What Next?
It took Monty almost two hours to take care of the
baby, feed her, change her, and play with her until she was tired enough to lay
back down. Finally, after making sure
she had her bottle he hurried back to his room.
God, it was going to be tough to settled down
again to get to a point where he could relax, and shut out the outside
world. He quietly closed the door, shut
the Rolladen, and settled into the chaise.
Should he use the noise-canceling headset or not? Decisions, decisions, decisions. No, in case the baby cried out again he had
to be able to hear her… so perhaps with extra effort he could close out just
enough of the world to find his way to where he needed to go.
Here is where routine was to pay off. Early on, Monty had found if he followed the
same routine every day it was much easier to slip into his altered state. While that routine was obviously altered today,
the steps from sitting in the chaise would be the same, the thoughts, the
images, the whole process would be the same.
And so it went, breathing, heart rate, and blood flow, into that new dimension.
He concentrated on the facts before him and sought
out the CEO of Humanity Services, searching for her as she first awoke, so that
he could follow her to the point where he had first intercepted her. Before he had been using a random time, well
before the time he believed she would make the announcement, and had found her
fighting for her life. Now he would pick
a time he assumed she would be safe and secure and track her to that tragic
event.
Through time, across space, and in some unique, to
him, dimension he traveled. Without too
much effort he found the CEO, Gloria Harrington, asleep in her bed, alone in a
large penthouse located on the 96th floor of a New York high
rise. He sensed others in the house, but
could not focus on them, for fear of separating the link that now held them
both. He often wondered if his subjects
knew of his intrusion. There was never
anything obvious mind you, but occasionally he would notice them looking over
their shoulder, or pulling their collars up, as if against the cold. He wondered if there were others with his
gift and as they passed across this dimension it was their presence that led
people to believe in ghosts.
He moved to find a favorable place to observe her,
and in the process noticed, for the first time, what an attractive woman she
was. She was a brunette, colored he
assumed, in her mid-forties. She was
well proportioned, not fat, but not skinny either. Her hips and waist made an appealing curve as
she rolled from her back to her side in response to some subtle noise from the
other room. As her alarm went off a
slender arm extended to quiet it, and without pause she sat up in bed.
Monty watched as she stepped away from the bed,
her silken nightgown dropping away as she stepped into the bath. He was amazed at this, as he was normally
quite aloof as he spied on his subjects.
But this was different. Something
was drawing him to her. But he new he
didn’t have time, not now, not here. He
had a thought and the scene before him began to play in fast forward. It was as if he was viewing a video in three
times speed. Gloria moved quickly from
the bath, to the dressing room, to the gym, to the bath, then the shower, the
dressing room, the breakfast table and then out the door. Startled, Monty flashed forward to the lobby
where he watched as she entered a Bentley that pulled up in front. He moved effortlessly to a position across
from her to observe her while they traveled towards whatever was to occur
sometime in the near future.
This was new for Monty. Usually he could fast forward through time
and space to see what would happen, but precise details of exactly where and
exactly when had, up until now, never been that terribly important. His ability to forecast based on the details
he had observed was so effective in positioning his clients for the events to
come; that within a very small circle he was thought of as pure gold. Most of his clients didn’t really know how he
worked, and while curious, were not so curious that they pressed for more information
when told any future inquiries would lead to their loss of any contact.
But this subject was different; he was now
connected to her in a way unlike any of his previous surveillances. The more he observed, the more he wanted to
know. A disturbing thought crossed some
other part of his mind; surely he was not becoming attracted to this woman, was
he? No! That could not be it; he just
needed to know the details of what catastrophe awaited her so when he talked to
Bryan he would have the necessary details.
The car stopped, and Gloria rose and left the
car. Where were they? How long had it been? Monty saw her moving away and adapted his
thoughts to follow her. She was entering
a skyscraper in the heart of the city, as the doors slid shut Monty was there
beside her, and all the sudden it became clear to him, this was the box he had
seen in his earlier surveillance. Was she in the headquarters of Humanity
Services? Was he about to see the same
tragedy repeated? Surely an elevator
didn’t catch fire? Who had ever heard of
such a thing?
At that instant Monty knew he would have to try
something he’d never done before. He
would need to connect to several people in the same proximity to see if they
have a shared future, and if so, is this where that future ends.
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