“You are something of an anomalous phenomenon, sir. Even to our, well, most unusual order”

I looked up at the man as he sat on one of my kitchen table chairs. His shock white hair was most disconcerting to me, as he looked like a young man, about twenty five years old or so, close to my own age. His skinny flesh hung close to the skull of his face. His eyes were huge, enormous bulbous things that never blinked. He sat next to the deflated device where it still sat limp and flat on the table. I was having trouble getting my addled head around what he was saying to me.

“Let me get this straight… um” I hesitated to say his name, knowing that I could not possibly reproduce the sound he made when he introduced himself, “…sorry, what did you say your name was.

He just smiled and continued to stare at me with an unblinking, hawk-like gaze. The look he gave me said volumes; he found me amusing because he had expected to find someone much more impressive than I was.

“Well…” he eventually answered “…as I said, my name is…” his mouth then hung open, lips not moving, yet issuing from his throat came that incredible static noise. It was the sound that you hear when a television is not tuned in, when the screen is all grey with static interference, that makes you turn the volume down for its sheer intensity.

“Let me get this straight… Krshhh.” I attempted my best interpretation of his name.

Before I could continue he burst out laughing. As though he had been fighting to contain his laughter for some time.

“I am sorry sir, I am, truly” he said as he regained control of himself “You are quite a marvel. You honestly know nothing, do you? I truly did not expect to come here to find someone who was not already at least an inductee in one of the Houses, hoping to switch sides. You just… stumbled onto your powers didn’t you? Amazing.. Absolutely outstanding!”

“Yes well, as I was saying” I continued “Let me see if I understand you. You felt what I did with the cats eye?”

“Not quite. And not me personally, no. Actually it was one of our telepaths. He was in your neighbourhood you see. On unrelated business. Happened to be passing by your building when suddenly he picks up some thoughts. For a telepath in a house of the Alliance, to suddenly hear someone’s thoughts saying things like: See the marble. Feel its presence in the infinite space. Command your body from across the room. Sit your mind inside the marble. Move your hand. Move the marble… well maybe you can understand my confusion?”

“I’m sorry…Krshhh… but I do not.”

“Of course you don’t, do you? Hah! I’m sorry forgive me, I Will make it clear. These are the sort of thoughts, or mental exercises if you will, that are given to and practiced by our novice inductees! The telepath who heard your thoughts naturally believed that you were intentionally trying to get our attention. Inductees are sought after by all the houses, raw clay to be moulded to our design. We came here looking for a deserter wanting to be recruited, and found you passed out, which said immediately to us that something was unusual. The device you awoke to find was a test that we felt was necessary , to determine your skill level in telekinesis.”

“And you are a telekinetic then?” My interest was now piqued. All my life I had wanted something great, some magnificent event to change my mundane life for ever. Here a man dressed in black had impossibly stepped out of a foot long device, a man who was a talent scout for an organization of people who practiced all manner of mental arts! Could I join? I sincerely hoped so.

“I am yes. I do exactly what you did with your cats eye my friend. Only I am far more advanced in the use of such techniques. Watch!”

He stood up and moved. When I tried to follow him with my eyes, suddenly he was moving to fast for me to keep track of. I would see him in the corner of my eye and turn to face him, yet he ever stayed out of visual reach. He made a noise every time he dashed to a new spot. Have you ever held a stick as a child, and whipped it around like a weapon so fast that it made a sound as it broke through the air? Fsshow! He made a sound similar to that as he sped around my apartment constantly staying out of my focal point as though reading my mind. Pieces of loose paper were sent flying by the sudden wind he caused. He finally came to a halt.

“You see, sir, that there are many applications for telekinesis! We are the soldiers of the Alliance. When wars are fought between the houses, we are the front line! Telekinetics are so valuable to us, which is why we are here to see you.”

“That… was amazing! Did you propel your body like I did with the cats eye? How do you manage to keep your reflexes sharp enough to move at that speed without crashing into something? Can telekinesis be used to alter molecular structures like you did with the testing device? How did you fit inside it?”

“Ah no, hmmm, such things are not possible. No-one in existence has the ability to alter molecular structures, that is beyond our power. What you saw was an illusion. My friend here is a master hypnotist and illusionist.”

He pointed at an empty chair that was next to me. Only it was no longer empty! Moments before I had glanced at the chair, yet now as he pointed there was an elderly man sitting there. I jumped with shock!

“Hello” the man said with a raspy gravely voice that sounded like rocks being grinded together. He looked like a cowboy without the costume, old and rough, grey haired and grizzled. “My name is Jeff.”

“Jeff?” I said as I relaxed a little. After watching a man crawl out of a hole that was smaller than my hand, the sudden appearance of another man in a seemingly empty chair did not phase me for long.

“Yes, Jeff. Ah… um ah I don’t have… the knack for telekinesis, so I stick with my original name. Call me plain old Jeff!” he laughed, or rumbled it seemed.

“You see Jeff here is a telepath. He could read your mind like a book right now, should he have a desire to. He is so skilled at reading thoughts, that he can think hard enough about something and force that thought into the minds of others. A hard skill to master I am told. I never actually was inside the device, and so never came out of the device. The device is still there.”

I looked at the elongated barbell testing device. It was no longer deflated and limp like a balloon. It stood there in much the same way that it had when I had first awoken to find it. My jaw was getting rather sore from dropping so much!

“You had no idea we were in the apartment the whole time did you? You saw what Jeff wanted you to see. There was no way that you could, not without training in mental defences. We can teach you that much. Telepathy itself can not be taught unfortunately. It, unlike telekinesis, is something you are born with.”

Krshhh now made the window of my apartment fly open suddenly. I found myself unable to move. He was using his mind to physically move my body. I struggled at first but it was no use. I floated out of my chair and feet first through the window. I floated two stories down to the ground to stand in the pouring rain under a night sky.

I stood agape as he Krshhh floated down from my window to land on the grass beside me. I looked above his head. As he stared at me intently, all the rain that was falling on a course to land on Krshhh would suddenly swerve away from hitting him, as though he were standing in an invisible bubble that the rain rolled down the surface of.

“How… how?” I stuttered “How do you control more than one item at a time? I passed out from the strain of having my mind in merely two places at once. You must have your mind in many places!”

“It is simply practice, my friend! You could do it too, if you thought hard enough about it. Want to know how I say my name? Think about it! You can learn a cats eye in three years, yet you learnt the wooden loop of the device in no time at all! You changed the shape of your awareness to fit the loop, why not the raindrops? Why not more than one? A drop of rain is not much different than any other drop. Sound waves exist in the physical world. They are waves of deviating pressure in the atmosphere, mechanical energy, all part of the physical. Did you think that I say my name with my vocal cords? No my friend. I create the noise with my mind. You, good sir, are limited only by your mind. Well now it is down to business. Jeff has received word that our House leaders have decided what to do with you.”

Krshhh made a show of sitting down on a chair, despite the fact that there were no chairs outside on the sidewalk. He levitated in a perfect imitation of a man sitting cross-legged on an armchair.

“Never before has someone taught themselves telekinesis my friend. At least, not as far as anyone can remember. We of the Sixth House take extra care when deciding if someone has the knack, the natural affinity for telekinesis. Although it could be taught to anyone, theoretically, it will not be believed by everyone to learn it. You, on the other hand, have forged your will to make your mind do what you want it to. You are something special, though time will tell how special exactly.”

“I want to join!” I said suddenly and with fierce determination.

“No doubt that you do! Well then, here is your test. Your real test that is. If you can determine how I managed to move so inhumanly fast back in your apartment, then you shall be taken to the Sixth House, to begin your new life. This identity, who you are, with all the social ties that come with it, friends, family, must end for you forever.”

He placed his feet on the ground now. I looked around the street to see if any of my neighbours had seen this amazing sight of men floating to the ground by force of will. It appeared that no-one was watching.

“Come along Jeff!” said Krshhh, as he gestured dramatically with his hand in a commanding pantomime towards my apartment window. By force of Krshhh’s will, Jeff floated down from my apartment to stand next to us. “I personally believe that you will fail this test. Your achievements already should gain you a place in the house. Our esteemed masters have set you an impossible task. I have spent many, many years to get to the point of mental control that is necessary to achieve such feats as speed like this!”

Suddenly the pair flew off and up into the night sky! So fast that the raindrops were scattered in their wake, and a sudden wind rustled my hair and clothes. The noise was like a bullet from a gun.

**************

Three days later I again sat at my kitchen table. I had not slept since the pair had left me with my task.

It was hopeless. I could, with the proper focus, manage to move my body through the air in the same way that Krshhh had. I could now also move several items at once. I sat now in my relaxed meditation position, my eyes closed. I had taken the seat of my awareness, that which i felt perched behind my eyes, the centre of my thoughts, and made it move away from its normal spot. Astral projection is what some would call it. I could now look with my minds eye, in a way greater than physical sight, from any where in the room. To move my cats-eye marble, I had learned to force my mind's eye to leave my body and take residence inside the marble. In order to do this it had been necessary to 'learn' the marble, down to its finest detail. It had to become fixed in my mind, so that its weight size, texture, everything about it had become second nature. I needed to change the size of my awareness, so that it was the same size as the marble. with my mind inside the marble, I had then moved the marble as though it were an extension of my body, like my hand. This had caused tremendous strain the first successful attempt, as suddenly my physical eyes had opened to see the marble floating, and at the same time my minds eye could see my body sitting at the table from inside the marble!

And so in three days I had perfected the trick of having my minds eye in more than one place at a time. No longer did I feel waves of dizziness as my mind had developed a tolerance to the strain (although lack of sleep and negligible food were taking its toll on me physically). I could split my awareness now too. I made my mind leave my body three times. As I sat there pondering my task, I sent one awareness went to the marble, one to my remote control for the television, and a third to a spoon on my kitchen sink. The time it took for me to 'learn' these items, to fix them in my mind like the marble, was almost instantaneous now. I could see myself from three different angles, as I floated the items around my apartment. Yet I did so distractedly, almost automatically. My main focus was on the task.

I could move my body by making my awareness larger, and changing its shape to fit my body, then propelling my body like it were my cats eye! This is how Krshhh achieved flight, I now knew. But the success of flying meant nothing to me! I was not elated, because every time I attempted to move at his speeds, my pathetic reflexes would not allow me to control myself. I crashed into my wall before I knew it, before I could react. I was lucky not to injure myself.

Perhaps it was a clue… I considered an elephant. I couldn’t say for sure, but I felt that an elephants awareness, the focus of thoughts and feelings that would sit behind its eyes, would be a lot larger than my own. It would look down on an ant and see a tiny scurrying thing, so small and tiny. While I lazily floated the cat eye above my head, I imagined the elephant kneeling down for a closer look at the ant. The elephant could not expect to follow the legs of an ant with its eye. Have you ever tried? The ant legs from our perspective, seem to be a blur of motion as they propel the ant across the ground.

I decided to follow this line of reasoning. From our perspective, maybe. I could remember a documentary about flies I had seen on T.V. It was hypothesised that a fly would see a movie screen in a cinema as: blank, image, blank, image. The fly would not see what we saw; a moving image. It would see every frame between flashes of light from the projector?. How could that be? Was time relative to awareness? I felt goose pimples raise on my arms as an epiphany approached me. Would an ant believe that it was walking along at a reasonably slow pace, legs moving at the same speed as we believe our own legs do? If a giant space creature were to look down on a human city, would it be unable to follow the movement of our legs, as though we were ants? To the ant, is the elephant a giant statue that moves as slowly a the moon across the sky?

I had it! I knew what I had to do!

I had previously learnt how to increase or decrease the size of my awareness that sat behind my eyes. Where the back of my skull ends, the space is infinite and black. The seat of focus that is my mind shrinks to sit behind my eyes, expands to fill the infinite space. I felt strange sensations when I did so, I remembered. I sat in deep concentration, now no longer levitating the three items, instead just focusing on my task. I shrank my awareness. I am unsure if I can describe this to you in a way that you will understand. Imagine that you have shrunken. You are so small that you can now stand inside your own eyeball cavity. As you stand inside the eyeball , looking out through the pupil as though it were some great window, you realise that despite being able to look out at this giant world, you still have control over your giant arms and legs. Now imagine that the “shrunken” version of you has another shrunken version of its own standing in its eyeball cavity. Can you imagine what it would be like to stare out from that vantage point? You would see every fine detail, like hairs on the back of your hand that would appear like the trunks of giant trees!

That is how small I had made my awareness. In the same way that I had made my mind fit the shape of the cats eye. The world now looked like an alien landscape to my shrunken senses. My apartment seemed to stretch off into the distance as I looked around with my minds eye. Paradoxically, my physical sight was still working normally. With my eyes I could judge distances accurately, yet when I tried to move my hand my awareness was the size of an ant! Despite any effort to move my arm at what I considered to be a normal speed, it would only respond in an agonizingly slow pace. I’m sure if someone had been watching me I would have been moving at normal speed, but to me it was like being stuck in slow motion. I decided to use my telekinesis to move my arm. By relinquishing physical control, I moved first my arm, then my entire body across the apartment!

Success! I had done it! Using telekinesis allowed me to move at what from my perspective was a normal speed. I turned to look in my wake to see papers that were sitting on my table slowly, ever so slowly raise off the table and flutter away as though hit by a wind. I knew that the wind was caused by my body's passage!

I returned my awareness to its normal size. I turned around to see Krshhh standing there!

“Krshhh! Where did you come from? Did you see? I have done it!”

Krshhh only stared at me. He looked upset, staring at me with a grim look of determination.

“I am sorry. You were not expected to succeed” He said.

“Sorry? What do you mean?” I was confused by his reaction.

“You have just proven yourself to be much too dangerous to be allowed to live.” He said as he pulled five long bladed daggers from his pocket. He threw them in the air, and they floated above his head, the tips of the blades all pointing at me.

“What.. What? I don’t understand!”

“I am sorry… but I must follow my orders. Prepare to you defend yourself!”