Abel III's Awakening - 4. Chapter 4 Earth

Chapter 4

Earth

December 2733

After my grandfather had commented that I was more like old Angus than he expected, I took some time to review my family histories more closely. Of the family history going back eleven generations that my father provided, Angus Silversmith was way back in the fourth generation. He was the premier telepath of all the families, being the only proven fifth level. He also was the first one to live an extremely long life, reaching the then unheard of age of one hundred and forty-eight years old. That was still considered a very good achievement some eight generations later where the average human life span was still only about one hundred and ten. He was also prolific and sired six children. Unfortunately, only two of them had any telepathic ability and only one of those had any children. But Angus was careful about grooming the telepathic ability of those offspring that manifested.

He was so gifted but careful with his talent, that he was able to keep it secret during the time that the three publicly known families were first exposed and found out. He was extremely paranoid about being found out and was said to have actively monitored almost five thousand people to protect his ability and family. The family history did not mention the limit in distance of his ability, just that it was greater than ten kilometers. However, it did indicate that the people he monitored were scattered around the planet. The family history also hinted at additional unspecified psychic abilities and they seemed to imply that he could project suggestibility. He was the one that instigated the idea of the family council for the hidden families, which he had surveyed and discovered. And he was a gifted engineer responsible for many technical advances during his long life, including a more cost effective artificial gravity compensator for spacecraft. It seemed that my many times great-grandfather was someone really special.

I was excited to be returning to earth after more than seven and a half years since I left and it looked really good from our parking orbit docked at the Magellan Space Station, some 384,000 kilometers from the earth and exactly opposite from the Moon in the same orbit. The Moon’s huge lunar base processed minerals from the asteroid belt and the solar system. The giant space station handled interstellar traffic and was situated in orbit that way so as to provide some gravitational balance. It was a monstrosity, so big that it could be easily seen from the planet surface and could service several thousand ships at once, from small craft, to huge cargo or warships. The commerce side was about two-thirds of the structure, but the military side's one-third had some really awesome ships on display in port. While docked, we used station power from Magellan and gravity was increased to fifty percent of earth standard just as it was maintained on the space station. For comparison, the gravity on the moon was about seventeen percent of the Earth's. The station was so huge that it’s spin was barely detectable and gravity was also generated by compensators as well.

There were four space elevators around the Earth’s equator anchored to stationary large asteroids transformed into space depot stations at 100,000 kilometers above earth. Regular shuttle service from them to the Magellan was available. However, shuttles that could operate in both space and in a planetary atmosphere still landed on Earth as well.

The small observation deck just forward of the bridge and down a deck had been opened and provided a spectacular panoramic view of the planet through the reinforced glass composite with the outside protective hull panels opened. The view was direct, without looking through or past Magellan and you could make out the continents and oceans as well as the clouds. It really did look like a prized blue marble. I could clearly see the continent island of Australia and wanted to send out a very narrow thread to see if I could pick up the cacophony of minds of the millions that inhabited that bit of land. I realized that telepathy was usually not useful much beyond ten kilometers but wanted to see if I could pick up anything, even some echoes. I consulted Hal to see if he could pick up any outside telepathic probes of our ship and he indicated there were active probes along several known bandwidths, but no telepathic probes that he could sense. He said the active probes were not unusual and they were not perceived as a threat. I tried sensing for telepathic probes myself and also could not sense any. Somewhat reassured that I could attempt this without outside detection, I sent my sliver of a tendril of a telepathic thread toward the continent below and in fact toward the facility where I was raised.

It took a several minutes but I got more than a general buzz. It was more like a mighty thundering roar. I put into place several filters and tried to zone in on the boy’s section of my school to see if any of my old teachers were still there. To my amazement, I was able to identify several. Including one whom I had considered a bully. To my chagrin it appeared he was in the act of bullying a student just at the moment over a mispronounced word and making public fun of the seven year old in front of his classmates. I sent him a suggestion of a sudden strongly debilitating headache for which he must immediately leave and go home to bed. And saw that it worked. Worried about what I had done. I closed down the link and sought my grandfather.

Grandfather was looking into making arrangements to send the shuttle down to New Zealand to pick up his daughter, her husband and their two children and bring them for a first ever visit on the Silverspin, when I interrupted him by sending: {I need to talk now. I just monitored a former teacher on Earth from the observation deck and suggested he had a debilitating headache so he had to go home sick from class where he was bullying a seven year old and my suggestion appeared to work.}

{Meet me in my cabin at once} he sent me and then I sensed he was sending to the others so I “listened in” when he sent to Drew, my dad and Kade: {Emergency meeting in my cabin, now} and then he sent them a replay of the message I had sent him. I found the ability to send a replay of a sending interesting and vowed to learn from it.

When we were all assembled grandfather asked me to go into detail and tell them exactly what happened, I decided not to speak but to replay the entire sequence telepathically and began {I am going to replay everything from my point of view for you telepathically} and then did so to their shared amazement.

When I finished, Grandfather sent to Hal from our shared link: {Hal were you monitoring Abel III during the whole episode he showed us?}

Hal replied: {I did and he provided a faithful representation of it. I was also able to sense his former teacher and confirm he was verbally abusing the child through his link. Young Abel's ability to induce the headache and remove the teacher was also sensed by me through his link. There is no way I could simultaneously verify what happened through physical resources but I am checking the database at the school to see if the teacher reported being sick to administration. I should have that information in a few minutes.}

“Abel, your talents are impressive. You saw me send a replay of your send and then decided to provide us a telepathic replay of your mind blowing monitoring of someone over a quarter million miles away and then you sent a suggestibility that apparently worked to top it off. I am shocked speechless,” said my grandfather. Drew, dad and Kade were nodding their heads.

“How could you sense anything but noise” my dad asked? He went on to state, “When I've directed my ability at a planet full of people, all I get is a static noise no matter how much I try to focus and filter.” Grandfather, Drew, and Kade were all nodding at his statement.

I then decided I needed to send them the details of how and what filters I used and the sequence I employed them and did so. They all looked thoughtful. Grandfather asked “those last two filters are not standard, did you modify them on the fly?”

I considered the filters in question and saw that I had and the reasons why and then did a send to explain.

Hal interrupted and sent each of us, {School records confirm that teacher in fact went home sick and asked for a couple of days off.}

Grandfather gave me an apprising look and said: “I want you to go back to the observation deck and do a general scan of the planet.” He saw my shocked look and explained, “Not a detailed one to identify everyone but a general scan to identify potential threats. I want you to scan and to tag a thread on any thought of threat involving Silverspin, telepathy, Silversmith, Brown or anything else that you perceive as a threat to the family or our ship. Don't intervene or expose yourself. Hal will continue to monitor you and you can direct him to contact one of us if you come across something emergent.”

My face reflected my uneasiness without anyone having to do a telepathic scan. Grandfather gave me a reassuring smile and said: “Just try, and please remember to tag your threads so you can get back to them.”

I left to start while they turned to the logistics of getting the Browns up for their visit. Returning to the empty observation room, I sealed off the entrance and asked Hal to not let anyone in outside of my immediate family. I sat in a comfortable chair and lounged back and cleared my mind and then scanned and put into place the filters I had used previously plus filters for the keywords and thoughts as directed. I sensed lots of references to Brown, Silver and Smith but didn't tag those unless I could perceive some sort of threat directed toward my family. It was a lot of work sorting, sifting, rooting around and trying to be perfectly hidden and completely discrete. In fact if became tiring and tedious so I began setting up routines to do it automatically in the background. After I completed the first one aimed at Australia, I set up others to scan the other areas of the planet. Over the next several hours, I set up a total of 10 separate general scans and made sure Hal was following everything I was doing. He actually complimented me on my ability to break up the task.

Unfortunately, I started getting positive alerts on the items for which I was scanning and was kept busy setting up tags as I assessed potential threats. I was so busy that I did not keep track of the numbers. I also came across a surprise. After what seemed a full workday, I finally finished my preliminary scan of the planet and was just finishing up when Hal broke into my concentration and told me my family was at the entry of the observation deck.

Grandfather, Drew, dad and Kade entered and they each radiated concern. I asked what was wrong and dad said, “Son, you look like you just finished a marathon, only worse. You have dark rings under your eyes. You look exhausted. You have been at it for more than 10 hours straight.”

“Well I was busy and it was a big job. There are over 10 billion people on the planet. I identified some potential threats and others that need follow-up monitoring as soon as possible.”

“How many” asked my grandfather?

{Exactly 7,489 with 372 identified as greater potential threats}, Hal sent to us all as he had been monitoring me all day.

{Thanks!}, I sent to Hal, as I had not kept an accurate count.

{It's my job. I've also started some preliminary computer searches to find everything I can about the more serious potential threats you identified to supplement anything you can find out. I must mention that almost all of them were on the Eurasian landmass}, Hal related to everyone.

I jumped in excitedly and said: “There is one other thing I must report. I detected natural or wild telepathic ability ranging over the entire ocean area of the planet. It was very primitive but could effectively send warnings, or report good feeding waters. It was definitely non-human and after discussing it with Hal, I believe it is a breed of sharks called Basking Shark (Cetorhinus maximus).”

With that I ran out of breath and suddenly felt as exhausted as I apparently looked. My dad told me to go take a shower and he would bring me something to eat before I went to bed. I was too tired to argue and headed for my cabin. My shower felt good, but I was too tired to be sexually excited. Dad had brought me a big bowl of chicken soup and some fresh crusty bread, which I devoured. After using the facilities, I was too tired to do my T'ai chi and I crawled into bed and slept like a baby, and dreamed of endless oceans filled with light and warmth.