Discovery (Science of Psionics Book #1)

  The Science of Psionics

  Book 1: Discovery

  By Dave Renol

  Smashwords Edition

  © 2012 Dave Renol

  All rights reserved.

  I would like to thank my wife for her patience and support, Leon for expanding my reading horizons, and theChive.com for keeping me smiling when the writing was slow. Keep Calm and Chive On!

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  The Science of Psionics

  Book 1: Discovery

  Table of Contents

  1 – The Storm

  2 – Discovery

  3 – Dreams in the morning

  4 – Breakfast Adventures

  5 – A Dream Revisited

  6 – Theory and Practice

  7 – Party Surprises

  8 – The Secret Revealed

  9 – Up, Up, and Away

  10 – Practical Practice

  11 – New Experiences

  12 – Dangerous Practice

  13 – Violent Disagreements

  14 – First Interlude

  15 – The Morning After

  16 – Under Siege

  17 – Evening the Odds

  18 – Gathering Intelligence

  19 – Escalation

  20 – Flight

  21 – Second Interlude

  22 – Decisions

  23 – An Astral Journey

  24 – Arrested Development

  25 – Payback’s a Bitch

  26 Epilogue

  27 Book 2: Blood Magic

  Chapter 1

  Linda: The Storm

  It was a dark and stormy night… ok, it wasn’t really night time, it was only late afternoon, but the storm was real enough. I paused in my typing as yet another flash of lightning lit up the office where I was working on my latest novel. The boom of the thunder rolled through my otherwise silent country home.

  “That one was close,” I thought to myself. Resuming my work, my childhood habit of counting the seconds between the flash and the boom kicked in, and I realized it was heading this way fast.

  This latest book had come together remarkably fast, since most of the plot advancement ideas had come from my boyfriend and fellow author Mark Ewing… I smiled as I usually did, thinking of him. We had met almost two years ago, while awaiting our turns at the local blood drive. We both happened to have the same blood type, and as the conversation progressed, discovered that we had much more in common as well.

  Light flashed again in the office window, but no thunder. Peering out, I saw the headlights of Mark’s truck as he parked in his usual place near the side door. Uncurling myself from my overstuffed lounge chair next to the window, I went to greet him with my customary hug and kiss. As I approached the door, I heard the rain start beating heavily on the fiberglass awning covering the side entry. Peering out through the window, I saw Mark rushing toward the house with his umbrella covering the knapsack that he used for his laptop and notes.

  “Typical,” I snorted. “How anyone that smart could be so stupid is beyond me.” The umbrella was easily big enough to protect both Mark and his precious knapsack.

  Opening the door for him, I stood aside to avoid his mad dash to get out of the pouring rain. Reaching inside, he placed his knapsack on the floor before turning and shaking the water off of his umbrella. Collapsing it down, he stepped inside and leaned forward to give me a quick kiss.

  “Let me change into something dry and I'll give you a proper greeting,” he grinned. “I wasn't quite expecting to have to ford a vertical river between my truck and your house.”

  A quick flash of lightning followed almost immediately by a sharp crack of thunder made me jump and interrupted my scathing criticism before I could get started. Running his hand through his hair to comb it out of his eyes, he grinned at me again as he headed past me toward the bedroom. Sighing, I went back to the office so I could clear off the table we used as a common workspace when we both worked on the same project.

  Three bolts of lightning in a row illuminated the office like a photographer’s strobe as the power flickered off and on, making the lamp flicker like someone was sending a Morse code message. The hairs on the back of my neck felt like they were standing on end as the loudest blast of thunder yet rattled the house and the lights went out. Momentarily frozen, I jumped as Mark wrapped his arms around me from behind.

  “Well hon, I had planned to have a romantic candle light dinner tonight, but I usually prefer to pick the time myself,” he said as he spun me around and wrapped his arms around me.

  “Any time is a good time for thoughts like those,” I replied, kissing him deeply. “Let me go dig up some candles and we can get some work done first. It's a little early for dinner and it'll be easier to cook when the power comes back on.”

  “Optimist!” he snorted. “I like the peace and quiet of your place here, but the service sucks. I bet my place in town still has power.”

  “Yeah, the city has enough power to keep the stereo next door blasting away all night as well. Thanks, but I'll take the peace and quiet out here so we can get some work done, as well as have some privacy for whatever else we do this weekend.”

  “Hmmm,” he purred. “I like the sound of ‘whatever else’ much better than the sound of that rap crap from next door back in the city. You go find those candles and I'll unload my gear so we can get that silly work stuff out of the way. My laptop is charged up, so we should have several hours before we have to abandon work and are forced to spend several hours doing ‘whatever else’.”

  “Crap, my laptop!” I wailed. “I had it plugged into the outlet next to my window seat and that doesn't have a surge protector. I hope it didn't get fried from the blast that killed our power.”

  “I'll check it out for you. Go get the candles.”

  “Alright, be right back.”

  Walking down the hall toward the storage closet where I kept my candles, I thought that I hardly needed them, as the almost continuous lightning strikes provided plenty of illumination. Grabbing the BBQ lighter from the utility drawer as I went past, I hurried nervously back to the office. The hairs on my neck were still standing at attention, like the very air around me was charged from all the awesome power blasting out of the sky. Stepping into the office, I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw the familiar logo on my laptop screen as it booted up.

  “So far, so good … it was locked up, but seems to be rebooting fine.” Mark commented as I set the box of candles down on the table and sat down in front of my computer. “There did appear to be some scorch marks on the power outlet though. You use that outlet often enough that you really should put a UPS or at least a surge protector there. It's cheap insurance.”

  “Fingers crossed,” I said as I watched it finish booting. “It seems like I got lucky,” I said with a smile as my desktop appeared.

  “Luck is all well and good,” he commented as he stepped over to the box of candles, “but relying on luck is a losing proposition when a little common sense can ensure safety.”

  “Common sense,” I laughed. “This is from the guy who stepped into the house soaking wet because he couldn't figure out the complicated maneuver of covering both himself and his knapsack with only one umbrella.”

  “Hey, at least I protected my livelihood, unlike y
ou who risked losing all your hard work due to carelessness.” he retorted, looking up from shoving the candles into my silver candelabra.

  “Ok, ok. Get those things lit so we can get our work for the night out of the way. Why you take down so many handwritten notes is beyond me when your laptop never leaves your sight.”

  “Well, what can I say? There's something I find satisfying about writing out notes and ideas by hand. Plus, I find it easier to integrate them into the story when I can rearrange the notes to suit the best order. Remember, I don't always write them out sequentially.”

  “Perhaps it is easier for you, but not for me. Your handwriting is atrocious, your grammar horrific, punctuation random, and it appears that proper spelling is optional.”

  “All of that is to give me an excuse to stand over your shoulder and wrap my arms around you,” he replied putting action to his words.

  “Nice, but also distracting,” I giggled, slapping a roaming hand away from my right breast. “Later, Casanova, you promised we would get our work in sync first so we have most of the weekend free.”

  “Spoilsport,” he replied as he flopped down into his chair beside me. “Besides, how can I concentrate with this storm over our heads?”

  “Fine,” I acquiesced. “Grab us a couple beers and we can snuggle on the couch until the storm passes.”

  Grabbing my laptop, I made my way to the living room and set it on the coffee table so we could have some background music. Working my way through my playlists, the computer felt a little sluggish and I wondered if it had suffered some damage after all.

  “Honey, I think I better get you to take a look at this thing for me. It seems ... sluggish and weird,” I said to him as he sat down next to me and handed me my drink.

  “Sure, no problemo,” he nodded. “I'll run through the works after dinner or tomorrow morning."

  “Speaking of which, I have a couple of nice juicy T-bone steaks thawed for dinner. The storm seems to be slacking a bit, so it should pass over by the time we'll need to grill 'em.”

  “Sounds perfect,” he agreed.

  We made small talk for a while, getting caught up on the last ten days in which he was away on a consulting trip, and then had a nice dinner of grill-baked potatoes and steak. The power was still out, so we decided to put off our work and just go to bed early. Of course, that didn't mean it wasn't still a late night.

  Chapter 2

  Mark: Discovery

  I woke up before Linda, and lay there content and relaxed for several minutes before quietly slipping out of bed. I quickly grabbed a few things to wear and silently snuck out of the bedroom. After seeing that we once again had power, I got the coffee maker started, then grabbed a quick shower in the other bathroom, so as to not awaken her.

  I poured myself a cup of coffee and headed over to the office so I could check my email. Remembering my promise of last night, I moved Linda’s computer back into the office and set it up next to mine so I could work on it. I also wanted to back up her recent files in case the laptop was dying. I glanced over to the other side of my machine at my steaming cup of coffee, out of reach for the moment.

  “Soon,” I murmured to myself. “Gotta get this hard drive scan started first.”

  As I waited for her computer to finish booting, I glanced down at my arm and noticed the hairs were standing up, like they were last night during the peak of the storm. Getting up, I grabbed my coffee and went over to the window.

  Peering out at the sky, it looked like it was shaping up to be a nice clear day, and I wondered why it felt like a storm overhead. Shrugging, I went back to Linda’s laptop and started a hard drive surface scan. With that running, I went and topped off my coffee before setting down to go through my emails and messages.

  I was at the end of my last reply when I heard Linda’s computer beep, indicating that the scan was complete. Hitting send, I shifted over to her chair to take a look at the results. The scan came up clean, but she was right that it did feel a little sluggish and weird. I started an anti-virus scan and opened up a shared folder on my computer to copy her recent files over, just in case. Rubbing my arm, I noticed that the hairs on it were still standing up, and it felt a little sore from wrist to shoulder. Shrugging again, I went to get a refill before sitting down to start entering my hardcopy notes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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