by Dave Renol
My last thoughts before falling asleep were confused; what did these people want so badly from me that they were being so nice and generous?
Chapter 17
Carl: The Trustworthy One
“Is that coffee ready yet?” I asked while yawning.
“Should be close,” Mark replied. “You’re up early this morning… you couldn’t sleep either?”
“Barely a wink all night, what with all the new things my brain needed to process.”
“What do you think of our little psionic thief?”
“I think Linda was right that we need to tread carefully with her. You could see it in her eyes that she was going back and forth between fear and suspicion.”
“If she’s homeless and living on her own, then I guess that’s the kind of attitude that helps keep her safe.”
“Yeah, it can’t be easy… especially for a girl.”
“What do you think we should do about her? She is the thief Baker’s been looking for.”
“Screw Baker,” I said. “We agreed to help him up to a certain point, but I’m not about to turn her over to him. I think we should just try to convince her to stop and that’s it.”
“That might be easier said than done, but I know where you’re coming from. It might be different if she was stealing high dollar items, but all she took was cheap stuff.”
He topped up his mug before continuing. “The last time Baker talked to me, he said the thief wasn’t stealing as much, but had switched to some nasty tricks instead. Everything seems targeted toward the same guy… some dude named Tom Murphy.”
“What kind of tricks?”
“Little things that are simple, yet highly annoying. Like a skunk getting trapped inside his garage, a huge hornet’s nest that appeared over his front door overnight and a bunch of dead fish that somehow got into his AC vents.”
Hearing the list of what Claire used her psionics for was almost enough to make me snort coffee out my nose.
“That’s brilliant,” I said, wiping coffee off my chin. “Brilliant, inspired, and friggen hilarious to boot… I wonder what her beef with this guy is.”
“I’m not sure, but I’m glad she’s not pissed off at me. The pranks that can be done by a telekinetic could prove to be very nasty.”
“From what you just mentioned, they already are, but I know what you mean… nothing she did was actually very dangerous unless the guy’s allergic to bees.”
“So what do you think we should do about her?”
“I think we should give her a helping hand where she needs it. Train her psionics up a bit so she doesn’t do anything dangerous, and stay on her good side so we don’t find ourselves on the receiving end of her tricks.”
“She also has a few things she could teach us, like her expanded spectrum with telepathy.”
“I hear ya loud and clear on that one. Isn’t it strange how the range of psionic abilities grows at different rates, depending on what’s needed?”
“Everyone thinks a little bit different, and necessity is the mother of invention. If we had a driving need to speak telepathically with a non-psionic, I’m sure we would have made progress in that direction.”
“True, but that’s something we’ve been talking about for almost a year. Now we find out it’s not only possible, but was one of the first things she picked up.”
“We didn’t have a chance to try with anyone,” he said, standing up and beginning to pace. “In case you forgot, between Sid, Sara, and Dawn, we haven’t exactly had a good track record whenever we share our news.”
“True again, but there’s still three people that know about our powers and haven’t tried to kill us… yet,” I finished lamely.
“It’s something to consider, but I don’t think I would add Hatter to the ‘safe’ list; he wouldn’t hesitate to attack if he thought it was for the greater good.”
“True for the third time… I think that’s a new record for you.”
It looked like he was going to rise to the bait, but Claire poked her head around the corner and the moment was lost.
“Good morning, Claire.”
“Morning, eh!” I chimed in.
“Morning,” she replied quietly, coming the rest of the way out of the hall.
“Are you hungry? Carl was about to fix up some breakfast.”
“Yeah, I could eat some. Anything I can do to help?”
I gave Mark a dirty look, but sighed and knew he had me. I turned back to Claire. “If you can chop, then you can help,” I said, standing and gesturing to the kitchen. “I was thinking some omelets might hit the spot.”
“Ok, just tell me what you want me to do.”
“Let’s see,” I said as I opened the fridge and began rummaging. “Start with these mushrooms and cut them up thin.”
She took them to the cutting board and picked through the knife block until she found one she was happy with. I grabbed an onion, red bell pepper and some sharp cheddar cheese, figuring that would all go good together. I dumped them on the counter next to her and went back for the rest of what we’d need.
I thought the saltiness of some country ham would be a good accompaniment, so I set some slices to soaking while we worked on the rest. I saw she was already done with the ‘shrooms and had started in on the pepper; she was obviously no stranger to using a knife. I threw some bread in the toaster and started cracking eggs.
“Linda told us you were a guest here on the night of the storm,” I began, trying to start a conversation.
“Yeah, ya gotta do what ya gotta do sometimes.”
“No doubt,” I chuckled. “I’m just surprised you were here that long ago, yet didn’t manifest your powers until recently.”
She just shrugged and kept chopping.
“We don’t understand everything about psionics either, but we’re slowly learning how it works and what can be done with it.”
“Miss Linda said something about astral stuff. I don’t know how to do that, only the mind speaking and lifting.”
“We wouldn’t mind showing you how to do some of the stuff we learned. Some of it’s handy, but could be dangerous if you tried without knowing how it works.”
“Dangerous?”
“Yeah, like there’s a variation on telekinesis called pyrokinesis, which is basically fire-starting. Linda almost froze herself doing that, since the transfer of heat has to go through you if you want to control it.”
“I can explain it in more detail later if you’re interested.”
“Yeah, fire-starting would be a handy thing to know. There’s been times when I wasn’t able to get a fire going, no matter how hard I tried.”
“Just don’t go using it for things like burning down the house of someone you hate.”
Her cutting faltered a bit at that, but she recovered fast. “You know about my revenge on that old turd Murphy?”
“We know some of what you’ve been doing, but not all, and not why. Look in that cupboard below you for a couple of big frying pans.”
She found the pans and gave them to me before continuing. “I can explain it in more detail later if you’re interested,” she said, mimicking my phrasing from a few seconds ago.
“It’s a date. Dump all that stuff in the first pan when it’s ready; I like to cook them a bit before adding the eggs.”
“So what else can you do with this psionics stuff?”
“One thing we found very handy was making shields. In a nutshell, it’s taking the kinetic force you use to lift things and forming it into shape without anything actually being there. If something hits that force, it gets blocked.”
“So if someone threw a punch at you, and you had a shield up, you wouldn’t have to dodge or nothing?”
“Pretty much,” I nodded.
“Cool. Is that one hard to learn?”
“It seemed to come fairly easy for us, but these abilities tend to vary how hard they are to figure out, since everyone thinks a little bit differently.”
“Is that why I figured out how to talk in my head to anyone and you guys can’t?”
“You got it.”
“I’m all done chopping. Is there anything else I can do?”
“Get another round of bread in the toaster and take that ham out of the sink.”
While she was doing that I called out to Mark. “Tell Linda to get up or she’ll miss brekkie.”
“Ok,” I said to Claire. “I got the rest of this handled if you want to put out some plates and stuff. Everything is in those cupboards and drawers at the end.”
It looked like she wanted to continue the conversation, but her empty stomach took priority. I had her hooked, though, and knew she would be asking more questions later. I started whistling as I worked on finishing breakfast.
***
“That was pretty good, if I do say so myself,” I said, both full and content.
“I’m not generally a fan of scrambled eggs, but the extra stuff in there made the difference for me,” Mark commented.
“I thought it was an omelet?” Claire asked.
“Omelets are usually in one piece,” Linda said. “When it’s in dozens of chunks, we call it scrambled.”
“Ok, so I suck at flipping eggs. They still taste the same.”
“We’re just razzing you… they were quite good and if you need more practice, we’ll be more than happy to let you try again tomorrow.”
I looked at Claire and said, “I think I was just scammed.” I gave her a wink to let her know it was all in fun, and a smile briefly twitched across her lips.
“I was taught that the people who cook get to relax and let the others do the cleanup… do y’all do that too?” she asked, innocently, but with a wink of her own in my direction.
“Why yes, I believe we do,” I said, nodding at Mark and Linda with a huge grin on my face.
“C’mon, dear… I do believe we were just out maneuvered.”
“Let’s go out back and give them room to work. If you want, I can show you a bit of what we were talking about earlier.”
“Sure.”
I grabbed two of the folding chairs we used yesterday and took them to the shade by the garage. I didn’t think we would cause any mayhem, but more free space than the deck provided might come in handy if things went wrong.
“Let’s start with shielding,” I began once we got settled. “It’s not really much different than what you do to lift something, so I bet you figure it out pretty fast.”
“Ok, what do I do?”
“Lift a log off that pile over there. You’re lifting it by applying force with your mind, right?”
I watched her lift one of the logs a few feet off the pile and hold it there. “Try and picture in your mind the force that’s lifting the log. Now put the log down and picture that same force lifting it again, but don’t touch it this time. Pretend the log is a foot above where it really is and build your shield there.”
I saw her brow furrowed in concentration as she focused on the task. After about a minute she turned to me and said she tried, but didn’t think it worked. I walked over to the stack of logs and peered closely at the area, using my mind instead of my eyes.
Smiling at what I found, I turned to her and with a flourish, dropped my coffee mug over the target area. It hit her shield with a dull thud, and the last bit of my coffee began pooling in the slightly concave shield she built.
“I would call that a success.”
“Holy crap,” she said. “It really did work!”
“Pretty good for a first attempt,” I said, enthusiastically. “It seems you’ve really got a knack for this stuff.”
“Thanks,” she said, slightly flushed with success. “What next?”
“To be honest with you, I’ve never tried teaching anyone this stuff, so I’m making it up as I go along.”
She looked a bit surprised at my candid confession, but nodded her head in understanding. “Ok.”
“How about we try that same kind of shield a few more times to make sure you have it down pat, and then we’ll try variations on it.”
“That makes sense,” she agreed.
I led her through the same exercise a few more times and finally had her build a flat shield in front of my chair; it made a most convenient footrest. Once she showed some confidence in the basic shield, I had her try different sizes and in different configurations.
When I showed her how to make a bubble shaped shield that could lift a sphere of water, she immediately jumped up and headed for the nearby stream in order to try it. I watched her until she disappeared into the trees and sighed, hoping I was doing the right thing.
“How goes the psionics-101 lesson?” Mark sent to me.
“Pretty good,” I sent back. “She’s eager to learn and seems to be able to figure out what to do without much trouble. The force is strong with this one.”
“Should we join you for the lessons, Yoda? We’ve been hanging back since Linda thought too many people around might make her nervous.”
“I think she has it right,” I agreed. “She’s just beginning to relax right now, so let’s hold off on overwhelming her. We’ll switch to one of you two later for the harder stuff, and also see if she can explain how she does her expanded spectrum telepathy.”
“Ok, then we’re going to head to town for a few things. Try not to blow up the house while we’re gone.”
“Take off, eh!”
Claire reappeared out of the trees with a ball of water trailing behind her; it seemed she was successful. She brought it beside her and left it floating there while she sat down, obviously proud of her accomplishment.
“Have any troubles with that?” I asked.
“The first one leaked like a bucket with no bottom, and the second leaked around the seams when the water sloshed, but I figured out how to make it a single solid piece on the third try.”
“Nice. How strong do you think it is?”
“I dunno… how do you tell?”
“Well, I guess the easiest way would be to hit it.”
I got up and selected a good stout stick from the woodpile. I took a few practice swings to get the feel of it and then stepped up to the plate, so to speak. My club burst her bubble like it was a water balloon, and to my chagrin, soaked her.
“Oops,” I said apologetically. “I guess I should have aimed the other way.”
She started laughing as she wiped water out of her eyes. “That’s ok; you just surprised me is all.”
“Did you want to take a break and change into something dry?”
“Naw, it’s only water and I’ll dry fast if I move into the sun. Besides, this is kinda fun.”
“You have a funny idea of fun. I heard about some of the ‘fun’ little tricks you’ve been playing on someone too.”
Her face clouded up immediately and I thought I might have pushed things too fast. I quickly tried to recover.
“Let’s go to that stream so you can try another water bubble. If you don’t want to talk about the stuff you did then that’s fine, but I promise not to judge hastily and I’d really like to hear it.”
She seemed to be having an internal debate, but today’s ‘fun’ won out and I guess I earned a bit of slack by offering to teach her. We headed to the stream and she started telling me her tale from the beginning.
I didn’t expect to sympathize with her side of the story, but as she went on I began to see how she did more for her friends than she did for herself. When she got to the part where her friend was beaten so badly over nickel and dime thefts, I began to see things her way a bit.
I really couldn’t condone stealing or revenge, but I could understand it. If anything, I was surprised at the restraint she showed by not using kinesis to unscrew his head like a light bulb. When she told me about the piece de resistance involving five gallons of cow dung, I almost fell into the creek laughing so hard. A ‘fun’ little idea of my own began to take shape.
“Let’s examine your ideas from a psionic point of view.
First off, your tricks with the skunk and the bees nest would have been safer and easier with a bubble shield. The shield can contain them completely, but make sure you don’t make a shield super tight around something alive or it’ll suffocate.”
“That makes sense,” she agreed, falling quickly back into the relaxed student-teacher relationship we had started earlier.
“You also have to make sure that your shield is strong enough for the job. For example, your shields are fairly weak right now so if you took an anthill and dropped it in his pantry, then it would probably work. If you tried to take a family of raccoons and dump them in his attic, they might claw through your shield before you got them there.”
“I… see,” she said, looking both stunned and puzzled at my choice of examples.
“I’ve always felt that shields are the most versatile out of all that we’ve discovered so far. They can protect you from harm, they can contain water in a bubble for something like putting out a fire, or they could be used to stop up a toilet.”
All this talking was making me thirsty, but this was proving to be priceless.
“Let’s see how much fine control you have with telekinesis. Reach out with your mind to the house. Find the fridge and one of the cans of beer inside. Open both the fridge and patio doors, grab the can, and carefully bring it here. Make sure not to shake the can, though… nothing pisses a guy off more than his beer spraying him in the face when he opens it.”
It took her a while to do the complicated multi-tasking, but that was fine, since it gave me time to think. Eventually I saw the can float up and stop next to me and after complimenting her on a job well done, I reached out to crack it but paused. I held it up in front of her before flipping the tab open.
It was a wise choice as it did spray, but she must have known it was going to, since she built a shield in front of her that deflected the foam to the sides.
“Sorry about that… I hit it kinda hard when I closed the patio door too fast, and a couple of trees were also in the way.”
“No harm, no foul. Might I also say that it was quite the good use of a shield… and without any warning to boot. Keep working on your bubble shield and I’ll try to come up with examples for other kinds of shields.”
