David Brin - Earth

Alex removed the grimy goggles and they looked at each other, breaking out in silent grins over how filthy, horrible, battered and positively wonderful each of them looked to be alive.

They were still holding hands, purely out of habit, when they finished scrambling through the brush covering the cave entrance and stepped into a morning filled with clouds and trees and a myriad of other fine things too beautiful ever to be taken for granted again.

□ ATTENTION! You have been targeted by a very special net search routine. Please don’t purge this message! It originates with the World Association of Mahayana Buddhism, one of the great religious orders of history, and your selection to receive it was not random . This is an experiment, a melding of modern science and ancient ways in our continuing search for certain very special individuals.

Those we seek are tolkus … reincarnated beings who in lives past were saintly, enlightened men and women, or bodhi-sattvas. In the past, searches such as this were restricted to within a few days’ journey of our Himalayan monasteries. But of late, tolkus have been found all over the world, reborn into every race, every native culture and creed. It is cause for rejoicing when one is discovered and thereby helped to full awareness of his or her true powers.

Even when tolkus live their lives unannounced, forgetful of their past or even skeptical of our word, they nevertheless often become teachers or healers of great merit. These powers can be amplified though, through training.

We emphatically denounce claims that Eastern meditation traditions are simply glorified biofeedback techniques for inducing natural opiate highs. Chemical comparisons are crude and emphasize only the superficial. They miss the essential power that can be unleashed by the concentrated human mind. A power you may have refined in prior lives and that even now may be within your reach.

Our search is of great importance, now more than ever. Recent strange portents, observed all over the globe, appear to indicate a time of great struggle approaching. Like those of many other faiths, we of Mahayana Buddhism are preparing to face the danger ahead. We have sent into the Net these surrogate messengers to seek out those whose lives, courtesy, works of charity, and creditworthiness indicate they may once have been masters of enlightenment. We ask only that you meditate on the following questions.

Do you believe all beings, large and small, suffer?

Do you believe suffering ends, and that one end can come through what some call Enlightenment, a piercing of life’s veil of illusion?

Do you sense that compassion is the essence of correct action?

If these questions resonate within you, do not hesitate. Use our toll-free account to arrange an interview in person.

You may be more blessed than you remember. If so, we have faith you’ll know what to do.

“So tell me. What do you think of Elspeth?” Dr. Wolling asked as she poured and then passed him a cup of tea.

Nelson stirred in a spoonful of sugar, concentrating on the swirling patterns rather than meeting her eyes. “It’s… an interesting program,” he said, choosing words carefully.

She sat across from him, clattering her own cup and spoon cheerfully. Still, Nelson figured this wasn’t going to be an easy session — as if any with this teacher ever were.

“I take it you haven’t a lot of experience with auto-psych programs?”

He shook his head. “Oh, they had ’em, back home. The school counselors kept offerin’ different ones to us. But y’know the Yukon is, well…”

“A land of immigrants, yes. Tough-minded, self-reliant.” She slipped with apparent ease into a North Canuck accent. “De sort who know what dey know, and damn if any wise-guy program’s gonna tell dem what dey tinkin’, eh?”

Nelson couldn’t help but laugh. Their eyes met and she smiled, sipping her tea and looking like anybody’s grandmother. “Do you know how far back autopsych programs go, Nelson? The first was introduced back when I was just a little girl, oh, before 1970. Eliza consisted of maybe a hundred lines of code. That’s all.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. All it would do is ask questions. If you typed ‘I feel depressed,’ it would answer either, ‘So you feel depressed?’ or ‘Why do you think you feel depressed?’ Good leading questions, actually, that would get you started picking apart your own feelings, even though the program didn’t understand the word ‘depressed’ at all. If you’d typed, ‘I feel… orange,’ it would have answered, ‘Why do you think you feel orange?’

“Funny thing about it, though, Eliza was positively addictive! People used to sit for hours in front of those old-fashioned screens, pouring their hearts out to a fictitious listener, one programmed simply to say the rough equivalent of ‘Hmm? I see! Oh, do tell!’

“It was the perfect confidant, of course. It couldn’t get bored or irritated, or walk away, or gossip about you after-ward. Nobody would cast judgment on your deep dark secrets because nobody was exactly who you were talking to. At the same time, though, the rhythm of a true conversation was maintained. Eliza seemed to draw you out, insist you keep trying to probe your feelings till you found out what hurt. Some people reported major breakthroughs. Claimed Eliza changed their lives.”

Nelson shook his head. “I guess it’s the same with Elspeth. But…” He shook his head and fell silent.

“But Elspeth seemed real enough, didn’t she?”

“Nosy bitch,” he muttered into his teacup.

“Who do you mean, Nelson?” Jen asked mildly. “The program? Or me?”

He put the cup down quickly. “Uh, the program! I mean she… it… kept after me and after me, picking apart my words. Then there was that, um, free-association part…”

He recalled the smiling face in the holo tank. It had seemed so innocuous, asking him to say the first word or phrase to come to mind. Then the next, and the next. It went on for many minutes till Nelson felt caught by the flow, and words spilled forth quicker than he was aware of them. Then, when the session was over, Elspeth showed him those charts — tracing the irrefutable patterns of his subsurface thoughts, depicting a muddle of conflicting emotions and obsessions that nevertheless only began to tell his story.

“It’s the second-oldest technique in modern psychology, after hypnosis,” Jen told him. “Some say free association was Freud’s greatest discovery, almost making up for some of his worst blunders. The technique lets all the little selves within us speak out, see? No matter how thoroughly a bit or corner is outvoted by the rest, free association lets it slip in that occasional word or clue.

“Actually, we free associate in everyday life, as well. Our little subselves speak out in slips of the tongue or pen, or in those sudden, apparently irrelevant fantasies or memories that just seem to pop into mind, as if out of nowhere. Or snatches of songs you haven’t heard in years.”

Nelson nodded. He was starting to see what Jen was driving at, and felt intensely relieved. So all of this has something to do with my studies, after all. I was afraid she wanted me to face that program ’cause she thought I was crazy.

Not that he felt all that sure of his own mental balance anymore. That one session had exposed so many raw nerves, so many places where it hurt — memories from a childhood he’d thought normal enough, but which still had left him with his own share of wounds.

He shook his head to knock back those gloomy thoughts. Everybody has shit like that to deal with. She wouldn’t be wasting time on me if she thought I was nuts .