The Way Things Seem

by Mackey Chandler

  "One wonders if there are people anywhere who can see the same as I am learning without needing the jewel," David speculated.

  "You are full of endless speculations," Uncle said, but he didn't make it sound like a reproof, just a statement of fact.

  "Do you get dust storms here?" David asked, looking out over the valley.

  "Not often and never in this season. What made you ask?" Uncle asked.

  "I thought I saw a haze, like there was dust in the air," David said, following a line along the valley with an extended finger.

  "A haze? Or does it have structure if you look at it...closer?" Uncle asked.

  "How does one look at it closer?" Dave insisted.

  Uncle looked perplexed. "How can such a thing be taught? Can I teach you to look at the mountain?" He gave a wave at the opposite hill.

  "I guess not," David admitted. "I'll...experiment."

  After a bit David leaned back. "This can be very tiring," he admitted.

  "Eat something," Uncle advised him. "The berries will make you feel better fastest."

  David wished he had a mirror. He had more beard than he'd ever grown in his life and he could see his belly was flatter and his legs thinner than he’d ever seen. On the other hand, he felt as good as he had in years. He really felt like he was twenty again. He didn't think he had lost any cognitive ability, but then a drunk thought his judgment was just as good drunk as sober. Sometimes they even perceived themselves as better drunk. He didn't trust his own judgment on that score without some actual testing.

  "I feel good, is it the plant doing that?" he asked directly.

  "I doubt it," Uncle said, then looked uncomfortable. "When I first saw you, I saw the patterns on your face." He drew a circle around his own face again like he had in the past. "You had the face of a bread eater, a farmer. My nephew has the same thing from growing fat on rice and sweets. This is my personal opinion from observation. It's bad for you. He'll die younger than he needs to and it drags him down like a boat anchor. You might think on that for when you go home.”

  David was surprised. "Well, all I have is your face. I don't have others to compare."

  Uncle nodded acknowledging that. "You'll see. I can tell you are coming into your powers. You'll be able to tell the people who have an illness. Not all illness comes upon you from outside. Some live foolishly, fond of khat and hashish and alcohol. Some have defects of heart or mind," he said, touching those parts. "Sometimes a whole family has a defect, if they can get children before it becomes evident. It's a shame."

  "OK, I'll eat some of the berries and practice my looking," David agreed.

  Davis ate the berries slowly, savoring each one. It still looked like a haze, like fog except it didn't block seeing the hill opposite or down the valley. It followed the line of the valley...wait, followed how? He looked in the distance and then close, looked back and away. It had grain. Not as obvious as lines in wood or the flow in a stream, but subtle. Sort of like the curtain of rain falling kilometers away, or a sunbeams filtered through a tree. It reached into the distance in parallel, not aimed at a point like the rays from a setting sun.

  David tried to describe what he saw to Uncle. It was frustrating. He didn't feel he did a very good job. Uncle for his part looked out over the valley and thought. He pursed his lips. David expected him to speak. He usually did after that mannerism.

  "Do me a favor," Uncle proposed.

  "Anything," David agreed.

  "How you've changed," Uncle said, amused.

  "Well, I've learned you're not going to ask me to fling myself off the escarpment or eat a worm now that you know how it revolts me."

  "Can you see what you are telling me about only in the distance?" Uncle asked, waving a hand at the vast landscape, or nearby too?"

  David looked around, at the nearby rocks, first one way and then another. He sighed and closed his eyes and did the same thing. "It's here close, but much easier to see over a bigger area. I couldn't have seen it at all yesterday."

  "Take up your knife in your hand," Uncle said.

  David looked at him funny, wondering if he was going to make him regret saying "anything", but he did so holding his hand out flat with it rather than grasping it.

  "Do you see it?" uncle asked.

  David gasped and almost dropped the knife. He turned it around slowly several times.

  "It gathers the lines and has its own," he said, and then thought on it. And the lines across the valley. They all go off north." He took the knife and struck the back of the blade sharply on a rock, carefully keeping it pointed north. The curly disorganized lines near the blade evened out somewhat. "I can see magnetic fields!" he said amazed.

  "And now you see another reason Sahar dislike the city and mobs of people," Uncle said. "It a chaos of tangled unnatural lines, squiggling and moving. Instead of this serene beauty," he said waving a hand at the valley."

  "This shocks you," Uncle said after a bit, surprised.

  "It certainly does. All these lines...they all look parallel here, because the field is so BIG, as big as the Earth, surrounding it, but they all go to one place at either end," David said, trying to instruct Uncle.

  "So I've heard, but I'll never go that far away to see it myself," Uncle said.

  "I'm just really flipped out. What else will I see?"

  "Oh, quite a bit yet," Uncle promised, "but it may take a few days."

  * * *

  It was three more days, before David saw something strange. They were eating something Uncle brought back to camp. David didn't even ask what it was. It was red meat, some sort of mammal, so he didn't object as long as it wasn't something disgusting. Uncle made a kabob with napoles and some sort of small tart fruits.

  "Is there something different in the fire?" David asked, frowning at it.

  "The same as it has been for days," Uncle said, offering no clues.

  "It looks different," David insisted. "Like when a knot pops and there's a flurry of sparks, but it's doing it steadily."

  "Ah, I may be able to help with that. Finish your meal," Uncle urged him, "and I will test you after. I've noticed you’re very fond of testing things."

  David didn't argue, it was true, but he didn't consider that a bad thing.

  "Attend!" Uncle said after all the skewers and scraps were burned and there was nothing to attract scavengers or vermin. He was mock stern however, enjoying it.

  "Yees...Maaaster..." David said in his best horror movie voice. Uncle didn't dignify it with a response or let on if he got the reference.

  "You've seen me do this. It may look different now." He prepared a fire starting stick, curling chips of wood back but not cutting them off. It looked a bit like a miniature toilet brush, or some of the flowers his neighbor used to grow along their fence.

  Without any more explanation Uncle held it near the fire, concentrated on it and made it burst into flame. This time was different. The same sort of sparks he saw in the fire gathered from all around the stick, just appeared out of thin air, flowing to the stick until it darkened and ignited. David however noticed the sparks all came from a pretty small volume, perhaps a hundred millimeters across.

  "See it?" Uncle asked. "They're everywhere, but you really have to look for them. Then, well it's hard to explain. It isn't just looking this time. You have to want them to come together. Some never can do this, and if they can it's tiring. Don't be upset if you can't do it yet."

  David sat and thought about it, thought about heat and conduction, Brownian movement, and Maxwell's Demons. Air held a certain amount of heat. The stick had heat too, but making it travel down the length of the stick would be difficult. Wood was a pretty good insulator. This whole idea would give his physics professor a stroke. He wasn't too comfortable with it himself.

  The larger the volume of air he tried to influence the more heat there would be to get, he reasoned. David made a stick like Uncle, but it wasn't as pretty or as even, but then, how many thousands had Uncle made over the yea
rs? Uncle was sitting back, relaxed, holding his chin. Interested, but not concerned if David failed.

  David held his ugly stick out towards the fire, but he visualized a much larger volume of air. There was nothing. It was as useful as pushing a string, then he thought about the false color the sparks had too. A LOT of sparks rushed in from a meter in every direction. The stick burst into flame too fast to see it brown, the heat so intense David had to drop it and yank his hand back.

  "Na'am! Na'am! Na'am" Uncle laughed slapping his leg with his hand and laughing. "I thought you were going to be a good one!"

  Uncle was right. He felt drained, and he slept really well.

  * * *

  When Uncle was off finding some food the next day David was still thinking about it. He pictured a big volume of air and brought all the sparks together in front of him. He willed them into a smaller and smaller volume. At last he had a white marble of incandescent air in front of him so hot he could feel it on his face. He let it dissipate and sat there trembling. Some was the effort of doing it, some was the shock of being able to.

  When Uncle returned he looked concerned at David. "You were pushing yourself," he accused. "You can overdo this just like running too far or trying to go too long without sleep you know. I'm not sure if one can actually injure themselves by draining their energies away, but please don't find out for me."

  "Surely, if it can be done, you must have heard the story," David insisted.

  "Third hand," Uncle admitted. "I have not seen it myself, but I was told a Sahar defended both himself and some companions. They fed him and nursed him but the man was old and he didn't recover and died."

  "Protected them from what?" David demanded.

  "A pack of hyenas. They are powerful animals and can be vicious. He reached out, and killed them. But it drained him."

  David sat and thought about that for awhile and Uncle watched him. "I'm glad you didn't ask how," Uncle finally said.

  "I have some ideas actually, but it drains me to light a fire. I think given a pack of hyenas I'd rather my Sig Sauer and an extra magazine," David decided. "I have an idea I'd like to try..."

  "Tomorrow," Uncle said sharply. "Your face is like a man who has run the whole morning. Here, eat. You need it," Uncle ordered.

  * * *

  The next day Uncle quizzed David on what made him so tired. He felt confident he could repeat it with less effort briefly and demonstrated. Uncle couldn’t really see the value of it but admitted it was a new trick to him. It required far too much effort to keep going to like a flashlight at night.

  In the afternoon he asked David what he saw in the sky. He walked him around to several locations and asked him to describe anything untoward. He saw some pale lines, a sort of shading in the sky from one vantage, but nothing else. Uncle apparently was satisfied he was safe to have some more of the plant and doled it out to him.

  Toward evening uncle went away and came back with some small birds. There wasn't much meat on them outside the breast, but they took the time to pick off what they could. David felt thoroughly recovered and full of his supper.

  "I'd like to experiment with something," David announced.

  "As long as it doesn't touch on me, feel free," Uncle invited.

  David pulled out his clear plastic water bottle. There was a small amount left in it still.

  "If you are going to heat water in that I have to warn you," Uncle said quickly. "Ruin that bottle and I have no replacement for you. It is possible to heat tea that way, in a metal cup, just like a fire stick. However you may still find it a strain to do an entire cup."

  "Not my thought at all, but thank you."

  David loosened the cap and tilted the bottle so the water was all to one side in the bottom, holding the top portion. It was harder to see the little sparks in the bright daylight. He had to remember to look for the new color too. This time he willed the sparks away from entire area around the bottom of the bottle, centered on the water itself.

  He almost dropped it in surprise, because he felt the effect of his efforts before he saw anything. The bottle felt cooler in his hand quickly. Uncle saw his reaction but said nothing. He resumed removing the sparks, and could feel the effort sap him, but kept at it. After about four minutes he saw what he wanted happen. The water crystallized in a heartbeat.

  David kept willing the heat out of it until he was confident if wouldn't revert too quickly and tipped the bottle back vertical. The little crescent of ice stayed in the corner until he jarred it against his other hand to break it loose.

  He rattled the cube in the bottle to show Uncle it was ice and handed it to him. The old man took it and felt the cold. His expression was surprised, but delighted.

  "How did you ever think of that?" Uncle demanded.

  "Well, you showed me how to move heat," David said. "I just did what a freezer does to make ice cubes, but without all the machinery."

  "But I don't know how a freezer works," Uncle said. "Any fool can plug one in and use it. They make it simple enough. But if I had to build one, or even repair one, well, you better not need it too badly, because I wouldn't know where to start."

  "I'm more into electronic things," David admitted. "But I had to have a lot of basic science courses to get to the more complicated electronics. I had chemistry and physics. We studied about the nature of heat and how gasses behave."

  "You must have been a good student," Uncle said.

  "Only in the things in which I already had an interest. Some of the other courses they required you take I didn't do so well. I could have gone into math a lot more and I was terrible at writing things out to explain them to others. I was an indifferent student of history, in school, but now that I'm older I find it interesting and read about it on my own. At the time I had little use for it.

  "I wasn't as bad as some of my classmates, but there were times I grew weary of the routine and just wanted to have some fun," David said. "Then it's hard to sit and listen to a lecture on three hours sleep and hung over from the night before."

  "Ah, well... they could avoid those problems if they didn't accept men as students until they are thirty years old and past such foolishness," Uncle declared.

  "That's an interesting solution," David said.

  "My view of things may be different than yours," Uncle admitted. "I never had the privilege of a formal education. Not a single day of it."

  David felt a sudden need to be careful. It would be easy to offend the man by saying the wrong thing. "In what ways did you acquire an informal education?"

  "In a remote village you get lessons from most of your relatives, by working mostly. Sometimes the work isn't that hard but you must sit and keep at it. It becomes tiring and boring. If it isn't too strenuous to talk the older one can help pass the time with tales. They aren't always meant to teach something, but they often do anyway. Just reminiscing about how things used to be fifty or sixty years ago in their experience. My one uncle mentioned he was a grown man and had a wife before he saw his first motorcar. It jolted me at the time."

  David nodded. "My father related a similar thing. He once asked his grandmother what was the most important invention was to her, during her life. He expected something like airplanes or getting a telephone. Instead, she said it was getting wire screens on the windows to keep all the bugs and mosquitoes out in the summertime."

  "In a remote village you get lessons from most of your relatives. The things craftsmen do are often done outside or under just an awning, but if children have free time to stand and watch they run the risk of being recruited to work a bellows or fetch things. Parents loan out children for tasks and many get sent to work and end up trying many different trades. I enjoyed making pottery and helped a weaver, but I made clear to my parents I had no wish to be a tanner before they thought to sent me to one. I was a bit fastidious," Uncle admitted.

  "That's stinky work, isn't it?" David asked.

  "Stinky and filthy," Uncle agreed. "Not every village wants a tanne
ry. Those that do allow one put it well down-wind and as far away as practical."

  Dave decided to risk telling him a truth. "In my country now it is impossible to get permission to have a child work. It's seen as abuse and can put you in jail. In fact, it's near impossible to let your child roam free in your neighborhood without supervision. If the police see them alone in public they will bring them home or take them to other authorities and you may lose custody."

  Uncle looked skeptical and then disgusted.

  "How do you feel about that?" Uncle asked.

  "I think they're insane," Dave said.

  "I don't think you were raised that way," Uncle decided. "You don't display the wounded spirit of something raised in a cage."

  The cooling took as much effort or more as heating something. David took a nap, stretched out in the sun like an old cat. Uncle didn't reprove him.

  The next dose of plant seemed to have more impact to David. There was less effort needed to see the new colors and textures. Rather than strain to see them and close his eyes to shut off normal vision it was more of an overlay, like a heads up display.

  Uncle counseled it could be confusing and distracting until one became accustomed to it. He didn't use the term, but David took the sum of his warnings to mean he could experience sensory overload. Uncle gave an example of being so distracted by all the new detail that one forgot to look for traffic and stepped in front of a truck.

  Being in the wilderness to become acclimated to his new senses was probably easier than the environment in town. Uncle made clear the additional input from concentrated human activities was still irritating to him after years to grow accustomed to it. But David was itching to apply the sensors and instruments of his business to the new sensations and visions. He knew he was looking at magnetic fields, but he very much wanted to see what power lines and digitals feeds looked like. Could he perceive microwaves or ionizing radiation? He wanted to see if he could learn to judge a person's state of mind or general health like Uncle suggested was possible.