Discovery (Science of Psionics Book #1) by Dave Renol (sad books to read .txt) 📗

out what we would need, when Isuddenly had to duck, as the jug of Orange juice went flying pastmy head.

I stepped back quickly as a steady stream offood started moving out of the fridge to rest on the counter nextto the stove. Eggs, bacon, ham, onion, chilies, mushrooms, andcheddar all made the trip under no visible support. Looking over atLinda, I saw a smirk on her face, both triumphant andsatisfied.

Being a fairly competitive guy, I couldn’tlet her outdo me, so after a few moments of thought, I had a plan.With what I was preparing to attempt firmly in my mind, I quicklylocked my arms on the counter in case of failure, and pulled myknees up toward my chest. Quickly giving my legs some mentallift, I waited a second to make sure that they had support,and then crossed them into a Yoga position. I moved my center ofbalance forward, released my grip on the counter edge, and threwLinda a smirk at my success.

“Showoff,” She said to me and stuck out hertongue. “Watch and learn, noob!” she exclaimed, jumping straight upand crossing her legs beneath her at the peak of her jump. Shehovered there for only a split second before falling on herass.

Trying not to laugh, I reached out to giveher a mental ‘hand’ but seeing what I was about to do, she waved meoff, and bowed her head in concentration. Slowly, legs stillcrossed beneath her in a mirror of my own, she rose up off thefloor until she was at about the same height as I. Looking up atme, she smiled, nodded her head toward the counter with the food,and said “Your turn.”

Guessing her meaning, I took a deep breathand very carefully grabbed control of a knife and floated it overtoward the cutting board. Using a second mental ‘hand’, I grabbedan onion and placed it in the middle, rotating it slightly so Icould chop off the root end. Aligning the knife over the end, Ibrought it down and watched the onion roll away and fall off theedge.

Grabbing it with a quick mental catch, Imoved it back to the cutting board and took a firmer hold of it.Moving the knife back into position, I tried again to slice off theroot end, this time succeeding. Encouraged, I chopped off the otherend, rotated the onion ninety degrees, and split it in half.

Grinning with my success, I started to tearinto the onion with greater confidence. Linda, seeing that I hadthe chopping under control, started moving pans onto the stovetop.By the time that I had finished with the onion, I had the necessaryaction figured out fairly decently, and I made short work of therest of the ingredients.

I moved everything that I chopped into a bowlthat Linda placed next to the cutting board, and opened the cartonof eggs. After holding everything so firmly for chopping, my mindgrabbed the eggs a little harder than I should have; the first twoliterally exploded as I tried to move them. Linda, who was in themiddle of flipping some bacon, paused and started laughing at me,the piece of bacon bouncing in mid-flip along with her laughs.

Throwing her a dirty look, I handled the nextone much more carefully and met with success this time. When thetime came to flip the omelet, I was pleased to discover that amental flip was much easier to perform for me than doing itby hand. By unspoken agreement, we sat normally in chairs at thedining table to eat. Once we started eating, we both discovered howravenous we really were, as we devoured every last crumb. After wecleaned up the breakfast dishes, we settled down on the couch totry and make some sense of this weirdness.

“So,” I began “Did you want to go first, orshall I?”

“Go ahead. I really have no clue where tobegin.”

“Well, I doubt that we’re both dreaming, soI’ll be working on the theory that this stuff is all real somehow.The only thing I noticed that was different this morning was thatthe hairs on my arms were standing up, like I was inside some kindof electrical or magnetic field. It pretty much had the samefeeling as last night during the peak of the storm.”

“The hairs on the back of my neck felt likethat both last night and today,” she agreed.

“Let’s run with that for a current workingtheory, until we think of something better. If this is the case, itseems that we somehow obtained some kind of ‘biofield attunement’,giving us access to telekinetic abilities. At least that’s what Icould come up with as a name for this thing during my briefinternet search this morning.”

“Biofield … it sounds like you’re trying tocover both mystic and scientific angles. Or at least covered aswell as scientific magic can get.”

“Psionic actually, not magic.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

“In effect, probably not much, however,psionics refers to a mental ability. Magic, on the other hand,usually refers to ‘spells’, sometimes with components necessary forthe casting of them.”

“Hmm … Ok, I’ll buy that for now. How muchdoes psionics cover?”

I stood up and said “Let’s go back to theoffice before I answer that. I think I left some of the psionicinfo pages up on my computer.” We made our way into the office andsettled down in front of my machine. “Here we go,” I said.

The term psychokinesis comes from the Greek"psyche", meaning mind or soul; and "kinesis", meaning motion. Thisliterally translates as "mind-movement". This is also referred toas telekinesis with respect to describing movement of objects.Psychokinesis is also a generic term for various related specialabilities which may include telekinesis, pyrokinesis, cryokinesis,teleportation, apportation, levitation, and transvection.

“So let me make sure I have this straight,”she said, composing her thoughts. “Telekinesis is moving stuffaround, teleporting is when you move yourself somewhere instantly,and levitation is moving yourself. What do the other onesmean?”

“Pyrokinesis and cryokinesis refer totelekinesis at the molecular level, where you speed up themolecules, (heating them) or slow them down (cooling them).Apportation is like teleportation, but with external objects,rather than you. Transvection is basically just flying, and doesn’tseem to be too different from levitation.”

“What other kinds of psionic abilities arethere?”

“There’s dozens