Nuances
The looks his teammates gave him suggested Frankie wasn’t known for being a deep thinker, but she was absolutely delighted he’d asked, even if he seemed to be questioning his term.
“Yes, super connectivity,” she confirmed, turning to meet Frankie’s eyes and allow him to ignore the team’s looks, “but more specifically, the tangible infinity, the part we can sense through the substance of thought.”
She had an idea, and she ran with it, looking again around the room as she described it. “Think of it like this: you’ve all been a part of a group in a room, conversing, cavorting, whatever… and someone else walks into the room and changes the mood simply by being present. Now, you don’t have to look around at anyone else, or hear any of their specific thoughts on this new person, but you feel the weight of the collective response changing the literal metaphysical atmosphere of the room, right?”
She got a few skeptical “uh huh”s and confirming “right”s with a speckling of nods and blank expressions waiting for the rest of it, Klepic was a part of the latter group, so the passenger continued. “Now, holding on to that notion and imagine we’re all in that room, that the person walking in is your Commander. I’ve never met this person, but I’d know it was this person simply by the way you all change the way you’re thinking, the way you project yourselves…
“aaand, holding on to that notion, imagine you center yourself to have no reaction, but instead, to openly receive the reactions of your teammates…”
Even as she said it, one of the men who’d been silent so far but whom had helped her to her feet, finally chimed in, “this shit is crazy.”
“I was just thi-“ Ace began, but stopped himself as the subway car erupted into an epiphany inspired, mouse caught in the thought trap symphony of laughter.
“You just experienced the substance of thought and fluidity of consciousness, gentleman.” The passenger laughed with them.
“I just thought out loud… we just had the same thought at the same time, how is that the same thing?” The speaker asked, looking at Ace for a moment, almost apologetically.
She took a step toward the inquirer, pleased by questions as much as daunted by them, for it didn’t just challenge her ability to communicate an idea or understanding, but also gave her understanding of the building blocks they were working from. “In the quantum consciousness, or quantum awareness, saying you spoke a thought out loud the same time someone else was thinking it, totally independently, is like saying sliced cheese grows that way.”
There were two voices that made the same befuddled tone when they asked, “what?” while others laughed again in their masculine chuckles.
“Cheese is, for lack of a better word, grown –or… cultured more specifically, but my point is, if all consciousness is the block of cheese, we’re the slices of cheese… but, we’re all still cheese.” She answered with a sideways smile.
“So, we’re cheese now?” Someone else asked, and earned more laughter and a few punches in the arm.
“No,” Laith rumbled with obvious amusement, clarifying as if it was a serious question, “but we are all made of the same stuff.”
Frankie’s distinct voice muffled forth with another question, directing it at the passenger instead. “So… yur say’n we’re all made of the same stuff sliced up individually, but you leave a pack of sliced cheese open, only the slices closed to the open air get hard and theys not the same no more. Explain how hard cheese has the same thought as soft cheese, huh?”
His teammates weren’t the only ones impressed by his grasp of the conversation, and challenge to her explanation using cheese. His question was valid, and the passenger found herself regretting breaking his nose more than she had before. Ignoring it, and everyone else’s expectant looks, she answered him with a grin. “You’re right on track.
“The difference is, the people that are the cheese in this metaphor have conscious awareness, and in that, we’re tethered by our sentience and that same stuff we’re all made of; so, despite experience that changes our individual perceptions, hard cheese or soft cheese, people have the ability to consciously connect.
“We already do it on instinct, on a surface level when we meet someone new and ‘feel’ them out, when we walk along side someone and synchronize our stride, when women in the same home synchronize their bleeding cycles, when we meet a strangers eyes from across a distance of space but feel an exciting familiarity…but we can do it consciously if we let ourselves… and then we can reach further and connect with more on a conscious level.”
“Infinity?” Ace asked for his teammate, still fingering his gun like it could tell him how things might have ended.
“Yes. Not just your own infinity, every version of yourself, but also the nuances of this sliver of infinity and the way each conscious mind shapes it.” She knew she was losing them again so she rushed on, her hands mimicking motion to keep them drawn in. “Just think about the moment you breached this car, the way the weight and feel of the room changed as the passengers noticed you all.
“Think about the choices those passengers made, the choices you made, how you each were riding your instincts and consciously fixed on your training, or routine… It seemed so easy, but also very intense, was it not?”
She had them back in that moment, she knew it, and went on to bring that moment back to their topic of conversation. “The state of the world today, their minds could have went different ways, you may have even caught yourself on the edge of sensing it and leaning toward taking action or waiting for their choice to be made first…
“This could have ended before anyone even thought to reach for my earbuds. But it didn’t. There was a fluidity of conscious understanding. Whether they didn’t care about my wellbeing, or sensed none of you were here to harm me, they left and you got the job done, and I’d bet a tenner it was without ever stopping to consider there was a force behind your collective conscious mission.” The passenger was looking around at them but few of them were looking at her; somewhere in their minds trying to make sense of what she was saying.
“I stupidly ignored it, that force, in favor of my reading,” one of the men, she noticed, had her book in hand and finally took a look at it as she went on, “but if I hadn’t ignored that, I’d have had more time to process what was happening and I could have saved us all injury. My mistake, and also my point.
“Infinity isn’t just the abstract of every possibility, it is also the ones that exist right here and now, as we live them. Every single person in this room is contributing to our experience of this sliver of infinity. Just as I made the decision to ignore the disruption that led to our injuries, someone else made the decision to have this subway blow right past the last scheduled stop.
“Now, that decision has affected every other individual upon this train, and the new choices facing those individuals will affect the choices of those they cross today, but wouldn’t have if they’d gotten on, or off at that stop. Assuming you’ve had this entire train commandeered until a specific stop, think of how many conscious decisions that one decision has now changed.”
Mental gut-punch; her words made a tangible impact throughout the subway car, as each man in the team realized the weight of their every-day obedience to orders that affected more lives than the ones they were directly involved with. Some, she could sense, took the thought further and came to realize the substance of every choice they’ve made or not made that sent others into a spin of choices they might not have otherwise had to face.
Conscious awareness, being fully awake, clearly wasn’t all kittens and rainbows.