Strangers and Shadows (15 page)

Jack rejoined the group, still trying to process this brand new experience.  “How come I haven’t seen anybody else floating objects around?” he asked.

“Well, it’s considered rude to use telekinesis in public, especially for simple tasks that can be accomplished without it,” Desmond explained.  “Not all of us here in the Sixth have the ability.  In fact, most don’t.  Those who don’t sometimes blame themselves, feeling inferior or incomplete.  So, we who have the ability try not to rub it in their faces, so to speak.”

“There are some, though, who disagree.  They think that their abilities are there to be used in whatever way they see fit,” Celia added.  “Usually it’s the younger ones.  I used to think that way.  Took me a couple of decades to come around.”

Jack looked at the beautiful woman in amazement.

“
What
?” Celia asked.  “I used to have a little wild streak in me.”  Her face was flushed.

Her father laughed.  “
Used to
?”   

Before Celia could defend herself, they arrived at their destination.  It was a closed door.

The door read
Professor Williams—Advanced Studies.

Desmond knocked on the door and waited.  There seemed to be no reply.  “He says he’ll be with us in just a minute, he’s almost finished with his class.”

“You people are freaks,” Jack joked, shaking his head.  “What exactly are we doing here, again?”

“We’re here to teach you how to shut up, Jack.”  Celia smiled.  “I like you and all, but if you don’t stop screaming every little thought you have, I’m going to kill you.”

“Sorry, I’m doing my best,” Jack said, feeling rather embarrassed.  But he wondered why he should be embarrassed at all.  It’s not like he knew any better.

“And that’s why we’re here, Jack.  It’s not your fault that no one ever taught you.”

Jack felt something strange, and heard a bell ringing in his head.  The door opened and twelve and thirteen year olds started spilling out of the room.

“And don’t forget, tomorrow we cover mind bombs!”  An older man with graying hair called out as children fled the scene.

“Professor!” Desmond exclaimed.  “It’s good to see you again.”

The professor looked up and saw Desmond and Celia.  “What’s she done this time?  Who are you going to get to fix her mistakes when I’m gone,
eh
?”  The professor and Desmond shared a hearty laugh.

“Celia, for once, isn’t the problem, Professor.”  Desmond turned to Jack.  “It’s him.”

“Well, hello there,” the professor said.  “What seems to be the troub—   
Aughh!
”  The professor rubbed at his temples.  “Ah, I see.  Quite the volume you have there… Jack, is it?”

“Uh, yeah, hi.”  Jack waved hello, moving in to shake the professor’s hand.  “That would be me.”

Directing his attention back to Desmond and Celia, the professor said, “Why don’t you give us a few hours, this could take a while.”

The team of father and daughter left the room, and the professor began packing up his things—notebooks, a few writing utensils, and put them into his bag.  He was wearing slacks, with a button-up sweater, and dress shirt underneath.  Mister Rogers definitely came to Jack’s mind.  Not as creepy though.

“This way, Jack.  Who’s Mr. Rogers?” Professor Williams asked, leading him out of the classroom and down the hall.  

“He’s an ancient TV show character that my mom used to make me watch when I was a boy.  Where are we heading?”

“I’m going to take you to the Academy for this one.”  He called over his shoulder, not pausing to see if Jack was following yet or not.

Jack jogged down the hall to catch up.  “What’s the Academy?”

“Come along, come along.  All in good time, my boy.”

They exited the university through the teacher’s lounge and into a parking structure of a design that was not unlike the ones from back home.  Hovers stacked neatly one on top of the other, some stacked as high as ten.  The hovers didn’t actually sit on top of one another, they were suspended by the mag holds in the walls of the structure.

Professor Williams’ hover disengaged from it’s mag-hold and began flying around to pick them up.

“How did you do that without your key?” Jack asked.  Back home, you had to have a key to activate your hover.  The keys could be just about any device, people usually picked something they always had with them like their comlink, a datapad—some even had the new implants that connected directly to the brain.  “Never mind,” Jack said, the answer finally dawning on him.  “Telekinesis right?  You moved it with your mind.”

“Telepathy, actually.  Most of our technology has telepathy incorporated into it.  Much harder to duplicate someone’s mind than it is to copy a key or hack a feed.”

The hover pulled around and the doors opened.  The men got in and Professor Williams told the hover where to go.  Well, Jack assumed he did; he never actually said or touched anything before they took off.

Aside from the limited view from his balcony and Desmond’s office, this was Jack’s first time fully seeing Cairo.  It was much larger than Jack had expected, sprawling into the horizon in all directions.  Even
his
New York wasn’t this big, Jack was impressed.

“No, it’s not,” the professor said.  “In fact, Cairo is the largest known city in any Verse.”

“It’s beautiful.” 

The trip was short, lasting only three minutes.  The Academy was a large glass pyramid dwarfing every other building around it for at least a mile. 

As they were landing, Jack remarked on how green the city was.

“Yes, we have terraformed the city to suit our needs.  Driving back the desert with trees, grass, and fields full of crops,” the professor explained.

“I know a lot of people where I come from who would love to know how it’s done.”  Jack said, thinking of the parts of Africa that were still devastated from droughts and the wars of a hundred generations before.

They parked the hover and entered the pyramid.  The Academy was much larger than it had looked from the air, there must have been a thousand or more rooms.  The corridors were like a maze, twisting this way and that, rooms branching off on either side.  If not for the Professor, Jack was sure he would be lost in a matter of minutes.  Young men and women milled about up and down the hallways, some in conversation, some silent, lost in thought or some telepathic function.

“This is where we train our Shadows.”

“That’s what Desmond is, isn’t it?” Jack asked.

“Very good, yes.  Celia, too.  They are our protectors and agents.  Here, this might help.”  The professor sent Jack a thought.

Jack saw an FBI agent, a CIA spy, a marine, a doctor, and a host of others in his mind.  The forms began to melt together, morphing into one body, taking a rough shape at first, and then smoothing out until there was only one person left.  It was Desmond.

“Kinda like the best of the best, right?  Superheroes,” Jack said, thinking he had the gist of it.

“Something like that, yes, and more.  After completing university, the most gifted young people are brought here to train to become a Shadow.  The only qualification is that they must have the telekinetic ability.”

“How many Shadows do your people have?” Jack wondered, thinking that an army of these would be quite formidable.

“In these times, not as many as we would like.  The training takes many years and many do not see it through until the end.  As of right now, there are little more than a hundred of them.”

“That’s it?  There must be at least five thousand people in the Academy right now.”

“Some don’t possess enough of the telekinetic gift to become Shadows, and some will decide that the life of a Shadow is not for them. It is not the easiest of roads, and your life is rarely your own.”

Jack said nothing, waiting for an explanation.

“They are a relatively new development for us.  Desmond, in conjunction with several others, is responsible for their founding.  With the discovery of the MultiVerse and the strife with the Seventh, they realized that we needed to create an agency capable of responding to any threats from outside verses.  The name for our agents actually comes from the Seventh, as a fully trained agent is like a shadow—there, but not there.  Unable to be grasped or held...”

“I see,” Jack said.

He was led to a small room, the walls about twenty feet long all the way around, and the ceilings  about the same.  It appeared to be a symmetrically perfect cube.  The floors looked like finished concrete, with a long-threaded, white, square rug in the middle of the room.  On top of the rug there was large crystal on a pedestal two feet off the ground.  The crystal was light gray and roughly cut, but translucent.  It reminded Jack of several glass sculptures he had seen once at an art exhibit that he had been dragged to on a first date.

“It’s an energy crystal.  It’s why I brought you here, instead of just doing this back at the university.  I thought you might need a little help.”  The professor smiled at Jack.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Jack said.  He was slightly offended, but not sure why—after all, it’s not like he had any idea what was going on or what he was supposed to do.  

“You’ll find that most people will vote for your confidence when they actually see that you have some…  Anyway, the crystal will amplify your telepathic ability, helping you to learn in a matter of minutes what may have otherwise taken you half a lifetime to learn.”

“Alright…  So how’s this work?”  Jack was excited to read somebody’s mind.  In fact, he’d been looking forward to this since he was seven years old, reading superhero comics on his bedroom floor.

“Hate to burst your bubble Jack, but you’ll probably never be able to read someone’s mind, unless you mutate somehow.  But you may be able to hear someone’s thoughts.  At least an unshielded mind’s thoughts… like yours right now.”

Jack’s enthusiasm faded.  “I’ve just about had enough of this crap about my inferior mind.  How do I shut it off?”

“Let’s begin:  First you must learn to connect with your own mind.”

“I think I’m pretty in touch with myself…  I can hear my own thoughts just fine.  I thought the problem was, so can everybody else.”

“You are not your thoughts though, Jack.  Anyone can connect to their thoughts.  You must connect with your mind, with your true self.  We’ll begin with an exercise, and go from there.  Have a seat.”  He motioned at the rug on the floor and then sat down.  

Jack followed his lead.

“Now, close your eyes and breathe deeply.  In, through your belly, not your chest, and all the way down.  Imagine that you’re breathing down into your legs and feet, that the air is filling up every part of your body.  And when you have inhaled fully, slowly let your breath out, relaxing completely as you exhale.”

Jack began to breathe as instructed, not really believing this was going to do anything.  But as he exhaled, he felt a calm begin to come over his body.

“Good,” Professor Williams said.  “Now, again, breathe deeply and relax your body even more… feel your muscles let go of all the tension that you have stored in them for a lifetime, and let yourself fall deeply into the calm that surrounds you.”

Jack kept breathing, trying to will himself to relax even more.  He became aware of his own heartbeat.  

The experience was completely foreign to him.  His mind began to wander as thoughts of Celia, and Cairo, and Kid came to him.  The feeling of anger and loss swelled up in him. 
What was he doing here?  He had to find Kid and rescue him.  He didn’t have time for this foolishness.

“Do you notice how loud your thoughts are now Jack?  How you can’t quiet them?”

Jack opened his eyes, frustrated.  “What am I supposed to do?  I can’t control what I think.  This is a huge waste of time!”

“You may not be able to control your thoughts, but you can learn to not be controlled by them,” the Professor said.  “I thought we might be able to take the gentler route here, but I see that we will not have enough time.  There is a faster way, but it is not very pleasant.  You will only be able to learn how to shield your mind from others, and you won’t be able to communicate back.”

“Whatever, let’s just get this over with so I can get on with finding  Kid.”  Jack’s patience was at an end.

“It’s good that you’re angry, it will help you.  The only other way for you to learn control over your mind is through pain.  I will, unfortunately, have to hurt you until you learn to protect your mind.  Are you ready?”

“
Ready
?  I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.  How can I...”  Jack was suddenly incapacitated by a searing pain in his head.  His vision went white and he slowly became aware of someone screaming.  It was his own voice.  Abruptly, after what seemed like hours, the pain stopped.

“Was that a pleasant experience for you?” Professor Williams asked.

“
What the fuck do you think
?” Jack spat.  “What the hell did you do?”  The blinding pain returned, this time even more painfully.