Discovery (Science of Psionics Book #1) (4 page)

If I was to analyze this as a thermodynamic
system, I would have to look at the work done, compared to the
energy used. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it can only
change form as either heat or work. If Linda agrees that we should
tell people about this, perhaps I could get some of my old lab rat
buddies up in Edmonton to help evaluate and quantify things.

For now, though, I needed to get back to my
research on the subject. The more I know about the basic theory,
the less risk there should be attempting the practical. Sighing, I
sat down and began typing out my next search query. This could wind
up being a long day.

Linda: A Dream Revisited

I was glad that Mark admitted to not being
quite as calm and collected as he had appeared to be. I may have
spent the morning thus far using this strange new ability in a
casual manner, but every action that I performed frightened me down
to the very core of my being. I don’t think that
anyone
could be calm when confronted with impossibility like this. Not
even my friends Sid and Sara Jensen, who were both ex-rangers and
highly decorated from a tour of duty in both Iraq and
Afghanistan.

After changing into clothes suitable for a
hike up the mountain trails, I put on my boots and stepped out onto
the back deck. Looking around, but not quite focusing on anything
in particular, I came to a decision. Raising my arms above me, I
leaped up off the deck and floated into the crisp clear sunlight in
my back yard. Since my dream had reminded me of the lovely pond, I
decided it was a good time to pay it a visit. Turning to the right,
I started to follow the little stream that wound its way up the
hillside.

Gaining confidence, I slowly increased my
speed. Following the gurgling stream up higher, I enjoyed the
tranquility of the mountain which was broken only by bird song or
the occasional chatter of a startled squirrel. I had rarely gone
this way, due to the roughness of the trail leading up to it, but
what was difficult on the ground, was easy when above it.

As I rounded the last bend and it came into
view, I paused for a moment to savor the sight of the water
sparkling in the sunlight. The serene feeling that had been
building inside me on my journey here suddenly faded as it dawned
on me… I wasn’t just getting the idea from my dream, this
was
the dream: right in front of me was the mama dear with
her baby, drinking from the pool. I waited for it, and yes, the doe
suddenly raised her head, looking at me and tensed, preparing for
flight.

With much wonderment and more than a little
trepidation, I gave myself over and said the words I had spoken in
my dream. “
Peace, little darling, I won’t hurt you
.” The
deer looked at me for a moment longer before resuming her drinking.
My heart soared with joy and amazement that such a beautiful dream
could be reality.

As a young girl, I’d had the not-uncommon
brushes with déjà vu, so really this wasn’t too much different. I
could wrap my mind around this, I was sure of it. I slowly lowered
myself down to the close edge of the pool where it started to
tumble down as the stream which I had followed. I took a drink,
then stretched out and closed my eyes, luxuriating in the feel of
the hot sunlight on my body.

That might not have been the best decision.
My brain immediately kicked in and a sense of panic began to grow
inside me. This was simply not normal. Suddenly, I badly wanted to
go back home. I was scared of the implications of what just
happened, and needed the security of my own four walls around me.
As soon as my legs felt like they would support me, I started off
down the trail.

I had barely gotten a dozen steps along the
way when my feet flew out from under me as I stepped on a slippery
patch of mud. Flailing my arms, I braced myself for hitting the
rocky ground, but found myself floating a few scant inches short of
impact. I had instinctively saved myself from the fall by using
this strange new ability. No longer trusting my feet to a path made
treacherous from the storm, I raised myself to vertical and
carefully floated my way back down.

By the time I arrived back at home I had
calmed down a bit, although I found that my thoughts were no less
chaotic. I stepped inside, kicked off my boots, and grabbed a
bottle of water from the fridge. After guzzling about a third of
the bottle, I put the cap back on and wandered over to the office
to see how Mark was making out with his research.

“Hey babe,” he said, turning toward me as I
stepped into the room. “That was a lot quicker than I thought. I
figured you would be gone until at least mid-afternoon.”

“What can I say; I just
flew
up the
mountainside … literally.”

He threw me a sharp glance and said “Sounds
fun, but we really should take this slowly and carefully. There’s
no telling what kind of danger or cost is involved in doing this
kind of stuff. No work can be performed without using energy of
some kind.”

“That’s real world physics, and this is
magic. The rules may not apply.”

“I refuse to believe in something that
ignores basic laws of nature,” he replied with scorn. “We may not
yet know the rules of this stuff, but thermodynamics is universal,
and therefore has to somehow apply.”

“By definition, laws of nature cannot apply
to that which is unnatural,” I countered.

“All systems follow rules, and I refuse to
believe that psionics, however unnatural they may seem to us now,
don’t follow at least similar rules to that which we know. We just
have to figure them out.”

“Well genius, figure this one out,” I said,
and then related to him my experiences up the mountain and how they
so closely mirrored my dream.

He sat still for a minute with a look of deep
concentration on his face before turning back to his computer and
pulling up a website that he had bookmarked. After the site loaded,
he scrolled down a few pages, and then paused to read. He nodded
his head after a moment, and then scrolled the web page a bit more
before pausing to read again.

Finally turning back to me, he said “The
first part, dreaming about what you would do before it happened,
would appear to be clairvoyance or precognition. Also in there,
would probably be telepathy with the deer, or animal mind speech to
be more specific.” He thought for a moment. “This would mean that
our abilities are not just limited to the kinetic lines of
psionics, but are of a much broader spectrum.”

“Oh good,” I said with heavy sarcasm coloring
my voice. “I do so hate to be limited to the same boring old
stuff.”

“The disturbing part,” he continued unfazed,
“is that you have demonstrated multiple times that you are using
the ability without conscious thought. You dreamed the events of
this morning while still asleep, as well as levitating. You also
calmed the deer without trying, and you stopped yourself from a
fall.” Pondering a moment, he said “I guess that I used it like
that as well, when it first happened with the coffee cup
falling.”

“Out of all that happened to us today, why is
that the most disturbing part?”

“It bothers me more not that we
can
do
these things, but that we can do them subconsciously. Trying to
pretend that these powers don’t exist won’t work. Sooner or later
we would do something by reflex and the secret would be out. If
we’re out in public and get startled, we might automatically react
and do something stupid. We’ll need to discuss that in more detail
later, but for right now, my gut instinct is to tell nobody about
this unless we’re both completely sure they can be trusted.”

“Yeah, I don’t particularly relish the
thought of being called psycho or freak. What do you think our next
step should be?”

“I think we should spend some time trying to
carefully figure out the limits of what we can do. We should work
on mastering control of the abilities, but slowly in case it’s like
working a new set of muscles. Perhaps after that, we could try to
perform a few of the other psionic abilities on the list that I
collected from my searches. Then we can decide what we want to do
about sharing our secrets.”

“Sounds like a reasonable plan, when do we
start?” I asked.

“Give me fifteen minutes or so to finish
looking through these last few links that I have open, and then we
can give it a go.”

“In that case, I’ll go put together some
lunch for us.”

“Just make sure to do it by hand,” he
admonished. “We need to be logical and thorough before we do
something we might regret.”

I stuck my tongue out at him as I turned to
walk away, but I silently agreed with him. I wasn’t totally
convinced that the dangers he was worried about were real, but I
trusted his instincts. They had served him well for all the years
he was doing research and development up in Canada.

I quickly put a substantial lunch platter
together for us consisting of sandwiches, fruit, a bag of chips,
and a couple of sodas. Walking back to the office, I saw that Mark
was still bent over his computer doing his research, so I put the
tray on the table next to him and fixed myself up a plate to take
back to my chair. “Eat up. The web will still be there if you look
away for a few minutes,” I said, putting action to words as I took
a bite of my own sandwich.

Nodding agreement, he turned his attention to
the tray and quickly inhaled his lunch with the same single minded
intensity that he gave to his research. “There’s a lot of
interesting information on psionics that I’ve read so far. If
circumstances were a little bit different, I would put this
together as a basis for a new science fiction book.”

Hearing that, I almost choked on my sandwich.
Leave it to Mark to turn the impossible into the mundane.

Mark: Theory and Practice

I studied the apple intensely as it rotated
slowly in the air, a foot away from my nose. If I concentrated, I
could feel that ‘magnetic field’ sort of disturbance that I had
discerned before. I was sure that the field was the key to all of
this, even though I was no closer to knowing
how
.

I glanced over at Linda and saw her staring
at the empty soda can floating in front of her, a look of boredom
on her face. I was always the one to approach a subject with logic,
research, and testing. She was more of the mindset ‘do it now and
let someone else figure out the details later.’ The opposing
mindsets sometimes caused a bit of friction between us while
working on a project, but in the end usually provided a better
result.

“I agreed to start slow with you on this,”
she began, “but I didn’t think that you meant baby steps. What’s
the point of this anyway?”

“I’m trying to figure out where the power to
do the work is coming from. The limits and dangers change depending
if it’s from inside us, from around us, or from somewhere in the
firmament.”

“Alright, Einstein, but hurry up. I already
know that I can safely lift myself at one hundred twenty five
pounds, so the limit of an empty soda can for a test is a bit
silly.”

I frowned at her impatience, but slowly
nodded my acquiescence. “Ok, let’s try a few different things, but
through all of them, keep that can aloft as our baseline. See if
you can lift me a few inches off of my chair. I’m one sixty five,
so that’ll be more than you’ve tried before, but should be ok.” I
had barely finished talking before I found myself slowly rising off
of my seat. It felt far weirder to float while under someone else’s
power than on my own. “Ok, how do you feel? Any strain, pain, or
anything else that feels wrong?”

“Nope,” she replied. “All systems green, so
to speak.”

“Ok, put me down and try to lift yourself up
with your chair. That should be approximately the same weight, but
without any distance. Force needed should change with both mass and
distance.”

“It feels about the same, but maybe a hair
easier,” she answered after completing her task.

I tried the two tests myself and found them
fairly close to the same. I thought about it for a moment and then
said “Let’s head outside where we have a bit more room. I want to
test the distance thing a little more.”

“Ok,” she agreed in a hurry.

We moved outside and set ourselves up about
twenty paces apart. “Try now,” I said, doing the same myself. We
both rose sporadically, as the feeling of rising from someone
else’s control felt very distracting. Distraction aside, it did
feel a touch harder with more distance. We had the mental lever, I
thought whimsically; maybe we need a mental fulcrum.

“Ok, put me down and let’s try another twenty
paces.” Once in the new positions we did it again, and this time I
definitely felt that it took more power to do the job. “Once more,
from opposite sides of the yard this time,” I called out. Her lot
was about one hundred yards long, and as we reached our positions
and began the test, I found that I definitely had to strain in
order to lift her up. I lowered her back to the ground and looked
around the yard. I saw the ashtray on the patio table and figured
that it would do for a comparison test. Yes, that was definitely
easier to lift at a distance.

We were making a good start on gathering
data, but I had to admit to myself that the combination of
researcher and test subject rarely worked out well. There would
always be things missed due to being in the middle of it all. Maybe
we could trust my old lab partner Carl. I had just come back from a
trip where I helped him calibrate his new lab, and he owed me for
that. Plus he mentioned that he was going to take a few weeks off
before beginning his testing in there, so he would be free. I
decided to talk to Linda about it when we took a break later.