[OT][WAAAAY OT] laser beams from PARC in 3-2-74?

Luciano Notarfrancesco lnotarfrancesco at yahoo.com
Thu Apr 5 18:00:26 UTC 2001


I'm reading "Dealers of Lightning". In 1972 it was
installed a laser link between Building 34 and Porter
Drive. Soon after the installation there was an
incident: "One morning after a foggy night Rick Jones
was summoned from his office to field a complaint from
a peeved Palo Alto police officer. It seemed that a
local morotist startled by a ghostly red beam crossing
overhead had run herself off Foothill Highway into a
ditch the night before." (Page 141)

I'm reading VALIS too, and I couldn't help to relate
PARC's lasers with the most important event in Philip
K. Dick's life (in his own opinion), i.e. the
teophany, psicotic incident, acid flashback or
whatever you want to call it, that happened the 2 of
March of 1974. It derived in 4 novels (Radio Free
Albemuth and the VALIS trilogy) and the eight thousand
pages of the exegesis Dick wrote every day until he
died (exactly eight years later). The experience began
with a pink or red light that blinded Dick. In VALIS
he compares the light with a red laser beam. Could it
have been a laser beam from PARC? I'm quite sure
Philip Dick was living in Berkeley by that time.

I find the posibility of a relation between Dick and
PARC just beautiful. I always though Smalltalk was a
very gnostic idea.

Luciano.-

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