Chapter 16: Scanning

Jaime and Keira

ON SUNDAY, they walked in the park and practiced quick reads on people. And of course, they kissed occasionally, just to open their senses more.

“Behave yourselves decently! There are children in the park. Find someplace private!” a woman barked at them as she walked past them. She had a dog on a leash and ignored the pile of poop it left as she was lecturing them.

«None of the children are hers, » Keira said. «She thinks if we’d had a proper upbringing, we wouldn’t be making a spectacle of ourselves.»

«She’s a very unhappy person because the world doesn’t behave according to her idea of the way it should. We’re just an example of the degeneration of the species.»

«I think we’re an example of the ascent and improvement of the species, » Keira laughed. «Though maybe at one time, the entire human race could communicate telepathically and we are a step in the de-evolutionary process.»

«It makes my head hurt to try to parse that thought, » Jaime said.

«Funny. I don’t feel it hurting at all.»

«Look! It’s the old man, Angus. He’s picking raspberry leaves for his rabbits.»

«Let’s talk to him.»

They walked up near the old guy, picking the few green leaves that were left and putting them in a plastic box.

“Hello, Mr. Angus,” Keira said aloud. “How are you today?”

“What? Who are you?” he growled.

“Um ... We kind of met a week ago. Maybe it was just in our heads.”

«Oh, you’re the ones who were talking so loud, » Angus said in his head.

«Yes, » Jaime answered. «Sorry if we disturbed your rehearsal.»

«Oh, the girls are in a film-writing class and I agreed to help them out by reading one of the parts. It was just a scene we did for their class a few days ago.»

«That’s interesting, » Keira said. «Excuse us for asking, but do you know if there are many people around like us? We encountered a couple at a concert and didn’t think we knew anyone else.»

«Hmm. I wouldn’t say many. Meeting two at a concert? That’s pretty high. But three of us in a scarcely inhabited park is just as odd. I don’t go looking for them.»

«Thank you. I hope your rabbits are well, » Jaime said.

“You two have a good day. I’ll not be around for a while. I’ve got a new case and I’m just collecting food for my friends before I have to leave for a few days.”

“Be careful out there,” Keira said. They smiled and left each other. Jaime and Keira walked back to her home.

«Keira, I want to do this every day. I don’t mean just kissing, but talking to you and holding your hand. We can do other stuff, too, but probably not every day. I can live with that.»

«According to my voyeuristic survey of members of our class, I’d say about half have had sex, but something less than a third have had sex in the past three months. We should check that as we surf the school for head talkers tomorrow.»

«We’re both going to do that?»

«When I suggested it, you jumped right in with a full intent to participate, » she said.

«There’s a downside of having our thoughts so easily read by each other. We know when one of us is bullshitting.»

«And don’t you forget it!» Keira laughed. They paused at her front door and gently kissed. «Seriously, though, we need to allow each other privacy when we want it. I don’t want you to think you’re just an open book and we don’t have to actually converse about anything.»

«You’re right. I love you and I want to share my life with you, but sometimes random thoughts are embarrassing and I don’t want them automatically broadcast to you.»

«I agree. I’ll see you in the morning, Jaime. Let’s see if our investigation reveals anything.»

Trayce

“Trayce, this is really good,” Ms. Dorn said on Monday in a school across town. “I’m honestly impressed. The sensitivity and understanding you wrote into this mother and daughter relationship was heartfelt. And the tragedy so sad. You see? You didn’t need to camp in someone else’s yard at all.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Trayce was pleased with the praise and thought her story was, in fact, good. But it had really hurt to write it. The story of the little girl losing her father was too near to Trayce’s experience. The mother was written as she wished her mother had been. The mother in the story was heartbroken, but her first concern was her little girl and how to make the transition easier for her.

Trayce’s mother had held it together for only as long as it took to bury her husband. Even the night after the funeral, Trayce had seen her staring vacantly at the TV with a drink in her hand. She wondered if her mother had always had a drinking problem kept in check by her father, or if the blow had been so crippling to her that she could just no longer function.

Trayce saw a counselor, but the counselor had seemed bored by the story of losing her father. The counselor felt Trayce was a teenager now and should be able to deal with tragedy. When Trayce quit seeing the counselor, her mother quit going to counseling as well. Trayce lost herself in writing again. Her mother lost herself in booze.

Trayce had two ideas for new stories. The first featured an old man who fancied himself a detective. His imagination was filled with dangerous adventures while his reality was focused on a couple of strippers who played along with him. He used a cane and imagined it was a sword. In his world he could simply stab a villain, even if the villain was shooting at him. She’d begun making notes about what kind of mystery she might create for him to solve.

The old man was almost a comic character with a number of butt jokes and fart jokes, but he was also a sweet and sympathetic man who had a hard life and had no one else in it but the people he met in the clubs. She wanted to write him with the same empathy and sensitivity she had used for the little girl, but wasn’t sure how to proceed.

Into this, another scene had inserted itself. It had begun to filter into her consciousness over the weekend when an imagined kiss had moved her so much, she’d involuntarily whispered ‘Wow!’ The premise for the story was a pretty simple high school romance. Except it was really sexy. So far, all she’d managed to jot down were notes about how good holding hands and kissing felt. She’d been so caught up in the fantasy that she’d laid in bed playing with herself for over an hour Saturday night. She could just feel their lips as they pressed together, the instant tingling of her privates as their tongues touched and the thrill when he caressed her breast.

I need a boyfriend, Trayce thought. That would surely cure her of the romance of having a boy touch her. She’d be fighting him off all the time.

She’d dated a few times. The boys were disgusting things who just wanted sex. At least that was her take on them. They wanted a payback for every nice thing they did. They all had a goal, it seemed, and her legs were the goalposts. They just needed to get their balls between them and score.

Maybe she was gay. She liked girls, but had a hard time imagining putting her face... there. Now that she was eighteen, she thought she’d just walk into Lovers Package and buy a couple of toys. She’d glanced in the window once or twice and it didn’t seem like there were many men around. The clerks were women. Maybe they could give her some advice.

In the meantime, she supposed she’d try to work on the old man story. She needed to imagine what it felt like to be old. How old was he? Forty? No, she thought he was really old, like maybe sixty. If he was only sixty, though, wouldn’t he have a job? Maybe he was ancient—like seventy-five. Did men that old still go to strip clubs? She didn’t think men that old even cared about women or sex. Why would he be at a club like that?

Trayce puzzled over her problem all day.

Jaime and Keira

Keira and Jaime met before school to put a strategy in place for surveying how many people might have the ‘gift’ of hearing other’s thoughts, and how many people regularly had sex.

«So, like we did in the park, we just sort of skim the people we meet to see if they are aware of other people’s thoughts, » Keira said.

«Do you think we should try to communicate with anyone?»

«Only if you suspect they are actively receiving. And do it some really subtle way.»

«Like just make a suggestion that they look up?» Jaime asked.

«That might work. I have to work out the probabilities in my statistics class. We’d better get to lit and start checking.»

They headed to their first period class and attempted to survey the people in it, but the class was interesting and engaging. No one was actively broadcasting or apparently listening mentally.

They split up, promising to meet up again at noon.

Jaime thought he had a hit in his Design Technology class when he spotted a classmate looking up when he suggested it. In reading the kid’s thoughts, though, it turned out that he was a little OCD and there was a ceiling tile that was slightly crooked. It drove the kid crazy and he couldn’t take his eyes off the misplaced tile when he was in that classroom. He was not absorbing a lot from the instructor, but he did have an interesting project plan he was drawing up for the class.