I woke up feeling refreshed. The room assigned to me was comfortable, with a large bed and a small living area. The bathroom was clean and the few toiletries that I found there were passable. Overall, I had no complaints. I have stayed at worse places, but if I were to remain there for long it would need sprucing up. I made a mental note to ask for the whereabouts of the base exchange and commissary.
Liv had taken me to my room and showed me where to go for ice and beverages. Then she had left, promising to come for me in the morning in time to get some breakfast before meeting the director again. She was a girl of her word, and the clock showed a minute to eight when I heard a knock on the door. I went to open and imagine my surprise when Liv showed up in a white Navy uniform.
“What’s the costume in aid of?” I asked. “A dress party?”
She smiled, apparently enjoying my surprise.
“That’s me, Lieutenant Liv Ellman.”
“Yesterday you were simply Liv. How did they turn you into this?”
“We are allowed to dress down after hours. But now I’m on duty, so here I am,” she said, running her hands in a sweeping motion that accented her uniform.
“I like you better after hours. If you’re in the Navy, what are you doing here on dry land?”
“Approximately half of the staff here is military. We have been assigned to help with different projects that are developed here by civilian scientists, each because of his or her particular talents.”
“So what is your talent, besides looking smart? And how many military are here? And what do they do?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not at liberty to discuss these matters. You’ll get information on a need-to-know basis, I guess.”
She looked away while speaking, which gave me an unpleasant feeling, you know, like when everybody else knows what’s going on and the joke is on you. After a brief pause, she said, “Now we must hurry if you want to have time for breakfast.”
I saw that she wasn’t going to blab to me just because I was asking, so I postponed the third degree and followed her out, locking the door of my room behind me. She walked in silence, as if she was embarrassed that she had refused to answer my questions, until we reached a mess that could easily sit four hundred, but at the time only had about fifty people eating there. Approximately half of them were military, as she had said.
Breakfast was decent but not memorable. Liv seemed to enjoy it, though, and limited her conversation to have me please pass the salt and pepper, and did I want some more coffee. That worked fine for me because it gave me time to think and observe. When I am in a new place, I like to absorb as much as I can from the people I see, and so I spent time checking up those seated at nearby tables and listening in to whatever snippets of conversation I managed to catch.
As soon as we finished cleaning up our plates, we took the trays to the appropriate stand and left. Liv had long legs—I couldn’t help noticing them the previous night below her short dress—and they looked good and proportionate to her lissome body. She used those legs now to walk really fast, gazing straight ahead.
“Someone chasing you?” I asked.
“What … Ah, oh, sorry. You mean that I’m walking too fast? I’ll slow down.”
She blushed, which made her look cute. Cuter, I should say.
“No. No problem. I’m probably in better shape than you are. It’s just that I don’t like to run, if I don’t have to.”
“Just force of habit, I’m sorry. We have arrived, anyway.”
We had reached a large door marked “Top Secret – No Admission Without A-Grade Clearance.” Liv placed her thumb on a reader and after it beeped, she pushed the digit into a hole beside it. The door beeped again, and this time it opened.
“What did you do that for?” I asked.
“The thumb hole? This is a top security area. The thumb hole checks your blood circulation. That ensures that the thumb is attached to your body, so nobody can cut it off and carry it around in his pocket to open doors.”
“Gross!”
“Yeah, but smart.”
Two more doors that opened with Liv’s fingerprint got us into a roomy laboratory. The director was standing beside a tall civilian, next to a machine that looked like a gigantic slipper. The “insole” was a bed, the hospital testing type, and a broad arch loomed above the pillow area.
“Here you are,” the director said. He checked his watch, and I guess he was disappointed to see that I was on time so I couldn’t be reprimanded, which is a hobby of his. “Meet Doctor Alexander,” he said at last.
“Nice to meet you,” said the civilian. He was almost a head taller than the director, with a bristly mustache that looked ridiculous and a face that showed the signs of badly treated acne. He gave me his hand, which I took and shook. It was sweaty and flaccid, and I found it repulsive. I rubbed my palm against the fabric of my jeans to wipe away the feel of that handshake, without making too much of an effort to hide what I was doing. Then, I waited patiently for the director to speak.
“I’ll let Doctor Alexander give a basic explanation of what he is doing here. Please proceed, Doctor.”
“Yes, this is the laboratory that I head, and this machine is perhaps the greatest achievement of this century …”
“Can we stick to the information that we need to tell our agent, Doctor?” the director interrupted.
“Certainly, certainly. So, what you see here is the MWA machine, which stands for ‘mixed wave amplifier.’ We have been able to identify a precise combination of brain waves that is generated when telepathic activity occurs. It is a mix of beta, theta, and gamma waves in very specific proportions. I understand that you have experience with telepathic phenomena. For telepathy to happen, your brain must generate that particular combination of waves.”
“But how do you know that? The director tells me that I’m the best telepathic subject he knows, and I never know when I’ll have a telepathic event.”
“Ah, good question. Yes, great question,” said Alexander. He gazed at the director as if to ask for permission to explain, and when he got the nod, he continued. “We have been conducting research on telepathy for a very long time now. As you may know, certain subjects exhibit specific telepathic connections. Take, for instance, twins; it is not uncommon for twins to be able to transmit sensations and even images to one another. Their ability to communicate, even if on a subconscious level, is sometimes astounding, but their communication channel, so to speak, only exists between them and does not allow them to communicate with others.”
“Yes, I know that. It even happens between mothers and children. I remember a few times when my mother sensed when I was excited or scared; she got restless and called to check on me. That happens, but it’s not proper telepathy.”
“Exactly. That happens often under stress. So we took a few pairs that exhibit spontaneous telepathic connection and studied their brain waves when we subjected them to stress, following which they reported telepathic events. The result over time was constant: whenever a telepathic event happened, there was a very specific combination of brain waves. That’s how we created the MWA machine.”
“But that happens in my brain, doesn’t it? So how does that big machine help with that?”
“That combination is always present in your brain, but it matters only when the intensity is high enough, and only then are you able to reach a state of resonance with somebody else’s mind, which is conducive to telepathy. You’re not able to control the intensity needed to reach the threshold, so that happens erratically. The machine I developed amplifies those waves in your brain and gives you the ability to use your telepathic powers as you wish.”
“This must have had a huge effect on those twins,” I said.
“We didn’t test it with them,” said the director. “The twins and other subjects that we used to study telepathic phenomena are civilians, and no civilian can know about this project.”
“So who tested it? Is there anybody I can talk to?”
“Ahem, we carried out careful animal studies, including with rats, and the results are conclusive.”
“Rats? Are you telling me that you never put a human person into that slipper?”
“That’s right, but rats are an excellent model for humans. All medical trials use rats, because they are so similar to us.”
“They may be similar to you, Doctor, but I’m not a laboratory rat, and I won’t climb into that slipper before I know for sure that it’s not going to fry my brain.”
“What are you saying, Tessa?”
The director sounded dangerously calm.
“I’m saying that it was nice seeing you again, sir. I’ll be in my room until you arrange for my return home.”
Having said my piece, I turned around to leave. I gazed at Liv to see if she intended to take me back to my quarters, but she stood there, gazing at the floor, so I ignored her. I have a pretty good memory—a photographic one, you might say—and I knew the way back to my room. Once I got there, I locked the door and waited patiently for developments. The director hadn’t gone ballistic, which meant that he had an ace up his sleeve. I didn’t like the thought of that, but all I could do was wait and see.
I woke up when my tummy started to rumble. The time was well after dinner, and I hadn’t had any lunch either. I’m a healthy girl, and I need my calories. I started to wonder if the director’s strategy was to starve me until I agreed to go into his machine. I was determined to win this psychological battle, though—he wouldn’t let me starve for too long. I got up and started stuffing my things into my duffel bag, when a knock on the door interrupted me. Outside, the young attendant—the good-looking one who had met me on arrival—stood rigidly at attention. He looked like someone who had swallowed a broomstick and seemed more flustered than before.
“Is the car that will take me out of here ready?” I asked.
“Oh … what? No … the director wishes to see you. Please come.”
I walked beside him in silence to the director’s office. ESA15 was waiting for me, standing.
“How nice of you to make the time to say goodbye to me,” I said.
“Shut up and take a seat. You need to see this.”
He clicked on a remote control, and a video started playing on a large screen. In the video, I saw Liv climbing into the machine and the doctor pushing a few buttons while she lay there.
“What’s that? Why are you showing me this?”
“That is Lieutenant Ellman, who volunteered to test the machine. She was in there for an hour and came out unscathed. Here are the tests that our medical department ran on her, which show that she did not suffer any adverse effects from her exposure to the machine.”
I gazed at the dossier in his hand but did not take it.
“I don’t believe it! This is below even you, and that’s a lot to say. You ordered that poor girl to be a guinea pig. I am …”
“I didn’t order anything. She volunteered. In contrast to you, she understands how critical this is to our security.” He waited for that statement to sink in, and then he continued in a conciliatory tone. “I hate to be in a position to need you, but I do. The country does. You know you are unique, otherwise, troublemaker as you are, I would have gladly replaced you by now.”
I weighed this. By then, I had cooled down a bit. I tend to be hotheaded at times, although I won’t admit it. But I wasn’t going to make it any too easy for him.
“All right. But if I discover that you forced her in any way to go into the slipper, I’m out of here.”
“I didn’t, but here’s the thing: now that you have learned about the project, you can’t leave. You can either be in it or be stuck with us here, gazing at the wall, until the project runs its course, probably in a couple of years. Your choice.”
“I said I’d do it, didn’t I?” I sounded pissed, and I was.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at nine a.m. sharp,” he said, and turned his attention to some papers on his desk as if I wasn’t there.
I hate it when he outsmarts me.
Back in my room I had a nice surprise, for a change—Liv was waiting for me. She was wearing a nice blue dress—not the one she had on the day before—which accented her blue eyes and long, blonde hair that she had let fall naturally. More importantly, there was food on a tray that she had placed on the table.
“I thought you’d be hungry,” she said.
I closed the door and turned the lock. Without speaking, I went straight to her and kissed her lightly on the lips. She hadn’t seen that coming—she was left wide-eyed, actually—but I noticed with pleasure that she wasn’t taken aback. In fact, after the initial surprise she closed her eyes for the length of the kiss, and she kind of returned it, if shyly.
“Thank you,” I said. I took her by the hand and guided her to sit beside me on the bed. “Why did you do that?”
“I told you, I thought you’d be hungry.”
“No, not that. Why did you go into the machine?”
“I didn’t want you to leave. I volunteered before I knew you, to train with you on this project. I wanted to do it before, and I want it so much more, now that I’ve met you.”
I got up and feigned interest in the food tray. I needed time to think. When the silence became too oppressive, I turned back and gazed at her. “That kiss … You didn’t seem to mind.”
“I didn’t. Please, don’t misunderstand me—I like guys, but you … I don’t know how to say it. I feel that you’re special. It’s like there is something that makes me want to get closer to you. I can’t explain it.”
I gazed at her seriously for a moment, weighing her words.
“You know that you are beautiful, right?” I said.
“Maybe,” she said, brushing it aside modestly, “but you … I’ve never seen someone like you. You are so young, and yet, your personality is magnetic. I felt it from the first moment I saw you. Your eyes are so deep and the way you move, like a cat. And your voice—it’s like hot, liquid silk …”
Wait a minute! I thought. I have no false modesty as far as my looks are concerned. I’m fully aware that my green eyes, my beautiful honey-colored skin, my light brown hair that I keep in a teasing tomboyish cut, and my slim body, can make other people’s hormones go wild, sometimes. I enjoy my looks, and I exploit them when it suits me, but I never thought of myself as deeply “magnetic” before. Yet, this gorgeous young woman was throwing hormones back at me in a way that had never happened to me before.
I could feel the electricity in the air. This kid had awoken something in me that I didn’t completely understand, but the last thing I wanted was to scare her away. I took her hand and gazed straight into her eyes.
“I need to tell you something.” I paused, looking for the best way to say it. “I apply an equal opportunity policy, as far as guys and girls are concerned, if you know what I mean. Sometimes I feel a special connection with someone, which I don’t know how to explain. It’s just there, and it makes me want to be close to that person because I like him or her both outside and inside … and I like you in that way … I think. It’s as simple as that.”
Liv blushed and averted her gaze. “I like you too … in that way,” she whispered hoarsely.
I got up and gazed down at her. She remained seated on the bed, and for a moment she looked like a young girl waiting to be scolded for something bad that she had done. Then she gave me a timid smile that cancelled that image.
“Let me have a bite, and then I’ll show you how nice I can be when I like you,” I said.
Liv blushed again, which made her look more adorable than before. By then, I was really hungry, so I ate quickly from the tray, without wasting time picking and choosing. As soon as the hunger stopped bothering me, I pushed the tray aside and reached for the light dimmer. Then, I approached Liv, took her hands and pulled her to her feet.
Her hair smelled fresh and flowery. I liked that; and I showed her how much.