Moon Over Seaville: Episode 2: In Search of Aginsky's Mind

By Dr. Leighton J. Reynolds

A psychological, action, and erotic thriller, Episode Two sends all the characters from Episode One, and new characters, deeper into the problems that generate California wildfire and wildfires worldwide. Six months after the Canyon Fire, Dr. Roger Sterling finds himself confronting a serial arsonist (or arsonists) "still out there," a kidnappin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: Nov 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781953699336

Dr. Leighton J. Reynolds

Leighton J Reynolds has a multidisciplinary doctorate in Psychoanalytic Studies (Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience, and Psychology), and he is a Certified Psychoanalyst. He lives and works in Southern California in the heart of wildfire country.

Book preview

Chapter One

The wildfire didn’t just creep up on Kyle; it leaped up at him like a huge ocean wave, full of beauty and destruction all in the same motion. Kyle caught glimpses of red, orange, blue, yellow, even pink flames, dancing in the darkness around him. He heard the sound of crackling and he knew it was sage brush burning. Then he heard what must have been the sound of sage brush exploding, and all he could think about was how rapidly the desert landscape had been turned into a raging furnace. Everything was happening in seconds. Although he didn’t want to believe it, he knew instantly that he was in big trouble. The wildfire had already accelerated into a roar, filling the ravine with what sounded like 100 locomotives coming straight at him. The noise was deafening.

As Kyle turned to look behind him, he witnessed exactly what he had already sensed. He was in the direct path of a wildfire that appeared to have come out of nowhere. What was a small brush fire a minute ago had grown into a monster in a manner he had never imagined was possible. Panic set in, and Kyle could feel his body shaking. Fear gripped every aspect of his being.

Am I going to get out alive?

Even before he had time to contemplate how a wildfire might act, there was a wall of flames 30 feet high towering over him. No matter how hard he tired, Kyle couldn’t wrap his mind around how this had all happened so quickly. Then the heat, the brilliant mix of colors, and the roar of the wildfire took over. In seconds Kyle, Chief Bradford, and the F- 150 were engulfed in flames. It was a terrifying moment. Although he had been over the story in his mind many times, it was never clear to Kyle exactly where he got the strength. He watched himself grab hold of the door handle to the pickup truck. The handle was red hot and it burned a circular hole straight through his left hand. He saw the Chief inside. He’s a big man. How am I going to get him out?

Kyle felt himself pulling with every muscle in his body. I have to get him out of here! The heat from the flames was incredible. In a rush of red, yellow, orange, pink and blue colors, he was being scorched. He just wanted to let go of the Chief ’s body and run. Instead, he found himself watching the Chief tumble out of the driver’s seat. Their two bodies landed in a heap on the desert sand that was quickly coming to a boiling point.

You have to get up now Kyle! The sand is burning your skin.

Once Kyle struggled to his feet, he reached out to grab the Chief ’s arms. But he couldn’t hold on because his sweaty hands kept slipping off the Chief ’s fire suit.

He was getting desperate.

How am I going to drag the Chief out of here if I can’t even hold on to him?

The 30 foot wall of flames was pouring over him now. His mind/brain was hyper-aware of the heat, the swirling air loaded with desert dust, the flames, and the deafening sound of the wildfire crackling everywhere.

The same thought kept swirling around in his mind. How am I ever going bring him up to the top of the ravine? This man weighs too much for me!

At the very last second, Kyle saw a rope underneath the driver’s seat. It wasn’t very long, but he figured it was long enough. He grabbed for it creating a shimmer through the heated air. Just moving his arms toward the rope was enough to catch them on fire. The hair on his arms was singed immediately, and Kyle retracted his arms. He screamed. The red hot hole in the middle of his left hand was still there.

One more time, Kyle grabbed for the rope and this time he managed to pull it from underneath the seat. Frantic, he threw the rope around Chief Bradford’s mid-section and put a half-hitch in the rope. He pulled with all of his might, but the Chief ’s body barely moved. He turned and looked back up the ravine. It looked like a mountain behind him that he was never going to be able to scale. As he turned to look back at the Chief he felt the oxygen being sucked out of his lungs; it was an incredibly suffocating feeling. What was worse was the fact that the simmering heat surrounding him was about to begin searing his lungs.

We’re never going to make it out.

Then he fell backward. Down. Down. Down. It felt like he was falling forever into a deep, dark hole.

Still sleeping but way over the edge in his psyche, Kyle’s dream was loaded with such emotional velocity that his mind/brain finally had to close down everything. Quietly, his dream closed out on him and he fell rapidly toward Stage 4 sleep. Stage 4 is the deepest state of human sleep, and the body remains paralyzed in it. Kyle was finally safe from any further traumatic moments. Whatever was haunting him about his dream was still there, buried deeply within his unconscious. His analyst, Dr. Roger Sterling, would have told him that there must be a very good reason for this. The time was 11:04 pm on December 14th.

When he awoke the next morning, Kyle had a vague memory of his dream but not enough to make much sense of anything. What did stay with him was the feeling that something was haunting him about what he saw in the ravine.

Something else happened out there. I just know it.

In the days that followed his first dream about the ravine, Kyle’s consciousness would occasionally be interrupted by the feeling that he was falling backward. And always he had the feeling that he was falling away from something he did not want to see.

That day, Kyle decided to bring up his dream in his session with Dr. Sterling. For almost two months now, he had been struggling to remember what had happened to him back in the ravine. Finally, he had something to bring into his treatment.

Dr. Sterling, last night I finally had a dream about the ravine.

What happened in your dream, Kyle?

Kyle took a deep breath. I really don’t remember much. But I’m haunted by something I saw out there that night. I just don’t know what it was.

Does your dream have a shape?

That’s a strange question about a dream. Kyle could feel his anxiety rising.

I was hoping my question might trigger something in your unconscious.

Dr. Sterling, all I can see now is black when I think about the dream.

So your dream has a color. Do you have any associations to it?

All of a sudden, Kyle didn’t really want to talk about his dream. In fact, the more he thought about the ravine the less he wanted to think about it. Besides, the entire incident was causing him a lot of anxiety about something. More accurately, he was experiencing a certain dread that he didn’t understand in the least. No he didn’t want to have any associations to the color of his dream, not today anyway.

I’m just drawing a blank, Dr. Sterling.

Traumatic incidents, like yours Kyle, often fragment the mind. The hormone Cortisol is over-produced when the mind/brain is traumatized, interfering with the laying down of memory. As a result, persons who have been traumatized have difficulty remembering what happened to them.

But finding the shape of a dream isn’t that kind of a lame idea?

I was hoping that a shape might pull the fragments of the dream together.

It’s still kind of lame. Kyle’s anxiety was consuming him, and he had difficulty concentrating on what Dr. Sterling was talking about.

Dr. Sterling added another thought. Freud said something about trauma that I have always found very interesting. I’m paraphrasing here, but he wrote something to the effect that trauma is an experience that presents the mind/brain with an increase of a stimulus, within a short period of time, that is too powerful to be dealt with or resolved in the normal manner in which the mind/brain works. The result, he wrote, was a permanent disturbance of the manner in which the energy in the mind/brain operates.

Kyle was silent.

Did I lose you, Kyle?

I’m having difficulty thinking about anything, Dr. Sterling. The whole idea of the ravine and Chief Bradford is sending me into a panic.

I think that was Freud’s point. The energy in your mind, because of the trauma in the ravine, is no longer operating in a normal manner and it blocks you from remembering what happened. It’s all very, very frustrating.

But Kyle was already gone; and he didn’t finish hearing Dr. Sterling’s point about trauma and energy in the mind/brain. Instead, he had fallen into Stage I sleep and he was dreaming while he lay in the big reclining chair that had been provided for his room.

Very quickly his mind was back in the ravine seeking answers.

Roger knew that his job right now was simply to help Kyle contain his emotions and the trauma that was driving them. Exploring the trauma could come later. I’ll just sit with you Kyle. There’s no need to say anything.

As Roger was leaving the hospital after his session with Kyle, his mind flashed on the question of energy in the mind/brain and he thought about Dr. Aginsky. During his three year Fellowship with Burt’s Institute in San Diego, he had heard Dr. Aginsky say over and over and over again: It’s all about energy, energy, energy. He could still hear Burt’s voice in his mind. He hadn’t thought about his Fellowship with Burt in a long time. But he knew, in fact he had always known, that Dr. Aginsky was on the right track. Everything on the planet was all about energy, energy, energy. Everything…

The time on that chilly winter day in California was 5:05 pm. Because it was December 15th, darkness had already settled over the Seaville Valley. Normally, the winds that sailed through the valley from the north would have subsided. But not tonight, the cold winds would continue through the evening, throughout the night, and into the morning hours. Per usual over the past 10 years, the winds had the effect of drying out an already parched landscape. And drought was one of the key factors in California wildfires.

Chapter Two

Exactly one week later, on the off chance that he might find something— anything---in the ash and rubble, Roger risked a visit to the house. What was left of their once beautiful home was nothing but piles of ashes. Even the fireplace was gone.

I still can’t believe there was enough heat to melt the bricks in the fireplace.

Chief Bradford had answered Roger’s questions about exactly how and why his house had burned down by explaining to him that a wildfire is capable of generating heat that reaches 2000 to 3000 degrees. There was plenty of heat inside your house to melt the bricks in the fireplace, and torch the entire house in a matter of minutes, were the Chief ’s exact words.

After more than a month of struggling with whether or not to return, Roger made the decision. He would take one last walk through, and say goodbye.

Expecting to hear no, Roger had asked his kids anyway about returning to the house to say goodbye. Both Brad and Abby had said no, and he understood. The memory of being there would have been too traumatic for them. So he went alone.

It was a California winter day, and high clouds were stretched across a dull, blue sky. December 22nd was his late father’s birthday. The time was 2:00 pm.

Over the years Roger had read plenty of articles in the Los Angeles Times about returning to one’s home after it had been destroyed by a wildfire. And there were plenty of interviews on TV in the aftermath of a wildfire exploring the same experience. Everyone used the same word: devastating. No surprise to him, this was exactly what he experienced the moment he arrived in front of his property, minus the house. It was devastating to see nothing when there had once been a very real something. He closed his eyes while he visualized the front of their home. Everything was so real: the colors, the angles of the roof, the brick, the flowers and shrubs, the windows reflecting scenes in the street. But when he opened his eyes there was nothing in front of him.

Standing at the perimeter of what was once their home, Roger concluded that he must be looking at the surface of the moon. There was nothing left but piles of black and gray ash, the by-products of combustion. The phrase barren landscape came to his mind while tears began to form in his eyes.

My pain must have been right below the surface. Lots of memories flashed through his mind. Abby was born into this house.

My first football toss with Brad was here in the backyard.

I took long, sensuous showers with Jill. I loved watching the shampoo drip off her hair and drift slowly down her incredible body. It was shiny against her luxurious skin.

We made love in front of the fireplace and Jill got her first rug burn. There were birthday parties, and treasure hunts in the backyard.

My parents visited while my Dad was still alive.

And then there was Jill’s cancer, the bright light slowly and painfully leaving her eyes.

When the memories slowed down, Roger began a visual search through the rubble from his position on the perimeter of what had once housed all of these memories. Eventually, his eyes wandered over in the direction of where his office had once existed. He recognized the room by the few remaining colors in the ash. They were once the Rousseau patio stones outside the French doors that were the entrance to his office. The colors were a dull yellow, red, and white that had somehow survived the fire. As he gazed into his office through his memories of the room, he caught sight of a silver clip.

Is that the clip on my old briefcase?

He had totally forgotten that he even had a briefcase.

Could it really have survived the fire?

Roger walked slowly through the piles of ashes that used to be his office. He never suspected that he was about to discover anything important as he made his way across the room that didn’t really exist anymore. When he reached the silver clip he stared down at it for several moments.

More memories flooded his mind. This time the memories were about the fire. He could hear the explosive crackling as the wildfire devoured its way through the neighborhood. But most of all he heard his own voice: how come the investigation into how the wildfires started can’t confirm anything?

Finally, he was able to bring himself back to the piles of ash in front of him. That’s when he kicked the ashes and dust around the silver clip. At first, he couldn’t believe it. There was actually something underneath the ashes.

Still using his foot he traced the outline of the form. Something popped out at him. It was indeed his briefcase. As he lifted up the shape with his foot, he realized that the plastic handle had melted, but not the case. The briefcase wasn’t that expensive but it survived the fire. Damn, I don’t even remember what’s in it!

When he picked up the ash covered briefcase and opened it, he found a single folder with a two page letter and a tattered journal decorated with flower prints. Then he remembered. Here was the letter he had written to Brigham Young University about a month after Burt’s death. The tattered journal contained the very first notes he had taken from Burt.

What does it mean that the letter and the journal survived?

Roger left the blackened briefcase in the rubble and ash and walked the tattered journal and the folder with the letter in it back to his SUV. He studied the letter for a few moments and then began to read.

The letter had been written back in February, 2000, to a Professor of Anthropological Studies at Brigham Young University. As Roger scanned down the first page of the letter, several sentences caught his attention:

Burt worked on this theory for 65 years but he never published anything about it.

What was my idea then about why Burt had never published anything, not a single thing, about his theory on The Ongoing Evolutionary Development of the Universe?

He paused for a moment. I think he was afraid of the criticism he would face if he released a theory that challenged so much of what the world thought about planet earth.

Taking in a deep breath, he read on:

"During my three year Fellowship with Dr. Aginsky, he dictated 114 sets of notes on his theory that we planned to turn into a book and an article for Scientific American. Unfortunately, he passed away early in January, 2000, due to complications from many years of struggling with diabetes. In closing his estate, all of these notes were accidentally thrown out, although I have wondered if they were stolen for some unknown reason."

Roger paused again, this time for a long while. Is this what I really think, that someone stole the notes, and not that they were accidentally thrown out?

He could only conclude that he really didn’t know. The question was: did he want to find out?

The next several sentences brought him back to what he was thinking a decade ago: I believe the value of Burt’s estate was around 10 million dollars, which would have been plenty of money to sponsor further research into his theory. But the money, along with the notes for the book, simply disappeared.

A cold December wind began blowing down Canyon Drive, but Roger didn’t notice. He read on:

When I first met Dr. Aginsky, he told me that he had ‘figured it all out.’ What the Universe was all about, and what we were doing here. At first I was very skeptical. This is a huge claim to say the least. But as we worked together I came to believe that he was on the right track, and that his ideas and theories were worth pursuing. I believe his genius was in taking the Big Bang Theory and carrying it from the beginning of Time into the inorganic world, the organic world, the biological world (species), and on into the human mind, culture and beyond. I believe his work is extremely important to us. What are we doing here, and just where are we going on this planet? Do we have any guideposts in the continuing development of humanity and civilization? I truly believe he found some important answers to these questions.

The letter went on to point out that Dr. Aginsky and his wife, Ethel, had given a number of seminars on an aspect of his work at BYU back in the 1970’s. Roger had wondered, because of this previous connection, if BYU would be willing to sponsor the research necessary to draw the book together from what scattered notes he had left, and publish something with Scientific American.

As the temperature began to drop even further, Roger finally took note of the cold winds stretching down Canyon Drive. It brought back Christmas memories with Jill and the kids. The holidays at the Sterling household had always been a wonderful time, except for last year because it was their first year without Jill. Roger allowed himself the pleasure of a few beautiful holiday memories drifting through his mind. Then his mood changed. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the cold wind held some kind of ominous meaning. Up and down the street was nothing but devastation. Nothing, absolutely nothing had been left standing. All of the 45 homes in their development had been totally leveled by the Canyon Fire. His mind wandered to a place where he knew he was irritated and frustrated.

Two months should be enough time to figure out what happened here.

But thus far no one has a clue.

On several occasions back in October, Roger had wondered if a beautiful teenager named Darlene had something to do with the wildfires. Her late night visit to the Sterling residence was bizarre, and then after a bunch of frantic phone calls to his voice mail she had simply disappeared. Over time, she had also simply disappeared into his unconscious along with a lot of other teenagers he had been concerned about. But just because 100 plus teenagers were logged into Roger’s unconscious did not mean that nothing was happening. The unconscious was a dynamic aspect of the human mind working out of sight and at its own pace. By the time next April rolled around, the synchronicity between Roger’s unconscious and Darlene’s unconscious would become apparent, just as Dr. Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity predicted it would.

Still deep in thought, Roger put the letter back in the folder, and set it on the passenger’s seat along with the tattered journal. BYU had been considerate enough to reply to his request but the answer was no, as it was from everywhere else Roger had applied for grant money. Finally, he gave up. Gradually, the responsibilities of family and his practice took over his life and he had forgotten about Dr. Aginsky’s work, except for occasional passing thoughts about it. Now, he was wondering why the letter and the journal had survived when nothing else in the house had?

Several weeks later he pulled out the old tattered notebook that contained a small portion of the original notes Burt had given him, and began anew to make some sense of them. After working on the old notes for about a month, he began to see a connection between Burt’s theory and California wildfires. Little did Roger know then where his pursuit of the theory, and the connection with California wildfires, could possibly have led him. Over the following few months, the 114 sets of notes for the book that had disappeared, exactly where the ten million dollars in Burt’s estate had gone, a young teenage girl named Darlene who had vanished, and another California wildfire would all re-appear in the same context. As Dr. Aginsky had explained to Roger on many occasions, energy never stands still. It is always transforming itself. It’s always in motion. So nothing in the Universe ever remains the same. And nothing stays disappeared for very long.

Chapter Three

Six months after the worst wildfires in its brief history, the City of Seaville, California had returned to a fragile state of normalcy. The life motion of its citizens was, after too brief a recovery, moving merrily along. Seaville was mostly a new California city nestled in a deep, wide valley north of Los Angeles, 20 minutes inland from the Pacific Ocean. The City was listed as one of the most livable in California, and this is where Seaville concentrated most of its energy: making things new, shiny, and fun. Throw in a good educational system, and it was a very desirable place to live and raise a family.

It was the Month of April and springtime was taking over the city. Blooming trees, flowers, bushes, and shrubbery were everywhere in hundreds of bright colors. Citizens all over Seaville could see the explosion of Nature as it spread rapidly across the city and the countryside. The landscape was alive, vibrant, and amazingly colorful. Few of Seaville’s citizens, however, had the time, or the inclination, to consider that there was more going on in the city than the arrival of spring. Unfortunately, the forces of Nature that had been ignored the previous fall were still being ignored. What most of Seaville’s citizens failed to recognize was the fact that the beautiful life-energy of springtime they were experiencing was, at the same time, opposed by the forces of death and destruction. As a result, these other forces played themselves out under the conscious radar of its citizens. Further, most folks were unaware that these life and death forces on the planet Earth were never at rest, and that their energy was constantly being transformed. Neither were the good citizens of Seaville able to apply the Second Law of Thermodynamics to their everyday lives. The Second Law of Thermodynamics simply stated that the energy of the Universe could neither be created nor destroyed, it could only be transformed. The question was: exactly how was this energy being transformed as the Universe rolled along still expanding, since the beginning of the Big Bang, at 1000 miles per hour?

On this particular evening, after the sun had dipped quietly behind the mountains on the West side of the Valley, a certain set of life and death forces were coming into play. As a by-product of this struggle between life and death, both physical and psychological, there was the potential for a new perspective on this ancient struggle. Consciously and unconsciously, the community of Seaville would soon be engaged in the search for Aginsky’s mind.

For over three months now, Roger had been preparing a series of seminars on Dr. Aginsky’s theories that he would be presenting to the public at City Hall on the afternoon of April 12th. In preparing for the seminars he had the image that the community of Seaville could be represented as a game of evolutionary chess. Tonight, however, outside the consciousness of the community, including Roger’s, reality was quickly moving ahead of the theory. The pieces had already been placed on the evolutionary chess board waiting for the opening move. On one side of the board, in white, were the forces of life, sexuality, and connection. On the other side of the board, in black, were the forces of death, destruction and separation.

Also outside of Roger’s awareness, because human consciousness can only contain seven items plus or minus two in a moment’s time---the remaining items are in the unconscious---was an understanding that there were more pieces on the evolutionary chessboard that he imagined. Roger had started out working to understand the wildfire that had burned down his home, and almost killed him and his two children. He believed that he was beginning to understand the connection between Dr. Aginsky’s theory of the ongoing evolutionary development of the Universe and the yearly presence of California wildfires. But with each passing minute that evening more pieces were being added to the evolutionary chess game. And it was going to get increasingly difficult to keep up with the game.

What had begun as a fairly straight forward question to be researched, Why do so many wildfires occur in Southern California every year, and why did our home burn down, would soon be mushrooming into a situation that was out of control. Without knowing it then, Roger was opening a huge door to the complexities and challenges of the ongoing evolutionary development of the 21st century. Also without being aware of it, a retired fire fighter named Jerry was the opening move on the evolutionary chessboard.

Alone for awhile, Jerry was actually feeling rather salty. He was thinking about an old bumper sticker he was used to seeing back on the East Coast when he went to visit his brother on Cape Cod. The bumper sticker read: Old Fisherman Never Die, They Just Smell That Way. He was imagining that he would rather feel salty and smell fishy than feel and smell crispy from years of fighting California wildfires. He envied his younger brother and the soft fishing life he led in