Chapter 19: More discovery

As expected, I was discharged from the hospital in the middle of the next morning. The nurses were very pleased with the amount of breakfast I had eaten, although it did not escape my notice that they stayed in the room to monitor that I was actually eating it and didn’t go throw up afterward.

Amanda walked beside me as the orderly pushed me in a wheelchair to the exit. I hadn’t even bothered protesting. I knew it was hospital policy, and I also knew I wasn’t going to be stuck in the chair for any extended period of time. I supposed I could understand why some people would react badly, but I just didn’t feel that way.

As we left the hospital, I saw several people, including patients, standing outside smoking. I hated that they did that, and for a second I was tempted to Compel them all to give up. That gave me an idea.

I needed to train my Compulsion, and apparently, the FBI was fine with powers being used on consenting subjects; I was just about to go literally read the minds of a bunch of students who thought the whole thing was a joke but had nevertheless signed the appropriate paperwork. It occurred to me that I could use the exact same framework to establish myself as a hypnotherapist, with a focus on smoking cessation and weight loss. The anti-smoking bit, especially, seemed as safe as could be. I determined to ask Dianna about it.

We stopped for lunch on the way home, and my wardens apparently decided that my new, healthier diet could wait a little longer. I took full advantage. We arrived back home just in time for me to get a shower before heading out again to the FBI office.

When I arrived there, once again I went through the metal detector and approached the front desk.

“Mr. Stott?” said the pretty young girl behind the desk. I nodded.

“Go straight up,” she said, “ADD Forbes is expecting you. You know your way?”

I nodded again.

“You need to have your ID on display all the while you are in the building,” she said. “Do you have it with you, or do you need a pass?”

I pulled out my ID and showed her.

“Fold the wallet back on itself, and loop it over your belt,” she said. “That’s what everyone else does.”

I took a surreptitious glance around and saw that, indeed, everyone had their IDs on their belts. I hadn’t been sure if she had been pranking me.

“My,” she commented, “you are a suspicious one.”

“Let’s just say that life has taught me that a healthy distrust is a good basis for working together,” I replied.

She smiled. “Lenin?” she asked.

“Stalin, I think,” I replied.

“Smart, too,” she mused, only half to herself.

“I’d best get moving,” I said. “Nice to meet you...”

“Rosie,” she said.

“I’m Caleb,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

I made my way to the elevators and pushed the button for the top floor. As the door was closing, a hand clamped onto its edge, and it retracted. David Spencer slid in.

“Caleb,” he said. “I wanted a quick word.”

“I’m just on my way up to see Maggie,” I said.

“This will do,” he said, punching the button for the floor below Maggie’s. “I just wanted you to know that when we were talking, and I mentioned the sniper and the fifty-cal’, there wasn’t any hidden meaning. I wasn’t trying to threaten you in any way. It was just conversation.”

“Dianna did mention that,” I said. “Thanks for telling me personally though.”

He smiled. “I, for one, am very happy you’re back on the team.” He stuck his hand out and I shook it. The elevator arrived at his floor, and he got out.

Twenty seconds later I was stepping out onto the floor above, heading for the ADD’s office.

There was a man sitting at a desk outside her office, apparently her PA or secretary or something like that. He looked me up and down like I had crawled out from under something.

“Do you not own a suit?” he asked after I identified myself. I was dressed in my usual jeans and T-shirt.

“I do,” I said, “but I wasn’t informed of a dress code. I’ll know better next time.”

“Sit down over there,” he directed. “ADD Forbes has someone with her just now. I’ll let her know you are here.”

He picked up his telephone and pressed a button. I heard the phone ring in the office.

“There’s a Caleb Stott here to see you,” he said. “Yes, Ma’am.” He put the phone down and stood, addressing me again. “Follow me.”

I stood and followed him ten feet to her door. He knocked and then opened it. He drew back and indicated for me to enter. I thanked him, but he just sniffed.

Maggie stood as I entered and smiled. “Caleb,” she said. “I’d like to introduce you to The Maharishi Guptal-Pah.”

I turned to look at the elderly-looking gentleman sitting in one of the chairs around the small table. Even sat down I could see he wasn’t particularly tall, maybe about five-seven, and was skinny, with long, grey hair, and a long, grey beard that somehow looked false. His eyes were blue, and they bored into me with ageless wisdom. He wore a flowing white robe, and there was a carved white cane, which looked like it might be ivory, leaning against his chair. He wore an elaborate headdress that looked like a cross between a turban and something a Vegas showgirl would wear.

Everything about the man screamed ‘imposter’ to me.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” I said to him, looked at Maggie, and then back to him.

He regarded me imperiously for a moment, and then I saw a twinkle in his eye and he grinned. “He’s not buying it,” he said, sounding more Indiana than Indian.

“Call me Jeevan,” he said, leaping to his feet and thrusting his hand out, belying the advanced age he had previously portrayed.

I looked at Maggie, confused.

“Jeevan is a Healer,” she explained. “He gets away with performing some minor miracles occasionally by posing as his alter ego.”

“I also spend a good amount of time spouting absolute crap,” he added, “so most people don’t take me too seriously. It helps to keep my cover. Most of my Healing is done secretly. Nobody, even the patient themselves, knows it’s happening - and before you ask, we know, patient consent and all. I do get consent, but the patient doesn’t actually know it.”

“If they don’t know, then how is it consent?” I asked.

“I ask them if they want to get better,” he said tapping his temple. “If they answer in the affirmative, I take that as consent.”

“And if they don’t?”

“They die,” he said. “I won’t heal someone against their wishes. You will see my work on the news, and all of the nutjob and God-botherer sites. The ‘I prayed for a miracle and it happened’ stories are usually down to me or one of the other Healers. We can’t cure everything, but we can help some people, and we do what we can.”

“Then why the...” I indicated his attire.

“It’s just a cover,” he said. “It allows me to get away with more direct stuff without people actually believing I have real power. The more blatant I am, the more people are convinced I’m a fraud.”

He sat back down and indicated the seat opposite him. “Please,” he said.

I sat. Maggie took one of the unoccupied chairs.

“Maggie says you are a dreamer,” he said.

I had to resist the temptation to answer, ‘but I’m not the only one.’ Instead, I looked at Maggie, even more confused.

“It means you use your powers by dreaming of the result rather than directing your subjects to act,” he explained.

“I guess so,” I said.

“That is good for Healers,” he said. “Non-dreamers can become Healers, but it requires much, much more work. They need to have a deeper understanding of the human body than most doctors, along with biochemistry, microbiology, and hematology. It’s the difference between you imagining a person’s tumour has disappeared, and someone controlling their individual powers to manually direct the process of the cells breaking down and being reabsorbed and the body not reacting to the release of the proteins and having the kidneys die, etcetera, etcetera.”

I guessed that made sense. It was good news for me then.

“Maggie also tells me that you have Compulsion, TK, Empathy, and Telepathy,” he said. “How strong are you in each?”

“My TK is quite strong,” I replied. “The others I haven’t really started to train properly yet. I’ve used them a few times each, but I’m supposed to be training my mind reading today.” I looked at Maggie. “I also had another idea about training my Compulsion I would like to discuss with you. Directing my housemate’s sex lives is fun, but it’s not particularly regular.”

“Have you had any further sessions with them?” she asked, and I shook my head.

Jeevan looked at me. “Would you be prepared to let me see your strength?” he asked.

I gritted my teeth. He wanted me to drop my shields. I wasn’t exactly enamored of the idea, since I didn’t know him from Adam, and I glanced across at Maggie. She sat impassively, waiting for my reaction.

I did a quick scan for other power users in the vicinity. There were no power users in the building other than myself, Maggie, and Jeevan - unless, that was, they had learned to cloak as I had.

I dropped my cloak and my shields. His eyes widened.

“Mother of God!” he said, examining me more closely. I felt a tickle around the edges of my mind. I was poised, ready to rebuff any attempt to move inward.

“You have a little scarring,” he said, “but it’s healing. It seems you overtaxed yourself recently.”

I nodded, deciding he had seen all that I was willing to show him. I re-shielded.

“May I ask how you managed to overtax even your power?”

“I was trying to protect my girlfriend,” I said. “She had been spiked and was about to be raped.”

“So you used your power by proxy?” he asked, and I nodded.

“How far away was she?”

“Five hundred, maybe five-hundred-fifty miles,” I said, “I’m not sure.”

“I can train you,” he said, “although you won’t need much training. It’s more a matter of knowing what is and what isn’t possible and why. You will need to learn basic anatomy though. Since your power works by your imagination, there’s little else really to learn. With you, it will be mostly brute force. However, healing takes a lot of power. You have a lot of power, but you are prone to overextending yourself. If you don’t take more care with that, then healing will kill you.

“Before I will even start to teach you to heal, you need to learn how to monitor your own body while you are using your powers. That way you will be able to see when you are overtaxing yourself and damaging your own psyche. You are young, and the damage you already did will heal in time, but as you get older, it will take longer, and you might get to the stage where it is permanent.

“Do you play video games?” he asked.

“Occasionally,” I nodded, confused about the sudden tangent.

“I want you to spend an hour tonight playing, and every night this week - more, if you can.”

“Okay,” I said uncertainly. “Can I ask why?”

“Because when people play computer games that have HUDs,” he said, “if they play enough, they start to almost see them when they are not playing. I want you to get into the habit of seeing your health and stamina bars, so play something that has those. When it becomes second nature, you will actually start to see them for real. Your imagination will display for you your personal condition.”

That sounded outlandish, but then I remembered that when I was younger, I had played for hours on a combat flight sim, where enemy aircraft were displayed on screen with a diamond-shaped box around them. I distinctly remembered driving down a road later that day, and getting the impression of the same boxes displayed around oncoming traffic.

“It’s time for you to go downstairs,” said Maggie. “There are three people coming in. You will have an hour with each. You have ten minutes to get down there and make any final preparations. The agent down there will explain the drill to you.”

“Am I okay dressed like this?” I asked. “I didn’t know the dress code.”

Maggie’s eyes flicked to her door for a second. “Cuthbert gave you a hard time?” she asked.

“Cuthbert?” I asked.

“My PA. His name is Charles, but everyone calls him Cuthbert because of his manner. He’s very good at his job, and a sweetie once you get past his thorns. There’s no dress code. You’re a consultant, not an agent. What you have on is fine. I’d draw the line at ripped jeans and a T-shirt with profanity on it, but on the whole, as long as it’s tidy you are good.”

I stood up. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Maharishi,” I said, and he grinned before his face changed, and he nodded at me imperiously.

“I vill be in touch,” he said with a sudden Indian accent and a croaky voice.

I shook my head, smiling ruefully.

“I’ll come down to see you when you are finished,” said Maggie. “I want to hear your idea for training your Compulsion. You need the fourth floor. Take a left out of the elevator and look for Daniel Drey.”

I nodded and left her office, closing the door quietly behind me. I looked across at ‘Cuthbert’ and set myself the challenge of making him like me.

“Thank you,” I said pleasantly to him as I walked down the hall toward the elevator. I didn’t hear a response. I punched the button for the elevator and waited for it to arrive.

The fourth floor was much more enclosed than the top one. As soon as I stepped out of the elevator I was facing a noticeboard pinned on a wall, the corridor running left and right. I went left as instructed and walked down a hallway with pictures on the left wall and doors on the right. The doors were labeled ‘Interview 1,’ ‘Interview 2,’ etcetera.

At the end of the corridor, I came to an open-plan waiting area, where there was a young woman in ripped jeans and a t-shirt waiting. She looked at me and grinned.

“You here to get your mind read too?” she asked. I smiled at her.

“Just to observe,” I replied. “Is the pay good?”

She nodded, a small frown creasing her face. “It pays the bills. It was either this or medical research. Last time I did that I was sick for a week.”

“Well, I’m sure you won’t be unwell after this,” I said.

“Caleb?” The new voice came from behind me. I turned.

“Daniel?” I asked, and he nodded.

“We’re in there,” he said pointing to a room. He turned to address the girl. “Did you finish the forms?”

She handed him a clipboard that had been on the seat beside her. “Do you really think you will be able to read my mind?” she asked, a sudden worry crossing her face.

Daniel smiled. “It’s early days yet,” he said, “but anything we see or hear from you will be kept completely confidential, and, per the waiver that you definitely read thoroughly, we even guarantee that we will not prosecute any crimes we discover in this manner.”

“Guilty secrets, Miss Cavanaugh?” I asked with a grin, and her eyes widened.

“How did you know my name?” she asked.

“It’s on the top of the form,” Daniel said, laughing. I grinned at her.

“Asshole,” she grumbled at me, but she smiled too.

I followed Daniel into the room. Inside was a table with a chair on either side; it looked quite like a police interrogation room. There was a second chair back against the wall that had an armrest table like you get in lecture halls. There was a pad and pen on that armrest.

On the table were a number of cards, each of them with different words, colors, and symbols printed on them. There was a pad and a pen on the table too.

“The usual drill,” he said, “is that I will introduce you as an intern, observing the tests. Ostensibly, you will be here to learn about what we do. Take notes or don’t as it pleases you. I will run some standard tests on her while you do your thing. If you want me to do anything else, or ask a question, then I presume you can tell me that directly?”

“You don’t have power,” I said. It was an observation, not a question.

“Not many of us do,” he said. “In this office, only Maggie and Dianna have power. There are others scattered across the country. You guys are rarer than you think, and yet the douchebag power users seem to be crawling out of the woodwork. You don’t know how much of a relief it is to know that you have a power user at your back when you go up against a proper one. I’m not talking about your dumb wilds who are just fucking anything that moves; we can take them down easy, even if we have to drug up. I’m talking about real power users, who are trained and experienced. We can do it, but it puts us at risk, so, thanks.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I could tell he was being genuine, and it validated my decision to return to the FBI. For the first time, I seemed to have found someone who wasn’t trying to work an angle.

I smiled at him. “Thanks,” I said, and took my seat.

Daniel opened the door again and invited Miss Cavanaugh in. They sat on opposite sides of the table.

“Okay,” Daniel said, “My name is Daniel Drey, and your friend over there is Caleb Stott. He is an intern with us, just observing. As you can see, there are no recording devices in the room, and the notepads are subject to all confidentiality clauses and waivers in those releases you signed. Moreover, you can request to see what is written on the pads at any time.”

That last bit seemed as much for me as for Miss Cavanaugh. I felt a sudden urge to jot down something entirely inappropriate, but it passed.

“I will be asking you a series of questions based on your answers to the questionnaire you completed online,” he explained. “I will then be showing you a series of cards, which I will not be able to see. I will be asking you to concentrate on them, and I will try and see if I can read those thoughts from your mind.”

“How often do you get it right?” she asked.

“Usually one in about fifteen,” he said, “which is about the result you’d get from random chance. If we get better results from you, then we may call you back for further testing.”

“Why exactly are you doing this?” she asked. It was a good question. I would have wanted to know that myself.

“There is some very sporadic and unreliable evidence that some of us are gifted with the ability to project our thoughts to others,” he said. “If we were to prove that to be the case, and we could find such people, then their talents could be very useful in law enforcement.”

“So, if I pass, I get a job offer?” she asked.

“Possibly,” he said.

“How many have been recruited that way?” she asked.

“None so far,” he said, “but since we are paying you one thousand dollars for an afternoon’s inconvenience, I guess anything else would be a bonus, yes?”

“I guess.”

“Shall we start?” he asked, and she nodded.

I gently extended my power and sent a tiny probe into her mind. I still felt uncomfortable doing it, but it was legal and sanctioned. I was playing along with the FBI on its home turf, rather than being a lone wolf and using my household for all my training needs. If nothing else, it would build trust, which would eventually let me see even more of what the FBI – and Maggie, in particular – was and wasn’t comfortable doing to Norms.

Daisy Cavanaugh was twenty two years old and living in a shared house with three other girls. She didn’t currently have a boyfriend, nor did she want one, but she did occasionally join one of the other girls for a threesome with their respective boyfriends, happy enough to be sucking cock or eating pussy. She was in her final semester at catering college. She was very nearly a chef.

I suppressed my grin as I began to ‘download’ everything she had learned. I imagined the surprise on Mary’s face when it turned out I’d learned how to boil water.

It took me the better part of an hour to take all her memories of her schooling. I wondered how long it would take me to assimilate all that learning, not to mention gain the associated muscle memory. There were, apparently, an awful lot of hot, sharp, and pointy objects in a proper kitchen that one needed to master.

By the time I was finished and my attention had returned to the room, Daisy was bored with the testing and wasn’t even trying. She kept glancing at me, and I realized that she was trying to figure out if I’d be good in bed. I gave her a sympathetic smile, and that was enough to cement her decision – not about whether I’d be any good, but about whether she’d make the offer.

I just couldn’t resist. On my blank notepad, I drew a tiny little heart on one of the margins. Someone might have even mistaken it for a blotch or a stray mark if they’d only glanced.

Daniel finished his tests and told her he was done.

“Can I see what you both wrote?” she asked.

Daniel handed her his pad, on which there were various notations about the accuracy of the tests. They were even worse than random. I passed my pad over; Daisy inspected it for a second longer than its almost-blank pages deserved, and I saw her try – and almost succeed – to suppress her reaction to my last-minute addition. When the pad came back to me, she had scribbled a telephone number on it.

I’d felt a little bad for her; her memories had told me that it had been a long time since she’d taken a real romantic risk. One tiny little heart on the margin of my notepad, and, instead of being a nervous wreck about offering her phone number, she was instead feeling a little confident, a little validated, and even a little horny. I didn’t need Telepathy to know any of that, either. Daisy’s poker face wasn’t great.

I made a little show of acting surprised, but pleasantly so. I memorized the number and caught her eye again. It was easy, because she’d been watching me the whole time, desperate to see my reaction. I gave her a subtle smile, and tried to make my eyes twinkle. Once again, she did her best to hide the little jolt of excitement, plus the relief afterwards. I briefly imagined how our first phone conversation might go. “So, full disclosure, I have four girlfriends, am involved with another couple on top of that, and of those, six of us live together and five of those are sexually active with each other. Care to come over and build your own sex sundae?”

Daisy headed out with a new spring in her step. I admired the rear-view until Daniel nudged me. “Do you want a coffee before the next one, Casanova?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said breezily, and we walked out together.

There was another guy in the waiting area. He was wearing a sports jacket and slacks. He, too, had a series of forms attached to a clipboard sitting next to him on a free chair. Considering he looked to be in his late teens, he dressed older.

Daniel and I each grabbed a coffee and took it back into the room, bringing the new guy with us.

His session went very much like Daisy’s, although I didn’t get anything useful from him. His father was an investment banker and had a lot of money, but they had argued, and his father had cut his allowance, telling him he needed to get a job. The studies and tests were an interim money earner, as he was positive his father would relent after a short while. The one thing I did get from him was that he was a complete dick. He sucked up to anyone with more money than ‘him’ – meaning his dad - and looked down on anyone he felt had less. His look toward me when I had been introduced had been contemptuous. I’d had to resist the temptation to exact some kind of retribution on him. At the end of our session, my notepad was full of curt little notes like “total failure” and “no discernible effect.” It was a little petty, but I got some satisfaction when he looked over them and huffed.

After he left, Daniel just asked, “Total dick?”

“Total dick,” I confirmed.

“Yeah, I must be psychic,” he said. We both had a chuckle, gave daddy’s boy a head start, then walked out to the waiting area again.

Our last session was with a young nerd. He was majoring in computer science, but had just started. He was barely old enough to be eligible for the test, and had had to get his parents’ permission. My glimpse into his mind was a sad journey. His confidence was low, mostly due to the pronounced stutter that he’d been completely unable to control during our introductions. That also meant that he had had no luck with girls. He wasn’t bad-looking - a bit skinny, but definitely not ugly - but hadn’t even so much as kissed a girl. He wasn’t gay, nor was he a bigot. Men just didn’t appeal to him. He had a crush on a girl in his class, and as far as he knew, she didn’t even know he existed. He had never plucked up the courage to talk to her, terrified that his stutter would make him unable to even get a full sentence out, never mind all the other reasons she’d surely reject him. He had been ridiculed all through high school for his disability, and it had left him quite damaged.

My thoughts on being a ‘hypnotherapist’ solidified.

After he left, Maggie came down to see us. “How did it go?” she asked.

“It went well,” I said. “I had no problems. They didn’t seem to notice me in there, and I am now very hungry. That shows I’ve pushed myself. I also started a four-year catering course.”

“Don’t fill your head up with crap,” she said. “Your brain needs time to assimilate all that stuff.”

“I remember Dianna saying the same when I asked why I needed to go to all my classes and couldn’t just download someone else’s memory.”

“See how much of it you remember after a week, and then you’ll see why.”

I was disappointed and wondered if I could do something about it. I had seen how messy my mind was when I’d gone in there during my exams. I’d read random tidbits online about people – Norms, I assumed – doing mental exercises and constructing memory palaces. I’d also seen it on The Mentalist, but I wouldn’t have put any stock in it just from a TV show. I put it on my ever-expanding powers-related to-do list. With all of my psychic powers, I was convinced there was a way to train up my brain.

“So,” Maggie said, breaking my train of thought, “what bright idea do you have about your Compulsion?”

“How about I become a hypnotherapist?” I suggested, getting right to it. “There are lots of students doing ‘alternative therapies’ - massage, aromatherapy, reiki, and such - as income generation. I checked, and you have to register, but all that takes is a police check and paying a fee. Then you can get a license. I could help people to lose weight, stop smoking, get over phobias, kick bad habits, all that stuff.”

“It’s not as straightforward as you think,” she said, “although it is a good idea. Weight loss and smoking cessation could be handled with Compulsion, but some of the other stuff you might come across may require deeper analysis, and you don’t have the training for that. You could hide symptoms without treating underlying causes, which could damage those you are trying to help.

“It would give you more opportunities to practice your mind reading also. You would need both to be really effective. That means that you would need to draft a very specific treatment waiver. Perhaps you might use wording like, ‘Information may be obtained directly from your subconscious mind.’ I’m for it with those caveats. Don’t forget also that Dianna is available; you could always consult with her. I am certain she would be up for helping, as long as it’s not every day.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll put something together and let you take a look.”

She nodded, and then looked at her watch.

“It’s nearly six,” she said. “Time you weren’t here.”

It was nearly seven by the time I got home, and I was very hungry. Mary cooked for expediency’s sake, and I filled them in on all of my training. I didn’t mention downloading the chef’s memories. I wanted that to be a surprise if I got to keep them.

I had to show them the memory of me being told I had to play at least an hour of computer games a night before they would believe me.

I opted for World of Warcraft. Since it had been so long since I played, I had forgotten how. I decided to start a whole new character. The game wasn’t nearly as much fun as I’d remembered it being. After an hour, I was bored and was glad to log out. The fact that I’d only collected seventeen out of twenty boar tusks for some unreasonably-chipper gnome did nothing to tempt me to keep playing.

At ten, I went to bed. I wanted to get back into my training routine in the morning, but there was so much running through my mind that at first, I couldn’t sleep. To pass the time, I decided to see if I could do a little ‘tidying’ of my mind, so I turned my focus inward.

It was no less messy than the last time I’d looked - more so, in fact. It looked like someone had backed up a refuse truck and dumped a load of garbage in there. I realized that that was almost exactly what I had done in downloading Daisy’s memories.

I took a tour, finding nothing labeled and no handy signposts, but I did notice that every so often, some of the litter would move - almost of its own accord. It appeared that there was some order in my mind, even though I hadn’t perceived it before. All the data was in a queue, and every so often, the piece at the head of the queue would float off to somewhere else.