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Mark had been meditating for more than three hours, periodically pausing to mentally tag everything about what he was feeling. The idea had come to him shortly after he had finished savoring the last piece of Mrs. McFarland’s legendary apple pie at dinner. When the final morsel had been swallowed and the wonderful sensations in his mouth were only memories, it had come to him.
Memories. Thanks to the augmentation he had received on the Second Ship, his memories were perfect in every respect. Sitting on the couch he had played back the memory of eating the slice of pie, the flaky texture of the crust, the sweet tang of the fresh apples, the cold smoothness of the vanilla ice cream as it mixed with the still-hot filling on his tongue. He could feel it, taste it, smell it every bit as realistically as the original experience. Amazing.
If he could do that with an experience like eating, maybe he could get control of his emotions using the same technique. The problem with meditation was that it took time. But remembering how he felt took almost no time at all. If he could play back the feeling in his mind, every detail the same as it was during meditation, he should be able to achieve exactly the same brain state.
Retiring to his bedroom, Mark sat down on his bed, vividly recalling how he felt during one of his meditation sessions. Almost instantaneously he was there, calm yet completely alert, aware of every hair on his skin. There was no doubt in his mind that if he were hooked to a device that displayed his brain waves that they would be an exact match with what they had been during that past meditation.
Thrilled with this new discovery, Mark moved his memory around through different parts of previous meditations, adjusting his brain state accordingly. One thing he determined was that he needed a better system of recalling exact levels of meditation, depending on the state he desired to achieve. Borrowing Jennifer’s idea of tagging memories in a scheme that let her easily find the memory she desired, Mark set to work. Rather than play back and tag parts of old meditations, he started fresh, taking himself through a wide variety of meditative techniques, progressively going deeper and deeper. As he did, he began setting the mental tags at points he thought he might want to recall quickly.
Finishing with a close approximation of the deathlike trance in which he had frightened Heather and Jen on the starship, Mark brought himself back to full alertness with a shift of thought.
Rising from the bed, he pumped his fist in the air. “Yes!”
Despite that they had all attained the ability to use 100 percent of their brain capacity, most of that potential was completely untrained and yet to be explored. Mark had no idea what might lie along those unexplored neural pathways, but tonight’s success left him more eager than ever to find out. In one fell stroke, he had accomplished something that had eluded him for weeks—he had regained his sense of self-control.