II
"I needed a break from science," she continued in the foyer amid the buzz of conversation as they slowly made their way toward the exit.
It was mid-afternoon in Chicago. February, 1962. It was cold and windy and she was tired and needed a break from science. "Would you like to meet for supper?" the young man asked. "I'm hungry", she replied affirmatively without affirming. It was biological instinct. She was hungry therefore she had to eat. It required no thought. "How about 5:30, here in the restaurant?"
She had come from St. Mary's with her adviser Dr. Walsh. The young man had come, from where? She did not know. He was there on business with his father. What kind of business? She did not know. What was his name? She did not know even that. Nor did he know her name. It was all reaction: revolution-->dazed wandering; hunger-->eat. There was no call for formalities.
She went back to where she was staying; he went back to wherever he was staying and at 5:30 this communion of strangers reconvened in the Sheraton Blackstone restaurant for supper.
It was a large round table. It was four of them, the young people, the chaperon-adviser Dr. Walsh and the young man's father. Instinctively they grouped by age, the two young people on one arc of the circle, the two older men on another.
She was not a she with long, shapely legs then, he was not a tall, handsome young man then, they were two of the human species with the brains of the species which enabled minds and souls which were unique among species on this world, the only world that any of their species knew and their brains comprehended the lecture and their minds understood the change in their reality and their souls felt it.
They communicated. This was done orally. That is, they made sounds that their brains transmitted to their vocal cords and mouths to form sounds and to string those sounds into longer strands that communicated thoughts that formed in their minds that their brains transmitted electrically. That's all they had, that was their reality of communication. There was not much of this oral communication on the young arc of the circular table. There were these sounds, they were strung together into these strands but the strands were short as this method of communication goes in this species and the times when there were no sounds were longer. Their minds were communicating, though. Their souls, too. This communication had not the friction of mediation of electrical signals to the biological features of vocal cords and mouth. On the older arc of the table the men were practicing normal oral communication, unmelodious, complex, lengthy strings of sounds communicating facts.
What were facts now?
The dinner over, the four parted, the young people without formalities.
"Breakfast?"
"7."
