Chapter 10

Emerson raised an eyebrow. “Using a lot of big words in a semantically accurate context to say nothing is still nothing, Timmy,” Emerson said. “So, you can join Monte in the silent go round box until everyone else has spoken, but thank you so much for playing.”

“I’m confused,” Bambi said.

“Yay you,” Emerson said, genuinely applauding.

“Why would you say ‘yay you?’” Bambi lead with.

“Recognizing confusion is a huge step towards clarity,” Emerson said.

“Just give us a spell,” Jane said.

“Asks the girl who wanted to write things in her journal along with Monte,” Emerson said.

“You trash us, then you suggest we have some authority, maybe even autonomy, which is based on our language and perception, but, that can’t be completely true, because our perceptions are based on our memories which…” Bambi stopped. She was seriously struggling.

“Keep going,” Emerson encouraged, waving his hands enthusiastically. He was on the verge of standing on his chair.

“Our memories, our personal histories, define us and dictate what is possible or remotely probable, which means we’d have to forget who we are to even wield magic, but if we’re already wielding magic to maintain the illusion of our personal permanence then we’re trapped by our own etymologies…” Bambi lamented. “My head hurts.”

“You have come up upon the first conundrum,” Emerson said. He was joyfully tearful for Bambi, even though in her revelation she had sunk to a lower level of despair. She sunk so low she might have fallen out of her chair. I became aware of Janet frowning at me because of where my eyes went. “Memories limit the expression of magic through expectations, and yet, without memories, there can be no scaffolding from which you might build spells upon.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Timmy said, out of turn.

“Timmy, you were banned from speaking for one round as defined by my ban on Monte,” Emerson said. “The punishment, class, for breaking established protocols will be one additional week of class beyond successfully completing this course.”

“You can’t arbitrarily add punishment to a rule randomly administered in play without prior disclosure of possible penalties,” Timmy argued.

“It is now two weeks, and ignorance of a rule is not a defense against application of said rule, and all disputes are finalized by the Professor, who would be me,” Emerson said.

“Well, that’s hardly fair, either,” Janet said.

“What fricking world are you from?” Emerson asked again. He turned to Bambi. “You okay?”

“Do you care?” Bambi asked.

“With more compassion you can ever imagine,” Emerson said. “Look, here is something you guys need to know about magic. Once you learn how to get past your own physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual blocks, you can do anything! Usually your will, not your thoughts, gets implemented before you even have conscious awareness of an inkling of a thought. Your subconscious mind knows what you’re going to do before it even starts lighting up pathways in your brain to make it physically possible. I can prove this by putting you into a fMRI and ask you to make choices and I can tell you what choice you’re going to make 5 seconds before you even consciously make the choice. You are not you! And when you start letting magic flow, every unrealized thought of lust or revenge or hate or kindness is fully and perfectly manifested and you will be hip deep in it before you start to think, ‘what the heck?!’ Correcting after the fact is like driving a car on a sheet of ice and even though you don’t think you’re over correcting, you have gone to both sides of the road and are spinning out of control and it doesn’t stop until you end up in a ditch or dead. Safe Haven is the place where you’re going to learn how to drive. It always starts with sex, so I recommend indulging while you have the safety nets in place.”

Hisao, a thin, young Japanese human male raised his hands. Emerson acknowledged him. “You’re advocating sex?”

“Got anything better to do with your free time?” Emerson asked.

“Well, that’s kind of my point. I’m tired of sex. I got tired of sex like the first week. Is there anything to do on this campus, other than attend class or have sex?” Hisao asked. No one ridiculed him. I was kind of surprised by how serious everyone seemed to be, looking to Emerson for answers. Give me a choice between anything and sex, I would choose sex. I would choose sex over eating.

“I’m not sure how to respond to that,” Emerson said.

“This place is absolutely boring! There’s no TV. There’s no movies. There’s no radio. There are no video games, arcades, pool halls, cars, and I can’t seem to find a way off campus,” Hisao said.

“Oh,” Emerson said, sighing. “What did your species do for the hundreds of thousands of years before it had access to the kind of tech you’re talking about?”

“They sat around on their assess bored out of their minds until someone said, eh, I have an idea, and built a computer,” Hisao said.

“Well, they did have more quiet times,” Emerson agreed. “They also had a lot more sex. Better quality. Better grounding. They were much more intimate with their environment and the creatures that shared their environment. They knew a great deal more than you seem to know. I see by your look that you scoff at that, but you can’t build the kinds of pyramids and earthquake proof walls they did without knowing some things about physics and math. They knew the Universe and they knew they weren’t alone. They had communion! Kind of like sex, but better than sex, better rewards. Oh, yeah, but you’re tired of sex?”

“I can’t go ten steps without getting solicited. Yes. I’m bored with sex. I want a video game,” Hisao said, his statement showing he had disengaged from Emerson’s speech probably before he even got started ranting.

Emerson chewed on the bottom of his lip. “Your brain is far superior to any computer gaming system you have available from where you came from. Why don’t you use your brain?”

“You’re joking, right?” Hisao said.

“Oh, I never joke with students. Mostly because you wouldn’t get it,” Emerson said. He puffed out his lips and slowly let the air out, considering his response. “You will find that most of you come from environments that have kept you so distracted and overstimulated that touching magic is almost impossible. We were not meant to live in a constant state of arousal, and so your sense of ‘boredom’ is a so skewed, that I wouldn’t rely too much on that faculty.”

“I’m not sure how to interpret that…” Hisao gave it back.

“You have lived your entire life on meth, crack, ecstasy, coffee and candy, with so few nuggets of nourishment, that you are an unreliable measure for true boredom,” Emerson translated.

“I have never used drugs, Sir!”

“No, you were just force fed garbage, never learned to think for yourself. You’re most elaborate video game is no match for the power your own brain can create. Safe Haven is kind of like rehab. You have to learn to sit up and crawl. Quite frankly, your brain is so atrophied I doubt you will be walking before the end of your sophomore year,” Emerson said. “Let me be very clear here. Technology doesn’t work on campus. It’s too much of a distraction. It is not impossible for anyone to leave campus, but highly improbable that any of you will leave campus on your own volition, before your junior year.”

“You’re saying we’re imprisoned here?” Hisao demanded.

“No, I didn’t say that. You can go anywhere you like on campus. You can even leave the campus. Leaving campus does require the use of magic. So you’re either doing magic or someone is doing magic for you, and you will find that most of the upper classmen don’t want to carry the lower caste because they have enough on their plate than worrying about your safety. You are responsible for people if you take them off campus. The sooner you learn magic, the sooner you’re traveling. Until then, just enjoy the sex.”

“I have had sex! I have sex with multiple partners in every possible bodily configuration, and even some configurations I didn’t know was possible. I am sick to death of sex,” Hisao said.

“And that’s because you still haven’t learned to have sex. You’re having sex the way you ate fast food and played video games. The only way to really learn to have sex is to have a lot of sex. After a certain threshold, it’s different for everyone, you will suddenly realize you’re not just having sex, but practicing magic and making alliances. You’re not going to believe it until you surrender to something that’s fairly ineffable; this is learned through experiences,” Emerson said. As an afterthought he added: “It might even get you off campus.”

“I don’t like this world at all,” Serena said. Her eyes looked incredibly tired. A little on the heavy side, with easy features that gave a sense that she was pleasant enough to be around, in a quiet setting, maybe doing needle point or quilting, but not rock climbing. “I can’t sleep outside, but even if you gave me a bed and four walls, I need a TV on in the back ground so I can sleep.”

“Yes, you all have a very low frustration tolerance, so much so that you are disturbed by peace, but it is in the quiet where you will find yourself. It is in the quiet where you will discover a plethora of new things to experience and hear and see. Here is what you need to learn to accept. The sense of hearing never turns off,” Emerson said, quietly, almost a whisper, because apparently the class wasn’t accepting the premise that too much stimulus was just too much, and, though I couldn’t speak for their worlds, my world was a nonstop barrage of visual and auditory stimulus, something from which I had been trying to minimize and escape, so I was incredibly bias, and consequently, had decided to remain silent on the subject. “Your hearing is going round the clock, even when you’re asleep. It was kind of a survival mechanism to keep people from getting eaten by bears or snuck up on in the night, but if you constantly are hearing things in the background, you brain becomes numb and cant’ hear, just like if you’re in the presence of a smell for an extended period of time, the sense of the smell goes away, even though it’s still there. Consequently, to remain stimulated, you have to keep upping the volume or the input, because you always become immune to your present stimulus, unless you reset in silence. It is extremely difficult to learn magic if you never experience quiet, and since you’re not likely to do it on your own accord, Safe Haven is forcing the issue. You need a peaceful, quiet’s night rest, with no sound, in order to go deeper.”

“No, I am telling you I sleep better with a TV on,” Serena said.

“By the time you graduate, that won’t be true,” Emerson assured her. “But don’t worry. Though you may initially suffer, the withdrawals from TV and cell phones and facebook, the experience won’t kill you.”

“But boredom will,” Janet said. “The only reason I came to class was there was nothing else to do.”

“Another good reason not to allow tech on campus,” Emerson said. He didn’t argue with her by saying that if she were wielding magic there would be so much to do that she might be dulled into complacency, which wasn’t much different to our present state.

“The least you could do is give us a schedule,” Janet said.

“Because you need a schedule to tell you when, where, and how to be?” Emerson said.

“It might help me not be late,” I offered.

“Pfft! I’ve been to your world, Sir,” Emerson said. “People have electronics in sync with atomic clocks, with corrections pushed through GPS technology, and people are late all the time. Indeed, the more precise you aim to be, the less on time you are. The more you use calendars, watches, and smart phones, the further away you get from where you need to be.”

“So, if you don’t use a clock, how do you know when to end a class?” Janet asked.

“I just know,” Emerson assured her. “Like today. We’re going to end the class with a game. I’m going to go around the room and in turn ask each of you to repeat back a number. Each round, I will add a digit. The numbers will increase in complexity until you can no longer repeat the number I provide. Last one standing in play, wins.”

The kids seemed eager. I wasn’t so fond of games like this, which I suppose makes me incongruent since I had argued against competition, but mostly I felt fear that the kids were going to make me look like a cliché, old man by outperforming me. Emerson gave everyone a single digit number to repeat back. Everyone could repeated back one number. Bambi dropped out at five. Four more players dropped out at seven digit numbers. I was the only one remaining in play at ten digits, but the game didn’t stop, even after Sophia, a young Spanish lady from Spain in a bohemian dress, rose in her hair, dropped out at 9. Emerson gave me an eleven digit number, and I repeated it back. He gave me a twelve digit number, and I gave it back. We continued until I failed to repeat back correctly a twenty three digit number. The class applauded, which triggered my self-loathing. I didn’t want praise.

“Why are you all clapping?” Emerson asked, annoyed.

“That was amazing!” Bambi said.

“How did you do it?” Janet asked.

“Whoa, hold it, silence on the floor,” Emerson waved. I thought he was going to jump up and down in his chair. “You should be appalled at yourselves, applauding this simple, parlor trick!”

“It’s a damn good trick,” Bambi said, nodding pleasantly at me. I told myself to keep thinking of Loxy. Bambi was distracting. Actually, Janet was, too, but I had a sense about her: she came with drama. Bambi just naturally drew you in and I wanted to pet the sides of her face that was painted to resemble the marks on a doe.

“Hardly!” Emerson said.

“What would it take to impress you?” Janet asked.

“When you can repeat back a thousand digit number, you will have made it to kindergarten!” Emerson said. “What’s worse is you applaud him, all impressed, when you should be wondering why, while simultaneously being extremely embarrassed, that you can’t do the same.”

“It’s a gift,” Nicki said.

“No, it’s not. Your brain is a gift. Your ability to use it is a discipline,” Emerson said. “Jon, how did you do it?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Well, you clearly don’t work for the IRS, or you wouldn’t have been able to go past a nine digit social security numbers,” Emerson said. “What did you do for a living?”

“I pushed freight,” I said.

“So, the freight had tracking numbers and you’d log it, and the freight was probably stored in areas based on the numbers making it easier to track and find,” Emerson said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. The tracking numbers were 22 digits long. Freight was stored in areas of the warehouse by a particular numbers highlighted within the 22 numbers.

“How long did you work there?”

“32 years,” I said. I had worked for one company more than half my life. I had gotten the job at 14 using a fake license saying I was sixteen. The company was bought up by another when I had been there two years, and it became a union job. “I started at the ware house when I was still a freshman in high school. Only job I ever had.”

“So, you’re saying we have to push freight for thirty two years before we can repeat back a twenty two digit number?” Monte asked.

“It’s now three additional weeks,” Emerson said.

“Oh, come on!” Monte said. “Everyone spoke when they repeated back the numbers you gave them.”

“Four weeks, and the game inside the game was an exception to the applied rule, but only for the duration of the game,” Emerson said.

Timmy clearly wanted to interject, but he bit his tongue and fumed silently.

“Oh, by the way, Monte, based on the nature of your question of how long it will take you to learn to repeat back a twenty two digit number, I would suspect for you it’s going to take sixty four years. Fortunately for you, I will not detain you until you each demonstrate equal skill with numbers. Quite frankly, I don’t expect to live that long,” he said, motioning to his desk to move it away from the door. It slid across the floor, answering his call as if it were a well-trained dog.

“You’re all free to leave. See you next class,” Emerson said.

The kids made a dash for the door. I hesitated.

“If you have further questions, Jon, I would prefer you hold them for the next class, so the others may benefit as well,” the Professor said.

I nodded, but still lingered. “And if I forget between now and then?”

“Then it wasn’t worth asking,” Emerson said. “Go on. Get out of here.”

“Is this a typical class?” I asked.

“Five weeks,” Emerson said. “Do you wish to continue?”

“Good day, Professor,” I said, and exited the class. And I thought lemurs were supposed to be friendly. Zoboomafoo clearly was not your typical lemur.