I nod and smile and sip my lukewarm vat of coffee. I ask Max how he knows if I was right and he checks the leaf himself, settling on a slightly higher number. (It is not a stellar number but for an urban plant whose main job is to decorate a coffee shop, this is not surprising.) My finger catches, it trips along the bakelite plate a bit, and we decide that the plant's number is 381. For weeks now I have been told about The Stickiness, the magical, murky thrum that connects your body to the ether. Max is watching me expectantly, and I admit I want to feel the stickiness. We are both sitting on the same side of a pair of green plastic tables, the box in front of us. When I start to feel the 'stickiness' I'll stop turning the dial, and the number I land on will be the plant's rate-the measurement of its general vitality. The idea, he tells me, is to detect life in the plant. It's a little bit like rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time. Max snaps a leafy twig off the plant behind us and pops it into the beaker-the 'witness well.' I clean my fingers with alcohol to remove any grease and slowly rub my right index and pointer finger along the surface of the Bakelite-what's known as a stickplate-while turning a knob on the machine with my left. He wants to give me a shot at operating the mysterious box, and in order to do so a nearby shrub has to make a donation. Max carefully records my numbers on a form he has brought with him, and then we proceed to the main event. He peers with light blue eyes through his round glasses at his radionics machine, the battery-powered device I'm currently hooked up to that is supposedly scanning my aura like so many bags at the airport. His snowy white hair is pulled back in a neat ponytail. Max is dressed in all black: black polo shirt, black fleece vest, black slacks, black wristwatch. Our wacky box does not even register as interesting. Just blocks away on Haight Street you can buy weed from a dispensary, ogle multiple people whose leashed cats ride on their shoulders like parrots, or buy Victorian-inspired fetish gear. In true San Francisco fashion, no one around us-not the gym-rat hipster couple, not the French family-seems to care this is happening. The copper rod is getting warm in my hand. When he hits on something, he writes down a score of 461 for my 'general vitality' and then he checks my 'aura coordination.' It's 405.

Radionics machine for sale