Immune

by Richard Phillips

  The memory of how she had felt during the meditation worked its magic, completely banishing the vision and its associated sense of loss of control. Heather was so thrilled that she hugged and kissed him, something that almost caused Mark to lose his own self-control. He was quite certain that, if the kiss hadn’t been quite as best-friendish, he would have devolved into a lovesick idiot instead of her self-control coach. As it was, he barely managed a congratulatory smile and some generic words of encouragement.

  Fortunately, the moment passed before he succeeded in making a complete fool of himself. The next part of their practice session was the most dangerous. In order to practice turning off the visions, Heather needed to learn to turn them on at will. That meant having her focus on how it felt just before she had succumbed to her past hallucinatory experiences.

  Their only goal for now was to have her practice stopping the visions as they began. Mark had Heather seat herself on the couch where he could watch her closely, promising to wake her from her trance if she didn’t bring herself back within one minute. She nodded that she was ready, then inhaled deeply, letting her breath out slowly. As Mark watched, Heather’s eyes acquired a faraway look, as if she was no longer in her living room but was looking out over a distant landscape.

  Mark glanced at the second hand on his watch. When he glanced back up, deep lines of anxiety etched themselves across Heather’s beautiful face. Another quick glance at his watch showed that less than fifteen seconds had passed. There was no way he was going to let her go through a full minute of whatever was scaring her so badly.

  Mark had just reached out to gently shake her shoulder when he saw the change. A look of peaceful bliss replaced the worry lines as her breathing slowed and steadied. With a gentle smile, Heather touched his hand, her eyes once again fully alert to his presence.

  “I’m okay. It worked.”

  Mark suddenly realized that he was the one who hadn’t been breathing, something he remedied with a gasp of relief. “Wow. The look on your face scared the crap out of me. It was so intense I was afraid you weren’t going to be able to snap out of it.”

  Heather sat up. “It was so hard to remember that what I was seeing wasn’t real. Once I was able to think of that, remembering the meditation was easy.”

  “Can you remember what you were seeing without slipping back into the vision?”

  Heather nodded. “Jennifer was there.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m not sure. She was doing something with her mind. Then she looked at me and grinned. Something in that look spooked the hell out of me. That’s when I remembered to try to bring myself back.”

  “Well, at least that worked.”

  Heather’s smile returned. “I think it’s going to take quite a bit of practice to get good at going in and out.”

  As she tried to stand, her legs wobbled and she would have fallen had Mark not been there to steady her.

  “You okay?”

  Heather straightened. “I think so. Just got a little lightheaded for a second. That must have taken more out of me than I thought.”

  Seeing the concern on Mark’s face, she laughed out loud. “Mark. I’m really okay now. You can let go.”

  Mark released his grip on her arm. “Okay. I think that’s enough practice for today.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take it easy until I get the hang of this.”

  The sound of the garage door rising caused her to put a finger to her lips. “Not a word to Mom and Dad. They’d never go for this.”

  “What’re you going to do about your meds?”

  “Doctor Sigmund has them watching to ensure I take the pills. I’ll have to fake swallowing them.”

  The conversation was interrupted by Gil McFarland’s entry into the house, grocery bags in each hand.

  “Hello, Mark. How’d the study session go?”

  “Hi, Mr. McFarland. I think we’ve got it down pretty well.”

  “That’s good,” Mrs. McFarland said as she followed her husband into the kitchen. “Biology tests can be tough.”

  Mark helped carry in the rest of the groceries and then excused himself. For once, Mrs. McFarland did not invite him to stay for dinner.

  He found his mom and dad watching television in the living room, an old Bonanza rerun. Mark had seen this one, the episode where Hoss and Little Joe thought they had found Leprechauns on the Ponderosa. It was one of his favorites. Seeing that his parents were chuckling at a particularly hilarious sequence, Mark resisted the urge to ask about dinner and made his way upstairs.

  Pausing just outside Jennifer’s closed door, Mark considered knocking, but decided to wait until after dinner to talk with her. Except for the last couple of months, he had been as close to his sister as any twin could be. She had always seemed so frail, a delicate but brilliant source of light in his life. He had always imagined himself her protector, and although it now seemed that Jennifer no longer wanted or needed his protection, he was determined to restore their mutual affection. Perhaps if he did a little less talking and a lot more listening that could happen.

  After dinner would be better. Besides, he hadn’t gotten in his workout yet today. If he hit the weights for a half hour, he should have time to shower before Bonanza ended. Closing his door and locking it, Mark glanced at his unmade bed and the pile of dirty clothes in the closet. He had intended to carry those down to the laundry room. Oh well, no use picking up the room now. It wasn’t that many hours until he’d be getting back into bed anyway.

  Mark added weight to the Olympic bar until there was no more to add. He had been wanting more, but that would have meant trying to explain to his dad why four hundred and fifty pounds wasn’t enough. He didn’t actually know what his max lift might be. He’d never had the privacy required to find out. Not that it really mattered. The neural augmentation he had received on the Second Ship had made his muscular system so efficient that it seemed he could do pretty much whatever was required, at least for any physical activity he had attempted to date.

  Mark changed into his sweat suit, lay down onto the workout bench, and lifted the barbell from its support, the weight causing the bar to bow slightly in the center. Inhaling deeply, he lowered the bar to his chest, exhaling as he raised it to the original position, repeating the action in a smooth, steady rhythm. As he worked the bar, Mark employed one of his newest mental tricks, playing back one of his favorite Evanescence albums in his head, letting Amy Lee’s haunting voice power his arms, every note exactly as he had heard it through his headphones.

  By the time Mark completed what he thought of as a mini-circuit and showered, he could hear his mother calling from the kitchen. God, he hoped Dad had grilled burgers. His nose told him the good news as he reached the bottom of the stairs: it was a cheeseburgers and hot dogs night.

  “Thought you were going to let me eat your share.” His dad grinned as Mark grabbed a plate.

  “Hah. I was just cleaning up after my workout.”

  Mark piled his plate high with a pair of burgers and dogs, then set about adding a healthy stack of condiments.

  “Don’t forget the potato salad,” his mom added. Seeing him eye the bowl with suspicion, she laughed. “Don’t worry. I didn’t make it. I bought it at the store.”

  “Oh good,” Mark said, without thinking. “Oops. Sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  Once again, Linda Smythe’s laughter trilled out. “Yes, you did, but it’s okay. I may be a lousy cook, but I’m an incredible shopper.”

  As he reached the table, Mark looked around. “Where’s Jen?”

  “Oh, she’s out with some of her school friends.”

  Mark almost dropped his plate. “What? I thought she was grounded.”

  Mrs. McFarland shot a quick glance at her husband. “She is. But we had a very nice discussion with her this afternoon, and your father and I decided that it would be okay to let her have a break for this evening.”

  Mark fought to regain his composur
e. A break? This was her first day of being grounded. As he sat down, he felt his appetite fading.

  “So who’re the friends that she’s visiting?”

  “Jillian Brown and Kristy Jacobs.”

  Mark almost choked on the first bite of his sandwich.

  “The cheerleaders? Wasn’t that who she got grounded for seeing in the first place?”

  His dad nodded. “I know it sounds odd, and I guess it is when you look at it that way. But like your mom said, we had a very nice chat with Jen today. Sometimes you have to be able to recognize that the right thing to do isn’t necessarily the logical thing. We both felt this was the right thing to do.”

  “Can I get you another soda?” Mrs. Smythe asked as she headed for the refrigerator.

  Mark shook his head. “No thanks, Mom. I still have more than half of mine left.”

  And just like that, the conversation turned to his school schedule, the interesting new piece of electronics his dad was working on at the lab, his mom’s male hairdresser’s new boyfriend, anything but Jennifer. That doorway had closed, the subject locked away like a crazy relative in the cellar.

  Mark forced himself to finish everything he had put on his plate, despite his sudden loss of appetite. Then, after helping clean up the kitchen, he excused himself, proclaiming his need for a couple more hours of study before tomorrow’s biology test.

  He’d been intending to study for the test, but couldn’t get his mind off of his parents’ inexplicable decision to temporarily waive Jennifer’s grounding. The theory that formed in his mind on that subject put him into a slow-boiling rage. Only through using his meditation technique was he able to cool down and wait for Jen to get home. Anyway, he wouldn’t know for sure until he got a chance to ask her about it.

  The wait proved to be a long one. By the time a car pulled up outside to drop her off, Mark’s clock showed 1:03 a.m. Oddly enough, his parents seemed as unconcerned about her lateness as they had about allowing her out in the first place. This was confirmed when Jennifer ducked into their bedroom to kiss them good night.

  As Jennifer retreated to her bedroom, Mark moved out of his dark bedroom, his hand catching her door before she could close it. He stepped inside.

  Jennifer stared at him, a look of amusement on her face. “It’s a little late for a brotherly chat, don’t you think.”

  “What did you do to Mom and Dad?”

  Jennifer pushed the door closed, then turned back toward him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Okay. Since you know it all, you tell me.”

  “I know about your extra little trips out to our ship. I’ve seen the way you’ve been affecting people around you. You’ve learned a new trick.”

  “Relax, Mark. I’m the same twin sister you’ve always known.”

  Suddenly, a sense of well-being enveloped him, a wonderful calmness reminiscent of the deep alpha wave patterns from some of his meditations. Shit, she was doing it to him. Using the reverse of his meditation technique, Mark pulled forward the perfect memory of his previous anger.

  He leaned in close. “Sorry, Sis. You’re little mind games won’t work on me. I don’t care what you do to your vapid little cheerleader friends, but you stay the hell out of my head. Stay the hell out of Mom’s and Dad’s heads too.”

  Jennifer grinned, the look sending a chill down his spine and ramping his anger to the next level.

  “I can’t believe you’d do that to Mom and Dad. But since you don’t give a shit what you’re doing to them, why don’t you drug their food while you’re at it?”

  The look of fury that swept Jennifer’s face pealed away her calm facade. “Don’t you ever talk to me that way again. In fact, don’t even talk to me. Get out of my room. Now!”

  Mark wheeled, pulled open the door, and strode rapidly down the dark hallway toward his room. Behind him, he heard Jennifer’s door close and lock. Fine. If she wanted to be that way, then screw her.

  As his anger faded, a wave of deep depression settled into the hollow it left behind. Mark knew he should recall his meditations and get control of his emotions. But somehow, standing at his window, staring out at the darkness that separated his house from Heather’s, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  89

  Heather didn’t need to glance at the clock on her nightstand to know that it had just ticked past two a.m. As the Thorazine continued to dissipate from her system, she had lost her need for sleep. And as it departed, the visions hammered at her consciousness. The one good thing about that was she was getting plenty of practice shutting them off. Over the last several hours, her confidence had grown to the point that she let herself wade more deeply into some of the waking dreams, just to test her ability to exit them whenever she desired.

  But going more deeply left her exhausted. Luckily, one of the meditation techniques proved extraordinarily restorative, thirty minutes leaving her as refreshed as a full night’s sleep.

  Heather had run through the probabilities from each test, and there could be little doubt that Mark was right. What she was experiencing had nothing to do with losing her mind. It was a side effect of exploring a new region of her brain. While their link to the Second Ship had unlocked the full potential of their brains, it had left them stumbling blindly through that vast, unexplored landscape.

  But that was okay with her. Exploration of her potential might be dangerous, but Heather had always enjoyed risk. The knowledge that she wasn’t going insane empowered her.

  Thrilling as that realization had been, a new discovery currently held Heather’s full attention. She had stumbled upon it by accident. As she prepared to immerse herself in another vision, she was momentarily distracted by a moth that brushed her hair.

  Heather felt her perspective shift, her view of the moth zooming in until it seemed she was trailing along behind it. The flutter of its wings was preternaturally loud as it bobbed left and right in some dark space. The sight of clothes lined up on hangers triggered her recognition. This was her closet.

  Suddenly, the moth’s forward momentum ceased. It spun about, flapping harder than ever, but going nowhere. Long sticky strands clung to its wings, legs, and thorax, each movement only increasing its ensnarement.

  Heather focused her thoughts, drawing herself into the meditation, which returned her to the present. Looking around the room, she found the moth perched atop her lampshade. Without hesitation, Heather arose from her bed and walked directly to her closet. She opened the closet door, switching on the light as she reached inside.

  There it was, high up in the far left corner, the same web she had seen in her vision, a fat black spider moving along an upper strand. Interesting.

  Heather grabbed one of her tennis shoes, reached up and smashed the spider, sweeping the web away. Wiping the shoe on the carpet, she paused as she set it back where it belonged.

  What had just happened? Had she changed the moth and spider’s futures? That was certainly true, but she’d done it to prevent one of her visions from coming true. No doubt about it. Her mind was doing a version of its math thing, allowing her to visualize the most probable outcome of a scenario. Just because she experienced the vision didn’t mean it couldn’t be changed.

  The other interesting aspect of this vision was that it had focused on what she had been thinking about. Maybe she could learn to control that too.

  But it didn’t explain the visions that came at her from nowhere. Maybe her subconscious was picking up signals that her conscious mind failed to notice. It was going to take a lot more experimentation to come to grips with how this really worked.

  Returning to her bed, Heather paused to look at the moth. “You owe me, big time.”

  A smile spread across her face at the thought that she had just become the first superhero for hapless insects.

  Heather rearranged her pillows so that she could sit back against the headboard and settled in for another round of deep meditation. I
t wouldn’t do to start the next exercise even slightly tired from the last, at least not until she had gained more confidence.

  Morning came quickly, the first light of dawn bringing her out of her practice session. She was so anxious to tell Mark about her progress that Heather considered sliding into some clothes without showering. A quick glance in the mirror changed her mind. Even a good friend deserved better than that.

  By the time she had showered, dressed, and made her way downstairs, she could hear the Smythe’s talking to her parents by the front door.

  “Hi, everyone…” The words froze on Heather’s lips as she saw the grim faces. Mrs. Smythe’s eyes showed clear evidence that she had been crying.

  Heather’s mom reached out to put an arm around her. “Jennifer’s gone.”

  “Gone?” The panic that clutched at Heather’s chest robbed her of her breath.

  Linda Smythe began to sob softly, burying her face into Mr. Smythe’s shoulder. It was Mark who answered her question, his voice cracking with emotion.

  “She ran away sometime in the night. She left this note.”

  Heather took the paper from his hand. There, written in Jennifer’s beautifully precise handwriting, were the words that removed all doubt.

  “Dear Mom and Dad. I’m so sorry to hurt you this way, but I have to find my own place in this world. I love you both. Say good-bye to Heather for me. Jen.”

  No mention of Mark. The realization struck her like a slap in the face. As her eyes locked with his, all doubt faded away. The omission had not been accidental. Jennifer had known exactly how to hurt her brother, and from the look in those eyes, she had been successful beyond her wildest dreams.