Chapter 9: Training and Sharing

I started my Monday with a run. The weekend had been amazing; there had been some ups and downs, sure, but overall, it had gone really well. Jules was euphoric, Amanda and Mary were happy, and Josh and Louise would be back from her parents’ later today.

For some reason I had got out of bed even earlier than usual, waking up just after four-thirty. I was wide awake and felt energized. I decided that rather than just waste the time, I could go for a run, get an hour’s worth of martial arts training in, and still be at the gym by six-thirty to meet James.

Intending to shower at the gym, I packed a change of clothes in my backpack and set out.

I was feeling particularly upbeat, so I put my earbuds in and started my playlist off with ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky.”

I checked my shield as I ran. Ever since my first session, when James had told me I needed to keep it always raised - even when sleeping - I had endeavored to do just that. Maintaining it when I was awake was not a problem. It had the added advantage of blocking out all the extraneous noise I had been exposed to as my Telepathy had developed. Keeping it up when I was asleep was more difficult, and I’d failed miserably the first couple of times I’d tried.

I’d decided, then, that that was as good a time as any to perform an experiment I’d been hesitant to try: Compelling myself. I’d still shied away from the most direct approach, but ultimately, ordering one’s mental starship crew to keep the shields raised until eight in the morning is just ordering one’s self. That’s what I’d imagined happening, and, to my delight, my shield had stayed up until exactly then.

I got a little jolt when it dropped automatically at the predetermined time: an unexpected rush of mental noise. A small amendment to the order, though, and I was secure behind the best mental shield I could build. Best of all, the only cost seemed to be that I was eating more. I guess the energy had to come from somewhere.

I still hadn’t figured out how to cloak while the bonds with the twins were active. I was also a little concerned about them generally. As James had said, they were a vulnerability. Even without being attacked directly, I could be incapacitated if someone got to one or both girls and somehow neutralized the bond. I needed to figure out a way of not becoming completely useless if that happened. If it did, that would mean the girls were in trouble. I’d need to be able to save them.

I ran through the park, and, after I had covered around five or six miles, I ended up on a playing field just outside the university grounds. I dropped the backpack onto the ground and began to center myself and practice the forms I had been working on.

Half an hour later, I ‘smelled’ James’ approach. He was not trying to be stealthy, so I didn’t stop the kata I was in the middle of. When I finished, I turned toward him, and out of a reflex I didn’t even know I had, I bowed.

“Nice,” he said. “You are coming along nicely. How much time are you practicing a day?”

“I average about two hours a day,” I returned.

“Show me,” he said, adopting his own fighting stance.

We circled each other. I knew from the start that I had nothing that would worry him, so I concentrated on keeping my form good and executing each move precisely.

He feinted a blow, but I easily read his intent, ignored the feint, and blocked the follow-up.

I copied his feint, and likewise, he ignored it, but it was a double bluff. I followed through with the original move, forcing him to backpedal a little and block. Then I saw an opportunity to use my wrestling skills; I grappled him, taking him to the floor and trying to apply an arm bar. He wriggled free and rolled away, regaining his feet and immediately attacked me while I was still down. I was in no position to defend myself, so I used my Telekinesis to push him away.

He grinned at me. “Excellent use of combined skills and abilities,” he praised. “Your martial arts training is coming on well; I will give you more memories at the end of today’s session. Remind me.” He chuckled at his own joke. “Adding in your wrestling experience was a good play. It’s something you are familiar with, and had you locked in that arm bar I would have been in trouble. The fact that you didn’t would have been a problem if you hadn’t thought to use your power to give yourself space to recover.

“I am not concerned about your ability to fight, so I think we need to concentrate on other things from here on. I’m not abandoning the martial arts training, but if you maintain the regimen you have been following, I don’t need to be as involved.

“Actually,” he reconsidered, “let me give you those memories now. Drop your shield for me.”

I complied and soon felt more martial arts information being poured into my mind. With that out of the way, he indicated that I should follow him, and we jogged briskly the half mile or so to the gym.

Once inside, we sat on a bench at the side of the room. “I am sure you have been thinking about things since we met last,” he said. “Is there anything you want to talk about before we start?”

“I need to do something with the bond,” I replied, “so I’m not incapacitated if it is disrupted. No matter how good my defenses are, if someone gets to the girls or somehow finds a way to block the bond from outside my shield, I’m fucked.

“Also,” I continued, “I need to figure out how to use the cloak and not disrupt the bond. I was also thinking about how to use the cloak more like a disguise. Apparently, the cloak makes it look like I’m not there. Having a physical presence, but no mental one would be a red flag to anyone who can sense it.”

He nodded. “All good points. Did you figure out something to use to detect illusion?”

I nodded.

“What did you decide on?” he asked.

I grinned at him. “If I tell you that,” I said, “I’m going to have to start all over again.”

“Good man,” he laughed. “Tell nobody - not me, not Dianna, not even your three girlfriends. Only you need to know.”

We started the session. First, he showed me how I could compartmentalize my mind so that no matter what I was going through emotionally, I would still be able to function. It was initially unpleasant, as it effectively switched off my emotional drive completely. It was dissociative; I could still recognize the emotion and understand its significance, but it didn’t affect me directly.

“Use that with care,” he said, “and only in dire need. It is possible to overuse it and lock it into place. If that happens, you effectively become a psychopath, with no emotional drive. I’m sure you recognize how dangerous that could be given your power. Also, you need to remember that if the bond is disrupted, you may have locked off the emotion, but your girls will still be suffering the full pain of the disruption, so make sure you resolve the issue swiftly.

“Now,” he continued, “about your cloak. I did some research, and I found something that might answer two of your questions - specifically, I watched Star Trek VI, where the cloak has been improved to the level where they can not only fire their weapons through it, but it can also mimic its surroundings and appear to be the same as normal space.

“Since your abilities seem largely driven by your imagination, perhaps you can imagine a scenario where the phasing of the energy making up your cloak allows the specific frequency of energy that forms the bond to pass through unimpeded, and also picks up the background signals you are receiving from those around you and uses them to create an image to project instead of just a blank space.”

I nodded but decided it was something that I needed to practice at home. I needed to have the girls in sight in case something went wrong and I accidentally blocked the bond.

“I said that I would show you how to exit an illusion once you determine that you are in one,” he continued. “I am going to create an illusion, and pull you in. Once you recognize that it is an illusion, I want you to tell me. That will let me know how good your detection is. Then I will show you how to get out.”

I nodded.

“Ready?” he asked.

I nodded, but nothing happened. I wondered when he was going to start but then thought about how much of a sneaky bastard he was. I surreptitiously checked my ‘tell’ and found that we were in fact within an illusion.

“Ok, so when did it start?” I asked him.

He looked at me, grinning. “Did you ever see those movies where they depicted the film getting jammed in the projector and catching fire?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Just imagine that whatever is in front of you suddenly freezes, and then melts, like in that scene. That should be enough to disrupt the illusion and force you back into reality. Always double-check your tell once you are out.”

I looked at him, imagining that his visage had frozen. Suddenly I saw it, just as he had described. The film strip, even with the perforated edges, froze and then melted from the middle out. I was standing in the middle of the park where we had been fighting.

I checked my tell again, very careful not to let him see what I was doing. It seemed I was out of the illusion.

“Excellent!” he said. “But you forgot to check your tell.”

“Did I?” I asked innocently.

He laughed. “Not a visual tell then. I was watching your eyes. A physical one. That’s even better. But remember if whoever has you in an illusion also has you physically, which they probably will, they will have access to your body and everything you have on you. They may well strip you naked, and remove jewelry like your signet ring, necklace, and anything you have in your pockets. Once they figure out how you are using whatever it is, they can include it in your illusion.”

“I take it that that is why you had me drop my shield,” I said. “The martial arts memories were just a ruse?”

He grinned again. “Yes and no. I was going to give you those memories, but I wanted to pull you into an illusion without you knowing. I can’t do that when you are shielded.”

Once again, I checked my tell and then raised my shield.

“If that’s the case,” I asked, “why worry about illusion? If it can’t be imposed through my shield, then shouldn’t I be immune?”

“If you keep your shield up permanently, then probably,” he replied, “but you still have to consider that as powerful as you are, there may well be someone more powerful than you that could overwhelm your shield. There are also drugs that can temporarily dampen your abilities. If, for instance, I were to slip that into a drink or food, then you might find your psychic abilities become unavailable to you for a while.”

“Then how could I leave an illusion with no psychic abilities?” I asked. “And what would be the point anyway? Surely if I have no abilities, then I could be compelled to do anything they wanted me to do in any case.”

“No,” he said, “if your psychic abilities are blocked, then no psychic abilities can be used on you either. The drugs effectively prevent connections being made to your mind, in either direction. There are physical side effects, though, which is why norms working in the agency don’t routinely take them.”

“I don’t understand the purpose of illusion, then,” I said. “If they have to break down my shields to both Compel me and to use illusion, and they can Compel me to do, say, or reveal anything in any case, what is the use case for illusion? Why would they even bother?”

“Good question,” he replied. “Yes, they can Compel you to do or reveal anything with Compulsion, but a trained operative can often spot someone who is being Compelled, even subtly. One use case for illusion is, naturally, to trick a person. It’s a way to make them act how you want them to act because they’ve been fed bad information.

“Other use cases are more ... dire,” he continued. “I might even call them perverse, which is quite the word when we’re also discussing people using mind control to commit rape. If somebody buys into an illusion, they’ll stay there potentially forever. The longer they stay, the more their own mind will take over and do the work. It’s a great way to take somebody off the board for a very long time, or, once again, to brainwash them in a way that doesn’t ‘smell wrong’ to another powered person. Does that make sense?”

“I think so,” I said thoughtfully. “Now I guess I just have to deal with possibility that I’ve been in an illusion for weeks or months, and will never know.”

“Yeah, that is the thing, isn’t it?” he said ruefully. “I’m not going to tell you not to push occasionally and see if you can find some cracks, but, well ... be careful. You’re rolling some heavy dice if you dedicate your life to that instead of to anything else.”

He indicated that I should follow him, and we jogged briskly the half mile or so to the gym, again, except actually for the first time. I checked my tell; still not illusion, unless everything else had been too.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s see your Compulsion.”

We trained for about an hour; the lesson of the day was subtlety. He told me that most untrained people with the Compulsion power just overwhelm their victims psyche and force them to do what they want them to do. It’s brutal, traumatic, and easily detectable to those who also have power. Even those who have been trained, but are unskilled, use that approach. He didn’t hesitate to share his opinion that it was lazy, disrespectful to the power, and even disrespectful to the victim.

He explained that you could use Compulsion in a targeted and subtle way, not to force, but to encourage people to do what you wanted them to do. It was about nudging their motivations rather than their actions – a simple domino effect. If you found the right motivation at the right time, you could trick the subject into thinking they’d been acting completely of their own volition. Not only that, but it was much harder to detect from the outside. The threads of control are so fine that they are easily missed.

“Couldn’t I just imagine the subject believing that they were acting completely free of all influence?” I asked.

“You could, but that would still be full-on Compulsion, and therefore highly visible to an external observer with power. It’s not necessarily just about the victim’s perception. You can also get a cascade effect - sort of like a doctor giving a drug, and then giving another drug to minimise the side effects of the first, but then having to give a third drug to minimise the side effects of the second and so on. If you stack Compulsions like that, it can get out of hand.

“Let me demonstrate the difference between full on compulsion and a more subtle approach,” he said.

I dropped my shields again, and he tried to compel me to do something, I wasn’t sure what, because I felt the Compulsion on my mind like a lead weight. I forced it off, pushing him out of my mind, feeling pleased with myself.

It was only then I realised that I was scratching furiously at my balls, trying to rid myself of an incredible itch that just wouldn’t go away. I examined my mind and saw the tiniest of threads connecting us. I severed it with a scowl and the itch stopped.

My shield went back up.

Just then, all three of the girls showed up.

“Are you coming for breakfast?” Mary asked. “If so, you need to shower now.”

I looked at James and he nodded, grinning at me, pleased with himself. I experimented, reaching out delicately to his mind, and sent a tiny thought, giving him the worst ring itch imaginable. He squirmed, not wanting to scratch his ass in front of the girls. I grinned back at him.

“Same time on Wednesday?” I asked.

I saw him concentrate for a second and felt the connection snap. “You will pay for that,” he said, but then grinned again. “Nicely done though. See you Wednesday.”

He departed, and I headed for the showers.

On Wednesday, we talked about shields, and how to get through them.

“Most people imagine their shields as a wall, brick, stone, marble, steel,” he said. “Things that they think are impenetrable. You can usually find cracks or flaws that you can worm your way through. If you are subtle enough, and gentle enough, you can do so without them even knowing their shields have been breached. That is the gold standard.

“You, however, have gone high-tech: energy shields. But the principle is the same.”

“Does that mean that in order to breach a shield, you have to know how the target visualises it?” I asked.

“Yes and no,” he said. “The shield will be visible to you on approach, so yes, you do have to, but no, it’s not something you need to go out of your way to discover. Look at my shield.”

I reached my mind out to his, and immediately was faced by an endlessly tall wall of ice.

“Game of Thrones?” I said, “Really?”

“I picked it for today’s exercise,” he replied dryly.

I Examined his shield looking for gaps, I looked up, there was nothing, the ice went on gently curving to a horizon some distance away. Looking down gave me the same view. Left and right glances confirmed my thoughts. I was looking at a huge ice sphere.

I tried shifting my perspective but although I moved, my view didn’t change. I tried going closer and closer, magnifying the sphere looking for cracks or crevices I might worm through, but this was ice. It was smoother than glass.

I tried pulling back, seeing the sphere as a whole, looking for anything I might use to gain access.

I slowly worked my way around, not physically moving, but mentally circling his shield searching for any route through.

“Well?” he said, “any thoughts on how you might get through?”

“It seems very strong,” I said, temporizing, but at the same time catching sight of a small ripple in the ice that I wanted to investigate further.

“And it completely encloses your mind,” I added, moving closer to get a better look. There seemed to be a tiny section where there was an overlap, where the ice didn’t appear to seal perfectly. I moved closer to that point.

“I think I might have an idea,” I said, burrowing through the tiny hole left where the imperfection had left his shield vulnerable.

The ring itch was back.

“You FUCKER!” he exclaimed, squirming. He severed the connection.

“Do I need to worry about you?” he asked. “You seem awfully interested in my ass.” He obviously hadn’t learned about my sexuality.

“Well, it is pretty cute,” I said, winking at him.

“But you have three girlfriends,” he said, clearly confused.

“Four, apparently,” I said, “and one boyfriend so far, although he is with one of the girls, so I’m not sure how they count.”

He looked stunned.

I backpedalled. “Look,” I said, “my giving you ring itch was purely a revenge for the itchy balls. You opened that particular can of worms. If you’ve got a problem with my personal life, let’s call it here and I’ll talk to Dianna about finding a replacement.”

He shook his head. “What’s good for goosed, right, Caleb? I started it, just like you said. I’ll try to keep the locker room cracks to a minimum from now on. As long as you never do anything to hurt my ‘nieces,’ it’s all good. If you do, then I won’t care if you’re the straightest arrow in the quiver.

“For the record, though,” he finished with a chuckle, “the itch is fine as a motivational technique, but no scratching it for me, okay? I’ll go find myself a classic pinup nurse for that.”

I smiled at him. Inwardly, I was a little relieved. You really never knew when you were going to run into one of those people. James and I hadn’t been working together for very long, but I would’ve been very disappointed if he had turned out to be a bigot. Honestly, I would’ve felt betrayed.

“So back to the topic,” he said. “How did you breach my shield?”

“I found a hole,” I said simply, and then grinned at the unintended double-entendre “and used that.”

“I guess I could have gone at your shield with heat, or force, but since we were working on subtlety, I thought I’d give that a go.”

James frowned. “Damn, I spent ages constructing that. I guess I missed something. Anyway, you see that there are two main ways to breach a shield. You can brute force your way in, sledgehammer, explosives, etcetera, but that will mean your target will know you are there. And if you fail, you may be in for a battle. The other way relies on the fact that people are generally lazy and linear in their thinking. Unless they take time and pay particular attention to detail when creating their shields, there are usually flaws you can find and exploit. For instance, most people think in two dimensions; they will build a wall around themselves but forget to look up or down. You will be amazed at how many people simply build a brick wall that you can just step around. If your target is OCD in building their shields, brute force may be your only option.

“I took time, and paid attention building my ice sphere, but you still managed to find a weakness in it. Some people may take a lot more care than I did. Anyway, check your shield, and then I will see how long it takes me to get through.”

I considered the new information for a moment and re-imagined my shield. I started by imagining a ball of energy in the palm of my hand. I expanded it so it covered my entire body, not just my mind. I then set it spinning, first in the x axis, then in the y axis, and finally in the z axis. I hoped that by doing that, I would make my shield exceptionally difficult to examine carefully.

Going by what James had said, that just left brute force. It seemed to me, then, that once shields were a given, they were more about detection and delay than actual defence.

“Ready?” he asked when I looked at him.

I nodded.

I waited, and waited, and waited some more.

“FUCK!” he shouted. “I can’t get through. You’re not the first to choose shielding like that, but I couldn’t find any flaws to exploit.”

I smiled to myself. Because the shield was featureless, he couldn’t even tell it was spinning, so even if there were flaws, they would probably be almost impossible to see. I guessed that if the flaw was big enough it might be detectable, but tiny ones would be invisible.

“How about now?” I asked, adding my cloak. I had figured out how to visualise the bond phase-shifting with my cloak, so that it would always be present, even though my mind was totally cloaked.

“Now I can’t even fucking see you,” he said grumpily. He seemed to be getting frustrated with me.

I added in the background cover.

“I see you now,” he said, “but it’s like it’s not you. Just a load of random thoughts. I can’t fix on anything. If you can keep that up twenty-four-seven, then I have nothing to teach you regarding defence. I guess we are going to be concentrating on refining your control of your other abilities.”

“I don’t understand,” I said thoughtfully, trying to collect my thoughts into a coherent question. “Why does it have to be so complicated? Why can’t I just imagine an impenetrable barrier and leave it at that?”

“What are you, five?” he asked with a grin, but then said, “You need something at least plausible to hang your imagery on. As an adult, you know that there is no such thing. Your mind will reject the impossible. You must at least be able to rationalise that such a barrier could exist, and only someone with an exceptionally simple intellect, such as a child, or someone mentally challenged or insane, would be able to do that. That is another reason why uncontrolled children with power are so dangerous. Their imaginations are not tempered by learning and experience, and they CAN rationalise such things. Fortunately, they often don’t recognise the need to shield their minds and rarely do, so we can sneak up on them, so to speak, and stop them from hurting themselves or anyone else.

“Don’t forget there is always the option of brute force,” he reemphasized. “No matter how strong someone’s conviction in their imagery is, it is limited by the actual amount of power they have. If you are stronger, you will be able to take them down. If they are stronger, or even the same strength, then they can always just push. You should remember that, too, since you’re so strong. In an emergency, reject the game. Feel the forces instead. Just push as hard as you can. Crush, smash, all that.”

“Do I have to turn green and ruin my shirt?” I asked cheekily.

“Dealer’s choice,” he replied with a grin. “Don’t use the catch phrase, though, or you’ll get sued for sure.

“One last thing,” he said. “In my experience, most untrained psychics - what I call ‘wild’ psychics, ones who discover their power on their own - don’t even bother to shield. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that others may have a similar power. That’s not a guarantee, but an observation from my own experience. If you come across someone with a shield, the likelihood is that they have been trained, so approach with care.”

I nodded.

He looked at his watch. “We still have some time left,” he said. “Let’s talk about Telepathy.”

When I got home, Dianna was sat outside in her car. The twins and Jules would be home in the next hour or so; they had decided to go do some shopping after uni. Josh and Louise would be home any time.

“Why are you sat out here?” I asked. “You know the combination of the key safe.”

“I didn’t want to presume,” she said.

“No presumption,” I said. “If we are not here, just go in and make yourself at home. Josh and Louise have the second bedroom, and Jules the last one, so I’d ask you to respect their privacy...”

“I thought Jules was in with you guys?” she said.

“She is,” I answered, “but I thought she might want her privacy from time to time. But I do need to talk to you about Jules.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s why I’m here. Mary told me what happened, and also what you wanted to do. I’m glad you saw sense and waited to speak to me first.”

“Would it have hurt her?” I asked worried.

“Possibly,” she said, “but more to the point, you needed to let her know all the ramifications of what you were about to do. Since I doubt you know them all, I thought I should come talk to you all.”

“That might be difficult. Josh and Louise are here, and they don’t know about us.”

“You need to tell them, Caleb,” she said.

“But I thought...”

“They are your lovers, yes?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” I said.

“Not just casual sex partners,” she clarified. “Lovers. There are feelings there - both ways?”

I nodded.

“Then they need to know,” she said, “and the reason I am going to tell them and not you, is so that I can assure them that you didn’t use your powers to make them love you.”

My jaw dropped. “You think they might think...”

“It’s possible,” she said. “Josh in particular must be wondering why he suddenly is in love with a guy, when he has been straight all his life.”

“But you said I didn’t...” I began.

“I know you didn’t,” she assured me, “but they might not believe it coming from you. They are far more likely to believe it coming from me, someone who works the FBI. I also want to talk to you about the summer holidays, and your plans.”

I heard a car pull up and looked around. Josh and Louise had arrived home. We all went inside.

“Josh, Louise,” I said, “I’m sure you remember Dianna, Amanda and Mary’s grandmother - and before you say it, yes, she really is their grandmother, and I know she doesn’t even look old enough to be their mother. Her ego is big enough already, so don’t feed it.”

I got an elbow in my ribs for that, but Dianna chuckled all the same.

“Happy to meet you properly,” she said.

Louise smiled at her, but Josh just gaped. I heard ’MILF’ run through his head and I snorted.

“That would be ‘GILF’,” Dianna said helpfully, and he flushed scarlet.

Dianna couldn’t have heard him, but she could read auras so well she may as well have been Telepathic. Louise laughed. We went into the kitchen, and I made coffee.

“I needed to talk to you both,” Dianna said to Josh and Louise, “because now that you guys and Caleb and the girls are lovers...”

Josh spat his coffee onto the counter and looked at me accusingly.

“Relax, Josh,” Dianna said, and I felt her power flex a little, soothing him. “It was necessary for me to know, and when I explain, you will understand why. Caleb has a tale to tell you both, and I want you to listen carefully to him. But before he does, I want to assure you that what you feel for him, and for the girls, is completely genuine, and comes from within you. When you hear his story, you will understand why I’m telling you that. Okay?”

They both nodded. I could see the confusion on their faces. They had questions, but decided to keep them until I had told my tale.

I started with the morning of my birthday. I explained everything: Josh’s dream, all the experiments I did, the visit home, the party, Harold, hearing Julia’s music, everything.

There was stunned silence.

As I came to the part about Dianna being FBI, she pulled out her credentials and placed them open on the table.