Seven Point Eight (32 page)

The next photograph showed a girl of mixed race origin. She had skin the colour of milk chocolate, and braids in her hair. In the photograph, she took part in a school play in the lead role.

“Aleisha Keane, born 10
^th
of August 1981 to Roger and Beatrice Keane. They currently live in
Jamaica
, where Beatrice was born. Aleisha is academically bright, a good all rounder but seems to excel at anything that involves leadership, with an enhanced capacity for organisation and initiative. She also enjoys acting, and is very good at that too.”

The man didn’t seem as impressed but looked thoughtful. Daniel handed him another photograph of a lonely and troubled looking boy, with dark hair cut in a bowl style. His large, blue eyes were startling as they were sad.

“Anthony Preston, born 29
^th
of December 1981 to Roy and Colleen Preston. He says very little but has a keen mind, capable of advanced maths and problem solving. Anthony plays chess on a regular basis and has beaten everyone who plays him. His memory is incredible, and he can remember the entire sequence of a deck of cards.”

The man looked concerned at the boy’s sadness and studied the picture of Anthony intensely. Daniel passed him the next photograph of a girl with long, dark hair and a pretty face.

“Katie Wright, born on the 12
^th
of February 1982 to Keith and Anne Wright. She’s exceptionally bright and sociable, with an early leaning towards science. At the tender age of eleven, she had an advanced understanding of the universe and wants to be an astronaut. Her brother shows no signs of prodigious abilities.”

“And finally, Ava Kavanagh.”

Daniel passed him a recent photograph, in which Ava left the lab with her co-worker, Tom. The man stared silently at the picture, deep in thought until Daniel gave a run through of his findings.

“She was born on the 19
^th
of November 1967 to unknown parents, and adopted by David and Caroline Kavanagh at the age of four. There’s no trace of her anywhere until that age, my guess is that she lived abroad. At school, she was clearly brighter than the rest of the kids and leaned towards the sciences at an early age. Ava achieved a first in her genetics degree and since 1991, she’s been working at her uncle’s research lab. This is where it starts to get really weird.”

The man became more attentive now.

“Last year there was…an incident. One of the workers had a grudge against her uncle and decided to take it out on her, by attacking her with a highly contagious and fatal virus. The strange thing is, she survived, and not only did she survive, she developed no symptoms. The official line is that the virus wasn’t live, but my informant assures me the rest of the batch wasn’t ‘duff’, as he put it. Since then, she’s been involved in illicit research with her co-worker, Tom Fisher, based on her anomalous immunity to the disease. Their results so far indicate an almost…superhuman immune system, for want of a better word.”

The man’s expression gave little away, although Daniel felt as if he’d stepped into a science fiction book or conspiracy tale. He looked to his contractor for some sort of feedback, but received no leads.

“I hope the information is to your satisfaction,” Daniel said.

“You’ve told me what I needed to know.”

“Did you know beforehand that virtually all of these people are prodigies?”
 
Daniel asked. “It’s certainly…a coincidence. I also noted one other factor that most of them share.”

“And what is that?” the man asked.

“Well, all of the kids were conceived
in vitro
, if you know what I mean. Except Ava, because test tube babies didn’t exist in 1967.”

“Your observations are noted.”

“Is that all?” Daniel asked.

“No, I have more research for you.”

His contractor passed two envelopes across the table, one contained the payment for his work and the other contained a piece of paper. Daniel looked at another list, an additional ten names of children all born in 1982, plus eleven more names of people born much earlier in the century, with no apparent connection to any of the youngsters. Who were these adults? He looked at the man, incredulously.

“You have a year to bring me the results like before, although you may find some of the adults now reside abroad somewhere, just do your best. I’d really like to find these people.”

Daniel nodded and stood up to leave, but then the man asked him a question.

“This co-worker of Ava’s, Tom Fisher… Can he be trusted?”

“Trusted?”

“With the knowledge that he holds about her,” the man continued.

Daniel gave him a wry look.

“Well, let’s put it this way, he talked for a lot less money than I thought he would.”

The man seemed concerned but didn’t trouble him with it. Instead, he just nodded with appreciation and Daniel left the room. Outside, Daniel gave little thought to Ava’s potentially precarious predicament and looked at the list of children’s names. The dates were much closer together this time. How many more of them would there be? And was there a more sinister, underlying connection between them? Who were these adults and how were they connected, if they were at all? A story lurked beneath all this and he felt determined to get to the bottom of it.

Back in the room, the man drummed his fingers on the table again. He picked up the phone and called his friend, an associate researcher at another university whom he’d recently asked a favour of. His friend answered, as the number was a direct line to his lab.

“Hi Mike,” said the man, “have you found that electromagnetic anomaly yet?”

“Hey, I’m doing fine, thanks for asking,” Mike joked. “Yeah, I was going to give you a call, just confirming the data now. I’ve picked something up in a remote part of the Far East,
Hokkaido
Island
.”

That didn’t surprise the man.

“I also noticed some weird shit on
Long Island
,
United States
,” he added, “don’t know if it’s related. The
Hokkaido
anomaly is continuous, whereas the
Long Island
one switches on and off. Do you mind telling me what this is all about?”

The man considered his request, but remained adamant.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said.

Mike responded, “Try me.”

“Another time…we’ll discuss it another time.”

The man put the phone down, satisfied that his plan was beginning to come together. He sat quietly in reflection, with the photographs strewn in front of him, looking over them thoughtfully, particularly the one of Ava. It appeared the woman he’d seen walking through the park matched the photograph of Ava. He wasn’t wrong, he hadn’t been wasting his time watching her. Now he had to decide his next move.

14

OOBE’s Birth

Since Paul made a passionate presentation to Max at the end of July 1964, he’d been on tenterhooks. The possibilities of space exploration via remote viewing overflowed his everyday thoughts, and he couldn’t concentrate on writing his book about the soul as an electromagnetic field. Ironically, maybe this electromagnetic body would allow humans to explore space.

Could he have envisioned something that would revolutionise space travel, even though it was just in its infancy? The current impetus sought to expend so much fuel and dollars, and subject the human body to such an extreme environment, that to only take the vital part of a person, their consciousness, the entire core of their sentiency seemed an obvious solution. In the future, remote viewing could scout possible worlds for exploration first, before exploring physically. The scope of it excited him, for maybe human consciousness could, indeed, know no boundaries.

One September evening, Paul listened to the radio while attempting to type out his most recent thoughts and conjectures. Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’ played in the background, and a copy of a recent physics paper sat folded up beside him on the table. In it, he’d read an interesting article about Peter Higgs, who proposed that a massive quantum particle called a boson potentially gave atoms the invisible mass that equated with all that empty space, a topic discussed in one of his early lectures.

The phone rang and Paul stopped typing. For some reason, he sensed its significance and taking a deep breath, he picked up the phone, hearing Max’s voice on the other end of the line. Greetings were brief, as he wanted to get to the point.

“I’ve reached a decision on your proposal,” Max began.

The moment of truth had arrived. Paul needed Max to gain access to remote viewers of high calibre and provide the funding.

“What you propose is radical, challenging yet progressive. It has the capacity to stretch frontiers and expand our knowledge of the cosmos, yet, the results will be difficult to prove and substantiate.”

Was this positive or negative feedback?

“It’s unlikely conventional science will ever touch this, however, as we both know, the government uses reports by remote viewers for a variety of different purposes, many of which are of interest to national security.”

Okay, it looked 50/50 now.

“I’ve decided to proceed with this project on a trial basis, which will be a year in duration.”

Paul wanted to punch the air. Although Max had only offered him a trial, it would prove whether the project had longevity or not.

“How does that appeal?” Max asked, on not receiving a verbal response.

“It sounds fantastic.”

That was an understatement.

“Of course, you’ll need a remote viewer who is capable of this kind of advanced work.”

That had been the only barrier, aside from persuading Max.

“I have someone here at The Institute who’ll be perfect for this project. She’s shown astounding potential so far and I believe if anyone can pull this off, she can. However, she does have study commitments and duties here at The Institute, so I can only lease her to you once a week at the most, hence, the twelve month long trial. Is that a reasonable acceptance of your proposal?”

It was all falling into place quite nicely.

“I’m happy with that,” Paul replied.

“Don’t forget you have my project to work on too, we need a method of protection against other remote viewers. I’m depending on you for this.”

“Don’t worry,” Paul reassured him. “When can I meet this new remote viewer?”

“I’ll send her over in a few weeks time. Her name is Tahra.”

Max hung up and Paul breathed a sigh of relief. Success! All he had to do was meet this remote viewer and see what she could do. He wondered what she was like, and why nobody had mentioned her before.

***

As Tahra stood outside Max’s office at The Institute, tumultuous feelings churned around inside her. She had to face him again, something she wished to avoid after her behaviour at the birthday meal. So far, they’d evaded each other and now that stalemate had to be addressed. She wondered what he wanted from her.

After knocking, she heard Max say ‘come in’ and she fumbled with the handle as she opened the door. Feeling awkward and humble for a change, she entered and found Max, sat at the desk with a pen in his hand. For a brief moment, she thought she saw something other than indifference on his face, but his cool demeanour soon returned. She took a deep breath and decided to hold her head high.

“You can sit down,” he said, with a vague hint of weariness in his voice.