I was not in a good state of mind. I listened to the various people who came to my room, feeling regret that I could not muster enough enthusiasm for what they were telling me as I once might have. The room I found myself in was comfortable, with a nice bed and a desk with a computer, the very computer that I am now recording these accounts of my life, leading up to my discovery of the Answer. You will all know the kind of room I mean, as surely as you knew your own room when you were a novice inductee in the Sixth House of the Alliance of Minds.

I had awoken here, laying on the bed, looking around in confusion. I felt ravaged. My stomach was growling, my face covered in stubble, and I could not lift the veils of mental fog that seemed to cloud every attempt at remembering what had happened, or where I was. Bits and pieces came back to me, of my discovery of the mechanics of telekinesis, to my mysterious visitor and our incredible battle over the ocean near my home. My life, or who I was before that seemed insignificant, as though to my mind I was nothing, and then I became my true self.

I had mastered incredible techniques in a matter of days! I had pushed my mental abilities far past any limits that they should have had! Remembering this, I now understood why I could barely keep my thoughts together. To me, now in this room, time would flash by in bursts, then slow to a stop, yet this was no trick of the mind I was employing, I truly was delirious. Suddenly someone would be in the room with me as I lay in my confusion.

“…House dates back to Druidic Celtic societies” my first visitor was saying as I managed to focus on his words. It was the old man who spoke to me last, floating above the ocean. What did he say his name was? Schwbong! You know as well as I do the folly in trying to write down in letters the names of Telekinetics; how to phonetically write the sound of a massive metal gong being struck? You all know him as Grandmaster Gong. Gong was explaining to me the history of the Sixth House, but I drifted in and out of the conversation.

“And so the House is not really a building, per say…” he continued, “More a group of loyal members with likeminded goals. In fact, we constantly have to change our accommodation to remain hidden from the other two houses. Yes my boy, I know it may seem confusing to you, being the Sixth House in a group of three. The Alliance began in pre-Christian times, as a means of safeguarding against the growing influences of the Church. Initially there were nine houses, all across the globe, each with the common goal of protecting the mental arts from discovery and annihilation by religious zealots. In times long past, a group of ’witches’ and ’wizards’ like ourselves would have been viewed as being in league with the devil! As time went on, the influence of the Church waned, and so the various houses began to feel safe, to the point where…”

I half listened to his speech, finding it hard to focus on his soft, rustling voice. The kind of voice an old man might get when his vocal cords are worn to the point of being useless. I did take in what he was telling me, but in a subconscious way. I remember now that the Ninth House had come under the rule of a man named Warn, the most dangerous and powerful telekinetic the world had ever seen. At least, until I had come along, it seemed. Warn is the sound of a chainsaw cutting through wood, if you did not know. While he told me of Warn’s corruption of the Ninth House, and his subsequent destruction of all but two other Houses, I found my mind going back… to the oceanic funnel of water I had been imprisoned in!

I had shrunken my awareness to an incredible degree! What were those bonds that held the quarks together? They had been pure light! Solid bars of light, that seemed to have mass and shape. My mind had balked at investigating further into these bonds, as though there was an incredible danger present. I could use my mind to slice the static electric bonds that held molecules together, so what else could I do? The splitting of an atom could result in the most powerful eruption of nuclear energy… and having looked at an atom, as though standing before it, with my minds eye, I knew I could achieve the same thing! I could split an atom! Chills ran down my arms and back, goose-pimples of extreme emotion as the magnitude of my power dawned on me… what of the unnamed bonds of light holding quarks together? What incredible fury would be unleashed if I tampered with them?

“Gong, how small can you shrink your awareness?” I suddenly asked.

Krshhh looked at me in a confused manner, large hawk-eyes goggling at me without once blinking. He sat at the foot of my bed, and I realised that Gong had left. I had not noticed! How much time had passed? I worried now that I had permanently damaged my brain.

“Gong, my father that is, has left!” said Krshhh “You should relax, my friend. The condition you have is not uncommon, many novices before you have pushed themselves too hard! The areas of the brain that we use, that we unlock with our abilities are mostly unknown to the scientific community. Repeated use of these various areas of our brain lobes results in a strange kind of delirium. It is caused by a unique onset of neuron firing, and is not permanently damaging to your mind. It will pass let me assure you. I wish to apologize to you, my friend”

He held out his hand, and I took it, sensing from him nothing but sincere friendship, despite our previous battle.

“…how? How did you… the funnel. I know, I mean KNOW that I held the funnel firmly with… mind! I felt nothing from you, nothing at…! If you were powerful enough to force my mind out and disperse the water, I would have… gases? Please you must…., I know you need your rest… Warn is going to find us! He is too…”

Snatches, that is all I could hear from him. I remember explaining how I had made my awareness so small that I could telekinetically manipulate the individual water molecules that held me imprisoned. He never felt my awareness enter into his, his awareness that held the water in place, because mine was simply too small! I do not remember it, but also I told him about the white bonds of light.

“Such a thing is unheard of!” he said, fear and awe evident on his face as he stared at me. “No-one can make their awareness that small! Every novice tries it, only to feel panic and despair, an instinctive fear mechanism! Yes I believe you described that very fear when looking at the white bonds! The limit is of the mind! Although… perhaps… perhaps it is because you have taught yourself! Yes, I believe that is it. You have none of the preconceived notions that our novices do. Perhaps it is us, their teachers that are placing the limits in their minds…”

“Krshhh” I interrupted “Say your name for me”

He looked surprised, then opened his mouth to speak. I made my awareness small, instinctively, and I then split a minds-eye away from the core of my being. By astral projection, I sent the minds eye over to his throat. From a vantage point inside his throat, my mind so small that time slowed down from my perspective, I watched his vocal cords as he generated the electrical static noise that was his name. As I suspected, he did not use his vocal cords.. Making my mind smaller, I looked around his mouth, I doubt that he suspected that I was doing so. Just above his tongue, a tongue so large to my mind that I was floating above a large forest of pink slimy taste buds, I could see the ripples in the atmosphere that Krshhh was telekinetically producing to say his name. Sounds is a vibrational energy, to us it is the vibration of molecules in the air by a force, in a rippling fashion. The ripples travel onwards, picked up by receptors in our ear canals. The receptors in our ear detect the changes in pressure in the soundwave, converting that information to our brains, to become what we know as sound. Different vibrations are caused by different levels of force from soundwaves, equalling different sounds. I could see what kind of force was being generated by Krshhh, telekinetically manipulating the atmosphere, to result in the soundwaves he desired. Having discovered what I wanted to know, I split another minds eye off and sent it flying away out of the room, out of the building, flying around the country until I found the sound I desired to study.

“Krshhhhhhhhhh” I said his name telekinetically, without using my vocal cords. “I have decided on a name for myself” I opened my mouth and replicated the sound waves inside my throat necessary to make the sound of a computers internet dialling up. “Eeeeyyeeerrrwkssshhhwksshheeeee…”

Krshhh was no longer there. Jeff sat before me now, with a look of awe on his face.

“What… what the hell?” his voice like gravel being ground together “Well I’ll be! I sensed your mind leave the building, and came here to see what you were up to, only to find you naming yourself? You know boy, the naming ceremony is an important tradition to you Telekinetics. I wonder what they’ll think when you’ve… well damn it I guess you just keep on working things out, don’t you?”

Jeff was a telepath, an entirely different kind of mentalist to what I could do. He sat and talked to me, now calling me Eeeyer, deciding that if I had named myself who was he to argue? He mostly talked, explaining some of the training I would expect to be given, joking that I would probably work it all out myself. He would teach me ways to safeguard myself from hypnotists and telepaths, the most important way being to always have a telepath as a partner. My mind wandered back and forth, half hearing him explain that thoughts require electrical currents in the brain, brain activity that gives off electrical signals. Electrical signals give off vibrational frequencies, and the thoughts of the mind, whether picturing something or just thinking a thought, give off very unique vibrations, so delicate that no current invention of man can detect them. Similar vibrations to sound, but not in a way that affects the atmosphere, if that makes sense. A telepath is born with a part of the brain activated that can pick up these frequencies.Imagine that a radio can tune into different frequencies. Jeff could ‘hear’ thoughts, as though picking up such broadcasts.

While he spoke I was daydreaming. I was considering what Gong and the rest here had to teach me. I had no equal here, none! The true limits of my power were dawning on me in my delirium. I could, should I choose to, defeat everyone here. The very fact that I escaped the funnel, made me aware of how easy it would be to dominate any opponent. It was not in my nature to do so, yet I wondered what I could really achieve here, as a member of a elite group of mentalists. What could I achieve anywhere? I would be valued here, as a weapon against Warn and his Ninth House and other as yet unnamed threats from the Third House, the other surviving members of the Alliance of Minds. I wondered if I should even care? What purpose was there in this struggle? Did Warn really want to rule the world, as Gong had told me? What would he do with it? Where is the thrill for people like us in material possessions, when we can do what we can do? When you control something, the requirements of maintaining that control end up controlling you. What good is power not freely given? Am I now just as aimless in life as before I discovered my power, only so recently?

“Kid, you need to look at the bigger picture. Warn is insane! He doesn’t want to rule the world for any other reason than his own aggressive nature. He will ruin this world for everyone!”

As Jeff had obviously been reading my mind, I decided to investigate his claims on how telepathy worked. Again I made my awareness small and sent it out into his body. More specifically, his brain. I wondered, could he read my thoughts when my awareness was this small? Time perception was altered when I did this feat. I imagined Jeff would only hear a high pitched whining as my thoughts, from his perspective, raced at a faster speed.

With my minds eye I examined his living brain. Looking microscopically at his entire brain mass, I determined which areas were receiving the electrical currents associated with brain activity. I could see the little electrical waves as they pulsed around and through the centre of his grey matter, fluctuating between the neurons and glia, cells that comprised the human brain. Memorising which areas had the most activity , I sent my awareness out into the nearby street, to examine the brain of a passer-by. I could see which areas had a distinct difference in the amount of brain activity. It appeared that all areas of the brain; whether frontal lobe, temporal lobe, occipital lobe etc… all these areas functioned for balance, memory, etc… but in a telepath like Jeff, the electrical activity in these areas was increased, and localized in areas that were not used by the passer-by! I suspected that a telekinetic would have the same phenomenon in his brain. I could see where the electricity was coming from too, by using my minds eye. A CT scan and the like will only detect the radiated energy from these reactions, and show the results as energy fields on a graph. I could see the electrical currents in action! I could see things that science had not worked out yet! I knew where in the human brain these currents were generated from! Does a thought create the current, or does the current create the thought? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

I know now that I quite possibly went insane in my delirium, otherwise I would never have attempted what came next. I doubt that a sane man would have ever conceived of such thing. I examined my own brain with my minds eye.

I could see my own brain at a microscopic level. Every thought that went through my mind was simultaneous with a fluctuation of electrical activity in all areas of my brain. What was astral projection, then, that my mind could be outside of my body, and yet my brain still activated with electrical currents when I thought? I wondered then and there if there was truly such a thing as a soul, if I could achieve such things. I examined which areas of the brain were activated by telekinesis, comparing them by memory to the areas of Jeff’s brain that were activated by telepathy. I could see the difference. I then made my awareness small enough to telekinetically move the electrical currents. I moved them in the same way that I had moved my cats eye marble, in what seemed an eon ago. I diverted the electrical current from their set pathways in the grey matter, away from their source straight to the areas of my brain that would activate telekinesis. Once I was sure that I had simulated the electrical activity that I had seen in Jeff’s brain, I felt successful. The electrical flows through my neorons would maintain themselves, now that they were set.

Snapping back to reality, awareness increased to normal size, I realised that I was alone. Jeff had left without my realising, once again. The sound of nearby people thinking invaded my thoughts. People in the building, people mostly thinking about me! The voices babbled! Is he our saviour? Warn is too powerful! Is, when, he, we will be found soon, does, scared, when will he recover? I realised that I had no control over telepathy! How could I switch it off?

The room was dark. It was night time. The room was light, it was daytime. Time flashed forward and slowed to a crawl. I stared about the room, trying to gain my bearings, trying to clear the mental fog. People came and went. I don’t know how long this confusing state of being continued for, but to me suddenly Gong was before me.

“… the Question! If you can discover telepathy, and let me assure you that has never been achieved by any telekinetic before, that we know of, then surely you are the one to Answer it? Jeff was beside himself when he heard your thoughts being projected into his mind!…”

“What…” I said weakly “…is the Question?”

“Well my boy, it is a question set by a man named Aldaer. In ancient times, many years ago, he was the greatest mind of all! He is the man who started the Alliance! He was the first telekinetic to discover how to reproduce sounds telekinetically, the same way you named yourself, my dear Eeeyer. You will read about Aldaer when you recover my boy. Hmm I wonder, do you even realise that your delirium had lasted for three months? Very unusual, but for you I guess anything is possible. Anyway, as I was saying, one day Aldaer announced to his fellow Druidic cultists that he had become too powerful for this world to contain. This event is recorded in our most sacred documents that we keep in our vault. He announced, and I am quoting his words now, that; “the nature of reality can be broken by sheer force of will. Brothers! I now know how to pass from this world to the next! I must leave you now, to seek my destiny among the many worlds to come!” He left with a final question: “How can I do this? I have looked far into our future, brothers, and it is bleak. One day, there will come one who can answer this Question; How is it possible to leave this world as I have? I have seen beyond the borders of our reality brothers! We face heartbreak and sorrow, but fear not! One will come who will answer my question, one who will be the saviour of this world!” And so my boy, we have come to believe that Aldaer managed to somehow break the dimensional walls that separate this universe from other parallel realities! This Question, how did he do it? It has plagued all of the houses since it was asked… and now we can only hope that you can save us from Warn…”

“But Gong!” I said sitting up, as at that moment, after months of confusion, endless introspection and fantastical dreams the delirium finally passed, and I was able to orientate myself and gather my bearings. “I know! I believe that I know the Answer!”

The wall of my room, metres from my bed suddenly melted. The view through this sudden unexpected hole showed several people in the hallway, laying dead or dying. Into the room, through the melted hole, a tall muscly man strode with an angry but pleased expression on his face.

“No! How did you get in here?” said Gong, rising to his feet “Stay back Warn! You will not harm him!”