IA: Initiate (16 page)

She decided not to answer.

Not sure if he wanted to hear the answer, Naz continued. “And why don’t you cry anymore? Everybody has to cry. It’s natural,” he said, while moving his knight out of harm’s way and into striking position.

“I know, but that day, when I cried and cried and cried, I … I

cried because it was my fault. It was my fault that he found out. It was my fault that he came home that day and …,” her voice trembled. She swallowed hard. “It was my fault that he killed her.”

“Don’t you ever say that again. You had nothing to do with it. It was him and only him. It was bound to happen eventually regardless of what you did, because he was a bad man, and Momma didn’t have sense enough to leave him.”

“It was my fault.”

“Stop it!” Naz’s temper rose.

“I prayed, and I promised God that if He delivered me and my brother that day, I would never cry again. Who would’ve known that He had already answered my prayer the year before by sending me you?” she said, making an aggressive move on his queen.

“What are you talking about?”

“What else do you know about your father?”

“Just that, like Momma, he was some kind of teacher and that he gave me a stupid name.

“A stupid name?” she laughed. “Why do you hate your name so much?”

“Because it’s stupid. You know it’s stupid. It’s not even a name. It’s what you get when you cross a computer with a deity,” he said laughing.

“You’re silly, but I still like your name,” she said, laughing along with him.

“Then it’s yours; you can have it,” he said, countering her aggressive move. “Did you know you had a brother before I came here three years ago?”

“No, but that first day they brought you home, I knew I had seen you at least two other times before.”

“When?” he asked curiously, his eyes opening wide.

“Well,” she said, moving another one of her pieces. “When I was about five, I would go shopping with Momma. We would go to different stores and shop all day long for this and that.” She had to pause. Reminiscing about the good old days with her mother was causing her to become misty-eyed, and she was about to renege on her promise to God. She cleared her throat and continued. “Twice we went on a long ride to the suburbs and Momma stopped at this beautiful park that was like nothing I had ever seen before. The grass was like thick, green carpet, and there was no trash anywhere. The playscapes were so colorful, it was like candy: lollipops and licorice.”

Naz closed his eyes as she continued.

“There were different kinds of slides and swings, curvy slides, straight slides, and tunnel slides, and swings made out of tires. I liked the tire swings the best, because they reminded me of home, only cleaner, and there was nothing dangerous about these tires like ours, no nails sticking out or anything. The ground was soft and colorful, or made of wood chips that smelled like … I don’t know, outdoor freshie.” She laughed.

“Outdoor freshie? What is that?” he said, laughing as he opened his eyes.

“I don’t know, but it’s the only way I can describe it.”

“I can see it, too,” he said, closing his eyes again.

“It’s your move,” she snapped at him.

He jumped, and his eyes sprang open again. “I know. I’ll get to it. You shouldn’t be in such a hurry to lose. Tell me more about the park,” he said, moving one of his chess pieces without thinking about it. His mind was no longer on the game. It was on the park. He was in the park. He closed his eyes again.

She paused, studying the chessboard carefully meaning to take advantage of what she thought was a careless move on his part.
Ah
, she thought, going for the kill on her very next move, and then continuing her story to keep him distracted.

“Then, there was my most favorite thing of all, the monkey bars,” she continued. “That’s when I saw you for the first time. You were on the very top of the monkey bars, and your hair was a lot longer than it is now, and wilder.”

Naz stopped playing his guitar and began to twist his hair.

She continued as if she were telling the greatest story ever told. “Your arms were straight up over your head, but you weren’t hanging from the highest bar, you were in a handstand on the top of it, and you were perfectly still. I don’t think anyone noticed, but me. I turned my head upside down, and it was like you were holding the whole world, monkey bars and all, over your head. I pointed and said, ‘Look!’ All the other kids started looking, pointing, and cheering you on. Then you swung down around another bar, back into the air, did some kind of flip, and then landed with both feet on the ground. Everybody started clapping and ran over to you. We were all asking you questions, but you wouldn’t say anything. You just looked at everyone and smiled. I looked over and saw Momma sitting on a bench clapping, too, with the biggest smile. I never saw her smile like that before.

“We came back a couple of months later,” she continued. “I don’t know if I was more interested in seeing that beautiful park again or seeing the amazing kid that could fly on the monkey bars. We must’ve stayed there for hours waiting. Momma never said it, but I got the feeling she was waiting for you, too. It was getting late, and Daddy … I mean, ‘he’ would’ve had a fit if we came home too late. I think we were just about to leave when two boys got into a shoving match. Well, it really wasn’t a match. One boy was bullying another one who was half his size. When I turned to leave, Momma got up and was walking away with a man I had never seen before.

“That’s when I heard a boy shout, ‘Leave him alone.’ I turned back around to see it was you who said it. The bully stopped, looked up, and then you said, ‘Why don’t you pick on somebody your own size?’ This sounded strange to me because you were no bigger than the boy who was being picked on. The bully said, ‘Why don’t you make me, runt?’ Then you went off. You said something about him being a bed wetter, sleeping with his light on, failing the fourth grade, and some other stuff, too, but you sounded like a grown-up. Everybody started laughing.”

“Weren’t there any grown-ups around?”

“Yeah, but we were all laughing, so I guess they thought we were just having fun. That’s when the bully got really mad and came charging at you. You just moved out of the way and stuck your foot out, and he went flying past you and landed under the swings in the wood chips. Everybody really started laughing then. When he came at you the second time, he tried to hit you in the head twice, but you ducked both times, and he missed. Then you dropped down and did something with your leg like it was a broom. The bully flew straight into air and landed on his butt.

“By this time, everybody went crazy. When the bully looked up and saw the boy he’d been bullying holding his side laughing, he got up, put him in some kind of headlock and started choking him. I heard you yell ‘let him go.’ What happened next, happened fast. Everybody started screaming, and I could see Momma and the man running toward the crowd. Through the crowd of kids, I could see you standing with your arms out and your eyes closed, and the bully was on the ground shaking. The next thing I knew Momma had grabbed me by my wrist, and we were running to the car. While we were driving away I could hear the sound of sirens getting louder. Then I saw an ambulance pass us. I looked back to see it turning into the park.

“When you came home from the hospital a few months later, even with all your hair gone, I knew it was …”

PART THREE

DISSOLUTION

In The Past …

On
the screen is shown a random sample of forty preschool-aged children divided into two groups of twenty. The children are seen watching a series of amusing animated short films of children slightly older than themselves gathering information and making decisions about various stimuli without the traditional use of their five senses. The children in the films are using a combination of their five senses in nontraditional ways, along with a sixth sense, simply referred to as mind.

In the films, a little girl has the ability—with uncanny accuracy—to predict and/or to influence what a person will do, given a specific set of choices, by just having physical contact with that person. One boy outperforms a lie detector machine by simply making eye contact with the subject in question. Two children celebrate their achievement when they can solve a complex mathematical problem together simply by mutual focus, meditation, and concentration.

Group A, the control group, is told that they are simply watching a cartoon meant for their enjoyment before they embark on a yearlong adventure learning camp. Group B, the experimental group, is told explicitly that the events depicted in the animated short films are true and that through the yearlong adventure learning camp they will acquire the same abilities exhibited by the cartoon characters in the films.

The children in the study are then shown participating in various activities of the yearlong learning camp. In the film the children traverse random and ever-changing obstacle courses daily by using only their senses of hearing, touch, and smell. They are encouraged to use their imagination to see things that are not there and explain how those things affect the outcome of certain events. The children participate in daily individual and small group prayer, meditation, and visualization exercises for the purpose of solving specific problems related to adventure games played at the camp.

When the film is over, the screen and stage go dark simultaneously, and the house lights come on to reveal Cory with a handheld microphone in the middle aisle of the auditorium, as he addresses the audience around him.

“‘Necessity ... is the mother of invention’ is a saying attributed to no one, but applicable to all,” says Cory. “At some point or another in all of our lives, we change because we must. Our situation dictates … no, demands it. History is replete with examples of people not having or losing one or more of their five senses leading to an enhancement of their remaining ones. A visually impaired person’s senses of hearing, smell, touch, and even taste often far surpasses those senses in a person with no visual impairment. What if we, by intention, develop our own five senses the way these impaired people develop their remaining ones, and then enhance those five senses with a sixth sense—mind, which connects them?” asks Cory, pointing to his own head.

Cory continues as he paces up and down the aisle. “One of the biggest myths that still persists is that we only use ten percent of our brains. Better than ninety percent of the graduate students that come to me still believe this. It never has made sense to me. But I too wanted to believe so badly that there was more up here,” says Cory as he points to his head again, “that was untapped. I mean come on, if we were only using ten percent of our brains, imagine what we could do if we were to triple that output ... or just double it. When I learned the truth—that we use all of our brains—I remember saying to myself, ‘Well that sucks!’”

The audience laughs.

“But then it occurred to me that even though we may use all of our brains, we don’t nearly use it to its fullest potential. It’s akin to lifting a pencil over our heads,” says Cory, as he lifts his arm over his head, back behind his neck and shoulders and then back up to reveal a pencil. “I’m using my whole arm ... or am I?” He reaches back down behind his neck and shoulders and then up again to reveal a fifteen-pound dumbbell instead of the pencil.

The audience murmurs.

“Ah ... that’s more like it. Now I’m using my whole arm ... and then some, I believe,” he says as he playfully struggles to put the dumbbell down beside him and then rubs his shoulder.

Some in the audience laugh, but some are beginning to lose patience.

“No, we don’t nearly use our minds to their fullest potential,” says Cory. “We only apply them to the obvious ... the outside, what we can see, touch, taste, hear, and smell. I tell you there is more.”

“Noted philosopher, Robert Darryl Glenn wrote, ‘It is not as much about faith in the unseen, as it is belief in the possibilities within.’ Indeed, when it comes to our own capabilities and limitations, belief liberates while doubt incarcerates.”

The uneasy audience begins to murmur again.

One amused gentleman, a reporter who is seated near Cory, raises his hand. Cory moves to him and hands him the microphone.

“Yes, sir?” asks Cory.

“Now, are we talking about psychic powers, Dr. Andersen ... I mean, Mr. Anders?” asks the reporter mockingly.

There is sparse laughter throughout the auditorium.

“Psychic powers?” asks Cory, keeping his composure. “Those are your words. What you see here today is simply heightened application of our five senses and the mind. But you tell me,” says Cory dramatically as he abruptly points to the stage.

With Cory’s movements, the house lights go off and the stage lights come on to reveal a small girl standing next to a bicycle with training wheels. The podium is gone and behind her is what appears to be an obstacle course with artificial bushes, tree stumps, miniature park benches, signs, and a red plastic fire hydrant. Cory asks the reporter to join him on stage.