Telekinetic

Telekinetic

by Laurence E. Dahners

“Telekinetic” is the first of a series of post-apocalyptic stories featuring the Hyllis family. The collapse of civilization has reduced their people back to iron and horsepower. The Hyllises tend to inherit “tele-talents” such as telekinesis and teleportation. Tarc Hyllis’ mother (and his grandfather before her) could “feel” things with their talent. They became healers because they could feel inside their patients, which frequently let them diagnose the underlying causes of an illness. Having made a diagnosis, unfortunately, there was often little they could do to treat a problem. Tarc’s father can “push” objects with his mind, but, because he can’t feel inside anything, he doesn’t know where to exert force in order to help to treat his wife’s patients. Tarc’s just gaining the ability to do both of these things. The combination of these two powers will let him both diagnose a physical problem such as internal bleeding, and then stop that bleeding by applying pressure inside the patient. His mother finds this development extraordinarily exciting. She has too often had to watch her patients die for lack of an effective treatment. Then some strangers show up to scout the town where the Hyllises live. They plan and initiate a violent takeover. Could Tarc’s powers, weak as they are, play a role in resisting this invasion? It turns out he can guide a knife after it’s thrown…

Excerpt

As customers started to filter in for lunch, Tarc wondered whether, in a bigger city there would be so many patients coming and asking for his mother’s skills that she could support the family without having to keep a tavern. As soon as the tavern’s usual slow time in the afternoon began, his mother sent him upstairs with instructions to stop his other reading and begin studying their atlas of anatomy. At first he felt angry to be sent off early to study, but as he climbed the stairs he heard Daussie complaining about having to do one of his chores. He grinned to himself, thinking of her downstairs working while he was up studying. To his surprise, Tarc suddenly found the world of anatomy fascinating. The atlas started with the arm. Inside his own arm, his ghost found each of the structures shown in the book’s drawings. Somehow, he’d been thinking each person’s insides were different, but apparently, they were, to a surprising degree, similar. Later, Daussie came upstairs to work on her own reading assignment. She told Tarc to head back down because the kitchen needed water. As he passed through the kitchen his mother grasped his wrist to stop him. “What’s the name of this bone?” she asked, pointing to the midpoint between his shoulder and elbow. Staring wide-eyed at her, he shrugged, “I don’t know.” “Didn’t you start at the beginning of the book?” He nodded. “And you didn’t see the arm bone in there?” “Yes, and I compared it to my own. Mine seems to be shaped almost exactly like the ones in the book,” he said with evident surprise. “I’d thought there’d be a lot more differences.” Eva nodded but frowned, “Why don’t you know its name?” “I thought I was just supposed to learn where things were and how they were hooked up. What do the names matter?” “So you, and I, and other healers can talk to one another. If you’re going to take care of people, you not only need to know what their parts are, but what the names of their parts are. The language is important!” Tarc shrugged, “Okay, okay, I’ll learn the names.” “With your talent, you can simply feel the insides of people to know what their parts are. The only reason to study that book is so you can learn the names and how things are supposed to be arranged. It really helps, when you’re wondering whether there’s something wrong, to know how things are intended to be disposed.”