The Telepath Chronicles (The Future Chronicles Book 2)

by Elle Casey

  How much longer before what you read in the following pages is no longer science fiction?

  In The Future of the Mind, Professor Kaku notes, “We have learned more about the brain in the last fifteen years than in all prior human history, and the mind, once considered out of reach, is finally assuming center stage.”

  Science fiction writers peer into possible futures, using a literary form of precognition, as it were. And so the writers of The Telepath Chronicles follow that grand tradition, celebrating this a new Silver Age of fiction, an age of online publishing and digital books, an age where we are surrounded by wonderment and wonders, where science, in many ways, has become magical.

  #DontTell

  by Peter Cawdron

  The smell of hairspray hung in the air. Lisa could have walked out into an F4 tornado and not a single strand of hair would have been displaced. Foundation had been caked on her face and her lipstick looked ridiculously bright. A fire engine or a Ferrari could have driven past outside and still all eyes would have been on her. Her natural good looks were highlighted to the absurd by the TV makeup, but under the lights, it would all somehow look natural. That was the thing about television, she thought: nothing was real.

  “We’re ready for you, Ms. Zindani.”

  Ms. Zindani. Such shallow flattery shouldn’t have worked, and yet it did. Lisa mostly kept her head about her, but sometimes the circus seemed real. A “celebrity reporter”—once she’d considered such a concept absurd. The point of a news report was to be objective, to be impartial and independent from the story, to put the focus on the subject, not to be the subject. But, fame! Her interview with General Augustus Huguenot from the French militia in Guiana had catapulted her into the limelight three years ago, and since then her popularity had only continued to grow. To the public, there was something comforting in seeing a beautiful person report on the tragic, ugly reality of a world constantly torn by war, disease, and famine. Pretty faces were a distraction.

  The guard was wearing a balaclava.

  Lisa followed the guard out of her hotel room and along the worn carpet in the hallway. Cameras were already on her; one cameraman rushed backward in front of her, catching her every expression while the other followed close behind. Occasionally the first cameraman would glance over his shoulder to avoid bumping into furniture or to take a corner, but how he didn’t trip over his own feet, she didn’t know. The other cameraman had it easy, following behind her.

  “Given the intense public scrutiny surrounding telepaths, this interview is being conducted in the utmost secrecy,” she said as she hurried behind the guard. “The 60 Minutes film crew was brought here in a van with blacked-out windows. We entered the building through a loading dock. I don’t know where we are, just that we’re somewhere on the north side. We have strict instructions not to film any faces. The guard you can see works directly for the Tells. He may even be one of them.”

  Commentary on the move gave her interview a gritty feel before it had even begun. She liked that. She could imagine the jerky footage adding to the tension of the moment.

  “He’s armed. I don’t mind telling you I’m scared. Even though I’m told there’s nothing to be scared of, I am. My heart is racing. It’s easy to say there’s nothing to be scared of when you’re the one holding the gun.”

  She was repeating herself. Normally, that was a no-no for a reporter, but in this context it seemed to heighten the tension.

  “It’s about four in the morning,” she said as she reached out to push open a fire door before it shut behind the guard. She followed the burly guard down a set of crumbling concrete stairs. “I was told the interview would be conducted last night, but there were delays. No one would tell us anything. They drove us around for hours, often stopping for upwards of forty-five minutes at a time, before we were finally brought to this rundown hotel. I’m tired. We’re all exhausted.”

  She stepped out into an empty kitchen below the ground floor. Bright lights blinded her, leaving retina flashes in her eyes, but she fought the temptation to cover her eyes. She spoke as she hurried between the stainless steel bench tops.

  “I’ve been told I’m safe here, that I have fifteen minutes with the infamous Subject X and then it’s over. I’ve got to make every question count.”

  The guard stopped, gesturing for Lisa to walk ahead of him into a darkened room at the back of the kitchen. It must have been a pantry or storage area, as there were shelves lining the walls. Several spotlights had been mounted on tripods, but they faced outward, toward her, leaving the rear of the room in darkness. If she squinted, she could make out the form of a man, seated on a chair in front of what appeared to be the rear door. Quick escape, she thought. Tells weren’t dumb.

  The cameraman crouching in front of her halted at the door, pushing against the doorjamb so she could squeeze by. Like her, the two cameramen had their orders.

  “Have a seat,” the dark stranger said, gesturing to a chair immediately in the spotlights. If she didn’t know better, Lisa would have sworn she was being interrogated, and she understood that this would be like no interview she’d ever conducted.

  She stepped forward, feeling vulnerable.

  Lisa was wearing a white lace shirt. Under the intense lights, it was probably semitransparent, making her feel more self-conscious than she’d like. Ironically, she’d worn this top to put her subject off kilter. Men were such easy marks. Show a bit of skin, some soft cleavage, something even vaguely suggestive of sex, and their minds turned to mush. But that choice had backfired on her spectacularly under the glare of these spotlights.

  She sat down. Her cameramen took up their positions. One stood behind her, but slightly to one side, capturing the long shot as she conducted the interview. The other knelt slightly in front of her, focusing on her good side, looking to capture her face as she asked questions. As the subject would remain anonymous, hidden in the shadows, it was important to capture some human interest.

  Human interest? Who was she kidding? Eye candy.

  “Subject X has agreed to meet with us,” she began, “but only with a guarantee of anonymity. With the Telepathy Act before Congress, there’s a very real threat against the Tells. Internment is at the heart of the issue. The question is, should a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, have the power to arbitrarily imprison a segment of its own population without the due process of law?”

  Pretty, but smart, she thought. No, she didn’t. She wasn’t sure where that thought came from, and for a moment, that fleeting realization distracted her.

  “First,” she began, addressing Subject X as he sat still in the darkness, “can you tell me why you agreed to this interview? Tells are notoriously reclusive and secretive. Why meet with me? Why go on national television?”

  “Because the people have to know,” Subject X replied.

  Lisa had her suspicions confirmed. When X had first spoken, asking her to sit, she’d thought, black male, aged 24-28, lower socioeconomic group, limited education. Now, as he began to talk more, his tone of voice and choice of words reinforced that impression. The darkness provided no cover. She could see him for who he was—a disenfranchised black male raging against the world.

  X didn’t elaborate further; she was going to have to draw information out of him. She smiled warmly, wondering if he was reading her mind.

  “No,” he said, before she could ask another question. “It doesn’t work like that. Telepathy—everyone thinks they know what it is. It’s reading minds, right? Wrong. If you think telepathy is reading minds, you know nothing.”

  Again, there was an awkward pause.

  “Go on,” she said. “This is your moment, your chance to tell us, to talk to the nation and tell them what telepathy really is.”

  X didn’t reply. Lisa desperately wanted to see his face. Interviewing someone without any of the usual visual clues and feedback mechanisms associated with body language was painfully difficult.

  “When did
you first develop telepathy?” she asked.

  “It ain’t something you develop,” X replied. “It’s something you are. And we’re all different, but we’re all the same. Get it? Like you. Look at you with your pretty blond hair. Anyone can look at you and see that you’re blonde, but what is blonde? No two blondes are the same, right? And yet you’re all blonde.”

  Lisa nodded. She had no idea what he was talking about, but he was talking, and talking was progress. In her experience, give someone enough rope in an interview and they invariably hanged themselves. Shut up, she told herself. Let the man speak.

  “Let me speak,” X said, and her eyes went wide. Lisa couldn’t quite explain what she was feeling, but it felt as though she was having a conversation with this man on two entirely different levels. One verbally, and another at a subconscious level.

  “See, it’s not really reading minds, not like you’d read a book or something. People got it all wrong.”

  “How did you know?” she asked. In the depths of her mind, she knew that was all she needed to say. No additional qualifiers were necessary. There was an implicit understanding between her and this angry young man.

  “First time I ever tripped was when I was thirteen. Me and my girl were making out behind the bike sheds at school. Hell, I thought it was normal. We swapped spit, you know, our lips locked, my hands on her tits, and our minds just kinda fused. I loved it. I thought it was normal, but damn did it freak her out. She jumped back, her eyes wide like yours. Wouldn’t speak to me for a month!

  “But even then, I didn’t really know what’d happened. See, it’s not like some superpower you can turn on or off, it’s just part of you. You don’t think about sight. You don’t think about smelling or hearing, right? You just live life, you know, and you see stuff, you smell apple pie, flowers and coffee. But you never think about what you’re doing, you just do it, right? For me, it’s all about emotions. The more emotional I am, the more I trip.”

  Lisa nodded.

  “Telepathy isn’t reading minds. You need to understand that. It’s not like going to a library and getting out a book. Think about the name: telepathy. Tele means at a distance, like television, telephoto, telescope.”

  Lisa was surprised by Subject X. He was more intelligent than she’d assumed, and she was vaguely aware that she’d mistaken a lack of education for low intelligence, but these concepts weren’t synonymous.

  “Yeah, I looked that up,” X replied, unsettling her with how he picked up on her assumptions—though he could have simply read her body language, she noted. Lisa had run into subjects like this before during interviews. The best con men were those that could pick up on the subtle tells people gave away with their eyes, their posture, even how they held their hands. X didn’t break stride as he spoke.

  “Telepathy isn’t tele-thought, it’s about pathos, empathy. You want to know what most people are thinking? You don’t need telepathy for that. You see a beautiful young girl sitting on the bus. She’s wearing a short skirt and a tight top. She gets off the bus, and all them men, they pretend they’re civilized, they pretend they’re dignified and moral, wearing their dark suits and white shirts, but they all turn their heads as the bus pulls away. They all want a look. Like a dog sniffing ass. And see, you don’t need no telepathy to read that mind.”

  Lisa felt sweat beading on her forehead under the intense lights, but she fought the temptation to wipe it away.

  “It’s okay,” Subject X said, and she saw his hand move in a gesture that said relax. The cameras were on his dark shadow as he spoke, so she carefully dabbed at her forehead, trying to avoid smudging her makeup.

  “You want to know what people think? I’ll tell you what people think. They think about themselves. Most of the time, they’re consumed, wondering what other people think about them. But no one gives a shit about them. They’re all too busy thinking about themselves.

  “Nah, it’s not a party trick. Telepathy is something different. First time I knew? First time I really knew was when this guy collapsed on the sidewalk in front of a cafe. Me and my crew was out, walking in a swank neighborhood in the Village. Shit, we were fish out of water, we were in the wrong part of town. All the stares, man, we got them, but we don’t care.

  “Anyway, there’s this fancy Italian joint with tables on the sidewalk. They say it’s owned by DeNiro or Billy Joel or someone famous. We’re joking around. Cop car pulls up. Asks us what we’re doing. Fucking harassment. What? Is the Village just for white folk? Don’t give me no lip, he says, move along. Yes, officer. Fucking dipshit!

  “Anyway, he rolls on around the corner, gives us the evil eye, and we’re just laughing. Then this guy crashes into a table right in front of me, knocks it over. The cop car is gone, and this guy is lying flat on his back, grabbing at his throat and choking.

  “My boys ran. If shit’s going down, you don’t want nothing to do with it. Too easy for a cop to pin the blame, you know. Only Jules stayed—I guess girls get less shit planted on them.

  “I wanted to run, but I couldn’t. There was no telepathy kicking in or anything. I didn’t need telepathy. I could see it in his eyes. The pain. He was dying. All these white folk are shouting and panicking, but they’re all just standing around. Ain’t no one helping him. I have to. I don’t know why I care about this fifty-year-old white guy, but I do.

  “I reach down and touch his arm; and that’s when it hits me. I didn’t read his mind or nothing. There were no thoughts, no words bouncing around, just knowing. He’d been drinking, but he wasn’t drunk. He’d tripped on the doorframe and fallen into the side of a table—and it struck him in the pharynx. Now there’s a word I don’t know, but he knows it. The force crushed his windpipe. He can’t breathe. But he’s a doctor, see, a surgeon at Mount Sinai.

  “Give me your pen, I say to the waiter standing next to me. He hands me the pen as I grab a steak knife from the pavement. In my mind, I know it’s not sterile, but that’s not my thought and it’s not his either, but it’s based on his experience as a surgeon. I know what to do. He’s fading. His mind is slipping, but it’s all there, decades of experience for me to draw upon. I just know, but I don’t know how. I ain’t never been to college.

  “I bite the end of the pen, break through the plastic, and spit the nib and shit on the sidewalk. I’m left with a hollow, clear tube. I wipe the knife with a napkin and lean over him, trying to cover him from sight so no one can see what I’m doing. People are going to freak out with this shit. You don’t need to be a telepath to know that.

  “Jules is still with me when this woman freaks out and starts hitting me with her handbag. Jules pulls her away. She knows. And me, I perform a tracheotomy on a sidewalk covered in old chewing gum. With my finger, I touch at the bridge of the sternum. I don’t know what the fuck a sternum is, but he does. I cut through the soft skin. Epidermis, that’s what he knows, but to me it’s just skin. Blood pools, but I cut deeper. I’m confident. I know I have to cut deeper, through the thick cartilage leading into his windpipe, but I have to be precise. Cause too much damage and blood can run down into his lungs. I want just a small hole, just large enough to push the pen through so air can flow.

  “Now the woman or wife or mistress or whoever she was, she’s screaming in my ear. Fuck, it’s hard to concentrate with some high-pitched bitch yelling just inches from your head. Shut the fuck up, I yell. I raise the empty pen high above my head, keeping one hand on the bloody wound in this guy’s neck, and strike hard, jamming it deep into his throat.”

  Lisa’s mouth was open. She’d lost all composure while listening to Subject X tell his story. This is not what she had expected from the interview.

  “And he gasps. There’s blood and shit everywhere, but he’s breathing again. By this time, there’s a crowd gathered around, and he’s blowing blood bubbles. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen, but he’s alive.

  “These two big white guys grab me by the shoulders and haul me off the dude. Jules yells at them to stop, b
ut she ain’t up for a fight, and I don’t blame her.

  “The first guy slams me into this parked car. The alarm goes off. All the lights start flashing as the second guy smacks me in the solar plexus. What the fuck is a solar plexus, I’m thinking as the wind is knocked out me, but the doc and me, we’re still connected. Jesus, that shit is confusing. And the guy that hit me, I got enough contact to make a connection with him too, but it’s faint. I can see inside his mind. He’s a fucking Green Beret. In his mind, I’m a dead man.

  “I raise my hands, protecting my head, because I know that’s where he’s going. That’s where he always goes. I don’t know how I know, I just do. It’s not like getting a book off a shelf and looking something up, more like remembering a scene from your favorite movie. Anyway, fists are pumping. He’s beating on me, hitting my jaw, my cheeks, the side of my head. I’m trying to protect my head, but I can’t. I’m crying. It fucking hurts, you know. He’s pounding on me like a gorilla. I’m on my knees and he’s hitting me with fists made of iron, I swear.

  “I grab at his ankle and share the pain. Shit, did that work. I barely touched him, but it was enough. His buddy is yelling. Finish him! Finish him! But he just sinks to his knees in front of me. Our eyes meet, and he knows. He’s crying, like me.

  “See, y’all are afraid of the Tells, but you don’t get it. We’re the ones with something to lose.”

  Lisa felt a tear run down her cheek.

  “I work on a construction site,” X said, changing the subject, but Lisa desperately wanted to know what happened to the surgeon, what happened to the soldier, and to X himself once the police and paramedics arrived at the restaurant. X wasn’t telling. He wanted to move on to something else.

  “So one day, we’re sitting on the overhang of an unfinished roof, watching people walk by on the street while we eat lunch, and this girl crosses the street toward us.