Chapter 147: Running Away

Thursday, June 17, 1971

I needed to sort things out in my mind, so I decided to take a walk. I scanned until I located everyone, assuring myself that all was safe, then headed up the old logging trail.

Using the techniques the old ones had taught me, I practiced becoming one with the natural things around me. I had never done it while walking and it took me a moment to get the hang of things. But soon, I began to relax, feeling the energies of the trees and tall grasses flow through me.

The next thing I knew, I was standing beside the platform that had been constructed for my ceremony with Mikeya and Ileana. I knew I was at what they now called Michael’s Point, but I could not recall walking there.

“C’mon,” I called to Penny. “The view is better from here.”

Penny had been following me, maybe a hundred yards behind, stopping when I did, watching me ever since I left the Lodge. I could sense her uncertainty about encroaching on my time alone. She approached slowly until she stood beside the platform where I now sat. I wasn’t thrilled about the intrusion on my privacy either.

“I wasn’t trying to intrude, but I didn’t think you should be out here, alone,” Penny said. I could see she was suddenly concerned she might have made me mad.

“You were doing exactly what I pay you to do. And I am glad you did,” I confessed. “Thank you. You are correct. I didn’t need to be out here alone.”

I patted the platform beside me indicating she should have a seat. Penny didn’t say anything as we sat there looking out over the valley. It was still more than four hours until sunset, so I wasn’t in a rush to get back to the ranch. And surprisingly, the hunger that had been gnawing at me earlier, seemed to have subsided while I walked.

“I can sense you have questions,” I finally said. “Please, feel free...”

Penny hesitated a moment, then spoke.

“I have to tell you, Michael, These last two days with you have just about blown me away. First, I find out that you’re not really a teenager. It’s hard to believe you’re actually older than I am. And you’re from the future. Then I find out you’re friends with aliens from another world, and that you have to fight some great battle for them. It all seems so ... surreal,” Penny said. “I talked to Narvenia for a while, and I believe she is what she claims. It actually makes sense in an abstract way.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I sighed.

Penny hesitated for a moment. She hadn’t taken time to consider what the events of the last month had done to me.

“And if I understand it correctly, you have all these women around you because you have some ‘connection’ with them that you will need for this upcoming battle,” Penny said it as a statement, but she was looking for confirmation.

“You’re pretty close,” I told her. When I didn’t say anything else, Penny continued.

“I knew when I accepted the position as your Chief of Security, that it was not an ordinary personal protection job, but I had no idea that it would involve all of this,” Penny exclaimed. “And I haven’t a clue how to protect you from whatever it is you’re facing. The Academy never trained us to fight aliens!”

I understood her concerns. I scanned her for the first time since the incident at the State Department and saw that she was worried. Not enough to run away, but she really didn’t understand what I was facing, nor what she could do to protect me from it.

I turned to look at the naked woman sitting next to me. At thirty-two, Penny was the epitome of the girl next door. Her slim frame carried her medium sized breasts perfectly, and her slender hips and long legs gave her an athletic look. She was toned, and healthy looking. Wholesome, was the word that came to mind. Her dark hair hung to her shoulders, framing an oval face, with soft features. But it was her eyes, shining in the late afternoon sun as it filtered through the trees, which gave her an exotic appeal. Laughing eyes, Grandma Brown called them. When she looked at you a certain way, you just knew she was happy, and that made you happy as well.

“Penny, there is absolutely nothing you can do to protect me from ... whatever it is that’s coming, so quit worrying about that. I promise that I’ll tell you everything, but I’m afraid that I don’t know a lot more than you do at the moment. Instead, I want you to focus on protecting the others. At least until I know more about what I am facing,” I told her.

Her brow furrowed. “You’ve told me everything?” she asked.

“Pretty much. Narvenia obviously knows more, but she says she isn’t allowed to tell us,” I replied. “She may reconsider, but I don’t know.”

“Can I ask you some questions?” Penny asked. “I have a hunch that you may know more than you realize.”

“Sure,” I replied. I couldn’t think of anything I hadn’t already told her.

“Tell me about the test. The one the aliens put you through,” Penny instructed.

“But I’ve already told you that,” I objected.

“Humor me,” she said softly, “Please, Michael.”

Sighing, I began to recall the Obrelausten test that the Radapel had administered. She stopped me frequently with questions, such as, where did he get the energy bolts? And did I feel like he was holding back? Penny was very interested in the shield I constructed and asked me all sorts of questions about it. How big was it? How heavy did it feel? How long had it taken me to fabricate it? And so on.

When we got to the energy glove, she asked me to describe it, and then describe it again in more detail. What did it feel like? Could I see it? And then she asked, “While you were catching all those ... what did you call them? Energy bolts? How did you keep them from striking the rest of your body?”

I had what I refer to as a mini-revelation while I considered her last question. In telling the story the first time, I hadn’t even realized that it had happened quite that way.

“That’s why we ask witnesses to tell their story over and over, questioning all the mundane items. The more we do, the more they seem to recall about what they saw. Our instructors at the Academy were masters at it and they drilled it into our heads. They said that interrogating a witness usually produced more results than interrogating the suspect,” Penny said happily.

I had suddenly realized that when I had constructed the energy glove, it had become an attractor, similar to a magnet, drawing their dangerous bolts away from my body. I remembered, as Penny questioned me, that I first constructed a shield around me, and then the glove. The shield was almost in tatters before I could get the glove up, but when I did, the energy in it began to reinforce the strength of my shield. I was using their negative energy to power my shield while I channeled the girls’ love to help me gather and control what I captured in the glove.

“I have another idea I’d like to try. Would you stand here?” Penny asked. She positioned me next to the platform, then moved about ten paces away from me. Stooping to pick up several small stones as she did. “Now, I want you to reconstruct that shield.”

I was surprised how quickly I could rebuild the shield, once I focused. I looked at Penny, nodding.

She didn’t say anything. Instead, using an underhand toss like a softball pitcher, she lobbed a rock straight at me. It fell a few feet in front of me. I assumed she just hadn’t put enough on it. The next one she tossed even harder, and again, it seemed to die of momentum several feet in front of me.

“Why don’t you come closer?” I suggested.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said as she wound up to throw the next stone. I knew then that she had played organized softball. The rock came whizzing out of her hand, almost a blur to the eye, only to carom off my shield and the edge of the platform, skipping across the lawn before it disappeared out of sight.

“I don’t know how fast that rock was traveling, and I’ll admit it’s been a few years. However, in high school, I could pitch a softball over forty miles an hour,” she said.

I just grinned at her and shrugged.

Suddenly, Penny charged me, intending to tackle me. I was so surprised, I didn’t have time to move. But as she came close, she seemed to dive to my feet, her fingers still inches from my toes.

I helped her up, brushing the dirt from her shoulders, arms, and then finally her breasts as she bent at the waist to wipe the dirt from her knees. She jerked away as she felt my hand brushing her breasts, glaring at me. Then drawing back her hand, she went to slap me.

At only two feet away, there was no way she could miss. I had instinctively begun to turn my head when her open hand passed harmlessly by my cheek, close enough that I could feel the breeze, but without touching me. Penny’s momentum continued to carry her around in an unsteady arc, as her hand didn’t meet the anticipated resistance of my face. I reached out to grab her by the waist to steady her, but her momentum caused her to stumble and the next thing I knew, she had slipped through my hands, until I found myself catching her by her breasts.

Penny leapt away angrily, then turned, staring at me intently.

I held up my hands as if surrendering. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I was just trying to keep you from falling.”

When she didn’t answer me, I scanned and saw that while Penny might have been a little upset by my catching her by her tits, she was mostly preoccupied analyzing every movement of what had just happened. I sat down again to wait.

“Michael,” she said, finally. “I want to try something, but you’ll have to really trust me.”

“I’d trust you with my life, Penny,” I told her prophetically. She smiled, her eyes laughing at me, I was sure.

“I just hope you don’t regret saying that,” she said with a wry smile, “I want you to stand up and cross your hands over your chest,” she instructed. Then stepping off ten paces, she turned and pulled her gun from her boot.

“Now, make your shield as strong as you possibly can,” she called out to me. “And stand PERFECTLY still.”

I scanned her quickly to confirm what I suspected, then taking a deep breath, I slowly exhaled as I brought my shield to the highest energy level I could. Even though I was focused on relaxing, I could still feel my heart thumping in my chest. I stood as still as I possibly could, waiting.

Using both hands, Penny aimed and fired as she had done countless times on the firing range. I felt the bullet hit my shield, as it ricocheted to my left, burying itself in the frame of the wooden platform.

“Are you all right?” she asked anxiously, as the echoes of the gunshot faded.

I heard excited voices in the distance, but couldn’t see anyone yet. I scanned and discovered that Ileana, Hanna, Grace, and Natalie were headed this way, and since they had heard the gunfire, they were worried that something was wrong.

“It’s okay,” I thought to all of them. “We were just experimenting.”

Penny had reached me, quickly examining my left arm. Then she began looking for the slug that had buried itself in the platform. When she found it, she looked from me to where it had gone in and back again, trying to determine the bullet’s trajectory.

“I was aiming for a point a few inches outside your left bicep. I don’t believe I missed at this range. From what I could tell, the bullet deflected off your force field, or shield, or whatever, and hit the platform there,” she said pointing. “Did you feel anything?”

“Yeah. When the bullet hit my shield, it vibrated throughout my body,” I tried to explain.

Grace and Ileana came charging into the clearing about then, with Hanna and Natalie right behind. They were all breathing hard by the time they reached Penny and me.

Grace hugged me as she thanked me for telling them not to worry. Then they all wanted to know what we were doing. I looked at Penny. It was her experiment.

“Michael was telling me about his final test on the other world, and I became curious, so we tried a few things,” she said.

When they wanted more details, Penny told them we were testing the strength of my shield.

Penny bent down, gathering a handful of small pebbles then handed them to Grace. “Stand over there and throw one at Michael.”

Grace moved back and then threw one of the rocks at me. It fell to the ground a few feet in front of me.

“You throw like a girl!” I teased.

“In case you haven’t noticed, I AM a girl, she said proudly, sticking out her chest and wiggling her boobs sexily.

“Oh, I’ve noticed,” I told her.

Grace threw the remaining pebbles in her hand, all at the same time. They showered down on me, scattering before they could touch me. It looked like I was holding an invisible umbrella. The other girls all picked up some of the small stones scattered around and duplicated Grace’s efforts, with the same results.

“Could you shield someone else with that ... whatever?” asked Penny suddenly.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know,” I told her. “I’ve never tried.”

“Who wants to volunteer?” Penny asked the other four.

Ileana raised her hand meekly. “What do I have to do?” she asked.

“Just stand next to Michael. I’m going to toss this small pebble at you. If he can, Michael is going to try to block it. Okay?” Penny asked her.

“Uh ... okay,’ Ileana said as she moved next to me. I bent my head to kiss her before I told Penny we were ready.

The gently thrown pebble bounced off my shield about two feet in front of us. Penny’s eyes went wide in amazement.

“I don’t know why that is so much harder to believe,” Penny said. “I mean I just saw you deflect a bullet. But for some reason, seeing it bounce off thin air, and in front of Ileana, it’s ... well, it’s just incredible!”

The others were equally amazed and wanted to try it, so we repeated it with me shielding two, then three, then finally all four of them.

“I want to try something else. Ileana, you stay there, and Michael, you move away and see if you can shield her without touching her,” Penny instructed.

I stepped about an arm’s length away and focused. The pebble bounced away. Penny kept moving me further away and added Natalie beside Ileana, then Grace joined them and finally Hanna, as Penny kept moving me further and further away. Finally, I rounded the bend in the trail, out of sight. I had to scan to pinpoint them as I focused my shield around them. The pebbles she tossed continued to clatter away, never touching the girls.

On her last throw, I changed my focus, encasing Penny in the shield. This time, the pebble stayed inside the shield and almost hit Penny on the ricochet.

“Whatthefuck!” Penny said quickly before she figured out what I had done. Then grinning at me she said, “Cute, Michael. Real cute!”

I raised my eyebrows at her phrasing. Donnie and Marie wouldn’t make the phrase famous until they launched their TV show in 1976. “I guess I should have warned you, but I just thought of it right before you threw,” I told her. “Sorry.”

“No harm, no foul,” she said quickly before asking the other four girls why they were here.

“Catherine said it was almost time to eat, and Vickie tried to contact you, but she said you were too far away or concentrating really hard because she couldn’t get through to you. So we volunteered to come get you. Vickie said that even if she couldn’t reach you, she could tell you were in this direction,” Ileana explained.

As we walked back towards the ranch, the girls all listened as Penny and I discussed what we had learned. I made a mental note to experiment with Vickie later. I was curious if my shield was blocking her ability to read me as well.

“How hard is it to keep a shield like that going?” Penny asked. “Could you keep it up all the time?”

“I don’t think so. I have to focus pretty hard right now,” I replied.

“Maybe if you practiced, it would get easier,” Natalie suggested. “Things usually get easier with repetition.”

I decided Natalie might have a point, so I kept the shield around me. It was hard to walk, listen, and keep the shield in place all at the same time, at first. But, by the time we had returned to the Dining Hall, it was getting easier.

The rest of the family was already eating when we arrived, so we took a seat at one of the long tables with the rest of them. They were serving ‘Family Style’ tonight, where they brought the food to the tables in large bowls and platters, and everyone passed them around. Grace and Natalie started to tell Catherine what Penny and I had been doing, but Penny asked them to wait until we were back at the lodge.

I was seated between Ileana and Hanna, across from Izzy and Adriana, when Trealyn came and whispered something in Izzy’s ear. Izzy surprised me when she answered in Russian. Izzy scooted over a little and allowed the young girl to share her seat as they continued to converse in Russian.

Looking at me, Izzy finally said, in English this time, “See, I told you he doesn’t understand a word of Russian.”

“That’s good... “ Trealyn replied, also in English, “ ... I guess.”

Both girls giggled at their secret, and then ignoring me, went back to talking quietly among themselves.

“You look distressed, Michael,” Narvenia thought to me from further down the table.

“It’s nothing, really. I just wish I understood Russian sometimes,” I thought back.

“Are you referring to the language the young girl and Izzy are speaking?” she asked.

“Yeah. I have the feeling that they’re talking about me. I just wish I understood,” I told her with a sigh.

“I don’t think it is much. Maybe what you would commonly refer to as ‘girl talk’. Trealyn has been telling Izzy how there are no boys her age at the ranch. And how she would like to spend more time with you. I heard her mother telling Catherine she thinks Trealyn has a ‘crush’ on you, whatever that is, but Trealyn is concentrating on what we are communicating right now,” Narvenia explained matter-of-factly. “She’s also thinking that she would like to kiss you. Is that normal on your world?”

I looked up and saw that Trealyn was watching me intently. I winked at her as I tapped Catherine and Nicky on their mental shoulders.

“Help!” I thought. Then I replayed the whole scene from the time that Trealyn had approached Izzy.

“I didn’t know Izzy spoke Russian,” Catherine replied.

“Catherine! That’s not why I called you!” I thought. The aggravation in my voice was obvious. “I need help. Trealyn can hear my thoughts!”

“That’s only because you’re letting her, Michael,” Narvenia interrupted. “You’re broadcasting them to anyone that wants to hear them.”

“Huh?” I said. “What do you mean?”

Narvenia then launched into a detailed explanation of why my thoughts could be heard, and what I should do to shield them.

“Whoa! I needed to talk this through, but not where the other guests could hear me,” I thought. I quickly jumped up from the table and motioned for Narvenia to follow me as I led her out on the big front porch.

“Now,” I said aloud, when we were comfortably seated on a swing at the far end of the porch, “please explain to me again how this works.”

“I am sorry, Michael. Spiro and I thought you were doing it intentionally, to help you locate those that have a connection to your soul,” she explained. “We were even applauding you for coming up with the idea. We had not thought of doing that, because we did not know it could be done. Now, you’re telling me you did it by accident? That you haven’t figured out yet, how to control your thoughts?”

This was getting complicated!

Just then, Izzy came out to where we were sitting in the porch swing. She had Trealyn with her.

“Michael, Trealyn told me that she’ll turn thirteen on Sunday,” Izzy said, “and she has never kissed a boy.”

“Happy Birthday,” I told her, smiling. But inside, I could feel the panic rising.

“I told her that you were a very good kisser,” Izzy said.

“Well, I would certainly love kissing you, Trealyn, but I’m afraid that your folks would probably kill me if I did,” I said.

“Literally!” I added as an afterthought to myself. Then I looked at Izzy, wondering why she was doing this to me.

Trealyn said something to Izzy in Russian. I looked at Narvenia.

“Trealyn just told Izzy that you are wondering why Izzy was doing this to you,” Narvenia thought to me with a smile.