On the Head of a Pin by Walter Mosley

Author:Walter Mosley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

There were flecks of ochre and green in Zintel’s brown eyes. They became more pronounced with his wariness.

He pulled a bit and I realized that I was still holding him.

“When I was a child,” he said at last, “my father used to take me to a stream just a little south of Venice Beach. It wasn’t so built up back then and there were crayfish that you could catch with your hands…”

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the dandy’s words.

“… or by net,” he continued. “And, and … Oh my God…”

I didn’t have to turn around to know that the memory he was experiencing was being represented on the screen.

I opened my eyes just in time to see Cosmo hurrying from the room.

“How did you do that?” Zintel was asking.

“It’s the Sail,” I said, exhaustion moving through my limbs. “It, it … Everything that ever happened, everyone and everything that ever lived has left an impression. This screen can connect with those impressions.”

“Like ghosts?” Zintel asked. There was no vestige of the official left. A deep experience had yanked him by the roots of his mind and he was moved.

“Yes,” I said. “I believe so.”

“How can that be?”

Joe and the rest of the employees from JTE had gathered around us.

“Their souls are carried, enveloped in another co-existing dimension. These spirits do not dissipate when the body dies. Vestiges of memory and self-memory live on, kept in place by yet other aspects of an unseen world.”

“Horseshit!” Pinkus proclaimed.

No one responded to him.

“How do you know this, Josh?” Joe asked.

Thalla appeared in my mind. It was her touch that gave knowledge, awareness. We had shared something that neither of us realized at the time.

“It was Pinkus,” I lied.

“What?” the thin-lipped racist uttered. “I didn’t say anything like that.”

“Sure you did,” I said. “You said that you saw … certain images when you were alone with the Sail. I realized that there is a two-way communication between that realm and this—that there’s something beckoning to us, calling out beyond what we know.”

I could almost feel the hatred coming off the programmer. He despised me more than my girlfriend, Lena Berston, had ever loved me. The intimacy of this revelation sent a mild spasm through my nervous system.

* * *

FOR THE NEXT SEVEN HOURS Joe and Ana, Dak and Doreen, and even spiteful Todd Pinkus tested my theory. Cosmo returned after a couple of hours and joined in.

At first we approached the Sail one at a time imagining moments in our lives. This method only worked with Pinkus. Every time he approached the Sail alone it began to show different ways in which children were tortured and killed. Finally he fled the room, unable to face the demons his presence called forth.

After the general failure of the one-on-Sail approach we tried the interaction method. First Joe stood with his back to the screen like I had and was approached by each of us concentrating on a particular memory. This method only worked when I was the focal point.

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