Does Berkeley Exist? 8 of 8: Skeptical Summary

Skeptical Summary

 

So there you have it. Time control, a unicorn, a ten-second vacation, mammary planet, a dream room, and the ghost of a ghost; I witnessed all of those marvels in Berkeley.

In each case, the true weirdness wasn’t the weirdness; it was the suspiciously brisk resurgence of normalcy. The clock beat me, the unicorn was a goat, I zapped back to the street corner, women shape-shifted back, the dream matched the room, and Walter spooked me by not being a spook. How neat! How convenient! How life-like!

It all made perfect sense at the time; but now that I look back, I’m skeptical. Are such shenanigans possible?  Is Berkeley?

I doubt it, but even so, I was there. I lived in Berkeley. I saw those things. So if Berkeley doesn’t exist, then neither do I. What’s more, I wrote these tales, and you’ve read them; so if I don’t exist, then neither do these tales, and neither do you.

If you’re real, then so are these stories, and so am I, and so is Berkeley; but so, too, were the preposterous events here described.

So I ask you, dear reader:

Does Berkeley exist?

 

Does Berkeley Exist? 7 of 6: Ghost of a Ghost

          Ghost of a Ghost

         

          It was the day before scattering the ashes of my friend Walter. I visited the grieving, turbulent family’s street. I write ‘street’, not ‘house’, because they had two houses on that street, at opposite ends of the block. Such was his family’s turbulence. I could say more, but that would be a long story.

          The ash-scattering was to happen far away, early the next day. We all had to start out early in the morning, so I stayed over for the night. The only bed free for me was Walter’s.

          As I prepared for bed, I wondered if I would dream of him. Will I meet his ghost? In Walter’s turbulent circle of dramatic fantasists, for him to become a ghost would be normal. But I wasn’t scared. In fact I welcomed a spooky encounter. I turned off the light, laid down in Walter’s bed, and closed my eyes.

          The next thing I knew, it was morning. I was awake and refreshed. My mind was clear. I remembered no dreams at all.

          That’s when I knew, deep down, that Walter was gone. Ever since then I have been haunted by the presence of his absence.

 

Does Berkeley Exist, 6 of 8: Dream Room

          Dream Room

          I was sitting up in bed, reading a book. It was late, I was tired. Then I noticed something odd; the words of the book were changing and shifting. But why? Then I noticed something even stranger; my eyes were shut. I felt my eyelids firmly sealed together; yet I could see. But how?

I realized that I was asleep and dreaming. Within that lucid dream, I looked up from the book and scanned the room. There was the bookshelf, there were the knick-knacks, there was the couch, there was the computer desk, there were the windows and shades… all dreams.

          Then I willed myself awake. I opened my eyes, and the first thing I noticed was that I was slumped over. I sat up, closed the book, and looked around. Same bookshelf, same knick-knacks, same couch, same computer desk, same windows and shades.

          The two rooms were identical.

 

Does Berkeley Exist? 5 of 8: Mammary Planet

          Mammary Planet

 

          The nurse said, “You need to schedule another blood test next week.”

          I shrugged. “OK.”

          “And to test hormone levels,” she continued, “you’ll have to abstain from all sexual activity.”

          “All sexual activity? For a week?”

          “Mm-hm.”

          “Including masturbation?”

          “Mm-hm.”

          I shrugged. A week without masturbation sounded easy enough. We scheduled the blood test, I went home and put away my one-hand magazines. (This was before the Internet.)

          A day came and went without inconvenience, then another. But on the third day something odd happened. I was walking down Telegraph Avenue, and I noticed that every woman on the street had unusually large breasts. Not just some of the women; all of them. This strange change in half the human population of Berkeley persisted all day, and I realized that it wasn’t them, it was me.

          My perceptions were distorted, due to hormonal imbalance. Every woman’s breasts weren’t really bigger than before; they just seemed that way to me. I was hormone-addled, and seeing things oddly. I knew this, but knowledge did not decrease the perceptual distortion. 

          This effect increased on the fourth day. Every woman, everywhere, had an amazingly ample bosom. I knew that was an illusion, but it was a very convincing illusion. I tried not to look, or seem to notice; but my judgment was probably as impaired as my perception. I hope that the women of Berkeley ignored my astonishment, or forgave me.

          By the fifth and sixth days, I was adrift in an impossible parallel world of fantastic mammary antigravitation. As before, knowledge of illusion did not dispel illusion. I knew that I was hallucinating, but still I saw the mirage as plain as day. I was amazed by how florid the hallucination was, yet also how clear and specific. Nothing else looked any different.

          On the seventh day I went to the clinic and gave a blood sample. Then I went home and got out the one-hand magazines.

          The very next day, every woman’s breasts had returned to their normal size.

 

         

 

 

Does Berkeley exist? 4 of 8: Ten Second Vacation

Ten Second Vacation

 

I was standing on a street corner in Berkeley. There was noise, crowds, and traffic. I had places to go and things to do, but the WALK light had not yet turned, so I had nothing to do. It was a moment that did not count, and I had no expectations of it.

I looked up, I looked down the street, and there beyond the end of the street, beyond the edge of town, across the bay...

... a mountain.

It was small and blue with distance. It was streaked with brown and green. Its profile was rough and fractal.

I tuned out everything but the mountain and the WALK sign. Anchored to the sign, I mentally leapt to the mountain. I took a vacation there. I bathed in its blue, brown, and green. I hiked up and down the mountain, I inspected its plants and rocks, I climbed to the top...

- then BLINK -

... and I was back on the street corner, looking at the WALK sign, which had just turned. I looked both ways, stepped off the curb, and crossed the street.

 

 

 

Does Berkeley Exist? 3 of 8: Thurber's World

          Thurber’s World

 

          I was visiting Marion Zimmer Bradley’s house. After trucing a few rounds of dilemma chess with the fantasy writer’s son, I stepped out to their back yard for a stroll and a breath of fresh air.

          It was twilight; the zenith had darkened to deep blue, the horizon all the way around glowed orange and red; the “girdle of Venus”. A crescent moon shone, and a few stars, and the planet Venus too.

          I stopped, amazed; for there in front of me stood a goat. An Angora goat, waist-tall, with silky white hair… and a single horn.

He was Lancelot, a successful animal-husbandry experiment by Morning Glory and Otter G’Zell. At the goat’s birth, they had surgically fused Lancelot’s two hornbuds together; the fused hornbud grew into an imposing monohorn.

          Lancelot was a unicorn. That surgically-modified Angora goat looked like he had stepped out of a medieval tapestry. Morning Glory and Otter G’Zell claimed that such surgery was possible in medieval Europe; so maybe unicorns were real enough.

          Just then, in the evening twilight, with Moon and Venus overhead, that unicorn looked more than real; for Lancelot was eating Marion Zimmer Bradley’s rosebushes. One of James Thurber’s stories was about a unicorn eating the rosebushes in a backyard garden. In that surreal moment, I learned that a visit to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s place can send you into a Thurber story.

          I also learned, by observation, that unicorn droppings are about one centimeter long and about half a centimeter wide.

Does Berkeley exist? 2 of 8: Time Control

             Time Control

 

I know what you’re thinking. Berkeley, weird experiences; I must have been tripping, right? But I swear that drugs had little to do with most of these stories.

But not, I admit, this one.

I was flying sky-high when I noticed something odd about the wall clock; its second hand was leaving a trail behind it. Somehow it occurred to me that I could slow down the clock if I paid it close attention. So I concentrated on the clock, and by golly, it worked! For a moment it visibly slowed down!

I sat back, panting. Slowing down the clock is hard work. I sat up; I looked hard at the clock; I gave it a burst of fierce attention. The second hand briefly slowed down again.

So far, so good. Then I asked myself; can I make it stop?

Gimlet-eyed, I glared at the clock. It slowed. I stared harder, it slowed some more. I pushed even harder…

… and failed. I sat back, gasping, and the second hand swept on.

The clock was stronger than me.