Elijah's Chariot (The Forgotten Children Book 1) (27 page)

Sean
couldn’t tell how long they’d been working. At first, it had started to seem
like a long time. He expected that he would soon be getting tired or hungry, but
just as soon as he’d thought this, his body was filled with renewed energy and
he was able to plunge into the work again. Within a few minutes, he was almost
laughing at himself for thinking that he was growing weary. A few times, Sean
looked up at the sky, expecting that it would be getting dark any moment, but
it never did. The cold, cloud-filled heavens never darkened, but only turned
over and over as the wind softly blew. 

They’d
accomplished quite a bit in a seemingly short amount of time. Already, they’d
been able to take a few deep, core samples with a diamond-tipped drill they
found in one of the tents. The first team to the site had brought quite a bit
of geological equipment, from picks and chisels to elaborate imaging systems
complete with ground penetrating radar. Kevin showed Sean how to use it all.
This was the first time that he’d been able to work so closely with his father
on a project. Usually, Kevin had just given him a cursory overview of what he
was spending his time on at work. But now, they were doing actual field
research, collecting data and forming some basic hypotheses as to the origins
of the enormous meteorite. Sean was impressed with his father’s knowledge of
and comfort with all the complex geological equipment. Not for the first time
in his life, he wondered if there was anything that his father didn’t know. 

As
they sat at a portable work station just outside one of the tents, Kevin
pointed to a few lines of data on the screen. “See, these ones here – no
matches. It definitely has all the characteristics of some type of ore, but
nothing that we’ve found here on Earth.”

Sean
blinked. “What does that mean?”

Kevin
chuckled as he continued to stare at the computer screen. “Well, it could mean
quite a few things. First, that these elements are in fact located somewhere on
Earth, but we just haven’t discovered them yet. Or, they don’t exist at all
here, but do in some of the other planets and asteroids in our solar system.
Third, there’s the possibility that this meteorite arrived here from somewhere
outside our solar system, where these elements do exist. Or, it could mean that
we just don’t have any idea what we’re doing and I’ve made a mistake
somewhere.”

Sean
looked over at his smiling father. He was just as he remembered him: curious,
overwhelmingly intelligent, but, at the same time, humble and always willing to
admit the limitations of knowledge – the consummate scientist. 

Suddenly,
Kevin’s smile disappeared as he winced and pressed the palm of his hand against
his temple. A faint moan escaped his lips as he bent over, holding his head.

“Dad,
what’s wrong?” 

“My
head… just a headache… been staring at the screen too long…”
       Sean put his hand on his father’s shoulder, feeling panic start to rise
within himself.   

Kevin
sat up slowly, hands still pressed against his head. “Okay, okay, it’s going
away, it’s a little better.” He looked at his young son whose face was awash
with concern. “That’s quite a migraine, but it feels like it’s subsiding. It
just came all the sudden—”

Kevin
gasped and slid out of his chair to the ground, his fingers white from
squeezing his head. Sean gripped his father’s jacket as he slid to the ground
and rolled over onto his back. “It feels like my head’s going to explode…”
Kevin managed to say between clenched teeth. 

“NO!”
Sean screamed as he knelt helplessly beside his father. “You can’t die again!
You can’t leave me again! You’re going to be okay, Dad, it’ll go away, just
hang on a minute, the headaches will go away!” 

Kevin
stared up into his son’s eyes as he fought against the pain. “What’s going on,
Sean? What’s happening?”

Sean
couldn’t remember exactly when he’d started crying, but he now noticed that
painful sobs were causing his body to tremble as they tore through his throat. 

“Nothing,
Dad,” he managed to say, “You’re going to be okay, you’ll be okay.” 

Kevin
gasped as a new spasm of pain coursed through his head. He opened his eyes
slowly and looked intently into his son’s face. 

“What’s
happening, Sean? Do you know what’s happening to me?”

Sean
clung to his father, rocking slowly back and forth as he choked down tears,
shaking his head. 

Kevin
spoke again, more insistently this time, “I need you to tell me what’s going
on. You know. What’s going to happen, Sean?”

All
the merriment of the past few hours had suddenly drained away. Everything had
changed again, so quickly, in the last few moments, making it seem as though
none of the experiences they’d shared that afternoon had actually happened.
Suddenly, it seemed, they were back in the hotel room, his father lying on the
bed, cold and motionless, with Sean staring at his body with no idea in the
world as to what he was going to do or how he was going to live without his
father, all alone in a foreign country. Why is this happening, Sean thought.
Why has my father been brought back only to leave me again? Wasn’t once enough?
He’d seen so much death over the past few weeks, why did he have to see more? 

“You’re
dying, Dad. You’re going to die.” 

Kevin
looked up at the sky above him and exhaled slowly. Then, turning back to Sean,
he said, “That’s right. I’m going to die. But why?”

Sean
blinked at the tears in his eyes. “It’s because of the headaches. You get the
headaches, then you die.”

“Yes,
but why? What happened?”

Glancing
around the clearing, Sean’s eyes were once again drawn to the enormous
monolithic rock sitting several dozen yards away. “It’s Jerry or Elijah – Ilya…
once it landed, everyone started getting headaches and dying.”

Holding
his head carefully, Kevin pulled himself up into a sitting position with Sean’s
help. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, breathing slowly as he tried
to clear his aching head. “But, you didn’t die. Why didn’t you die, Sean?”

“I
don’t know. None of us know. We kids – we didn’t die. Just the adults. Jerry
killed all the adults.”

“But,
you had headaches too, didn’t you?” Kevin asked.

“Yes,
I think we all did. But, they didn’t kill us kids. What’s happening Dad?”

Kevin
slowly pulled his hand away from his face, keeping his head very still to avoid
jostling it and aggravating his headache. He started speaking haltingly, as if
struggling to find the words, but as he continued, they came more quickly. 

“My
brain is… is expanding. It’s changing – getting just a little bit larger and
it’s developing more folds and wrinkles, increasing its surface area. New
pathways are literally being opened up. It’s making me smarter – a lot
smarter.”

Suddenly,
Sean could literally see exactly what his father was talking about. He wasn’t
sure whether the images actually appeared right in front of his eyes like a
television screen or whether they were just in his mind, but he really saw what
was happening: a detailed cross-section of the brain beginning to change, ever
so slightly. Its already wrinkled surface almost visibly pulsated as it began
growing larger, the tiny folds deepening. 

“The
entire brain gets just a little larger, just enough to unlock and increase its
already powerful capacity. That’s what happened to you – all of you children.”

Sean
nodded, still seeing the image clearly, watching the brain change slowly, new
permutations gradually developing across its surface. “But, why didn’t we die
too?”

“Because
you weren’t adults yet. Technically, you’re only an adult once your skull is
fully developed. There are several bones that make up the skull, which are held
together by soft sutures. These sutures are not fully fused when we’re born so
that the skull can be slightly malleable at birth, in order to fit through the
birth canal. They become fully fused at adulthood, usually around eighteen to
twenty years of age. Jerry affected us all in exactly the same way – expanding
our brains. But, only the children, whose skulls still had a little room to
move and grow, were able to survive this. Those of us adults whose skulls were
solid weren’t able to withstand the growth. Our brains pressed against the
inside of our solid skulls, causing hemorrhaging and… death.”

Sean
watched as the brain continued to grow, pressing against the hard inner walls
of the skull. As it did so, small areas of red began to pool and expand, until
the brain stopped growing and was filled with dozens of clots. Then, the image
disappeared. 

Kevin
sat peacefully on the grass as he watched his son’s thoughts dance across his
face. 

“That’s
how you’re all able to have these wonderful new abilities now. Your brains were
transformed in such a way so that you can now understand more about the world
around you – and control some of it. It’s not magic – none of it’s magic. It’s
all done through basic scientific principles, irrefutable laws of the universe,
most of which we just didn’t know or fully understand yet. You can move things
by just thinking about them – how do you do it?”

Sean
had barely moved a muscle since the image of the brain had first appeared. He
was still kneeling, his hand on his father’s shoulder, staring transfixed into
his eyes as he listened. At Kevin’s question, he seemed to come out of a daze
and looked around again quickly, as if trying to remind himself where he was. 

“I,
I don’t know. I just think about something moving and… and it does. But, it
only works with smaller things, I can’t move heavier stuff.”

“Yes,
but how does it happen? What do you think about, what do you sense is going on
when something moves from one side of the room to the other without you
touching it?”

Sean
swallowed before continuing. “I feel, when I concentrate on a rock or a plate
or something, I feel like there are all these tiny little pieces in it, all of
them moving very fast. Then, I think about where I want the thing to go and I
concentrate on all the tiny pieces in that spot on the floor or in my hand.
Then… I don’t know, it’s like there’s almost a button that I push in my mind,
like I just turn something on in both the object and where I want it to be. I
make all the little pieces attracted to each other somehow, like a magnet. But,
I have to do it gradually, just a little at a time or they smack together too
quickly. But, I don’t know how I can feel all those little pieces – the
molecules and atoms, I guess. And I don’t know how I can press that button and
make them pull toward each other.”

Kevin
nodded. “It’s basic electromagnetism. You’re using the electrons in the atoms
to pull toward each other, making it seem like something’s flying through the
air, rather than what’s really happening. It’s just moving toward another
magnetically polarized area in a very controlled way. See, these are basic
laws, basic building blocks for the physical world around us. Now, you just
have the ability to know some of them – and to control them.”

Sean
nodded as he tried to imagine all the swarming electrons in the objects around
him, inside him. It was almost overwhelming at first, thinking of all the
trillions of tiny pieces moving in completely erratic and unpredictable ways.
But, as he continued to concentrate and began to relax somewhat, they all
seemed to slow down a little, just enough for him to have a better sense of
where they were. It was almost like a dance of living water, like little eddies
in a river swirling around millions of unseen rocks. 

“But,
what about non-physical abilities like Viktor’s? He just knows things – he can
remember everything he reads or sees. He’s like a computer.”

Kevin
smiled and nodded. The thought of how much the same his father was struck Sean
– the way he smiled, the movement of his mouth when he spoke. He even taught
Sean in the same way that he had when they were at home tinkering around in the
garage or hiking in the mountains. He kept asking Sean questions to make him
think, to solve the problems himself, each question guiding Sean closer and
closer to the answer. But, this whole experience was different somehow. Right
now it was different. While they’d been working on collecting and analyzing
samples from the meteorite, Kevin had been excited, practically bouncing around
with the joy of discovery – just like he always had when he was working or
learning something new. But, now, he was just telling Sean how it all worked.
He wasn’t discovering it with him, but rather, explaining something that he
himself already knew, that he seemed to have known and understood for a long
time. 

“To
each person is given a certain talent. Just like with other talents that
everyone has like intelligence or athletic ability, each person has a certain
degree of knowledge of how to influence the world around them. Some have a
great deal of natural talent, some less. But, just like the ability to run
great distances, for example, you can increase your talent and ability with
time and practice. You may start with the ability to do something very small,
but over the course of your life, you can develop this talent so that you are
able to do truly amazing things.”