Part XIV - 3: Symbolic Relations

Dr. Kinmon, Mr. Higgs' 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 that the other, Dr. Kinmon waited for us to tell him what our visit was about.

"Arron... You remember when we spent days studying the pictures of the Egyptian hieroglyphics in the library?"

"Of course I do. You know I still dabble in them. Why do you ask?"

Mr. 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 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. Uhm the fourth... the fourth... Wait a sec, I just have to try that one again... "

"What are you doing?" the doctor asked as I concentrated on my right arm.

"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... er... pointy thing on the left middle side."

"Wil, [SWB1] is this some kind of joke?" Doctor Kinmon asked.

"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.

"Where's the manuscript with the symbols now?" I queried after I found the old parchment which the doctor had managed to obtain for his own collection.

"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 had walked behind his desk to a life size picture of the old document and was studying it before realizing the doctor was getting rather angry and was telling Higgs if he didn't get some straight answers that we would have to leave.

"Mr. Higgs, look at this. I can't believe it... Doctor Kinmon, do you have any idea what this says?"

"No, and you couldn't possibly know either. Wil, I'm sorry, but this has gone far enough. I'm much too busy to... What is it?" Doctor Kinmon asked when my face went white with shock.

"I... I just... Oh my God... " I said, feeling weak in the knees.

"Tim," Higgs said softly 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, yeah, 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... Oh my God. I could have killed everyone here."

"What?" the Doctor said as Higgs stiffened from my statement. "How? Don't tell me you believe in this... witchcraft!"

"Tim, you better show him now," Mr. Higgs said putting his hand on my shoulder.

"Show me what? Your hocus pocus? Wil, this had gone way too far. I really want you... to... <gasp>"

"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 a different pattern of symbols, and I really 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.

"Mr. 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.

"You okay?" Mr. Higgs asked me when I shut my eyes and held my head.

"I will be. I just haven't done that kind of... link before. I think I better lay down, though."

"Arron, are YOU okay," Mr. Higgs asked his friend who hadn't moved.

"What? Oh. Just give me a minute, Wil. It's still sinking in."

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

"Tim, what exactly does this thing do?" he asked after studying it.

"Well, part of it is something like... uhm, 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... Oh well, anyway... the pulse is like a telepathic death ray. I'm not sure what all it does, but after you said that about 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."

"You mean, if you had... transmitted these symbols, the two of us would have had heart attacks?" Doctor Kinmon asked.

"Not just you, but... I don't know how far I could send them. But 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."

"Good lord. That would have killed everyone on campus," Doctor Kinmon said, sitting down in his chair, hard.

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

"I wouldn't bother," I said, not looking at them.

"What?" Doctor Kinmon gasped.

"Why not?" Higgs asked.

"Who ever 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's a lot 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."

"Shit, Wil. He's talking like it's an everyday thing," the doctor said to Higgs. Then to me he said, "I'm not sure if it would be safe to help you with this. What if you make some kind of 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?"

"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."

"Hey! Principals aren't supposed to cuss!" I said sitting up grinning.

"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. Uhm, what did you say Mr. Higgs? Scared the poop out of you?"

"But how does that justify risking the lives of everyone involved?" the doctor insisted.

"Doctor 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, Mr. Higgs. Nothing more."

"Wil?"

"It's safe, Arron. Tim and a few others have used this a lot without anyone ever getting hurt."

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

"All right," the doctor said.

"Go ahead," Mr. Higgs said when I looked at him with a questioning look.

"Right. Just listen to me count backwards and think it as I say it... Ready? Three... two... one... Linked."

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

When I found the Doctor 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 Mr. Higgs and Doctor Kinmon talked.

"Tim," Mr. Higgs said, gently shaking me awake. "Doctor 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?"

"You didn't look like you wanted to be woke up," Mr. Higgs simply said.

"Oh. What're the questions, Doc?" I said, plopping down in a chair.

"First of all, I'm not clear on what you wish to accomplish, and what you need from me."

"Oh... Uhm... 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 easy 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, yeah. 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 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... uhm... efficient."

"That's very possible," the doctor 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 to what they are doing that can be adapted to your own unique... er, communication system. I believe Professor Goldstein wouldn't mind working on something like this... "

"Arron, don't forget the other things before getting lost in the idea," Higgs said.

"Yes... All right.[SWB2] 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."

"Uhm, I don't think... "

"In exchange for your services, you would have your own research facilities, some 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 like force myself to remember things, but I can only force so much in a day without hurting myself or 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.

"And 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, but not in my own. I always have to store it in my short term, then wait... uhm... 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 telepaths."

"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. But after about a year, it gets pretty hard for anyone to find something I stored in their head anyway, so its 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."

"Wil, how can you just allow three students leave on something like this? I wouldn't think the school board would allow it."

"They don't have much choice if the parents wish to provide their kid 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 weeks, 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," the doctor 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 four 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... <sigh> I just don't fit in there anymore."

"Trust me, Tim. You still fit in," Higgs said.

"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 [SWB3]with him, but she always goes with this other dude and he doesn't want to interfere. I found out yesterday that that dude was her cousin who was just going with her because no one ever asks her. It's so stupid, its 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. "You are going to graduate with the rest of your class, and that is final. You know you'll be in summer school this summer anyway, so if you just use some of that memory forcing thing every weekend on yourself... "

"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, Micro Economics, American History, College Chemistry, and College Algebra. I only got Bs in them, but I was kind of busy with... other stuff, you know?"