Robert Sheckley - The Dream of Misunderstanding

universal mind, owned by no one and everyone, to which few are given access. I saw all our differences reconciled. But this too faded away. Apparently this ultimate reconciliation with the person I loved was not allowed by the ground rules of existence.

Shortly after that, I was expelled from her mind.

Her interior filing cabinets were shaking and quaking. The corridor itself writhed. The interior of her mind suddenly semed to knot, then explode outward with an irresistable force. I was thrown from her mind against the membrane. I passed through as before, and came out the other side intact.

Someone was standing there, waiting for me. It was the Ahriman, the subgod who had given me the parchment. Now he plucked it out of my head.

Ahriman said, "Apparently you didn't understand the gift. It's not to be used for yourself. You give it to someone else. The gift to give is to be able to understand, not to be understood."

"You didn't tell me that."

"You didn't ask. You said you knew what to do."

"Why did you give it to me in the first place, among all the people you could have given it to? You must have known from the start that I was damaged."

"We can only give the parchment to the damaged ones," he said. "Unfortunately, being damaged, they don't use it correctly."

So that was the end of it. When I woke up in my bedroom, I could find no sign of the parchment, and luckily I had the sense to tell no one about it, until now, in the form of a fictitious story.

I have never again heard from Ahriman.

If I had it to do over, I think I'd start changing the minds of dictators. Adjusting their political and social attitudes seems an easier task than trying to solve those of the secrets of a human heart.

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