Discovery (Science of Psionics Book #1) (6 page)

Returning, Carl passed out the drinks and
said, “You should have seen Mark today. I swear he has horseshoes
up his butt.”

“Yeah,” Sid agreed, “Every time he sliced
into the woods, he managed to get a lucky bounce back to the
fairway. Not to mention the fact that his putter was on fire today.
He totally kicked our asses.”

I threw a sharp glance up at Mark, who looked
back at me for only a split second before turning his eyes down
guiltily. “
The little bugger
,” I thought to myself. “
He
cheated and used his new ability!
” They chatted amiably about
highlights from their game until our table was ready in the dining
room and we moved inside. After a nice lunch, we all headed back to
the house. Mark and the boys went to take a quick shower while Sara
and I went to change into bathing suits. We had planned to relax in
the hot tub so the boys could soak their muscles out from their
morning outing.

I made a pitcher of iced tea, another of
lemonade, and brought them both out to the tub where Sara was
already soaking. I slipped into the water across from her, sighing
as the hot water started to relax my own tense muscles. I was
nervous about the big reveal tonight and had to curb my impatience,
wishing that it was over already.

As we all chatted and gossiped, I noticed
that Sid kept prodding at Mark in the same manner as Sara had done
with me earlier, trying to get a hint about our big announcement. I
felt that Mark was a bit better at his evasions than I was. Carl
kept mostly silent, but paid careful attention, hoping to garner a
clue of his own.

When we had all felt sufficiently soaked, we
gravitated over to the patio table to let the afternoon sun dry us
out. After about an hour, the sun had left us in shadow and we
decided to move inside for a while. Mark went into the kitchen to
get some things ready for dinner later, Sid and Carl went to the
living room to watch a football game, and Sara challenged me to a
game of cribbage.

By the time it was getting close to dinner, I
was down three games to one. I was normally a better player than
Sara, but had trouble concentrating today. By mutual agreement, we
all helped haul our dinner supplies outside. Carl drew the short
straw and pulled grill duty. While he got things ready to cook our
burgers and shrimp skewers, the rest of us laid out our condiments
and side dishes.

After dinner, the boys did the cleanup while
Sara and I relaxed with a drink. Finished with their chores they
rejoined us outside, Mark bringing the game box for our Risk set
with him. Things went smoothly for a while as we all focused on our
strategies. After a good round where I knocked Carl off of
Australia and took it for my own, Mark turned to me and said, “Well
played. Why don’t you
fetch
us all a round of beers while
waiting for your next turn.”

Gulping at his slight emphasis on the word
‘fetch’, I looked up at Mark and saw him give me a slight nod.

It was time.

Mark: The Secret Revealed

All through the day I was nervous and unsure
on how to let the cat out of the bag. I kept throwing furtive
glances over to Linda, and was a little jealous at how calm and
composed she appeared. I was close to blurting out the truth when
she figured out that I had used little psionic nudges to assist my
golf game this morning, but restrained myself in time when she
appeared to let it slide.

Even as we all soaked in the hot tub, I found
myself unable to fully relax as I ran multiple scenarios through my
head on the best way to broach the subject. It was almost a relief
to get out of the tub and I eagerly jumped on the chance to get
some time to myself doing prep work in the kitchen.

I found myself stretching out the time the
work took. I would stand around the table where Linda and Sara were
playing cards or watch some of the Raiders game with the guys
before retreating back to the kitchen to think … anything to delay
having to take the plunge.

I heard Sara claim victory on the latest crib
match just as the football game ended. Figuring that this was as
good a time as any, I called everyone together for dinner and
played a quick game of ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ with Carl and Sid to
see who would be tonight’s BBQ master. Carl lost. While Carl set up
the grill, the rest of us hauled our supplies outside and set up
the table.

Dinner went well, but because I was so
distracted, I couldn’t have said if I ate burgers or boogers. It
was the boy’s turn for cleanup duty, but since I had spent most of
the afternoon doing prep work, the other guys took pity and did the
bulk of the work. For once, I wished that cleanup would have taken
longer. Five or six years might have been good.

Despite my wishes to the contrary, our work
was finished in short order, and we were free to rejoin the ladies
outside. To give me a bit more time to think, I grabbed our Risk
game on my way out and threw down the gauntlet, which was eagerly
accepted by all. We soon had a heated game in the works, with Sid
and me battling over the Americas, Sara and Carl duking it out in
Europe/Asia, and Linda gaining strongholds in both Africa and
Australia.

Strengthening my resolve, I watched Linda
trounce Carl and gain complete control over Australia and decided
that with her turn over, she would have the perfect chance to
introduce our little surprise. I turned to her and said, “Well
played. Why don’t you
fetch
us all a round of beers while
waiting for your next turn.”

She gulped at the slight emphasis I put on
the word ‘fetch’ and looked up at me. I gave her a slight nod: this
was it.

Sara started to stare at Linda as she
acquiesced to my request but didn’t make a move to get up. To
distract her for a few moments and give Linda the time she needed,
I attacked her in Europe, making her roll the dice in defense. Less
than a minute later I saw the patio doors slide open and so I put
down the dice, focusing my gaze on the six-pack floating toward us
out of the house and thereby drawing everyone else’s eyes.

Time seemed to stand still. Sid had paused
with his drink halfway to his mouth, Sara held her dice up in mid
roll, and Carl simply gaped at the sight of the beer floating
steadily toward us in complete silence. Linda placed the box down
on the table next to the game board with only the slightest of
thumps and then looked up at me expectantly. “Who needs a drink?” I
asked upon the deathly silent table of friends.

“That’s a neat trick,” Carl finally said into
the silence. “I didn’t even see any wires.”

“No wires, no tricks,” I replied. To
emphasize the point I popped the cap off of a bottle and floated it
over to Carl, letting it hang in the air above him. Linda did the
same for Sid and Sara and almost as an afterthought, gave us our
own. “We’re not sure on how it happened, or why, but Linda and I
can both do this now.”

“Real live telekinesis?” Carl asked, half in
awe and half in doubt. He was moving his hands in the air all
around the bottle trying to find some gimmick.

“That’s what it seems like. All we know is
that it started last weekend after a massive thunderstorm rolled
through the valley. Working in the office the next morning, I
knocked my coffee off the table and it just didn’t hit the floor. I
went to get Linda out of bed, thinking that I might be going crazy
or something, and saw her hovering
above
the covers.”

“How are you two doing with this so far?”
Linda asked her friends, looking back and forth between Sid and
Sara.

“I’m not sure,” Sara began. “How is this …
you can fly?” she finished.

I threw Linda a wink as I lifted myself up
from my chair, and seeing what I was doing, she followed suit a
moment later until we were both hovering about two feet above our
seats.

“If this is some kind of elaborate practical
joke, I’m gonna kick your ass, Mark.” Carl warned.

“I already told you. No joke, no prank, no
trick … this is somehow real, and we have no idea how we can do
this, but we want to figure it out.”

Carl looked like he was deep in thought for a
few moments and then suddenly sat up straight, “You asshole!” he
sputtered. “All of those lucky bounces and amazing putts earlier …
You cheated!”

Laughing, I replied sheepishly “I wasn’t
quite sure how to broach the subject today, and since sometimes I
still think it might be a wacky dream, I was just testing systems,
so to speak.” Seeing that they were all still a bit freaked out, I
lowered the bottles that I was controlling as well as myself so we
could keep things calm. Linda followed suit.

“Can you do anything else, or is it just
telekinesis?” Carl asked. “I assume that one of the reasons that
you brought me in on this was to work out a logical explanation,
but of course the only Psi stuff that I know comes from sci-fi
books.”

“We decided to reveal this to all of you
because we value your insights and intelligence. We also felt that
you three were trustworthy, and before we go much further, I want
you all to swear that you’ll keep this a complete secret.” Still
stunned, they all agreed to silence outside our small group. Having
their promises, I went back in detail over what we knew, both from
experimentation and from research. Amused, I noticed that nobody
had touched the ‘flying beers’ that Linda had brought out, as if
they were afraid that they might take flight again between table
and lip.

“How are you dealing with this, Sid,” Linda
asked during a conversational lull. “You’re the only one who hasn’t
said anything so far.”

“I’m not sure,” he replied bluntly. “I’m
trying to figure out how dangerous this thing is. One of the few
things that I trust is the evidence of my own eyes, so I believe
that your ability is real, I just need to know more about it. Carry
on. I’m not a science geek like Carl, so I’ll just listen for a
while.”

“Ok,” I began. “You’ve all heard our story
and you’ve seen some proof. Does anyone have any questions or
comments?”

Carl looked up from fiddling with a game
piece and asked Linda “Did you ever figure out how to do the
telepathy thing again, or was the deer episode the only time.”

“Only that time, if it ever really happened
at all” she replied.

“Make me float. I’m curious to see what it
feels like,” he said to me.

Raising my arm theatrically I complied. The
surprise on his face was sort of comical, but he didn’t freak out
like I half expected he would. “Anyone else care for a ride?” I
asked, looking over at Sid and Sara. Sara eagerly agreed, but Sid
quickly shook his head no. I gave Linda a nod to work with Sara so
I could keep my attention on Carl. The last thing that I wanted to
do with the tension so high was to accidentally drop my friend on
his ass.

We talked long into the night, giving
demonstrations upon request. Linda and Sara mostly stayed together,
while Carl and Sid sat with me. Carl asked plenty of questions,
most of which I couldn’t answer, while Sid just sat there
listening. It was well past midnight before I called an end to
things to let them sleep on it and process all the new
information.

Carl had always been a night owl and would
have kept going until the sun came up, but he reluctantly agreed
that it might be a good idea and went inside to try and get some
sleep. As we all trundled into the house, I wondered how much
sleep, if any, we would get tonight.

***

We were all a little red-eyed the next
morning from lack of sleep. I amused myself momentarily calling it
precognition, but disregarded it as plain old common sense. We sat
around fortifying ourselves with copious amounts of coffee,
drinking mostly in silence. Nobody seemed eager to be the first one
to raise the subject.

Carl was the one who finally brought it up,
asking me to show him what information I had dug up on the subject.
I got up and motioned for him to follow me toward the office. Sid
got up and followed us as well. It took us the bulk of the morning
to go over all the research about psionics that I had saved on the
computer. Carl kept asking me to try something every time he came
across a new psi ability that sounded cool, and I had to keep
reminding him that we only knew how to do the one single thing.

Linda brought in a plate of sandwiches for us
around lunch time, but just left them and went back out to where
she was talking with Sara. “Perfect timing,” I thought. “We could
use a bit of a break, and nobody has had anything all day except
coffee.”

“I have an idea,” Carl said in between bites
of his sandwich. “Let’s sign you up for the PGA Tour and make some
money. You would be unbeatable with your telekinetic control of the
ball.”

“Not funny,” Sid sputtered indignantly. “This
should be used for the good of our country, not for crass monetary
gain. Think of the lives that could be saved in a place like
Afghanistan when we’re engaged in battle.”

I poked Sid and said, “Relax, he’s just being
flippant. We’re all a bit giddy from the shock.”

“I must admit that I haven’t given much
thought to real world applications for this yet,” I said. “Both
ideas probably have the potential of working. We could try various
things this afternoon to see what ideas we can come up with, and
maybe come closer to figuring out the mechanics of how it
works.”

“Maybe we can also figure out if this can be
taught to someone, or if we should all run outside in our underwear
every time a storm builds up,” Carl said with a lopsided grin.

“Let’s go see what the girls are up to, and
maybe we can figure out the answer to that. I’ll try
anything
, to save us from the sight of you in your
underwear” I said, trying to keep a straight face.