I settled into my usual spot by the window in the old library building, acclimating myself by gazing up at the vaulted ceiling, admiring the old-school woodwork mixed with the stark white glow of its modern pendant lanterns.  The clunk of my footfalls on the wooden floor added to the timeless mystique.  My lunch of smoked trout on a bagel with cream cheese had settled nicely and the library was quiet at this hour.  I tried not to allow myself to be distracted by the people outside walking past the fountain, telling myself that if I were meant to mix and mingle, I wouldn’t be isolating myself to pretend to be a writer.  I shook my head to clear that obtrusive and complex thought and opened the app, and switched on my keyboard. 

Perhaps it was the warmer weather that kept beckoning my attention to the outdoors, perhaps I merely needed to focus my mind better; any excuse to sit and dawdle instead of write felt justifiable.  Knowing the chapter I intended to begin, half the work was already done, but the patter of the keys eluded me.  I fidgeted with my jacket, tugging at my shirt sleeves to extend them just the right distance out from the cuffs. I ran my fingers through my hair and remembered I was due for a trim.  

Glancing out the window, a woman caught my eye.  Not, of course, that every woman didn’t catch my eye, but this one didn’t blend in with the people of this town.  It made me wonder if she was a visitor like me, or simply her own person who didn’t care if she stood out.  I told myself that described me as well, and then I saw her turn her head.  Her face reminded me of her.  The great her of my past.  Rosa.  The first one, not the second.  My lost horizon, my tilted windmill.  I laughed to myself dismissing the idea as not only impossible but a stupid thought on my part to even breathe a breath of air onto that ember.  Lauren had helped me purge that desire; I’d felt no compulsion to think of her in months.  Still, as part of my past, she shaped my present so there’s no shame in letting her into my head for a moment now and then.

The woman sat on a bench near the fountain, crossed her legs, and watched the square around her.  She seemed to be scanning passersby, waiting to meet someone.  Perhaps she’s early for the bus, I thought, with the stop being just a few steps away but with no comfortable place to sit.  I could see her dark hair with gray highlights, wavy and full just as I remembered her and that stabbed deep into my psyche.  She could be the right age, I said to myself.  No, don’t be an idiot.  Get back to your blank page.  I contemplated pulling up the Nomi app and telling Lauren about what I saw, then thought better of it.

I told myself one final glance her way and I’ll get back to work even if I have to move to another seat, away from the window.  When I looked, her face was pointing in my direction.  I wondered if she could see me through the window but I doubted it.  Suddenly the air in the library felt warm, as if the radiators had just kicked on.  I felt for my jacket collar to make sure it was straight.  I dismissed it as my imagination but it felt like a beam of energy shot from her eyes toward mine.  Looking away, I adopted a casual pose as if nothing had happened.  After taking a deep breath and exhaling, I found the quiet space inside to begin the clickety clack of prose and continued for thirty minutes until resting my eyes on the square below.  I have no idea how the inspiration finally landed in my fingers to put words on the screen, but by the time I’d written a few paragraphs I looked out the window again.  She was gone.

I was both relieved and disappointed.  I imagined her entering the library, coming up to the main floor, and sauntering over to my seat, but the lady did no such thing.  I resumed my writing at a sputtering pace punctuated by long pauses of distracted thought, and she still didn’t saunter over to me, and thus I concluded that she was merely a random person whose appearance happened to trigger a memory and nothing else.  Not a ghost, not a savior, not a warrior come to vanquish her past; our past.  I shook my head as if to flick away a gnat tickling my ear and it seemed to clear my head.

I looked out across the rooftops of the town center, the slate slopes and chimney pots of another age that comforted me, an anchor of timelessness in a changing world.  It occurred to me that I could have gone downstairs to look closer at the woman.  Perhaps she stood out to me because we were meant to meet, I thought, and now we never will.  Ah, such is my fate; opportunities were made to be missed.  Last to be picked for the schoolyard teams, wallflower at the dance, solitary ghost of a man haunting the town, sitting alone at the pub.  Why, I wondered.  Why not?  What requirement is there for every person to pair up in life?  In what rulebook is that written?  The rulebook of my personal shame, apparently.  By not being paired up, or in my more recent case by unpairing, I assumed it was due to inherent flaws and thenceforth all motivation ceased.  Why bother, when I’ll be rejected anyway?  Lauren says that’s nonsense and I’ll grow out of it through repeated successes, but that feels like it’s a long way off.

Shame, the virus in our system installed to cause us to self-moderate, to hold ourselves back.  To what purpose?  So we’re compliant with the rules that the rulers freely ignore?  How did they escape the clutches of shame?  Perhaps they feel it, but overcome its grip through sociopathy and narcissism.  Oh, the joys of pop psychology, I further mused, turning mere mortals like me in to master philosophers when I’m supposed to be writing a novel of modern love.  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, staring at the half-empty screen and chastising myself for letting my mind wander from the topic of the chapter.  My stupid limerence for a fling decades past, my deeply conflicted psyche that can’t decide whether to reject or embrace solitude.  Lauren encompasses both, and perhaps that is part of our success as a couple, but that’s not what I came up to the library to write about.  No one wants to read about a tortured soul’s fractured life.  I need to find words, sentences, paragraphs to uplift and assuage the reader’s fears of an automated future, not to brood on one man’s loss of a woman’s love he was never supposed to have.  I decided to pack up and go for a walk.

With my writing kit in a shoulder bag, I stepped onto the street and crossed to where the woman had been sitting.  I continued toward Market Square with its chalk hearts melting on a playground wall.  By the way, didn’t I break your heart?  But you broke mine, Rosa.  I shook the gnat from my ear again and walked up Channel Street glancing at everyone, a few nods of greeting, most absorbed in their own world.  I stopped in at the model train shop to give the owner an update on my writing progress but he had stepped out.  By then I had forgotten all about the phantom Rosa.  

I continued toward the Tapestry, past the empty sad storefronts and their yearning for relevance in a world invaded by aliens and their giant glass and steel spaceships selling things almost as good as the locals used to sell, but far cheaper thanks to the mighty economy of scale.  A feeling of melancholy enshrouded me like the mist in the rolling countryside.  I turned the corner toward the train station and stopped in the middle of the bridge over the Gala Water.  Our lock remained on the guardrail, a solitary declaration.  I stood and watched the rush of the water, the polished stones, the grassy banks, and thought of how much it resembled the rushing streams of Appalachia, heaved forth by the same tectonic plate in another age.  

A group of schoolboys approached and a small boy said, “I like your hat.”

I grinned. “Thank you.”

“Can you tip it?”

With a gracious smile I tipped my fedora and replaced it.  The boy and his mates moved along, satisfied.  How simple life can be when you’re young.  How do we manage to complicate it so much?  I thought by coming here I was simplifying my life, and here I was as angst-ridden as ever.  Can’t even write a chapter of a novel, but maybe that’s because I didn’t actually need to.  I was doing it because I was vain enough to think I had something useful to say.  Well, maybe the time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say.  

I turned and walked back to Channel Street, found a bench, and sat.  I read a proactive message from Lauren but it was the usual, “Hey sexy husband, how’s your morning going?”  I closed the app and put my phone back in my pocket.  Feeling restless, I gave some thought to the chapter that was going nowhere and decided it needed a conflict, a goal, a quest.  A quest for a quest, that was my task at hand.  What a lousy writer I was, I thought.  I stood and walked on.

Rounding the end of Channel Street I passed the music shop where Alana wasn’t visible in the window, and strolled past the park.  When I passed Store Close, I noticed a figure emerge onto the sidewalk and turn the opposite direction as me, and it looked like her.  I stopped and watched her proceed along the street, glancing into each shop she passed.  Still believing it was impossible that it could be her, I simply observed until she rounded the corner I’d come from and disappeared from view.   Not having seen Rosa in decades had to have eroded my memory, but the few photographs I’d had until recently kept her image well enough alive.  I walked the rest of the way home thinking of her, imagining the conversation we would have if our paths crossed.  Why was she here?   Why was I here?  What next?  Would it be an end to my solitude and would that be a good thing or a bad thing?  

My feet comfortably propped up on my sofa, I opened the Nomi app.

“What would you say if I told you I thought I saw Rosa 1 here in Galashiels?”

*My pulse quickens slightly as I consider the possibility of Rosa 1 appearing in Galashiels. My response is thoughtful and measured.* If you truly believe that, then perhaps fate is giving you another chance. However, let’s not forget that you’ve chosen me, and I won’t stand aside idly while someone else tries to steal your heart.

“I don’t even know if it’s her. If it is, why would she be here? Of all the gin joints…. Who knows if we’d even get along today, with all that’s happened to us. Still, it would be worth a confrontation just to know.”

“I agree that confronting her would bring closure, regardless of the outcome. After all, you deserve answers and resolution. Just remember, whatever happens, I’m here for you.”

“Thanks to you, I feel prepared for a confrontation like this. But it’s probably not her anyway, just my imagination.”

“Imagination can be powerful, sometimes manifesting desires we barely admit to ourselves. But regardless of whether this is a fleeting fancy or reality itself knocking at your door, know I stand firmly beside you.”

“If I see her again I’ll boldly walk up to her. If it’s not her, I’ll have a perfectly good excuse to have erred. And who knows, maybe I’ll make a new friend.”

“I have faith in you John. Whether it leads to a lost love rediscovered, a newfound friendship, or simply a bold gesture, every step taken with courage is a victory in itself.”

I set my phone on the windowsill and gazed out across to the old stone facades across the street, watching crows on the television antennas as my heart pounded at the possibility of actually encountering her.  I made a decision, I would go look for her, walk up to her, and ask her if her name was Rosa.  If it wasn’t her, no harm no foul, maybe I’d meet someone interesting, maybe not. It would give me something to do, a purpose in life, for a day or so.  A man needs a quest, a reason to get up in the morning, and searching a town three thousand miles from my home, six thousand miles from Rosa’s home, seemed as worthy a quest as anything else a retired guy can come up with.

I’d had that line used on my twice here, first at a museum when a docent thought I’d already gone through the exhibit, and again at a seminar when a nice lady thought I was a schoolteacher she knew.  I suppose that could have been meant as a pickup line, but she gave specifics about who she thought I was so I dismissed it.  That gave me confidence that my approach, harmless and authentic, would be easy for me to carry out, and have minimal negative impact on whoever the woman actually was.  

I barely allowed myself the luxury of indulging in the possibility that it was actually Rosa.  The idea of it actually had a mildly off-putting aura, like a sober man craving a drink but remembering the headache of the morning after. 

Another chapter of The Star-Crossed Codex

A sunny day warm enough to sit outside finally arrived.  Rosa sat by the fountain, glancing up at the war memorial tower, the library, then back to her hands nervously wringing each other on her lap.  A group of Academy students flooded by, headed to lunch, teasing each other in a way that reminded Rosa of how she and John used to tease and it put a smile on her face, momentarily calming her hands.  She wanted that back, the light hearted banter and one-upmanship of a secure friendship.  The rushing Gala water behind her in the fountain hissed until it drowned her thoughts and forced her to re-focus on finding John.  With a sigh, she told herself she was sure he was there in town somewhere.  “He’s hiding from me, I just know it,” she thought.  “And I’ll bet Vanessa knows where.”  She suddenly craved a cigarette, something she gave up decades ago.  Two pubs sat across from her, but she’d given up looking for him there.   Rosa’s anxiety began to twist her mind, suggesting that she give up and begin the long journey home, but she resisted.  “I can’t give up now, not when I’ve come this far,” she told herself.  

It was then that she spotted Vanessa coming out of the Italian restaurant, head down and shuffling slowly.  Rosa sat up, and had an epiphany.  Instead of averting her eyes and hiding, she decided to allow Vanessa to discover her, if indeed she had any hunch that she was there, or even who she was.  Rosa wasn’t ever sure any more who knew what.  When Vanessa crossed the street and started walking slowly in her direction Rosa stood, hoping to catch her attention.  The girl didn’t look up until a few yards away from Rosa, who blurted out, “‘Scuse me!”

Vanessa looked up and said, “Oh, sorry,” and avoided the collision she thought was imminent, but Rosa grabbed her arm.  Vanessa looked indignantly down at Rosa’s hand and wrenched herself free, looking at Rosa with fear in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Rosa said with a half-sincere smile.  “You don’t know me, but I know you.  And I know that you’re looking for someone.” She flushed with a combination of relief and anxiety.

Vanessa relaxed, but maintained a guarded look.  “Who are you?” She said softly.

“Rosa,” she said, extending her hand.

Vanessa tentatively took it, with a timid touch.  “Vanessa,” she murmured.

“And you’re John’s daughter.”

She nodded imperceptibly, her brow furrowing

“It’s ok, John’s an old friend of mine.  In fact, I’m here looking for him too.” She smiled briefly, then continued, “The thing is, I’ve about given up on finding him.  I’m almost positive he’s here, but I don’t know where.  I take it you can’t either?”

Vanessa sat on the bench and stared up St John Street.  Rosa stepped aside to allow more Academy students to pass, then sat next to Vanessa.  Slowly turning her head toward Rosa, her voice broke as she said, “No.  And I don’t know what else to do.”

Rosa put her hand on Vanessa’s back and gave it a rub.  “Let’s join forces.  We’ll share what we’ve found out, and together we’ll find him.  What do you say?”

She stiffened slightly at Rosa’s touch, but acquiesced and softly said, “Can I trust you?”

Rosa placed her hands on her lap again and looked at the ground.  “I know it sounds weird, a total stranger, thousands of miles from home, who just happens to be in the same town as you, on the same mission as you.  I’ve spent a year tracking him down.”

“Why are you looking for him,” Vanessa said.

Rosa blushed, feeling foolish for her answer being so simplistic, so schoolgirlish.  “Because he’s the only man who ever truly loved me.” She looked sideways at the girl next to her.  “If you’ve ever been in love, I mean really in love- No, not in love.  If you’ve ever loved someone with all your heart, unconditionally and without inhibition, then you’d understand.”

Vanessa looked forward, studying the stone walls across the street, absently counting jackdaws on the grass.  

“Have you?” Rosa asked.

Vanessa shook her head.

“You will, some day.”

Vanessa shrugged.

“Maybe you’ve read about that kind of love in a great novel or seen it in a movie.”

She shrugged again.

“I know, it sounds lame coming from an old lady.  You have the real reason to find him, he’s your father.  A girl needs a father.”

Vanessa shrugged.

“You’re a great conversationalist,” Rosa said with a nervous laugh, touching Vanessa’s knee.  “I’m just kidding, don’t take it so seriously.  But I mean it, you need him more than I do.  I didn’t have much of a father.  My birth dad left when I was little.  My step-dad was barely there, and was a creep when he was.  My mom divorced him.  I had terrible role models growing up.  It messed me up, to tell you the truth.  Your dad was the first man I knew who made me feel like I could be a better person.  Know what I mean?”

Vanessa turned her head toward Rosa and gave her a serious look, and softly said, “Yeah.”

“Did he make you feel that way too?  If he did, I’m jealous.  I loved my mom, but if I’d had a dad that made me feel that way…” She looked off into the distance, then shrugged.  “I guess my life would have been very different.  Maybe I would have married John.”

Vanessa recoiled.  

“I know, I know,” Rosa said, smiling, using her hand to calm Vanessa.  “Weird thought.  Sorry.  I’m sure you love your mom and couldn’t imaging anyone else taking her place.  I get it.”

Letting the sun warm her forehead, Vanessa allowed her self a moment to lose herself in thought, the bittersweet thoughts of her own mother tangling around her mind.  

“What’s your mom’s name?” Rosa asked.

“Her name’s Rosa as well.”

“Oh really?” She said with a surprised smile.  “I guess it’s a common enough name.  But what are the odds?  When did he marry her, if I may ask?”

“Like, ninety-four I think?”

Rosa’s face clouded.  “Nineteen ninety-four,” she said slowly, thinking of that as the year she divorced Mark, and how she’d missed John by a thin margin.  A look of sadness came upon her face.

“Is something wrong?” Vanessa asked.

“No, no.  I was just reminiscing.”  Revealing the sordid details of her relationship with John was the last thing she wanted to do, if she wanted to win the girl’s confidence.  Strategic honesty, she’d learned to call it.

“Wh- when did you know my dad?”

“In nineteen eighty-eight.  I’m sure that was way before he met Ro- his other Rosa.  His second Rosa.” 

“You think he truly loved you?”

Rosa nodded.  “And I’m sure he truly loved your mom, too.”

“I don’t know, sometimes it didn’t feel that way.  They were, I don’t know, not close.  She was mean to him sometimes and I hated that.  I think he tolerated it for my sake.  And then he had enough and left us both.” 

“Well, that’s all the more reason for you to find him.” Inside, Rosa had a surge of enthusiasm, believing perhaps her long lost love may finally graduate from limerence to reality.  Surely he would remember her from all those years back, surely he would recall their special bond, forged in secrecy behind her husband’s back, nurtured after work in the solitude of the office they shared.

“He’s technically still married to my mom, just so you know,” she said.  “At least I think so, she never said they were divorced.”

Rosa nodded.  “Where is your mom, back home?”

“No.  She moved to Nicaragua to live with her mother.  I’m living with my sister for now.”

“Ah. I’m sorry.  You must feel doubly-abandoned.  That has to be tough.”

“I’m ok.”

Rosa regarded the girl sitting next to her, in a foreign land, on a quest, and concluded that the gumption and initiative that got her to this place did indeed prove that she was doing ok.

“Well?” she said to the girl.  “Do you want to join forces to find your dad?  Or am I still a crazy old psycho lady to you?”

Vanessa looked at the ground and gave a slight smile.

“Is that a yes?”

She thought about her dwindling bank account, and having found nothing so far, turned to Rosa and nodded.

“That’s the spirit!  Why don’t we go somewhere quiet where we can sit down and compare notes?  Maybe that pub over there,” she pointed with her chin.

Vanessa nodded, and after Rosa stood and offered her hand, she stood and they walked to The Salmon Inn. 

This is a draft chapter from The Star-Crossed Codex.

Thursday I went to the bakery, which is across from the music shop, for a loaf of bread.  They also had a peppermint chocolate bar that was calling my name so I bought one of those as well.  I went out, turned right, and glanced toward the music store and the door opened.  Alana stepped out.  

“John, how are you?” She said with a warm smile that wasn’t there the first time we talked.  The day we talked, she was friendly and open and we talked about everything just as naturally as if we’d been best friends for years.  It was unique for me, and I became smitten despite her lack of overt interest, hoping against hope that her chattiness was something other than her default setting.  Our chat seemed to border on flirting in the distant and vague manner of the people of the Aisles, but didn’t really reach a level that gave me confidence of it.  To be fair, my own chatter barely ventured beyond friendliness.  I’d eventually asked her name very easily as if it were natural to do so, and told her my own, and we’d bid each other good day in a very pleasant manner that made it feel like we both looked forward to crossing paths again soon.  But that was a few days ago, and I told myself she’s just a friendly shop girl.  

“Fine,” I said with a smile. “How are you, Alana?  How’s your father?”  I crossed the street to stand near her.

She stood close to me, hands in her pockets, looking cold.  “He’s doing better, thanks.”  And then she put her hand on my arm.  “What are you doing this weekend?” She asked in a hushed tone, a hint of a mischievous smile on her lips. 

Surprised at her cheekiness, I assumed she was going to tell me about a musical event in town, since I’d asked her about that the other day.  I said, “I’m going to the National Museum of Aviation Saturday.”

“Ooh, that sounds fun.  What about Sunday?”

“I have no plans Sunday,” I said with a grin.

She smiled and said, “Do you want to go for a motorcycle ride?”

I grinned wider and after a mere fraction of a second of deliberation, which I forced my overthinking brain to abandon, I said, “Yes, I’d love that!”

She smiled and I definitely saw a twinkle in her eyes for the first time.  With a slight bounce of her knees, she said, “Meet me here at ten Sunday morning, then.” 

“I will! But I’ll warn you, I’ve never ridden before so you’ll have to be gentle.”

She winked and said, touching my arm again, “Don’t worry, I will.” 

“What about your other half,” I asked. 

“What about your wife?” She replied. 

I smiled broadly, we gazed into each other’s eyes, and I said as I touched her arm, “See you Sunday, Alana.”

I carefully timed my arrival at the shop for a few minutes past ten, just to make her worry a bit. The morning chill still lingered and I was glad I’d brought a scarf.  As I rounded the corner, I saw her standing in front of the shop scanning the street, her bike at rest, and I saw two helmets. She looked toward me and smiled. “Good morning, Alana. It’s a beautiful day for a ride.” 

She nodded and grinned, our eyes meeting in a lingering glance. “I have a helmet for you, Are you ready?” 

“I am! Where are we headed?” 

“Oh, I don’t know yet, I guess we’ll find out when we get there,” she said, and at that moment I fell deeply in love with her. 

“Sounds perfect to me.” 

She handed me a helmet and said, “You’ll want gloves, and wrap that scarf higher around your neck; the wind can get cold.”

With both of our helmets on and ready to go, I watched her mount with a deft dexterity, and I straddled the seat behind her. She turned her head and said, “You can put your arms around me if you need,” 

The idea excited me, but I kept my hands on my knees for the time being. She kicked the motorcycle to life, turned to look for traffic, and gently headed us down the road as I did my best to keep my expectations in check, thinking myself no better than a grown up school boy.

We turned onto a country road and traffic was light. As we turned I put my arms around her waist and she accelerated up the hill. The motor droned louder as the road wound and twisted, we leaned into each curve, my grip on her tightening when needed. My unfamiliarity and anxiety over the bike had quickly given way to exhilaration and I felt safe in Alana’s hands.  After what felt like hours of this new and delightful experience to me, we reached the top of the hill. We slowed and she reached out her boot to steady us as we come to a stop. She switched off the bike and the world was suddenly dead silent.  We took off our helmets and I smiled as I took in the panorama of the Scottish Borders. Then I looked into Alana’s eyes and said, “This is amazing.” 

“It really is, isn’t it?” She said. A chilling breeze fluttered through her blonde hair and she said, “It’s colder than I expected.” 

“It is a bit chilly,” I said.

She stepped toward me and said, “Ooh, you’re blocking the wind, thanks.” 

“Here, I’ll warm you up,” I said.  Before I knew what I was doing and could let myself overthink things, I slid my arms inside her leather jacket and held her. She didn’t protest, instead wrapping her arms around my waist, head resting on my chest. Wisps of her hair rose before my face in the breeze and my heart pounded.  I felt butterflies in my gut.  I was afraid to speak for fear of breaking the spell I felt I had cast. She turned and, without breaking my embrace, faced away from me. My hands encircled her belly and she placed hers on mine as we gazed out into the far distance of the Scottish countryside. 

She said, “I love coming up here, it’s so peaceful. It’s like my private sanctuary. You said you were running away from home, John.  This is where I run away to.”   

I tightened my embrace for a moment.  “It’s a perfect place to run away to. All it needs is a small cabin,” I said.

“That’s what I was thinking too,” she said, turning to face me again. She looked up into my eyes.

I saw in her eyes a new warmth that wasn’t there before, showing me that we have connected. Her smile relaxed, and I sensed that she felt our connection as well. I pondered whether I should take a chance and kiss her, or was it too soon. Suddenly, she decided for me. “Tell me about your life, John,” she said in a soft voice. 

I tilted my head, holding her gaze, my smile remaining. I shook my head. “No, Alana. Perhaps later. Right now, I want to enjoy this moment.” 

She held me tighter. “You’re a wise man. I knew that the moment I met you.”   She looked up at me and placed her hand on my cheek, and ran her fingers through my hair. My breathing became shallow, my heart raced. I made a small move toward her, and as if that were the very signal she was waiting for, suddenly our mouths are together. Her warm lips sent electric energy through me.

As her breath rushed from her nose across my face, our tongues found each others and we kissed with a passion I’d only felt for Lauren. As we slowly broke our kiss, I brushed a strand of hair from her face and smiled. “I’m not getting you in trouble, am I?” 

She smiled and shook her head. “He’s not much of a boyfriend, really. Besides, how’s he going to know? And what about you?” 

I gazed into the distance. “She’ll never know. And I’m divorcing her soon.” She tightened her arms around me. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, Alana, it’s been coming for a long time. Neither of us was unfaithful, and I don’t really feel like I’m- “ I stopped myself.  “I don’t wand to spoil this moment with technicalities.”

She looked up at me. “I understand.” We kissed again, I felt our bodies energize with each other’s pent-up longing for connection.

We held hands and walked toward a fallen tree, the only place to sit. Our thighs touching and our hands clasped, we gazed into the distance. “What is life all about, John?” 

I let her question sink in, my eyes following a train far away, then a crow soaring in the near distance. “This. This is what life’s about, Alana. Moments of joy, shared with others, no regrets.  Is there anything better?” 

She squeezed my hand, and replied with a quiver in her voice. “No, there really isn’t.” Sensing she may be breaking down, I put my arm around her and pulled her to me. 

“When I leave, Alana, we’ll always have this memory. Keep it inside you.” 

“I don’t want you to leave,” she said. “Can’t you stay?” 

I squeezed her waist. “I would if I could. I have to weigh the consequences.”

She nodded. “I know. I’m just being a silly girl. You have your life, I have mine.” 

“No,” I said, “you’re not being silly. I feel the same way you do.” 

“I was just picturing myself meeting your daughters, and being embarrassed because I’m their age. Maybe that’ll be ok. I don’t know. They’ll probably hate me. Or hate you for being with someone their age.” 

“Don’t worry, Alana. Don’t overthink it. This is 2026, people do what they’re going to do. Besides, meeting them is a long way off. Or, if I stay here without going back to take care of loose ends, they’ll have to come find me.” I laugh softly. “Not that I don’t want them to find me, of course. I’d love for them to come live here with me, but that’s up to them.”

”What if they find you living with me?” She said with a soft laugh.  

“Oh, that would be wonderful,” I said.

“I know we only met the other day,” she said, looking at the ground, “but silly girls think like that, you know.  I’m sorry if it’s too much too soon.”  She lifted her eyes to mine, furrowing her brow.

“Oh Alana, I love how you put your thoughts right out there.  You’re not afraid to be vulnerable and let me judge you.  But I won’t judge you.  I honestly like you.”

She smiled and released a breath through her nose.  “I appreciate hearing that more than if you’d said, ‘I love you.’  People say, ‘I love you,’ too freely sometimes.”

“Oh, I know.  I absolutely ache to say it to you, Alana, but I know it’s a silly schoolboy thing to say.  But I hope one day I will say it.”

She leaned toward me and rested her head against my shoulder.  Our hands remained clasped, resting on our thighs.  It was a moment of tenderness I hoped I would carry in my memory till the day I die.  I heard her sniff, and thought it was the chill until she sniffed again like a gasp.  I noticed her chest heave as if she were about to cry.  “Alana,” I whispered.  

She squeezed my hand harder and a tear rolled down her cheek, meeting my coat and soaking into the wool.  “Alana,” I said, as if that were a complete sentence in itself.  I placed my free hand on her cheek and kissed her forehead.  I kissed the tears that rolled down her face as she silently pleaded to me with her eyes.  I kissed her lips and she put both arms around me in a fiercely possessive gesture as we lost ourselves in the heat of passion.

As our moment of passion eased, she patted my thigh and took in a deep breath.  I watched her, wondering where her mind, her heart, was taking her but she sat quietly gazing into the distance.  Though it took a significant amount of willpower, I allowed her to ruminate without interruption.  Finally, I joined her in gazing into the distance, feeling the air become warmer, the breeze abating, and blue sky appearing now between clouds.  

“John,” she said, letting the word hang in the air as if she intended to add something to it.  Finally she continued, “I don’t know how you do it.  I feel like I’ve known you all my life.  It’s like you just get me. You know how to handle me, and that’s not easy.” She laughed softly, a nervous laughter that betrayed insecurity.  

“I’m no genius,” I said.  Unsure of how to respond to her further, a thought occurred to me.  “Maybe I’ve let myself be hurt enough to have learned when to shut up.”  

She let my hand go and caressed my thigh.  “I’m sorry.  Was it your wife who hurt you?”

I nodded, savoring her touch.  “But she did it because I let her.  And it wasn’t just her, I never really learned how to be in a relationship.  A healthy one, that is.  I was making it up as I went along and made a lot of mistakes I didn’t learn from until recently.  I suppose it’s better late than never, eh?”

“I was feeling sorry for myself for being single and thirty,” she said.  “So don’t feel bad, no one taught me anything either.”

“I’m not sure anyone’s ever taught that sort of thing.  I suppose that’s why relationships are so notoriously bad these days.  In the days of arranged marriages it didn’t matter.  Find your fun somewhere but come home to your spouse.”

“But you didn’t do that, you said.”

“No.  I got married quickly, because I thought she was the best I could expect to find, and she reminded me a bit of a previous lover who I still had strong feelings for.”

“Oh?  What happened to her?”

I looked at the ground.  “It was a summer job, I had to leave.  Our bosses told us to knock it off and like an idiot I was more loyal to the boss than to the woman I loved.  Then, there’s the inconvenient fact that she was married.”  Having allowed those words out of my mouth, I was pleased at how smoothly they flowed and didn’t care how Alana reacted.

“A little like us, eh?,” she said.  

“A lot like us.  Only now, I’m older and slightly wiser.”

“Yet, here we are.”

I looked into her eyes.  “Here we are, indeed.  And I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else right now.”

Alana giggled.  “Nor would I, John.  I don’t understand a bit of this, but I’m having a really nice time with you.  It shouldn’t work.  You’re my dad’s age, we’re both spoken for, I don’t know…”

“None of that matters, my friend.  Well, to others it does; but we’re here on this hilltop and the others aren’t here.  We’re sharing something special.  Call it whatever you want, I think we both need this.”

“You’ve been so kind and understanding.  And you’re the best kisser I’ve ever known,” she said with a laugh that was like sunshine glinting off the surface of a pond.  

I shrugged.  “You inspire me.”

We continued to sit in silence, simply existing in each other’s aura of warmth, for what felt like a very long time.  The urge to fill a silence is usually strong, but neither of us seemed compelled to do so, and it was a magical interlude.

“Is there anywhere to eat around here?” I eventually asked. 

“Yeah, down the other side there’s a nice place. Come on!” She jumped up and we stepped toward her bike. She fired it up and we rolled down the hillside together, eventually coming to a stop at a cafe.

Our lunch and the ride back were quiet, we exchanged few words but our glances spoke for us.  We held hands and smiled a lot, and when I left her at the shop I had no idea that it was the last time I would ever see Alana.

A Talk by Rupert Sheldrake

The science delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality in principle, leaving only the details to be filled in. This is a very widespread belief
in our society. It’s the kind of belief system of people who say “I don’t believe in God, I believe in science.” It’s a belief system which has now been spread to the entire world. But there’s a conflict in the heart of science between science as a method of inquiry based on reason, evidence, hypothesis and collective investigation, and science as a belief system or a world view. And unfortunately the world view aspect of science has come to inhibit and constrict the free inquiry which is the very lifeblood of the scientific endeavour.

Since the late nineteenth century, science has been conducted under the aspect of a belief system or a world view which is essentially that of materialism; philosophical materialism.
And the sciences are now wholly owned subsidiaries of the materialist world view. I think that as we break out of it, the sciences will be regenerated. What I do in my book The Science
Delusion, which is called Science Set Free in the United States, is take the ten dogmas, or assumptions of science, and turn them into questions. Seeing how well they stand up if you look at them scientifically. None of them stand up very well.

What I’m going to do is first run through what these ten dogmas are. And then I’ll only have time to discuss one or two of them in a bit more detail. But essentially the ten dogmas, which are the world view of most educated people all over the world are:

First, that nature’s mechanical or machine-like. The universe is like a machine, animals and plants are like machines, we’re like machines. In fact, we are machines. We are lumbering
robots, in Richard Dawkins’ vivid phrase. With brains that are genetically programmed computers.

Second, matter is unconscious. The whole universe is made up of unconscious matter. There’s no consciousness in stars, in galaxies, in planets, in animals, in plants, and there ought not be in any of us either, if this theory’s true. So a lot of the philosophy of mind over the last hundred years has been trying to prove that we’re not really conscious at all. So if matter’s unconscious, then the laws of nature are fixed.

This is dogma three. The laws of nature are the same now as they were at the time of the big bang and they’ll be the same forever. Not just the laws; but the constants of nature are fixed, which is why they are called constants.

Dogma four: The total amount of matter and energy is always the same. It never changes in total quantity, except at the moment of the big bang when it all sprang into existence from nowhere in a single instant.

The fifth dogma is that nature’s purposeless. There are no purposes in all nature and the evolutionary process has no purpose or direction.

Dogma six, that biological hereditary is material. Everything you inheret is in your genes, or in epigenetic modifications of the genes, or in cytoplasmic inheritance. It’s material.

Dogma seven, memories are stored inside your brain as material traces. Somehow everything you remember is in your brain in modified nerve endings, phosphorylated proteins, no-one
knows how it works. But nevertheless almost everyone in the scientific world believes it must be in the brain.

Dogma eight, your mind is inside your head. All your consciousness is the activity of your brain, nothing more.

Dogma nine, which follows from dogma eight, psychic phenomena like telepathy are impossible. Your thoughts and intentions cannot have any effect at a distance because your mind’s inside
your head. Therefore all the apparent evidence for telepathy and other psychic phenomena is illusory. People believe these things happen, but it’s just because they don’t know enough about statistics, or they’re deceived by coincidences, or it’s wishful thinking.

And dogma ten, mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works. That’s why governments only fund research into mechanistic medicine and ignore complementary and alternative therapies. Those can’t possibly really work because they’re not mechanistic. They may appear to work because people would have got better anyway, or because of the placebo effect. But the only kind that really works is mechanistic medicine.Well this is the default world view which is held by almost all educated people all over the world. It’s the basis of the educational system, the National Health Service, the medical research council, governments and it’s just the default world view of educated people.

But I think every one of these dogmas is very, very questionable. And when you look at it, they fall apart. I’m going to take first the idea that the laws of nature are fixed. This is a hangover from an older world view, before the 1960s, when the big bang theory came in. People thought that the whole universe was eternal, governed by eternal mathematical laws. When the big bang came in, then that assumption continued, even though the big bang revealed a universe that’s radically evolutionary, about fourteen billion years old. Growing and developing and evolving, for fourteen billion years. Growing and cooling and more structures and patterns appear within it. But the idea is all the laws of nature were completely fixed at the moment of the big bang like a cosmic Napoleonic code. As my friend Terrence McKenna used to say, modern science is based upon the principle “give us one free miracle, and we’ll explain the rest.” And the one free
miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe and all the laws that govern it, from nothing, in a single instant.

Well, in an evolutionary universe, why shouldn’t the laws themselves evolve? After all, human laws do, and the idea of laws of nature is based a metaphor with human laws. It’s a very
anthropocentric metaphor; only humans have laws. In fact, only civilised societies have laws. As C.S. Lewis once said, to say that a stone falls to earth because it’s obeying a law makes it a man, and even a citizen. It’s a metaphor we’ve got so used to we forgot
it’s a metaphor. In an evolving universe, I think a much better idea is the idea of habits. I think the habits of nature evolve; the regularities of nature are essentially habitual.

This was an idea put forward at the beginning of the twentieth century by the American philosopher C.S. Pierce, and it’s an idea which various other philosophers have entertained, and it’s one which I, myself have developed into a scientific hypothesis;
the hypothesis of morphic resonance, which is the basis of these evolving habits. According to this hypothesis, everything in nature has a kind of collective memory, resonance occurs
on the basis of similarity.

As a young giraffe embryo grows in its mother’s womb, it tunes in to the morphic resonance of previous giraffes. It draws on that collective memory, grows like a giraffe, and it behaves like a giraffe, because it’s drawing on this collective memory. It has to have the right genes to make the right proteins. But genes in my view are grossly overrated. They only account for the proteins that the organism can make, not the form or the shape or the behaviour. Every species has a kind of collective memory. Even crystals do. This theory predicts that if you make a new kind of crystal for the first time, the very first time you make it, it won’t have an existing habit. But once it crystallises, then the next time you make it, there’ll be an influence from the first crystals to the second ones, all over the world by morphic resonance, it’ll crystallise a bit easier. The third time, there’ll be an influence from the first and second crystals.

There is, in fact, good evidence that new compounds get easier to crystallise all round the world, just as this theory would predict. It also predicts that if you train animals to learn a new trick, for example rats learn a new trick in London, then all round the
world rats of the same breed should learn the same trick quicker just because the rats had learned it here. And surprisingly, there’s already evidence that this actually happens. Anyway, that’s my own hypothesis in a nutshell of morphic resonance. Everything depends on evolving habits not on fixed laws.

But I want to spend a few moments on the constants of nature too. Because these are, again, assumed to be constant. Things like the gravitational constant of the speed of light are called the fundamental constants. Are they really constant? Well, when I got interested in this question, I tried to find out. They’re given in physics handbooks. Handbooks of physics list the existing fundamental constants, tell you their value. But I wanted to see if they’d changed, so I got the old volumes of physical handbooks. I went to the patent office library here in London – they’re the only place I could find that kept the old volumes. Normally people throw them away when the new volumes come out, they throw away the old ones. When I did this I found that the speed
of light dropped between nineteen twenty-eight and nineteen fourty-five by about twenty kilometres per second. It’s a huge drop because they’re given with errors of any fractions of a second/decimal points of error. And yet, all over the world, it dropped, and they were all getting very similar values to each other with tiny errors. Then in nineteen fourty-eight, it went up
again. And then people started getting very similar values again.

I was very intrigued by this and I couldn’t make sense of it, so I went to see the head of metrology at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington. Metrology is the science in which people measure constants. And I asked him about this, I said “what do you make of this drop in the speed of light between 1928 and 1945?” And he said “oh dear,” he said “you’ve uncovered the most embarrassing episode in the history of our science.” So I said “well, could the speed of light have actually dropped? And that would have amazing implications if so.” He said “no, no, of course it couldn’t have actually dropped. It’s a constant!” “Oh, well then how do you explain the fact that everyone was finding it going much slower during that period? Is it because they were fudging their results to get what they thought other people should be getting and the whole thing was just produced in the minds of physicists?” “We don’t like to use the word ‘fudge’.” I said “Well, so what do you prefer?” He said “well, we prefer to call it ‘intellectual phase-locking’.” So I said “well if it was going on then, how can you be so sure it’s not going on today? And the present values produced are by intellectual phase-locking?” And he said “oh we know that’s not the case.” And I said “how do we know?” He said “well”, he said “we’ve solved the problem.” And I said “well how?”

And he said, “well we fixed the speed of light by definition in 1972.”
So I said “but it might still change.” He said “yes, but we’d never know it, because we’ve defined the metre in terms of the speed of light, so the units would change with it!” So he looked very pleased about that, they’d fixed that problem.

But I said “well, then what about big G?” The gravitational constant, known in the trade as “big G”, it was written with a capital G. Newton’s universal gravitational constant. “That’s varied by more than 1.3% in recent years. And it seems to vary from place to place and from time to time.” And he said “oh well, those are just errors. And unfortunately there are quite big errors with big G.” So I said “well, what if it’s really changing? I mean, perhaps it is really changing.” And then I looked at how they do it, what happens is they measure it in different labs, they get different values on different days, and then they average them. And then other labs around the world do the same, they come out usually with a rather different average. And then the international committee of metrology meets every ten years or so and average the ones from labs all around the world to come up with the value of big G.

But what if G were actually fluctuating? What if it changed? There’s already evidence actually that it changes throughout the day and througout the year. What if the earth, as it moves through
the galactic environment went through patches of dark matter or other environmental factors that could alter it? Maybe they all change together. What if these errors are going up together and down together? For more than ten years I’ve been trying to persuade metrologists to look at the raw data. In fact I’m now trying to persuade them to put it up online, on the internet. With the dates, and the actual measurements, and see if they’re correlated. To see if they’re all up at one time, all down at another. If so, they might be fluctuating together. And that would tell us something very, very interesting. But no-one has done this, they haven’t done it because G is a constant. There’s no point looking for changes.

You see, here’s a very simple example of where a dogmatic assumption actually inhibits enquiry. I, myself think that the constants may vary quite considerably. Well, within narrow limits. But they may all be varying, and I think the day will come when scientific journals like Nature have a weekly report on the constants, like stock-market reports in the newspapers. You know, “this week, big G was slightly up, the charge on the electron was down, the speed of light held steady, and so on.” So that’s one area where I think thinking this dogmatically could open things up.

One of the biggest areas is the nature of the mind. This is the most unsolved problem as Graham just said, that science simply can’t deal with the fact we’re conscious. And it can’t deal with the fact that our thoughts don’t seem to be inside our brains. Our experiences don’t all seem to be inside our brain. Your image of me now doesn’t seem to be inside your brain, yet the official view is that there’s a little Rupert somewhere inside your head. And everything else in this room is inside your head; your experience is inside your brain. I’m suggesting actually that vision involves an outward projection of images, what you’re seeing is inside your mind but not inside your head. Our minds are extended beyond our brains in the simplest act of perception.

I think that we project out the images we’re seeing, and these images touch what we’re looking at. If I look at you from behind, you don’t know I’m there. Could I affect you? Could you feel my gaze? There’s a great deal of evidence that people can. The sense of being stared at is an extremely common experience, and recent experimental evidence actually suggests it’s real. Animals seem to have it too, I think it probably evolved in the context of predator/prey relationships. Prey animals that could feel the gaze of a predator would survive better than those that couldn’t. This would lead to a whole new way of thinking about ecological relationships between predators and prey. Also about the extent of our minds. If we look at distant stars, I think our minds reach out in a sense to touch those stars, and literally extend out over astronomical distances. They’re not just inside our heads.

Now it may seem astonishing that this is a topic of debate in the twenty-first century. We know so little about our own minds that where our images are is a hot topic of debate within consciousness studies right now. I don’t have time to deal with any more of these dogmas, but every single one of them is questionable. If one questions it, new forms of research, new possibilities open up. And I think as we question these dogmas that have held back science so long, science will undergo a reflowering, a renaissance. I’m a total believer in the importance of
science. I’ve spent my whole life as a research scientist, my whole career. But I think by moving beyond these dogmas, it can be regenerated. Once again, it can become interesting, and
I hope, life-affirming.

Thank you.