Another excerpt from Revelation: The Epiphany of Cassandra Philips

Mark Poncy’s Blog
Another excerpt from Revelation: The Epiphany of Cassandra Philips

Each chapter of this novel begins with a consideration of a sensory organ within the developing embryo (see prior posts) Here’s the one on the apparatus of hearing:

Within the temporal region of the developing animal’s head, construction continues on structures that would funnel yet another form of energy from the environment into the organism, appraising it of information that will increase its awareness, and therefore the odds of its survival. Potentially threatening movement through the surrounding world would always involve some mechanical disruption, creating energy that is transmitted in the form of sound waves. The hearing apparatus would be meticulously fashioned to capture this flow of energy, warning of approach hidden under the cover of night, or otherwise camouflaged from visual detection.

In parallel with the bilateral placement of its eyes, the twinned ears, located on either side of the head, will receive acoustic information at times and strengths slightly variant with respect to one another, enabling the auditory cortex of the brain to calculate the direction from which the sound emanates. With sonic energy traveling at the speed of over one thousand feet each second, this difference, while less than a millisecond, is well within the discriminating powers of this finely-tuned system.

Because of the tendency of sound to rapidly decay during its propagation through the atmosphere, a specialized apparatus providing amplification of acoustic energy is forming within the middle ear. Three delicate bones arranged uniquely will offer mechanical leverage to the most minute stimulus, bringing the footfall of the padded paw into the realm of detection. At the same time, a powerful muscle begins to invest the delicate structure, one that will reflexively activate upon the arrival of loud and potentially damaging sound, immobilizing the apparatus, keeping it from shattering under its own resonance. Thus will the organism react to an enormous range of sonic energy, from the click of the turning key to the assaulting power of the cannon’s roar.

Deep within the structure of the ear, the snail shell-like cochlea is forming, a remarkable fluid-filled chamber lined with fine cilia, tiny hairs whose roots impinge upon the delicate curling branch of the auditory nerve. Tapering to microscopic thinness along its concentrically-wrapped length, the cilia vibrate in ratio to the pitch of the conducting sound, betraying its nature, from the threatening howl of the stalking wolf to the plaintive mourn of the maestro’s cello. Once again, it will all happen according to plan, a manifestation of instructions dictated by the linear order of chemicals splayed within the invisible nucleus of each invisible cell.

Short Characterization from My Novel "Revelation"

For all of you scientists out there whose work is vetted by clueless administrators, below is a short characterization with which you’ll unfortunately be familiar. It’s taken from my just-released novel, “Revelation”: enjoy!

The telephone beside Steven Helmsley’s obscured right ear kept ringing until the bureaucrat was awakened out of a profoundly satisfying dream. He had taken to the ritual of the late afternoon nap, perfecting all the accoutrements of deception lest anyone discover his true enterprise, that of escaping the horridly boring insignificance of his daily workday existence. He was on his way to mastering the art of channeling, directing his unconscious awareness into a Walter Mitty dreamland. Unlike the predictable monotony of his workplace, little thrills and surprises often peppered these directed flights, taking him to the levels of scientific accomplishment that had so successfully eluded his conscious pursuits.

He stuck it out because he needed the income, and the pension they had offered in exchange for his freedom was just two years from vesting. Working for the government had robbed him of the opportunities and rewards of outside industry, or so he believed, and he was not about to forego the comforts of this costly security blanket, no matter how much crap he was catching from them. In reality, he had been too afraid to chance it on his own, which was more than likely fortuitous. Steven Helmsley lacked the imagination to ever contribute to the body of significant research, and so he made his living overseeing its practice under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health - another bit of oxymoronic logic in the unique operational construct of the United States government.

A perspective of the evolutionist, Laslov, on the development of sensory function - in this case, telepathic communication - as contained in my novel, "Revelation: the Epiphany of Cassandra Philips"

A perspective of the evolutionist, Laslov, on the development of sensory function - in this case, telepathic communication - as contained in my novel, "Revelation: the Epiphany of Cassandra Philips":

The second area of intense interest to the scientific mettle of Petyr Laslov was that of mind-to-mind communication, popularly misnamed extrasensory perception, or ESP. Laslov kept this fascination to himself, lest he suffer the indignities normally extended to those who seriously entertain the reality of such an ethereal quality. He was uncertain himself as to its existence, but his instincts told him there was a good possibility that it was a developing sense within his species. After all, he was blessed with the outlook of the evolutionist, where systems came and went over large chunks of time, and he suspected that somewhere within the brain were the beginnings of a receptor which could resonate to the extremely low-voltage signals propagated through space as a consequence of another’s mental activity. Imperfect, yes, perhaps requiring another ten thousand generations before becoming an identifiable sixth sense, but could one rule out the fact that at this moment in time, the human species was experimenting with yet another method of sampling its environment? Certainly not.

Given the understandable limitations of his ability to conduct structure-function experiments on such a theory in humans, at least with present techniques, he conceded the proof of his hypothesis to be extremely unlikely; his evenings were, however, still dedicated to the library of neurophysiological text in which he sought clues to the existence of man’s next tool.