Chapter 1
The club was at least as nice as I'd expected it to be, with maybe better taste and definitely more money spent on it. Edgy modern art on the walls, exotic wood all over the bar, monitors all over catering to the very high end tech crowd. I nursed a decently built martini at the bar and surveyed the terrain, totally out of habit.
Slim pickings: a group of women with their heads together in a booth sharing a pitcher of something red; two or three couples, the female halves of which didn't look appetizing; a mixed group way at the end of the place around a pool table. The contact I was looking for, Kayla had assured me, would show up. To "hold court" was the way she'd put it. But, she'd told me, there was always the possibility of a crash in Asian markets or a filing in the EU that needed attention. Or maybe it was just too early in the evening. My contact had the reputation of being a workaholic.
A blonde squeezed in next to me, the usual well-coiffed and expensively outfitted type here, trying to get the bartender's attention. Membership in this club was very difficult, very costly (except for me, of course), sort of an urban country club but you didn't have to pretend to like golf. So she was at least upper management somewhere. Marketing, I thought, by her style.
More out of boredom than any special sexiness she displayed, I did my thing a little bit on her, dilated her, as I call it, or sometimes pinning. I watched her, not impolitely, just aware, and waited for her to put eyes on me. She did and it was easy.
She stared at me, longer than any halfway attractive blonde should let herself with a strange man. And I'm no movie star, FYI. Still, she couldn't take her eyes off me.
"You're very beautiful," I lied.
As expected, she gave a little startled reaction. She straightened her posture, making her breasts more prominent, finger-combed her straight hair back, smiled, especially with her eyes. "Thank you. You're, umβ" The club was its own small world and networking was how you mined the buried gold. Just for evil fun I cranked my thing up a bit. "What, what's your name?" She could hardly get the words out.
I mumbled something.
"Oh, nice. Weβ my business partner and Iβ we were just talking and . . ."
I'm so cruel sometimes. I started doing my thing to her down there and she had to cross her legs and hold onto the bar to stay upright, while still trying as hard as she could to keep her eyes on me. Difficult given the spikes of pleasure I was shooting up her spine from her pudenda.
Her drinks arrived. I released her so her trembling fingers could get out her credit card. Anyway, I'd had my fun. She tried to get me to come back to sit with her and her friend but I begged off, saying I was waiting for someone. True on a certain level, though not the romantic one she no doubt imagined.
I have a special ability, without equal in my experience and research. I am telekinetic. That is, I can move matter with my mind. Only tiny, tiny amounts of matter, so small the effect is easy to miss and difficult to measure. But that's okay.
I'm a scientist, or used to be. Not a great scientist, not even really a very good one. But I know how to collect data, run an experiment, test hypotheses. I was working late in the lab one evening in grad school, trying to purify a neurochemical my advisor (who was also the lab's boss) needed. Successful preparation of the substance was, into the bargain, the goal of my dissertation for the Phd I'd deluded myself into believing I had to have.
Things weren't going well. Whatever methods I used to remove contaminants seemed to also remove the fraction I wanted to keep. So there I was, tired and hungry, carefully placing a postage stamp-sized piece of blotting paper in the analytical balance, willing it to show me the tiny increase in weight that would tell me I'd done it.
And it did! The weight increased. I was so happy I did a fist pump. But then the weight dropped down. I growled. There are so many small effects that can produce a false reading when you're looking for microgramsβ temperature, water evaporation, and so on.
I stared hard at that damned blotter paper again. And the weight went back up! That was crazy. I pursed my lips and thought. Decrease. Huh? Stared. Increase.
I tossed the blotter paper in the trash and tried just moving the balance. That didn't work, but another damp bit of blotting paper did. I spent the evening making the weight measurement go up and down. I tried everything I could think of to make the balance do what it was doing by non-insane means, moving the lab furniture, turning equipment on and off, adjusting the air conditioning. It's the first thing you need to do in an experiment when you see something that's too good to be true. Finally I sat back and had to reach the insane conclusion: I could move things with my mind. Not much, only a few hundred micrograms. But I could do it.
I contemplated my new ability and what it meant while I had a burger at the only place in the university district open that late, a low-end diner. I could move some of the tiniest crumbs across my plate when I really concentrated. I could maybe make a drop of condensation on my beer glass go up the side. Maybe. It was starting to look like my amazing ability was amazingly useless.
The waitress came by for a last call. Even this place was closing. Her name, I read from her badge, was Donna.