Chapter 23: A Quiet Sunday Spent Relaxing

When I finally awoke I was groggy, it was dark outside and the lights were on. It took me a while to focus and I realized I must have been drugged again, since my head felt like a cotton ball. Although I seemed to have slept well, no doubt aided by the drugs, I remembered odd little dream fragments. One featured a little black girl poking her tongue at me, taunting me with "You'll never amount to anything. You'll never be any good". I had to shake my head a little to get my brain to begin focusing.

"Ah, finally you're up," Chalise observed from beside me. It was only then I noticed I had a bedmate on my small hospital bed. Chalise looked comfortable cuddled up to me.

"Kitty had to go home," Chalise told me, apologizing for her friend. "She wanted to stay, but her father felt it was a bit much letting her stay over." I looked at her so she blushed a little, realizing she hadn't finished her explanation. "My mom stayed over as well. She went down to the cafeteria since we didn't know how long you'd be asleep."

Looking around I saw Ryan and Jennifer, of all people, talking together, while Cate, Becky, Dr. Avers Peterson and Dr. Edward Padilla were deeply involved in a discussion in the corner. There were also a few of my girls scattered about as well.

Anh walked up, alerted by Chalise, and gave me a long drink from a glass to help me refresh myself. It was painful swallowing, but it helped alleviate my dry throat, plus I was tremendously thirsty and hungry. As if anticipating this, Anh handed me a large thermos she must have prepared at home for me. Opening it I discover a thin but rich soup which smelled wonderfully to a hungry kid.

"Hospital dinners too small for you," she announced. "You need to eat good to recover properly."

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you'll have to stick to the IV for now, Alex," Ryan warned me, seeing me staring into the thermos. He got up and walked over to me.

"So, how are you feeling?" he asked, checking me over and waving his finger before my eyes to test my responsiveness. Rebecca walked up from the other side and checked my vitals.

"He says he's feeling fine," Shani answered for me. "He's feeling groggy and hungry, but otherwise he isn't too bad. His throat still hurts, but the headache is mostly gone."

"I'm not surprised with the way you heal. You're looking good, though." As Rebecca told him my numbers he started to peel back my bandages to examine my throat.

"Hmm, it looks good. As usual, it's healing quite rapidly. It was a clean through and through. There was no specific injury to any vital organs, but there's still significant swelling, so you'll have trouble talking and swallowing for several days. The surgery was just to ensure nothing was damaged, and to sew the damage up in a more methodical manner. We'll keep you overnight, mostly for insurance purposes and to ensure you get a full dose of antibiotics and IVs for hydration. After that you can head home if you want, although I'd stay home from school for the rest of the week. Your sister tells me you're fully caught up at school, so you should be able to take a little time off to recover. She also mentions you have your prom coming up and you have a few ladies expecting dances, so if you stay home this week I'll allow you to attend your prom. Needless to say, you were incredibly lucky. The neck is very thin and holds a lot of blood vessels and nerve bundles. The fact he missed them all was amazingly lucky."

Unable to say anything I just shrugged.

"He say we, his girls, believe he have someone watching over him," Anh said. "He mostly means me. I tell him about spirits from the spirit realm visiting the earth. They all think I crazy," she said smiling.

"Well, I wouldn't be surprised. Getting shot from that close, it's amazing you weren't much more seriously injured."

"I'm sorry for having them keep you asleep so long, Alex," Cate announced, standing up and moving to my bed, "but I told Dr. Ryan to medicate you so you'd rest. You kept holding court for so long you got exhausted, and we were so worried over what happened to you Friday night I decided you really needed time to recover, even if it meant drugging you."

I nodded, letting her know I understood. Cate smiled, seeing from my expression that I didn't object.

"He says he doesn't like being out like that, but you made a good call," Anh explained for me. "He was having a hard time before he finally fell asleep."

At this point everyone congregated around my bed, but Anh waved them back.

"He need stand up, move around. Let him get some exercise." Anh's English was getting better all the time, I had to give her that much.

Everyone stood back as Chalise climbed out of bed and she and Cate helped me to stand up. I was a little weak from having lain in bed for so long, but it was nice to get up and move. They guided me the short distance to a nearby chair where everyone had been in such deep discussions. Shani took care of my IV stand for me. It was a short trip, but it was tiring as well. There were chairs scattered around, so everyone sat with me.

"Well, we're glad you're up," Ryan told me. "As you've probably noticed, Edward, Avers and I told the wives we'd be working late just so we could talk with you. These two sisters of yours have been brainstorming for a while, so we're anxious to hear what new theories they have, but they refused to share anything until they can present it to you first."

I was going to grunt, but remembered just how painful it would be, so I merely nodded instead.

Just then the door opened and Caroline, Allison and Natalie entered and joined us.

"You know," Ryan continued, "I've been sitting here having a very interesting discussion with Jennifer. Not surprisingly, she's very interested in oncology given her own history and what she's been doing here with the other cancer patients. We got to talking and I mentioned that I've got a friend out west who is working with a very poor community which is suffering from a high cancer incidence. They think it's from contaminated groundwater, but they can't afford testing equipment or new lines being dug. Thus my friend, Dr. Simon Reinhart, is using it to study cheap alternative cancer treatments which can be used in remote areas and third world countries which can't afford chemotherapy treatments.

"Allison mentioned you are planning on heading west after school lets out. Since you're heading that way, I'd be obliged if you could possibly stop by and visit him. He's really concerned with his patients, so much so he's spent a lot of his own money helping them. But he can't afford treatments for everyone. I'm sure he'd be willing to sacrifice some of his testing for some real results."

"Where does this Dr. Reinhart work?" Anh asked.

"He's in a remote section of Utah. If you made it as far as Las Vegas I'm sure he could arrange to pick you up. He's outside of Cedar City. It's a bit of a hike, but it would mean the world to him."

"And these people are in bad shape?" Anh asked again.

"Yeah, since they can't afford any treatments, and since they can't get clean water or improve their sanitation equipment, things are very tough. He's trying a variety of options to boost their immunity, as well as a variety of native cures, but many of them aren't showing much improvement."

"Alex say he not sure how soon he could make it, but maybe Jennifer would like to head out, since she doesn't have any appointments here? She could check the people there, see if there is anything he could help with. She could communicate with him over long distances. That way, once he got there, he could see what he could do."

Jennifer looked up at me, her eyes suddenly bright.

"Are you serious, Alex? I'd love to be able to help people suffering from cancer. I know just how expensive it is, and how rough it is even when you are receiving the best treatments. If I could help some people who aren't getting much help, it would be really important. What's more, I could help you. I could search for other people like us out there where you wouldn't normally find. I'll be sure to stop at each of the towns. I may not find anyone, since there aren't a lot of people in that region, but they would be people you wouldn't ordinarily find."

I considered this, which was made slower by my partially drug addled brain. Finally I nodded to them both.

"He thinks it's a great idea. He asked me if I'd do it for him, and I think it's a great opportunity to put my new abilities to use," Jennifer told Ryan. "I'd love to be able to see what I can learn on my own, effectively testing out what Allison has been teaching me the past week."

"Great, so I can call Simon and let him know he'll be getting some assistance, then?" Ryan asked.

"Alex says to go ahead," Allison said. "He can't give you a timetable for when he's likely to reach there, but he'd be glad to help, as long as it isn't too far out of his way. Rebecca can handle his scheduling for him, so have him contact her so they can work out when he should be in the area. As you're already aware from talking with Cate, he's a little concerned with how much time he may have available, so he's a bit concerned with keeping things in focus now."

"I'm sure Simon will be willing to agree with whatever you want. Having you there would be worth several extensive chemo therapy treatments for quite a few patients, although it may throw his results off.

"But speaking of how much time you have, I'm very concerned with what Cate and Allison have been telling me about you. I'll do a quick check, run several tests, but I'm guessing it's going to be hard to determine how your overall health is doing. If this energy surrounding you is stressing your body, it's also healing any signs of that stress, so it will be hard to measure. There may be something which will turn up on standard blood tests, but you are a very unique case. I suspect we'll be recording what happens to you to figure out how to handle cases like this in the future. I don't think anyone else has ever been in this situation before."

I groaned, and it did hurt just as badly as I had thought it would.

"Run the tests," Allison told him. "It may not give us much, but we should document where he stands at the moment."

"Probably what we need is a stress test," Ryan informed me. "You know, one of those things where you get on a treadmill and run for 20 to 30 minutes and we see how your body reacts to it. I'm guessing that will be the only thing to reveal anything, and if what Cate told me is true, it would be equivalent to what you went through the other day." I couldn't help but blush, imagining what Cate described regarding what we were doing at the time, but the good doctor ignored my embarrassment. Ryan rattled off a series of tests for Rebecca to run. She nodded and hurried out to find the necessary equipment.

"Now that that's done," Allison continued speaking for me, "Alex wants to know what you two have been getting up to," she asked Cate and Becky.

Cate got serious now, and turned to look me in the eyes, not glancing at anyone else but simply speaking directly to me.

"Well, before I begin, let me tell you about the tests I was conducting this past week. You got shot before I got a chance to finish it. When they first put you under I went home and caught up with stuff, as well as bringing several things you might need, and I finished them then. It looks like you didn't cause Jennifer's bones to shatter like you were afraid. However it did contribute to it. The rabbits' bones weren't as strong as the one's you didn't do anything to. I'd suggest if you try that treatment in the future, that you drain the energy from the cancer, then when it looks better you then try to feed energy back into the bone to try to make up for what you took from them. I don't know what effect that will have, but it may prevent what happened to Jennifer from occurring again. But basically it wouldn't cause the bone to shatter on its own. Jennifer's bones were already very fragile when you began her treatments.

"Now, this newest twist of you doing something to Rakeem's brain made Becky and I revisit our previous theories. We think we have some new ideas, but we wanted to pass them by you first. Are you sure you want everyone here to hear them?" she asked me.

"He says they've heard most everything else, it would probably be good to have them provide feedback on it," Allison told her.

"Except this isn't medical or even biological in nature, but is mostly about alternative physics," she warned. However, not having any idea of the direction she was going to go in, I couldn't do much more than shrug. So far they'd kept my secrets, I'd trust them to continue doing that.

She seemed to accept that as well.

"Very well," Cate told me. "So far, we've thought this mysterious hole in your head was how the energy you radiate gets into your head. We believed the similar one in your girls' heads was simply a haphazard method of building new brain tissue where there was none before. We had no idea how it worked, but your girls confirmed it seemed that was where your energy was at its strongest, so it made sense. Now, however, we think it's both more complex and simpler than that. I think the reason why there's a gap in your brain isn't because of what is coming into your brain, as much as what was sucked out. This is going to sound crazy and completely unscientific, but let me explain it first. I suspect you somehow opened a portal to another dimension, and it essentially yanked the gray matter you had there out."

Ryan edged closer and Alex started to say something, so Cate quickly held her hands up, forestalling any arguments. "Let me get through the initial explanation before you start discussing the finer points, as there are several issues to get out. We're well aware it sounds like a bad Sci-Fi movie, but it's our best idea on the subject.

"Essentially, we think you created this conduit to some other, I'll say dimension, because I don't know how else to describe it. But you somehow created a link which allows for instantaneous transmission of thoughts, emotions, sensations and matter. It seems it takes anything fed into it and transmits it. That's why it created a perfectly round hole in each of your brains. That's probably the dimension of the portal. The reason why there's no liquid or cerebrospinal fluid in it is because, as soon as it enters, it's transported out. However, for whatever is taken out, you also get what is on the other end, which seems to be a boundless supply of this life force. That's why you have this radiating energy pouring out of you.

"Also supporting this theory is the lack of any scarring on your brain. It seems to be fully functioning tissue, adapted to utilize your new abilities. Thus it wasn't so much 'ripped out' of your head, which would have caused significant tissue damage, as it was cut off and transported, effectively separating it quite efficiently from the surrounding tissue. If Edward could utilize the same technique when dealing with brain tumors I'm sure he'd have a great deal of success, as it can successfully remove tissue without damaging any surrounding tissue. The new energy flowing in helped your brain form new connections to deal with those lost to your creating this 'portal' which could take advantage of it.

"Now, let me just discuss the sci-fi aspects of it. When I say 'portal', I'm not suggesting it's actually a different dimension, since we have no proof those exist. All I'm saying is that you seem to be transmitting material, energy and other things back and forth over incredible distances with little effort. It could very well just be to somewhere we're unfamiliar with here in our own galaxy, but we have no way of knowing. However, wherever it is, it seems to be a source of incredible amounts of this energy. You should also note that the links in Rakeem and your girls' heads don't lead to the same place, since they don't have access to the same levels of energy. I'll get to why I think that's so in a minute.

"This also helps explain why you can communicate telepathically over long distances. Not only isn't it limited by physical distance or obstacles, we're proposing that it doesn't even travel via physical space. Instead it's somehow transmitted through the linked portals that Alex created in each of your brains. That would mean you could travel anywhere on the planet and communicate just as you are now. In fact, I'm guessing you could travel to the moon and have no difficulty talking as much as you'd like in real time."

I had to sit back to consider all of this, despite my brain still feeling cloudy. It was a lot to take in. It's one thing to suggest you have a weak ability to speak to someone, hardly shocking because it's only the equivalent of a cheap walkie-talkie, but it's another to say I'm teleporting both thoughts, energy and matter between dimensions, or whatever they hell they were. I suspect Cate could see the disbelief in my eyes.

"Your unique genetic trait isn't that you can communicate telepathically or activate people, but that you can create tiny portals to other worlds. We think you've created one in each of your girls, then used the energy you got from this other world to foster the growth of sufficient brain matter to handle it. That's why it took so long for you to first be able to process your telepathy. At first you simply had a connection, and then you had to learn how to grow tissue to take advantage of it. I'm guessing you perfected the process a little more with each girl you did it to. That might also be another reason why you kept getting increases to your abilities, you simply figured out better ways to handle your abilities based on the increased experience you had with it. It seems you have so much energy because your 'portal' either is closer to the source of the energy, or you simply created a larger portal for it to travel through. If it's the latter, it may explain why it's overwhelming you now. You may have unintentionally created a larger connection than your body can handle. That would be easy to do the first time you attempt something."

"An alternate theory is that the portals you supposedly created in your girls' brains are actually linked directly to your own brain," Becky suggested, jumping in to offer a new variation on Cate's theory. "That may actually fit better, the reduced amount of energy they receive may be because they are only receiving a small amount of your own energy. It's a 'neater' theory, meaning it explains things a little nicer, with fewer unexplained side issues. Unfortunately, the only way we'll ever know is if you were to pass on. Then we could see whether your girls retained their ability to communicate with each other. If so, then chances are their portals are similar to yours, only smaller. If not, then they are likely tied directly into yours. Unfortunately, there's no telling what you did when you've been 'boosting' their abilities lately. You may very well have been creating a new portal in each of them which serves as a communal portal. Otherwise you may have just given them the ability to bypass your controls over your own brain. We really don't know which it is. So just be sure not to boost everyone's abilities, just so we'll be able to figure out what happens after you, uh, pass away," she explained a bit nervously.

"Becky has a good point," Cate suggested. "I'm guessing you somehow modified the girls' portals rather than created new ones, though we'd need new MRIs to be sure. For all I know, you may be able to create one portal on top of another, since we don't have any idea how these things would function. If so we'd never find any physical evidence to support any of what we're describing."

"However, it would also mean that Alex is just like the Apple company is," Becky said, drawing her own parallel, "he could potentially keep coming up with new upgrades to his basic models every so often, boosting everyone's ability without having to do anything new to their brains. If not, then he may indeed upgrade their 'phone', as it were, by creating a new area in their brains' many fissures and sulci."