Page 124 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

EtheRealization

high percentage of which were merely phatic communion, cries of
pleasure and pain in a forum resembling psychodrama more than
constructive discussion of ideas. England, said Knox, dependent on
its language to maintain social stratification, would be the last to go.
He had a graph showing just when that would happen.
That was like baiting a bear. Other disciplines—history,
anthropology, and philosophy—joined in the chorus of outrage.
Knox shrugged it off, and was preparing yet another response, when
he was attacked on an unexpected front. An anonymous letter to the
journal’s editor accused Knox of perpetrating an intellectual hoax: the
so-called glossolalia theory was itself utter nonsense concocted by the
computer scientist to tweak the noses of his self-important colleagues
in the humanities department. That put him beyond the pale: not
simply wrong, but dishonest; the measure of that dishonesty given by
the success of the deception. He protested loudly: it was a low blow,
a denial of fair hearing and the give-and-take of informed opinion
providing the life’s blood of academic freedom. Further, he would
tell his shrinking audience, how could he possibly prove his sincerity?
Was his theory at issue or his motives? If the latter, who was to
establish them? He volunteered to undergo hypnosis or polygraphy in
order to clear his name.
A wall of silence closed around him. By the end of the academic
year he was finished. He was written out of the grant that supported
him, and he hadn’t been at the university long enough to gain tenure.
He departed, a pariah with a chip on his shoulder and a microchip
full of data and software in his pocket. Still a young man, he cast
about for a new line of work. Unsurprisingly, he returned to his old
skill, stage magic. It occurred to me that he might have the ability to
ace lie detector tests or to mimic hypnosis quite convincingly, had
either of those means been used to plumb his depths. After all,
weren’t magicians the best debunkers of hoaxes, owing to their
knowledge of the tricks of the trade?
That profession provided only part-time and unpredictable
opportunities for employment, so Hart Knox kept his node in the
network while bringing in a regular salary by tending bar at The
Rabbit Hole. And he was next in my list of strange people with weird
ideas: I had to deliver a rather tidy sum in a credible fashion to him
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