Elite (17 page)

Daniel opened his eyes and tried to focus deeper as he stared at the grain on the wooden table before him.

“You have to
believe
that they’re there, Daniel,” Horchoff urged. “If your conscious mind doesn’t believe it can achieve this, it never will.”

Daniel squinted and started over, feeling for his heartbeat. He visualized the muscle, expanding and contracting. He felt it pull the blood in through one ventricle and out through another.

Then he felt something. Not so much
felt
it as
sensed
it. It was very difficult to explain as he had never experienced anything like it before. He searched his mind to try and determine where the strange phenomenon had come from. He tried to command his conscious mind to use the new pathways to search for it, but he wasn’t quite sure how. How could he tell his thoughts to do something? The whole process was incredibly confusing.

Horchoff
sat silently, glancing back and forth between the heart monitor and Daniel, as though he could sense that he was getting closer.

Daniel began concentrating on the action of his heart again, and once again the sensation struck him for a brief second. He physically flinched as though trying to trap it in a mental net. It was like a fleeting thought, coming to him and then disappearing just as fast as it had come.

And then it hit him.

A thought!
That’s exactly what it was like. It was like a thought, only one that he hadn’t chosen to think.

He began to search his mind for the thought that told his heart to keep beating. He concentrated hard on the action of his body’s second most vital organ, and searched for the thoughts that controlled it. He tried using his conscious mind to scour the rest of his brain for thoughts it was not influencing.

Then he had it.

There it was, buried deep inside of him. He had no clue of the geographic location in the brain it was coming from, but it didn’t
matter. The command had now been granted access into the conscious part of his mind, or vice-versa. Either way he could…
hear
it.

Expand, contract…expand, contract...
the thought wasn’t those exact words being spoken in his mind, but his consciousness was somehow able to interpret what they meant, and he just somehow…
knew.

“I found it!” He blurted out. He almost panicked as he didn’t expect to be able to speak while maintaining his grip on the part of his brain that was in command of his heart.

Horchoff nearly jumped out of his chair with excitement. Daniel had just confirmed that he had finally accomplished everything he had dedicated his life to achieving. He could barely contain himself enough to continue the testing.

He had intended to coach Daniel further from this point, but could not seem to form words through the excitement. Instead he curled his hand into a fist and placed it between his teeth, continuing to monitor Daniel’s heart rate.

Daniel didn’t need any more coaching, as he had learned enough from the Doctor over the past three days that he was capable of continuing from here.

He focused in on the “thought” that was commanding his heart to beat. He tried to sync his conscious thoughts with the command, repeating in his head, “
expand, contract…expand, contract.
” Then he tried to merge his conscious thoughts and the command into one, until his conscious thoughts no longer sounded like words in his mind, but rather he
sensed
them as he did the commanding of his heart.

He then focused in on the command, and told his brain to stop “thinking” it – to stop sending the signal to his heart. He could no longer sense the command. His conscious mind was still operational
however, as he sat there wondering whether or not he had succeeded in stopping his heartbeat.

Before he could put his mind in a position to determine whether or not his heart had stopped, he heard a squeal come from
Horchoff as a cold, round object press against his chest – a stethoscope.

“You did it!”
Horchoff explained.

Daniel impressed himself by not getting excited, but instead staying focused and keeping control of the seemingly foreign part of his brain.

Suddenly, he started to feel his brain start to fatigue, and thought that maybe controlling that area of his brain had caused him figuratively – or literally depending on how you looked at it – blow a circuit.

Then
Horchoff quickly put those worries to bed.

“Now your brain can’t go without oxygenated blood for very much longer, and I’m not sure whether it will resume normal function after you black out, so you may want to start making your heart beat now on your command. I’ll time one minute and count the number of times you tap the table. I’ll also keep my stethoscope on your chest to see if your taps line up with the beating.”

Of course!
Daniel thought to himself.
My brain is losing oxygen.

Then, just as he was beginning to calm down, he did a mental double-take and repeated the thought.

My brain is losing oxygen!

Quickly he focused back in on where he had melded his conscious mind with his unconscious mind and repeated the command he had sensed before shutting it off.

Expand, contract…

He felt his heart beat in his chest.

A deep tone came from Horchoff’s throat as he turned his head from his watch toward Daniel, his stethoscope in his ears. Daniel had forgotten to tap.

He gave the command again, this time tapping as he did so.

Expand, contract…

This time
Horchoff said nothing, but Daniel could see him nod his head from across the table.

He decided to repeat the command a few times rapidly, deciding it was probably a good idea to get more oxygenated blood to his brain quickly.
Horchoff seemed a bit put-off by this at first, but then seemed please as Daniel began to distance each beat out again, varying the times between heartbeats.

After thirty seconds or so, Daniel began having fun with it, trying to make his heartbeats match the beat of the song “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie.
Or was it “Ice, Ice, Baby?”

Horchoff
chuckled. Daniel wasn’t sure if it was because he recognized the song or just out of the pure joy of success.

“Very good,”
Horchoff finally said after the minute was up. 152 beats, although I think we could safely assume you had taken control.

“You caught that,” Daniel half asked and half stated, letting go of his conscious minds control of his heartbeat.

“Yes, I caught it,” Horchoff said with a grin. “Queen is one of my favorite bands.”

Daniel smiled and then decided to mess with
Horchoff a bit.

“Actually it was
Vanil…”

“DON’T!”
Horchoff cut him off, raising his hand up in the air. Then he slowly turned with a lopsided grin on his face.

Daniel had to chuckle. It was the first time he had ever seen the doctor this loose. If he was going to be this
laid back from now on, Daniel might actually start enjoying his time in the classroom.

“Okay,”
Horchoff started, “let’s try something else. How much can you…”

Horchoff
stopped himself as he turned back to see Daniel struggling in his chair. At first Daniel hadn’t even realized anything was wrong, but suddenly he began to feel very light headed.

“Daniel!”
Horchoff yelled as he moved quickly to Daniel’s side.

Daniel tried to respond but was finding it difficult to put any words together. The lights in the room seemed to be getting dimmer.

Quickly, the doctor threw his stethoscope back on and pressed it to Daniel’s chest.

“Daniel, you’re heart’s not beating,” he said, trying to hide his panic. “You have to command your heart to beat.”

Command my heart to beat?
Daniel thought to himself, a bit confused.

Then he was able to put it together. His conscious mind had never relinquished control of his heart. It had simply just stopped telling it to keep beating.

Suddenly Daniel was beginning to feel very tired.

Horchoff
grabbed Daniel’s drooping head and held it up to meet his own eyes.

“You have to do whatever you were doing before to make your heart beat. If you don’t do this immediately, your brain will not receive any oxygen and you will die.”

Die?
Daniel thought to himself. “Die!” He inadvertently shouted out loud, suddenly finding a burst of energy from somewhere unknown.

“Yes, die,”
Horchoff responded. “Now make your heart contract!”

Daniel concentrated, trying to find the thought in the back of his mind that he melded to last time in order to take control. It wasn’t there. Then he remembered. Last time he had locked onto the command to expand and contract – If his heart wasn’t expanding and contracting there was nothing for him to lock on to!

But I’m already locked on,
he reminded himself. The room was now beginning to spin around him. He closed his eyes. What was that thought again? What did it feel like?

Expand, contract,
he thought to himself through the back of his mind.
Expand, contract.

Horchoff’s
head shot up in surprise to look at Daniel.

Daniel began thinking faster.
Expand-contract, expand-contract, expand-contract.

He took a deep breath, feeling his beating heart in his chest. The strain on his brain began to lessen a bit. He opened his eyes and looked at
Horchoff.

“Now what?”
He asked.

Horchoff
sat upright and took a deep breath, contemplating his answer.

“You have to shut it down,” he answered with a shrug. “You have to shut down the connection between your conscious mind and the part of your brain that is responsible for your heartbeat.”

“How do I do that?” Daniel asked, making sure to continue to command his heart to beat between speaking.

“I don’t know,” the doctor replied very softly.

“Right,” Daniel said, nodding. “Not really a whole lot of literature on this one.”

“If you don’t,”
Horchoff added, standing up from his chair, “you are going to have to walk around telling your own heart when to beat for the rest of your life.”

Just one more risk the good doctor failed to mention previously,
Daniel thought to himself.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, concentrating on his thoughts. He could still hear the echo from the thought in his conscious mind through the back of his brain where the proper signals were being sent to his heart.

Shut it down,
he thought to himself, trying to echo the command in the same way as the one that was currently keeping his heart beating.
Shut-it-down!

It was no use. As soon as he stopped giving the command to his heart again he could feel it stop in his chest. He knew that wouldn’t work. The words “shut it down” or “cut it off” sounded like actual words in his conscious mind. The commands to
expand and contract
did not. They were a command that his conscious mind was able to interpret as meaning those two words. He had to figure out how to give this command in the same way.

Or maybe this had nothing to do with another command. After all, there was absolutely no reason for the brain to have a command to force the conscious mind out of an area it didn’t belong. That instruction wouldn’t exist.

But then how could he stop it?

He sighed with frustration.

“Maybe just push it out,” Horchoff suggested from where he now sat on the table at the head of the classroom.

Daniel gave him a curious glance, silently asking for clarification.

“You were able to push your conscious mind into that part of your brain, now tell it to leave,” he clarified. “Push it out.”

Daniel closed his eyes again, remembering when he had searched his brain for the area that was controlling his heart. He reopened his eyes, staring blankly at the wall, and began to search again. It was more difficult this time, because rather than just search for the signal that was already being sent, he had to consciously give the command, and then follow the echo to where the signal was being sent to the heart.

After about 20 heartbeats he finally tracked it down.

Now what?
He thought to himself once he had a lock on its location. Then he remembered Horchoff’s advice.
Just push it out.

So with nothing to lose, he mentally pushed his conscious mind forward out of the area in which it didn’t belong, while also focusing on breaking the meld between his conscious thoughts and the involuntary command.

It felt like nothing had happened, but his heart was now beating on its own. He tried to give the command consciously again just to see, and he couldn’t even remember what the thought was that had made it happen. All he could think were the words
expand
and
contract,
but there was no interpretation in the brain the way there had been before.