Baby Blues
an excerpt

“People don’t talk about this stuff where you’re from?”
“My family is...” I look for a word that won’t turn this into something bad for secrecy, “old fashioned.” That should do it.
I can see he’s trying to figure out how being old fashioned applies to his question, but he lets me get away with it.
“Y’know, I borrowed a book from my physics professor that’s kind of on these lines,” I say.
“Quantum reality?”
“I don’t know about that. It’s more the near-death thing. It suggests our memories don’t seem to be stored in our physical brains at all, but some massive, shared consciousness in which, somehow, we still get to keep all the stuff that’s us. Me. Whatever.”
“Like how a bunch of users can share a computer without mixing up their files,” he suggests.
“Exactly! Have you read it?”
“No, but I’d like to. Do you have the author?”
“Sorry. I’ll have to look it up.”
“Please do.”
We’re both kind of gleaming from our little moment of precise communication and as it lingers, I realize this could quickly become something I don’t want to encourage. Damn it, why does the boy-girl thing have to be so stupid? I tap the pizza boxes in his arms to remind him we’re on a mission, and start walking again. He falls in step with me.
“So you’re willing to consider what the book suggests?” he asks me.
“It’s pretty cool,” I admit. “But if it’s true, what’s up with Alzheimer’s disease? And why doesn’t everyone recover language and stuff after a stroke? If the brain isn’t responsible for all that, you’d think we’d be a lot more flexible in coming back from disease and brain injury.”
Wow. I can’t believe such an insightful thought has come out of my mouth. Maybe I’m channeling someone else’s computer files. I stifle a grin.
“Maybe the brain is responsible for all that.”
“Huh?” So much for insight.
“Maybe Alzheimer’s causes a short in the circuit that lets you retrieve specific kinds of memories,” he says. “And maybe language is all a brain function, not a consciousness function.”
“You should be teaching, Jeff. You have an amazing -- I was going to say brain, but I guess that’s not a compliment, huh?”
“Mind?” he offers, grinning.
“Thoughts?” I counteroffer.
“Spirit?”
His voice is gentle and I’m noticing his eyes. It’s too dark to notice his eyes, so this has to be my imagination. Or worse. It’s that weird near-chemistry between us that is my hormones reacting to his, calling us to do what hormones are so good at calling us to do, something that the brain, mind, whatever, has no part in. It’s all animal.
I have got to get a boyfriend.
“You’ve got a booger on your face,” I say to break the mood, then feel guilty as he turns away to swipe at his face.