Answer? “Because we thought it was palms.”
Are you going to tell somebody's got some illness she's dying from, tell her that's no illness that's your belief?
The thoughtful victim will say yes it's my belief and it's my belief for my own I think are pretty good reasons thank you and I intend to die from my belief, do you mind, or do you insist that I die from some different belief that you'd prefer, or at some other time that fits your schedule instead of mine?
Books with photographs for evidence—subjects hypnotized, convinced their legs are tightly bound with ropes. Minute later, day later, there's the imprint of ropes on their skin. Touched with an ice cube and told it's a hot iron, there's the blister raised at the spot. Not ropes, not irons . . . amazing powers of mind.
Not miracles, he thought, hypnosis. And not even hypnosis, that Greek mystification, but plain everyday have-a-donut?-yes-or-no suggestion, several hundred thousands of billions of times over and most answers yes. It'd be astonishing if we didn't see what we've been told is so!
Isn't it possible, he wondered, that this whole quantum-electric universe they say's made of tiny little strings, those strings might be created by thought instead of chance, atoms arranged by suggestion? And us unquestioning, lapping it up, amplifying all the joy and terror of our cultures’ believings because we learn best when we're emotionally involved in the lesson we've chosen to learn and believing's the way we get there?
That's not impossible, not at all. We don't live many lifetimes, he thought, but we're free to believe we do, breath-by-breath excruciating detail. A belief in reincarnation's exactly that: a belief we experience so long as we find it interesting, useful, engaging. Disengage and the games are over.
So if suggestions build the stuff we see around us, and for all the gazillions of 'em, what really is a suggestion?
He puzzled that one out in the dark, fell asleep tumbling down thought-stairs.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jamie Forbes woke to the motel alarm clock, dreams unremembered. Packed his bag, checked the room one last time before out the door, found a note on the stand by the bed, his own handwriting, forgotten, barely legible:
Sxggxstion = axy Contxct mxkeS us chXnge oxx Pxrceptxxns!
That's what a suggestion is, all right—whatever makes us change the way we think, and therefore what we notice. Suggestion's the flickering of some future which we can make true.
By the time he reached the airplane, he knew some contacts made him change his perceptions:
photos, paintings, movies, computers, schools, television, books, billboards, radio, Internet, instruction manuals, meetings, phone calls, articles, questions, stories, graffiti, fairy tales, arguments, scientific papers, trade journals, menus, contracts, business cards, lectures, magazines, songs, slogans, poems, menus, warnings, games, relationships, parties, newspapers, random thoughts, advice, street signs, conversations with ourselves, with others, with animals, parties, graduation exercises, glances, school classes, emotions, chance meetings, coincidence,
and he poured that sea into the oceans he'd found before.
Every event's a contact, he thought, walking around the T-34, checking it before flying. Every one's a glitter, noon sparkles on endless ruffled waters, each milliflash a possibility.
He knelt to look over the left main landing gear, the brake line, the tire. Tire's a little worn, he thought, and realized in the daylight: that's a suggestion.
Every suggestion intensifies itself.
Tire's worn too much?
If yes: Worn too much,
Next suggestion: Don't fly. Change tire.
In order to change the tire I must find a mechanic to do the work, must locate the proper tire if it isn't in stock, stay overnight at least to change it, meet and talk with unknown number of people I wouldn't have met if it weren't for the tire, any one of whom can alter my life with a word like the hitchhiker in North Platte. My life's changing now, if I stay one day longer for the tire or three days or twenty minutes . . . new events trigger further new events, every one the result of some suggestion accepted.
Or,
If no: Tire condition normal,
Every suggestion intensifies itself.
Next suggestion: Fly on as planned.
(Trillion other suggestions in box Do something else: Ignored. No intensifying, no effect at all.)
But if the tire blows out next landing, it could mean big trouble.
Suggestion: Reconsider original suggestion.