My Library

And Zelda reminded me that I had designated myself as a lean, mean, fighting machine, and ought to ignore the obscene accusations. Buell advised that I SHOULD read minds, for doing so was the only way of protecting oneself. Well, I did like my drinks. So at least the drinking part was partly true. But in fact, I didn't drink very often or very much except on occasions when I had no lab work forthcoming. You see, drink caused my psi functions to degrade or cease altogether. I also couldn't drink and paint or write, which I did most of the time, because doing so caused my inspirations to vanish. But there was another side to the gossip, and I found going before me a fabulous reputation, one entirely out of proportion to my humble self. I was a genius, an experimental innovator, an inspired mystic, and could travel out-of- body anywhere I wanted to go. The appellations of "superpsychic" and "superman" (with X-ray eyes, no less) now first surfaced for the first time. Some of this fabulous gossip held that I was the best thing which had ever happened to parapsychology. I shuddered on hearing this, for I well knew what parapsychologists would think of it.