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The Mind Like A Strange Balloon
by Tom Maddox
This story originally appeared in Omni, June 1985.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Me, too, I guess I tried to fill it in my usual ways. Drank too much beer, cooked elaborate Mexican dinners, walked aimlessly in the dripping woods under slate-gray Oregon skies.
And of course, I watched television: old movies seen in worn prints, music videos with strutting rock stars, baseball games inching to conclusion across bright-green fields Ghost images, ghost voices pulled by my dish antenna from the satellite-thick sky. The void remained: I had a talent growing slack from disuse; I had an empty space in my bed.
The image in my living room was real enough, though Toshi Ito had come calling to offer me a job. "How are you, Jerry?" he said. He shook the water off his raincoat and draped it over a chair, then looked around at the pine veneer on the walls, green plastic sofa, mismatched chairs. "You like it here?"
"It's all right, Toshi." Not quite a lie Though in Palo Alto I'd had the usual company-sponsored condo, it hadn't felt like mine. Not just the apartment, the work I'd done and life I'd lived--none of it had seemed to belong to me. Tawdry as it was, this place did.
"You making any money?"
"Some... enough. " That was true. A few high-priced consultations with Control Data, a week spent lecturing for the International Telecommunica tions Union in Zurich-- I'd done all right financially. With the money I'd saved while at SenTrax, I had more than enough.
"Cheryl says hello," he said "MIT made her a nice offer, so it looks like Stanford has to give her te