He took a deep breath and stared at the thing. He didn't even have a name for it. Within a few seconds the machine clarified his identity. It finally made sense. It was the kind of sense that long periods of standing meditation on its own used to give him. John loved tangential thought. He was a decent student in school as a child but for one reason or another didn't get into the college he wanted to and decided to work.
The former major change in his life came from that first job. He remembered it like it was in slow motion. About a month into the job he went to work the machines to pack the pipes and one of them ran out of that high gauge plastic that it used for the ties. When they couldn't be packed the pipes slipped and fell on the floor. Instinctively he backed up and his right arm went into the machine that gathered the pipes, he still wasn't sure what that machine was called. Silencing that memory he visualized where his right arm should have been. To brighten up he then thought about his lawyer at the time, the $2 million settlement, and his life now. He was amused at the thought of after a couple decades of semi-seclusion on his land living his way and never needing to apologize to anyone for anything it may be time for him to brush up on his people skills.
Again, he stared deeply into the machine. Maybe it was better if he never put a name to it. He thought about how this moment of realization was far more important than many of the other moments of his life, even the one when he lost his arm. The random knowledge and experiments and ideas he played with that he thought were fun but ultimately meaningless came to mind.
He remembered spending several months playing with the idea that the curves and straight-line ratios in all alphabets, pictographs, or any other type of written human communication could be distilled into designs that focused something he was not sure he could describe, but the closest thing he could allude it to was either turning thought into action or the manifestation of cognitive power. Neither of those descriptions quite fit though.
The machine with its outdated submarine batteries and powerful electromagnets originally intended to call forth ball lightning failed miserably. But when he made a better chamber out of it and connected all the things that gave and manipulated power in such a way as to reflect his research on all human written communication and the purest distilled essence of symbolism he could create everything felt right. Every device inside the machine that consumed power and seemed to do little else was placed and connected according to an opposite set of curves and straight lines that mirrored the other parts of the machine. While there was no logical reason to do this design it felt like a fun and frivolous flight of fancy.
Now, he knew this machine was responsible for the added clarity of his thoughts and his interesting friend in his dreams. He did not want to think that the person he had been advising in his dreams was a real person because that would make his footprint in life too great for his liking. He did not want to affect the world too much till later. Now, it was time to open and explore with other people, just a little. He thought about the decision to write an invitation to anyone seeking clarity of thought through standing meditation done inside his machine. For the past few months he blogged about his machine and standing meditation as part of his method of extending this invitation to anyone interested. Also, he commented randomly on websites that would be used by the open-minded, experimental, possibly new aged crowd. It was only then after that moment of reflection he turned to the small crowd gathered behind him.
