Chapter 3: Psychological Transference

I snuck out of the chateau about 2:00 am and set out on foot towards the nearest village. I covered the four miles to the village in little more than an hour. I kept expecting the gendarmes to find me and detain me and I was trying to decide how I would respond. But the gendarmes never came. To avoid detection, I skirted the small village to the west, until I came upon the railroad tracks. Then I simply followed them to the station.

Once there, I found an old canvas mail hamper and turned it upside down, then squeezed under it. I cannot tell you what I was thinking for I truly believe that I wasn’t thinking at all. I was just reacting. I was scared by what had happened and I was scared of what might happen if I stayed. But I had no where to run to, and no one to call. I was alone. And afraid.

It was the sound of the train’s air brakes that woke me. I had no Idea what time it was, but I could hear the tiny station bustling with people. I was trapped. I had no way to board the train. I didn’t have any money, and no way to get any. I had no food or water. And I was afraid of being discovered any minute and carted off to some filthy jail with no understanding of the language and no one to help me.

This was a dangerous emotional spiral and while I knew it, I couldn’t do anything to stop it. And as my thirst increased with my depression, I started imagining I was hearing voices.

American voices.

Speaking English.

My sister’s voices.

Calling to me.

Suddenly, I stood up. I had to see my sisters!

“THERE HE IS!” she screamed. “MOM! He’s here!”

Mischa reached me about thirty seconds before her mom and hugged me tightly as she whispered soothing words in my ear. Carina wrapped her arms around both of us and squeezed. The Gendarme stood silently by for a moment as he watched our reunion. Finally, he said, “If there’s nothing else, Madam,” then he tipped his cap and walked away.

“Daniel? Are you okay?” Carina asked.

“Water...” I rasped through very dry lips.

Carina went to buy water while Mischa helped me to a nearby bench. After downing both of the bottles of water, they helped me to her car, carefully avoiding any questions about why I ran away.

Later that night, Carina sat on the edge of my bed while Roland occupied the room’s only chair on the other side.

“Can you tell us what you were thinking, Daniel?” Roland asked.

I looked at Carina but couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

Roland, vigilant as ever, didn’t need words to figure it out. He could read my eyes.

After a long silence, he asked me, “Do you love her?”

Again, I almost couldn’t speak, but somehow, the words came.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled as Carina looked on in stunned silence. “I’m not really sure what love is.”

“Do you care for her?” he asked. “Deeply. Like your mother? Or your sisters?”

“Roland! Don’t do this!” Carina pleaded with her husband.

“Or is it like a woman?” he continued. “A woman whom you desire to touch and to hold and to kiss?

When he asked that, I looked up at Carina. Her face was passive. Calm. But her eyes held fear.

“What is she afraid of?” I wondered.

“Daniel, for the last three weeks, I have not offered you any opinions. However, I’d like to tell you now, as your psychiatrist, what my professional opinion is. Okay?”

I just nodded my head slightly.

“Getting hit by lightning changed you. It changed your body, and it changed your mind. It probably even changed your soul, the very core of your being. Then you were forced to leave your home and go to a strange land and live with a strange family and try to face all these changes within yourself without the benefit of your normal support group. So, you find yourself, through a series of events, not of your making, facing the unknown with only a single source of comfort. Of security.”

“Roland?” Carina said softly. But the warning was there in her tone.

Ignoring his wife, Roland continued, “I think that you really, deep down inside, know what you have to do, what you must admit to yourself and to others. But you’re scared to do it. You’re afraid that you’ll hurt someone or mess up their life. So, you find yourself rejecting that which would actually be good for you.”

“Roland. Darling? What are you doing?” Carina asked her husband. “Why are you pushing Daniel at me?”

“You reject that which would do you good and you run away. But you discovered that you can’t run away from your problems because they will stalk you and they’ll haunt you until you finally admit how you really feel...

“Ahhhhh!” I screamed. And then kept screaming.

But as strange as it seemed, no energy was coming from me to damage their home.

“Daniel,” she called out, trying to hold me as I thrashed on the bed. “Please, don’t scream any more. Please let me help you!”

Finally, I gave in and grabbed her and pulled her to me. Then holding her tight against me, I let go and embraced that which I knew I might never survive.

I embraced ... all the power within me!

My body began to glow a brilliant white, and I was forced to let Carina go for fear of burning her. She scrambled to her husband and held him tightly as she looked at me in horror.

In that moment, I knew! I knew this power within me and I knew it was mine. And in that moment of knowing, I finally relaxed. All the tension that had been bottled up inside me since that day I had awakened in the hospital in Georgia seemed to flow out of me.

I looked first to Carina, but she was watching her husband. Roland looked at me with wonder in his eyes and so she too, looked at me anew, trying to see what he saw. Then she got it! Her eyes got big in amazement as I continued to burn like a hot white flame. Except I wasn’t burning anything that I was touching. The sheets were still unscathed, the room was intact, even the electronics were untouched.

Somewhere along the way, I began to cool down and fell asleep. Roland and Carina continued to hold hands as they watched me, until finally, Roland pulled the covers over me and they walked hand-in-hand from the room.

(This next part was spoken in French between Carina Roland and later translated for me by her Roland. He claimed it was part of my therapy).

“It’s called Psychological Transference,” Roland said softly. “He knew, deep inside, that he wanted to embrace the seductive energy inside of him but was afraid of what it would do to him and all those around him. So, he transferred that forlorn desire over to you. He knew that to choose you would also have devastatingly negative effects on the people around him. And I think he was counting on you to resist him. To help him to not give in.”

Carina stopped in the hallway and grasped both of her husbands’ hands. Pulling him tight, she looked into his eyes as she spoke.

“In all the years I have known you, I have never actually seen what you really do for your patients. Yet, for the toughest challenge of your career, I had a ringside seat. In fact, I was almost center stage. I have to tell you that I was this close,” she said, holding her finger and thumb only millimeters apart, “to stripping off all my clothes and giving that boy what I thought he so desperately needed. Thank God that you were there to keep me on track! I love you so much. Come, my darling man. I still desire to strip off my clothes and give a man what he really wants.”

Then she pulled him, giggling, down the hall to the master bedroom.

After that evening, the world changed. Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say that I changed. I was glowing when I went down for breakfast, and they all claimed they could see it. Even Phillipe. Roland had to pull his children aside before they left for school and warn them that they could not speak of this to anyone, for they would be endangering the whole family if the wrong people found out.

Then, after breakfast, the experiments began again. This time in earnest. Roland was determined to discover what powers I really had, and what their limits were. We discovered that I could contain my energy simply by willing it so. Then we discovered that I could direct my power, unleashing it at specific objects without harming those around it. We discovered that my range was greater than the length of the longest hallway in his house (about thirty meters). Then we tabled that discovery until we could find a safe outdoor venue.

We discovered that my powers were very much akin to lightning, in its damage, but we had no way to really measure anything specific. We also discovered that the more I worked to control it, the stronger I became. Sort of like working out and causing your muscles to grow.

We also discovered some cons, or problems with my powers. There was no way to totally hide them. If someone was actively looking for me, they would be able to see me, or even sense me with the proper instruments. There was just no way I could turn them off.

However, I could dim them significantly, simply by spreading my power out among other people. So, Roland concluded that I might be safest in a crowd. When I tried spreading my powers on a few people at the chateau, it did not seem to have any adverse effect on anyone, although Roland reported to me a month or so later that there was going to be a population explosion among the staff at the chateau soon. I guess it was a good thing that Mischa and Carina were not there that day.

We finally ended up going to a soccer match to test that one out more completely. Roland, through some of Carina’s medical contacts, had secured a device that could locate significant amounts of human energy similarly to the way thermal imaging could locate signs of body heat within downed buildings. He would go to one side of the stadium and then try and locate me on the other side, using the device. I was fairly successful in staying hidden. I decided to keep an eye on the news to see if they reported a population explosion in the area of the soccer match nine months from now.

We even flew to Morocco to help search for victims of an earthquake amid the rubble. That was not a fun experiment but was mildly satisfying when we discovered a small child still alive in the rubble.

There were two areas that I kept wanting to explore more. One was healing. Ever since I helped Mischa feel better, I felt that there might be other things I could do. And both Carina and Mischa came to me for help the next time they started their periods. But I just never seemed to find the opportunity to explore healing much further.

The other area of interest was the effect of my power on time. I kept wondering if I could use my EMF to touch or warp time. I finally gave that thought up for now. I would need much more education to tackle that one.

“Daniel, I have an idea for another experiment,” Roland told me after breakfast. “I’d like to see if you could actually transfer some of your powers to someone else.”

“What do you have in mind?” I asked.

“Well, we know that using your EMF you can sense other normal EMF’s and even identify some of them. And you can do that at an almost unlimited range.”

We had determined that one night as we lay in the back yard on a blanket and found I could detect the Space Station and all six people on board.

“So, what I was wondering was if you might be able to transfer some of that energy to the people you sense. We can start small. I’ll walk across the room, and you see if you can transfer some of your power to me.”

“No,” I told him. “It’s too dangerous. Maybe we can start with a small animal or such.”

Roland contemplated this for a moment and then agreed. “We will shelve this one until I can come up with an animal,” he said.

“While you’re thinking on it, you might better decide what kind of animal you’d like having this kind of power. Just in case it proves successful,” I told him. I was halfway kidding him but found out later that he had taken that warning to heart and never even looked for an animal.

And that was the way the vast portion of our experiments went. For every success, there were multiple setbacks or failures. Still, Roland’s creativity amazed me as he kept coming up with things we could try. And all the time, whether the experiments worked, or they didn’t, I kept getting stronger and better control.

One day, while Roland was seeing another client, I was lounging on the terrace by myself when I had a thought. I’d like to go home. One thing about my gift, when you put a lot of raw power behind an idea, you get thousands of ideas on how to make it happen.

As I began to organize my thoughts, I realized that I needed money. Sure, Roland and Carina had money. But except for daily living and whatever they chose to spend on me, I had steadfastly refused to ask them for any. So, Roland was mildly surprised when I asked him to borrow €100 Euros. When he asked me what I wanted it for, I told him I wanted to visit the casino in Cannes.”

He hesitated slightly and then unlocked his bottom desk draw and pulled out €1,000 Euros.

“You don’t have to pay this back. We’ll chalk it up to another experiment,” he told me. “When would you like to go?”

I knew I needed to study casino games on the internet, so we scheduled it for a week from today. I don’t know if he told Carina about this experiment, but I never said a word. I was not sure how she felt about gambling.

Finally, the day came, and we made the thirty minute drive down to Cannes. I had my Texas driver’s license and the €1,000 Euros and I had studied the games the casino offered.

I had decided to start with roulette. We stood beside the wheel as I watched the dealer go through his motions. I had determined that I might be able to use my energy to block certain numbers, thereby creating better odds for myself, but I quickly discovered that my control was not good enough to block individual numbers. So, I decided to try blocks of numbers. First it was six numbers, and then half the wheel. When I finally had it down to blocking all but six numbers, I placed my first bet, €10 Euros, the minimum, on the six unblocked numbers. Then I carefully watched the wheel, just like all the other gamblers.

I won €350 Euros on number twenty, but lost my other five bets, so I cleared €300 Euros. I skipped a few turns and then divided the €300 Euros into six fifty Euro bets. I won €1,750 Euros but lost my other bets, so I cleared €1,500 Euros. I immediately bet €200 Euros each on six totally different numbers, and once again, I won. This time, it was €7,000 Euros, less the €1,000 Euros I lost on my other bets. I decided to walk away at that point with my €7,300 Euros.

“I’m ready to leave if you are,” I told Roland. “This is not like I expected it to be.”

He just chuckled and we headed for the car park.

Car Park? I had been in France for almost six months, and I was calling the parking lot, the car park. Geeeze!

It was while we were experimenting with swimming that the next idea formed. Roger had rented us a small fishing boat and loaded on a scuba tank. Then he took us out past one of the many small islands that hug the coast of France, where no one could see what we were doing. There, I fastened on the tank and the weight belts Then the fins and mask and flipped backwards off the boat, just as I had been taught. But I didn’t put the regulator in my mouth. The object of the experiment was to see how long I could hold my breath.

I was only down to about five meters, so I wasn’t too worried about decompressing on my way back up. I just stretched out and studied the sandy bottom. The Mediterranean is interesting in that there is almost no coral growing in it. And while I did see a few fish, there was not much else to grab one’s attention. I almost felt like I was going to doze off a time or two, but finally, I gave a push with my fins and returned to the surface.

“Holy Smokes! You were down there for over an hour. How do you feel?”

“Bored, mostly,” I told him as we headed back to shore.

It was a week later, and Roland had hired a fishing boat with a skipper. We explained what we wanted, and the skipper agreed to take us. For a fairly hefty sum. But the captain knew his stuff and parked us on top of a wreck in over 100 meters of water.

“You’re gonna need bigger diving rigs if you’re going down to 100 meters,” he told Roland in French. But Roland explained that we were only going down about twenty meters or so to take some pictures. And that’s what we did. At least that’s what Roland did. When Roland stopped, I continued on until I reached 100 meters. I swam around the wreck a time or two, broke off a piece of barnacle and begin swimming for the surface.

When I reached Roland, I was none the worse for my experience in the depths, so I simply waited as Roland did his compression stops. Just as we neared the surface, I inserted my regulator in my mouth.

We were both quiet all the way back to the old pier in Cannes, unwilling to discuss the experiment for fear of being overheard. But when we finally bid the captain goodbye and began the drive back to the chateau, we were giggling like schoolboys at recess. This experiment opened up a whole realm of possibilities. But I still couldn’t figure out how to make any money at it.

Seven months went by. It was an early November morning. The skies were overcast with brisk winds and temperatures in the low teens, Celsius (or mid-50’s, Fahrenheit). We were in Roland’s office, discussing several experiments that we were attempting to run concurrently, when I brought up my idea for Thanksgiving.