Chapter 2: Desideratus - Regret

I hiked out of the park. At the trail head was a car-camp where I had left my Honda. There was a family camped there, a mom and a dad and two eight year old twins, a boy and a girl. They were in a big green Kelty family tent. It was getting on towards dusk and I was very tired. I had hiked all day. Maybe I wouldn't have done what I did if I hadn't been so tired. But I was and I did.

As I hiked down, I was still very open, unprotected. I walked into the emotion of their argument and didn't close it out. I know now that it owned me, but it didn't see it happening then.

"Jesus, Frank. Not in front of the kids. Please no." Crying from inside their tent. The sound of a solid smack.

"Judith, I told you to pack the fucking beer, you bitch. Now I have to drive all the way back to that shitty little store and it may already be closed. You're fucked if it is."

I could hear him slap her open handed again.

The kids held each other and were being very, very quiet.

Just by touching the minds of the kids, I was suddenly angry and scared and hurt and I was all of it all at once. I didn't even think. I just reached out to Frank's mind and just somehow broke something. I turned him off. Where there'd once been a whole human being, there was now something more like a broken doll.

"Frank?"

"FRANK!"

"Daddy!"

I heard the sound of a body hitting the floor. The tent listed to one side and I saw a couple of tent pegs pull loose. The woman screamed. The kids began crying. I reached for him. He wasn't there anymore. Frank was gone. He was breathing and everything, but there was no person left there.

I couldn't fix it. I tried. I tried to help. I dropped my pack and ran down to their tent. A middle aged white guy with two kids and a worn out looking wife lay on the floor of the tent, drooling, smiling slightly. Urine pooled under him. He kinda gurgled and smiled.

I drove down to the ranger station and got help and came back. I stayed with them until the ambulance came.

"Thank you, mister." Judith said. I felt dirty when she said that, slow fat tears leaking out of her eyes. "I don't think I could have managed it all." She grabbed the kids and climbed into the ambulance. It drove off, and after they were gone, I stood in the empty camp ground looking at the lopsided tent and abandoned gear. I felt scared and out of control. I had no idea I could do these things.

I drove home scared and upset. It was almost five in the morning when I got back to San Jose. I didn't even want to think about sleeping, I knew I'd dream about Frank and Judith and their two kids, Donna and Danny. I didn't want that.

Something was different, off, when I walked into my house. I was immediately on guard. For a moment I wondered if I had walked in on a burglar. But I couldn't find anyone. Just as I was about to dismiss it as fatigue from being up all night, I turned and this guy was sitting right there in my living room, on my couch. One moment he's not there, and the next he was.

"I was here the whole time. I just didn't let you see me." He's a small guy, maybe forty five or so, wiry looking and smiling a pleasant smile. Dark hair, olive skin. He had a very slight soft accent, Australian or British maybe.

"FUCK." I jumped back a foot or two. "Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house!"

"My name is Martin. I'm your preceptor."

"My what?"

"Your preceptor, on behalf of your Inceptor."

"My what?"

"Your Inceptor, your awakener."

"My what?"

He paused and smiled. "My name is Martin. I'm here to teach you to control your power or destroy you if you don't tame it."

I was angry, like I said. "You can try."

My entire world turned white and soundless.

I woke up on the floor. It looked to be broad daylight out.

"Lets try again, shall we? Hello, my name is Martin, I'm your preceptor."

"Fuck, my head really hurts." I was stupid. I got up and tried to grab him. I tried to surprise a telepath. I woke up on the floor again. There was a lump on my head where I had hit the edge of my coffee table. Martin was in my kitchen making a sandwich, he seemed a little amused when I walked in.

"Welcome back."

I stuck out my hand. "I'm Carter"

"Yes, I know. Your name is Carter Dawson. You were born in 1968. You're originally from Virginia, but your parents moved west to California, San Jose specifically in the early eighties. You just graduated with a bachelors in psychology from San Jose State. Pleased to meet you, finally." His grip was warm and soft.

"You're my preceptor?"

"Yes, I have that honor." He smiled.

"What's an inceptor?"

"Not what, who. Inceptor. An extremely powerful telepath. Someone far more powerful than me, someone capable of awakening a latent."

"A latent?"

"You were a latent, you're now a rogue, though you should be an apprentice."

"Um. Sounds complex."

"Actually, I'm your second preceptor. Your first is for all intents and purposes dead. Your Inceptor silenced him."

"Killed him?" I was barely managing to follow all this.

"No, silenced. Eliminated his talent, wiped him clean."

"Uh, why?"

"Well, he missed you, didn't he? He didn't get to you before you took off. Then he lost you. Not acceptable to anyone to have someone awakened running loose as a rogue. Not acceptable at all. Also, it makes your Inceptor look bad. Of course, it's now worse than all that."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you've hurt someone, haven't you?" He looked grim.

"I don't really want to talk about that, thanks."

He tossed me my car keys. "We're going to take a drive now, Carter." He looked at me steadily, almost as if he was measuring me.

"I can't really drive anywhere. I'm not up to it. I've been up for like 30 hours or something, and I'm just wiped out."

"Which is stronger, the body or the mind?"

"What do you mean?"

"Watch."

Then he somehow pushed his power into me. I saw, felt him do it. I was defenseless against him. The thing is, he did it slowly so I could see it happen. Then he took over my mind. Literally. He just flat took control of my consciousness. It was the most unsettling feeling of helplessness I've ever experienced ... well, up to that point, anyways. I felt violated. He smiled as he did it, even though he was gentle about it.

He directed my attention inwards. He didn't use words, but I quickly learned a lot about my body. Chemical balances, hormones, brain body interface. Every moment with Martin was directed and intentional. Martin was always on task. He was an all-business kind of guy.

He showed me how to access my reserves of adrenaline. How to refresh and awaken myself. A light touch here, a push there, and soon I was wide awake and completely refreshed ... ready to go face the world.

"That's how that's done, you can extrapolate from there."

"Thats AMAZING, Martin"

"That's a parlor trick, Carter. Just don't get attached to it. It works for a couple of days and then your body catches up with you." He smiled. "Let's go."

"Where are we going?"

"Just drive."

We drove back down 101 Southbound the way I had just come in. He was quiet most of the way. Every once in a while he'd show me some small trick, some thing. One of the more interesting moments went like this.

"Drive faster"

"I'm going seventy."

"Go ninety."

"That's really fast Martin, I'm not a great driver at that speed."

"Just do it."

I went faster and faster. My Honda was not happy.

"Good, now watch this."

Martin then directed my inner attention outward, and I flowed along with him. He directed my attention outward to the intention of the drivers around me. Suddenly, I was in this bubble of just flat knowing what every car around me was going to do.

"This is awesome! I know what they're all about to do before they do it."

"Good, but now watch this."

Next I could feel his power flow outward, very controlled, very precise. Everything about Martin was elegant, almost feminine that way. His power reached out around us, and people just didn't want to be in my lane.

I drove down the highway at ninety miles an hour. No one stopped me, no one got in my lane suddenly, I knew where all the cars were going. I felt this incredible sense of power.

We arrived at Valley Medical Center in Fresno a little over an hour and a half later. I'd been so amazed at the trip and the experience that I didn't pay attention to where I was headed. I parked.

"Why are we here, Martin?"

"You're here to fix something."

"What?"

"You're here to fix that man you hurt."

"I tried, I can't." I suddenly felt tired again.

"You don't know what you can do. You have no idea what you can do. You're a rogue. Without proper training, you could end up eventually being really dangerous, but right now you're just a danger to yourself and the unprotected 'normals' around you."

"Now Carter, you remember the feel of his mind, yes?"

"Yes."

"Reach out for it."

"How?"

He showed me.

"There, like that ... now reach out for that man's mind."

"Okay, I feel him."

"Good. Now think back. Think hard. When you hit him with your power, what did you do?" I could feel Martin's 'touch' slide along side mine as I held onto Frank's ... Frank's ... aura? Mind? Life? There was something gentle about Martin's power, something caring.

"I don't know, really."

"Stop that sloppy thinking. It'll get you killed. It'll kill others. THINK. What did you do?"

"I just kinda felt for him and just snapped something"

"Really? Hmm, you're a powerful talent, Carter."

"Why do you say that?"

"Feel him ... go into him the way I've gone into you ... flow in there."

"How?"

"Like this..."

"Ah." I could see how to do what he was telling me as I sent my consciousness alongside him.

"Good, now what do you feel? What do you sense in there?"

"No one is home. It's awful, there's no mind there."

"Yes there is, look over there." He directed my attention down deep inside Frank. What I saw there was something like a slash or a cut across ... across his 'selfness'.

"What you did Carter was impressive. You suppressed the activity in his frontal lobes. Look here. That's where people's thinking connects to their brain, that's the mind — body connection. You severed it. Brutal."

"I'm not exactly happy about that."

"Now you're going to fix it."

"How, Martin? He seems pretty broken."

"Pull from here and push from here. Let his mind heal."

I did what he said to do. I worked under Martin's guidance and healed the damage I had done. In the hospital in front of us, up on the fourth floor, in the intensive care unit, Frank Merkowski woke up and smiled at the ward nurse. I cried when that happened.

Then Martin showed me how to actually look into that guy's mind, not just look at it like a big block of thinking to hammer away at. He showed me how to actually read someone's mind, how to get inside it. A person's mind is not this massive monolithic block, though it seems like it when you first wake up as a telepath. Initially, a human mind feels like a trip to the circus. Wherever you look there's something happening and it's all happening far too quickly to comprehend. So you just let is all wash over you and hope to catch a detail here and there.

What Martin showed me is that the human mind is a little bit like a computer, and a little bit like an onion. It's like an onion in that there are layers to people's thinking. Down at the deepest layers are the ancient systems, fight or flight, lust and passion, smells, all that old caveman hindbrain stuff. The outermost layers and the 'thinnest' ones are the ones that we'd call 'thinking' ... people doing math in their heads, or making a shopping list. A human mind is also like a computer in a way in that there are these functions or processes that are hardware. Like a beating heart or breathing. Yet, the mind has some access to them, slowing the heart or whipping your body up into a fighting rage. I was amazed by the complexity of what I was sensing.