It begins with a dizziness. An odd sensation since I have not fallen ill in over a decade with anything more entertaining than bad back, but I choose to rest because old age is a bitch even at fourty-five. I drink water simply to wet my dry throat. And then...I sleep.
I awakened to a loud noise like traffic and yet there is no traffic. I smell the scent of meats and vegetables cooking, spices and herbs, the smells of takeaways blowing their cooked meals out into the sky. This time I find myself in a city, pressed in on by an impossible crowd.
I think of my bed and I am there. It is ridiculous. The very thought that the crowded street drowning in humanity was real and yet as I think of it the distance between the bed and the dream closes and again I am there. I sit on a bed in an alley way watching a nauseating wave of humanity wash by and with a thought I return home. I sit and contemplate the prospect I am insane. It would seem an odd sort of insanity that would leave me to stare at a fragment of some foreign newspaper stuck to the leg of my bed like toilet paper clinging to the sole of a shoe.
Its time to try this again.
I focus on a location I know and I am standing on a beach not more than a half mile from my home. The sand is wet from the tide now headed out. Half a mile. I return home with a thought.
Its time to test the limits.
Up.
I fall through the air. The distant city below me appears as I clear the cloud and see the lights of streets and a few houses. I focus on home and my descent ceases.
I know I can move things with me and I can travel but now I need to go further and move large masses. I know what I want to do.
I find myself on an Ice shelf in a rather brutal winter. This should be Antartica. nearby the abandoned Haley Six Science Station and I grab hold. It burns to grapple the cold metal even through leather work gloves but what I am wearing is not designed for this environment. First I move it to the Desert. The entire facility now sits on the sands on edge of the Simpson Desert.
Its amazing. I had not been able to get a good look at it in the snow storm but I can see its quite impressive. I didnt even exert myself. Lets put It back, but this time lets move it from the inside. I climb a stairs to a door with a window and look inside. I dont even bother trying to open the door. I simply am there beyond the barrier.
I turn to look out. This time I will take it to the south pole. And the desert is replaced by Antarctic snow. I look out at a distant base located at the South Pole. Now they realy have something to discuss.
At home I pour milk into cereal and enjoy breakfast for the last time. This is the last time I will ever come home.
I change my clothes.
I am on the Space station. Zero gravity is not something I have experienced so my stomach objects to not having a down. The Astronaut at the far end of the module seems paralyzed by my presence.
"I can assure you I am real." He nods in fearful agreement. "You might want to hold on. We are going to Mars."
Mars. Not orbiting so kind of screwed, but the view of the red planet from the Window of the International Space Station is kind of cool.
"Sorry." I smile. "I have yet to work out how to put us in Orbit." I am thinking to myself: at least he hasnt pulled a gun in panic.
"Fond of getting places in rocket ships were you?" For a guy trapped on a space station near Mars he is strangely quiet as he looks out the window at the closeness of a little uninhabitable ball of reddish frozen rock. "We can go someplace else if you like."
I focus on a distant star and make it as close to us as our star seemed to be from Earth.
"And this would be some other Star." I wasnt realy thinking about a particular place. "Not realy sure which one."
The Astronaut seems to be in some distress now. He's looking at me as though I ran his dog over.
"Are you are okay?" I move the station back to somewhere between the earth and the Moon. The poor fellow seems unwell. "You are obviously not taking this well so perhaps I should take you home."
I park the space station on the beach a half mile from my house. I figure we can get out here. The sudden sensation of gravity puts it all at an akward angle on the sand.
"Now," If it works out I'll have a good paying job moving space stations so I need to put this delicately. "About the Job."
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