Chapter Twenty-two, Childhood
From the moment she was born Kathy lived in two worlds: one, the world of
her senses, of time and space; two, the larger world of memory.
Just beyond those two distinct modes of being there were forces that were
always active in her consciousness. She was aware of the living presence of all
of the other human beings around her, every single one.
Her memory spoke to her in words and visions, contextualizing everything
she encountered, summarizing each new experience at the speed of light, faster
than light. The operations of her mind could occur in no-time, nearing the
transcendent.
Every smell, every touch, every sound was evocative.
The things she saw, the foods and
drinks she tasted drew her out of herself and into another world.
As an infant she was often debilitated by the experience of new things.
She would get stuck in the on-rush of memories, coming on her like a flood
She often found herself paralyzed and drifting, floating in-between
worlds.
The voices came to her unbidden, they were the voices of her ancestors seeking
to protect her, but they were more than that, they were more than a
reconstruction of personalities from her ancestral memory. Through her unique
consciousness her memories were connected to the real presence of her
ancestors, of humanity, of actual people who were long dead and yet persisting
in the cynergenic field of Earth.
The imprint of every person who ever lived was present in this field, the
nous-sphere. Within this quantum
field every person who had lived and died was present.
There were hidden places within her, deep places she would spend years
discovering. This was not unique to Kathy, but she was uniquely able to access
all the remote regions of her sub-conscious and unconscious mind, the deep dark
well of her being.
There were languages that no person had spoken for thousands of years.
She conversed in them with her ancestors.
There were memories of love, of pain and the promise of transcendence.
She dwelt in them, rejoiced in them, and was lifted up by them.
Her memories were full of
visions; visions of transformation, visions of her ancestors, of her own self always
in a state of becoming.
Kathy took refuge there,
entertained herself there, she relived the great dramas of the collective past,
the stories that still lingered in the popular consciousness of her
contemporaries, she peeled away the myths, the lies and the propaganda.
She discovered the bare stories, the prime narrative behind the world’s
hero’s and god’s.
She spent even more time in the stories of the completely forgotten. In
the memories of the farmer and the slave, the common soldier, the ordinary
mother, among the artists and the craftsmen.
She learned.
She chose from among the people and figures of her memories, friends,
caring people who could guide her through the processes of managing the
incredible deluge that she was awash in.
Her internal mentors were not just figures from her ancestral past, they
also had an active, conscious presence in the cynergenic field.
She chose protectors, good people, teachers, those were had experiences
in life that were similar to her own.
Kathy’s memories came to her unbidden.
Memories populated her consciousness, suggesting themselves for her
consideration, to frame her understanding of the events she was experiencing in
real time.
In remembering she experienced
a dialog with the ancestors within her, deciphering events, answering questions
in an instant.
It was an atavistic process, happening faster than light speed, happening
in no-time.
Kathy was particularly susceptible to sensory input.
When she encountered a new feeling or texture, smelled or tasted
something she had not experienced before, saw or heard something that had been
unknown to her, the forces within her brought to her mind everything she would
ever need to know about it.
She was prone to getting lost in the faces of people she met for the
first time, learning their names, fixing their identities.
The wheels within her would turn and turn over everything her long memory
had to give her regarding all of the times she had encountered a person with
those eyes, with that nose, with that name, or that tone in their voice.
This was always augmented by input from the psychic entities, the ghosts
and spirits that hovered around her, the ancestors, all of the departed dead,
the collective consciousness of humanity, past and present.
She was in constant dialog with them.
Kathy belonged to them and
they to her.
Anything that was new was surreal to Kathy. The more unique the event,
the more fascinated she was by it.
She was virtually incapable of being surprised, but it did happen from
time to time, and when it did she was pleased, even overjoyed.
For her to witness something unprecedented was like watching a blurry movie,
or an old TV off-axis, while the voices inside her attempted to shape her
understanding of the event by providing context, offering comparisons,
suggesting similes, complimenting it with knowledge.
Even things that were tragic and horrible, if they were unexpected and
“one of kind” gave her something that she was missing, and she would observe
those moments with a morbid, self-satisfying curiosity.
Searching out the new was like trying to grasp a handful of water, or a
fistful of sand.
The thing or the moment she would reach for would slip between her
fingers before she could hold it for any length of time.
Searching for a new experience, would cause her mind to construct in
advance, ideas of what she would find. The closer she got to her goal, the
closer her image of what she looking for became an image of expectation, and
assumed the character of what she would discover.
In that game she was always several steps ahead of herself.
She was prescient.
Trying to find what was new in other people was the worst because she
could sense them approaching, she could read their minds, she could become one
with their thoughts, and once she knew them she could commune with the spirits
of their dead. If she wanted, she could learn everything there was to know
about them, and their past.
Kathy had to practice mindfulness at every moment, simply to keep her
grounded and in the present. Learning this was the ultimate discipline, and it
was the key to her sanity. She exercised her powerful mind to create buffers
between herself and the world.
For Kathy, knowing things came
unbidden. Details of particular points of knowledge filled her mind at quantum
speed.
Languages, and codes opened themselves up to her, revealing their
secrets. There was not an article of arcana which she could not decipher.
Her consciousness worked outside the boundaries of time and space. She
did not have to ponder or search her memory for anything. She simply knew
things.
The meanings of symbols, of histories, the patterns in music, beats and
rhythms, these things populated her consciousness in no-time.
She could tell the stories of people, of human migration, stories that
had never been written down. She knew where all the skeletons were buried.
Everything her senses encountered was filtered through a screen of the
complete human experience.
What she did not have access to, from her own genetic line, she could
find through the cynergenic field, communing with the dead in the nous-sphere.
Both the past and present were open, like a book, she could observe
anything.
She could even peer into the minds of her contemporaries, see through
their eyes, merging with them, becoming one with them in the confluence of
their perceptions and feelings.
Kathy was the most powerful psychic the world had ever known. She was
dangerous, and her value was without measure.
The opportunity to work with her was considered the greatest privilege in
the scientific community, she was a closely guarded secret, those who had the
opportunity to put a question to her were held in the highest esteem by their colleagues. Even though
they would never have any direct contact with her, just the opportunity to
address the Sibyl, which was her code
name in the intelligence community was an indication that what you were working
on was of the highest value.
It was prehension, Kathy’s intuitive comprehension came from a place
within the mysteries of the atom, within the waves that make up the fabric of
the subatomic field, from a place in which time and space are concepts without
meaning, where there were trillions of points of light drawn into the
concrescence of insight.
Her mind represented the fulcrum of all humanity, she was the full realization of its potential, and not
just of humanity, of the Children of Earth, she was the fully actualized representation of the
Ancient People.
Her coming was a thing that had been carefully prepared, by Jim, the
Observer, for thousands of generations.
Her genetic code was the product of a careful breeding program, but there
was more to his plans than merely producing a body with the latent atavistic
capabilities he was searching for, which he needed for his campaign against the
Continuum.
Jim also prepared her over thousands of lifetimes, to see him, to respond
to him, to pick up on the subtle cues that would come from him through the
genetic memory she would have access to.
He was preparing her in advance to be able to filter the collective
consciousness of humanity, to draw what she needed from it at will.
Kathy would be to Earth’s organic collective what the Continuum was to
the Collective on the HomeWorld.
Kathy played music and she loved it.
For Kathy, there was nothing more freeing than being lost in cloud of
rhythm and melody, expressing her
deepest feelings. The rest of the world could slip away, she could be alone.
There was not an instrument, or a rhythm, a tonal scale or a mechanism of
timing which she did not master instantly. The mastering of them, unlike the
mastery of ideas, did not require dialog with the ancestors within her, they
were there of course, but in music their presence was non-verbal.
She sang, with perfect pitch.
She could identify any note, any chord. She could replicate them in her
voice, or on any instrument.
She spoke in her own voice when she sang, all the while sensing the
multitude within her, guiding her fingers, her brushes, bows, sticks, picks and
tongue.
Kathy was the living repository of all human knowledge.
It was an incredible burden.
She shunned it, but in music she found this to be soothing, liberating.
The visitation of her memories, the voices of her ancestors, these were
always present to her, putting pressure on Kathy to act and perform in specific
ways.
They were present to her in the music she listened to and played as well,
but in music she felt more as if she was coming home to them, rather than the
voices inside of her reaching out to her.
Music was a homecoming to a place where there were no expectations.
Chapter Twenty-three, Prodigy
Kathy loved jokes. Humor was a relief to her and she was a funny child.
Comedy is the art of the unexpected and of the surprise, Kathy loved it
when she could suspend disbelief for a moment, allowing herself to be taken at
unawares.
It was a departure from her normal mode of being.
Her laughter was the first unusual thing that her parents noticed about
her, a trait which distinguished her from other children, it alerted them to
the fact that she was different, because her laughter was different, it was
mature, knowing, it seemed to come from a place beyond the tiny physical body
of an infant.
Even as a baby she picked up on the punch lines of jokes. She delighted
in them in her infancy. The fed her
spirit, they were like water to a
thirsty woman. She understood the spoken words, the inferences that were made
and shared between adults. She understood and could follow their exchanges
months before she had learned to speak.
It was unnerving to anybody who witnessed it, therefore her sense of humor
became one of the first expressive traits that Kathy learned to conceal, it was
an act of social alienation and self-abnegation.
Laughter is like crying, it is a free and open mode of communication, it
is non-verbal and honest.
Kathy had to deny herself that, she had to keep it in check.
The laughing person is vulnerable, and Kathy had to learn to hide that
vulnerability, withdrawing inside herself, to share her mirth with her
ancestors only, and the other ghosts lingering in the outer-world.
Kathy was as quiet as she was observant. She learned to watch and ask
questions of the voices within her.
It was better this way, for her it was better.
She also took joy in the acquisition of knowledge, the analytical skills
she was developing were more astute, but she also found that asking questions,
the types of questions she asked set her parents and teachers on edge.
As a baby, she did not flit about randomly like infants and toddlers do.
She was not easily distracted or delighted by the things that most babies are
delighted by.
She was a strange child.
Her introspection was so extreme that in those first months of life her
parents thought she might be developmentally disabled. They had no way of
knowing that in those moments she was communing with the voices of her
ancestors.
She was focused, balanced, and cautious. The evidence of her
determinative spirit showed clearly through everything she did.
She repeated sounds and gestures in patterns that quickly became
noticeable to her parents. The subtleties of her personality, the things they
had thought were the ticks of autism, were in fact her measured and purposeful
quest to learn.
Kathy was motivated by a deep desire to communicate, to be understood.
While she had the cognitive ability to speak, nearly from the day she was
born, she did not have the motor skills to form words, those took time to
develop.
She trained herself, quickening the pace by which she would learn to
walk, and talk, and she would not be stopped.
Her parents had no desire to get in her way.
In the days when they were still figuring out what their child was doing,
if they were to interrupt her or try to redirect her, they would see the flash
of anger in her eyes.
This was not the helpless rage of an infant wailing.
It was the anger of a fully formed person who would not be deterred from
her path.
She was a frightening child.
Her parents were concerned for her wellbeing and her safety, both.
Kathy was crawling within weeks of being born, and walking within a few
short months. In her private moments she was flexing her muscles, gaining
strength, and tuning her body to obey her thoughts.
The voices within her guided her. Through repetition and diligence, she
gained control of her limbs, she developed dexterity, and coordination.
By her first birthday she was dancing.
Kathy practiced and practiced in the quiet moments of her day.
At night, in the dark, while her parents slept.
She did not speak a word until she was speaking in complete sentences.
Her vocal muscles were the most difficult to master.
She practiced her breathing, she spoke to herself when she thought no one
was watching.
She listened to the conversations happening all around her, the dialog
without and within.
She knew that her parents were concerned about her.
Every person they ever brought to meet her told them how strange she was.
Kathy tried to make things easier on them, but she was not always able to hide
the things that she was doing, and she could not control her feelings.
The glands that produced the hormones and chemicals which formed the
wetwork of the human emotional spectrum, they required a much greater level of discipline and measures of time to
control.
The direction for her exercises came from deep within herself. From her
ancestors, and from her intimate link to the cynergenic field.
In the nous-sphere Kathy communed
with those who were not directly linked to her heredity. She was connected to the
assembled masters of every tradition, they instructed her in physical
disciplines, martial disciplines, cognitive disciplines, the full scope of
human knowledge was accessible to her. They guided her and focused her, kept
her calm, allowing her to see her own life and experiences in the context of
the collective experiences swelling within her.
She discovered a sense of belonging
in the world through the interior of her mind.
She formed plans spontaneously, in order to realize her goals, her
powerful mind operating beyond the limits of time and space, and then she had
to slow everything down, to allow her body time to make the adjustments she was
preparing it for.
It was excruciating, she wanted nothing more than to allow her mind to
drift away, to leave the cares of the flesh behind, but when she felt that way,
the chorus would rise within her, reminding her that she had a purpose to
fulfill.
She had to prepare, be quiet, discreet, not draw attention to herself she
developed her physical strength, and the strength of her mind.
She took pride in her accomplishments, they were a source of great esteem.
Kathy could shut the outside world off and retreat into the recesses of
her interior life, But she could not escape from the voices within, they were
always with her. She might ignore them for a time, but she could not depart
from them, and even if she died, she knew that she would remain with them, as
with all people, a shadow of herself imprinted on the cynergenic field.
Kathy followed the path of discipline, to protect herself from the world
and from what was inside her, both.
Whatever her parents tried to teach her, Kathy took to with ease, despite
the moment by moment challenges she endured in dealing with her atavistic
connection to the past.
Nevertheless she was still a child, she had ordinary instincts, she
wanted to belong to her parents, and for them to belong to her.
She wanted to please them, make them smile, watch them laugh. She did not
like it when the things she said or did, or did not do, disturbed them.
Kathy mastered complex tasks without effort.
She had to learn, to pretend to learn from her parents and the adults
around her.
This was one of the things that put her parents at ease. It was often the
case that they would propose to show her how to do something, like tie her
shoes, and she would just do it without thinking because the voices within her
supplied her with the method.
This unnerved her parents, she had to learn to slow down and hide these
things, even pretend to make mistakes so that they could correct her.
This was an exercise in conformity.
She struggled with the skill of blending in, with hiding her differences.
Her parents came to accept the fact that Kathy was pretending. They could
tell because she was not good at it, and also because she would almost always
shift to a pattern of action that was better, more efficient, quicker, more
streamlined than what they had taught her.
For Kathy to get along she learned to be silent, to listen, to wait, to
let the others fail. She had to be content that she knew the answers and had to
resist the temptation to seek the reward of praise.
She practiced quietude.
She would not assert herself. She did everything she could to divert
attention, seeking only the private recognition of her teachers.
She could not insert herself into the activities of her peers (she had
none), she could not correct them, or provide the right answer to problems that
were proposed in public settings to her classmates.
She learned to experience success as a personal matter, only harkening to
the applause that came from within.
She turned in flawless work.
She reacted negatively to her teachers when they tried to highlight her
talents, her knowledge and skills.
This was difficult for her.
Like any child she loved praise, and she had to force herself to eschew
it.
More than praise from her teachers, she wanted friends
The other children in class with her, did not like her, they did not like
the way she looked at them, or the way she looked through them.
They knew intuitively that she was beyond them
She was alien.
Kathy was unique.
She felt other.
She was different from every human being on the planet, different from
all who had ever been.
She embodied the full scope of human potential
and its actual realization in time.
She was unique in all the universe, she was born that way.
She was still young when she realized the differences that distinguished
her from everyone else she had ever met. She had known empirically that this
was the case. Her ancestors within her had said as much, and that estimation
was confirmed by the voices of the entities she encountered in the nous-sphere, in Earth’s cynergenic
field. Nevertheless, Kathy succumbed to a basic human tendency, which was to
assume that the people she encountered were like her, that they shared a common
point of view or perspective on the things and events they were
witnessing.
Understanding her differences did not help her manage her feelings, or
those of anyone else. She had difficulties.
She knew that it was not her responsibility to control what other people
felt. Whether they choose to be in a relationship with her, like her teachers,
or whether, like her parents, the role had been thrust on them.
People were afraid of her.
They either wanted to run away from her, or to exploit her.
Some people simply wanted to examine her, run experiments on her as if
she was a laboratory animal.
Her parents were afraid of her, and afraid for her.
They were simultaneously proud of her, and ashamed that they had brought
her into the world.
The people who cared for her knew that she suffered, but they could do
little about it, some tried to comfort her, most did so only as a convenience
to themselves.
Chapter Twenty-four, Adolescence
Kathy was angry all the time.
She was angry with herself, she was angry with her teachers and handlers,
she was angry with the voices of her ancestors that tried to soothe her from
within, and she was angry at the presence of those persons she encountered in
the cynergenic field, who were always seeking to intrude on her thoughts.
Kathy understood the things she was going through, the physical
transformations of adolescence, but like much of her knowledge, her
comprehension of it was abstract. It was disconnected from her actual
experience.
Understanding had little power to quell the rank emotions rising within
her body, the chemical miasma fuming inside her, which were the same as in any
youth.
In the abstract she understood what was happening, she regularly employed
the techniques her ancestors had taught her, so she could control herself and
reduce the burden she placed on others.
Though she regularly did this, she did not always do it, and when the
mood struck her she would lash out at the people who were closest to her.
She might invade their psyche, steal their secrets, expose their fears,
and brutalize them.
She was not pleasant to be around, her proctors, teachers, and handlers
always approached her with caution.
As a child Kathy was composed, especially around strangers, in public, in
social settings. She carried herself with confidence and intentionality. As a
small child Kathy always acted with poise and purpose. This unnerved her
parents, but as she grew older they came to rely on it, believing that it was
key to her safety and to theirs..
There was not a person who observed her in these settings that did not
mark her affect as unusual. Most people were delighted in the strange unusually
confident child.
A few, those who were more observant, they were disturbed by it.
Kathy was beset by fears, not just for herself, but for her parents as
well. The poise that she exuded was just a mask. She could keep it up for
hours, even days if needed, but it was a ploy to hide the raging doubt inside of her.
As she matured, when in public she became paralyzed by insecurity, she
would freeze, become silent, and withdraw into herself.
Am I insane, she thought, who am I, am I alone, why am I alone, how
can it be that there is no-one else like
me anywhere in the world?
The answers she gleaned shook her to the core. They confirmed for her
that she was, in fact, alone.
Unique.
There had never been another like her.
She searched her ancestral memories for evidence of the contrary, but she
could find nothing, the voices grew silent.
She searched the cynergenic field for someone who could help her, and
again there was nothing, or next to nothing.
There was only a vague impression of a teacher, a priest, a shaman, a
person who had guided her ancestors in the distant past, but they were not
present to her now.
Kathy’s life was a series of disturbances.
Her parents did whatever they could to help her, bringing in tutors,
sending her to special schools. They desperately searched for a place, an
institution, a person, who could find a way to reach Kathy, to relate to her,
to give some form of comfort and understanding.
Between the ages of nine and fifteen her family moved a dozen times.
The moved over and over again. They sold everything they had, and they
burned through all of their savings, every last bit of their family’s money.
They exhausted themselves in the search for a solution.
The only comforts they could really give her were material ones; food, water, shelter. They were unable
to adjust to her intellectual and emotional demands.
Kathy knew what her parents were doing for her. She tried to cooperate,
and she had good moments. Nevertheless, when she was feeling pained, or lonely,
when she felt like an alien in her own world, out of frustration and deep
resentment she lashed out at her teachers.
She mocked them without mercy, she ridiculed them, she alienated everyone
who came in contact with her.
She had no place of belonging.
She used her gifts to reveal their greatest insecurities and she
exploited them, her intentions were not to profit from them, but merely to
drive them away, to protect herself and her family from their ambitions.
With every new failure at building a relationship with her teachers and
proctors, Kathy grew increasingly despondent.
She felt the despair of her parents and it was magnified in her.
She listened to the voices within her, most of which beseeched her to be
calm, remain strong.
She also listened to the voices that encouraged her to flee.
Kathy burned with rage. She
was consumed by a hatred for the world, by self-loathing, and by the intrusive
voices coming to her from the nous-sphere.
She did not find relief in the comfort of her memories.
Kathy did not want to be calm, she did not want to be strong.
Her contempt for everyone she came in contact with lit a fire deep in her
belly. There was no talking it away.
She felt like an alien, she began to refer to other people as “the
humans,” as if she were not one of them. She focused on every little bit of
difference between her and the people she met. She allowed the power of her
mind, her intellect, her knowledge to roll over people like a thresher, cutting
them to pieces.
There was no therapeutic approach to help her mitigate those feelings.
She felt guilty.
In order to cope, she turned the heat and violence of her anger inward,
focusing all of that energy on herself.
It gave her no relief.
She isolated herself. She took refuge in music, in movies, in books. She
spurned the reflexive desire to augment her experiences by consuming media in
consultation with the voices within her. She did not go to them for insight or
discovery. She allowed her media habits to be filled only with the most
contemporary materials.
In time Kathy learned to separate herself from her emotions. They would
have killed her had she not.
The body is the servant of the mind, and as with all complicated machines
it requires diagnostics and maintenance.
She discovered the methods by which she could commune with her physical
form.
She listened to it.
Her body spoke to her.
She exercised it, mastering every muscle, every gland.
She gave it the attention it needed, sustenance, and nutrition, whatever
her body required to be balanced.
She took control of herself and found refuge in discipline.
She found peace in meditations that took her outside of her body.
With an ability that no human being ever had before, she entered the
cynergenic field, creating a distance from the structured, chemically sequenced
emotions of her body.
She was guided in this by the ascended masters dwelling within her, and
with those dwelling near to her in the nous-sphere.
Kathy discovered the ontological reality she shared with every living
being on the planet.
She discovered that they were united, in spite of her feeling of
alienation she learned to adjust to this reality.
They were one.
Understanding her essential humanity gave her a great feeling of esteem.
Kathy spent the energy of youth learning to master her thoughts and
feelings, just so that she could get along in the world
She needed a place to escape.
Kathy found escape in the real world. The circle had become complete. The
past, she found, could be more oppressive than the present,
She discovered the supreme distraction in the passions of her body.
In self-pleasure, and sexual coupling she was able to forget herself,
forget the world around her in the uncritical-careless delights of sexual
gratification.
She lost herself in the attraction she felt for beautiful people, in the
present moment, in the desires that were most immediate to her senses.
She could linger for hours, in the scent and taste of a lover.
Physical love was timeless. It concentrated all her attention in the now.
The present moment was everything, she became lost in it.
Kathy found momentary peace, she found a temporary release and she found
freedom in the orgasm.
The energy of a sexual climax delivered her to a place beyond space and
time, removing her (temporarily) from the cynergenic field.
The world around her paused, she became weightless and all the concerns
she had for herself, for others. All of the demands that the world placed on
her, demands of fear, the demands of hope, all of those expectations melted
away.
The universe contracted in that moment, as did her psychic connection to
humanity, in that instant, she could go anywhere, be nowhere.
It was the pinnacle as if she had arrived at the peak of the human experience and stepped off into nothing.
From her first time with her first lover, to the last person she took
into her bed; it was the same, she cherished those moments.
In that release there was silence, a quietude that none of her teachers
could fathom, she likened it to the experience her ancestor Gottama had, while
meditating under the banyan tree.
There was a temptation to remain there, to stay in that magic place, to
elongate it, to leave the world forever.
She flirted with the notion, but never seriously.
Without exception, the people she brought to her bed were unnerved by the
experience of watching her.
Her sexuality shook them.
Some were traumatized by it, the greater their sensitivity to psychic
phenomenon, the more empathic they were, the more they struggled in that
moment, there was the danger that Kathy would drag them into that space, and
they would disappear.
Chapter Twenty-five, Abnormal
When Kathy was five years old, instead of beginning kindergarten, Kathy’s
parents placed her in private tutelage.
They looked at dozens of schools,
public programs, private institutions, schools that were religiously
affiliated, and they did not encounter a single program that they felt like
they could trust.
In most cases they could tell within seconds or minutes that the
administrators saw exposure to Kathy as something they could exploit.
They kept looking.
They took these step because they were continuously unnerved by Kathy’s
mannerisms. The things she said and did, the things she knew, the profound
abilities of her powerful intellect, that differentiated her from everyone, not
just children her age.
They were afraid of her, and they feared for her.
They did not want Kathy to grow up in the face of other people’s fear.
They felt it would warp her, possibly turn her into a guarded and hateful person.
They were desperate to help her, and eager to be released from their
parental obligations. They could not face the idea of simply home-schooling
her. They themselves needed a break from managing her day to day, hour by hour.
They also knew that they did not have the skills to guide her.
They sought private tutors to help them, professionals under a variety of
disciplines.
Every tutor Kathy’s parents brought in to teach her manifested
predictable and disturbing patterns.
Tutors, psychologists, scholars; her parents contracted with people
inside and outside of the educational system; scientists, doctors, specialists
in human behavior.
They exhausted their resources doing it.
Without exception the behaviors and interactions that each of them had
with Kathy filled her parents with dread, and Kathy with a cynical unease.
At first they were delighted. Would be welcoming in their initial
encounters, and she would tease them with the things they wanted to know.
They would come back to Kathy’s parents at the end of the day, glassy
eyed, and wondering at the genius of their child, going on and on about her
potential, and her unique gifts
As the days went on they became fearful, scared. Those same gifts that
had delighted them just days earlier, unnerved them with continuing exposure.
If Kathy wanted to get rid of them, she would attack them. She would
misuse her psychic gifts by exploiting their fears and weaknesses, by exposing
their deepest secrets.
This drove most of them away.
Those who stayed did so either because they had stalwart character, or
because they were shameless, seeing in Kathy someone who they could build a
career on.
They tested her, and wrote
about her.
The shameless sought to use her for their own benefit, believing she
would be a source of fame and wealth.
The altruistic among them were convinced that the fate of the world
hinged on learning her secrets.
Kathy’s private education was a bitter disappointment. Her parents
quickly learned that they must put non-disclosure agreements in place with
everyone who came in contact with Kathy, after which they were constantly
occupied with the legal action to enforce them.
By her tenth birthday, Kathy’s parents decided to forego tutors. They had
proven to be of little help to her or them.
They put her in the care of doctors and clergy, people from institutions
which they believed had a broader commitment to supernal values, to doing good
for the sake of doing good. They told themselves that this would protect Kathy from the meanness of the
world.
They placed Kathy completely in their care, entrusting them to guard and educate her. With that they
withdrew.
They finally found the release they were looking for. They took what
savings they had left and moved as far away as possible. They had no more
desire to be a part of the decision making processes for their daughter.
They were confident her needs would be looked after, she would be nourished and sheltered, they had done
what they could.
They gave up.
Kathy was alone now, sequestered.
She was not an orphan, she was just a child with no parents.
She was overwhelming sad at the absence of the only people who had ever
loved her.
She was despondent.
She had no sense of belonging.
Kathy withdrew into herself and patiently endured being an object of
fascination.
The people who took over Kathy’s care were good people, by and large. It
had taken years for them to identify just who among the dozens of tutors and
doctors they had consulted with, could be trusted to look out for Kathy’s
interests, instead of their own.
Kathy’s imprimatur was key to the selection process. She knew that her
parents were preparing to leave her, she understood their motivations.
This made her sad, made her angry, but she understood.
She used her abilities to narrow their choices, and to affirm them
Then she said goodbye to them.
It took a great deal of time for Kathy’s proctors, her selected panel of
advisors to find an institution for
her. She knew what motivated them as well. Their self-interest was apparent,
but it was not a dominant factor in their search, or their decision making.
For the most part, they merely wanted to discharge their responsibility
to Kathy in an expeditious manner.
When they found a place for her, they told her it was a home for
prodigies, gifted youngsters.
They believed it, for the most part, even though they knew the truth,
they knew that the home was a front for the National Security Establishment.
They also knew it was safe
It was the safest place they could possibly imagine, but those who had
been entrusted to help Kathy, had betrayed her, and to some degree her parents
knew it.
Kathy accepted it all, just as they voices within her moved her to do.
Kathy read, she listened, she watched.
She was the most astute observer any of her teachers had ever seen.
She engaged all of her senses in the act of probing her memories. She
brought to life the most-minute details of her ancestral experience.
She learned to remember the events she probed more accurately than the
original participants could see it for themselves,
She was able to triangulate her recall of a specific moment, seeing it,
from the perspective of multiple observers. She learned to penetrate their
memories and their internal reflections, to separate those reflections as they
changed over time.
She studied and took tests, at the same time she was tested, probed, and
examined by her proctors. They were continually seeking the limits of her
knowledge, and developing theories as to how it was stored, what part of her
psyche gave her access to it.
They used her as an experiment.
As a child she was periodically in a position where she did know what was
going on, at times she just wanted to let things happen, she did not want
answers as to why it was happening.
There were many occasions when she was unaware of what was transpiring,
but she learned to see patterns, to dwell in them.
She preferred to think of things in terms of patterns, to depersonalize
them rather than seek the individual motives of the people she was interacting
with.
Kathy learned to cope, she was alone in the world without family or
friends. She had teachers, and handlers, some were nice to her, most possessed
a calculated indifference.
They held her in high esteem,
they were proud of the work they did with her.
Kathy’s handlers had never considered the concept of an “ordinary psychic.” They were the foremost
experts in all things paranormal, and supernatural.
Genuine telepaths were exceedingly rare, but they existed, and when they
were discovered every effort was made to bring them into the fold of the
national security apparatus so that their talents could be used for the benefit
of the government.
They were coerced if they would not come voluntarily.
In the later 20th century their abilities were tested, analyzed, put to
use by spy agencies and police forces around the world. Genuine psychics were
considered to be among the most vital assets of the state.
They could be very difficult to find. Given the nature of their abilities
they were able to see dangers approaching from a long way away.
Most of the world’s psychics were mentally, emotionally and
psychologically unstable.
The line between psychic abilities and psychosis was very thin.
Schizophrenia and madness were common features among the gifted.
Psychic abilities of any degree were extraordinary.
Kathy’s gifts required a completely different understanding of the range
of possibilities.
Every aspect of her life was studied in its most minute detail. With the
greatest scrutiny being given to her genetic profile.
Her eggs were harvested, and she was cloned.
Kathy was the most significant subject of scientific inquiry that the
world knew nothing about.
Kathy’s moods normalized as she grew older, she adjusted to the reality
of her differences.
Even though she had always understood, objectively, that she was unique,
that she was a different kind of human than had ever walked the earth, she had
resisted this.
She did not want to embrace it.
She was not homo sapient sapient,
she was homo sapient ancestral, she
was human potential, fully realized.
She was not only self-aware, she carried within her the full awareness of
her ancestors.
She found resources in her memory to guide her in the development of
self-control.
She quietly disciplined herself to the measures that her ancestors
desired her to take, she did this in the field of consciousness where time was
meaningless.
She did it in no-time.
As she learned to control her feelings and her moods, she learned to do
many other things as well.
She disciplined herself to the practical tasks that she was always being
asked to perform by her handlers.
Her gift for analyzing data grew exponentially.
Institutions formed around her, think-tanks
devoted themselves to studying her, access to her was more valuable to national
intelligence than access to the fastest super-computer.
Her existence was among the most closely held secrets in the government,
only the National Security Council had an inkling of the full range of her
capabilities.
Chapter Twenty-six, Adulthood
Kathy was longing for a place in
the world.
As she advanced in her skills and gained control of her powers, Kathy’s
sensitivity to the motives of those around her became profound.
The intentions of the analysts who questioned her were an open book. She
had to develop new skills, the ability to buffer, to keep herself from prying
into the lives of anyone she was near.
She was starving for
companionship, for friendship but
she could not find it anywhere.
She did not want to know about the private lives of every person that she
met, their fears, their hopes, their anxieties, and their lusts.
Those things were disturbing to Kathy, she did not want any part of them.
She reported on how easy it was for her to read anyone she spoke to. She
did not tell them that she could read people from miles away, or on the other
side of the world, anyone could be read if she concentrated.
She told them the types of things they wanted to hear about her
abilities.
She told them just enough to give them the feeling that they could
control their encounters with her.
Millions of dollars were spent to mask the thoughts and intentions of the
people who had to interact with Kathy on a daily basis.
Even though these efforts were mostly connected to secrecy and national
security, they were also meant to foster in Kathy a sense of belonging, and community, which they
did with ever increasing difficulty.
Kathy felt the artificiality of her life, some days it weighed on her
heavily, though when she was busy she hardly noticed.
In her work place, every little detail of her environment was contrived,
scripted, fake. The lighting, the view, the temperature, the sounds and smells,
her handlers put everything in place like they were scripting a television
show.
Their aim was to keep Kathy passive, and somewhat distracted.
No effort was spared to engender within Kathy feelings of safety and love, the sense that she was
valued.
They would introduce something into her environment, a painting, a vase,
a lamp, then they would measure its effect on her output, her vital signs and
expressions of her well-being, both voluntary and involuntary.
Kathy saw through all of the contrivances made on her behalf. At the same
time, she appreciated the sentiments behind them, as artificial as they were.
She accepted those things and pretended to accept them as genuine.
She was able to maintain that peaceful coexistence with her handlers for
many years, into her young-adulthood. In that time she wanted to believe that
the people she met had good intentions.
Over time however, all the false fronts vanished.
Kathy became cynical.
As she grew older her cynicism did not cause her to lash out.
She remained quiet and focused.
She preferred, as all cynics and pessimists do, to think of herself as a
realist.
She stopped wanting to believe that people had her best intentions in
mind, she did not want their kindness or sympathy even when it was genuine. She
knew that she was an asset, merely a tool, and an unceasing object of
fascination.
Analysts came to see her nearly every day. They brought their tests with
them, they brought their questions, they brought their problems to be solved.
They brought her work.
Sundays were Kathy’s only regular time of respite, a day of reflection
and a time to lose herself in the past.
Kathy listened to them, and while she did she looked into their
consciousness, she explored their hearts and minds, their history.
She would privately decide on who she would help and who she would not.
She did not express those decisions overtly, but every analyst who could not
get resolution from Kathy on the project they were working was relieved of
their duties and diligently examined.
Everyone who came in contact with Kathy was profiled exhaustivly,
analyzing the analysts that who came in contact with her became a cottage
industry in the intelligence community.
She read their papers, watched their films, and when they put questions
to her, she shared her insight from the depths of her memory.
If she liked them then, she led them to the resolution they were seeking.
If she did not like them, their projects lingered, unfulfilled.
She read ancient languages, interpreted obscure symbols, and saw the
patterns in everything.
Her handlers eventually learned what type of person they could present to
Kathy, the type of people that would elicit a positive response from her,
people she would help without coercion.
Kathy would not be coerced to do anything.
Kathy loved problem solving. She was making her career out of it.
She loved complex tasks, and she delighted in the resolution of new
challenges.
She sought them out.
She took joy in creative and critical thinking. If her work was helpful
to people, it pleased her.
Problem solving gave her a sense of purpose, that is where she found her
place in the world and felt most as if she belonged
to something.
In the cases she was presented, in the analysis she was asked to give,
the greater the complexity and length of time for the project, the better it
was for her.
She preferred challenges for which the answers did not just spring from
her memories straight into her mind.
This was rare, the challenges facing human government, medicine, war,
espionage, might feel new to most people encountering them, but they were not
new to the human experience.
She was fascinated by encountering new things, new ideas, for this reason
she devoted her private time to the study of the atom, to physics,
astrophysics, and quantum physics.
Kathy quietly and privately wrote groundbreaking papers, this was an
incredible source of pride and self-esteem
for her.
Without being fully aware of the influence of her work, Kathy was
generating research that rippled out through the global economy.
Access to Kathy was sought after by every think tank, causing the
National Security Administration worked tirelessly to keep her identity a
secret.
In order to maintain their own secrecy, her handlers deliberately
narrowed Kathy’s focus, restricting the scope of her involvement in matters
pertaining to national security.
They would parcel out questions for her in the hope that she might not
see the patterns over longer periods of time.
They sought her understanding of minute details, doing everything they
could to limit the information that she could glean from them about what their
real concerns were
They were concerned that if she was ever discovered and captured, it
could do irreparable harm to the country.
Kathy never revealed to them how easy it was for her to penetrate their
thoughts.
She kept her own secrets, she held them closely, and she led her handlers
down false paths to keep them in the dark about what the range of her abilities
were.
If they would have known, they might have been comforted, or they might
have killed her, something that many people at the National Security Council
wanted to do.
She kept her full abilities masked.
She worked hard, and she produced data for the people that came to her,
she offered expert analysis, and from time to time she took proactive measures
to prevent a catastrophe from developing.
Her handlers were content to utilize her abilities infrequently, but on
significant matters, having discovered that the more often they involved her in
minutia, the more and more she was inclined to go out into the world and expose
herself for who she really was.
Religious conflicts began to
shape the later 20th, and the early 21st centuries. Kathy’s input regarding the
origins of these conflicts was invaluable.
Current events had to be understood in their historical context, because
tribal history continued to move its people long after the members had
forgotten the particular details of a broken promise, an injustice, or a blood
feud.
Kathy’s ability to pinpoint the specific moments in time that were the
antecedents of those tribal conflict was uncanny. If she could not reach the
understanding through her own ancestral memories, she could commune with the
spirits of the dead, she could pull the insight she needed from the cynergenic
field, the nous-sphere.
Her memory produced volumes of insight for her handlers, but questions
along those lines left her deeply disturbed. It caused her to dread the entire
human race, the vile antipathy people held toward one another, and how easy it
was for the bucolic life of a farmer, or a herdsman to become twisted by greed
and drive them toward the calamities of war. It was a weight she could not
ignore.
The human psyche was incredibly easy to manipulate. People were supple,
pliable, soft and reducible.
Human beings had a vast capacity for self-delusion, and a profound
willingness to be complicit in it.
In the midst of research Kathy often felt the instinct to flee, to run
away from everything, and to never return.
Just as she had been abandoned by her parents, Kathy wanted to abandon
the world.
She desperately wanted to be alone.
She knew there was no being alone, death was merely a transition to
another state of being, not an opportunity to escape.
The intelligence operatives stopped visiting Kathy in person, they
engaged her by proxy and through handlers.
They did not want to expose themselves to Kathy’s penetrating psychic
insight. They took every measure they could to conceal their motives. They only
wanted the answers to their questions, they did not want any reflection from
Kathy about the projects they were working on, the reasons why they needed
their questions asked.
They submitted questions in writing.
They used a long chain of couriers to deliver the contents of their
inquiries, and from which they receive their answers. Everyone who came in
contact with her was watched.
The multiple degrees of separation proved to be a valuable tool. It eased
the fears of the security establishment that Kathy would glean too much
information from their agents and analysts if they were exposed to her
directly.
Kathy received her assignments. She in turn wrote papers giving details
and context in response to the questions they submitted. She deciphered code,
sometimes ancient script, offered geopolitical analysis, identified covert
agents, pointed out weaknesses in their own security.
Oftentimes she did not answer questions directly, she supported their
work by helping them to ask better questions.
This frustrated her handlers at times, but Kathy was not being coy. They
often brought questions to her that they already possessed the ability to
answer. Kathy did not want to be responsible for a weakening of the
intelligence and security apparatus, she wanted it to excel through her
engagement with it.
She wanted to assist with the escalation of its full potential, to see it realized
in her time, because for all the faults of humanity and her own government,
she felt it difficult not to be patriotic, and she believed hat the American
institutions of democratic government, liberal and progressive, was the only
hope the world had to lift itself out of the age of conflict.
Like any other human being, she wanted her work to matter.
Chapter Twenty-seven, Isolated
Kathy journeyed inside herself, reliving lifetimes
through her memories.
She experienced the lives of her ancestors in quantum
time, which was not time at all, it was outside of time, it was no-time.
In that mysterious space she communed with her ancestors
and under their tutelage she mastered all of the disciplines she required to control
her abilities, learning from them a way that allowed her to function in
society.
She wanted to be a normal person, to experience normal
things, to feel the weather, or human touch, to see the beauty of the world and
of humanity, to listen to music, and the sounds of the city, to smell flowers
and food cooking, and the bodies of
her lovers.
She wanted those things for herself, she wanted more than
to just relive them through her intimate connection to the past.
She developed austere habits and disciplines in order to
possess muscle control, discernment and patience.
She developed the ability to flesh out the memories she
wandered in, to experience them for herself as if she were truly living in them.
There was no path too remote for her to follow.
She took up the plastic arts, she drew and painted, she sculpted.
She took the time to recreate the visions of her
ancestors, and to capture through various media, her own unique experience.
Of all the “normal” things that people occupied
themselves with, the ordinary pleasantries and little things that filled up
their days and nights, music was the
most difficult thing for Kathy to endure.
There were new generations of performers emerging all the
time.
Every year brought new waves of artists writing songs, and
making hits. Vocal styles changed, tonal styles changed, the content of lyrics
and the popularity of certain instruments changed, but only within a narrow
range.
The rhythm and the beats, the timing of the drums changed
even less over time.
If Kathy was careless a melody could cause her to slip,
without knowing, into another lifetime. She would fall into her memories,
slipping away from the present in ways that were dangerous to her
A beating drum told a hundred thousand stories; they told
of the hunt and the harvest, of conflict and the march to war, of years toiling
in servitude pushing through the field and pulling at the oar.
Kathy loved music, she would use it for all of those
purposes, but her susceptibility to it made it dangerous to her.
It was an area of weakness.
Her handlers knew this.
They had observed the effects of music and other sensory
stimulants on her, enough for them to see the patterns, learning enough about
Kathy’s relationship to certain stimuli that they could use it to manipulate
her.
When Kathy danced she moved without thinking.
Dancing was auto-hypnotic. She lost herself in the drums
and rhythms.
She abandoned time in movement, in the moments flowing
from the present to past ages.
She relived the steps of her ancestors, felt their
feelings, both their fears and their hopes for the future.
Dance was a place of transcendence.
When she was dancing she was not fully engaged with the
present world, the psychic noise and the din of chaos slipped away, the cares
of the world disappeared, and she was vulnerable.
Kathy experienced this same phenomenon in many ways, but
what made dancing different for Kathy was that while dancing she did not
succumb to the temptation to retreat into no-time.
She hovered in between the world of the present moment,
and the world of her ancestors, simultaneously connected to each.
With her body in motion, she could not fully disengage
from the world around her, and at the same instant she was connected to both
the world of her memories and the collective consciousness that joined her to
the entirety of humanity.
Dancing was freedom.
Dancing was the ultimate expression of who she was, of
her uniqueness as a human being.
Kathy danced for the joy of it.
Eating was a necessity, there were many days when she
wished she could dispense with her diet altogether.
The rituals of cooking, the textures of food, brought her
to places she did not want to dwell in. Not that the memories were unpleasant,
that was not necessarily so, but she could not avoid the nexus of memories
those activities brought her to.
What bothered Kathy was the lack of control.
Flavors and odors haunted her, they hovered around and
clung to her like ghosts.
Taste and smell could transported her instantly to past
times and past ages, placing her unbidden,
into a kind fuge, one she should not escape from.
Kathy found solace in the bland, comfort in modern
processed foods, foods that were completely new and entirely foreign to human
experience.
She did not want to mix anything in a bowl, stir
something in a pot, engage in knife work, or butchery.
Even the smell of baking bread, so pleasing and
comforting to almost every person in the world, even that was troublesome for
Kathy.
Eating was a necessity.
Kathy consumed most of her calories like an astronaut,
sucking it out of packages that did not require any processing.
Nevertheless, of all the foods and drinks she imbibed, the
most pleasing thing to her was coffee.
After years of working with Kathy, her handlers came to
an appreciation of how dangerous it could be to interact with her directly regarding
the nations secrets.
She could penetrate the minds of anyone who came in
contact with her. This happened without effort in regard to those who near to
her, either close to her emotionally, or proximate to her in space. The content
of their thoughts might pass through her as if she were sifting fine particles
from the air.
In spite of her generalized feelings of alienation from
society, the empirical fact of her interconnectedness to other human beings
spoke to her of her belonging.
She was one with humanity as they were with her. The
thought comforted her.
Her handlers determined to engage her at a distance. The
efforts they took in this regard had a positive impact on Kathy’s life.
Everything about her circumstances was completely contrived, this much she
knew. They represented the efforts her handlers took to allow her to live a
semblance of a normal life.
There were some in the security establishment who argued
that she should be killed, that she was too dangerous, and that it was too
costly to keep her in the world.
There were powers at the top of the hierarchy who would
not hear these recommendations, they argued two things; first, that Kathy was
the most prodigious problem solver and analyst the world had ever seen; and
second, that they needed to study every aspect of her abilities so that they
could document the full range of human potential
Kathy was placed in a small-private college, she did
research, and wrote.
She became an academic.
It was a comfortable environment, quaint, aesthetic.
Her work was recognized and this filled with pride. She
enjoyed the esteem of her
colleagues.
Her handlers thought that distance, and noise were the
keys to protecting their secrets, believing that the more people they placed
between Kathy and themselves the more likely it would be that they could shield
their intentions and motivations from her
They were wrong, there were few limits to Kathy’s
abilities.
Out of an innate drive for self-preservation, Kathy
developed the ability to ward off psychic intrusions.
She built mental walls to ensure her privacy, to keep the
thoughts and feelings of other people from seeping into her cognitive flow.
As her mastery over her powers grew she also had to be
careful not to project her wishes and desires onto other people. No one knew
it, not even one of her handlers suspected this, but she had the ability to
control the thoughts of other people, to audit their memories, to make
suggestions that they were powerless to refuse.
She wanted privacy, and she had no desire to influence
people. The boundaries she established for herself were crucial to preserving
her sense of identity.
Those defenses required constant mindfulness, a diligence
that stole her energy. And so, in order to rest, she preferred to be alone.
She was a recluse.
For Kathy, being alone was not enough, she also had to be
distracted, her senses needed to be stimulated all the time, or else she would
slip into the nous-sphere, float in the cynergenic field, or find herself
caught up in the labyrinth of her memories.
Kathy desired little more than to be present, to be
helpful, to advance the causes she cared about; diplomacy, justice, care for
the environment and the safeguarding of the human race.
She was increasingly focused on the long range plans to
establish a permanent human presence in space, on the moon, and toward the
outer planets.
She dreamed of a life out among the stars, in those
dreams she encountered a thread that pulled at her consciousness like the
threads of her ancestral memories.
She heard a calling that awakened her to a sense of
purpose, and with that purpose she was able to direct her energy toward the realization of her potential.
Kathy began to experience a degree of freedom she had
never enjoyed before. She knew that it was entirely conditional. At all times
her handlers wanted Kathy close to them, under strict observation.
The apparatus they built around her was an amazing thing
to behold.
The National Security interests utilized a revolving
network of spies to keep an eye on her. Every agent was linked by satellite, it
gave them the ability to track her comings and goings in real time and from a
distance which they felt was sufficiently safe from her prying mind.
Those agents whose mission it was to keep their eyes on
her, they had no idea who she was.
They were junior agents who came and went so quickly from
their assignment, that following Kathy was generally viewed as a basic training
exercise. Nevertheless, every observation they made was pushed up into the
cloud and correlated with the vast data base that her handlers were building to
track everything she said and did.
Kathy felt her autonomy increasing.
Every little bit of space they gave her, she took.
The assignments she was given came less and less
frequently. She could see the patterns in their behaviors toward her.
She knew that she was both indispensable and a matter of
grave concern for the people at the top of the security apparatus.
In time, she even had some freedom to travel.
When she did, she went to the places that her ancestors
directed her to.
Chapter Twenty-eight, Encounter
Week 30, 2019
Kathy began to feel
something strange and unfamiliar.
She felt as if she was
being followed by someone, and she was used to being followed, but this time
she was being followed by a man who was not connected to the agencies she
worked with.
She developed this sense in
the normal way, in the way that ordinary people might feel like there are eyes
on them.
That in itself was
extraordinary to her experience.
She was being watched, she was under observation, she
was being followed; the sense of it did not come to her from the psychic
antenna that always attuned her to such things, and that was the strangest
thing of all.
He left no impression
whatsoever.
She began to recognize the
man, to see him out of the corner of her eye while she was walking down the
street, or in a line at the store buying groceries, at a café or a restaurant
where she was eating or drinking.
His face evoked powerful
memories, but the voices within her were silent. They could not offer any
details on the man.
His presence sat in her
consciousness like the weight on a fishing line, it held steady in the water,
there was a hook, but she could not discern it.
She could not read him.
She could not recover a
sense of him from the cynergenic field.
He was a mystery, and that
was enticing.
Kathy went to her mailbox
as she did every day, she reached inside always hoping to find some correspondence from her parents, or a
teacher that she had been fond of.
She occasionally received
mail from a teacher, or a colleague, or one of the few people she had been able
to form a kind of friendship with.
It always delighted her
when she did.
She never received anything
from her parents, not one word at all since they had left her.
Nevertheless, personal mail
was rare.
When her fingers touched
the envelope inside she became very excited.
Kathy ignored the fact that
the letter in her box was neither stamped nor metered.
Its arrival was completely
unexpected.
She was excited.
There was a mystery in
front of her, she did not have a clue what it might lead to.
She peeled the envelope
open, took out its contents and read it, by doing so, she found herself
entering into a conspiracy.
The script was written in
an alphabet that no person other than herself could have known, and in a
language from another time and place entirely.
It had no connection to the
modern world.
She had to stretch her mind
in unexpected ways to even recognize the pattern. When she did she was
astounded.
There was danger in it, the
kind of danger she wanted to run to,
not away from.
She was faced with a puzzle
like no other she had ever seen.
The day began like any
other.
It was Sunday.
Kathy woke up, did yoga,
meditated.
She prepared her coffee,
and a piece of toast for breakfast.
She was looking through her
task list for the week, planning her research.
Then the phone rang, and
she had not had the slightest premonition of it.
The phone rang, and rang.
Kathy was somewhat startled and slightly paralyzed
She allowed the phone to
continue ringing, she thought it must be a wrong number, but they did not give
up.
She suppressed a bubble of
fear that rose within her. She faced it, telling herself that she was the most
heavily guarded person in the world. She was safe, She had nothing to fear.
She lifted the receiver from
the cradle.
She said, “hello.”
The man who spoke to her,
spoke in a language that had been dead for millennia, there was no one else
even knew this language had existed.
She had no trouble with it
and she knew this must be the person who had sent her the letter, the same
person who was attempting to wrap her in the cloak of conspiracy, beginning
here, with this conversation.
In the conspiracy she felt
a sense of belonging.
Her heart began to race,
and skip; for the first time since she was an infant, she was not alone, and
yet, she was slightly disturbed by his presence on the other end of the line.
Kathy was nervous.
She was Giddy.
She had reflexively looked
for answers to the question of who this mysterious man was, she had peered into
her memories, she had sought contact with him through the nous-sphere, in the
cynergenic field.
She encountered a
disturbing silence on all fronts.
Not only could she not
reach him, she could not glean any information about him from any source.
That should have been
impossible.
After her preliminary
foray, she accepted the mystery for what it was, a gift, and she stopped
looking for answers.
She was determined to move
forward one step at a time, and to let the facts reveal themselves in the
present moment.
They met at a café Kathy frequented, a busy place. Kathy felt secure in that, and she did not want to
draw attention to him, to put him in the cross hairs of her handlers.
Kathy liked crowds. She was
comfortable in them.
The more people that she
was surrounded by, the easier it was for her to allow the psychic chatter of
each individual to blend together as background noise.
She felt safe in the cafe. It was a place where
it was not unusual for strangers to sit together, as she was about to do with
the man from her letters.
Kathy was all nervous
energy in the hours before she went to meet him, but on seeing him approach her
she immediately began to relax.
She knew that she had never
met him, but there were echoes of him throughout the long chain of her
inherited memories, not him exactly, but someone like him.
The voices within her were
silent, however, and so her memories were just impressions of a shadow of a
mystery.
The myopia within her was
tantalizing.
Why this man, of all men, why was it that she could not summon her
powers to glean anything about Him?
It was intriguing, it
caused her to want to learn more.
It was as if he had been
present throughout her entire past, but there was no point of intersection
where her genetic line crossed his.
Despite the mystery, or
perhaps because of it. Kathy found herself at ease with him.
His name was Jim.
The sound of his voice
soothed her.
He used patterns of speech
and inflection that leapt into her consciousness as if he were speaking through
her ancestry, but he wasn’t.
He shared her
personal-historical perspective but he was not a part of the same continuum as
she.
That first contact with him
was a dream come true for Kathy, she felt a sense of privacy with him that she
had never felt before.
The most significant thing
about him was that she could not read his mind.
He was a man like no other she had ever met before.
It took Kathy several
moments to get her bearings when she met Jim.
It was the first time she
had ever encountered a human being that she could not fathom in an instant.
It left her feeling
disoriented.
Kathy thought she had
prepared herself for the unexpected, his knowledge of ancient languages alone
informed her that she was going to encounter a unique individual, perhaps
another person like herself.
It was not just his
knowledge, knowledge was not the right word. He had an intimate familiarity
with them, akin to her own familiarity, he knew more than the meanings of
characters and symbols, he knew how the speech sounded, when it was spoken
something he could only know if he had been there, or if he was attuned to some
part of himself who had, as Kathy was.
In this encounter Kathy
understood her own uniqueness in a new light, she was fascinated by him, and
could understand how others would be fascinated with her, she could appreciate
their esteem in a way she had not
allowed herself to look at before.
It took her several moments
to adjust to this new reality. She was uncertain as to why she had believed
that being in close proximity to him would change anything.
Distance and proximity had
never been factors in her ability to reach another mind before.
Jim was closed to her.
All she wanted to do was to
be absorbed by him, to lose herself in him, as everyone she had ever been with
had been lost in her.
For the very first time she
felt a longing that was not rooted in loneliness and isolation.
She felt as if she were a
distinct person, distinct from him, and she felt desire for him.
Kathy looked forward to
every meeting with Jim. It both
excited her, and made her feel a deep sense of trepidation.
She imagined that at any
time her handlers from the Agency would come to put a stop to it, to
interrogate her and ask her endless questions about who he was, how he appeared
in her life, what his motivations were.
She knew that they would be
disturbed if she were to tell them that she did not know the answers to those
questions.
Being with Jim gave Kathy a
feeling that she had never experienced before. She felt peace, and comfort.
She felt understood
She was like a child with
her father. He was older, wiser. In fact, his age was unfathomable to her.
He never asked her to use
her abilities, to explain things, to read minds, to solve problems, to perform
her tricks. This differentiated him from every other person she had ever met,
other than her biological parents.
And yet, Kathy wanted to
perform for him, show off her skills, to demonstrate her intelligence, to show
him that she represented the apex of
human potential, something she did
not really believe, but that she knew other people believed of her.
His mind was still.
He was utterly opaque.
She knew that he was an
ancient person, an alien, an anomaly, and yet nevertheless human, in the full
sense of the term.
He was not like her, he was
something different, and she loved him without question.
Emergence 4.0
Part Four, Kathy
A Novel – In One Chapter Per Week
#Emergence #ShortFiction #365SciFi #OneChapterPerWeek
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