Amissum Codex — The Book of Loss
Copyright A. Acer Custos © 2005, 2006
2. Desideratus — Regret
I hiked out of the park. At the trail head was a car-camp where I had left my Honda. There was a family camped there, a mom and a dad and two eight year old twins, a boy and a girl. They were in a big green Kelty family tent. It was getting on towards dusk and I was very tired. I had hiked all day. Maybe I wouldn’t have done what I did if I hadn’t been so tired. But I was and I did.
As I hiked down, I was still very open, unprotected. I walked into the emotion of their argument and didn’t close it out. I know now that it owned me, but it didn’t see it happening then.
“Jesus, Frank. Please don’t hit me in front of the kids. Please no.” Crying from inside their tent. The sound of a solid smack.
“Judith, I told you to pack the fucking beer, you bitch. Now I have to drive all the way back to that shitty little store and it may already be closed. You’re fucked if it is.”
He slapped her open handed again.
The kids held each other and were being very very quiet.
I was suddenly angry and scared and hurt and I was all of it all at once. I didn’t even think. I just turned him off. I reached out and just somehow broke something.
“Frank?”
“FRANK!”
“Daddy!”
The sound of a body hitting the floor. The tent listed to the side. The woman screamed. The kids began crying. I reached for him. He wasn’t there any more. Frank was gone. He was breathing and everything, but there was no person left there.
I couldn’t fix it. I tried. I tried to help. I dropped my pack and ran down to their tent. A middle aged guy with two kids and a wife lay on the floor of the tent, drooling, smiling slightly. Urine pooled under him. He kinda gurgled and smiled.
I drove down to the ranger station and got help and came back. I stayed with them until the ambulance came. She thanked me for helping. I felt dirty when she said that. After they were gone, I stood in the empty camp ground looking at the lopsided tent and abandoned gear. I felt scared and out of control. I had no idea I could do these things.
I drove home scared and upset. It was almost five in the morning when I got back to San Jose. I didn’t even want to think about sleeping, I knew I’d dream about Frank and Judith and their two kids, Donna and Danny. I didn’t want that.
Something was different, off, when I walked into my house. I was immediately on guard. For a moment I wondered if I had intruded on a burglar. But I couldn’t find anyone. Just as I was about to dismiss it as fatigue from being up all night, I turned and this guy was sitting there, in my living room, on my couch. One moment he’s not there, and the next he was.
“I was here the whole time. I just didn’t let you see me.” He’s a small guy, maybe forty five or so, wiry looking and smiling a pleasant smile. Dark hair, olive skin He had a very slight soft accent, Australian or British maybe.
“FUCK. Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house!”
“My name is Martin. I’m your preceptor.”
“My what?”
“Your preceptor, on behalf of your Inceptor.”
“My what?”
“Your Inceptor, your awakener.”
“My what?”
He paused and smiled. “My name is Martin. I’m here to teach you to control your power or destroy you if you don’t tame it.”
“You can try.”
My entire world turned white and soundless.
I woke up on the floor. It looked to be broad daylight out.
“Lets try again, shall we? Hello, my name is Martin, I’m your preceptor.”
“Fuck, my head really hurts.” I was stupid. I got up and tried to grab him. I tried to surprise a telepath. I woke up on the floor again. There was a lump on my head where I had hit the edge of my coffee table. Martin was in my kitchen making a sandwich, he seemed a little amused when I walked in.
“Welcome back.”
I stuck out my hand. “I’m Carter”
“Yes, I know. Your name is Carter Dawson. You were born in 1968. You’re originally from Virginia, but your parents moved west to California, San Jose specifically in the early eighties. You just graduated with a bachelors in psychology from San Jose State. Pleased to meet you, finally.” His grip was warm and soft.
“You’re my preceptor?”
“Yes, I have that honor.” He smiled.
“What’s an inceptor?”
“Not what, who. Inceptor. An extremely powerful telepath. Someone far more powerful than me, someone capable of awakening a latent.”
“A latent?”
“You were a latent, you’re now a rogue, though you should be an apprentice.”
“Um?”
“Well, actually, I’m your second preceptor. Your first is for all intents and purposes dead. Your Inceptor silenced him.”
“Killed him?” I was barely managing to follow all this.
“No, silenced. Eliminated his talent, wiped him clean.”
“Uh, why?”
“Well, he missed you. He didn’t get to you before you took off. Then he lost you. Not acceptable to anyone to have someone awakened running loose as a rogue. Not acceptable at all. Also, it makes your Inceptor look bad. Of course, its now worse than all that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve hurt someone, haven’t you?” He looked grim.
“I don’t really want to talk about that, thanks.”
He tossed me my car keys. “We’re going to take a drive now, Carter.” He looked at me steadily, almost as if he was measuring me.
“I can’t really drive anywhere. I’m not up to it. I’ve been up for like 30 hours or something, and I’m just wiped out.”
“Which is stronger, the body or the mind?”
“What do you mean?”
“Watch.”
Then he somehow pushed his power into me. I saw, felt him do it. I was defenseless against him. The thing is, he did it slowly so I could see it happen. Then he took over my mind. Literally. He just flat took control of my consciousness. It was the most unsettling feeling of helplessness I’ve ever experienced... well, up to that point, anyways. I felt violated. He smiled as he did it, even though he was gentle about it.
He directed my attention inwards. He didn’t use words, but I quickly learned a lot about my body. Chemical balances, hormones, brain body interface. Every moment with Martin was directed and intentional. Martin was always on task. He was an all-business kind of guy.
He showed me how to access my reserves of adrenaline. How to refresh and awaken myself. A light touch here, a push there, and soon I was wide awake and completely refreshed... ready to go face the world.
“That’s how that’s done, you can extrapolate from there.”
“Thats amazing, Martin”
“That’s a parlor trick, Carter. Just don’t get attached to it. It works for a couple of days and then your body catches up with you.” He smiled. “Lets go.”
“Where are we going?”
“Just drive.”
We drove back down 101 Southbound the way I had just come in. He was quiet most of the way. Every once in a while he’d show me some small trick, some thing. One of the most interesting moments went like this.
“Drive faster”
“I’m going seventy.”
“Go ninety.”
“Thats really fast Martin, I’m not a great driver at that speed.”
“Just do it.”
I went faster and faster. My Honda was not happy.
“Good, now watch this.”
Martin then directed my inner attention outward, and I flowed along with him. He directed my attention outward to the intention of the drivers around me. Suddenly, I was in this bubble of just flat knowing what every car around me was going to do.
“This is awesome! I know what they’re all about to do before they do it.”
“Good, but now watch this.”
Next I could feel his power flow outward, very controlled, very precise. Everything about Martin was elegant that way. His power reached out around us, and people just didn’t want to be in my lane.
I drove down the highway at ninety miles an hour. No one stopped me, no one got in my lane suddenly, I knew where all the cars were going. I felt this incredible sense of power.
We arrived at Valley Medical Center in Fresno a little over an hour later. I’d been so amazed at the trip and the experience that I didn’t pay attention to where I was headed. I parked.
“Why are we here, Martin?”
“You’re here to fix something.”
“What?”
“You’re here to fix that man you hurt.”
“ I tried, I can’t.” I suddenly felt tired again.
“You don’t know what you can do. You have no idea what you can do. You’re a rogue. Without proper training, you could end up eventually being really dangerous, but right now you’re just a danger to yourself and the unprotected ones around you.”
“Now Carter, you remember the feel of his mind, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Reach out for it”
“Um?”
He showed me.
“There, like that... now reach out for that man’s mind.”
“Okay, I feel him.”
“Good. Now think back. Think hard. When you hit him with your power, what did you do?” I could feel Martin’s ‘touch’ slide along side mine as I held onto Frank’s ... Frank’s... aura? Mind? Life? There was something gentle about Martin’s power, something caring.
“I don’t know, really.”
“Stop that sloppy thinking. It’ll get you killed. It’ll kill others. THINK. What did you do?”
“I just kinda felt for him and just snapped something”
“Really? Hmm, you’re a powerful talent, Carter.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Feel him... go into him the way I’ve gone into you.. flow in there.”
“How?”
“Like this...”
“Ah.”
“Good, now what do you feel? What do you sense in there?”
“No one is home. Its awful, there’s no mind there.”
“Yes there is, look over there.” He directed my attention down deep inside Frank. What I saw there was something like a slash or a cut across ... across his ‘selfness’.
“What you did Carter, was impressive. You suppressed the activity in his frontal lobes. Look here. That’s where people’s thinking connects to their brain, that’s the mind — body connection. You severed it. Brutal but effective.”
“I’m not exactly happy about that.”
“Now you’re going to fix it.”
“How, Martin? He seems pretty broken.”
“Pull from here and push from here. Let his mind heal.”
I did what he said to do. I worked under Martin’s tutelage and healed the damage I had done. In the hospital in front of us, up on the fourth floor, in the intensive care unit, Frank Merkowski woke up and smiled at the ward nurse. I cried when that happened.
Then Martin showed me how to actually look into that guy’s mind, not just look at it like a big block of thinking to hammer away at. He showed me how to actually read someone’s mind, how to get inside it. For the next several hours, we walked around the grounds of the hospital, for all the world looking like a pair of relatives waiting on word about a family member, as Martin took me through every single part of that man’s mind. I learned Frank Merkowski inside and out.
Frank’s mind was a nasty place. His dad loomed in that dark world like an ogre lurking under a bridge. His father was tied into everything that didn’t work for Frank. Being a man meant hitting women, it meant taking no crap from kids. It meant leaving a job when your boss pisses you off.
Then Martin showed me how to do this incredible thing. He showed me how to change someone’s mind. How to alter their reality. He had me go to work on that ogre in Frank’s mind. We created a scene in Frank’s memory... a scene in which Frank finally stood up to his dad and told his dad off for every mean, miserable thing that had ever happened. Frank got a chance in that new world to tell his dad he loved him, but that he didn’t respect what had happened. That ogre shrank to human proportions and turned into a weak man who had hit women and abused kids.
Upstairs in the hospital, Frank shook his head. He turned to his wife.
“Judith baby, I been full up with hate. I don’t want to live that way any more. You and the kids are all I’ve got in this life. I’m never going to hit you again. All I ever wanted to be was strong for you. I felt like I could never measure up. I’m sorry baby.”
I studied with Martin for a little over a month. He insisted that I go to work each day and study with him each evening. In the beginning it was hard to get myself through each day without making some mess or having an accident, but I did it, and after the first week it became much easier.
I learned how to build a shield around my thoughts, how to protect myself from another telepath, how to feel for another. I learned how to attack a telepath, how to push my power into someone and take their mind away... I learned how to do it in ways that you don’t get better from. I learned a thousand of Martin’s ‘parlor tricks’. I also learned a lot about the world of the telepath.
Telepaths don’t just happen. Many humans have the innate, latent capacity for telepathy and other psychic talents. But it’s not just dormant, its almost vestigial. Martin taught me the mythology of it, but it was pretty clear he didn’t believe it all.
“We’re told that our distant ancestors, probably Neanderthals, possessed the talents of empathy, telepathy and telekinesis. As Neanderthals gave way to the more aggressive and smarter pre-modern homo-sapiens, the talents became recessive. What was once common became rare. Meanwhile, the ancient people who did possess the talents became increasingly sophisticated in their use. Some time about three thousand years ago, the last naturally ‘awake’ humans died out, and all of us ‘Talents’ since then have been awakened.”
“I’m not so sure I believe that, Carter, just so you know. I’ve met and seen some pretty unexplainable stuff out there, and what I’m telling you is the dogma, not the truth.”
“It takes a frighteningly powerful telepath to awaken a human being to his or her potential, like you were awakened. These people are referred to as Inceptors. Your Inceptor is Claudio. Claudio is from Italy, and I think he’s approaching something like 150 years of age. He looks about fifty to sixty. He lives here in the Bay Area... Up in the city in fact.”
“You’re shitting me, he’s a hundred and fifty years old?”
“Extreme talents have the ability to do some pretty amazing stuff Carter. Stuff from legends... stuff from movies.”
“Like what?”
“Like taking over a younger body, stealing someone’s life.”
“No shit?”
“Or purging the body of toxins that lead to aging. Or altering their actual, physical being. The stuff of legends.”
“Why did he choose me?” That was a question I’d waited a long time to get to ask.
“You’ll soon get to ask him yourself.” Martin smiled at me gently. “Your training is nearly complete Carter, there’s only so much left for me to do, and then you go visit your Inceptor. If he approves of my training, we both live. If he finds you wanting, you die. If he dislikes my training, we both die.”
I swallowed hard. “He’d kill you if he doesn’t like what I’m becoming?”
“Yes Carter, so please be on your best behavior when the time comes. I’d sincerely appreciate that. I really would.” He chuckled.
“What are the chances of that happening?”
“I’ve trained five other talents so far for Claudio. He let three live.”
“Those aren’t very good odds, Martin.”
“Yes, but the three that survived were my last three, and you’re an excellent student. You even have a sense of ethics, I’m not excessively worried. Just prudently worried.”
“Ah.”
“Just so, no need to get upset or nervous yet.”
“Oh, and one thing, Carter.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t let this go to your head, but you’re right on the edge of being more powerful than I am already, and I’ve never seen to much potential. You will end up being an Inceptor yourself someday, if you survive. So, be careful... if Claudio senses a rival in you... well, you know.”
When he rang my doorbell the next day, I could tell he was in an odd mood. He was grinning slightly. When Martin grinned, you knew he was up to something.
“What’s today’s lesson, Martin?”
“We have a whole new area to talk about Carter.”
“Really, we’ve covered just about everything, haven’t we? You said yourself yesterday that there wasn’t much more.”
“Sex.”
I think I probably either blushed or choked. Maybe both. “What do you mean, sex?”
“Carter, you’re a healthy and handsome young man. How long has it been since you had sex? How long since you had a girlfriend? Or at least a steady lover?”
“Pretty personal questions, Martin. You’ve been in my mind, you know the answers. I’m not real good with women, and I don’t really have girlfriends. Not for a long time anyway.”
“Well, we have to deal with that. You’re horny. You’re always horny. You jerk off at night to porno after I leave, and you’re still horny. Some days you’ve jerked off three or four times and you’re still horny as hell. The more your power grows, the hornier you get.”
“So?” I was surprised by this conversation and his directness.
“So, it’s a weakness. If you don’t deal with that overwhelming sex drive of yours, if you don’t get it under control, when you do come up against some opposition, they’ll be able to get to you. You’ll fall for seduction and not see it as a trap.”
“You’re making this sound like a big deal. I don’t see how it can be, I’m just horny a lot. All men are, so what?”
“No, very few men are as sexually driven as you are. Its even possible that you have a knack.” Martin had talked about ‘knack’s before. A knack is a powerful talent, a specialty. “You’re so wrapped up about sex that you repress it, sit on it. Carter... you never talk about sex, you never admit to sexual urges. I’ve been teaching you for a month and you’ve never even once mentioned wanting to mind-control some girl into your bed.”
I was shocked that Martin had touched on that. It was my most powerful and most erotic fantasy. I dreamed about that ... but I knew it was wrong. I was confused and upset by the direction the conversation had taken.
Martin turned to me, and he was all business, almost cold. “Carter, I like you and respect you. You’re a good man. But you’ve got a problem to face and deal with. If you have a weakness like this sex issue, Claudio will see it and destroy you. If you somehow get past Claudio and still have this issue, the first time you come up against a powerful female telepath, you’ll get eaten alive, turned into a mindless drone or wiped. Possibly even worse, you could be enslaved. I like you, I don’t want to see that.”
“This is your big issue. Every telepath has one. Some have no social conscience and have to be put down like dogs. Some have no killer instinct and become victims or die. Some just never develop enough power or facility to mind themselves in the big bad world. You are too noble to deal with your own needs. Unless you get down off that high horse of yours, you’re a walking dead man.”
“I waited to the end to deal with this because I knew it would be the big one for you. Now here it is. Time to play in the big leagues.”
“What are you saying I have to do?”
“You need to make certain that your needs are met. You need to create a permanent answer to this problem. You need to get over this block.”
“Are you telling me I have to mind-control someone into having sex with me?”
“No, I’m telling you to mind control a LOT of women into having sex with you. I’m telling you to do it often enough that it loses it’s sting and that you adjust to it. That, or you can just go out and get killed, because believe me, you’ll get fucked either way.”
“Jesus, Martin... that’s harsh.”
Martin smiled at me, almost softly. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t disappoint me. Go get laid.”