The Forever Lecture

Standing behind the lectern on an un-necessary stage at the front of the university lecture theatre she said, “As always I am Elise Hadsworth but not as always, this is the final session we are all having on this interesting case. Over the last eleven weeks you have been briefed on this individual and you have all been given thorough case notes. You have all had your opportunities to ask relevant questions and from some what appear to be irrelevant questions.” Elise looked up into her class and picked out a student and gave a nod and an almost disapproving look.

“Today’s session will allow us all to bring together the facts and discuss a diagnosis, which you will have seen I have omitted mine from the case, you have all probably made your own minds up as to what diagnosis I have made. Just to let you all know as well this is being filmed, so please try and be professional and not play up to the cameras and cameramen that you will see wandering around” again she looked up into the students and picked out a few individuals who she had singled out from day one as the jokers, extroverted individuals who waste no time to make a comment that is supposed to invoke a reaction.

“Ok, to refresh on the case so far, on day one I introduced you to a case I had worked on, a man who had been in a major coach crash in the Swiss Alps, he was the only survivor. He had lost the 5 remaining members of his family and two close family friends. He sustained minor injuries, one of which was a large gash on the back of his leg which dissected the Vastus Medialis, partial dissection of the Vastus Intermedius. The tear was approximately 8 inches long in a crescent moon shape. The bone was not visible and the Rectus Femoris and the Vastus Lateralis were visible under examination. He had no other major injuries, minor cuts and bruising to most of his other muscle groups except above the C3 vertebrae or his cranium. Cuts were indicative of blunt force and glass shards and bruising is common from the extent of the accident.”

“At the scene he maintained he was thrown free but this claim could not be corroborated by witnesses at the scene, who said that they believed he was first seen emerging from the back side of the wreckage after it had settled, no one could say that he had descended the drop off after the crash had happened. Sightseeing video was also in conclusive on this matter.”

A hand was raised in the auditorium and Miss Hadsworth said, “Yes”

“This is an observation not a question Miss Hadsworth” the girl paused looking down at her note pad and then continued, “from the Swiss accident investigation reports, the stipulated that the location of the gentleman’s seat they could see no way he could have been thrown free as the positioning of debris and collision damage would have enclosed his seating area, and also by the positioning of his seatbelt would suggest it had been removed after the coach had come to rest.”

Miss Hadsworth continued, “That is correct, it would appear from the investigation his seat was vacated after the coach had come to a standstill, this can be seen in the way the seat was vacant of expected debris and how the seat belt was positioned as though it had been opened and discarded on top of the glass and passenger personal possessions.” A slight pause as the slides from the PowerPoint presentation rotated through different scenes from the crash, impact points and then to the seating area where the man was designated to have been sat.

The presentation stopped on a slide that showed front and rear outlines of the human body, showing a directory of the injuries sustained. This was a vast list and each one of the injuries had accompanying text as filled in by the paramedic on site. Accompanying the injury list was the discharge notice from the hospital dated and signed the same day, all of the patient specific data had been removed from all the documents.

As Miss Hadsworth turned the page on the large file that was being used to provide all information for the seminar, there was the collective sound of pages being turned by all of the students. From this point on all of the pages had been completed by Miss Hadsworth. A comprehensive file had been kept as from the first moment she had spent with the man and the revelations she had been told on the plane journey back to Britain she knew this would be something the University could use as a very good case file to help the future brains the department of Psychiatry to study. She even got the subject to sign a waiver allowing her the authority to do this.

Page by page the file was discussed and just before the break for lunch they had come to the end, four hours for going over the file partly for the documentation on film and also to recap on the case that had been discussed in depth for the last eleven weeks.

Returning an hour later, Miss Hadsworth said, “You have all had this file for eleven weeks and we have quickly refreshed our brains on all parts of the case.” A door opened sheading light into the lower right of the auditorium and one of the students came in apologising that she was late, as she reached her seat Miss Hadsworth said, “I am going to open the floor up to initial questions or observation from you, please may I request that you leave any details you have about your own diagnosis’s until after this afternoons break.”

The late girl was making noise in the back and everyone silently looked around and when she finally looked up she nonchalantly said, “I have a question?”

Miss Hadsworth said, “As everyone is looking at you anyway we may as well start with you.”

“Thank you” taking a short pause to compile herself she continued with, “Miss Hadsworth you interviewed the subject and spent many sessions with him, if we forget about psychiatry and everything that lays basis on the diagnosis you came to, do you believe that the man was immortal.”

“I am able to answer that in two ways, firstly from my position here at the University I am not allowed to make any personal observations like that. I am here to make a psychiatric diagnosis under the guidelines that define varying scales of mental illness. Secondly, the subject was plausible and undeniably he was able substantiated the claims he made very well and was passionate about what he said, but the way he was able to substantiate his claims was via sources that could easily be able to be picked apart. Granted he was very knowledgeable and undoubtedly he was intelligent but when you ask a question or you are presented with a question like this you need to be able to not pick holes in the story. I was able to pick very large holes in a story that would seem to have been scripted by a calculated mind over a great deal of time.”

“His primary source of information throughout our conversations was internet based. From these snippets of information and looking into the histories of some of the lives he claimed to have been, I was able to find no details that could link his claims in historical fact.” Miss Hadsworth said.

Very quickly responding to this the girl said, “Surely you can’t rely on history books, if you look at history as it is written, this is the viewpoint of the author of that history. The reason I bring this up is didn’t Constantine the great have people who rewrote history to omit things, like his natural son for instance and my overall point of this is, surely history itself is a good source of inaccurate information or at very least the source of a single viewpoint. Back in the days of King Arthur there are no known records to prove he existed, there are also no known corroborative sources of information that prove he didn’t exist, yet the folklore that surrounds the name is a greatly told story. Surely a true belief structure is based on fact and that the facts of a belief structure come from history and the writings of many individual viewpoints all brought together to paint a picture from all the different sources as one. Isn’t the bible a good example of this, many books of the bible telling a story which is primarily about one individual and that individual is known throughout believers as the son of god which surely is something that can’t be proven, flipping the coin it also can’t be disproven.”

“I think you are trying to think about this too much.” Miss Hadsworth started to say before the girl interrupted her, “Surely it will be my job to apply the necessary thought to any case I have been given.”

Touché, Elise thought to herself. “Ok I accept your comments but returning to this case in point, from the details that have been presented in the file can you prove or disprove anything that has been said.” Pointing up to the girl in the audience she said, “We will pick this up again later, if that is OK with you. I do want to get feedback from as many people as I can in the time we have available. Please can I ask for you all to remember that this case is about a man who claimed to be immortal, he presented me with corroborating evidence of his immortality and also has been verified as the man that had been fished out of a lake and was declared dead by a coroner in America?”

The afternoon panned out with roll playing of a client and psychiatrist, showing the verifying evidence of the claims that had been made and then showing how recently this evidence had been amended, in-depth discussion was made about the area that was supposed to be where the subject was born and grew up in the early 6th century. History was investigated about Anslem, the Aosta Valley and the Abbey of Bec. But it was also pointed out that there are great gaps in the full history, someone chirped up about a person recorded in an ancient manuscript found in Tibet about a man who had turned up on foot who it had been said was on a pilgrimage looking for life, the name attributed to this short statement was Anselm and was from circa 1300 but this manuscript could not be substantiated as authentic but the carbon dating was from the approximate time.

The break came in the afternoon and everyone had been involved in the discussion except the girl, the shadowy girl sat at the back who was either waiting for her chance after the break or who in her eagerness to talk about this subject had said everything she had on the subject a little too early in the day.

The cameras still rolling and three cameramen wandered around the students who talked excitedly and animatedly about the case whilst drinking tea out of porcelain cups. The clink of cups could be heard in the ears of the sound recorder who winced every time it happened and wished the cameramen would get so close. The girl descended the steps and filled her own thermal cup from the coffee flask on the table, she then reached into her pocket and pulled out sachets of coffee and added four extra to her cup, two sugars and a good amount of milk. She then picked up several packets of biscuits from the table stuffing them in her pockets before returning to her seat without talking to anyone, but she did manage to catch the eye of Elise Hadsworth who smiled at her.

After the break, Miss Hadsworth said, “I am now going to open the floor to everyone, to discuss diagnosis’s, it doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree, based upon the evidence presented to you. Firstly how many of you believe that this man was in a state of mental anguish which lead to him taking his own life?” nearly all the students hand went up, she chose a few people at random to suggest why the subject had come up with such an elaborate story, and the answers she was given supported the conclusions she had made.

“Do any of you and can I ask you” pointing at the girl, “not to partake in this bit yet as I believe you are in this group and I want to hear from some of the few left over.”

No one made any move to put their thoughts forward, “Although you don’t need to answer here or have your say, this is your ideal place to make your point of view heard, after all this is what you future career is going to be about.” Miss Hadsworth said. Still no one came forward so she picked on one after another and when one of them did talk he said, “All the evidence does point to a grief stricken man wanting to concoct a story that is not believe able to make sense of what he has just gone through, but it is something to say you are immortal and provide evidence to say you are, have this evidence disproven or at least have a shadow cast upon this evidence to make some believe that it may not be true. But as the girl over there” he pointed somewhere behind him, “did come up with a point of view that just because it is possible to disprove something doesn’t mean that the alternative theory is correct either.”

“Thank you for your input; I guess you are going to go away sitting on the fence on this then.” Miss Hadsworth said with a hint of disappointment in her voice.

“You have all probably guessed that my diagnosis what that a grief stricken man who had miraculously survived a crash in the Swiss Alps that killed forty one people, was undergoing mental breakdown that led to him making up an elaborate story to help with his grief. He subsequently committed suicide in a place that he and his family loved to go and he had very good memories. One in particular being was that this is where both of is children had been conceived and played.”

No before we finish, the girl at the back of the auditorium stood up, “What if it is possible for someone to fill in a few of the gaps in his story. Would this change your mind on you diagnosis?”

Miss Hadsworth said, “Under the guidelines that define the mental stability of a person the diagnosis will stand as, no one will be able to prove immortality is possible.”

“But surely you can only prove something if you are in a position to disprove something to. Don’t these things need to go hand in hand? Just because something is said and cannot be proved doesn’t mean it is not true.” The girl said.
“If you examine your statement, from your point of view you will need to prove it to make your point to be valid.” Miss Hadsworth said.
“1. The Abbey of Bec in the Aosta Valley have records of a man who they welcomed in to their order, a 27 year old Anselm. This was in 1060; in 1079 he was ordained as Abbot of the monastery and became, Anselme de Candie Genève. In 1093 he became Archbishop of Canterbury under William the Second until 1109. But there is a point of exile in the middle, this was planned as it was starting to be noticed he was not aging, when he came back off exile it was under a different King. This gave him a few more years of grace before he had to make more changes; in 1109 he had died on Holy Wednesday. There is a drawing that was included in a book by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, who was the Dean of Westminster and who had pages omitted from the History of Christianity that suggested that the drawing was of Ansleme on his death bed as a 30 year old man.

2. In your file you have copies of photographs that include Winston Churchill during World War II that are of him with troops and one of the troops is a young man who your subject professes to be, this photograph bears a resemblance to the drawing done 900 years earlier. Coincidence, faked or real, well in the British archives at the museum they have the original photographs in their archive and there is a picture of the same troop on the same day taken just before the visit of the prime minister. Four men, one of them was Martin Nathanial, a man who bore a striking resemblance to the man in the other photograph that contained Winston Churchill and also to the drawing. This man's death certificate was fifteen years ago on Holy Wednesday.

3. When historians and archeologists where on site in the 1930’s in a place called Wegberg in South Western Germany they found the burial site of families and also the remnants of a battle they could date through soil samples, clothing fragments and timber habitats to the fifth or sixth century. They also followed the river and found another settlement of only two or three dwellings that contained the skeletal remains of a three women, the subjects mother and two sister and three men, a few miles away was a cave that had shown the signs of being lived in, it was well hidden and was found years later but this matches the statement of your subject. One unUsual thing about this was didn't he say he had three sisters?

4. From the eighteenth century there is a paper trail exchanging ownership every 20 to 25 years from one person to another and some of the land and properties have been included in the title transfer which includes a lake front house in Virginia in America, where six months ago a man committed suicide.

5. Six months ago when you were in America after being notified about the suspected Suicide of someone you were treating. If I am not mistaken the date on his death certificate would be know this year as Holy Wednesday.

There is compelling evidence that the subject in this file is the same man who throughout history has been getting more and more careful about whom he is.”

All around the room the silence was engulfing every word the girl was saying. Elise Hadsworth said into the microphone on the lectern, “Very interesting. Can you come to my office tomorrow first thing? I think we should talk more in depth about this, you have really caught my interest now.”

The morning meeting will never take place, the girl in the lecture theatre, the girl with a great deal of things to say on the subject and the girl who had returned from the lake front property in America six months earlier just got up from her seat in the lecture theatre put on her leather jacket, picked up her motorcycle helmet and walked out.

The girl, the one surviving sister of a man who claimed to have survived a devastating coach crash in the Swiss Alps by trying to convince someone he was immortal, the girl who knows the truth behind the story and shares a secret, she hasn't seen her brother in sixteen hundred years just wants to see him again.

All four in this series
In Need of an End
The Forever Lecture
Inner Peace Forever
The 21st Century Journal