METANOIA [01.05]

Formal Analysis

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..05.01 | Debrief

Afternoon

Once back at home base, the field agents set about their less glamorous tasks of the day: checking in with Will, then writing reports. It was the early afternoon by the time they squared everything away, but before they could even consider what to do next, Will rolled a chair up to the two of them.

“Alright, meeting time,” he declared.

An inexplicable dread echoed in the far reaches of John’s psyche. Ignoring it, he asked, “What about, exactly?”

“The exact thing we’re here for: answers. By now, we’ve learned quite a bit, haven’t we?”

Mia shrugged.

“Let’s start with our observations on our freaky demon friends. John, you’ve read about the two incidents before yours, right? Summarize them for me.”

“Sure. First, a few weeks before, a woman caused havoc in a restaurant, then got shot after attacking a cop who was sent to restrain her. When they looked at her afterward, the deformations were subtler than the ones I’ve witnessed but they were there, and the cop claimed that he saw something weird about her before she attacked.

“The next one, just a few days before mine, was the worst of the four by a mile. A grotesquely warped ‘man’ went on a rampage, killing five. Its body was too disfigured to ID, and no one who saw the thing at the moment of the change is alive. Officially, it was reported as a freak mechanical failure.” He leaned back and looked at his boss. “That cover it?”

Will nodded. “It’s not a lot to work with for the amount of questions raised, but I see enough commonalities to pick out a few patterns. For instance, all our shapeshifters attacked after changing, or at about the same time. We got no witnesses for that second case, but all wounds matched up to the claws and deformed teeth.”

Mia added, “I see a weak connection between the level of violence and the level of deformation. The woman at the restaurant who barely changed didn’t appear to intentionally harm anything until the cop attempted to restrain her. Then the two John encountered were incredibly violent and more… wrong… but still recognizably human-like. The one from the massacre was… not.”

“I think you’re right,” Will said. “The question is: was it the change that made them violent, or did they change because they were looking for a fight? Of course, you know my hypothesis.”

John said, “I think it’s obviously the latter. Every single one of them not only looked different but acted a bit different, like their transformation was ‘unique to their personality.’” He smiled cheaply at the grisly satire. “Each person we know of was acting ‘unstable’ well before they looked the part.”

“Great. We’re on the same page, then. So where do you fit in?”

John tapped his right foot on the floor as he deliberated. He didn’t need time to come up with an answer—only to make sure it was the one he wanted to give. “While the… end results are very different… Yeah… I think my ability is part of the same phenomenon. I have a hard time believing two impossible things happening at once could be unrelated.”

“Oh? So, you’re saying I should be worried you’ll sprout a lightning rod any minute and attack us?”

“Frankly… yeah. I doubt it’d be that random, but it’s a possibility.”

John figured Will had already guessed as much, but as the words left his mouth, he realized Mia may not have considered it. He glanced over. If that idea unsettled her she wasn’t letting it show—not this time.

Will leaned back. “Well, this would be a good time to go into more detail on exactly what it is you ‘experience’ when you do your little parlor tricks. You come up with a better explanation for that yet?”

“A little clearer, maybe. When it starts, it’s like… being a radio receiver. Or if that’s too abstract, it’s like getting hit by waves in an ocean. You don’t feel it in your nerves, though, it goes right to your consciousness—like when you feel something in a dream. The next part is even weirder; I haven’t exactly figured it out. It’s like I can think of the general idea of what I want, but I don’t have to say exactly how it’ll happen.”

“How’d that work when you killed ol’ Angler Tooth? Were you thinking, ‘I’m going to bust his head open,’ then somehow that turned your hand into a hundred-amp taser?”

“Something like that, yeah. However, I don’t know if I’d say the taser was so unintentional. It wasn’t something I consciously thought of, but if you asked me the most effective way to kill a monster, the first image that would pop into my head would be frying it with a good shock.”

“Must have had some interesting thoughts up on that skyway, too, then,” Will said with an eye boring right into John’s memories.

John waved a hand as if to swat away a prying hand. “Something like that. Point being: whatever the result is feelsright.”

“Mm. Maybe your automatic cognitive processes worked out the details—like a Graphics Processing Unit,” Mia guessed. “The CPU sends the draw order and any relevant information, but ultimately the actual rendering is handled without any further input from the main processor.”

“Yeah, I think that sounds right,” John affirmed.

Will scratched his head like someone had given him directions in another language. “Uh… sure. Back on point. John, do you have any idea what the limit is?”

“Best guess is it’s based on how I’m feeling and how strong that ‘wave’ hits.”

“And the strength of the ‘wave’ is based on?”

“Not sure yet.”

Will sighed. “Okay, so, coming back to our mutant freaks. That would mean your ‘wave’ has something to do with them, too? It lets you bend reality to make lightning, and they get to ‘be bent’ into reality-defying body horror. Why? You trying to say they want that?”

“Who can say what exactly they wanted. Clearly nothing wholesome, but who knows. Maybe I’ll stop one and ask next time.”

Will chuckled. “Well, there are people who will mutilate themselves with their own hand and a sharp piece of metal, so it’s probably a similar kind of thinking—or lack thereof.”

A shadow crept over the back of John’s mind. He dispelled it with a question. “What about the ‘where’ of this phenomenon? None of your records mention anything happening outside of this city.”

“There aren’t any,” Mia said. “It’s only been here. With four incidents in a month all here, we’re statistically guaranteed it’s a problem unique to Joule.”

“… for now,” Will added. “Which would say a lot, but there’s a lot of ‘unique’ things in this city. Might take us years to find a root cause, and it could be a mix of several things.”

John rubbed the side of his head as he considered what that could be. “We know ‘unstable’ people are at risk of becoming those demons, but where does that leave me? Is this whole thing some kind of disease I contracted from that freak in the garage? Is it someone’s mad experiment gone loose? A cabal of cultists invoking a demonic rite?”

Will put in his two cents: “If there is a malicious actor behind it, it could be another country. If it were to become widespread, it’d be the perfect kind of crisis to destabilize a region.”

“If it’s happening in other countries, surely the most pervasive intelligence network in the world would have found out about it?” John countered.

Will rebutted, “Who the hell knows what the CIA knows—including the CIA. Besides, I’m not saying it’s likely, but we can’t rule out the possibility another country has already seen this happen.”

John thought for a moment. “Okay, well, what about the fact that I can manipulate it now, even if just a little? Let’s say some third party knew enough about the phenomenon that they could have ‘planted’ Angler Tooth. Seems most likely to me that they’d already know of its tendency to spread to bystanders. Using it as a biological weapon would be like shooting your opponent in the foot only to give them the loaded gun right after.”

“Hmm, what makes you think you’re not a unique case?” Will’s mouth curled into a wry grin.

John panicked internally as he realized Will might have caught on about Freya, but he kept his calm on the surface.

“Putting that aside,” Will continued. “It’s a good point. No one would use tactics like that unless they were hopelessly desperate.”

“It could still be a less… forward-thinking, local actor,” John conceded. “The occult angle might be worth looking into.”

“Well, I don’t see you wearing spirit crystals or sacrificing goats to do your little storm-hands trick. So, if that’s the case, whatever they did is already set in motion, I’d think.”

“That’s a terrifying thought.”

Mia got out of her chair, stretched, and walked away.

“Eh? But we’re just getting to the good part,” Will teased emphatically. “We were about to pull out the tarot cards and read star signs!”

She left the room without another word.

“Are you sure you should be teasing her about that?” John asked.

“Ah, she’s just bored. Not interested in intangible things.” Will held up a hand as John started to open his mouth again. “Before you say it, I know these deformed monsters make her uncomfortable, but that’s something different. I’m just boring her with ghost stories like I usually do. She can’t even pretend to imagine supernatural things as being possible, for better or worse—usually. Soon as we walked into that autopsy room, though…” Will trailed off somewhere into his own thoughts.

He sighed. “Well, she’s not one to let her emotions stop her—or drive her in any way at all—so I’m sure she’ll be fine. If she’s not, she needs to get over it. Though… if the worst-case scenario happens, it’s critical that you—”

“Play chew-toy while she shoots. Yes, our iron-clad and outstandingly fair strategy has been worked out.”

Will grabbed John’s shoulder with a heavy pat and smiled. “Just don’t let them hit the vitals. I’d have a hard time finding someone as sheepish to replace you.”

John scowled.

Will grinned wider.

Then he grew serious again. “I think we’ve put together as much as we can today. We need more information before we get wrapped up in making conclusions. Experiment with that ability of yours, see if that gives you any more insight. Frankly, I’d rather you didn’t have to. Maybe that makes you go crazy as well, but the possibility that someone less sensible than us could figure this all out first is—”

“Bad. I know. I was thinking about that.”

“Good.” Will nodded. “If you’re thinking ahead like that, then I’ll assume you realize that there’s a possibility that some less savory characters—yes, worse than me, shocking—there’s a possibility they’ll start recruiting anyone they can find who can control this… Damn it, I need to make a list of terms for all this nonsense. This… ‘supernatural influence.’”

“Understood.”

John rose to leave, but Will pressed him back down.

For once, the old agent sounded almost sympathetic. “I get that you want to keep that woman uninvolved, but to people in power, people like you are resources to exploit. And they’re not going to leave resources just lying around. Whether that’s our government, someone else’s, or any number of other factions.”

John gave a half-hearted confirmation. “Yes. I see what you mean.”

Even as his grip tightened, it was the grim intensity of Will’s eyes that locked John in place. All sympathy had been wiped from his tongue. “I hope that you do.”

John broke into a cold sweat. It was the utmost foolishness, complete childish naivety for him to think he could hide something important from that man. His mind still reasoned there was a limit to what Will knew—that he was just being bluffed by an untrusting spook. Yet, a voice deeper inside—a primal circuit—insisted this hound had the scent of his blood. There were no holes the fox could escape to.

In that moment, John was reminded of a concept he had once forgotten: authority.

“And who knows?” Will’s wry smile returned and grip loosened. “Maybe if your little ‘private firm’ gets a few more employees, we can renegotiate your rate… So you can keep your people paid, of course.”

“… How generous.”

“Downright saintlike.”

..05.02 | Freya

November 1st

Two days later, at the opening of the new month, John found himself waiting in a faux-antique chair in a quiet corner of a fair-sized café. The kind of place where he imagined people met for book clubs and discussed their favorite Victorian-era dramas.

His attention, however, was almost entirely directed towards the array of strange equipment behind the counter. The various machines and tools were decorated with intricate, brass engravings of angels and abstract depictions of the sun and moon and stars. Each device clearly mimicked historical designs, with the larger pieces resembling a pipe organ in some ways, but it also had the tell-tale signs of modernity, like machine-milled metals and precisely shaped rubber caps and gaskets. As for each piece’s purpose… They were definitely for making coffee. That seemed to be the objective. Or at least, he had seen coffee come out of a few of the contraptions. After twentyish minutes, he was able to identify a select group that were directly involved in brewing, but nothing seemed very intuitive or efficient.

Hot water didn’t just pour through the grounds and a filter. An employee pressed a button to engage a pump, which sucked the water and grounds into a vat and swirled them around as the employee fiddled with a dial very precisely. After some time to brew, the employee came back and pulled a lever, causing the mix to drain into an opaque pipe for further processing involving a few more dial fidgets and switch flips. Two feet to the left of that is where an employee finally placed a cup for the coffee to pour into. On an assembly in-between was a tall, narrow, and slightly angled hatch with three latches. After each brewing, an employee would come by, undo the latches, open the hatch, then pull out a tray with all the old grounds and dump it into a bin.

And that was just one route for the coffee to take. There were two other different but equally obtuse stations to keep up with demand. The rest of the tools were just as busy for no apparent reason other than to be busy. It was a sight far, far removed from the increasingly streamlined machines he had watched growing up.

John guessed that some connoisseur could tell him how it affected the flavor. Or it could be that the ritual of it all was the purpose itself. Everything moved so smoothly that it didn’t seem that much slower than the normal process. It simply required more attention.

A lot more attention.

A buzz from his work phone slapped John out of his observational trance: a group message from Will.

Will: Finally decided on some terminology for everything we’ve seen so far. We’re going to want to annotate some older reports later to keep it consistent.

John grumbled quietly, dreading the prospect of additional paperwork.

The violent deformed people
    => Ghouls (formal) or Demon F***s (informal)

John’s Voodoo Magic “Waves”
    => RDF (Reality Distortion Field)

Effects created by manipulating the RDF
    => Distortions (formal) or Magic (informal)

People(?) who can manipulate the RDF
    => Conductors (formal) or Wizards (informal)

Ergo “conducting” is when a “conductor” “conducts” the “RDF” and creates “distortions.”

Simple, yes? Good.

This is final.

“Informal” meaning: “the words I’m going to say out loud, but if you write them in a report, you’ll be sorry.” But what John couldn’t figure out was why Reality Distortion “Field?”

“Hey!” A soft voice greeted him. John looked up to see Freya had arrived. “Sorry to make you wait.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I just tend to be early. Besides, I got to admire this very…” John looked towards the coffee machines again. “…unique system they have here.”

“Isn’t it fun? A lot of people come here just to quietly sip their coffee and watch.”

“Mm. Well, I’m curious to try the stuff. Must be alright if they have regulars.”

At the counter, a calm and collected woman with a long black ponytail put her current task on hold to get their order. “Hi, Freya! Who’s this?” she teased kindly.

“This is John. He’s helped me out with… some… stuff.” Freya responded, remembering to mind her words mid-sentence.

But did jack-all to be subtle about it.

Thankfully—in some sense—and inevitably, the barista perceived it as the harmless kind of suspicious. “Ooh. I see… Nice turtleneck.” She smiled and winked, spinning some romantic narrative in her head.

“Ah… thanks…” Freya laughed nervously while avoiding eye contact.

The exchange amused John at one level, knowing the barista meant it innocently. Yet in the back of his mind, he felt a tinge of lingering anger knowing the real nature of what that fabric covered.

They gave their orders, then returned to their table. Looking at Freya more closely, he could see that her eyes had cleared up and her skin was flush with life again. All around, it finally, fully struck him how beautiful she was. Neither tall nor short, she had a fit figure and abounded with excited grace. He was almost tempted to think her full of innocence, but in the subtle details of her movements was the weight of confidence. There was no question that this was the same woman from before.

“Do you see something?” Freya asked, fidgeting slightly with the slightest bit of a curl on her lip.

“You look like you’re recovering well. Any lingering pain?”

“Not much, just a little sore. I went in for a proper checkup yesterday, and they said there was no permanent damage…. Just some bruising. So… thank you…” Her eyes glistened, sitting on the verge of tears. “Thank you so much for helping when you did.”

John scratched the back of his head and dodged eye contact, overwhelmed by the sudden display of sincerity. “Just, uh… just glad I could help.”

He took a moment to refocus himself, then looked around to make sure their corner of the café was still clear. “Well then, I believe I owe you an explanation for what happened. Not that I have all the answers myself.”

“Whatever you can tell me is enough. I’m happy you’re telling me anything at all.” She dabbed her eyes politely to regain her composure and began listening intently.

“First off, I should let you know that my boss caught on that I was withholding some information in my report. Knowing him, he’s probably already assuming that you’re like me.”

She gave a puzzled look. “Like you?”

“Do you remember the blade you cut the… ‘ghoul’ with?”

“Ghoul? Is that what that horrible thing was? But yeah, I remember everything.”

“I went through something similar two months ago, only instead of a blade I generated a lethal amount of electricity from my hands.”

John gave a brief recounting of his first run-in with a ghoul, his recruitment as an FBI “contractor,” then the events that led up to him finding her and Deneb in the park behind the apartments.

In turn, she explained that she saw Deneb being attacked from her window by what looked to be a normal person at the time, so she rushed out to help—through the window… with a kitchen knife…. A very bold response, John thought. Bold and immensely amusing. She also mentioned again the “voices” she heard before she conducted.

Once she finished, John caught her up on the latest by explaining what they’d determined about the nature of the RDF. Then there was a brief break in the conversation. They sipped at their drinks while Freya processed what she heard.

“Wow. I was half expecting to wake up yesterday and find out it was all some dream. But… here we are.” She subconsciously held her hand to her neck. “So, you wanted to keep my, um… What did you call it?”

“‘Conducting’—as of fifteen minutes ago.”

“Right. So, you wanted to hide the fact I can ‘conduct’ so I wouldn’t get involved in whatever the FBI’s doing in response.”

“Them and whoever else eventually tries to take advantage of all this. Seems that plan was just a pipe dream, though.”

“I see. Well, thanks for looking out for me, but I’ll be alright.” She spoke confidently as if she had a foolproof plan.

“I don’t think it’ll be that simple.”

“I could just join your investigation team, right? Then I’ll have you and the FBI looking out for me, and I can help out in return.” She smiled innocently like she was working out the details of a picnic.

“But that’s… Why? I don’t even know if—”

“You said yourself it wasn’t a normal FBI operation, and you’re not actually part of the FBI either. So, what harm is one more ‘contractor?’ We’d be running around dealing with these ghouls when they show up, right? Well, I already killed one.” She sat up straight and puffed her chest proudly.

John silently cursed that old man. Was he just guessing at this outcome, or did he already figure this woman out as well?

John sighed, already defeated in a battle on two fronts for something no one else wanted. “Alright. Yeah. If that’s what you really want. My boss told me to look for more ‘contractors,’ so I can check if you match his standards.”

She beamed.

“Are you sure this won’t be a problem for you? I can make sure you’re paid, but I can’t guarantee the timing will be convenient.”

“Well, I’m not attached to my current job, and my little sister doesn’t need to be micromanaged or anything—as long as I keep the groceries stocked and pay the bills. So yeah! I’m all clear!”

It was quite adorable to him how excited she was, but he tried to pretend he wasn’t thinking that. “Okay… Guess I should explain what we’re currently working on, then. We need a firm grasp on the nature of the phenomenon and when and where it might manifest. We have one micro-pattern down, but you and I prove there’s more to it.”

“Mm. I see.” She rested her chin on her hands as she thought about it. “So… do we need to find more information to work with?”

“Pretty much. Right now, my focus is on figuring out the specifics of how conducting works.”

“I can help you with that, then! How do we do that?”

“That’s part of what we’re figuring out.” John clarified.

“Oh.” She looked a bit disappointed with herself.

“You did remind me of something that might be important, though. Do you remember how you ‘heard’ multiple voices when it happened?”

“Yes. Very clearly.”

“Do you still hear them now?”

“Yes.” She didn’t even pause to listen or think about it. “They’re quiet, but I’ve been hearing them ever since.”

John nearly laughed at the disparity in their experiences. Regardless, it gave him an idea. “To start, then, I think we can run some experiments with that.”

She nodded in acknowledgement, eager to go with whatever he suggested. “Where should we head first?”

“Oh, not immediately,” he corrected.

“Right. Right…”

“I suppose I should introduce you to our handlers first. Do you have time today?”

“Yep! Let’s go!” She seemed about ready to jump out of her seat until a wave of self-consciousness brought her back to earth. A touch flustered, she rose calmly as John did.

They made their way to the door and Freya waved to the barista: “Bye, Hanako!”

“Have fun!” she replied with a wink, blissfully unaware of the trouble her customer was diving into headfirst.

After leaving the café, John formally announced and introduced his new ‘employee’ to Will and Mia. Neither were surprised.

The rest of the day was spent getting Freya started on the same training he had just finished. On the following day, they started dedicating some of their hours to the investigation of their conducting.

..05.03 | Experiments

November 2nd

The experiment John cooked up was simple: Go to a few different places and see what happened to the “voices” Freya heard. To start, they went to a busy part of town: a nice, warm shopping center sheltered from the deepening cold. The two found an out-of-the-way corner within and started their observations.

“How does it sound?” he asked.

“Busy. When I’m at home, it’s quieter. Kind of peaceful, actually, but really noticeable. Here, it’s a lot noisier but faint. Feels like a thousand children trying to whisper to me, or something like that.”

“Interesting.” Almost immediately the results he was hoping for. Now the question he wanted to answer was whether or not the “waves” he felt were the same sensation.

Perhaps it was because he had another near-death encounter with a ghoul recently, but John found it relatively easy to focus on that supernatural sensation they now called the RDF. It still took some effort, but it was a matter of seconds rather than minutes.

Compared to when he was on the skyway the month before, the number of waves John could feel was a dozen times greater. Yet each individual one seemed smaller, insignificant, clear but distant. When he was staring in awe at the whole of the cityscape, it was like standing in the ocean as each pulse of water crashed into him. Now, it was as if he were watching from a boat; he could feel the evidence of the waves, but it was dampened and indirect.

He described that to her, then attempted to conduct. A small flash of light and a sharp crack emanated from between his fingertips. It worked—if only barely.

“Oh!” Freya gasped. She had been told what to expect, but it still caught her by a bit of a surprise when it actually happened.

“Can you give it a try now?” John asked.

“Sure… yeah… I just have to focus on the voices and think about swinging a sword?” She looked around. “Or a maybe a knife? Little easier to hide.”

“If it’s not working immediately, try recalling the memory of the first time it happened as—”

Bright golden lines formed in the air above her hand and the air between gleamed like glass, but it faded before a tangible shape should crystalize.

She gave a disappointed pout in response, but John couldn’t have been more impressed. It had taken her mere seconds to produce any result, unstable as it was.

“Nice!” he said enthusiastically. “It took me a lot longer than that the first time I tried.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, took me like half an hour just to keep that feeling in focus and I kept having minor panic attacks when it reminded me of getting stabbed.”

“Ah. I just have to try and concentrate.” She grimaced. “Wait, you got stabbed!?”

“Eh? Oh, right. Must have glossed over that part. My first encounter wasn’t ‘almost lethal,’ it was. Had to get a lot of blood put back in and flatlined once or twice in the meantime, according to the nurse.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to make you think about it.”

John chuckled. “Too late for that. I’ve been experimenting with this quite a bit since it happened, after all.”

“Right,” she said softly. “You did say that’s how it was for you at first.”

Her expression was hard to read. A bit shocked, for sure. Sympathetic, likely. Then some kind of aversion, yet no desire to recoil.

“Do the voices sound distant to you?” he asked plainly.

She snapped back to the present. “No. Nope. Ah… hmm… It’s like they’re whispering right in my ear, just very softly.”

“Interesting.” He grinned. “Seems like this isn’t going to be that straightforward, then. Not that I expected it to be, but it does seem that there’s at least one predictable effect.”

“How many sounds—or waves—we noticed, right?”

“Exactly. Let’s move to the next spot. See what changes.” He started to leave, then quickly stopped and turned to her again as he remembered. “And make sure you’re tracking it while we move around town.”

“Roger!” she responded with a playful salute.

He gave her an empty, heavy stare.

“It… seemed…”

“No.”

“… Right.”

She snickered quietly as soon as he took his eyes off her.

John brought Freya to the skyway where he had met Will. As he drank in the view again, he had a similar feeling well up inside him, yet that distance he had noticed at the shopping center remained. More noteworthy to him, however, was how minimal Freya’s reaction was.

As she put it: “It’s like there’s one, big voice, so that matches what you were saying, but it’s not very… pronounced, I guess. It’s just… there.”

When they tried to conduct, their conditions reversed. John’s hand sparked with trivial effort while Freya could barely get a trace of gold to glimmer in the air. This was evidence enough to John that the voices Freya heard were the same in nature as the waves John felt as it dictated the ease of their conducting, but he didn’t expect it to be so subjective in effect.

They tried walking through a few parks as well. The results were similar to the shopping center but “quieter.” Trying to think of someplace that would get more interesting results, John chose his old office as their next location. Or rather, a bench on the skyway three hundred feet up the seventy-story building, putting them at roughly the same height as his old office.

“It’s like sitting next to a beehive,” John remarked.

Perceiving the RDF at that spot was the easiest it had been yet for John. Though the feeling of distance persisted, it felt like he was at least dipping his toes in the water again. The distinguishing factor he could determine was the activity the people around him were engaged in. He reasoned that, perhaps, that was even more important than their physical proximity.

The way his and Freya’s distortions manifested so differently had made him consider that he could probably do more than just shock things. However, since then, he had been struggling just to do that much, so he hadn’t had the opportunity to properly experiment. So, rather than trying to remember what he had done before when he focused on the wavelike sensations again, he imagined a new outcome: cutting through some invisible object.

A bright flash erupted from just above his hand, searing his eyes and making him flinch in pain. As he instinctively raised his other arm for cover, the faint smell of burning air clued him in on what just happened. His “knife” had been a short-lived jet of hot plasma. While he had been picturing something more like Freya’s glasslike blades, he realized he had no idea what those were, so it made a kind of sense that his subconscious once again used electricity to solve his invented problem.

It wasn’t quite the effect he had been looking for. Still, he had made one important discovery: he knew now that he wasn’t limited to just the electrical shocks he had produced before. It wasn’t “anything he could possibly imagine,” but all he was hoping for was some flexibility with what he could summon into reality.

His mind set off to ponder what other tricks he might be capable of. Then he immediately lost his appetite for such thoughts as his head began to ache. He heeded the warning and gave up on the heavy thinking with a long yawn. Perhaps all the recent activity was catching up with him. An afternoon nap sounded like a good idea.

He looked over at Freya, who hadn’t reacted to anything he did, and indeed, had been quiet for some time. With eyes closed, she sat deep in thought. If she was on the verge of figuring something out, it’d be counterproductive to interrupt, so John remained still, waiting.

Keeping watch.

Her lips gradually formed a contented smile, and she finally opened her eyes; smooth and slow, like one waking up from a peaceful slumber.

“Have you reached enlightenment?” John inquired in serene sarcasm.

She blinked, her expression static. Then… “Huh?”

“You look like you just found peace with the world.”

“Oh.” She giggled cutely. “Nothing that profound. I wasn’t feeling much at first, but then I started wondering about what everyone in the building was doing; what kind of accomplishments they were making. Maybe there was an incredible breakthrough just now that will change everyone’s lives and we don’t even know it. That kind of thing.”

She continued more seriously but still with a gentle smile. “That’s when the feeling changed. It was like a window opened up. Not a big one, but it was still kind of exciting, you know?”

“I do.” He smiled in turn as pangs of nostalgia bubbled up.

“Actually, it reminded me just a little of when I got invited to a friend’s church when I was in middle school.”

John’s brow fell as the connection eluded him. “How so?”

“I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I remember a feeling of awe I had back then. The pastor had given a very… powerful sermon, and everyone started singing after. I don’t know if I’d call myself a believer in anything like that, but I was pretty moved by how passionate everyone was. I guess you could call that a religious experience?”

John nodded. “I think I see what you mean. Maybe we should go to one?”

“Yeah, that should— Oh! I got the perfect thing! A friend of mine was telling me about a technology symposium that opens in a few days. It’s hosted by one of the bigger churches in the city, I think. Let’s go to that!”

“What kind of technology are we talking about here, exactly?” A church hosting a technology symposium wasn’t something John had ever heard of, though it wasn’t unfathomable—especially in Joule.

Freya sorted through her memories with little success. “Umm… Prosthetics or something?”

John pulled out his phone and started a search, then asked, “Do you remember what church?”

“Trinity Church, maybe? It’s the really, really big, triangular one.”

Because of course it was. “Let’s see… There’s the Church of the Holy Trinity.”

“That’s it!”

Front and center on the church’s web page was a banner for the symposium. It was an organization that John was very familiar with, which dealt not only in prosthetics, but bionics of all kinds, including the body enhancement variety. Now that John found unfathomable for a church to host.

And here they were, considering attending to investigate a paranormal phenomenon….

As a Christian of no particular denomination himself, and with a “grounded, intellectual” view towards miracles, even he started to fear a little spontaneous combustion. Curiosity, however, demanded he still go at all costs.

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Next

METANOIA [01.06]

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