CHAPTER 1
As a child Kate Childs would wake up crying, at that age unable to understand she had been dreaming vividly but the worry of her parents had her believing they were nightmares.
Perhaps they were. No one got into Kate's head to check it out and of course years later she couldn't remember those early childhood dreams.
In ageing Kate came to accept that generally she had good dreams. She could manipulate her gift a little by thinking of something and then within a night or two she often dreamt it. She couldn't change a dream.
Gradually Kate's mother accepted her youngest daughter possessed a gift and to her credit she told no one and urged Kate to do the same otherwise Kate would be pestered by people to dream for them to meet their expectations.
"Just keep your dreaming ability secret darling."
"Okay mom. I don't want people I don't know pestering me."
Laura's realization that her youngest had a real gift came one morning when husband Basil had taken the two older children hiking.
Kate came to her mom's bed crying.
"Oh darling what is it," Laura said, hugging the 8-year old.
"Da-da is dying."
Laura was shocked. Her father was in hospital waiting to have a benign growth removed from his stomach. Her mother had said it was just a routine procedure, that there was no need for Laura to worry.
But the shock of hearing such a positive statement about 'Da-da' as the kids had always called him made her react. Remaining reasonably calm, she said to Kate to get dressed and they would go and sit with grandma.
It was a 90-mile drive and Laura's mother was surprised she'd come but was delighted that she had arrived and brought darling Kate.
"I want to see Da-da."
Gran checked her watch and said, "He'll be in the recovery room darling. We'll see him soon."
The surgeon came to the waiting room and told grandma everything had gone well.
Later the smiling nurse said, "Only two visitors at a time please Mrs Knowles."
Astute gran said, "Then would you please mind my granddaughter while my daughter and I go in?"
"Um you can take her in Mrs Knowles but please keep her quiet."
They sat quietly and chatted with the patient who looked poorly but said a few words including asking Kate what she'd been doing at school and she told him in great detail as if she were reading script.
They were about to leave when Da-da had a seizure. The visitors were hustled out and two hours later Mrs Knowles was taken aside and told the distressing news that her husband had died, probably as the result of a blood clot.
That night when the weary Laura was patting Kate to sleep at grandma's house she murmured, "Thank god you dream darling."
She then went out to meet the rest of her family who'd arrived in a borrowed vehicle and they hugged but no mention was made of Kate's dream that enabled Kate and her mother to be with Da-da moments before he died.
* * *
At college, freshman Kate Childs was under investigation accused of cheating. Her English class had been asked to memorize as much of Milton's epic poem as they could, and with more than 10,000 lines of blank verse that request was more than a tall order. Students knew that next morning they would be tested.
Kate was third person up for the recitation and she just went on and on until the instructor called stop and asked Kate to hand over her recording playback equipment.
"What playback equipment?" Kate asked looking perplexed.
"You have quoted that poem, perhaps word perfect but who knows, for almost thirty minutes, boring us all to death. No one is that good. Yesterday no one in the class, including you, claimed to have read that poem. Please hand me the recording apparatus."
Kate denied she was reading via any recording prompt and caused further uncertainty when she said angrily anyway how on earth would she have known 'Paradise Lost' would be the test piece? Nonetheless she was reported and next day appeared before a three-person panel.
Again she denied cheating.
"What would be the purpose? What we did yesterday wasn't a marked test."
At that even the convener of the panel, Assistant Professor Knowles looked confused.
"Okay Kate," challenged Kathy Knowles, "then how did you do it?"
"Memory retention I guess. I was almost up to where I'd read the night before the test when I was stopped. That poem is in our folio of suggested reading."
"How many times did you read that section?"
"Just the once; I had other things to do."
Professor Knowles went to her side desk and returned with two copies of the college's last annual report. She handed Kate a copy.
"Have you sighted this published magazine before?"
"Yes and I skipped through it."
"Did you read the President's three-page report?"
"God no."
The panelists had to smile at that.
"Please read the President's report."
Kate asked was it some kind of test and was told yes.
Several minutes later the three members of the panel huddled over the convener's copy as Kate put down her closed copy and began to recite. After a third of the way through Professor Knowles sighed and said, "You can stop Kate. You do have phenomenal memory retention. You may go. Please understand this investigation was necessary. Um how do you do it?"
"I just seem to be able to picture what I have read but must concentrate hard if I am to see the continuing imaging of that feedback."
As Kate left one of the panel members said, "Does she have a specialist career if she retains this gift?"
Professor Knowles said, "Perhaps CIA or military intelligence, police interrogation or a supermarket career."
"A supermarket?"
"Yes she'd be employed to walk around the aisles and return to her computer and order replacement stock where shelves needed restocking."
"You're kidding."
"It would be a damn sight cheaper than automating the re-ordering system."
After that nasty experience, not liking being accused a cheat, Kate decided not to reveal her power of memory attention and the occasional flash of seeing things she later found were predictions and often came true. Her mom had been right, it would lead to her being embarrassed.
Each year at college before graduating with a master's in political science, Kate studied all the published material of class testing and always finished that year no higher than 5th position in her class. She knew the information she possessed at exam time could have placed in in the top two but that would only risk attracting attention. The effect of that was no one remembered the revelation as a freshman that she exhibited a phenomenal power of memory retention.
Kate returned home to live with her parents in Roxton, a city with more than 400,000 inhabitants and so had a variety of employment opportunities if she could appeal to recruiters.
She failed to really impress. Well most of the interviews asked so dumb and irreverent questions such as, what was her work experience. Her answer was practically none as she'd not worked because of possessing indolent parents and good scholarships. She hadn't been asked, for example, about the theory of rocket propulsion having read about that in a tech mag once. Her shortest interview came when she applied for the position of assistant research officer for a large Women's Collective. She answered the first interview question did she plan to marry, "Of course, do you think I look as if I'm gay?" and the angry interviewer told Kate to leave.
Kate finally was hired as an office assistant in Senator Mitchell's office and was taken around at introduced to all thirty-one employees. She sat fiddling her thumbs for the remainder of that day and next morning was given a trolley by the head clerk and asked to deliver the mail. It was designed to embarrass the new recruit hired on the basis she had a degree in political science but had no office experience. Everyone in the general office concealed their mirth.
She arrived back within ten minutes and the head clerk looked at her sternly.
"This trolley is empty. What did you do with the mail? You can't have delivered all of it so quickly."
"Well I did. Now I'd like some real work."
"Like what?"
"Let me think. What about analyzing the Senator's workload over the past year?"
"For what purpose?"
Kate sighed and said to advise how he could improve his efficiency rate.
Maxine the head clerk grinned and said she would apply for authorization for the new genius from college to access the Senator's electronic diary. She then checked to find people who'd been given the wrong mail and hadn't received their usual Monday morning mail and was astonished to find everyone had their mail and said it was surprising the new girl had remembered their names.
When she returned to the office Kate said, "Please could you make that the Senator's current diary as well as his previous diary. I need both to cover the last twelve months since July last year."
"Yes Miss Childs. God is there no humility in you or awareness of the role of an office junior?"
There were sniggers around Kate and she wondered what the hell Maxine was talking about.
Not surprisingly, she received no authorization to access the electronic diaries that day and spent the day sorting mail and incoming invoices. She learned that the Senator received funding for eight staff that was divided between two locations. Others in the offices in the CBD worked in the administration of his family trust, his wife's family trusts and his portfolio of investments made when he'd sold out of his law firm that had grown to become the second largest in the city.
That night Kate's mom asked where the guys were.
"What guys?"
"Before you went to college and for much of the time you were there, guys kept coming around here sniffing."
Kate decided a tease was in order.
"Sniffing for what?"
Laura's face turned pink and she hurried from the room.
Yes thought Kate. Where were the guys? Then it hit her. Because of her absence she was no longer on the dating circuit and neither were many of her girlfriends were hanging about because they were going steady or were even engaged.
God, she was growing old!
Next morning Kate slipped out of the general office and went to the office suite of Senator Mitchell.
"Hi I'm Kate and wish to see the Senator."
"Miss you are required to make an appointment like everyone else."
The arriving Senator Mitchell looked at Kate's A1-shaped butt and said, "I'll deal with this Gaye. Come with me Ma'am."
"It's Miss Senator. Call me Kate, I'm new in general office."
Gaye appeared close to having a seizure.
