It's About Time: A White Feather Mystery

The happy aide sat down in the chair next to Frank, clasped her hands and placed them on the arm rest facing  her aging friend. “Actually, I wanted to tell you what I found out about what we talked about the other night.”

He shifted in his chair. “Oh. Well, I haven’t turned in a complaint on Nujent. I’m just ...”

Stacie interrupted, “No! Not that. I meant the ‘seeing time’ thing.”

Frank was only a little relieved. Stacie seemed genuinely excited. “It is called synesthesia. And it comes in many different forms. Some see numbers as colors, and some can taste colors.”

Frank smacked his lips. “I see numbers as impossible and I never eat my crayons.”

Stacie giggled delightfully, reached into her purse and pulled out a scrap of paper. She read, “Psychologist David Brang is studying a bunch of people with an odd form of synesthesia: These people can literally ‘see time.’

“Brang’s subjects have time-space synesthesia; because they have extra neural connections between certain regions of the brain, the patients experience time as a spatial construct.”

She beamed a triumphant smile as she looked at Frank and declared, “So, there you are! It’s real.”

Frank was unconvinced. Stacie raced on. “And in the article it told about what these people saw and it was exactly what you described to me.”

She held out her arms. “White Feather was right!”

Frank shook his head. He could not help feel a little proud to have a “special condition,” but at the same time, it made him feel a little bit like a freak. He put a finger to his lips. “We must not speak of this to White Feather. It might cause his head to swell and bust that hollow deer bone he wears in his hair.”