Chapter 4

The summer before 'The Day' and my mother moving to BFI, I had several friends one of whom was named Jimmy. The reason I mention Jimmy is that when I spent the evening or even spent the night with him his parents would let us watch whatever we wanted. That also had a down side in that for Jimmy the movies he loved the best was produced by some old guy by the name of Mel Brooks. His movies were entertaining enough and because a couple of them had historical themes I tended to remember them. In one of them there was a scene set in Rome and the conquering general is approaching the Emperor while another characters is standing behind him whispering, "Remember thou art mortal." Sitting in the back of the SUV riding home between my sisters, I was reminded of that line because no matter how much I trained or how far I could run returning home from the hospital I was totally wiped out to the point that I actually wanted to close my eyes and sleep as soon as we pulled out of the parking lot. When I opened my eyes again we were home and the SUV was parked in front of my stairwell with Brodie and my sisters looking at me. I was confused by my surroundings and I said so since I had just closed my eyes at the hospital; this brought giggles from my sisters who were sitting on either side of me like bookends keeping me upright.

My sisters' giggles brought our mother's attention to me, saying, "Brian, from now until tomorrow you are confined to bed as the doctors said that your body needs a lot of rest after your injuries. I got you out of the hospital but I do expect you to stay in bed."

Nodding my acceptance I had Shelly climb out first since she was closest to my stairwell, that only lasted a few seconds as Sherri was right there by the time my feet made contact with the driveway. With the help of my sisters they managed to get my exhausted body upstairs and into my bedroom where I preceded to collapse onto my bed not caring if I made it under the covers before I passed out. I was still lying in bed several minutes later my mother reappeared only this time she came bearing food and drink for the three of us. Making eye contact with me, she reminded me to stay in bed and if that was not possible then to at least stay in my apartment until the morning. She continued to lay down her law by adding that all of my martial arts were on hold until then too. Lastly she put my sisters in charge to let her know if I did not do what I was told.

I was thinking about being upset with my mother ordering me around but at the time I was just too tired to care one way or another that my sisters were staying with me to be my baby sitters. Lunch itself was one of my favorite if not entirely nutritious, Macaroni and Cheese, the food of ex-champions, to which my mother had added a couple of cut up hot dogs. Then to complete the ex-champion theme there were several sodas for my sisters and myself. Once lunch was over my sisters reminded me that I was supposed to stay in bed which was fine by me as I had a book that had belonged to my father on my nightstand. Opening the book I started reading, how long I read I had no idea or how long my two sisters stayed there reading or playing their I-pods before I fell asleep. I had no idea how long I slept and I did not care but when I felt another body shifting around on the bed I woke up wondering who had joined us.

The person that disturbed my sleep turned out to be Faith. I laid there with my eyes closed listening to them realizing that the three of them had become friends while I was stuck in the hospital. Their conversation now dealt with the last conversation my mother had had with the doctors. Most of it I already knew but according to my sisters the doctors were disappointed that they were unable to convince my mother to keep me in the hospital while they tried to figure out why I could see out of an eye that was obviously useless in addition to being able to heal so quickly. Once the explanations were done with the appropriate oohs and ahhs and sorrow being expressed at how unfair it was that Faith's sister would never be more than a quadriplegic requiring care for the rest of her life. Their conversation soon changed again thinking that it would be cool with some fantasy ideas of what else I could do since I had already survived being electrocuted. Faith put out that she wished that I could heal others as she missed riding and doing other things with her sister. I stayed awake for a while longer until my sisters turned the conversation to what the area was like, what the local boys were like and who lived nearby. When their conversation turned to the latest celebrity boy gossip I could take no more and I simply relaxed and went back to sleep.

The next time I opened my eyes I could see that the sun was just beginning to lighten the eastern horizon leaving the ground dark for another hour or so. My room was not totally dark as my grandfather's security light was on and it cast enough light through my window so that I never had to move around in total darkness. The light let me know that my sisters were still in my room in their pajamas, sleeping on either side with me under the covers while they slept on top of the covers trapping me in place. I tried to escape so that I could take care of my bladder without waking my sisters but I failed miserably. Every time I moved they moved, trying to move one over made the other snuggle up to my back. Finally in desperation I wished that both of them would go sleep on the couch. I was thinking what else I could do since my bladder issue was becoming severe when my sisters to my amazement both of them got up out of bed and walked out of the room.

Taking care of the business at hand I then poked my head into my living room to see where they had gone. I thought it was rather strange seeing them sleeping on the couch as I had requested but seeing that I was still tired I put the sight of them sleeping on the couch out of my mind and went back to bed alone. Only now lying in bed I could not get back to sleep as I thought about everything Peter had told me about what he could do. Adding to that I thought about what Master Kim had taught me.

I was thinking that this was odd when Peter answered, "Weird does not even start to cover this. Was that one of your Jedi mind tricks?"

I was still staring at my sisters sleeping there when I asked, "It may be just a coincidence but if it isn't what do we do with it?"

"I have no idea where to even begin. This falls into your Jedi mind tricks bag as I never did anything like this before personally I have never liked the idea of playing with someone else's mind, so I vote that this is your problem."

"Why me? You're the one with all the time on your hands. Hell you're the one that did this to me. I guess the old saying is right, 'No good deed goes unpunished." I answered.

Sharing a body with Peter was an interesting experiment in how different people think. That connection between us was strong enough that I could feel that he was scared. Taking a trick out of his bag I started to poke around in his memories what I found was that Peter was scared about being captured by his old handlers. Wondering why he was scared of them I did my own search of his memories and what I found gave me pause as the two doctors who suggested that I be taken from my family had nothing on what Peter had gone through with our benevolent government. Thinking about the images of his family that died then his stay in the hospital then finally as an asset of the government I could see why he never wanted to go back even if he was just a passenger with me.

Returning to bed I thought about what it would mean if I lost all of my family; at first I thought it would be nice but after a time I realized that I would miss them. I was still thinking these thoughts when the sun started lightening the horizon and I decided that sleep was better and that it would be nice if my sisters came back to bed and we could ignore the whole thing.

When I opened my eyes the sun crested the horizon Peter's nightmare returned in force. I opened my eyes to see that my sisters were back in bed with me.

My first thought was, "What the fuck?" when I realized that my sisters had returned to their positions in my bed as if they had never left during the night. Thinking that this was getting stranger I tried calling to Peter, the thing was he didn't answer which left me there wondering if I was going crazy. Or as I thought about movies maybe he was more like Brad Pitt's character in Fight Club and was a figment of my imagination. Looking at my sisters sleeping next to me I did not care where Peter was, I just needed his help to figure out what all this meant. But since he was ignoring me at the moment I took out my frustration on my sisters and ordered them out of bed to return to their own beds in the house. The problem with that was nothing happened. Thinking of another idea I concentrated on Shelly who was laying to my left and instead of ordering her out of bed I tried to give her the idea that she really needed to go to the bathroom. When that did not work I tried again but this time I thought about how I felt when I really needed to go and with that thought in mind tried to send it to her again. This time instead of ignoring me she started to squirm and after a couple of seconds she threw off her blanket and made a beeline for the bathroom. Taking that as my signal to escape, I did just that getting out of bed and heading to the living room.

It seemed to me that being scared came in multiple flavors. The easiest 'flavor' for me was facing someone in a fight where I had a chance to fight back, win, lose or draw. Another type of scared was not knowing what was going on and that was what I was facing now, I wondered what in the hell was going on? Implanting ideas or thoughts in my sisters' minds that they needed to go to the bathroom, or ordering my sisters to get out of bed and go to their room without saying a word was like you read about in those stupid stories on the Internet. Then again watching my sister come out of the bathroom and go back into the bedroom, I decided that maybe the stories were not so stupid after all. I needed to do some research and I needed to think about all of this a lot more but first I needed to clear my head.

With Shelly in bed rolled up in her blanket once again I closed the door so that I would not wake them when I started to practice my forms so that I could clear my mind and think, since Peter was hiding from me.

When I was done with my forms I was very relaxed as I knew I would be, so I decided to take a seat on the couch to see if I could come up with a reason why my sisters had done what they did during the night and what Shelly did this morning. Sitting on the couch thinking about it did nothing for me since neither Peter nor I had a clue as to what was going on. Thinking that I might find something better on the Internet I reached over to turn off the lamp, the problem was that as soon as my hand came close to the switch the lamp began to flicker. Pulling my hand away the flickering stopped.

When I reached for the lamp again, Peter offered, "This time think about what you want to do to the lamp."

"It is about damn time you showed up. Where in the hell have you been?" I shouted at Peter in my mind.

"Like I told you before I want nothing to do with any of your Jedi voodoo. I had enough trouble with what I could do. Now you are playing with people's minds, I want no part of that!"

"Well if you help me understand what all this means then I would be less likely to make a mistake and get us back into those labs that you are so scared about." I answered.

Peter did not answer and we stayed there not talking to each other for several minutes until I relented and attempted what Peter suggested I thought that I wanted to turn out the lamp. When I reached for the lamp this time it flickered for a second then went out with a click. Looking at the switch I could see that it had been turned off. When I asked Peter about what had just happened, all he said was that when he turned things on or off-the switch would always be thrown. I thought that that was somewhat odd but no matter how many times I practiced turning the light on or off the switch always tripped the way I wanted it to go. Once I was bored trying to figure out how I could throw a switch Peter had me pull the plug at the wall but this time he suggested that I sit with my back against the wall over the plug. The difference in energy levels was tremendous as I was receiving power from both sockets versus the lamp or any of the medical equipment I was hooked into while I was in the hospital. The down side to this power was that I immediately blew the circuit which required me to go downstairs to the circuit breaker panel in the main garage where I reset the breaker for the apartment.

I returned upstairs and Peter suggested that instead of just accepting the power straight, then when he first started to manipulate electricity that it was easier for him if he envisioned the power like water and that he was like a spigot controlling the flow. Sitting down in front of the socket again I did as Peter suggested only this time I was going to turn the spigot down to just a trickle. With that thought in my head I sat down in front of the outlet and this time I could feel the power flowing into me but at a reduced rate. Once I was comfortable with increasing and decreasing the flow, Peter had me grasp the two prongs from the lamp and redirect the flow of power that was coming into me from the socket to the prongs of the lamp. At first nothing happened but after trying for several minutes the lamp flickered then turned on steady. Losing my concentration the power from the wall increased and the light bulb popped accompanied by a flash. All I got from Peter was a laugh at my surprise and a story on how he learned to control the power.