“Hey Mac, have you ever been thinking of someone and then-bang! - The telephone rings and it’s them on phone?” “Pinkus, why are you always asking me stupid inane questions that have absolutely no relevance whatsoever to job at hand?”
Mac smiled and laughed loudly. It was kind of laugh that could boil water in your fishbowl. He rolled back from his desk slowly in his ergonomic computer chair, and then whipped a super-quick 360-degree wheelie stopping with perfect precision, his eyes staring directly at mine with a look of pure mischievous intent.
“You know Pinkus, I often wonder if you’re actually a human at all. The planet Kleptar 12 definitely seems like a much more probable location from which your form popcorned out and graced our universe with your presence. I’m serious man, answer question!”
Pushing back from my desk in cubicle I tried to remember Mac’s stupid question. Had I ever been thinking of someone and then phone rang, that person calling on line?
“Of course I have, it happens once in a while. Why do you ask? You got one of your deep-space theories that reason for this coincidence is actually a sign that humans were spawned by giant mushroom people in another galaxy, or is it a hidden conspiracy where mutants on Pluto are controlling our minds with ectoplasm injected into our chewing gum?”
Mac didn’t seem perturbed by my comments, obviously he was getting quite used to them. A very serious look covered his face; this was a rare event in itself as Mac never looked serious. Normally a smile was permanently imprinted on his mouth, a chilly reminder that maybe I wasn’t as happy as I could be in this life. His face often appeared in my dreams, sometimes whispering sacred proverbs, other times just a giant head chasing me through a tunnel that stretched for eternity. Of course I never spoke of these dreams to him, I didn’t want him to know that he had any effect on me, if he knew it’d be like letting a bee loose in a field of wildflowers. I’d never get him to shut up.
“Have you ever heard of concept of a collective consciousness Pinkie old boy?” he asked in an unusually intimately sounding voice.
“Yeah of course I have. I’m a computer programmer like you man; it’s called Internet. Everyone with access to it has a means to obtaining as much knowledge as they like from anyone and anywhere in world. What, do you think I’m a complete moron or something?”
Mac’s eyes lit up, they gave impression a tiger was about to pounce on a helpless antelope. In this particular case Pinkus Brewster was antelope. It was at this moment Beatles’s famous song lyric “I am a walrus.” popped into my head. I really could have handled being a walrus at that moment. It would have made it a slightly bit more comfortable.
“Collective consciousness is a concept I didn’t create Pinkus me lad. It’s idea that a species can obtain knowledge mentally from others in species without even searching for it. Have you ever heard story of bird that back in 1927 in England that was documented to have figured out how to rip lid off a milk bottle and then eat cream on top?”