Ch 9.
Continuing story of Stephen who sees emotions as vivid colour. In this chapter Stephen is back at work and Helen has more than one proposal to deliver.
As always comments and thoughts most welcome, really want to hear what you think.
All characters are over 18 years of age
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I was in deep thought as I took the short walk towards work. The last few weeks have been the strangest of my life. As long as I can remember I've always had a strong sense of how people were feeling. My earliest recollection of being in tune with a person was with my sister Jen. Ever since she was a baby, I had a strange affinity with her, I always knew what she wanted or needed. This is probably why we have always been so close. I've been going through some changes in recent times and I need to process all that had happened. I decided that I needed to take a more scientific approach to understanding what happened if I was ever going to be able to properly explain things to Jen or anyone else for that matter. I had to properly articulate my journey and try and understand the linkages and causes.
I arrived at work, took a seat at my desk, and withdrew a writing pad and pen from my draw and started writing down what I knew.
- I see the colour of people's emotional state.
- In the last few weeks my talent seems to be becoming more tuned.
- What had started as a greater awareness of a person's state had grown. It seems to have taken an almost physical form. Firstly, is appeared more like a fog, recently it looked more like a floating liquid.
- A mere few weeks ago I could no more affect that emotional state than one can catch light.
- More recently I found I could nudge the light. Then, while it was slippery, I could almost hold it, and more recently still, I've found I can capture, hold and direct it back to a particular person. What started as light had taken the form more like a flux.
- This emotional flux seems to naturally float between people. Some types of flux would readily pass between anyone. The "Pissed-Off" flux seems to affect anyone who comes into contact with it. The "Horny" flux passes easily between people to have a connection like husband and wife. It didn't ordinarily mix with those who are not naturally a couple. The other night while Jen and I watched mom and dad being most intimate their flux did not readily mix with ours, at least until I manipulated it.
- I can manipulate the flux, and once I do it does seem it be made to pass between unconnected people.
- The more I practiced manipulating the flux, the more skilled I became at controlling it.
I scratched out a final couple of notes to myself
- Practice makes Perfect!
- For what purpose?
I was awakened from my thoughts by a meeting alert that popped up on my phone. I returned my notepad to my draw and prepared for the meeting I had been invited to. Stopping by the office kitchen to make myself a coffee, I then proceeded to the meeting room.
My meeting was with Helen and the sales team. We had been working on a large potential account which was getting down to the final stages. Getting this deal was incredibly important to Helen and the company overall, but it was tightly run race and we would have to play every card the right way to win it. I moved into the meeting room, one of the account managers Graham was already seated. The rest of the team and Helen were slowly gathering. Within about 5 minutes and after some small talk we had all arrived and got down to business.
Helen opened the meeting reiterating the importance of getting this deal. Then began to outline the remainder of the selection process. We had already conducted a discovery exercise and now the final stage was a formal presentation and detailed pricing. This would take place over two days and the potential client would fly a team in for the meetings. They would stay overnight and we would take the client out to dinner in evening. Helen made it clear that our presentation had to be spot on, and we needed to really pull out all the stops on the evening entertainment. The meetings were scheduled with 2 weeks notice and we would need to be ready by then. She divided the team into smaller groups and I was to work with her on the opening and closing presentations. Basically I was to be her dogs body, but on the up side at least I'd be able to go to dinner with the client and that promised to be very high end.
