The Omnicosmic Odyssey of Sonicus Maximus

Part One, Chapter One, Act One

SCENE FIVE - HALF THE BATTLE IS KNOWING

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I waited for Amanda just outside the bar...

I had disregarded the weirdness with the bartender. I simply wanted to know if I would get confirmation from Amanda about going to the Amazon to film promotional videos. She was offering me a great opportunity to promote my video games, a chance that I feared was in jeopardy several times tonight.

"I'll take my card back," announced Amanda, who had exploited my preoccupation and slipped up behind me without detection.

"Of course," I said, laughing as I handed it to her before informing her, "but the bartender would not take it."

"I know," she said. I was not entirely sure how she knew, but that no longer mattered.

"Follow me," she requested...operating her wheelchair...mechanically. It was motorized.

As I did, I noticed that most of the back of her chair was covered by bags...or packs. Obviously, under these had to be a motor of some size. None of this surprised me. Someone who flew sophisticated, perhaps unmentionable aircraft, while confined to this chair for all other mobility, would likely pack as much as they could onto it. I had already seen that she had a taser...if not officially recognized...

I could not help but recall the revelation that she was a paraplegic who had seen combat. Was she a paraplegic before that, or was that how she became one? What if she had been shot down, and had to survive before being rescued? She might have packed suvival gear, even weapons, but how would she escape the aircraft with them? What would it look like for her to parachute to safety? I had many questions, but I was unwilling to ask anything about her condition.

I had already caused her pain tonight...without even understanding how. Earlier, I feared she could be having a debilitating mental breakdown. If the loss of her legs did stem from active duty, there was a high probability of another PTSD episode if my inquiries made her relive painful memories. I had no desire to cause her any harm...with or without the risk of plausibly deniable weaponized electricity being applied to my scrotum.

Amanda must have gathered from my awkward silence that I was contemplating something, and she questioned what I was wondering about. I took that as an explicit invitation to request information, and there were some less sensitive points of interest. She had emerged from the bar with several additional features on her attire, about which I was immensely curious.

I began by asking, "Why are you wearing elbow pads?"

"Why are YOU wearing elbow pads, she countered with her own query, "over a dress shirt?"

"Mine are part of my costume," I responded, perhaps with undue annoyance over what I assumed was clear from previous discussions, "I just drove here from a wrestling show in Uniontown."

"Well, mine augment my flight suit," Amanda retorted, "I just flew across the country. Boy, are my arms tired!"

I laughed loudly, but quickly regained composure and continued, "What about those things you put on your wrists? One of them looks like a portable video game."

"It does play games," she commented with a devious grin, "I downloaded one from the Microsoft Store while I was in the bathroom. It's called "Twister: Eye Level" and the art absolutely sucks, but the music isn't bad, and the programming...shows real potential from the developer."

I knew she was joking, because I had sent her a code for a free download. But I honestly had not expected her to play the game.

"Seriously, I did actually play it the other day," she revealed, "It was too short."

She smiled as I reacted in disbelief, "You actually finished it?"

"Easily," she confirmed, "My reflexes are exceptional. Other than that stupid thing when the doctor hits my knee with that little rubber hammer, I mean. I usually fail that one. But I do have extraordinary reaction time. They don't let me fly expensive experimental aircraft just because I'm cute."

"These are advanced computers," she explained as she interacted with the device on her wrist, "and they allow me to communicate and control certain equipment, including this chair. I love to read, and these even allow me to utilize audiobooks!"

Amanda pressed a button, and I heard a fancy male voice announce "The Call of the Wild...by Jack London."

"I see now," I assured her. In 2018, putting a smartphone into a decorative wrist gauntlet was hardly some kind of otherwordly technology. A simple video search would reveal several options from crafting channels to accomplish the task, with the most costly required item being the phone itself.

"As promised," she reminded me, pulling out some glasses and a beer bottle from a container on the back of her chair, "MK Ultra."

She began to pour her homemade brew, and once the glasses were full, she handed me one. We toasted.

"To what do we toast," I asked Amanda, as I took my first drink of MK Ultra.

"The truth," was her immediate answer, followed by a challenge, "if you believe you can handle it. Can you?"

By this point, we were well away from the bar and as far as I could tell, anyone else. If I could not handle...the truth...or the beer...at least there were no third parties to enjoy my humiliation.

"I can," I responded with my well-reasoned confidence, taking another drink and looking her in the eyes.

I was prepared for Amanda to say that "the truth" was that we were not going to the Amazon, because there was no more a place for me in video game development than there was in pro wrestling, or at least not one she could help me find. Amanda was clear up front about not being able to guarantee anything, but this would be devastating. I would continue developing games, I assured myself, but I was unsure how long and hard the recovery period would be.

Another sad outcome of such a "truth" would be saying goodbye to Amanda. Few people have ever impressed me as she had in such a short time. Though the flight to the Amazon would probably be in some fairly ordinary aircraft, I still wanted the chance to be a passenger of such an accomplished pilot. She had briefly referenced the "guys" on her team and I had wondered if I might have gotten to meet them. After all, if Amanda was this amazing, how incredible must her team be?

But then I considered that simply meeting Amanda and being inspired by her was what I truly needed to give the perspective I needed to make something happen. If she could overcome the obvious obstacles in her path to accomplish what she had, I had no excuse not to press forward...and succeed.

"Whatever truth you have for me, I can handle," I assured her, looking straight into her eyes while taking the largest drink of MK Ultra I could fit into my mouth, "Give me truth, and give me certainty."

"Finally," said the disembodied voice in my head that had spoken to me earlier tonight. I thought I had overcome the voices. Their return was so demoralizing I just stared at Amanda silently for a few moments.

"Uh...CC," Amanda inquired, "what's wrong? You made this qausi-epic speech after you drank my beer, but then you just froze."

"Focus," the internal voice demanded.

"MK Ultra was a CIA project," Amanda explained, "involving mind control and some other shit. It was the first of several secret operations that studied the expansion of human mental capacity and possibility. MK Ultra might have been a legitimate tactical countermeasure to similar achievements by the Soviets. Or MK Ultra might have been an overreaction to the perception of imagined enemy capabilities."

"Now, it's a really cool name for a beer," Amanda proclaimed, taking a huge swig.

"I lack the words to adequately express my feeling at this moment," I reacted, "because this is the best beer I have ever tasted."

"Glad you like it," the voice in my head replied.

Amanda was smiling innocently at me, gleefully sipping her homemade libation. With the...effects...of MK Ultra diminishing my inhibitions, I disregarded the potential consequences of her thinking I was crazy, and I boldly delivered the question that had gradually risen to the surface in my mind over the course of the evening.

"Amanda," I asked, "are you 'psychic?'"

She almost spit out her own drink laughing, before answering, "You are joking...right?"

I was serious, as insane as I felt for it. Perhaps I simply could no longer tell what was real.

Amanda explained, "Psychics should be able to tell the future through abilities we can't understand or replicate. I may or may not know some...individuals with the ability to predict outcomes with a level of accuracy that satisfies such a definition..."

Then she continued, piercing my eyes with her own to maximize the impact of her next revelation, "but, personally...I can only access telepathy..."

I reacted with urgent astonishment, "What???"

She gave me a moment to process it, before confirming what was now so obvious to me, "The same telepathy I've been using on you...since the first time you made sustained eye contact with me."

She smiled at me, and I waited to see if she might follow up by laughing and saying she was pranking me again. But she offered nothing more.

Instead, Amanda just smiled as the...disembodied voice...I had been hearing over the course of the night...inquired, "Are you going to finish that?"

I had to test this. If I asked Amanda a question, and received a response while looking at her, but no words were spoken by our mouths, then I knew this was...real.

"Are you wondering if I am going to finish this glass of MK Ultra," I asked her...in pure thought, with intense concentration.

"That is exactly what I am asking you," the voice in my head...Amanda's voice...confirmed, as she stared into my eyes, trying not to laugh.

"This is the most fun I've had with this for a while," Amanda said aloud, restoring the paradigm of...verbal speech, "Hey...talk to me. Are you okay?"

"This is a heavy...truth," I admitted.

"It does not have to be," she declared with a serious tone that put to rest any question about this being another prank, "because you can forget about it. You can forget tonight completely. You can wake up on your front porch with a funny story about getting so drunk you don't remember anything that happened here, or how you got home."

"Amanda," I asked, "How could I possibly forget this?"

"I would tranquilize you," she told me, giving a uncomfortably literal answer to a rhetorical question, "with a chemical that will harmlessly wipe a certain portion of your memory."

She was serious. I did not even need to question her, verbally or mentally. Somehow...I just knew that she could and would do exactly what she described.

If she and I could communicate with words telepathically...could she read my mind? Could I...read hers?

I stared her directly in the eyes. She responded by reciprocating the stare. I smiled at her. She smiled back.

I attempted to access her mind. I simply explored for whatever I could find, but I found nothing.

"That isn't exactly how it works," Amanda explained verbally after taking another sip of MK Ultra, "but you definitely earned points for the attempt."

"You are blocked from viewing Amanda's mind," she said as she snickered, mimicking a social media notice with which I was quite familiar, "and you can block me also, just by making the decision and maintaining it mentally. It isn't that hard. And no, I haven't been probing your deepest, darkest secrets. We both have to be careful about overusing this...avenue of communication."

"Why," I inquired.

"I am not a native telepath, and you aren't quite ready to understand how I can access the ability at all. As was probably obvious, drinking MK Ultra enhanced our communication. But since we aren't true telepaths, I have to kind of...borrow the ability...but the source will eventually be depleted, and need to be replaced. That's why I always chose short words and phrases until the MK Ultra freed us up a bit. So we need to agree that from now on, we only do it when we have to, and use the least amount of words possible. And let's definitely agree not to waste it by trying to probe each other's minds for stuff that should only be communicated in speech."

"I hereby agree not to attempt to probe you," I assured her, anticipating her reaction to the innuendo...and my commitment to avoid it...

"I meant mentally," she snapped back, "If you are a passenger on my flight to the Amazon, I reserve the right to check you for ticks and other nasty stowaways... however I have to."

I demanded bluntly, "Am I going to the Amazon?"

"I hope so," she responded, "because this night ends in one of two ways for you. One possibility is an agreement to go to the Amazon with me, and we finalize the details. The other possibility is you waking up on your porch with no memory of this night."

"An agreement...to go with you," I acknowledged with a blend of confusion and optimism, "Are you saying it is my choice? You're offering me the opportunity?"

"I was sent here with the expectation that you WOULD go to the Amazon," she revealed, "Any other outcome will be considered...failure...on my part."

"Then why didn't you say that," I challenged, perplexed, "knowing that was the very thing I wanted? Why the...interview...and all of that?"

"Before I took you to the Amazon, I had to get some commitments from you," she explained, "but before I could even request those, I needed to confirm some things about you. I have been testing you, and I must test you further...not for my amusement, nor for some experiment. I am testing you because I have to know that if I take you to a potentially dangerous place, you can survive. I only agreed to do this if I could be sure that you would not die there."

"Amanda," I confessed, "I am very close to wondering what I have gotten myself into here."

"That's unfortunate," she reacted sadly.

"Is it," I questioned, "and why?"

"Because," she explained, "if you ask that now, it won't mean as much when you ask it later."

"Come with me," Amanda instructed, now carefully working one of the devices on her wrist, "I have mentally tested you to my satisfaction, but now I have some tests with a physical component as well. I need to see you act, with speed. You will not have hours to make a decision before committing to an action. That's going to be a test for you. You won't have the luxury to overanalyze stimuli. And of course, this will test your physical limitations, including speed, strength, durability, and stamina, for starters. I'm a little concerned, because you aren't nearly the athlete you once were. Sorry for the reality check, but I doubt I'm the first to remind you of it. I fear that your speed, once described as 'supersonic' might now just be 'semisonic' and I just need to know that you can quickly move your ass from one point to another as if your life depended on it. Because it just might."

"Do you think you can keep up with someone in a motorized wheelchair," she challenged me, "at top speed?"

"It depends," I replied, "how fast can you...drive...ride...go in that thing?"

"100 on the interstate, 10 in the city," she answered sarcastically before clarifying, "Seriously, all you need to be concerned with is that I know I can go faster than you. Sometimes...when I am going a distance that lets me reach automobile speed, I start daydreaming, and I pretend I'm in one of my planes...high above this mudball, flying at speeds that would melt you. When I zone out like that, I tend to have a lead foot in the chair. Well, I guess I always have those..."

I was unsure what to believe. Then I noticed her chair had a seat belt. Then I wondered why I was even questioning how fast a wheelchair could go, given that I just had my first telepathic experience.

"Pun intended...I am still trying to wrap my brain around the telepathy thing," I admitted, "I hope it doesn't annoy you that I still have questions about that."

"Look," Amanda explained, "I get that the telepathy thing was big, but like I said, we aren't going to be doing that unless we have to. It might save your life some day...but it isn't going to change your life every day. I'm going to speed up here, so you need to focus and keep up with me."

Following behind her, I could not see the displays on the wrist devices, but I could tell she was looking at them for navigation. She was rapidly shifting her attention from one wrist to the other, apparently pressing tactile buttons or a touchscreen. I had to assume that one wrist was providing direction to her, and the other wrist was controlling the chair's speed and direction.

We soon reached an area where four men were standing and talking. I sighed to confirm that I recognized them...and that I understood why Amanda was not surprised to see them. She had led us to them...intentionally. She turned her head to me, as if to confirm I was ready, but said nothing.

I understood we should be using telepathy with restraint, but I did not know how to shorten my obvious question, and it seemed like something better discussed before the men could hear us.

"I thought you told me to ignore this guy for the rest of the night," I asked in bold, explicit thought.

"I meant inside the bar," came the answering thought in my head as Amanda smiled deviously, "because that would have interfered with your next test."

"Well," I declared aloud to her, "I suppose I might have to explain my joke three times after all."

The Penn Stater and the football players had seen us and were moving toward us.

"Hello boys," Amanda said to them with confident enthusiasm.