why/how for later. Maybe that’s the finite speaking.”
Noki paused. “If you do, by the way, you will find Misti more receptive to the fact of our gift, rather than argue about the source of it. She might be right, or you might be right. Or you both may be wrong. Neither of you need to be correct. It does not matter; it simply is.”
Adam thought about what Noki was saying and had to admit that she was correct. He had been looking at what had been laid before him as if it was a tool to solve his problems in his physical reality. That might also be so, he thought, it was a gift that could help in many ways; it had already helped with Alana. But there was so much more that wasn’t part of this reality. What he would bring back consciously to this reality from his mind excursions would, in the end, be what he could, in whatever way he could. He was certain that there was some crossover, some retention meant for him even if it was not everything that he sensed he and Noki had just experienced. Adam knew that what he experienced was not knowledge or perception in the rational conscious sense. It was something else. It resided in him somewhere, in all of us perhaps, and some might yet be available. Perhaps it resided, in greater part, in the unconscious mind. He might summon it, be guided by it, on an unconscious level, but he wouldn’t be able to summon the infinite; that was absurd. But that he had experienced the Infinite was something he did know somehow; Noki too. It wasn’t memory, per se, it was some other phenomena.
“I know what you’re thinking, Adam. And I’m thinking it too. We need more time in our alternate state to understand what is of that reality, and what is of this. More importantly what is the part of that state that we can draw on in this state? There is only one way to find out; we must go back. And often.”
***
This they did, as often as they could at first in London, and even more so when they returned to Barrows Bay. They began to establish the parameters of exploration, and the relationship of their discoveries to their world, the one they inhabited every day in Barrows Bay. They could bring back some knowledge, skill and experience. The rest resided in them, like a huge library they were still learning to use. Every journey was a new addition to their lives together, a new experience to plumb.
Although they often spoke in bed, and began having relations in the old-fashioned way, they found their relationship in the world of connected minds to be infinitely more pleasurable and satisfying. Indeed, Noki was correct: the mind sex was heavenly.
In the end, they decided not to attempt an explanation of their mind journeys to the others; to Alana, Misti or family. It would be far too difficult to explain, and that explanation would seem far too superficial to even bother. When the time came, and it would, those taking this journey with them would simply understand. Others would not, could not, and that was simply an inescapable fact.
Perhaps one day they would.
Chapter 24
Alana awoke early to the sounds of someone ruminating in the kitchen, a chair scraping the floor, and the smell of fresh coffee brewing. At five in the morning Alana knew it could only be Adam. And she, like her colleague, enjoyed the early morning quiet and calm. In her former life in San Diego, Alana would often rise by four in the morning, and complete most her work within hours thereafter. Her day could’ve been equally quiet at any time of the day, had she chosen, but the early morning hours, dark and serene, seemed to convey a mood that appealed to her most.
Adam was of the same mind, but for different reasons. He slept little before Misti came into his life, rarely more than four or five hours a night. Although he could now slumber more peacefully than ever before, he was still an early riser as a matter of habit. He too found the early morning quiet to be compelling, and amenable to thoughtful contemplation. Alana and Adam would frequently meet in the kitchen for a light breakfast, and fr
esh brewed coffee before beginning work. Adam was habitually on the kitchen side cooking, while Alana was on the opposite side of the counter watching his ministrations.
Adam thoroughly enjoyed the company, the audience, though solitude had always been his previous companion. Having Alana around was, to him, a giant bonus. He enjoyed her company, not just for her pleasant manner and wicked wit, but because he knew she enjoyed approving attention. He correctly guessed that Alana had been cheated out of a great deal of the natural attention a young woman of her wit and beauty should have received from her mid-teens years through college, and on to adulthood. Instead she had sequestered herself away, always surrounded by the fear engendered by the terror she experienced on the day, and days following her sixteenth birthday.
It had been only a short while since the events in San Diego alleviating the need for future concern, but Alana still felt a tiny residue of distress, and apprehension. Adam understood her slight anxiety and did his best to allay it. Their collaboration on computer matters had given Adam immense satisfaction; he finally had someone who understood his work, and mind better than anyone ever had. Misti, his wife and soulmate, filled out almost completely the four corners of his life, but not in his work, his passion in life, which permeated his entire being. On that one solitary matter did he almost always feel totally alone.
That Adam was without peer, was both a blessing and a curse. As he began work with Alana, he assumed that their work would cross over so little that she might as well be working with her father, the physicist. He was completely wrong, as he soon came to discover. And discover to his great delight.
It would’ve been plainly obvious that Alana, aside from her brilliant mind, and great abilities so much in demand, would’ve normally been noticed by most men immediately. She was beautiful, kind and sharp. Her tongue could be scathing when so inclined, but it seldom was and, so far, anyway, never in his direction. Nonetheless, Adam found her to be beautiful in everything that mattered or perhaps at least everything that mattered to him. Other men may have appreciated the intrinsic beauty of the gem, but only for a few of its shiniest facets. Adam was appreciative of the entire work that was Alana. He admired her, and felt comfortable in her presence; still, he didn’t fail to notice what any man would see immediately.
Alana likewise appreciated the man that Adam was now; she had only heard of what a terror he had been as a younger man, and had difficulty believing the stories that Noki and Misti had shared with her about his past, his mind and his darkness. If any of it were true, and she had no reason to believe that her friends would lie or misstate, she couldn’t align the man he was now with the man he had supposedly been then. But, she too had been a handful as a child.
Alana’s life had changed, and in dramatic fashion. Adam was at the core of that change, both freeing her mind from her constant state of terror as well as removing the cause of that terror. She didn’t ask for his help; he had simply intervened in reshaping her destiny without thinking much about it. He never spoke of either event nor did she ever feel that he wanted anything from her in return.
Had she not known him, his odd family, and his beautiful wife, she might’ve expected that an eventual quid quo pro would one day be exacted. But months later, even her slight suspicion of what might be sought, had evaporated from her psyche.
Adam wanted nothing, nor did his wife, nor his immediate or extended family. He and his Barrows Bay clan had not only welcomed her, they had welcomed her father, who she loved very deeply and from whom she didn’t wish to be separated. And her father was now here in Barrows Bay, happy in his own right, and integral to the immensely important project they were undertaking.
Her role was professional, and her skills had accomplished a great deal that the Teams had not, nor could not, have accomplished on their own. She had been immensely successful with her tasks, often realizing results that weren’t asked for, but which should’ve been had her colleagues been more astute. Her thought processes were not unlike Adam’s; and Adam was well-aware of that and her new and outsized importance in the family business.
Lately, Alana had begun to think other thoughts about Adam; thoughts that she shared with both Noki and Misti. Alana was still sleeping with Misti every night, and Adam still shared his bed with Noki. But Alana now shared her inner desires with her friends, not so much to plan anything concrete, but to ask their advice on what she saw and felt. She had been told by both Misti and Adam that if she wished one day to pursue developing her mental skills with Adam and his abilities, she could do so at any time. But Adam understood, and Alana felt, that the trauma of their first encounter and experience would take some time to fully dissipate. While Adam had cauterized the mental wound of recalling the actual events, she feared that further exploration might trigger some other trauma, for which she felt she was then unprepared and unwilling to undertake.
But in the months since their arrival in Barrows Bay, Alana had been in daily contact with Noki, who was more than willing to share the excitement of her evening excursions into the mind of Adam St. James. What she described was neither sex on, one hand nor religion on the other. It was something else entirely; real, spiritual, and yet concrete. It was hard to define or describe. What Noki gained from it was something she never thought possible; her past, her anger, and her will to dominate were gone. She now saw the world in terms that were beyond the physical, and the material. When journeying in her mind, or in Adam’s, she was at peace spiritually, confident emotionally and clear in her visions of herself and those around her. She was, in short, changed from the inside out.
She tried to explain, and describe her deepest feelings but said, eventually, that the only avenue to achieve understanding was for Misti and Alana to experience their own journey, on their terms. Words, thoughts, were simply inadequate to express what she now knew.
From her own experience with Adam, Noki understood the role that she played and would play in Adam’s life. Noki’s connection to Adam, though physical, had long since ceased to be predominantly sexual, at least in the traditional sense of the term. They had sex, and it was enjoyed on both physical and mental planes. But the substance of the experience was in her mind and in his. The physical act was virtually unnecessary, but nonetheless still enjoyed, and enjoyable. Noki exulted in the release she found with Adam. The only true evidence of the physical in her life with Adam was her pregnancy.
Noki would bear his first child and two others as well. She was completely at peace with this. She looked forward to their life together with their brood. They would be important; Noki and her offspring would remain with Adam all their lives. She couldn’t wait for every new day.
Noki also took time to explain what she understood of the roles that Misti and Alana would play. Misti was supremely confident in her love for Adam, and his love for her. Nothing, in Noki’s opinion, could ever develop in Adam’s world now or ever after that didn’t involve the grounding which Misti provided for him. She was the foundation of his world and all that he would ever accomplish. To Noki, his future wasn’t even possible without her.
She was his true North Star. And she would bear him seven children.
Initially in these private conversations, Alana felt as though she was the hired help; there to do work, but somehow excluded from the bigger picture. One day Noki, who had been asked by Adam not to discuss too much of what she knew, sat Alana down sensing that she was saddened by her “lesser” role.
“Adam would be upset by what I am about to tell you, but Misti and I believe you have a right to know. And to choose your own path.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“There is a third piece to the puzzle that’s Adam’s future and his happiness. If it can be said that I will fulfill his spiritual well-being, and Misti his worldly grounding, then there is a middle path that hasn’t been added as yet.”
“What is it?”
“Not what. Who.”
“I still don’t un
derstand what you’re getting at. Are we going to meet someone? Is it Hannah or Vera?”
“There are others who have yet to be revealed; Hannah and Vera also will play a role. But theirs will be a different path than mine and Misti’s. And yours.”
“Mine?”
“Something I’ve seen; something I have experienced.”
“Which is?”
“What I have seen as a possible future is maybe the most probable future, and it involves you. You are the third piece to complete the puzzle that is Adam. Misti knows it, as do I. When you are ready, it will be time to join with Adam. Talk to him, when you feel it’s right. He understands your fears and your reticence to joining, but you must overcome that fear. Talk to him. He is waiting for you. And he loves you.”
Chapter 25
This morning would be a little different. She had been contemplating talking to Adam for weeks now following her chat with Noki. There was still a residuum of fear about joining as they once had, and Misti couldn’t help much in that department. Misti had yet to experience joining with him deeply and Noki had never had a bad experience. The ladies could provide her with support, but taking the scary plunge was solely the province of Alana, who had to be ready and willing. Until this very morning, she had not arrived there yet.
But she awoke early, and something had changed that she hadn’t even felt the night before. Misti had been very tired, exhausted, and gone to bed early. She slept like a log; the polar opposite of her husband. Alana had stayed up late chatting with Adam, while Noki too had turned in early too tired from the pregnancy and long hours working. Adam and Alana talked about nothing spectacular; the elections in the US, events in the Middle East, and some funny emails they had received from Hannah and Vera.
They hugged as usual before bed, affectionately, but platonically, and quickly went their separate ways for their respective bedrooms. Nothing seemed new, different, or out of the ordinary to either. And yet, by morning, for Alana, it was.
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