Chapter 14

We need to talk.

Lena knew she had to lead up to the grand revelation carefully. And Rose's confusion about Missy gave her an opening. They decided to meet at Rose's house, and soon they were sitting in her room - drinks and snacks in hand - talking.

"First, the question you were trying to figure out how to ask. It falls into one of those gray areas you are finding increasingly annoying. Yes, there are people that narrow and shallow. But a lot of it has to do with the limits on the way they perceive the world. To a toddler in daycare, a three foot high barrier is an insurmountable wall, and the play yard is gigantic. To you, the barrier is low and the play yard is little bigger than a suburban backyard."

"If you're saying she's like a toddler, I won't argue." Rose cracked.

Lena grinned. "Yes and no. Her walls are more social. She sees the world in terms of local middle school society, and somewhat the same for high school. And in terms of the social class she perceives her family as being a part of. You've been places she'll never go, and interacted with people she can barely conceive of knowing. But within her limits, her world is almost as rich and varied as yours."

"Look at Angel. She is the weakest bio elemental I have ever met. But she does things with that little bit of power that bio elementals orders of magnitude more powerful wouldn't have dreamed of doing. She comes from a family that worked their way up from lower middle class to a neighborhood like this, but she has casual access to social elites and the rich and powerful - access that Missy and her family would kill for, but are never likely to get. And she's one of the nicest, and least pushy, people you know."

Rose was about to ask how Lena could know that, but the answer was pretty obvious.

"But you have your own limits. With the breadth of your own world, you can't really see the depth and subtlety of Missy's world. And it's important that you do."

"Why?" Rose was genuinely puzzled.

"Because you're limiting yourself. You can understand what they say, but be completely clueless about why they would say it. Or worse, would misjudge it. With your abilities, it is pretty much inevitable that you will find yourself in between two people or two groups of people with completely different world views. And most likely, neither will match yours. If you can get into each world, and accept it for what it is despite the differences in values and perspectives from your own, you can do world class things. And you can control the situation to a remarkable degree."

Understanding dawned on Rose's face. "You've done that. I don't know when or how, but you have."

"Yes, but I faced limits you don't. Without help, I can only do so with people or groups who speak some variety of English. You can't read minds directly, but if they don't speak English all I can read seems like gibberish. Their emotions are clear, but the other information is just not there for me. Or any other telepath, without the help of someone like you."

Then she dropped the first of an afternoon of bombshells. "And I have never met or heard of anyone like you. As far as I know, your combination of abilities is unique."

While Rose found the idea hard to believe, her abilities made it clear to her that Lena believed it. And Lena seemed pretty well informed about such things.

Lena shifted gears. "But accepting the internal validity of their world views does not mean you have to agree with them. You can understand and accept the internal validity of, say, the people who tried to capture or kill you, or Angel, or the Queen, or even David's parents, while still rejecting their actions as utterly immoral and unacceptable. This is about understanding them, not about becoming one of them."

She gave Rose a moment to absorb that, while she took a drink.

"Not used to talking out loud so much any more." she grinned.

"Sometimes, it's not so clearly right and wrong. Most of the time, in fact. When we are dealing with people your age, or even my age, it's more often a matter of 'Why on Earth would they do that?' or the like. And all too often the best you can find is 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.'"

Rose noticed an odd hint of stress in her voice, but did not notice the extent to which Lena focused on her.

"For instance, why would a group of powered morfs imitate an old legend? A few hybrids could easily pass for Bigfoot or even Nessie or related lake monsters. Lots of different kinds of powered morfs could effectively 'haunt' a house or some other place. If you asked them why they did something like that, the most honest answers would likely range from 'to see if we could' to 'seemed like a good idea at the time.'"

"But sometimes, just sometimes, there's more. Sometimes they might want to do something specific, and hide it behind the legend. It might be something bad, but most often it is something good with a chance of backfiring. About a century ago, the politicians called it plausible deniability or some crud like that."

"Huh?" Rose was having a hard time with the last bit.

"Ok, the politician part was like in the movies, when someone has other people do something so he can later pretend he had nothing to do with it. Like in the cop shows, where the bad guy doesn't want to get his hands dirty."

Rose understood what Lena was saying, but couldn't really tie the idea to morfs, unless they were criminals or something.

"Alright, here's an example. I know a telepath out on the west coast, who did something like that when he was younger. He used to hang around a local wishing well, and mentally listen to the wishes being made there. A surprising number of the wishes were simple things. Or at least, simple for him. Things like 'I wish Johnny would notice me' or something. So he would prod Johnny to notice her and say something."

"What did he get out of it?" Rose wondered out loud.

"Mostly, a feeling of doing something good for someone. That, and it was more interesting than sitting around watching the tube. The problem is, the wishes didn't always work out well. Johnny might have been a jerk, and when he noticed her he might have ended up hurting her emotionally. Or the wish itself had consequences he just hadn't thought through. After a while, it seemed to him that the bad things had piled up so deep he couldn't see the good ones any more."

"Does he still do it?"

"Sometimes. He's a lot more careful about it, though. Especially after the times he nearly got caught. He wasn't doing anything illegal per se, but he still could have gotten in a lot of trouble for some of the things that went wrong. But what do you think about that whole thing?"

"Well..." Rose could tell that the question was a lot more important than it seemed. Lena was leading up to something bigger than that, something hidden. What would happen if she gave the wrong answer?

"Nothing." Lena answered her unspoken question. "There is no wrong answer. And yes, there is more. But I want to know that you are ready to hear it."

Lena was telling the truth as she knew it. Rose was certain about that. But there was more to it ... a lot more. And she wasn't sure she was going to like it. But there was no trick question. "As long as he was careful, and did good things, I suppose it's ok. And when he did step in it, as long as he did what he could to fix it that would be ok too." Lena would understand the subtleties in what she was saying, even if nobody else would.

Time for another bombshell.

"Good." Lena said. "I know a group of people who are doing much the same thing here. Bigger and more complex, but more alike than different."

"The closest thing to a working wishing well around here is Pope Hill," Rose mused, "and Ohmygod! it's you!" She had put most of it together. "The whole thing. You read their minds and give them those feelings. David makes the glowey thingy. But what about the MORFS itself? The only bio elemental I know around here is Angel. Is she that much more powerful than she's telling people?"

"No, she really is that weak. She's just learned to do a lot with what little she has."

"Can all bio elementals do that?"

"No. There are only two that I know of in the entire world. It has something to do with extra brain power or something."

"So ... my wish, my special powers ... that was all you, David, and Angel?"

"Yes and no. First, Robin and Penny - Cassandra - had a hand in it as well. And second, Angel wasn't the one who triggered your special bout with MORFS. The other one was."

"But who IS the other one?"

"That falls into the 'Not my secret to tell' category. I can tell you that she doesn't live anywhere near here, and you haven't met."

Rose shifted gears a little. "So why tell me now? Let me guess ... you need my help and you're going to make me a part of the group?"

While she didn't "read" as entirely happy about it, she wasn't angry or resentful. Lena forged ahead.

"Yes and no. We made you a part of the group a long time ago. We do need your help for something big, that someone has asked us to do."

Memories of the basement flashed briefly through Rose's head. Lena hurried to reassure her. "Nothing like that. We would be doing a one time Pope Hill type thing somewhere else. Somewhere they don't speak English. We'll understand if you feel you can't, or don't want to, be involved after we explain it more."

"But first, your other question. I'm telling you now because you deserve to know, and you seemed ready to know."

"And because I needed to know about the scam to help with it?"

"It would make it easier. We could have worked around that in some way, but you deserve better."

Rose was still wrapping her head around the idea that Pope Hill was a fake, and that her new friends had made those changes in her. Her new friends?

"When I met you ... that wasn't a coincidence, was it?"

"No. But we do take that path a lot. After you changed, I kept a little bit of an eye on you to make sure you were ok. And after the trouble you had that day, you just seemed to need some new friends. We didn't want to push it, but we knew we could make you feel a little better."

"But why me in the first place?"

"Part of that was pure coincidence. Or maybe fate. The other bio elemental was visiting, and it was important to show her how the whole thing worked. We might have done it anyway, if I had heard your approach to Pope Hill. Then again, we might not have been able to get together at the right time. The big thing was that your request was very moving. And you were clearly a very worthy person."

"But why the powers? Not that they aren't useful and all."

Lena blushed. "She ... the other bio-elemental ... was new to the whole thing and she kinda ... overshot."

Rose was stunned for a moment. Then she burst out laughing. All of it - the good and the bad - that had happened because of her powers, and it was all a screw up? It was too absurd to be anything but true. After her laughter died down, she got down to business.

"Ok, when and where is this going to happen?"

"The when is easy enough. On the Winter Solstice. I don't even know where, except that they don't speak much English there. We'll be teleported there, by someone other than Robin." She then went on to detail the plan.

Some of the more important parts were also the more disturbing. They would be going somewhere, but they wouldn't know where. They wouldn't officially be there - there would be no records of their time there. If things went as planned, nobody - not even the person they were helping - would see or hear them. And after they were done, they would never know where they had been, or who the person had been. Neither would their parents.

And if things didn't go quite as planned, they could face two or even more hostile armed groups. They would have some help available, but nothing official. And if the authorities got hold of them, things could get sticky.

Yeah, sure ... nothing to worry about there.

At least in Tokyo she was officially there. On the other hand, there wouldn't be highly organized groups of heavily armed people who knew who she was and were trying to kidnap or kill her. And her family. And her friends, old and new.

For better or worse, there was one thing Rose was sure of.

"We need a test run."

Her arguments and ideas tumbled through her head in a jumbled mass, making it hard for her to express them. Then again, she didn't have to. Lena "saw" it all, and agreed it would be a good idea. The problem was time - they basically had the weekend to prepare for the real thing, which would start late Monday or early Tuesday.

Lena decided they needed to get the rest of the group together for the discussion. After a bit of negotiation, they settled on Lena's house. Since it was likely to go beyond supper time, they all decided to chip in on some takeout and relieve her parents of the burden of feeding a room full of teenagers. Since Rose didn't have any real source of income, and her parents weren't home yet, they decided to cover her share as well. Rose left messages for her parents to let them know where she was, and they were off.

They didn't flit there or fly there. They walked. After taking Robin and David for granted, it almost seemed novel. On the way there, Lena told her about David and Robin. Hearing about their going through the same pattern of being fooled then later told somehow made Rose feel better about it happening to her.

When they got there, the others were already inside and settled in the living room with drinks provided by Lena's mother. After offering Rose a drink, which Lena went to fetch, she excused herself and went to the room that served as her office. Rose could hear her muttering something about lanterns.

Lanterns? I didn't mean to eavesdrop.

Used to happen to me a lot. Still does, sometimes. She runs a company that sells camping stuff online. Well, together with some of her old friends.

The exchange was so brief that none of the others noticed it. Somewhat to Rose's surprise, Angel took the lead in the meeting. After the obligatory "I suppose you're wondering" joke, she turned to Lena. "So why did I call everyone together here?"

"First, to let everyone know that Rose has agreed to help with the Project." It was clear to Rose that the others already knew the details, or at least as much as she did. Lena went on. "She brought up a good point. Our integration will need to be as clean as possible. For that, we will need a test run."

Robin glanced at Lena, and after apparently getting a satisfactory response, spoke up. "One of the things we will need to do is run the test we did with Angel."

Since the others seemed to know what she meant, Lena turned to Rose. We'll be handling the sensitive stuff this way. she thought to Rose. Rose thought that was just a little bit obvious, but didn't say anything or think it too loudly. Lena went on to describe the tests with Robin rendering Angel invisible and/or intangible, and determining how that affected what she could perceive and do.

"Since my powers can't do squat," Rose commented to the group, "some of those tests would be pointless. The rest sounds interesting."

David spoke up. "Now all we need are some victims." He had a grin as he looked at his girlfriend. Lena rolled her eyes, then looked at Rose.

"What do we need?"

"Some people who speak languages I don't already know. They can be their primary language, or not. It doesn't matter whether they speak English or some other language I know in addition to the unknown." Rose briefly felt a little wistful, as she thought about her now distant relative and their exchanges in Gaelic.

Going back into "sensitive" mode, they came up with a plan. Lena would sweep the area, much like her code namesake technology, until she encountered thoughts in a language she didn't know - anything but English, Spanish, or French. She would run the thought past "our own Rosetta Stone" to see whether she recognized the language. If it was a new language, she would have David identify the thinker and add him or her to the list. They were reasonably sure they could find subjects for the first part of the test that way.

They were less sure about finding an appropriate subject for the full run through. They would need someone reasonably close, who was in the right age range for MORFS but didn't have and hadn't had an active case, and who was interested in getting something from going through such changes. And who wouldn't be likely to be rejected by family, community, government, etc. because of it. Simple, right?

After a year or two (ok, about an hour and a half. It sure felt longer), they took a break. So far, they had found a half dozen candidates for the first part - all adults - and eliminated two of them after warnings from Cassandra. Rose had learned that she was still capable of being surprised and embarrassed by random thoughts in languages she did recognize. And they had agreed that Rosetta was a good code name for Rose.

As they rested, Penny had a head palming moment. As Cassandra, she would need some amount of time to "settle into" anywhere new before she became effective. She had experienced the effect before, whenever she traveled too far from home. And she had never done so with a single point of reference for language issues. Especially one she was "time sharing" with a telepath like Radar. When she "mentioned" the problem, everyone groaned. And then agreed that another individual test was in order.

Before they could work out the details, Lena's father came home. Used to his daughter's adventures, he was startled but not really surprised to find the group huddled in his living room in serious, mostly silent, conference. It had all the hallmarks of a situation he would never know the details of, and one that he was probably happier not knowing the details of. He also knew that he couldn't sneak up on that group if his life depended on it. "Anything I can do?"

The smiles they turned on him ranged from guilty to calculating. Not surprisingly, one of the calculating looks came from his loving daughter. Teenagers.

After a moment of silent consultation, they told him that they would be busy that evening, that they would be coming and going at odd times (by way of Flit Express), and that they had pooled their money for take out so he wouldn't have to feed a room full of teenagers. After he smiled at that last part, he agreed to fetch the food for them. As they discussed dinner choices, he went off to see his wife.

He made sure he was not interrupting any electronic conversation, then kissed her on the cheek. "They're up to something again, I see." he commented with a wry grin.

"You don't suppose it involves finding me a new lantern wholesaler, do you?" She asked with a sigh.

"Somehow, I doubt it. More shipping problems?"

After brief recaps of their days, he got down to a more serious issue. "What do you want to do about dinner? The kids are ordering some take out, which I volunteered to pick up for them. I get the impression this is going to be home base for more scanning the area and popping in and out for a while. Maybe just tonight, maybe longer."