Three

Monday morning we tried to get back to normal. Mind you, normal for us isn’t what other people would consider typical.

“Coming over,” ‘said’ Lisa. “Open back door.”

Lisa and I usually went to school together. No point Holly joining us, her school was on the other side of town. A few minutes later, Lisa landed in the back garden.

“Not supposed to fly here.”

“Poo. Nobody noticed. Anyway, c’mon, let’s go.”

We rode the bus as usual. “Much quicker to fly,” I ‘said’.

“I know, but we don’t do that, do we?” ‘replied’ Lisa.

What was obvious was that we were much more closely linked than we had been. I could plainly ‘feel’ Holly in my mind. I knew she was finishing her breakfast and that she’d persuaded her mum to take her to school in the car.

“Lazy so-and-so,” I ‘said’.

“Don’t care,” she ‘replied’. “Mum was up for it straight away so who am I to argue.”

“Bet we could all three link up right now, right here, and do anything,” I ‘said’.

Lisa poured cold water on my girlish enthusiasm. “But we won’t, will we? Want to get us kidnapped again?”

“Suppose not.”

First lesson after registration was double Maths. Normally I didn’t like Maths - Lisa did, but not me. Today, though - hm - I actually enjoyed the lesson. I understood all of it first go. Most unusual. The big surprise of the day was the double Science just before lunch. An experiment in light and mirrors, in class groups.

“Lisa, d’you understand all this stuff?” I ‘asked’.

“Yeah. S’easy.”

“Not what you said last lesson.”

“You’re right. Odd. Holly? You understand all this stuff don’t you?”

Holly was in the gym. I already knew that but I could almost ‘hear’ her panting and puffing as she did what had to be circuit training or something.

“Mm. Light reflection. Easy. Why?”

Lisa thought about this. I ‘felt’ her engage Director mode. “That means there’s stuff passing through our link that wasn’t before. We’re helping each other understand stuff.”

“Talk later,” I ‘said’. “Emily’s just knocked the bloody mirror over!”

The other two just ‘laughed’ at me, but we got on with what we were doing.

Lunchtime saw Lisa ringing Beth at the lab. She hadn’t brought her phone with her that morning so she just ‘told’ it to appear in her hand instead of on the hall table where it usually lived.

I think the lab have orders to put any of us through to Beth straight away if we ring. Today was no exception. Now I found another curious thing to think about. Being so closely linked with Lisa meant I could actually ‘hear’ both sides of the phone call. I assumed Holly could as well. All three of us listened to Lisa’s phone call.

“Hi Beth. Lisa.”

“Hello Lisa. How was your flight back from Tokyo?”

“Ah. Thing is - we didn’t fly back. We’ve been back here since the middle of the night on Saturday - Sunday morning I suppose really.”

“You didn’t - you did, didn’t you? All three of you?”

“’Fraid so. Not all at the same time. Holly first, then Jody and me. Teeny bit of stress involved, that’s why we managed it I think.”

“Stress? What happened? I already know about you teleporting from Heathrow to Yorkshire.”

“Holly’s dad had a heart attack. That wound her up so she moved herself back home. Then the thought of her dad maybe going to die wound her up some more. We don’t know if she pulled us or if we used her stress to convince ourselves - whatever. Jody and I came back as well.”

“Interesting. Means that it’s not just you that can do it.”

I ‘heard’ Holly ‘say’, “Oh wow. Hadn’t thought of that.” Naturally, Beth didn’t hear her.

“Never thought it was,” said Lisa. “Anyway, lots of other stuff to tell you about. Like being able to move things we can’t actually see. That’s how Jody fixed the hospital generator. All three of us are just about done in. Can we come and see you at the weekend and tell all?”

“All three of you?”

“Hang on.” Lisa paused for Holly and me to ‘say’ yes. “Seems to be unanimous.”

“You asked them?”

“No need. They’re listening to you, through our link. Jody’s here with me but Holly’s umpteen miles away at her school.”

“They’re listening? You’re not just repeating what I’m saying?”

“Not as far as I know. They’re getting it as it happens, not second hand from me.”

“I’ve a feeling I’m going to need more notepaper and memory cards for the audio recorder,” sighed Beth. “Still, the more information we have, the nearer we are to finding answers - although you three pose more questions than we’ve actually managed to answer.”

“Sorry Beth,” said Lisa. “We don’t mean to.”

“I know, I know. Don’t worry. See you on Saturday morning?”

“We’ll be there.”

Lisa rang off. “You got all that?” she ‘asked’.

I nodded. We got a picture of Holly nodding as well from Holly herself. Who was it said a picture was worth a thousand words?

The rest of the week went by quite quickly. That’s what tends to happen when you go to bed early each night. All three of us found school work quite easy, even stuff we’d originally found hard. The exception to this was stuff we’d all found hard, like French, but even this showed some improvement as we ‘pooled’ our knowledge and resources.

Holly had words first thing on Saturday morning.

“I, for one, am going to fly to the lab. No good having all this neat stuff and not using it.”

“Hm. Good idea. Perhaps we will as well,” I ‘heard’ Lisa reply. “Just try not to be too obvious.”

“So dressing up as Ultragirl and zipping about low over the town a few times first is out then?” ‘laughed’ Holly, making reference to our little game of ‘dress-up’.

“Yes!” ‘said’ Lisa. “Low profile should be our middle names.”

“Spoilsport.” Despite the ‘laughter’, I knew Holly understood exactly what Lisa meant.

I went to Lisa’s first. She was wearing her usual jumper and jeans. So was I. Flying around in a skirt is interesting - for other people at least.

“Lab first, then probably McDs, Mum,” said Lisa. “Unless the lab feed us. Depends how long they keep us there.”

“Ok dear. Just let me know what’s going on. Dad’ll be around this afternoon to be on Taxi duty if you need him.”

“Thanks Mum.” Lisa gave her mum a kiss and we slipped out into the back garden. Several miles later and several hundred metres higher, I spotted Holly approaching from the other direction. We stopped in mid air above the lab to give each other a kiss. Lisa and I hadn’t seen Holly since the previous Sunday.

Inside the lab building, the security guard on the front desk just waved and pointed at the stairs. We dutifully climbed them to make our way to Beth’s office. There was nobody there.

Lisa took charge us usual. “Hm. Maybe in that big meeting room down the corridor?”

Nobody there either. “You did get the day right Lisa?” laughed Holly.

“Far as I know,” she answered. “Must have done. The chap on the front desk was obviously expecting us.”

“I know where they all are,” I said. “In that cafeteria place in the other wing.”

“Oh heck,” said Lisa. “Probably means a big audience.”

“Not bothered, are we?” said Holly.

“No. No - suppose not. Come on, let’s go and see.”

It’s nice to be proved right. There were about a million people crammed into the little cafeteria. Well, ok - about fifteen or so - but it looked like a million. Not helped by lots of equipment as well. I recognised the Kirlian camera.

“Ah, girls,” said Beth. “You found us then?”

I was content to let Lisa do the talking, and I think Holly was too.

“Mm. No problem really.”

“Come and sit down. When you’re comfy, I want some pictures of you with the Kirlian camera. We can get them processed and hopefully we can look at them later before you go.”

We sat and were duly photographed for posterity. One of the technician-types left with bits of the camera. Still felt like a million people in with us.

Beth opened proceedings. “Ok. We know you managed to teleport from Heathrow to Yorkshire? Don’t suppose you’ve figured out how you do it yet?”

“No, sorry.” said Lisa. “I cheated. We were being shot at and gassed. I just got everybody to believe we were going to die and - we went.”

“Can’t do that every time you want to teleport,” laughed Beth.

“What about the guns?” said Holly.

“Guns? You mean the ones shooting at you?”

“No,” I said. “The ones Arnie and Jim had in the car on the way to Heathrow. I knew what they were, how to load and unload them, about clips and safety catches and all that stuff. Don’t ask how - I just knew.”

“She must have been getting the information directly from the men themselves,” said Lisa. “I didn’t know we could do that, but that’s the only explanation.”

I had a thought. “Try an experiment?” I held out my hand to one of the researchers with an big, complicated, voice recorder. She handed it over without comment. It reminded me of taking the gun off Jim - just holding my hand out for it.

Looking at the machine, it was really obvious how it worked. I stopped it, then put it back into record. Holding it near my mouth I said, “Testing, testing, one, two, three.”

It had controls for rewinding - not what it actually did - it didn’t have tape to rewind - but I made it playback what I’d just said. “Testing, testing, one, two, three,” it repeated faithfully. I assigned the clip to a memory slot and saved it. Then I simply handed it back to the woman I’d blagged it off.

“I have to ask,” said Beth, “you’ve never seen that machine before?”

“Nope,” I said. “Been a pretty poor excuse for an experiment if I had, now, wouldn’t it?”

There was a lot of muttering which I took for agreement. Beth smiled and shook her head from side to side. “Did we all get what just happened here? Not you Amanda. You’ve just had your mind read. Not in any obvious way I have to say, but read none the less.”

Amanda was the woman whose voice recorder I’d ‘borrowed’. She shifted about in her seat, rather uncomfortably I felt.

“So, there you are back in Yorkshire,” said Beth. “I don’t suppose anything happened while you were there?”

Holly surprised us all by answering that. “Unless you count General Lisa giving orders that everybody obeyed without question - and that includes her mum and dad.”

I knew Lisa had thought about that a lot, both while we were on the plane with nothing much to do, and later.

“I just knew what I needed them to do,” she said. “I asked and they did it. And, yes, that included Mum and Dad. Mind you, it also included an airbase full of people and a squad of marines.” She giggled. “Their sergeant saluted me.”

“Well just remember who’s in charge here,” laughed Beth. “Although if you said ‘jump’, even I might say ‘how high?’”

Lisa waited until the general laughter had died down a bit. “We didn’t need Holly’s umbrella in Tokyo, nothing bothered us - until we heard about Holly’s dad.”

“Mm. I could feel myself getting stressed and wound up,” said Holly. “I had to get back - I had to - and I did! I ended up in our front room at home. Actually, I don’t know how, how I knew to go there I mean. I couldn’t go to Dad I don’t suppose, I didn’t know where he actually was. Perhaps the front room was a sort of default setting. Anyway, there I was. I told Lisa and Jody I was ok and Lisa just said to go to Dad at the hospital, which is what I did. I don’t think I broke the sound barrier but I’m not sure.”

“We had to try to explain to the people in Tokyo where she’d gone,” said Lisa. “Yoshiko understood at once - we’d used that trick on her after all. Everything was fine until Holly called us again.”

“All the lights had gone out,” said Holly. “The machinery carried on going and some dim lights came on but there was definitely something wrong. Mum collared a nurse or somebody and made him tell us what was going on. That was when I called Lisa and Jody.”

“Holly was really, really upset,” said Lisa. “Understandable really - she thought her dad was going to die. Somehow we linked up, two of us in Tokyo and one of us all the way back in England. I sort of took all the distress I knew she was feeling and dumped it into that link. I have no real idea how I did that, just as I don’t know if Jody and I went or if Holly pulled us.”

“Holly pulled us,” I said. “No question. If it’d been us, I’d have ended up in my house and Lisa’d have ended up in hers. We ended up in the hospital ICU - still sitting down.”

“But we were so closely linked that we could have taken where we needed to go to from Holly,” said Lisa.

“Hm. Ok. Yes, possibly. Point taken,” I said.

“Now Lisa took over again,” grinned Holly. “I even forgot how exhausted I was as I ran to find the answer to the question she asked me.”

“You too?” I said. “Anyway, Lisa led the way down to the standby generator. She knew we could fix it, I swear she did.”

Lisa took up the story, “We found a couple of men scratching their heads. They knew what was wrong, but it’d have taken them hours to fix it - hours we knew we didn’t have. They told Jody what the problem was. She understood even if Holly and I didn’t. The men produced a handbook - with drawings. That was enough to let Jody ‘see’ what she was doing. She reconnected the spade-thingy inside the engine - with her eyes closed! All Holly and I did was link up and hold onto her. I could feel her using my strength and energy to do what she needed to do.”

“Don’t all look at me!” I said. “I just did what needed doing. Worked anyway, engine started first go. Lights came back on and the ICU came back up to full blast again.”

“Holly pretty well passed out,” said Lisa. “Not quite as bad as me when I came back from California, but we’ve spent the last week recovering.”

“Ok,” said Beth. “Jody, you seem to be in charge of experiments. Any way we can recreate the generator thing?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Need something enclosed, so we can’t see inside, with drawings or pictures of what’s inside. Oh, and it needs to be obvious when we’ve done something to it.”

Somebody said, “What about the diascope machine? Ruddy things blown it’s fuse again. You know how long that takes to dismantle.”

“Hm. If you can fix that, we can display the latest pictures of you.”

“Is that the one in the conference room?” I asked.”

That’s the one. Can you do it if we give you the handbook?”

“We’ll have a go,” I said. “Err - do you all want to relocate there while the three of us have a little snack? You could take the funny-camera as well.”

Beth laughed out loud. “Ok, ok. Snacks and fizzy drinks. We’ll need about twenty minutes anyway. How about if you look at the handbook while you scoff?”

While mouths were fully engaged with food, minds were still chattering away.

“Reckon you can do it Jody?” ‘asked’ Lisa.

“Should be easy enough, although I won’t say ‘easy-peasy’ just in case,” I ‘replied’. “Much the same as the engine really.”

I looked at the book Beth had given us. It did seem straight forward. I could visualise where the fuse was, I just had to fish the old one out and fit a new one in.

In the conference room they’d set up all kinds of stuff, cameras of various sorts together with other machines and meters that measured everything from the room temperature to one strange machine Holly said was a gravimeter - a kind of seismograph. That measured earthquakes! I was fairly sure we weren’t going to cause one of those! One thing they didn’t do, thank goodness, was connect us up to any of the diagnostic machines they usually torture us with.

The old diascope was sitting on its usual table at the back. The three of us stood facing it. Lisa put her hand on my left shoulder while Holly used my right. Immediately I felt us change from three girls to just one!

“Woo. Haven’t done this since last weekend,” ‘said’ Holly.

“It’s a bit bloody intense,” I ‘said’.

“Shut up the pair of you and let’s see if we can amaze and confound these nice people,” ‘said’ Lisa. “Where did they put the spare fuse?”

“There on the table,” I ‘said’ “Let’s go for it.”

I closed my eyes. I could still ‘see’ the drawings in the book, now on the table next to us, but superimposed on this was a sort of picture of the actual printed circuit board-thing inside the machine. I prised the fuse out of its holder, using what had to be telekinesis. The fuse slowly rose into the air inside the machine until it was clear of the holder. Then I held out my hand and ‘told’ the dud fuse to be on my palm instead of inside the machine.

Now I turned my attention - literally - to the nice, new, shiny, fuse sitting patiently on the table. I ‘told’ it to stop being on the table but to be inside the diascope machine please. The fuse obliged by vanishing from its position on the table to reappear instantly hovering a fraction above the fuse holder. I let telekinesis take over and pushed the fuse down into the spring jaws of the holder with the tiniest sound of a click.

I opened my eyes. “Ok. Try it now.”

Somebody pushed a plug into a wall socket, somebody else turned a switch on the machine. A square of light appeared on the screen at the front of the room. There was actually some applause!

“Is that what you wanted to see?” I asked.

“Not that we actually saw anything,” said Beth. “But - yes. Now we can look at the pictures we took first thing.”

While Beth was busy messing about with the diascope, I noticed somebody taking away bits of the funny-camera again. I’d be interested to see what this one showed myself.

The earlier pictures were impressive enough. As a comparison, somebody had fetched the pictures of Lisa and me asleep. They showed these first. There was the familiar purplish glow around us both, with the fuzzy link joining us together. The pictures from today were a different matter altogether.

Not only were our auras - or whatever the camera actually photographed - much brighter and more solid, the links between us were more or less the same size as we were. If these links were a measure of our mental state, then we were what Holly would call an order of magnitude or more stronger.

There was a lot of muttering. But the show wasn’t over yet - oh no. The latest prints came back, the ones taken when we linked up to change the little fuse. There weren’t three auras, linked together - there was just one - and you could barely see the three of us in the centre of it, it was so bright and sharp.