The Thought Readers (7 page)

Right now, though, instead of enjoying the novelty of this experience, I’m wondering about Mira’s sanity. I recall reading something about underground gambling and links to organized crime in her file in Atlantic City, but seeing it through this degenerate’s eyes really put things in perspective for me.

Mira is nuts to be doing this. Why is she doing it? A Reader like her has to have a safer way to make money. Does she need something else in the criminal society? Eugene dropped a few hints about her looking for something or someone, but I still don’t get it. A green monster in me wonders if she finds these men appealing. Anton did think of some scary guy who maybe had her protected or something like that.

Whatever the answers, I will not find them anytime soon. I have no intention of letting Mira know I learned any of this.

If she knew I snooped like this, it would kill whatever little trust she has in me—if she has any, that is.

I re-enter the restaurant and find my way back to our little room. Then I touch myself on the forehead.

I’m back in my body. The sounds return.

“I must admit I love these places,” I say, making small talk to cover any weirdness in my demeanor. “It’s like a little piece of Japan in the middle of Brooklyn. This one isn’t as hardcore as some I’ve seen. At least we’re allowed to keep our shoes on.”

Mira and Eugene comment on how some places in Brooklyn are more like that. Some do make you take your shoes off, and their servers wear kimonos.

I breathe easier. I officially got away with the little bit of snooping.

We all examine the menus.

“So, Darren, how long can you stay in the Mind Dimension?” Mira says nonchalantly, resuming the conversation.

“Mira,” Eugene says, reddening as he looks up at his sister. “That’s not very polite.”

“Why is that not polite?” I ask, surprised. “Isn’t Mind Dimension what she calls the place you guys ‘Split’ into? The place I call the Quiet?”

“The Quiet? How cute,” Mira says, making me wonder if sarcasm is just the way she normally talks.

“Yes, Darren, that’s what she’s talking about,” Eugene says, still looking embarrassed. “But what you don’t know—and what Mira wants to take advantage of—is that this question is very personal in Reader society.”

“Well, we’re not in Reader society,” Mira counters. “We’re outcasts, so anything goes.”

“Why is it such a big deal?” I ask, looking from brother to sister.

“In the Reader society proper, it’s like asking someone how much money he’s worth, or the size of his penis,” Eugene explains as Mira chuckles derisively. “The time she asked you about is the measure of our power. It determines Reading Depth, for example, which is how far you can see into your target’s memories. It also determines how long you can keep someone else in there. I’m surprised you even ask this, Darren. It seems self-evident how important this time is, since even without knowing about Reading Depth, there’s the simple matter of longer subjective life experience.”

“Of what?” I almost choke on my green tea. “What do you mean ‘longer subjective life experience’?”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Mira says, downing a shot of her hot sake. “Don’t you know anything? I feel educated all of a sudden, and this is coming from a high school dropout.”

I don’t even question the dropout comment. I’m still on the life experience thing.

“You don’t age while in the Mind Dimension,” Eugene says. “So the longer you can stay there, the more you can experience.”

“You don’t age?” I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself. If you don’t eat or sleep, why am I surprised that you don’t age?

“No, there’s no aging that anyone’s ever noticed,” Eugene says. “And some of the Enlightened, the most powerful among us, can and do spend a long time in there.”

I just sit there trying to readjust my whole world, which is becoming a common occurrence today.

When the waiter comes back, I order my usual Japanese favorite on autopilot. Eugene and Mira order as well.

“It’s not that strange, if you think about it,” Mira says when the waiter is out of earshot. “Time stands still there, or seems to.”

“We don’t know that,” Eugene says. “It could also be that we’re not there in a real, physical sense. Only our minds, or more specifically, our consciousness.”

Mira rolls her eyes at him, but my mind is blown. “I was always bored when I spent too much time in there. I only used it when I was under some time crunch,” I tell them, realizing all the opportunities I missed so far. “If I had only known . . . Are you saying that with every book I read in the physical world, I was literally wasting my life away—since I could’ve done it in the Quiet and not aged by those hours?”

“Yes,” Mira says unkindly. “You were wasting your life away, as you are wasting ours right now.”

She uses sarcasm so much that I’ve already become accustomed to it. It barely registers now. I’m more caught up in thinking about all the times I wasted hours of my life and the many millions of things I could’ve done in the Quiet. If only I had known that it would add more time to my life—or rather, not take time away from it. All this time, I thought I was just taking shortcuts.

“Well, I’m so glad I met you guys,” I say finally. “Just knowing this one thing alone will literally change my life.”

“Oh, and Reading wouldn’t have?” Eugene winks.

I grin at him. “For that too, I’m forever in your debt and all that.”

“Why don’t you repay that debt a little by answering my question,” Mira says, looking at me.

“Will you tell me yours if I tell you mine?” I joke.

“See how quickly his gratitude dissipates and turns into the usual tit for tat?” Mira says snarkily to Eugene.

I’m so flabbergasted by all the revelations that it barely registers that Mira just made a joke about tits.

“It’s a deal,” Eugene says, answering for his sister.

We pause our conversation when our food arrives. Eugene is served a three-roll special, Mira has a sushi bento box, and I have my sashimi deluxe. I’m a big fan of sushi—to me, it’s like an edible work of art.

Returning to our discussion of how long I can stay in the Quiet, I say, “I can’t give you an exact amount of time.” Grabbing a piece of fatty salmon with my chopsticks, I explain, “As I said, I eventually get bored and phase out.”

“But what’s the longest you’ve ever been inside?” Eugene asks, adding a huge wad of wasabi into his tiny soy sauce bowl.

“A couple of days,” I say. “I never really kept track of time.”

Mira and Eugene exchange strange looks.

“You don’t fall out of the Mind Dimension for a couple of days?” Mira says.

“What do you mean ‘fall out’? I get bored and touch my skin to phase out. Is that what you mean?”

They exchange those looks again.

“No, Darren, she means fall out,” Eugene says, looking at me like I’m some exotic animal. “When we reach our limit to being in that mode, what you call the Quiet, we involuntarily re-enter our bodies. For me, that happens after about fifteen minutes, which is considered pretty standard.”

“I’m slightly above average for Readers, and practically a prodigy for a half-blood,” Mira says, echoing his stare. “And my max time is a half hour. So you must see how this sounds to us. You’re saying you can stay there for two entire days—or even longer, since you’ve never been pushed out.”

“Right,” I say, looking at them. “I never realized that was anything abnormal—well, more abnormal than going into the Quiet in the first place.”

Eugene looks fascinated. “That would mean your mother had to have been extremely powerful. Almost at the Enlightened level, if you’ve never been forced out thus far.”

“But if you get forced out, can’t you just go right back in?” I say, confused.

“Are you messing with us?” Mira’s eyes narrow.

“I think he really doesn’t know,” Eugene says. “Darren, once we get pushed out, we can’t go right back in. The recuperation time is proportional to how long we can stay there, though it’s not directly related. There’s a strong inverse correlation between short recovery times and longer times in the Mind Dimension. So the elites get the best of both worlds: a short recovery time and a long time inside. How it all works in the brain is actually my area of research.”

“Eugene, please, not the neuroscience again,” Mira says with exasperation before turning her attention to me. “Darren, if you truly don’t know about recuperation time, then your power must be off the charts. Only I didn’t think a half-blood could have that much power.” The look she gives me now is unsettling. I think I prefer disdain. This look is calculating, as though she’s sizing me up.

“You have to let me study you,” Eugene tells me. “So we can figure out some answers.”

“Sure, I guess. It’s the least I can do,” I say uncertainly.

“Great. How about tomorrow?” Eugene looks excited.

“Hmm. Maybe the day after?”

He smiles. “Let me guess, you’re going to spend a whole day going around Reading people’s minds, aren’t you?”

“Good guess,” I say, smiling back.

“Okay. Thursday then,” he says. He looks ecstatic at the prospect of putting more electrodes to my head.

“So, I can’t Read another Reader’s mind?” I ask as I eat a piece of pickled ginger. This is a question that’s been bothering me for a bit.

“No. But I bet you wish you could,” Mira answers, downing the last of her sushi.

“It’s only possible to do that to someone before they learn to Split for the first time, when they’re children,” Eugene explains. “Once people have experienced the Split, they simply get pulled into your Mind Dimension with you if you try to Read them.”

“And if you and I manage to Split at the same time?” I ask. “Would we see each other in there?”

“Now you’re getting into very specific and rare stuff,” Eugene says. “It’s almost impossible to time it that perfectly. Dad and I managed it only once. Even if you did, you’ll find that, no, you see the world still, as usual, but you don’t encounter each other. The only way to have a joint experience is to pull someone in. If either of you touches the other, the other will get pulled in. Once that happens, you’ll be using up the time of the person whose Mind Dimension you’re in.”

“Using up the time?” I ask, finishing the last bit of my sashimi. This was amazing fish, I realize belatedly.

“As you bring people with you, your time is shared with them. If I pull you in, together we would stay in my Mind Dimension for about seven or eight minutes—about half of my fifteen-minute total. Similarly, how deep you go into someone’s memories is half your total time.”

The Reading Depth thing gives me an idea. If what Eugene says is right, then I think I have a better gauge of my ‘power’ based on my Reading of Eugene and Mira’s neighbor, Brad. That sci-fi flick that he and Mira watched at the theater left the big screen at least six months ago—which means that I can spend at least a year in the Quiet.

As blown away as I am by this realization, something prevents me from sharing this information with my new friends. They looked awestruck at the mention of two days. What would they say to a year? And how do I reconcile this and being a half-blood? How powerful is Sara, to give birth to someone like me?

“What’s the maximum power a Reader can have?” I ask instead.

“That’s something even people who are part of the regular Reader society probably don’t know,” Mira says. “And even if they did, they wouldn’t share that information with us.”

“There are legends, though,” Eugene says. “Legends of the Enlightened, who were wise well beyond their years. It was as though they’d led whole extra lifetimes. Of course, some of these stories seem more like mythology than history.”

Myth or not, the stories sound fascinating. Before I get a chance to think about them, however, I’m interrupted by the waiter who brings our check. I insist on paying despite a few feeble complaints from Eugene. It’s part of my thank you to them, I say.

When we exit the restaurant, I tell them, “I wish we could talk for hours on end, but there’s something I have to do now.”

“You could pull us into the Mind Dimension and chat away; this way you wouldn’t be late for your appointment,” Mira says, giving me a sly look.

“Mira.” Eugene sounds chiding again.

She must be breaking another Reader social rule I’m not aware of. Using someone for time, perhaps? It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t mind doing what she’s asking if I wasn’t dying of curiosity. “It’s not about being late,” I explain apologetically. “It’s about asking my mom some serious questions.”

“Oh, in that case, good luck,” Mira says, her voice sympathetic for the first time.

“Thanks. Do you guys know where I can rent a car around here?”

Going to Staten Island from Brooklyn, or from anywhere for that matter, is best to do by car. There’s a ferry from downtown, but no thanks. That requires taking a bus afterwards. And the ferry is unpleasant enough by itself.

Though Eugene and Mira don’t know about rentals, my trusty phone does. According to it, there’s a rental place a couple of blocks away. Since it’s on the way to their apartment, I get an armed escort to the place—Mira with her gun. I’m grateful for that, as I’m still not a fan of their neighborhood. On our short walk, we talk some more about Readers. Despite Mira’s complaints, Eugene starts telling me about his research.

It sounds like he’s trying to find neural correlates that accompany what Readers do. That discovery might lead to knowing how the process works. He thinks he knows approximately what goes on, all the way up to the Split. After that moment, things get complicated because technology is finicky in the Quiet, and the instruments remaining in the real world don’t register anything—proving that no time passes in the real world after we phase in.

I only half-listen. It all sounds fascinating, but in my mind, I’m already having a conversation with Sara.

When we reach the rental place, I enter both Eugene’s and Mira’s phone numbers into my phone, and they get mine. We say our goodbyes. Eugene shakes my hand enthusiastically. “It was great to meet you, Darren.”

“Likewise,” I say. “It was great meeting you both.”

Mira walks up to me, and gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. I stand there wondering if that means she likes me, or if it’s just a Russian thing. Whatever the reason for her actions, it was nice. I can still smell a hint of her perfume.

When they begin to head back, I turn to enter the car rental place. Before I do, I’m pulled into the Quiet again.

It’s Mira.

“Darren,” she says, “I want to thank you. I haven’t seen Eugene this happy, this animated, for a long time.”

“Don’t mention it. I like your brother,” I say, smiling. “I’m glad I had that effect on him.”

“I also wanted to say that, as he
is
my brother, I, above all, don’t want to see him hurt.”

“That makes sense.” I nod agreeably.

“Then we have an understanding,” she says evenly. “If this whole thing is a lie, I’ll be extremely upset.” Her eyes gleam darkly. “To put it in other words, if you hurt my brother in any way, I will kill you.”