Discovery (Science of Psionics Book #1) (3 page)

“What on Earth are you talking about? I
haven’t the faintest idea how you did that!” I exclaimed.

“Well, I’m not sure how to say this, but when
I walked into the bedroom to wake you up, you were
floating in
midair
above the bed. I don’t think I had anything to do with
it since I wasn’t even in the room; you were just lying there
hovering. I watched you for a minute or two in shock before walking
over and shaking you awake. You fell back to the bed and then sat
up screaming. The rest you know. ”He then explained as best as he
could how he did this bizarre thing. Finished, he put down his
coffee, crossed his arms, and stared at me expectantly.

“I’m still at a loss for words,” I said after
a moment. “None of this is even remotely possible.”

“I know exactly what you mean, but just
because it’s impossible, doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. Why
don’t you give it a try and let’s find out how crazy we both really
are?”

Frowning, I agreed, since either failure or
success might help clarify the situation. I turned my focus toward
the coffee carafe when Mark interrupted me.

“Wait,” he said, grabbing his notebook and
tossing it to the floor. “Try with that, it’s much less likely to
do damage if your control is off. I broke the first cup I
experimented with.”

“Ok,” I agreed, turning my chair to face the
book on the floor. Frowning in concentration, I tried to calm
myself with several deep breaths before pointing my arm toward the
book and focusing my will on it. Nothing happened. Looking
quizzically at Mark, he gave me a comforting smile and urged me to
try again.

Turning back to the book, I focused my
attention on it to the exclusion of everything else. Once I had the
details locked in my mind, I closed my eyes and stretched out both
my arms. Holding that position for a few breaths, I then sharply
snapped my hands inward while thinking COME, picturing the book
coming over to me.

I sat there stunned for a moment, as the
breath exploded out of me with an involuntary “URG”. My eyes still
watering, I looked down to see the book fall between my legs to the
ground.

“Nice,” Mark said, giving me a thumbs-up.
“Next time though, you’ll need to be a bit more careful on how hard
you move something. If a small notebook can knock the wind out of
you, imagine what something like the carafe would have done.”

Catching my breath, I nodded to agree with
him. “Ok,” I started, “that was …
weird
.” I said, for lack
of better words to describe what just happened. Regaining my
composure, I watched as he slowly floated the book back to its
original position across the room from me.

“Try again,” he urged, “but slower this
time.”

Nodding, I carefully ran the details of what
occurred last time through my mind and began to focus. I started
the same as last time, narrowing my focus down to the book,
concentrating on all of the small details that I could: the angled
scribbles of his writing, the crossed out words and lines, the bent
corner at the bottom right of the top page. I closed my eyes,
recreating the picture in my mind. Hopefully, with a firm idea in
place, it would do what I actually wanted.

Once I had all the details worked out, I
opened my eyes and let ‘er rip... gently. Slowly I saw the book
rise up and float toward my outstretched arms, angling upward as it
closed the distance. It progressed up to the point where it was
between my hands and then gently came to a stop, hovering there
like it was sitting on an invisible podium.

An idea came to mind then and I carefully
rotated the book until it was facing me right side up. I gently
flipped the fingers on my right hand and watched with gratification
as the page turned as if my hand was actually touching it. I
flipped a few more pages and then floated the book over to the
table and released it.

“That was perfect!” Mark said
enthusiastically. “You seem to have better fine point control than
I do, and that was only your second attempt!”

“What next?” I asked, a little
breathless.

“Breakfast” he answered, with a lopsided
grin. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

Mark: Breakfast Adventures

I wasn’t actually as hungry as I led Linda to
believe, but I hoped that something normal like cooking and eating
would bring some reality back into an unreal morning. I should have
known better. Linda can be like a bulldog when she gets her teeth
into something, and this new development was no exception. I opened
the refrigerator door to pull out what we would need, when I
suddenly had to duck, as the jug of Orange juice went flying past
my head.

I stepped back quickly as a steady stream of
food started moving out of the fridge to rest on the counter next
to the stove. Eggs, bacon, ham, onion, chilies, mushrooms, and
cheddar all made the trip under no visible support. Looking over at
Linda, I saw a smirk on her face, both triumphant and
satisfied.

Being a fairly competitive guy, I couldn’t
let her outdo me, so after a few moments of thought, I had a plan.
With what I was preparing to attempt firmly in my mind, I quickly
locked my arms on the counter in case of failure, and pulled my
knees up toward my chest. Quickly giving my legs some mental
lift
, I waited a second to make sure that they had support,
and then crossed them into a Yoga position. I moved my center of
balance forward, released my grip on the counter edge, and threw
Linda a smirk at my success.

“Showoff,” She said to me and stuck out her
tongue. “Watch and learn, noob!” she exclaimed, jumping straight up
and crossing her legs beneath her at the peak of her jump. She
hovered there for only a split second before falling on her
ass.

Trying not to laugh, I reached out to give
her a mental ‘hand’ but seeing what I was about to do, she waved me
off, and bowed her head in concentration. Slowly, legs still
crossed beneath her in a mirror of my own, she rose up off the
floor until she was at about the same height as I. Looking up at
me, she smiled, nodded her head toward the counter with the food,
and said “Your turn.”

Guessing her meaning, I took a deep breath
and very carefully grabbed control of a knife and floated it over
toward the cutting board. Using a second mental ‘hand’, I grabbed
an onion and placed it in the middle, rotating it slightly so I
could chop off the root end. Aligning the knife over the end, I
brought it down and watched the onion roll away and fall off the
edge.

Grabbing it with a quick mental catch, I
moved it back to the cutting board and took a firmer hold of it.
Moving the knife back into position, I tried again to slice off the
root end, this time succeeding. Encouraged, I chopped off the other
end, rotated the onion ninety degrees, and split it in half.

Grinning with my success, I started to tear
into the onion with greater confidence. Linda, seeing that I had
the chopping under control, started moving pans onto the stovetop.
By the time that I had finished with the onion, I had the necessary
action figured out fairly decently, and I made short work of the
rest of the ingredients.

I moved everything that I chopped into a bowl
that Linda placed next to the cutting board, and opened the carton
of eggs. After holding everything so firmly for chopping, my mind
grabbed the eggs a little harder than I should have; the first two
literally exploded as I tried to move them. Linda, who was in the
middle of flipping some bacon, paused and started laughing at me,
the piece of bacon bouncing in mid-flip along with her laughs.

Throwing her a dirty look, I handled the next
one much more carefully and met with success this time. When the
time came to flip the omelet, I was pleased to discover that a
mental
flip
was much easier to perform for me than doing it
by hand. By unspoken agreement, we sat normally in chairs at the
dining table to eat. Once we started eating, we both discovered how
ravenous we really were, as we devoured every last crumb. After we
cleaned up the breakfast dishes, we settled down on the couch to
try and make some sense of this weirdness.

“So,” I began “Did you want to go first, or
shall I?”

“Go ahead. I really have no clue where to
begin.”

“Well, I doubt that we’re both dreaming, so
I’ll be working on the theory that this stuff is all real somehow.
The only thing I noticed that was different this morning was that
the hairs on my arms were standing up, like I was inside some kind
of electrical or magnetic field. It pretty much had the same
feeling as last night during the peak of the storm.”

“The hairs on the back of my neck felt like
that both last night and today,” she agreed.

“Let’s run with that for a current working
theory, until we think of something better. If this is the case, it
seems that we somehow obtained some kind of ‘biofield attunement’,
giving us access to telekinetic abilities. At least that’s what I
could come up with as a name for this thing during my brief
internet search this morning.”

“Biofield … it sounds like you’re trying to
cover both mystic and scientific angles. Or at least covered as
well as scientific magic can get.”

“
Psionic
actually, not magic.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

“In effect, probably not much, however,
psionics refers to a mental ability. Magic, on the other hand,
usually refers to ‘spells’, sometimes with components necessary for
the casting of them.”

“Hmm … Ok, I’ll buy that for now. How much
does psionics cover?”

I stood up and said “Let’s go back to the
office before I answer that. I think I left some of the psionic
info pages up on my computer.” We made our way into the office and
settled down in front of my machine. “Here we go,” I said.

The term psychokinesis comes from the Greek
"psyche", meaning mind or soul; and "kinesis", meaning motion. This
literally translates as "mind-movement". This is also referred to
as telekinesis with respect to describing movement of objects.
Psychokinesis is also a generic term for various related special
abilities which may include telekinesis, pyrokinesis, cryokinesis,
teleportation, apportation, levitation, and transvection.

“So let me make sure I have this straight,”
she said, composing her thoughts. “Telekinesis is moving stuff
around, teleporting is when you move yourself somewhere instantly,
and levitation is moving yourself. What do the other ones
mean?”

“Pyrokinesis and cryokinesis refer to
telekinesis at the molecular level, where you speed up the
molecules, (heating them) or slow them down (cooling them).
Apportation is like teleportation, but with external objects,
rather than you. Transvection is basically just flying, and doesn’t
seem to be too different from levitation.”

“What other kinds of psionic abilities are
there?”

“There’s dozens of them ranging from
semi-plausible, like telepathy or empathy, to the truly bizarre,
like transmutation or matter manipulation. Do a net search if you
want the full list.”

“Maybe I will, but not right now. I’ll have
to let the one we’re currently experiencing settle into my skull
before there can be any room for something even weirder,” she said,
laughing. She looked thoughtful for a moment before continuing.
“How are you handling this so calmly?”

“You think I’m calm?” I asked with a sardonic
laugh. “I almost left a brown stain on the seat of my chair when it
first happened. If anything, I’m still in shock and will maybe
settle down to a mere panic level in a few days… if I’m lucky.”

She nodded in understanding. “I can relate to
that, alright. In fact, I think I want to take a nice long walk to
help me clear my head a bit.”

“Go ahead, if you think you’ll be ok, but be
extra careful. Mountain paths or county roads are dangerous when
your head’s not screwed on straight.”

She nodded vaguely in my direction, “Yeah,
yeah.”

“I mean it. I don’t want you walking off a
cliff, or into traffic,” I chided.

“Yes sir!” she replied, snapping me a quick
salute. “I’m always careful, you’re the absentminded one.”

“See that it remains that way then. I’ll do a
bit more research while you’re gone, and maybe that’ll help me to
focus better.”

Wishing me luck, she left to go change into
something more appropriate for a hike. Fifteen minutes later, I
heard her go out the patio door. Spinning my chair back to face my
computer, I stared at the screen for several minutes without really
seeing it. Giving up for the moment, I got out of my chair and
started pacing.

“Ok,” I said to myself. “Putting the
how
and
why
of things aside for a moment, let’s look
at the ramifications. Is this a permanent thing, or will we go back
to normal soon? Do we announce it to the world? Keep it to
ourselves or maybe tell a few select people? What are the limits of
what we can do, and is it safe to keep trying to do things this
way?” I wasn’t expecting to come up with any answers yet, but
asking questions helped me to organize my thoughts.

Let’s assume that this thing is permanent. If
it goes away, then we can just chalk this up as a moment of shared
lunacy and move on. If it doesn’t go away, then sooner or later,
someone will find out. But does that mean that we tell people in
advance, or try to keep things a secret for as long as possible. I
did figure out that any decision to tell someone should come from
both of us.

Now let’s look at safety. So far, there
didn’t seem to be much danger, unless you count the risk of
impaling yourself with something due to lack of control. Then
again, what would happen if I tried to do something that I didn’t
have enough power to accomplish? Maybe my brain would melt or
explode or something. We might have been walking a razors edge over
a pit every time we used this thing. Testing the limits is
important. It needs to be done slowly and carefully, since there is
no possible way to evaluate the risks in advance.