The Talented (15 page)

“The scientist didn’t make too much of it at first, but he added to his meticulous notes from that day forward the food his wife packed in his lunch. Sure enough, in most cases, among this patient’s incoherent ramblings she would include the exact food items that he had brought. She was able to do this, even when he had not yet opened the pail himself to know its contents. Classic remote viewing.”

“Once he had compiled enough data, he shared it with some of his trusted colleagues. While skeptical, they began taking notice of this sort of behavior, designing tests for it, and they found that fully ten percent of the patients showed some faint degree of extra-sensory perception. When they brought their findings to the director, it almost cost them their careers, but they were lucky. The director was a young man of exceptional vision and foresight. Knowing he could not openly study this and hope to retain his commission, he created a secret program within the existing study. This program never had been given a name. It was just called ‘The Program’. The scientists of the Program selected the top remote viewers as breeders, and they gave birth to the second generation. The second and third generations were exciting because each subsequent generation tested higher than their parents did. Exponentially so. By the time that the third generation had given birth to the fourth, their psionic talents were developed and reliable enough to have practical, strategic use. It was like magic. Their parents had relatively weak and inconsistent abilities, but the children! By God, the children could perform amazing feats, and they could do it consistently. Reliably. Then the second World War broke out and changed everything.”

I needed a brain break. “Hold that thought,” I requested, “Help me understand the big picture. By the time World War Two happened, the Program had been around for over forty years, right? Holed up in a huge compound with hundreds of people, staff that needed to be paid, babies being born and raised there. How did they keep something this massive funded and secret for so long? Wasn’t the Great Depression around that time? Maybe?”

Kildare pondered this, then answered, “My understanding is that by that time the highest level of the government and much of the media was under the influence of the Program. While some of it was achieved with direct mind control, most of the influence was won by the remote viewers, hard at work discovering all the secrets of senators, bureau directors, even presidents. Anyone who threatened to pull the plug or expose the Program was soon presented with an offer they could not refuse. That was true until Franklin D. Roosevelt took office. He was one of those rare individuals who was impossible to influence using our traditional ways, and he didn’t approve of our theories and methods. We did, though, maintain influence over the rest of the government, but not until Roosevelt created a secret organization of his own meant to counteract our influence over the world. He named it the ‘Alliance for Metahuman Threat Management’, but we referred to it as the Alliance.”

“The Alliance began as an intelligence gathering organization, and had built quite a file on us by the time 1941 rolled around. Then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the conflict between the Program and the Alliance was put on hold. Both organizations redirected all their resources towards the war effort. We discovered that the Germans had a similar program as our own, and it was all spy versus spy after that. When Roosevelt died in 1945, succeeded by Harry Truman, and the war ending shortly after, we were back in business and more powerful than ever. The problem was that the Nazis took eugenics way too far, and we were forced to stay even more in the shadows.”

“Sorry to stop you again,” I interrupted, “and I appreciate the history lesson, but could you tell me more about what you all discovered in the decades of research and development?”

The doctor frowned, “Could you be more specific?”

“What is the science behind my psionic talents? Why am I like this?”

Cocking his head a bit, Kildare answered, “You’re trained enough to psychokinetically hurl a shotgun 200 yards, but your trainers never bothered with basic theory? If you asked me I would say that someone is keeping you in the dark on purpose. But I will answer your question as best I can. First you must distinguish your brain from your conscious mind. Your brain controls your bodily functions, stores memories and performs all your mental computations. It exists here and now, and when you die it dies with you.

“Outside of time and space is an immense source of will, a higher consciousness. When your brain formed in the womb it formed a link with a miniscule amount of consciousness, going online, so to speak, but as you grew the link widened and you developed a fully functional conscious mind. For most people that is where it ends. The consciousness controls the brain, and the brain controls the body. That’s it. The link to the consciousness is no thicker than a human hair.”

“Hold on a minute,” I interrupted, “You can measure this connection in a lab? With actual scientific instruments? So far this sounds more like religion than science, no offense.”

“Science and religion are not always incompatible, but yes, we can measure some of the properties of the Mandellian thread. It dissolves after death, so a dead person weighs infinitesimally less than he did before death. That weight loss signifies the loss of the Mandellian thread. We also can measure the weak psionic field it generates right out the center of the forehead, above the eyes.

“Psionically talented individuals like Kate Scott and Stuart Allen have a much greater connection from their brain to their consciousness, as thick as a finger, sometimes more. With training, they can learn to divert a portion of that conscious will away from the brain and onto another object in space/time. Those psionics are rated as class B or less.

“There are a handful of rare individuals who have multiple powerful connections to their own consciousness, each as thick as a man’s wrist. Harrison Kirkwood is one of those. They only need a thread of it to maintain their own thoughts. All the rest can be channeled to control the world around them. Class A…”

Alicia jumped in, “So when Adam did that to your shotgun, his conscious mind controlled the shotgun in the same way that it controls his brain? But how?”

“How indeed!” exclaimed Dr. Kildare, “We never understood the mechanics of it until one day we heard reports of a psionically talented boy living in the wild, that is, outside of the Program. When we found him he proved to be most valuable to us for his profound intellect, which was off the charts. That boy single-handedly solved the puzzle. Not only did he discover Mandellian threads, but the quantum fields of energy powering them. That is why we call them Mmmmnn!”

The doctor struggled to speak but his jaw was clamped shut somehow. Then his eyes glazed over and he shuffled over to the sofa and flopped down, instantly asleep.

“Harrison,” I growled under my breath.

Looking around frantically, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Thinking about what the doctor had said about Mandellian threads, I strained to see them, but nothing happened. Then the wall with the window began to ripple as if it were a reflection in a pond. Passing through the rippled surface of the wall was a huge man with a neatly trimmed beard on his square jaw. Once he was all the way in the room the wall behind him settled down and showed no signs of damage or even the slightest alteration.

Harrison turned to me and commanded, “You pull any stunt, anything at all, and they both die. Do you hear me? Do you doubt that I can do it? Do you?”

“No,” I said with pure hate in my voice, “I have no doubt that you can murder innocent people without a second thought.”

“Innocent? Hardly. In his heyday the good doctor here made Dr. Mengele look like a saint. And this young lady here was last seen by my men firing an automatic weapon at them. I believe she was the one who killed one of them. They are not innocent by a long shot.”

“Hold on! She was just defending herself,” I pleaded, “please do not hurt her. I won’t do a thing.”

Harrison seemed satisfied with my answer for now. He looked hard at me and said, “Somehow you have gotten the impression that the criminal enterprise known as Fortress Investments and all its partners are the victims here. It’s not true. They have stolen billions of dollars from the economy using illegally obtained insider information. The problem is that our laws and court system have no way to cope with the psionically endowed. No prison can contain them for long. Even the weakest among them could incite a riot or manipulate a guard to allow him to escape. The Alliance was created to stop those who operated above the law.”

“Stop?” I asked, “You mean murder, I think. Can’t you build some kind of super jail, or something, rather than killing them? You’re talking about white collar crime, for Pete’s sake, how is that a capital offence?”

A bemused smirk played across Harrison’s features. “I understand now. Stuart told you that we have been killing his people, didn’t he? Right? Did you happen to see any proof of this? Where are the bodies, then? When were the funerals? He lied to you, Adam. That is what he does best.”

My heart pounded as I struggled to judge the truth of his claim. “I’m not an idiot, Harry. Do you forget that your men fired missiles at Kate and me? Missiles! That rates for attempted murder in anyone’s book!”

His eyes narrowing at me calling him Harry, he responded, “That was entirely your fault, Adam. In this particular type of conflict, bringing a Class A psi into a fight is considered the nuclear option. It’s a declaration of war. With a single thought you could have instantly killed all of my men, if you were so inclined. We had to try to take you out first. When I saw the magnitude of your Mandellian fabric it was clear that you were a major threat. It never even occurred to me that you might be untrained, and we couldn’t take that risk.”

“Fine,” I capitulated, “for argument’s sake lets give you the benefit of the doubt. What have you done with Kate and her friends?”

“It’s just as you suggested,” Harrison replied, “They are in a sort of prison that we maintain. Once they have been studied and…rehabilitated, then we release them, no strings attached.”

Alicia asked suspiciously, “What do you mean by ‘rehabilitated’? How does that work?”

Harrison turned and let his eyes linger over her body far too long for my liking, but Alicia gave him her best ‘Oh, no you didn’t’ look and said, “Excuse me, Uncle Funny-Touch, you are way too old to be checking me out, so keep your pervy eyes up here, got it?”

That actually drew a reaction from the big man, his face flushing with embarrassment. Way to go, Alicia.

“I...I wasn’t…” Harrison muttered, then sighed and said, “Got it.” He recovered before continuing, “Rehabilitation is a delicate process of applying localized radiation treatments in the excess neural correlates of consciousness in the brain. Most of us have a special section of the frontal lobe that contains the majority of the NCCs responsible for the increased diameter of the Mandellian thread. After each series of treatments the subject is thoroughly evaluated, and once the Mandellian thread is within the range of normal human cognition, the subject is free to go.”

“Oh, well why didn’t you say so?” I exclaimed, “no harm done, save for a teesy, weensy little radioactive lobotomy. How bad can that be?”

Ignoring my sarcasm, Harrison replied, “Actually, most of the time it goes very well, all things considered. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s the best one available to keep offending metahumans from using their powers. Do you think you can come up with something better? Protect the world from the depredations of rogue metahumans without killing them?”

“Yes,” I shouted back, “There has to be a better way!”

“Then it’s settled,” Harrison concluded, leaning in and putting his hand on my shoulder, “Join the Alliance, help us make whatever reforms are needed to our methods. We can pardon your aggressions against us as self-defense. The only way to fix the system is from within, Adam. For the first time your powers can be put to use for a worthy cause. Do you want to go back to cheating casinos after all this? Sometimes things happen for a reason. I believe you were meant to be a part of our team. Otherwise, none of this makes any sense. What do you say, leave the past in the past and build a future together?”

We stayed like that silently for over a minute, with his hand on my shoulder. Then I looked up, my eyes shiny with emotion, and answered.

“Okay, but only if you agree to my terms. You guarantee that Alicia is permanently left alone, and that Kate will not be subjected to rehabilitation treatments until we have found a better way to handle them…and…then I will join the Alliance all the way.”

“Done,” replied a satisfied Harrison.

“No, Adam!!!” Alicia pleaded, “Don’t do this! You can’t trust him. Have you forgotten the week you spent in the hospital? He put you there!”

“Stop, Alicia, please, sweetie.” Taking her hand, I pulled her aside, my voice not much more then a hoarse whisper, “It will be all right, really. I will make it all right. Trust me on this. Trust me.”

Without another word, I stepped back to Harrison and shook his hand, all the while fighting to convince myself that I had made the right choice.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Before I could pull in a complete breath, thirty pounds of hard rubber medicine ball slammed into my midsection, expelling the remaining air from my lungs. I fell to my knees, struggling to breathe, as I sensed two more of the heavy projectiles speeding toward my head. Unable to quickly employ my abilities, I threw myself flat, barely avoiding the first ball. The second one clipped the back of my head, driving my nose into the rubber mat that covered the floor. It hurt like hell, and began to bleed some, but didn’t seem broken. Over the last week my muscles and skin have slowly continued the process of loosening up, allowing for faster reflexes, but apparently not fast enough. Even more of a concern was that my enhanced durability was wearing away as well. So much for being bulletproof.