“Ah, good question. Yes, great question,” said Alexander. He gazed at the director as if to ask for permission to explain, and when he got the nod, he continued. “We have been conducting research on telepathy for a very long time now. As you may know, certain subjects exhibit specific telepathic connections. Take, for instance, twins; it is not uncommon for twins to be able to transmit sensations and even images to one another. Their ability to communicate, even if on a subconscious level, is sometimes astounding, but their communication channel, so to speak, only exists between them and does not allow them to communicate with others.”
“Yes, I know that. It even happens between mothers and children. I remember a few times when my mother sensed when I was excited or scared; she got restless and called to check on me. That happens, but it’s not proper telepathy.”
“Exactly. That happens often under stress. So we took a few pairs that exhibit spontaneous telepathic connection and studied their brain waves when we subjected them to stress, following which they reported telepathic events. The result over time was constant: whenever a telepathic event happened, there was a very specific combination of brain waves. That’s how we created the MWA machine.”
“But that happens in my brain, doesn’t it? So how does that big machine help with that?”
“That combination is always present in your brain, but it matters only when the intensity is high enough, and only then are you able to reach a state of resonance with somebody else’s mind, which is conducive to telepathy. You’re not able to control the intensity needed to reach the threshold, so that happens erratically. The machine I developed amplifies those waves in your brain and gives you the ability to use your telepathic powers as you wish.”
“This must have had a huge effect on those twins,” I said.
“We didn’t test it with them,” said the director. “The twins and other subjects that we used to study telepathic phenomena are civilians, and no civilian can know about this project.”
“So who tested it? Is there anybody I can talk to?”
“Ahem, we carried out careful animal studies, including with rats, and the results are conclusive.”
“Rats? Are you telling me that you never put a human person into that slipper?”
“That’s right, but rats are an excellent model for humans. All medical trials use rats, because they are so similar to us.”
“They may be similar to you, Doctor, but I’m not a laboratory rat, and I won’t climb into that slipper before I know for sure that it’s not going to fry my brain.”
“What are you saying, Tessa?”
The director sounded dangerously calm.
“I’m saying that it was nice seeing you again, sir. I’ll be in my room until you arrange for my return home.”
Having said my piece, I turned around to leave. I gazed at Liv to see if she intended to take me back to my quarters, but she stood there, gazing at the floor, so I ignored her. I have a pretty good memory—a photographic one, you might say—and I knew the way back to my room. Once I got there, I locked the door and waited patiently for developments. The director hadn’t gone ballistic, which meant that he had an ace up his sleeve. I didn’t like the thought of that, but all I could do was wait and see.
I woke up when my tummy started to rumble. The time was well after dinner, and I hadn’t had any lunch either. I’m a healthy girl, and I need my calories. I started to wonder if the director’s strategy was to starve me until I agreed to go into his machine. I was determined to win this psychological battle, though—he wouldn’t let me starve for too long. I got up and started stuffing my things into my duffel bag, when a knock on the door interrupted me. Outside, the young attendant—the good-looking one who had met me on arrival—stood rigidly at attention. He looked like someone who had swallowed a broomstick and seemed more flustered than before.
“Is the car that will take me out of here ready?” I asked.
“Oh … what? No … the director wishes to see you. Please come.”
I walked beside him in silence to the director’s office. ESA15 was waiting for me, standing.
“How nice of you to make the time to say goodbye to me,” I said.
“Shut up and take a seat. You need to see this.”
He clicked on a remote control, and a video started playing on a large screen. In the video, I saw Liv climbing into the machine and the doctor pushing a few buttons while she lay there.
“What’s that? Why are you showing me this?”
“That is Lieutenant Ellman, who volunteered to test the machine. She was in there for an hour and came out unscathed. Here are the tests that our medical department ran on her, which show that she did not suffer any adverse effects from her exposure to the machine.”
I gazed at the dossier in his hand but did not take it.
“I don’t believe it! This is below even you, and that’s a lot to say. You ordered that poor girl to be a guinea pig. I am …”
“I didn’t order anything. She volunteered. In contrast to you, she understands how critical this is to our security.” He waited for that statement to sink in, and then he continued in a conciliatory tone. “I hate to be in a position to need you, but I do. The country does. You know you are unique, otherwise, troublemaker as you are, I would have gladly replaced you by now.”
I weighed this. By then, I had cooled down a bit. I tend to be hotheaded at times, although I won’t admit it. But I wasn’t going to make it any too easy for him.
“All right. But if I discover that you forced her in any way to go into the slipper, I’m out of here.”
“I didn’t, but here’s the thing: now that you have learned about the project, you can’t leave. You can either be in it or be stuck with us here, gazing at the wall, until the project runs its course, probably in a couple of years. Your choice.”
“I said I’d do it, didn’t I?” I sounded pissed, and I was.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at nine a.m. sharp,” he said, and turned his attention to some papers on his desk as if I wasn’t there.
I hate it when he outsmarts me.
Back in my room I had a nice surprise, for a change—Liv was waiting for me. She was wearing a nice blue dress—not the one she had on the day before—which accented her blue eyes and long, blonde hair that she had let fall naturally. More importantly, there was food on a tray that she had placed on the table.
“I thought you’d be hungry,” she said.
I closed the door and turned the lock. Without speaking, I went straight to her and kissed her lightly on the lips. She hadn’t seen that coming—she was left wide-eyed, actually—but I noticed with pleasure that she wasn’t taken aback. In fact, after the initial surprise she closed her eyes for the length of the kiss, and she kind of returned it, if shyly.
“Thank you,” I said. I took her by the hand and guided her to sit beside me on the bed. “Why did you do that?”
“I told you, I thought you’d be hungry.”
“No, not that. Why did you go into the machine?”
“I didn’t want you to leave. I volunteered before I knew you, to train with you on this project. I wanted to do it before, and I want it so much more, now that I’ve met you.”
I got up and feigned interest in the food tray. I needed time to think. When the silence became too oppressive, I turned back and gazed at her. “That kiss … You didn’t seem to mind.”
“I didn’t. Please, don’t misunderstand me—I like guys, but you … I don’t know how to say it. I feel that you’re special. It’s like there is something that makes me want to get closer to you. I can’t explain it.”
I gazed at her seriously for a moment, weighing her words.
“You know that you are beautiful, right?” I said.
“Maybe,” she said, brushing it aside modestly, “but you … I’ve never seen someone like you. You are so young, and yet, your personality is magnetic. I felt it from the first moment I saw you. Your eyes are so deep and the way you m
ove, like a cat. And your voice—it’s like hot, liquid silk …”
Wait a minute! I thought. I have no false modesty as far as my looks are concerned. I’m fully aware that my green eyes, my beautiful honey-colored skin, my light brown hair that I keep in a teasing tomboyish cut, and my slim body, can make other people’s hormones go wild, sometimes. I enjoy my looks, and I exploit them when it suits me, but I never thought of myself as deeply “magnetic” before. Yet, this gorgeous young woman was throwing hormones back at me in a way that had never happened to me before.
I could feel the electricity in the air. This kid had awoken something in me that I didn’t completely understand, but the last thing I wanted was to scare her away. I took her hand and gazed straight into her eyes.
“I need to tell you something.” I paused, looking for the best way to say it. “I apply an equal opportunity policy, as far as guys and girls are concerned, if you know what I mean. Sometimes I feel a special connection with someone, which I don’t know how to explain. It’s just there, and it makes me want to be close to that person because I like him or her both outside and inside … and I like you in that way … I think. It’s as simple as that.”
Liv blushed and averted her gaze. “I like you too … in that way,” she whispered hoarsely.
I got up and gazed down at her. She remained seated on the bed, and for a moment she looked like a young girl waiting to be scolded for something bad that she had done. Then she gave me a timid smile that cancelled that image.
“Let me have a bite, and then I’ll show you how nice I can be when I like you,” I said.
Liv blushed again, which made her look more adorable than before. By then, I was really hungry, so I ate quickly from the tray, without wasting time picking and choosing. As soon as the hunger stopped bothering me, I pushed the tray aside and reached for the light dimmer. Then, I approached Liv, took her hands and pulled her to her feet.
Her hair smelled fresh and flowery. I liked that; and I showed her how much.
CHAPTER 3
A knock on the door woke me up. I went to open it, and there was Liv, again in full uniform, her hair in a tucked braid updo that must have taken quite some work to make.
“I didn’t hear you leaving,” I said, yawning. I am a light sleeper, and I usually wake up at the softest of sounds, but I hadn’t, that time.
“I thought it best to go. You were sleeping like a baby.”
“Thanks to you … let me go wash my face.”
When I came back I saw that she had placed a tray with coffee and pastries on the coffee table.
“We don’t have time for breakfast. They’re waiting.”
“Oh, screw them!”
“My orders are to get you there on time. Drink this,” she said decisively, handing me the coffee.
“Do you have to be that serious about your duty?”
“I do, when I am in uniform.”
“Then I look forward to getting you out of it.”
“So do I,” Liv said, with an impish smile, but immediately became serious again. “But now let’s go. You can drink while you walk.”
I followed her, trying not to spill coffee on myself, and by the time we reached the laboratory I had managed to wash down a croissant and a scone with it. The director and Doctor Alexander were waiting impatiently, and the doctor scowled at my coffee cup. I guess it was blemishing the sanctity of his lab, or something.
“I trust you had a good night’s rest, Miss Tessa,” he said, sounding as if he didn’t really mean it. “Please climb onto the bed and lie with your head under the arch.”
“You mean, inside the slipper?”
“You can call that a slipper, if you want, but that’s hardly an appropriate name for a highly sophisticated piece of equipment.”
He sounded hurt, and that was okay with me. The director had said nothing since I had arrived, merely gazing at me with disinterest and not giving me an opportunity to say anything to annoy him. He knew me well. For want of a better option, I climbed onto the bed and waited for the doctor to go on explaining.
“Now, Miss Tessa,” said the doctor, “look at the screen before you. What you see are your brain waves. The red wave line shows your beta waves activity right now, the green wave line shows the activity of the theta waves, and the blue wave line, that of the gamma waves. Do you see that?”
“Yes. What is the yellow wavy line that jumps up and down?”
“That shows the amplitude of the combined beta, theta, and gamma waves in the specific combination that permits telepathy. It is not a simple summation of the waves but rather a very specific combination.”
“But that is barely visible; it’s below all the others.”
“That’s right. At this moment you don’t have sufficient telepathic power, do you?”
I thought about if for a moment, trying to sense the surroundings, but felt nothing.
“No, I don’t. I’m not feeling anything. Should I?”
“Not yet. Now see what happens when I turn on the amplifier just a little bit.”
He pushed a button and turned a knob, and the yellow line on the screen jumped up, above the level of the others.
“What does that mean?” I asked. I didn’t feel any different.
“It means that the machine has increased the amplitude of the wave combination that is happening in your brain. It is helping you to do it better.”
“But I’m feeling nothing. I’m not being telepathic.”
“I know. I have done merely a tiny amplification that doesn’t make a difference, only to explain to you. When I turn this on to a higher level, you will feel the difference. But you have a few things to learn first.”
“Like what?”
“Like how to get out of the telepathic state if, for any reason, you want to interrupt contact with a subject and we, here, beside the machine, are not aware of it. Do you have a preferred quiet place where you like to go in your mind to relax?”
“Sure, I always think of myself on a boat, drifting on the surface of a quiet mountain lake I visited as a child. But what does that have to do with it?”
“You’ll see that immediately. Please close your eyes and go to that quiet place, and after you feel relaxed there, open your eyes again and look at the screen.”
I did as instructed and immediately felt relaxed. I had learned to do it everywhere, and it had helped me through difficult times, particularly when I was about to do something difficult that required concentration. I opened my eyes and looked at the screen. The yellow line had dropped and was now much lower than at first—it was almost unnoticeable.
“You see what happened? The safe place is your safety switch. If anything goes wrong, you use it to resurface and to break the connection.”
“All right. This is good. I like to be in control.”
“You always will be,” said the director, speaking for the first time. “Now, let’s take fifteen to relax and come back for training then. Lieutenant Ellman needs to stay and prepare for the training session.”
The base was being lavish with food and beverages. I had noticed a dispensing machine, inside the top secret complex and close to the entrance to the laboratory, and I got a soda from it. The place was quiet with nobody around, and I sat on a nearby bench to think. So far what I had seen made sense, but we hadn’t got started yet, and I had to admit to myself that I was looking forward to starting training. Wherever that would take me.
When I returned—three minutes later than I had to, just to make a point—Liv was sitting on a chair beside the machine and the director and Doctor Alexander were confabulating at the other side of it. When they saw me they stopped, and the doctor turned to me.
“Please, Miss Tessa, jump in. As you know, Lieutenant Ellman has volunteered to allow you to make telepathic contact with her. For today, we will do two trial runs. Right now, we will ask you to read her where she is, and then she will go into another room where you can’t see her, and we will repeat the experiment.
Ready?”
I nodded, and the doctor touched the controls again. This time, I started to hear something. At first just noise, like water dripping, and then I ran into something unexpected. Stop reading me! came a clear thought, unmistakably from the director. He couldn’t have known that I was reading him, which I wasn’t. He was just being preemptive. I wasn’t tempted to read him, anyway. The code instilled in us from day one of the service prohibited that, and I would never read him, or spy on anybody who worked in my unit in any other way, without permission.
“Close your eyes and concentrate on your target. Focus on Lieutenant Ellman, otherwise the background noise will confuse you,” Doctor Alexander said, speaking softly.
I did as he said, and the background noise started to fade away. I thought of Liv, imagined her face, and sought her mind, but nothing came.
“I can’t see a thing,” I said, as I opened my eyes and sat up.
“Give it time. Relax and concentrate on your target. If you try hard enough, you’ll get the hang of it, eventually.”
I lay down again, and this time I concentrated hard on Liv’s face. I pictured it close to me, as I had seen it in my room, and managed to shut out every other thought from my mind. As if by magic, everything else, noise and images, disappeared into the background, and I found myself in her head. It was weird, because I was actually there, feeling her entire being. In the past, all I could get were random thoughts, often unclear, and garbled snippets. Now, I could hear her thoughts as if they were mine.
“When you have made contact, lift a finger,” Doctor Alexander continued to instruct, and as I lifted my finger he continued. “Good. Now, Lieutenant, I’ll ask you to think of what we agreed before—don’t say it, just think of it. What’s the matter, Miss Tessa?”
I realized that I was giggling, reading Liv’s thoughts and seeing the images that she had in her head. I doubted very much that this was what she had agreed to imagine during the experiment; surely she would not share our time together with her superiors. But then, the image changed into that of two kittens, playing on the bed, and I got the joke. I stopped giggling and just smiled.
Tessa (Tessa Extra-Sensory Agent Book 1) Page 2
