"But I get lots of exercise," Neda replied. "Especially since Jon bought me all of that exercise equipment and encouraged me to use it regularly."
"Yeah, I know," Karl said, "but Neda, don't you have any desire to see somebody besides Jon and me?"
"Are you saying I should want to see others?" she asked. "Because if you and Jon want me to go out and see other people, I'll be glad to."
"Oh, God," Karl groaned. "Do you hear that, Jon? She doesn't have any desire except to do what we tell her to do, and that's mostly what you tell her to do either telepathically or in words:"
Suddenly I felt a chill run through my body. "Neda," I said, "I may have to go away and never be able to return, so what would you do then?"
Karl and I watched her beautiful face slowly congeal in fear, and we recognized the light of terror well up in her eyes. She began shaking her head and moaning her disbelief piteously while I watched Karl cast an accusing glare at me as he took her in his arms and murmured soft reassurances to her. Great tears dotted her ebony cheeks and she shook her head back and forth refusing to consider the possibility that I might someday leave her life.
I tried to send her positive happy thoughts but my mind seemed to have become numb, and I slowly realized that my telepathic contact with her was futile-I was too upset to be able to control my mind. I kept thinking over and over-what have I done? What have I done?
It was some time before Karl and I could sufficiently reassure Neda so that Karl could take her comfortably back to her apartment. By the time Karl returned, almost an hour later, I had done some hard thinking and come to some painful conclusions. The first thing Karl said was that he wanted to talk to me some more.
"And I want to talk to you, Karl," I replied. "I realize now that what you were saying about my being a puppet master or slave master was true. I couldn't stand the thought of failing to make Neda happy, so I took over almost complete control of her mind. I-I didn't realize until this evening how completely dependent upon me she had become. No, not how dependent upon me she had become. Rather, how dependent upon me I had made her!"
Karl shook his head slowly. "You were having fun playing God," he said. "You know the old saying that power corrupts. According to your account of 2150, power doesn't corrupt Macro man, but it sure as hell corrupts micro man, and that's us, Jon-you and me."
"Yes," I nodded, "and while I have developed some Macro powers, I haven't learned to use them unselfishly. Rana warned me that if I used my new powers selfishly. I would make myself very unhappy. I was sure that I had nothing to fear since I was using them unselfishly, or so I thought. Now I know what she meant."
"Then do you realize," Karl questioned, "that you were bragging when you told me about all those people you had healed at the hospital? Do you realize that you were predominantly serving your pride, not people?"
I nodded my head in painful admission, and said, "There's another ancient bit of wisdom that says that anyone who exalts himself shall be humbled."
"Okay," Karl said. "I'm sure that if I'd suddenly developed Macro powers, I'd have misused them too. I'd probably have wiped out half the world's population by now, especially those bastards who know they're polluting our planet but just keep right on doing it to pad their own micro pockets. I probably wouldn't even have healed people out of pride-I'd have killed them out of hatred. But our problem now is to undo the damage you've done to Neda."
"I'm sorry as hell," I apologized. "I had no intention whatever of hurting her." Then, thinking it over, I added, "I could be dangerous, Karl."
"I'm not worried about that, Jon. Let's just get Neda back in shape before you go on to any more projects."
In the next few days I worked to teach Neda the principles of Macro philosophy. I was pleased to see how quickly she learned to grasp the concept, for I knew that if she could see herself and others through a Macro perspective, she could not be fearful, lonely, or dissatisfied with any experience.
After a week as her Personal Evolution tutor, I gave her this journal to read. I had talked it over with Karl beforehand and, while he, at first, was opposed to introducing her so quickly to the strange concepts presented here, he finally agreed to it on the basis that we didn't want to be over-protective. Our decision was vindicated by the enthusiastic reception Neda gave to the concept of the Macro society and by her acceptance of my desire to leave the world of 1976 and become a life-long member of the Macro society of the future.
While the Macro philosophy and P.E. tutoring helped Neda, the severance of our unhealthy dependency relationship would have taken much longer to complete if Karl had not fallen so completely in love with her. He devoted almost every waking moment that he wasn't teaching to being with her. It was he who got her out of the apartment and introduced her to the world of dating. However, he wasn't successful in getting her to return to her classes for the very good reason that the girl who was a university junior and had enrolled in courses under the name of Neda Cricksley no longer existed.
It was at this time that Karl came into our room one evening after a date with Neda and told me that he didn't know what to do about the legal problem of Neda's identity.
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"Well," Karl answered, "we couldn't get her back into her old classes because her professors and classmates would never recognize her or accept her as Neda Cricksley. We thought of enrolling her under a fictitious name for the next semester, but we finally realized that they won't accept her without past school records, and we haven't been able to figure out how we can come up with acceptable fake records for her."
"Well," I said, "I am sure you can figure out something. It doesn't sound too difficult."
"Yeah," Karl said, giving me his crooked grin, "I haven't told you all of it yet. Seems Neda's mother called the university and found out that Neda stopped attending her classes and that the psychology department has no record of her doing any typing work for any of their research."
"How did you find that out?" I asked.
"There was a notice on our department bulletin board," Karl explained, "listing her as a missing person and requesting that anyone who knows anything about her whereabouts get in touch with the campus police."
"Hmm," I said, "maybe I'd better call her mother and get it all straightened out."
Karl shook his head. "I wouldn't advise it," he said. "I talked it over with Neda and she thinks her mother is looking for her to get money from her now that she has a job. She'll want to see her, and we can't produce the body of Neda Cricksley, that's for sure!"
"In other words," I said, "you think the mother will charge me with kidnapping-possibly murder."
"Exactly," Karl nodded, "and neither she, the policemen, nor the jury that convicts you is going to believe your story, although it may help you cop a plea of insanity."
For the next couple of hours we argued about the necessity of talking with Mrs. Cricksley. Karl was strongly opposed to this and kept trying to sell me on the idea of finding a new identity for Neda and just letting her become one more unsolved missing person case. I pointed out that she had her name on her apartment mail box in the lobby and her telephone was in her name, which would certainly make it fairly easy for the police to find her when they really started looking.
With Karl still protesting, I insisted that I would see Mrs. Cricksley in the morning and try to convince her that her daughter was safe even if she couldn't see her. I went to sleep that night wondering how I was going to convince her.