Discovery (Science of Psionics Book #1) (2 page)

Glancing over at Linda’s display, I saw that
the virus scan was still running, but the file copy was complete.
Opening the shared folder, I ran my own virus scan on the files I
had copied over. They checked out clean, so I opened up the one I
needed for our shared work.

As I started reading, I reached over to my
coffee cup and promptly knocked it off the table. Ignoring the
inevitable result, I frantically reached out to save it, but a
sharp pain shot through my arm that caused me to yank it back. I
carefully took a few deep breaths.

Pulling it back to my chest I grabbed it
gently. The pain receded quickly, and I guessed that I had just
pulled a muscle wrong by moving it so fast. After rubbing it for a
minute, I figured I had better go ahead and start the cleanup. I
glanced down to pick the path of least soakage to my slippers and
froze.

After several seconds to allow my brain to
process what my eyes were seeing, I took a few steps around my
coffee mug. I checked it from all angles, even getting down on my
knees for a closer look, but I finally had to accept the fact that
my coffee mug was hovering about four inches off the ground.

A chill seemed to run through me as I reached
out a finger to touch it. I moved it about an inch and jerked my
hand back quickly and continued to stare at it. It sat there,
hovering in the adjusted position. Reaching out again, I turned the
cup to level and pulled my hand back again to watch, but it just
sat there in the new orientation, as steady as if it were still on
the table top.

Standing up, I paced back and forth for a few
minutes, never taking my eyes off of it. Puzzled, I walked back to
it, and putting my hand underneath, I slowly raised it back to the
height of the table top. Removing my hand, it stayed at the new
height and about six inches away from the edge of the table.
Confused and a little scared, I sat down in the chair by the window
and continued to stare at it.

“This is not possible,” I thought to myself.
“What the hell is happening? Am I still asleep?” I got up and
resumed my pacing. I couldn't think straight at the moment and
pacing always helped; I could always think a bit better while
moving.

“Ok ... what are the options here? One, I'm
asleep and having one stupidly weird dream. Two, I silently went
batshit crazy. Three, someone stored a few dozen hits of acid in
the coffee can, and I brewed up a big steaming pot of
hallucinogenic crap. Four ...” I thought back to the pain that shot
up my arm when it happened. “Four, I somehow caused the cup to stop
in midair.” Stopping in mid stride, I slowly reached out my hand
toward the cup from across the room.

“Come! Get the heck over here!” I ordered the
hovering mug. Nothing happened. I resumed my pacing and thinking.
“If I’m dreaming, then I can get a good chuckle from Linda when I
tell her all of this. If I’m crazy, then none of this really
matters since I’ll need real help. I doubt that there were drugs in
the coffee, so that leaves only
me
as the cause of this
event. That’s the only theory worth working on right now, but
how?”

Sitting again, I thought back to the exact
moment that this happened, and what I was doing and feeling. Being
a hardcore coffee fiend, I wanted my coffee, and knocking it over
would piss off both Linda and myself, although for different
reasons. She was always calling me the absentminded professor for
things like that. Maybe I needed to
want
it more for this
thing to work.

Reaching out my arm again, I concentrated on
the cup. How much I wanted it, how good it would taste, how I would
hate
for it to fall to the ground. Suddenly, the cup shot
straight toward me, landing in my open hand with a slight slosh of
the remaining liquid. Relaxing, I felt the weight of the cup in my
hand and knew that if I let it go now, it would fall. Staring at it
with both amazement and distrust, I took a sip. Feeling somewhat
stunned, the only thing my brain could process is that the coffee
had gone cold.

“Ok,” I said out loud. “Any of my
explanations of this could still apply, so how would I proceed if
this was a research project?”

My mind still a little incoherent, I tried to
apply the steps of the scientific method to the problem. The first
step is always to ask a coherent question. Ok, so my coherent
question is: what the hell is going on and how is this happening?
The next step would be to perform background research, but I had
too many opposing ideas to pick out any one line of inquiry.

Next would be to form a hypothesis. Well, I
should probably still discard the crazy or dreaming lines, as those
would be self-cancelling, which left the super power option.
Pausing for a moment, I realized that the super power option would
not necessarily preclude the crazy or dreaming lines, and I could
work with that. Ok, I was a batshit crazy, dreaming, superman.
Feeling better now that I had a course to follow that incorporated
all my lines of reasoning, I went and got a fresh cup of coffee
before sitting down in front of my computer.

The first thing that I thought to search on
was telekinesis. I spent the better part of an hour clicking
through the links that came up. Telekinesis, psychokinesis,
psionics, parapsychology… a guy could go on for days on this
stuff.

Ok, enough research, time to move on and form
a hypothesis. Somehow, I was experiencing the ability to control a
psionic power. The short definition of a psionic power was the
ability to perform an action with a mental rather than physical
effort. It seemed to fit.

Unable to comprehend the
why
of the
equation, I decided to concentrate on the
how
for now. That
meant that I needed to test the hypothesis by doing an experiment
under a bit more control than my half-assed attempt while still in
shock.

Staring down at the coffee cup, I tried to
calm my thoughts and concentrate only on the cup itself.
“
Rise
,” I thought at the mug. “
Rise
.” Closing my
eyes, I pictured the cup lifting off the table and thought sharply
at it, “
RISE
!” My eyes flew open as a sudden crash from
above startled me, and shards of the now shattered cup rained down
around me. It felt like my mind was going in a hundred different
directions at once as I cleaned up the mess with my body on
autopilot.

It seemed to work, if perhaps a little more
vigorously than I had planned for. Looking around for something
else to test with, my eyes fell upon my notebook. If that went
flying, at least it would do less damage. Trying to remember the
feelings that I had when the mug moved, I slowly extended my hand
toward the pad and softly said “
rise
,” lifting my hand
slowly while I concentrated. The paper fluttered for a moment, like
a breeze had struck it, and then slowly, it rose off the surface of
the table. Keeping my mind focused on the paper, I moved it slowly
up and down a few times. Then, twisting my hand slightly, I put it
into a slow spin.

I relaxed my concentration and let it fall
the few inches back to the table top and then tried again. It
slowly lifted off the table again, with slightly less effort from
me this time. I pulled it toward my open hand and grabbed it once
it was within reach, simultaneously relaxing my mental grip on it.
Ok, I now had a valid test and needed to analyze the experiment and
draw my conclusions.

Somehow, either through dementia, dream
state, or paranormal ability, I could cause objects to levitate.
Any of the reasons for the ability would be impossible for me to
determine by myself, since I could be considered a closed system
and only external input could resolve the dilemma. Well, the last
step of the scientific method is to communicate your results, so I
decided to go and get Linda out of bed. Walking back to the
bedroom, I tried to think of how to approach the subject, but was
baffled about how to begin. Opening the door, I turned on the
lights and saw Linda lying peacefully over the covers …
about
eight inches over the covers
to be precise.

Linda: Dreams in the morning

One of the vices that I reveled in was lying
in bed late. As much as I loved sleeping next to Mark, there was a
certain satisfaction to be found by having the bed to yourself and
stretching out anywhere at will. The bedroom was perfect for this
today, being neither too hot nor too cold, and I was enjoying it
fully. On a morning like this, I could cross the line between sleep
and wakefulness easily, and the vivid dreams this brought out in me
were amazing.

Dreams like this could even be controlled to
a degree. Some people referred to this as
lucid
dreaming
. Some of my best story ideas came out on mornings
like these. Today though, I had a more primal type of dream; I was
flying. Raising my arms high and wide, I leapt off the back deck of
my house and soared high into the crisp clear morning sky. Banking
right, I turned to follow the path of the stream winding its way up
the mountain, willing myself to go higher and faster.

Halfway up the mountainside was a pool which
took in numerous trickles of water before making the stream that I
had followed. I hovered there for a moment, enjoying the way the
morning sun created thousands of sparkling jewels from the flowing
water. A doe was drinking from the pool, her spotted baby beside
her. Everything looked so tranquil; I couldn’t help but pause and
enjoy how wonderful this dream was. The deer suddenly looked up at
me. Either I had made a noise, or it caught my scent.

“
Peace, little darling, I won’t hurt
you
,” I said calmly, but with feeling. The deer looked at me
for a moment longer before resuming her drinking. I lowered myself
down to the surface of the pool and scooped up a handful of the ice
cold water to take my own drink. I stretched myself out fully to
better enjoy the feeling of the hot sun all over my body. I watched
the deer, now sated, walk away to forage for her breakfast. I let
myself rise up in the hot sunlight almost like I was riding an
updraft.

Suddenly, the sky started to darken and the
world began to shake. Panicking, I felt myself start to fall.
Faster and faster I plummeted toward the ground, unable to slow my
descent. Screaming, I slammed into… the bed. Breathing fast and
heavy from the adrenaline surge, I looked around quickly and saw
Mark standing over me with his hand on my thigh.

“Easy honey,” he said in a soothing tone of
voice, “you were dreaming … and umm … more.”

“What?” I asked, still a bit freaked out with
the sudden scary ending of my otherwise pleasant dream.

“Get dressed and I’ll go make some fresh
coffee. I need to talk to you about something a little odd,” he
said as he left the room.

Crawling out of bed, I grabbed my robe and
headed toward the bathroom to take care of my morning ablutions.
All through my shower I kept thinking about my strangely vivid
dream. I could usually remember my morning dreams, but they were
always a little bit fragmented. They were also usually somewhat
more distant and dispassionate. By the time I had finished drying
my hair and put on my robe, I had re-run the dream through my head
at least a half dozen times.

Stepping out of the bedroom, I detoured to
the kitchen to put together a tray with mugs, cream, sugar, and a
carafe of coffee before continuing on toward the office where Mark
was waiting for me. Glancing over his shoulder as I walked past
him, the word ‘Psionics’ caught my eye. As I sat down, I wondered
what new project he had in mind that had him researching the
paranormal. Setting the tray down next to my laptop, I leaned
toward Mark to get my morning kiss.

“Morning, hon,” he said as he leaned toward
me for the kiss.

“Morning,” I replied with a smile as we broke
apart. “What are you working on now?” I asked as I fixed up my
coffee with some cream and sugar.

“Well,” he started, “I’m not quite sure how
to explain it.” He seemed unusually hesitant to me. “Perhaps I
should try and show you rather than attempting to explain.” Putting
action to words, he took a deep breath, and slowly extended his arm
toward the coffee tray. My eyes widened in shock as I saw the
carafe slowly rise off the tray and float toward his outstretched
hand.

“What…” I began incoherently. “I must still
be dreaming.”

“Sorry hon, but that’s my line. Find one of
your own.”

“How did you do that?” I finally asked.

“I’m not quite sure, to be honest. The first
time I did it was this morning when I accidently knocked my coffee
cup off of the table. I tried to catch it before it fell, and found
it somehow hovering above the floor. I tried to reason it through,
and could only come up with crazy, dreaming, gifted, or some
combination of all three. I tried to work it out logically, but
can’t really get anywhere from inside, so to speak. So now I put
the ball in your court to see what you can come up with.” With that
last statement, he refilled his mug and floated the carafe back to
the tray.

My head was spinning with the implications of
what I had just witnessed. Not knowing what to say, I took a sip of
coffee while I tried to compose my thoughts. After a moment, I
asked: “So … I have no idea if this is dream or reality, but
assuming somehow that it’s reality, how exactly are you moving
things without touching them?”

“I have no friggen clue on
how
or
why
, but the mechanics of it seem to be wholly mental. Using
hand and arm gestures also seems to help intensify my control over
the object in question.” He paused for a moment, deep in thought
before continuing. “I’ll try and explain what I’m thinking and
feeling while I do it, but I think that you somehow already
know.”