Then the lightning flashing (flashing crashing)Fireworks shooting up in her head (in her head)

I have only now been apprised of Professor Michael Persinger's unique and challenging contribution to science, "On the Possible Representation of the Electromagnetic Equivalents of All Human Memory within the Earth's Magnetic Field". A copy was not easy to come by, but without further delay I share it with the readership. For I am unstinting with my open-handedness, in the manner of ring-bestowing kings of the Sagas, not like certain members of the Riddled staff who bring their own chocolate Tim-Tams to the office and who change the combination on their lockers.

There is nothing to boast about in acquiring access to a published paper. And in the case of purely fictive essays, and publications that were only written in better-arranged realities than ours, often the library pixies will provide a short-lived quantum-fluctuation-facsimile in response to a propitiatory request, if they are feeling cooperative. The real difficulty arises with the liminal cases, works that were neither in print nor out of print; they fall through the cracks in the safety-net at the top of the cliff. Then one must master the arcane chants and rituals of the Wayback Machine, and persuade it to show the April 21 (2009) snapshot of 'Theoretical Biology Letters'.

Note the gap in the digital pagination -- much as hotel-room numbers might jump from 12 to 14 -- evidence of the evanescence of a manuscript that was published and then unpublished again.

But the journal's single-issue Index is haunted by Persinger's paper, or possessed: in accordance with the literary precedents it comes and goes, and casts capering shadows on the wall of the building across the street.

And in the November 30 2009 snapshot, it is back!
When this happens, there is nothing for it but to dispatch the entire journal to the realms of the irreal, burn it with fire and then nuke the site from orbit to be safe, for exorcisms are of no avail. This is bad news for the other authors who contributed to Theor. Biol. Insights, but the Libertas Academica publisher promised to archive their work and ensure continued access OOPS not really.

This is all very well, but however entrancing it is to wander unchecked through a garden of forking paths and bright images, are we not enticing your mind from Persinger's contribution to the gaiety of nations?

I am grateful for the reminder! The opuscule is a further step in Persinger's systematic exploration of the parallels and associations between the Earth's electric / magnetic environment, and the human brain. He proposes that not only are the mnemonic-emotional neural circuits of every brain coupled to the resonant frequencies of the ionosphere / capacitor, but every thought and memory we experience [that have ever been and will be experienced] are encoded and imprinted in the terrestrial magnetic field, acting as an insubstantial holographic recording medium.

It is all Akashic Records by way of Tesla Technology, and I suspect that Persinger read "Spock Must Die!" in childhood and retains a dim recollection of the chapter where the crew tap "directly into Hilbert Space" to make the Enterprise go faster. It helps that

Structurally the human hippocampus is two, interlocking C-shape structures that are geometrically congruous with a smaller spherical condenser wrapped and partially interdigitated by a larger spherical condenser [19]. Geometrically, the C-shaped structure is similar to a toroid with a gap which allows a discrete leakage of magnetic flux.

If I had known that in advance I would have accessed someone else's memories of reading "On the Possible Representation...", and saved myself all the trouble of tracing a copy.

It follows that given a sufficiently rasa-ed tabula, personalities as well as memories from the past can be called back from the magnetospheric standing waves and re-housed in mortal frames (using Yama Death-God's modified reincarnation technology). It only remains to vat-grow the mindless, memory-less bodies to be meat-machines, and other researchers are already well on the way to achieving this, if American politics are any guide.

Citations of the unobtainable paper include an inquiry into the consciousness of water, involving "an experimental simulation of the human head constructed using conductive dough". I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP although I admit that the 'conductive dough' model of human cortical function captures most of its salient aspects. In fact Goofling for "On the Possible Representation..." leads to such a scornucopia of calenture fritillary hatstand that my head was full and I needed a wee lie down under the olive trees in the Garden Bar at the Old Entomologist.

But wait! Had you considered the implications of immersing billions of human brains within a shared geomagnetic field? I hadn't either, but fortunately Professor Persinger has our back:
For every additional brain interacting the geomagnetic matrix requires a shift to higher frequency bands for the quantum coupling (I think Pauli's Exclusion Principle comes into it) and Persinger is worried about the phase transition that will occur when the human population reaches 8 billion. That is the point where the quantum coupling becomes sufficiently energetic to affect nucleotide bonds, and we begin to collectively edit our own DNA sequences.

That never ends well for the next generation.


The 'Spherical spaceship' trope is a recurring theme within 'Childhood's End' cover art. No-one knows why. It must be a tradition, or an old charter or something.

---------------------------------------------------

UPDATED with Bonus Persinger Paper #1:

Cerebral Networks of Interfacial Water: Analogues of the Neural Correlates of Consciousness in a Synthetic Three-Shell Realistic Head Model

-- Mainly because the Methods Section is uniquely detailed, and provides an excuse to use the "Iron Chefmasters" tag.

The conductive material consists of an open-source amateur electronics recipe by Squishy Circuits. This material is typically used as an educational tool to demonstrate the principles of electrical systems (Figure 3). The dough is fabricated by mixing 237 cc of water, 355 cc of flour, 59 cc of salt, 15 cc of vegetable oil, 2 cc food coloring, and various concentrations of a proton donor (lemon juice) together in a pot over a heated surface while stirring until partially solidified. The ball of dough is then covered in 10 cc of flour, kneaded, and applied at a constant thickness of ~5 mm in order to approximate the average human cortical thickness.

ALSO Bonus Persinger Paper #2:

Enhancement of Theta and Gamma Activity Power Within Fixed Sections of Human Brains Stimulated by Sean Harribance’s Electroencephalographic Configuration: Is He Equivalent to a “Universal Donor” for Entanglement?

The titular Sean Harribance is a Remote-Viewing Psychic, born in Trinidad but operating out of (where else?) Texas, who told the US Special Forces where they could find Saddam Hussein. Of course the US Army says they tracked Hussein to his hiding place by solid detective work and negotiations with informants, without requiring psychic consultation, but that's what they would say.

Naturally this inspired Persinger to take pickled slices of human brain, and stimulate them with recordings of Harribance's EEG, in the confident expectation of detecting their own innate neural activity in γ- and θ-wave bands.
I think I saw that in an episode of Fringe.