11/18/13

Twenty Six

John scanned the quad looking for the girl he had seen in his vision.  For once he had to use only his physical sight, his energetic sight was completely overloaded by what she had been doing.  He knew it was her that was setting all of these people free, connecting them with themselves and the Earth.  Like the virus he thought it was, it was spreading.  How else had he separated from the corporation, even for that short period of time?

He didn’t see her.  He decided to walk over to the apartments; maybe she was over on that side of the campus.  He knew she was still around somewhere.  He would have been notified immediately if she had left.  At least he figured that he would still be notified.  The way she was lighting everyone up, it might be that she had created enough of a distraction that they would not be able to see her any longer.

Hoping he was right, he made his way to where he thought she lived.

Before he reached the apartments he saw her.  She was sitting on a park bench with the boy he had seen her with before.  There was also a woman with them.  A striking, beautiful woman unlike any he had ever seen before.  Immediately he felt drawn to her, as though he had to talk to her, to be near her.  The thoughts that flew into his head were almost painful.  Shaking his head from side to side, he wondered what or who she really was.  He had not run into that kind of power in many years. 

He scanned the area around them, trying to decide the best way to approach the trio.  There were no trees near them, the bench sat out in the complete open.  He had no choice but to take the most direct route possible. 

John took a deep breath and strode out towards the group.  They did not notice him at first.  His purposeful stride did not catch any attention.  Then the woman, the one standing, took notice of him.  She stopped what she was saying in mid sentence and stared at him, a look of confusion crossed her face.  The young man with them turned around and noticed him.  Anger crossed his features. 

It was no surprise that they would react in such a way.  He was, after all, their enemy.  At least he had been until half an hour or so beforehand.  He had been until the effects of the girls energy work had invaded his space, invaded his mind and had shown him what he was missing.  Now he was not the enemy at all.  Now he had only one request. 

He wanted to be set free.

He slowed his gait the closer he got.  He kept his hands outside of his pockets, though he felt suddenly shy.  Wanting to turn back, he took the final steps to bring him next to the woman.  He looked at the three, they stared back at him.  The young man in anger, the girl with curiosity and the woman’s whose features had been schooled to show nothing.

“Hi.  I think you are the one I’ve been looking for.” He said to the girl.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” She replied.  He should not have been surprised at this response, but it still shocked him a bit.  Of course they knew he was and why he was there, and of course they would want him to explain it all.  It was to give them time to think of a solution or a way out. 

“Yes you do.” He responded, “But…well… I have to be honest.  Something has changed and I’m pretty sure you caused it and now…”  He wasn’t sure what to say next.

“What changed?” The woman asked. “My name is Tiana, by the way.”

“Tiana.  That is a beautiful name.  My name is John.”

“Hello John.” She smiled at him and he lost all the thoughts in his head. “What changed?”

“Oh” He said, shaking his head.  He forced his eyes away from the beautiful woman and looked at the girl.  He stared into her eyes and felt like he was falling into space and time. 

“What changed?” The young man asked.

Looking over at him, John finally found a face he could talk to without losing his train of thought.

“I don’t know how to explain it, it might take me awhile, but I can’t do what I’ve been doing any more and I think you three are the reason why.  I want to know what you did, I want to know if you can keep doing it.”

“What did we do?” The girl asked.

“You set me free.” John said.

“What?” the girl asked.

“You set me free.  I’m not sure that this,” He waved his hand around at the air around them, “That this is the best place for us to talk about this.  They may be watching and I don’t think it is very safe.  Can we, I mean would you mind if we went somewhere else?”

The young man nodded.  He stood up and reached for the girl’s hand. 

“We can go to Larissa’s apartment.  Her roommate should be gone this time of day and we should have the place to ourselves.”

“Larissa.  That is a lovely name. Yes, let’s head over there.” John nodded towards the apartment building. “if they were onsite they would be able to hear everything, but I think inside we can be a bit more concealed.”

They nodded to each other and started walking.  John fell into step with Tiana.

“Who are you?” He asked.

“You can’t know right now.” Tiana replied.

“Because of who I am?”

“And because of what you have done.”

“I see.  But might I get to know in the future?”

“It all depends on what you have to say.”

They arrived at the apartment and Larissa let them in.  She moved to the small stove and put on a pot of water to boil.  He was thankful for her effort.  He would be telling them a lot of information and it seemed as though caffeine would only help with the telling.  The young man and Tiana sat at the kitchen table and waited.  John looked around the small space and took a seat with them.

They waited until Larissa had finished making tea for all of them.  He let the steam from the cup wrap itself around his face, causing little droplets to form on his nose.  It reminded him of childhood, of sitting at other kitchen tables, of watching his mother move around their small space. 

“I will be as honest with all of you as I can.  There are things that I do not know about, but there are a lot of things that I do know.  I only ask that you please, please Larissa, consider setting me free.  I have tasted what you are capable of and it has only led me to want more of it.”

“What do you mean?” The young man asked.

“Let me try to explain.” John took a deep breath. “It all really started when I was a young boy.  I seemed to have abilities that the other children did not have.  Heck I seemed to have abilities that the parents didn’t have.  Even my own parents weren’t sure where I was getting them from.  I could tell them things, things that had happened years before on the land where we lived.  They would take me to parks and I would tell them about the battles that had been fought.  I would tell them about the animals that had been killed.  I could tell them about the good things too, but those were fainter.  The light has always had less of an impact on my abilities. 

These, abilities, drove my father crazy.  He would say that I was making things up, that I was a story teller or a liar.  He would remember details of what I told him and he would look up the information.  At least he would look up what information was available for him to research.  He would find out that I was correct.  That somehow I knew what had happened.  Keep in mind I was a small child, maybe four or five years old at the time.  There was no way I could have found out the information on my own.  Even if someone was feeding me the information, it was hard to accept that I would have remembered it all so well. 

To me, when I stepped onto a field, when I stepped into a park for the first time, it was as though what had happened on the spot was happening again.  The people involved would come out of the ground and tell me, or show me what happened.  It was incredible.  Sometimes whole battles would play before my eyes, I would sit on the playground and watch. 

My parents, other children, other children’s parents would watch me.  I would sit quietly in one spot, sometimes for hours, listening and watching.  Other children would come up to me and ask me what I was doing.  When I would tell them that I was watching a battle for example, they would sit next to me and ask me questions about it.  I would be able to talk to them in great detail about what I saw.  Some of the other children also saw what I saw, through my ability they would see. 

The parents would get frightened of me though.  It got so that other children were not allowed to play with me.  When it came time for me to go to school, many of the parents protested against my inclusion in the same institutions as their children.  My parents weren’t sure what to do.

They took me to several psychiatrists.  They put me through various tests.  They searched for an answer for what I was thinking, feeling and seeing.  They tried drugs to calm down the visions.  They did treatments of various kinds.

Nothing worked.  Nothing actually stopped the visions.  I did stop talking about what I was seeing.  I stopped telling stories to the others about what I was seeing, about what had happened on the grounds where they played.  Because I had learned to stop talking, my parents thought I was getting better.  The school finally accepted me.  Though I always had a reputation for being abnormal, I was still tentatively accepted into the society of school.

For many years I told no one that I was still seeing everything.  That I could walk into a room and know what had happened in that room since its inception.  I knew which desks in a classroom had been used for sex.  I knew what the teachers did when no one was looking.  I saw some of them stealing from each other and from the students.  I did nothing.  I said nothing. 

Just before I was to graduate something happened.  A gunman came to our school.  He was there to kill as many of us as possible.  I knew the moment he had arrived on the grounds, because the energy of the grounds shifted.  I knew where he was and where he was headed. 

I knew I had to stop him.

That is exactly what I did.  I went to the place where he was, before he had a chance to fire a single shot.  I found him getting ready, loading his gun and checking his ammunition clips.  I did the unthinkable.  I took his life force from his body.

“Yes,” Responding to the gasps from the others, “You heard me correctly.  I took his life force from his body.

I don’t know how I did this exactly.  One moment he was sitting there, sighting his gun, the next he was on the floor crumpled into a ball.  His life force was gone.  I knew it had shifted, that he had changed.  I walked away from him.

But somewhere I upset some sort of radar.  Not even a day later they came for me.  The corporation.  I don’t know what they are really called.  I call them the corporation because it seems to fit.

Anyway, these guys in suits came to my classroom and pulled me out.  They took me outside to a nice car with darkly tinted windows.  We traveled to a nondescript building and rode the elevator to the basement.  I thought maybe they were going to kill me or something.  I figured it was only a matter of time before someone decided I was up to no good with my visions and my abilities.  I wasn’t surprised at all.  Only wondered what had taken them so long.

They took me to a room, it had cement walls and fluorescent lighting.  There was a single table and three chairs.  I sat in one chair and two men sat in the other. 

Long story short, they convinced me to work for them.  I don’t know how, I don’t know that I will ever know how they did it.  But I ended up signing a contract with them.  To this day I do not know what the terms of the contract really are.  I do know that they call and I do what they tell me to do.  I don’t seem to have a choice.  They told me to come here, to search for Larissa and that is what I did.  I searched and searched.  I did not find her until she started doing what she did today.

I didn’t know who she was until the other side, the other parts of me showed me who she was. They showed me more as well.  They showed me what I was missing.  They showed me how I had given part of myself over to the corporation.  How I was letting the corporation steal my life force.

When I woke from the vision that was given to me, my computer was ringing.  It was the corporation wondering where I was.  They were looking for me as my connection with them had been severed.

You severed it Larissa.  I don’t know how, and I don’t know if the results are permanent.  But you did it.  You gave me back to myself.  And I want that, I want to be the whole person that I haven’t been in years.  I want to be me again.”