Enrico Fermi named them neutrinos, super-tiny particles of matter, neutral in charge.  They are everywhere.  Trillions of them.  Several thousand billion of them pierce every square inch of a person’s body every second.  They pass right through without a trace, as they would pass through millions of miles of matter without affecting any of it—at nearly the speed of light.  But, occasionally, by the laws of chance, one interacts, maybe carries a message.
        A few have been stopped and deflected by huge vats of cleaning fluid, underground.  But that’s not the point.  The point is that I think I can stop them at will.  I need to be very quiet, like someone in a meditative state needs to be, I imagine.  And then, I have to concentrate on the fact that these fellows are streaming through me from everywhere, until I can feel them.  How they feel is hard to describe.  They tingle or tickle.  They warm up the inside of my head as if a physician had just given me a shot of a powerful drug; but there’s no high here, just an opening to something.  On Twilight Zone, they called it a door, but it’s really not.  
  
All kinds of possibilities have occurred to me—reading thoughts, being psychic, picking the winning lottery numbers, solving crimes.  For now, my need is small, but it’s private and secret, and very personal.  
  
They come from every direction, move in straight lines.  So, some of them that move through me must come from every particular place and beyond.  I tried to find an old lover.  An illicit one, I might add.  It has taken years of practice to get this far.  I focus: for a moment I think I sense her, but then she’s gone.  There are millions of my neutrino friends coursing their way through her to me, through me.  They are there.  I pick up on her again.  Kind of sexy, but that’s not what I’m after.  No.  Just a brain-touch, a feeling, a miniscule moment in time.  Too bad it doesn’t work in the other direction, but of course, it can’t.  Only I have mastered this.  In all my research and gentle asking, no one has ever reported anything close to my experience.  I’ve never found anyone who could send me a conscious message or anything else in my neutrino-world state.  
  
I stop.  There she is!  I see a smile, a moment in the past that never was. Yellow blouse, blue pants; she’s waving at someone, at me—a feeling of tenderness, then bursts of color, huge, like being inside a barrage of fireworks, stars exploding, creation itself.  I’m picking up too much now and try to tune down to just the one signal, but I cannot at first.  Then I quiet the scene, shut down for now.  It’s too much.

The next day, I do it again.  I get the same moment but slightly different colors this time.  It may be a moment before or a moment later, but it feels the same.  Same huge burst of color, but this time I’m able to isolate a bit, slow down, then—interference by an angry man with murder in his heart.  I empty my mind.  Now there’s a sleeping baby’s mind, the aching foot of a dog, a woman in a grocery store, first breath, last breath, now desert sun.  Time for me to rest.  I am getting better at this, more controlled.  I’m making progress.  
  
Today I was successful again.  Same scene with my lover.  Maybe that’s all I will ever see, and will have to accept this limitation.  Still, I hold it a moment longer, wanting to reach out and touch, but the colors come.  Like always, I try to isolate the frame.  Then, suddenly, like a lid slamming closed, nothing!  No neutrinos.  I’m still in an altered state, but no neutrinos.
        I try again.  Nothing.  I’m still alive, I’m still thinking, but now I’m back to my normal, regular self.  
  
I have tried again and again, but to no avail.  I hope I’m all right, but I’m not sure.
        So I’ve isolated myself.  Some things are crystal clear to me; the logic is perfect—either I have lost my ability completely (unlikely—why should it happen now, after all this time?), or the neutrinos have stopped.  Who besides me would know that—has the scientific community and all their complex and difficult experiments failed?  If this is the case, am I the only one who realizes it?
        Or has the Universe changed in some fundamental way, and we are all unknowingly just waiting for something different?  No, this is even more unlikely.
        So, here I am, waiting for my neutrinos to return, to sing to me again.  If they do, I can resume a life.  If they don’t, there won’t be a need to.  My lover is out there alone.  She has no idea that I touched her and, for now, that I’m unable to do so again.
        I focus and I wait.
  
  
                      About the Author
  
        Long-time SIG member and contributor, Robert Weisz writes from Itasca, Illinois.  About his experience, he says: “I have written short pieces periodically since high school (which was in the second half of the last century).  I’ve had some publication success in small mags and some e-zines.  I’m also working on a fantasy novel and a memoir.  ‘Neutrinos’ grew out of my interest and reading in physics and science fiction.”
 
 
                                        Copyright © Robert Weisz