FIVE

 

 

After about five minutes, with Patty’s gentle touch on my arm, I was calm enough again to work on the problem.

We all four talked for a few minutes, then Screamer said exactly the conclusion I had been coming to. “There’s just no way to get over six hundred gods with different levels of powers to cover everywhere completely.”

I nodded. “To do that would take years of math and someone like the Bookkeeper to figure it out, and that’s if we knew exactly the level of every god’s powers. And we don’t and never will.”

“So how do we do this?” Patty asked. “Are we going to be happy with saving only some dogs and not all?”

I hated that thought. I hated it every time I couldn’t save a single dog.

“No,” I said, “we need all the power to go through one source and out over the entire continent, to form a complete dome of hardened air for a second or two.”

“And who’s going to do that?” The Smoke said.

“We are,” I said. “All four of us together, linked.”

Screamer opened his mouth, then shut it again. Patty just shook her head slowly. The Smoke seemed frozen.

But for the first time in a couple of hours I was starting to feel more confident.

“With the four of us linked, The Smoke can form the dome and make sure we are blocking the right frequency, Screamer can hold us together and add energy, and Patty and I can control and funnel the energy to the shield that The Smoke forms.”

“That’s going to be a lot of power,” Screamer said.

“I don’t think we’ll survive it,” Patty said. “We’re not gods.”

“And that’s why we can do it,” I said. “We’re the workers, the superheroes who get our hands dirty every day saving lives. We don’t need to touch the power, just like a fireman with a powerful hose of water doesn’t touch the water. We just aim it.”

“I hope you’re right, Poker Boy,” The Smoke said.

“If I’m not,” I said, “we’ll be dead and a lot of dogs will be human.”

I glanced at the clock on the wall. “We only have a few minutes. We need to practice this a few times.”

Screamer nodded for The Smoke to touch his shoulder and then reached for Patty and my hands.

It took us a moment, but then we each settled into our spots in the bigger mind we had created with Screamer’s connection.

I thought directly at The Smoke that he should imagine hardening the air over the booth next to ours in a way that would only block a certain frequency.

He did, and then Patty and I formed an imaginary hose and connected it to the shield to power it. We ran through it twice, then Screamer let us go.

“I want to practice that with Stan feeding us some light energy just before we go.”

Everyone nodded, so once again I called for Stan.

“Almost time,” he said as he appeared, taking us out of time at the same moment.

“One quick practice session,” I said. I quickly explained what we were doing. Stan nodded. “Might just work.”

For Stan, that was as encouraging as he ever got.

Screamer linked the four of us up and we could hear Stan ask, “Ready?”

“Ready,” we said as one, out of four mouths.

He started a slight flow of energy toward us and Patty and I captured it easily into the mouth of the imaginary hose we had formed in our minds and sent it directly to the shield.

Expand the shield, I thought to The Smoke, so that it covers as much as you can with the energy coming to you.

He expanded the shield as Stan increased the energy until the shield covered all of the Las Vegas area. As more energy came in Patty and I let the natural flow expand the size of the hose protecting all of our minds. It worked easily for one god’s worth of energy. Could we hold the containment for over six hundred gods’ energy, all directed at the same spot?

If not, we would be four very dead superheroes.