Ancient Echoes Read Online Free PDF Page A

doesn’t take drugs, as far as we know.’
    She said this pointedly and Jack answered irritably, ‘I don’t do drugs!’
    ‘Jack doesn’t take drugs, as you’ve just heard. And he hasn’t suffered physical trauma. A tumour would have long since shown itself or killed him, and so we’re left with a possible dysfunction, an inherited trait.
    ‘We really
shouldn’t
dismiss temporal lobe epilepsy: people who suffer from it have extremely realistic encounters with the imaginary, especially its sounds and smells. However:
    ‘When the encounter occurs with Jack, there is a physical, and witnessable phenomenon associated with it. We call it the
shimmering.
It’s like a skim of oil on water, reflective and occasional, but it covers his skin. Smells come from it, and distant sounds. His body could produce the odours – a form of psychosomatic-controlled excretion – but it’s hard to explain how the sense of
sound
could be coming from his
skin.’
    She turned the page and drew breath, again pushing her hair back from her face as she read quickly through the next set of notes.
    Garth had been staring at her in increasing astonishment. Now he exchanged a long look with Jack, raising his eyebrowson an otherwise blank face. Jack smiled. The man looked back at Angela, then folded his arms and settled into his seat, awaiting the next instalment.
    Angela went on, ‘The second rational possibility is that Jack is simply daydreaming. Quite literally Day Dreaming. His unconscious mind, a hurly-burly of images, memories, fears and shadows, is slipping through to his conscious mind during his waking hours, rather than just during sleep. This is so common that it is hardly worth mentioning, except that it may be occurring far more powerfully in Jack.
    ‘And there is research to show that the
dying
brain
creates
images from memory/imagination – these seem very real to people experiencing ‘near-death’. Oxygen starvation seems to be the trigger, coupled with sensory input reduction. Jack’s sensory input is certainly reduced during his ‘Visions’, and his breathing is very shallow. Is he having mini-near-death experiences?’
    Jack’s mother Rachel looked horrified.
    ‘Again,’ Angela said emphatically. ‘The
shimmering
is the phenomenon that puts these explanations into doubt.
    ‘So now we come to the paranormal,’ she said after taking a deep breath.
    ‘Oh good,’ said Garth, with a sidelong glance at the silent boy. ‘I like the paranormal. I use it a great deal.’
    ‘A parallel world!’ Angela said, stabbing a slim finger at the first of four numbered notes. She looked at the older man thoughtfully. ‘If quantum theory is correct, then the possibility that there are innumerable worlds running alongside ours, but existing in one of innumerable, inaccessible dimensions, is very strong. When the boundaries between such worlds come close, then a certain spillage might occur, like two rivers running very close to each other, and intermingling during a flood season …’
    ‘I get the idea,’ Garth said.
    ‘The channel for interactive parallel worlds might be the physical fabric of the external world, or the non-physical fabricof the mind. Question, then: is Jack experiencing a parallel world through his own unconscious mind?’
    ‘Hell of a question!’ Garth muttered.
    ‘And if so, where
is
that world? Is it Earth? Or is it an alien world, whose own dimensions are running very close to our own, linked to our own by a wormhole effect?
    ‘Is it the past?’ she continued. ‘Is it the future? Or is it a totally
imagined
world that has been given reality by the mind imagining it?’
    There were a few seconds of silence. Garth realized that Angela had finished her report and was watching him expectantly. ‘I think I’ll have that cigar, now,’ he murmured, and fumbled for a half-corona, lighting up as he reached for the folder, turning it towards him, reading quickly, then checking back through the pages,