Mind Diver: Chapter One

Mind Diver: Chapter One

La Jolla, California, 1998

One look at her doctor's somber face told Gillian McDaniel that he was not going to deliver good news this time.

In the stillness before Dr. Hammond spoke, Gillian felt Time pivot on its heals and pause. Before the bad news would issue from her doctor's mouth, she would take an accounting of her immediate surroundings -- preserve this moment while she still believed herself healthy. The way her behind eased into the soft creased leather of the chair she was sitting in. How like pieces of white paper thrown in the air the seabirds looked as they wheeled around in lazy circles just outside the large window.

She remembered breathing in the tangy scent of salt air as the cool spring breeze drove it in from La Jolla Shores Beach. This had to be a day for good news, she had told herself as she'd swung her dark blue Ford Explorer into the UCSD Medical Center's parking lot. She had expected a hopeful look upon her doctor's face, but had gotten a somber one instead.

Now the intermittent susurrus of the air conditioner whispered anxiously around her, reminding her that she shouldn't have taken all those good physical exams for granted.

"Okay," Gillian sighed, trying to sound casual while shifting nervously in her seat. "There's no fooling me today; I know you've got something dire to tell me about my exam. I'll spare you the revisions you're probably making to the final edit -- so just give me the facts sans the expected bedside manner."

Dr. Hammond mirrored her own nervous smile and cleared his throat. "Here I am, trying to soften the blow and you've already done it for me." Then he paused for a moment as he looked down at his desk, resettling the gold-rimmed glasses on his face. "You are familiar with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS?"

Gillian's hands gripped the handrests of her chair tightly. "'Lou Gehrig's Disease', right?" she said, her voice cracking in spite of herself. So that's why I had to take all those additional tests -- I thought it was just stress. "I thought maybe I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Epstein-Barre..."

"We ran the tests over and over," Dr. Hammond said, shaking his head sadly, "so there's no mistaking that it's ALS. In fact," pausing again, "you have the, um, fatal variety: progressive bulbar paralysis, where the degeneration is centered on the neurons of the cranial nerves and brainstem. As it progresses chewing, talking and swallowing become more difficult."

"You said it's fatal," Gillian said, her eyes closed, brow creased. "So how long do I have before I completely fall apart and die?" This is too luridly surreal to be actually happening, she thought frantically to herself.

"It could be a year or it could be three years -- there's no way of knowing exactly how long you'll live. In the meantime some symptoms may be controlled but..."

"But I'm going to deteriorate to the very end anyway, with absolutely no hope for a cure, right?" Gillian stood up jerkily, grabbing at the khaki linen jacket she'd draped over the back of the chair. Suddenly she felt her right arm stiffen, the muscles vibrating with spasm, as she drew her arm through the sleeve. "If it's all the same to you, doctor, I'd rather not prolong my suffering -- so you won't have to recite a chemical laundry list of the drugs I'll need."

She was out of the office before she could hear Dr. Hammond's protests.

###

Two weeks had passed since the fateful diagnosis and Gillian was still sequestered in her Muirlands home. She couldn't bear to tell her staff at McDaniel and Associates the truth; perhaps eventually -- but not now. How would I tell them anyway? Well, gang, it's like this: I'm going to waste away for about a year or so and then die. Meeting's adjourned. So she'd lied, telling them that her doctor had told her she was suffering from stress and needed prolonged rest.

Which wasn't entirely a fib; she had been running herself ragged for months ever since they'd clinched those two new out-of-state accounts. She'd spent the last three months shuttling between San Diego, Chicago and New York; her body still wasn't sure which time zone it was in, for jet lag had now become an integral part of her body chemistry.

Now she haunted her own house, ghostly pale in her terry cloth bath robe as she lay sprawled on the sofa in front of her television set watching the phosphor images strobe across her emotionless face. Dirty dishes littered the glass coffee table and books and magazines lay stacked at her feet and scattered in a circle around the sofa. Stretching a stiffened leg and accidentally nudging a pile of periodicals, she heard the slap of the magazines as they rolled on top of other magazines, but paid them no heed.

As Gillian ran a hand through her thin dark blonde hair and leaned forward to grab a fistful of pretzels, she caught a glimpse of herself reflected in a square of Mylar stuck to the back of a magazine. At least now she had an excuse for looking drab: she was sick, really sick, after all. No one had ever acknowledged her as looking anything but ordinary and plain -- or worse, "passively attractive." She'd once used that phrase to describe herself in a "personals" ad, honesty being her best policy. Honesty hadn't served her well, though -- for she'd gotten not a single response.

Perhaps she should have noted in the ad her financial status: that she'd inherited a sizable fortune from her paternal grandfather at an early age, using it to eventually start her own successful advertising agency. But that would only have drawn the gold-diggers to her in droves. I'd rather be alone than worry whether the man I'm dating is plumbing my wealth and skulking around behind my back.

Thirty-one years old and not a single serious relationship to her name; she just couldn't trust anyone who said "I love you" too soon. She didn't know if it was because she felt somehow unworthy of love, as her analyst had once suggested -- or that she was simply incapable of trusting anyone at all. As far as Gillian was concerned, both theories could be blended together in a psycho-babble soup and served to her without a spoon, for all the good it would do.

Bored with the relentless internal dialogue surging through her mind, Gillian scooped up the television remote and released the mute button. The talk show hostess suddenly stopped lip-syncing as she addressed the guests sitting in a semi-circle around her.

"--can travel to different time periods?" the hostess said, the studio lights bouncing off her blonde lacquered helmet of hair. Gillian marveled at the tight suit the woman wore; the skirt creased deeply at the hips whenever the woman moved. "How is this possible?"

One of the guests, a woman in her late fifties or early sixties, spoke in measured, oddly resonant tones -- as if she wasn't sure she should answer. "You see, I believe that there are rifts all over the world, much like earthquake faults. These rifts bridge the space/time continuum, allowing a traveler to slip into another time period using an object from a specific era."

"Would it be possible to travel to the future as well?"

The woman smiled with a regal, patient courtesy, as if addressing a child who's asked one too many ridiculous questions. "Not by my method; since we have no objects from the future, it would be impossible to be guided there through such a rift. However, I suppose, if someone had journeyed to the past, they might be able to return to our time."

"I have been informed," the hostess said, her tone dropping conspiratorially, "that you don't have to time travel only with your physical body, that you can actually send your consciousness into a body from the other time period. I believe it's called 'mind diving.' How is this possible?"

"It's just a theory of mine," the woman answered, her voice mildly irritated. "And it's something I really don't care to discuss before the world at large." Then, frowning, added, "Where did you hear of this? I never discussed anything of the kind with you or your producers."

The hostess glanced over her shoulder and nodded at the audience, winking. "Well we do have our sources," the woman said brightly, as she impatiently tapped the stage with her gunmetal-grey Prada pumps. "You have mentioned this 'theory' of yours to members of your community, haven't you?"

The guests glanced at each other quizzically.

"You have sources in Sedona, Arizona?," the guest said with sarcastic incredulity. "Geez, I only mentioned...uh... 'mind diving' conversationally. You're only asking me about it because you want to ridicule me. No, I will not discuss this -- not here, on national television."

One of the guests, a tall man with a thin face and dark hair tied in a ponytail, turned to the woman. "Well, I would like to hear more about this...what was it called? 'Mind diving.'" He patted the woman's wrist gently. "Don't worry, dear -- you're among compatriots in spirituality: we won't laugh."

The woman looked down at the man's hand on her wrist as if a snake had slithered across her hand. "I will not discuss it -- it's just a theory, with no basis in fact at all! It's not even worth discussing..."

The hostess tilted her chin upward. "This 'mind diving' is no more theory than 'channeling' -- so let's discuss it. This is, after all, a talk show."

The woman leveled her gaze at the hostess as she spoke through tightened lips. "We can talk about anything you like -- except 'mind diving.' If you insist on harassing me about it, then I'm leaving." She paused, her face flushed, eyes wide with confusion. "Oh heck -- I'm leaving NOW."

The woman pulled the tiny microphone from the lapel of her jacket and flung it upon the coffee table in front of her. She rose from her chair and walked purposefully off the stage, pausing for a moment to make sure she'd taken the correct exit.

Gillian muted the sound and watched the hostess pantomime her annoyance to the audience and the other guests. Something in the angry guest's voice told Gillian that the woman wasn't your average run-of-the-mill crackpot; and the mere fact that she did not want to exploit her talent any further seemed to validate this.

On impulse, Gillian pulled the cordless phone out from under a pile of paperbacks and rapidly punched the television station's phone number with a trembling forefinger. If the woman wouldn't reveal "mind-diving" to the general public, perhaps she might reveal it to an individual.

It was worth a shot.

Before someone could answer, Gillian slammed the phone into its cradle. What was she--nuts? "Mind-diving," of all things! Am I so desperate I'd really buy into something as ludicrous?

But a part of her thought she was.

###

Gillian spent the next two days trying not to think of mind--diving. It wasn't working.

She had discovered that diverting her mind from such thoughts required that she keep busy. But how could she do that here, at home in her bathrobe? She simply couldn't concentrate on her work -- and she had brought a pile of it with her from the office. She would riffle the pages of ad copy and hear the errant thoughts articulated in the whispers of the paper in her lap. She would boot-up her computer and hear those thoughts communicated to her in the machine's chirps and beeps. She would hear the thoughts in the soft clacking as she tapped her fingertips upon the keyboard.

Mind-diving. It had a pathetic, hopeful vibration that numbed all other thoughts away. And as those thoughts were pathetically hopeful, so was she. She was desperate -- there was no denying it. Desperate enough that she would embrace a concept so ridiculous and outlandish as mind--diving. After all, what else was left to her: a year, maybe, of wasting away and eventual death? The thought of dying one day had always intrigued her in a perverse way, yet the prospect of suffering her way to that death scared the hell out her. Scared her enough to consider any escape, however absurd.

Gillian's hand trembled a little as she reached for the phone.