Chapter 2: Symbolic Relations

January 15th - January 22nd, 1988

Dr. Kinmon, Dr. Higgs’s old friend, had a nice, neat, orderly office with several green plants growing by the two windows. After Higgs and he shook hands and finished the old ritual, “It’s been a long time,” “How’s the wife,” and arguing that their kids were driving them more nuts than the other, Dr. Kinmon waited for us to tell him what our visit was about.

Dr. Higgs started with, “Arron, do you remember when we spent days studying the pictures of the Egyptian hieroglyphics in the library?”

Dr. Kinmon said, “Of course I do. You know I still dabble in them. Why do you ask?”

Dr. Higgs looked at me and nodded, so I pulled out the large colored sketches I had two of my best drawers draw up for me the day before after school and handed the six by eight-inch symbols to the doctor.

“What on Earth?” he said, looking intensely at the first two. “Where did you get these beautiful glyphs?”

“That’s going to take some explaining, Arron. Just don’t worry about where we got them from just yet. Tim, tell him what each one stands for.”

“What? Oh, sorry,” I said, pulling my attention away from the fascinating streams in the doctor’s head. “The first one is ... bend, the second is ... release, the third one I haven’t found a word to describe what it does yet, but I could show you later. Uh, the fourth ... the fourth ... Wait a sec, I just have to try that one again.”

As I concentrated on my right arm, Dr. Kinmon asked, “What are you doing?”

“Oh yeah,” I said after my arm tensed up. “It means go stiff or something like that. It’s like a group symbol, but doesn’t have the regular ... uh ... pointy thing on the left middle side.”

Dr. Kinmon asked Higgs, “Wil, is this some kind of joke?”

“No, Arron. We’re very serious. Look at them. Have you ever seen anything like them before?”

“Well, not in such detail, but yes.”

“What? Where?” I said, scanning his mind frantically.

“First, you tell me where these came from. I take it you drew these?” he asked me.

Learning from his mind about the old parchment which the doctor had managed to obtain for his own collection, I asked, “Where’s the manuscript with the symbols now?”

“What? How did you know (something) (something)...” he said after his mind had instantly recalled the location of the document when I asked.

(I hadn’t commanded him to think of it. It’s just a natural thing the mind does. When someone asks a question, you automatically look up the answer in your mind and then evaluate whether or not to answer the question based on the answer itself.)

I turned around and found the life-size picture of the old document hanging on the wall behind us. I walked up to it get a closer look, and as I finished feeling out the first two lines, I realized the doctor was getting rather angry and was telling Higgs if he didn’t get some straight answers that we would have to leave.

I said, “Dr. Higgs, look at this. I can’t believe it ... Dr. Kinmon, do you have any idea what this says?”

Dr. Kinmon said, “No, and you couldn’t possibly know either. Wil, I’m sorry, but this has gone far enough. I’m much too busy to...”

I gasped and felt the blood run from my face, prompting Dr. Higgs to ask, “What is it?”

Feeling weak in the knees, I said, “I ... I just ... Oh, my God.”

“Tim,” Higgs said gently as he led me to a chair and had me sit down. “What’s the matter? Did you read it and it do something to you?”

“No ... I mean, yes, I read it. Part of it. It can’t hurt anyone just by reading it, but I almost tried to do what it said as I read. I could have killed everyone here.”

“What?” Dr. Kinmon said as Higgs stiffened from my statement. “How? Don’t tell me you believe in this ... witchcraft!”

Putting his hand on my shoulder, Dr. Higgs said, “Tim, you better show him now.”

“Show me what? Your hocus pocus? Wil, this had gone way too far. I really want you ... to...”

When Dr. Kinmon gasped, I said, “Doctor, the symbols you see flying around inside his head are real. They control the mind and some parts of the body, mostly anything using the nervous system. Telepaths can send these symbols to other people’s minds and can change what a person thinks, does, or feels. Every person seems to have different patterns of symbols, and I need someone’s help to understand how they all work. I’m not going to use them to hurt anyone. I just need to be able to protect myself from someone else using them against me.

“Dr. Higgs thought you might be able to arrange setting up a special group of students or teachers that could help me figure them out. I can’t promise much, but I can promise this. I won’t harm anyone, and you probably would never have a chance to see them again without my help.

“I’m going to stop sharing what I see with you now, okay? It’s making me tired,” I said as I closed the link.

When I shut my eyes and held my head, Dr. Higgs asked me, “Are you okay?”

“I will be. I just haven’t done that kind of ... link before. I think I better lay down, though.”

Dr. Higgs asked his friend who hadn’t moved, “Arron, are YOU okay.”

“What? Oh. Just give me a minute, Wil. It’s still sinking in.”

Dr. Higgs sighed after a moment, then walked back over to the picture on the wall.

After studying it, he asked, “Tim, what exactly does this thing do?”

“Well, part of it is something like ... uh, remember when Joey and I were working on that seeking blanket? We made it into a pulse, like a radar pulse, remember?”

“Yes, yes. Go on.”

“Well, it uses that kind of delivery. I never thought about adding commands to the pulse like that. The manuscript describes a pulse used as a telepathic death ray. I’m not sure what all it does, but after you talked about accidentally stopping people’s hearts the other day, I kind of worked out what symbols would do that. Seven lines down. From the fifth symbol on the left to the second on the next line. That’s them. What the others do, I don’t know. I’m sure they just make it more ... deadly.”

Dr. Kinmon asked, “Do you mean, if you had transmitted these symbols, the two of us would have had heart attacks?”

“Not just you. I don’t know how far I could send them. The last time Joey and I measure our range, we could reach about four and a half miles with our pulse. And that was about a year ago.”

Sitting down in his chair, hard, Dr. Kinmon said, “Good lord. That would have killed everyone on campus.”

“Arron, maybe you should get rid of this thing,” Higgs suggested, turning his back on it.

I said, not looking at them, “I wouldn’t bother.”

Dr. Kinmon gasped, “What?”

Higgs asked, “Why?”

“Whoever wrote that was just showing off. No one would bother ever using it. Building up a pulse like that would have taken too much time and energy. There are a lot of simpler ways to kill everyone around you. And like I said, I never thought about using a pulse to carry commands before. There might be other things I could learn from it. Like how to stop it or do the opposite to someone having a real heart attack.”

Dr. Kinmon said to Higgs, “Shit, Wil. He’s talking like it’s an everyday thing.” Then to me, he said, “I’m not sure if it would be safe to help you with this. What if you make a mistake and everyone involved dies? What if someone else takes what we learn and uses it for their own purposes. Perhaps, in this case, the best thing would be to ... live in ignorance?”

Dr. Higgs said, “Arron, I don’t pretend to know what Tim has gone through to reach this point, but I believe that he does need our help in working this out. I can vouch that he would never abuse what he learns. And he made a very good point to me the other day. If he can see them, then so can others. And that scares the shit out of me too.”

I said, sitting up and grinning, “Hey! Principals aren’t supposed to cuss!”

“Hush, Tim,” Higgs said with a small grin of his own. “If you tell anyone, I’ll make sure you get tardies for every one of those classes you’ve skipped.”

“Yikes! That’s something like a year of detentions. Uh, what did you say, Dr. Higgs? Scared the poop out of you?”

Dr. Kinmon insisted, “But how does that justify risking the lives of everyone involved?”

I said, “Dr. Kinmon, there’s no risk of anyone dying because, well, can I just show you what I have in mind? It’s just the Einstein linking, Dr. Higgs. Nothing more.”

Dr. Kinmon prompted Higgs, “Wil?”

“It’s safe, Arron. Tim and a few others have used this without anyone ever getting hurt.”

I said, “Well, no one but me, but all I do is get tired. And the more I do it, the less tired I get.”

Dr. Kinmon sighed, “All right then.”

When I looked at Dr. Higgs with a questioning look, Dr. Higgs said, “Go ahead.”

“Right. Just listen to me count backward and think it as I say it. Ready? Three ... two ... one ... Linked.”

Dr. Higgs got a kick out of finally experiencing the link which he had helped develop. Well, it was actually Joey who came up with the idea, but we would have never made it that far without Dr. Higgs’ help. And since he was so familiar with the concepts, Dr. Higgs picked up how to share his knowledge easily, so I used his mind’s storehouse of knowledge to demonstrate to Dr. Kinmon how the Einstein link worked.

When I found Dr. Kinmon relatively at ease with the process, I said, “Okay, that’s enough for now. I’m pooped,” and closed the links.

I laid down on the freshly vacuumed carpet floor and closed my eyes to rest and didn’t really listen as Dr. Higgs and Dr. Kinmon talked.

“Tim,” Dr. Higgs said, gently shaking me awake. “Dr. Kinmon needs to ask you a few questions, then it will be time to go home.”

“Huh? Oh ... Okay,” I said, realizing I had slept longer than I thought. “Why didn’t you wake me sooner?”

As I got up, Dr. Higgs simply said, “You didn’t look like you wanted to be woken up.”

Plopping down in a chair, I asked, “Oh. What’re the questions, Doc?”

“First of all, I’m not clear on what you wish to accomplish, and what you need from me.”

“Oh. What do I want to accomplish is ... I guess to understand how the symbols work. I mean, I’ve spent weeks studying them, looking for some kind of pattern in other people’s minds. But there are so many streams of them, I can’t sort them out.”

“But what of the symbols you’ve drawn? And you could read the ones from the parchment.”

“The ones I’ve drawn are telepathic command type of symbols. I can learn them easily just by sending them. But the ones in the mind, they’re different, yet the same. It’s hard to explain. They look just like the telepathic ones, and by themselves, I think they work the same. When they’re in a steam together, they act differently.”

“I see ... You’re experiencing a standard problem with uniquely written languages. You wish to understand how and why different groupings of symbols perform different functions than they do separately.”

“Well, kind of, yes. But there is so much more to it. I think all I really need is about twelve people to enter a link with me...”

“TWELVE!” Higgs exclaimed. “Tim, you slept for nearly half an hour after only having two people in the link with you for ten minutes. How do you expect to link to twelve people if you can’t even handle two?”

“I wouldn’t be able to right away. I’d first start with just one person, then add more one at a time when I’m strong enough. I really don’t think it would take that long to get up to twelve, but I’ve never tried having that many people in any link before. I don’t know. I was also thinking we might get someone just to work on making it more efficient.”

“That’s very possible,” Dr. Kinmon said while thinking. “There are two separate projects currently being worked on here which deal with increasing communication throughput without additional transmission lines. There may be aspects of what they are doing that can be adapted to your own unique communication system. I believe Professor Goldstein wouldn’t mind working on something like this.”

Higgs said, “Arron, don’t forget the other things before getting lost in the idea.”

Dr. Kinmon said, “Yes. Let’s get down to more specifics. That is, how much time you want to spend on it a day, where would you do it, what would the university get out of it.”

“Get out of it?” I said. “I don’t know what the university would get out of this. I mean, this isn’t something that can be published or made public, you know?”

“I understand that. In fact, I understand probably even more than you do. However, the school does not have the resources to simply provide you with the means without getting something in return. No, the information you wish to gather will not be suitable for anyone but for yourself and should be kept to yourself at all times. But you have an incredible resource that would be invaluable in helping others’ research.”

“Others’ research?” I echoed, not liking how that sounded.

“Yes. Such as allowing others to use your link to further their own research. If it works, that is.”

“Uh, I don’t think...”

“In exchange for your services, you would have your own research and office space, the option to employ students as research assistants, an allotment of funds for the project, and most likely have your choice of the staff to help you in your research if you help them in theirs.”

I let out a big breath of air, then said, “Okay, I guess that sounds fair. But if the other research takes too much of my time to where I’m not getting my own stuff done...”

“Then we will have to find another arrangement. I understand that. Oh, and before we go any further, Wil mentioned something about you bringing two ... friends with you? May I ask why?”

“You could say just in case I need more memory. I can force myself to remember things, but I can only force so much in a day without hurting myself or risk forgetting other stuff that I need. So I use other people to keep things I don’t need right away, but will still need to remember later. Sort of like a briefcase.

“I can store stuff in other people’s minds without them ever knowing it is there or ever finding it. I’m not sure why, but I can store as much as I want as fast as I want in other people’s long term memory that way, but not in my own. For this sort of thing, I always have to store it in my short term, then wait something like five or six hours before I can really use it. It takes that long for it to get stored in my long term memory. My mom and dad are like that too. I think it has to do with being telepathic.”

“Why not just use people already here?” Higgs asked.

“Because once I store something in someone else’s memory, it stays there. The only thing I can do then is hide it by burying it. After about a year, it gets pretty hard for anyone to find something I stored in their head anyway, so it’s just easier to let it get buried by itself. I’d rather have someone who I can trust and keep an eye on just so I can protect them and myself from others getting a hold of them.”

Dr. Kinmon asked, “Wil, how can you just allow three students to leave on something like this? I wouldn’t think the school board would allow it.”

Dr. Higgs said, “They don’t have much choice if the parents wish to provide their child with a tutor to continue their education while they are away. We haven’t arranged anything yet since the job of monitoring their progress would have to fall on your shoulders, Arron.”

“I was afraid you would say something like that. I’m willing to do it for one, maybe two. But three? I realize I wouldn’t be doing the tutoring, but still...”

“You wouldn’t have to monitor me,” I said carefully. “I mean, I’ll be seventeen in two days, so I don’t even have to go to school. I can just quit, then go back...”

“Absolutely not,” Higgs said. “You are not quitting my school while I’m principal. Knowing you, you’ll find something else to get caught up in and never get your high school degree.”

“And look at what you would miss,” Dr. Kinmon added. “You’re a junior I take it? I always felt my junior year of high school was one of the best years of my life. Don’t throw these years away, son. You never get a second chance if you skip them the first time.”

“But ... I’m not really a teenager anymore, am I,” I said somberly. “I’ve had nine days at being a junior in high school. Half of them I was doing things other than school stuff. And then ... well, like the other day. Someone tried to tell me a dirty joke, and all I could do was stare at them because I thought they were serious. I mean, I’ve seen and done things that...” I sighed and said, “I just don’t fit in there anymore.”

Higgs said, “Trust me, Tim. You still fit in.”

“Maybe from the outside, but ... Things the others talk about, think about, plan to do with themselves all seem so immature, I guess. Or even stupid. Like John’s dying to ask this one girl if she’d go to the sock hop with him, but she always goes with this other guy and he doesn’t want to interfere. I found out yesterday that that guy was her cousin who was just going with her because no one ever asks her. It’s so stupid, it’s funny. I don’t understand why he doesn’t just ask her anyway. It just seems so stupid.”

“That’s because you have more confidence that John does. That isn’t surprising considering what you can do.”

“But that’s just it. They all seem so small. I don’t mean small like I’m above them. Just helpless, I guess. They don’t understand how vulnerable they are. I kept telling people they shouldn’t draw attention to themselves and stuff like that because I’m afraid for them. So many of them could end up someone’s pet. A few of them already have been for a while.”

“You’re still not quitting school,” Higgs said firmly. “You are going to graduate with the rest of your class, and that is final. You know you will be in summer school this summer to make up for your time here, so if you just use some of that memory forcing thing every weekend on yourself, you should be able to stay on track.”

“Hey, wait a minute. I just realized something,” I said, looking at the two men with narrow eyes. “What about the 17 credit hours of college classes I took last semester? Can’t that count for something?”

They looked at each other, then Higgs said, “Perhaps. What classes were they?”

“English Composition, Microeconomics, American History, College Chemistry, and Trig. I only got Bs in them, but I was kind of busy with other stuff, you know?”

“You made Bs? In all those?” Higgs said surprised.

“Well? Can I help it if high school is useless? I mean, in college they start out like you don’t know shit, then as long as you do the homework, you can pass the tests. Can I get credit for them somehow?”

“You know Wil,” Dr. Kinmon said with a smirk. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard it working the other way.”

I asked, “The other way?”

Dr. Higgs explained, “We have classes at our high school that are college level courses, Tim. College Composition, College Chemistry, and Calculus are all good as college credits. I’m not sure how we’ll do it, but yes. I’m sure we can get you credit for the classes you took. If we reinstate your independent study program when you get back, I’m sure we get you all the credits you need. You may have to take a few tests to prove you have the skills, however.”

“That’s cool. So what about Eric and James?” I asked Dr. Kinmon.

“Why two?” he asked with a frown.

“Uh ... Dr. Higgs, Eric would kill me if he knew I told you this. I mean, I’m breaking my promise already, and I really...”

Higgs said sternly, “Spill it, Tim. We have to get going soon, and I’m not going to promise I won’t act on something if I feel I must.”

I told him about James’ situation and explained that I had already checked on his dad and found he just needed some time to adjust. Taking James with me would give them both some space to reconsider their differences and I promised to make sure things either worked out or to hand it over to the authorities. It took some doing, but I managed to get their consent if the parents agreed.

Before we left, Dr. Kinmon explained that while some of the researchers kept a cot in their labs to sleep on, there were no facilities such as showers, laundry, or kitchens available for us to use. In other words, we also had to find a place to stay. I could have lived in the dorms if I was alone, but didn’t see that working if Eric and James were with me.

So on the drive back, I started adding up some of the expenses this endeavor would require. Tutor for Eric and James, clothes for James (his dad had gotten drunk and burned all of James’ clothes that were at his house), housing, food ... I was glad that my dad had co-signed my Gold Master Card with no credit limit. I was seriously thinking about buying my own place down there so I wouldn’t have to worry about landlords and such, and surely they would take a gold card. (Silly me never considered you couldn’t buy real estate with a credit card.)

Even though I was tired, as soon as Higgs and I had finished all the details we could do at school after-hours, I went to Eric’s house to talk to his parents about letting him go.

I was surprised to find that Eric’s mom already knew and understood what I was able to do and had accepted what Suzi, Eric and I had done together the previous summer. Mary Roberts had always known about her husband’s sexual diversity and that was one of the things that had attracted her to him. She also knew before our time at summer camp that her son had also been leaning that way, having recognized the same look in his eyes as she had seen so many times in her husband’s.

As I had hoped they would, Eric and his dad had grown very close, especially when Eric’s friends at his old school made his sexuality a living hell. Eric and “Spanky” never once touched each other sexually, but he and his dad frequently talked about gay life.

I thought it was funny how both his sisters and his parents had each individually seen Eric and James have sex in one way or another, yet Eric believed that they all thought that James was just a friend and wasn’t even bi, let alone gay.

In fact, his younger sister had a crush on James up until she saw James and Eric 69ing. Afterward, she just plain out desired him and had daydreams thinking about what would happen if James noticed her lusty glances at him. She was truly her mother’s daughter, I guess.

So it came as somewhat as a shock to Eric when his dad didn’t want Eric to go simply because he didn’t want Eric and James having sex every time they turned around. But once the shock wore off, Eric ended up letting it slip that James and he had sex every time they turned around anyway, including every night in his bed.

That took a while for Eric to explain, and it just so happened that James rang the doorbell a few minutes after telling them about James’ borrowing his clothes for school. It was at that point where I explained the deal to Eric and James about straightening things out with James’ father once we got back, and then found myself not only having to talk Eric’s parents into it but James as well, especially since what James wanted and what Eric’s parents wanted were not anywhere near the same.

All I got out of either party was, “I’ll think about it,” and when I saw I wasn’t going to get any other kind of answer that night, I explained I would be going back down the next day to look for someplace to live and wanted James to go with me. Alone.

Eric asked, “Why can’t I come?”

“Because then you two would always be trying to start something, and that’s not what we’re going there for,” I said. Then I thought to him, <You need to work on your parents, and this makes it look like I’m following their wishes by keeping you two from having a lot of sex. Trust me, okay?>

Eric nodded, then whispered something into the frowning James’ ear.

When we got in my car, I asked James, “What did Eric say to you?”

James said without thinking, “He said to save him some.”

“Some of wha ... Oh,” I said when James gave me an exasperated look.

James suddenly said about ten minutes later, “You’re kind of weird.”

“I am?”

“You could get any guy you wanted to fuck and suck, but you don’t. You’re weird. If I could do the stuff ... We’re going to the mall? What for?”

“Clothes. For you. And if I promise you won’t feel any pain, how about getting that ear pierced like you’ve been wanting to. Eric nearly lost it when he found out I had my ear pierced.”

After looking at my bare lobes, James asked, “How come you don’t wear an earring then?”

“Because it just doesn’t appeal to me, that’s all. So how about it? I’ll even let you get some sexy underwear from the adults-only store.”

“DEAL!” James said instantly. “I know exactly what Eric would love too. I hope they got cherry flavored.”

“Heh. If they don’t, they’re nuts,” I said before feeling his excitement fade and his unhappy mood return.

“James, what’s eating you? If you don’t want to go, then just say,” I said, putting the car in park and shutting off the engine.

“Huh? No, I wanna go. I just don’t want to come back, that’s all.”

“I swear, James. I’ll make sure things work out for you one way or the other. If nothing else, I’ll make sure you get adopted by someone who won’t reject you being gay. But that isn’t really all that’s bugging you, is it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Come on, James. I know you’re holding something else back.”

“Hey! I thought you said it was rude to read other’s thoughts.”

“I’m not reading your mind. But I can feel you holding something back. Something you’re afraid of. Something ... about me?”

James stared at his shoes with a frown on his face, breathing through his mouth instead of his nose for some reason.

After seven or eight evenly spaced breaths, he took a deep one and said, “Eric’s mine. You can’t have him.”

“Huh?”

He looked up at my surprised face and boldly said, “He’s all I got, and I’m not letting him go, got it? I won’t let you take him from me.”

He was shaking a little from his short yet intense emotional release, but as he waited for my response, he started to get scared too.

So I looked him in the eyes to form an empathic connection and said, “I’m not going to take anyone away from anyone, especially not Eric from you. Eric is more like a little brother than a lover to me. I thought you understood that I’m not interested in having Eric as a boyfriend. Even Eric knows that. Trust me, James. I only want to help you, not hurt you.”

After a pause, James opened the door to get out and asked, “Are we going shopping or not?”

James was a strange kid. After we got into the store, he kept switching between being friendly and being distant with me. He knew what he liked and didn’t like, and could be extremely stubborn about it, but yet he also avoided confrontations of any kind. I noticed his dark mood after I had helped pick out some jeans and it made me realize that while he hadn’t liked the jeans at all, he hadn’t had the guts to say so. So after dragging his real opinion about the jeans out of him, we returned them, then I didn’t even attempt to help him pick anything else out.

He was a pretty happy kid after that, and I guess I started to enjoy his company. I even let him talk me into going to the adult store to look around before getting his ear pierced. He wanted to have something to keep his mind occupied while they did the piercing but conceded that we wouldn’t buy anything until after his ear was pierced.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite customer!” the shop owner exclaimed when we went in. “You had me pretty scared there, bud. Where have you been for the past nine months, huh? I almost had to sell off the place in June after you stopped coming in.”

“Sorry, Georgie-o. I didn’t have any control over it. I’m going to be down at Southeast State for a while, but I’ll be back in a few months. I promise.”

“Well, just make sure you give me a ring if you need anything. I’ll ship it right down to you. So ... Whatcha lookin’ for today. More toys? Or are you finally going to try something out of the B&D section?”

After spending a few minutes chatting with Georgie, I suddenly felt James become very interested in something. As I made my way to the section of the store where I could feel he was, I almost walked into two bikers wearing leather and studs, the larger one toying with a whip.

“Watch it, fucker,” the large man said to me as I apologized and went around. “Come on, bitch. We got some other shoppin’ to do.”

The other one didn’t reply, just turned towards me and allowed the bigger one to lead the way. It was at that moment I realized the smaller and long-haired biker was another guy. I mean, until he turned around and I saw his scruffy three-day-old beard, I had thought it was a girl hanging on him like that, not a guy.

The pair of bikers never seemed to notice my stare as they walked away, and I nearly jumped when James said next to me, “Man, that was the coolest thing I have ever seen.”