"But I don't," I began.
She put her finger to her lips to quiet me.
"When you fall asleep here, your other body, back in 1976, will awaken, hopefully remembering everything you've experienced here in 2150 and believing in its reality-its validity."
"But Lea-"
"Please, Jon. Just ask C.I. We must make every minute count if we're to have even a chance of seeing one another again in this 'time'," she said quickly.
Then, gently touching my face, she hesitated for a moment, as her incredible eyes poured forth into mine love, joy, pain, tragedy, acceptance, and peace.
"'Bye for now," she said warmly, almost to herself, and left me alone with C.I.
Forcing myself to trust, believe, and act on what she had said, I began asking questions, but each question seemed to lead to another. I became fascinated with this magnificent learning technique.
To be able to both see and hear the answers to my inquiries was a tremendous advantage I. compared it to my usual 1976 research procedures. I remembered the long waits in the library for materials from the stacks, the frustration at being told that pertinent volumes were already checked out by someone else or were never available in the first place. And there were the seemingly endless hours of reading through tomes of academically contrived chaff sifting out the wheat to be found floating there on seas of pedantic verbosity.
For the next three hours I sat spellbound, soaking up information about 2150, and learning more and faster than ever before in my life.
C.I. informed me that it had an almost unlimited number of data banks filled with information on every subject man has ever experienced. When I asked how this was possible, C.I. began describing technological processes so advanced and complex that I interrupted, afraid of spending my allotted time unwisely.
C.I. addressed my level of understanding by explaining that its own beginnings were represented by a learning device designed for use-in the '70s and called Computer Administered Instruction (C.A.I.).
My interest intensified. I had heard of C.A.I., but I had never experienced it, so I decided to test C.I.'s ability on a subject I knew more about-myself!
C.I. began, "You entered this lifetime on September 12, 1948, the only child of Ben and Jessica Lake. Your father was the town physician, your mother the librarian, prior to her marriage to Dr. Lake. On your first day in school you met Karl Johnson, who was to become your best friend. After the death of your mother during your second-grade experience, and the death of Karl's father two years later, not; Karl became your stepbrother the summer before you entered junior high school."
"You tutored Karl through school, and he returned the favor by getting you out of social jams which you seemed to have a propensity for. Take the homecoming dance during your senior year, for example. Even as Most Valuable Player on your football team, which you were voted that year, you couldn't take both Jan and Valerie as your date to the same dance-and you did promise them both. Thanks to Karl, you were saved again."
C.I. went on, "There were some things that even Karl couldn't handle, though, like Valerie's pregnancy. That was the only time your father ever cursed at you. He didn't like the idea of aborting a pregnancy, but he had a strong conviction that no one has a right to create a child that he is not both, psychologically and financially able to care for. That lesson in sexual responsibility was dearly paid for by you, by Valerie, and by your father. Fortunately, you learned it well."
"This and other hard-earned lessons left you with a relatively effective life philosophy which helped both you and Karl throughout your college careers. Karl, if you recall, was quite a rebel. He was constantly fighting, "... the ridiculous nature of most school subjects," or "... that monumental madness called the Vietnam War." You were the calming influence, reminding him that what is wrong for one person may be totally right for another. And that each person can only learn when he is ready to learn. Your position that professors are just the victims of their own psychological needs and their own limiting belief systems never fitted quite right with Karl. He always felt it was the students who are the victims."
"After your degrees in philosophy and psychology, respectively, you and Karl were drafted and within a very few months landed in Vietnam. There you served together until that final patrol where your platoon was destroyed. Karl used the one eye he had left to find his way back through miles of jungle with you, on his back, unconscious, and minus your right leg."
"Karl was as bitter about your injury as he was about his own, perhaps more so. You, on the other hand, felt that this was your karma and that, sad as it might be, it was necessary for your growth during that lifetime.
"While you, too, felt that the Vietnam War was a mistake from the start, you had by that time accepted a philosophy which held that truth is subjective and that whatever a person believes is true, is true for him. This, you felt, required you to – respect the right of each individual to believe whatever he wanted to. You could not condemn him for acting on that belief even though you disagreed with it.
"It was this very philosophy that led you to sacrifice your own leg rather than destroy another person.
"It was also this philosophy that got you involved in the Ph.D. dissertation that you and Karl are now writing on the development of values and self-esteem in children. And it is that philosophy, which provided the first link in the time translation path to bring you here to 2150 for whatever period of time is possible. But you can talk it better than you can practice it, Jon.
"If you're satisfied with the accuracy of our data banks, we can go on to examine other significant lifetimes. If not, we can get far more specific regarding your present life-such as-"
"Wait a minute!" I interrupted. "I've read a little about reincarnation, but what do you mean by 'significant' other lives?"
"Yes, we know that you're familiar with what your age calls the theory of reincarnation and what, within your concept of time, you refer to as 'past lives.' Here in 2150 it is no longer considered a theory, it's a fact, though it's based on a very limited basic assumption regarding time.
"If you wish, we can provide you with information on as many of your 'past' lifetimes as you would like to remember. We suggest that you limit this exploration to include only significant lives, meaning those whose lessons pertain specifically to the challenges of your present life. We would like you to keep in mind, however, that all these lives are, from a broader point of view, occurring simultaneously."
Juggling priorities, I asked about 2150's concept of time and got totally lost in the details of C.I.'s doubtless excellent, but very complex, presentation of their metric time system. So I changed the subject enough to, hopefully, bring answers to within my comprehension.
"I don't understand how you could tell me about my present life, much less about my past ones, or, if I understood you correctly, some of my future lives," I puzzled.
"We have obtained information about you in two ways," C.I. explained. "First, from your own subconscious mind, and secondly, from the universal mind in which is recorded everything that is happening, everything that ever has happened, and everything that ever will happen to your immortal mind. The system is very similar to that used by our C.I. data banks. Most of the data is now available to us, though we're still establishing electromolecular-what you would think of as telepathic-for some of it."
"But how do you have access to my immortal mind?" I asked.
"You are sitting in a chair that provides us an electromolecular connection to all your memories as well as all emental* and physical data on your body right down to the sub-atomic level. However, since one of your twin souls, Lea, has a mind structure identical to your own, everything about either of you is recorded in both your mind and hers. We have this 'telepathic' connection to the mind of every member of the Macro society. This establishes a partial connection to the macrocosm."