Guardian Angel

One stack of posters later, Sarah was still ranting about faith, fantasy, and the fortune database.

"...and if you refuse to search for the truth you will be eternally locked into a lie. What's wrong with lies? Why is the truth important? Because either truth or lies will define the guiding principles of your life! To have a successful life one must act on the truth, not a lie. If I believed that this poster was nutritional and acted on that belief - ate nothing but posters - would I live long? Of course not! And... and..." Mike and I both glanced at her involuntarily when the shouting ceased. "I think we're nearly out of posters, aren't we?"

We were. Mike sighed with relief, and I nearly did the same. Instead, I volunteered to get the rest of the posters. Anything to escape the line of fire. Sarah told me where to find them in her dorm room and reminded me to knock in case her roommate was inside. She sounded uncannily like my mother.

As I passed the student union somebody started humming. Not loud, but the person knew how to project his voice. It almost sounded as if the hummer had taken voice lessons. I wouldn't have noticed it, except the sound followed me. Never too loud, never too soft. The tune was one I had played in my high school band, but its name was just outside the reach of conscious memory. I kept walking, the humming followed. It was starting to creep me out.

After another minute of humming I stopped where I stood, turned around, and cocked my head to the side. There was no definite direction to the sound. I spun slowly, a full three hundred sixty degrees (two pi radians) and the humming cut off.

"So", said the little voice in the back of my head, "you've always wanted an MP3 player. And here it turns out you've already got something better. Funny, huh?" I didn't notice the people staring at me; I was too surprised. The little voice had never conversed with me before. All I had ever heard from it was advice on math, and lately on how to deal with Sarah.

"Betcha don't know who I am."

I wondered briefly how to talk to somebody inside my head. Not knowing what else to do, I spoke out loud. "You're my conscience or my subconscious or my alter-ego or something. You're a figment of my imagination!"

"Ok. If I'm a figment of your imagination, you can imagine me any name you want me to have. What'll you call me?"

I nearly gave up and ran for the school psychologist's office. Instead, I said, "Why should I call you anything? You're just a figment of my imagination."

"Because, figment or not, I don't plan to stop chatting with you any time soon, so you might as well call me something. How about Dave? I've always liked the name Dave. And while I've got your ear: You don't need to say anything out loud. All you have to do is think about saying it."

I tried out Dave's advice. "Can you hear this?"

"Loud and clear, thanks. Humans have a strange aversion to people who talk to themselves, seem to think it's related to insanity. Now keep walking, and they might even think you're halfway normal."

I started towards Sarah's dorm. Dave hummed a few bars under his breath and asked if I wanted some music.

"I'd prefer some explanations. If you can hear me like this, does it mean you can hear all my thoughts? If you can read my mind, why do we even need to converse?"

"I can't read your mind. All I have access to are your senses and some of the neural pathways immediately connected to them."

"Does that mean you aren't imaginary?"

"Well, you could argue that everything is imaginary, couldn't you?" I could nearly see the voice - Dave - grinning. It was just the sort of thing I might have said back when I fancied myself a philosopher, and he probably knew it.

"But..." I thought for a moment about what to ask next. "What are you? What would you call yourself?"

Dave, suddenly serious, said "Your guardian angel."

"WHAT?! What do you mean, 'guardian angel?'"

"Just what I said, Brian. Like it or not, you have a guardian angel. I'm here to advise your decisions and catch your mistakes."

He had thrown me off, but not for long. I shot back, "You make it sound like hearing disembodied voices is some sort of honor! And besides, doesn't everyone get a guardian angel?"

"You're wrong about that. Excusable, though, since it's a common misconception. Very few people have guardian angels. The ones who do are very special. Most of them are a little more grateful, too." Something seemed to retreat from my mind, as if Dave had drawn back into himself.

"Dave? Are you there?"

Dave didn't answer. He was, as I found out, a rather sensitive guardian angel. I was half glad to be rid of his voice too, because Sarah's dorm was nearby and I would need my wits about me if I ran into her roommate: Roommates can be dangerous little beasts.

---

24 hours early!! I think this is a new record. As a sort of celebratory act I will edit this before posting it tomorrow! Now, if I can just keep it up...

...and guess what? As I was walking to band Friday afternoon I realized that this entry, which I finished the night before, was actually 48 hours early! Which led to the realization that I had lost all sense of time and needed more sleep, but that was blown away by my excitement at the extra earliness. (-:

In other news: There are two new links in the "Worth a Glance" section of the sidebar. XKCD is one of them. It's a rather unique webcomic: Notable not for art (which, though clear, is minimal) but for a scathing ability to mock the world while seldom actually insulting anyone. I think it may have actually been the first webcomic I ever read, and that only because of the infamous "sudo Make me a sandwich" comic, which was quite popular for a while on the Ubuntu Linux forums. Primarily for techies and math fanatics. I think you have to be both to catch all the references. Despite (or because of) that, Randall Munroe manages to write some very touching comics.

The other link is to Indexed, a webcomic which, like XKCD, is minimalistic in terms of art but still conveys great meaning. It isn't even a comic in the traditional sense, instead Jessica Hagy draws simple graphs and charts that showcase some uncannily accurate observations on the state of the world. Funny and insightful. I would recommend it even though I occasionally disagree with her choice of independent variable on the Cartesian graphs.

If I can keep the focus I've had this week I may well avoid any more tardy entries. Hope you all have a nice week!