Cindy Psi: Spy In Training
Chapter 19: Fruit Salad

“So how many people lift the apple?”

It was Monday morning, and Cindy was sitting with Dave back in the assessment room with the table from when she first arrived. The children had been told they would be taken for some individual skills-based training today, and Cindy had gone with Dave to work on telekinesis apparently. Dave was looking a bit better than when she’d seen him on Thursday, although he still had big bags under his eyes. He was clearly still very busy working on various things – Rebecca, aiding with the defences against the Turgs and their human ally, maybe monitoring the twins, to name just the few Cindy knew about. She assumed the shadowy ‘Controller’, whoever he was, must be helping with these things as well, but Cindy didn’t know if she thought very much of him. She understood the story Dave told her but still had issues with what he had done. She’d had time to think about things over the weekend but still had a lot of questions in her mind.

The weekend had been a surprise – given the limited time, Cindy had assumed they would just be working constantly throughout the six months, but no, they were given free time on the weekends. Selma had explained that they believed a balance of work and rest was the best way to learn effectively, and they went with the traditional five days on, two off approach of old earth and the majority of planets in the galaxy. The children had spent their time watching streams on their PCDs and in the common room, exploring the facility, and getting to know each other better. George continued to come out of his shell and Cindy was delighted to see the others were responding to him better as well. She couldn’t believe how quickly things seemed to be turning around for him, and was hugely happy about it.

Natalie remained a bit aloof and remote from the others, although Cindy noted that Milton was very keen to talk with her at any opportunity it seemed. She suspected there may be a bit more to that than just wanting to be friendly; after all, Natalie was extremely pretty: tall, slim, that lovely auburn hair. It was also clearly the latest style (although Cindy didn’t pay too much attention to that stuff herself), and she was obviously up to date with galactic trends in other areas as well. She wouldn’t have to do a double-take to know who Jason Radler was, that was for sure. Yes, Cindy thought it was pretty clear that Milton had taken a bit of a shine to Natalie. She thought that was funny … she would soon replace out that it wasn’t that funny at all.

“On the first try?” Dave interrupted her thoughts to answer her question with a question, which he then answered himself. “Fewer than half, although it’s not uncommon. But, as I think you may have guessed, we’ve never had someone blow it up before.”

“Sorry about that.” Cindy was genuinely embarrassed.

“Don’t be silly. If anything it was a good thing – it gave us a clearer indication of the level of power we’re dealing with with you. So, on that note, why don’t we see what else you can do?”

Cindy felt a thrill of excitement. “Ok then, what do you want me to do?”

“Let’s start with another apple. This time I’ll keep it in the desk with the trapdoor closed to contain the mess!”

What do you want me to do with it? Blow it up again? Cindy surprised herself by switching to mindspeak almost accidentally.

Yes. Do you remember what you did?

Sure. Let me have a try.

Cindy flipped into mindspace. She focussed on the desk drawer, and sure enough there was the apple. Rather than try and lift it this time she surrounded it with the silver glow and imagined it tightening around the apple like a shoelace being pulled very taut. Just like last time, the skin of the apple seemed to buckle and boil as if it had no place to go, and, more quickly this time, the point came where it almost felt like the apple kind of gave up and surrendered to the force acting upon it. With a wet splat it exploded into pulp, coating the inside of the desk cabinet. As Cindy surfaced she became aware that Dave had been watching what she was doing as she did it.

Impressive, he spinged to her. Ready for something bigger?

Cindy was getting kind of excited by this. Sure! What have you got in mind?

This, sent Dave, walking over to the door and retrieving the biggest watermelon Cindy had ever seen in her life. He set it on the table and then fetched a free standing, transparent plastic screen from behind the door as well. “It could get messy!” he said aloud with a smile. Cindy realised that although Dave was maintaining his authoritative detachment, she wasn’t the only one getting a thrill from this line of experimenting.

Let’s try lifting it first, he suggested, placing the melon on the floor behind the screen.

Cindy waited until Dave returned and then dropped herself into mindspace once more. Everything around her came into vivid, sharp colour as she focussed on it, and she locked on the watermelon. At first, just to see, she tried just surrounding it with a ring of silver and willing it upwards. Nothing happened. Oh well, she thought to herself, worth a try, and instead started doing what she had done with the apple the first time to move it. She envisaged where she wanted the melon to be, then drew a mental ring around where it was and there, and started to pinch.

It was harder this time. Evidently the weight of the object being moved was relevant – that made sense. Cindy fined her focus in and concentrated on squeezing the ring at the base.

The melon started to rock, and then, slowly at first, it started to rise off the ground. Dave looked on with a gleam in his eyes. Cindy kept squeezing, and the melon kept rising.

Can you turn it?

I think so.

Cindy now had the melon where she wanted it, surrounded by a glowing silver ring about four feet off the ground. She mused on how to turn it. Was it just a matter of …

She willed the ring to start turning around. That was easy – it started to spin freely. Annoyingly though, the watermelon sat within the spinning ring, hanging in mid-air, motionless.

Hmm.

Okay, so the ring surrounds it, holds it, squeezes it, but doesn’t, sort of touch it. Cindy puzzled this one for a moment.

I know! She thought, and imagined the spinning ring contracting slightly at opposite sides as it span, almost sending out a little spike or spur.

Sure enough, the silver spikes started to nudge the reluctant (albeit floating) melon into motion. And sure enough, within a few moments, it was slowly turning on its axis. It gradually picked up speed.

Before too long it was turning quickly. A massive watermelon, spinning in mid-air. Cindy almost laughed aloud, and she saw Dave was smiling as well. Go on then, how fast can you get it? He sent.

Cindy, enthused, leapt to the challenge. Alright then, Mr Melon, let’s see how fast you can go, she thought, and started whizzing the spinning ring around as fast as her mind could produce. She increased the spurring as well, creating an almost serrated effect in the ring, gripping ever tighter on the melon so before too long it was spinning as fast as the ring.

“Faster!” Dave said out loud. Cindy got the ring whirring even more.

And more …

And more. It started to make a noise as it span, a kind of bass, thrumming noise. Cindy didn’t notice it was also rising near the top of the plastic screen. Faster! She thought, Faster, faster!

The melon span faster than the eye could follow now. The thrumming noise grew louder and louder. Dave looked on amazed, whereas Cindy was kind of oblivious – just focussed on getting the melon to spin as fast as it possibly could. The noise was getting uncomfortably loud.

The melon explosion was different to the apple one. Where the apple was a reaction to forces pushing in on it, the melon just reached its physical breaking point and started to tear itself apart. Instead of doing it all at once, pieces started peeling off it in quick succession. Great hunks of watermelon rind and flesh splattered themselves all over the room. They were quite fearsome projectiles moving as fast as they were, but fortunately Dave and Cindy were saved from direct hits by the plastic screen. Cindy was laughing too now, as the wildly spinning melon grew smaller and smaller, throwing pieces of itself off as it surrendered to the forces cast upon it by her mind. She kept the silver circle contracting so it remained tight around what was left of the melon until it was all gone but one, last, rapidly spinning seed. Cindy sent a final, power-filled surge at this seed and it shot off like a bullet, and the melon was gone. She let the last point of silver light spin into nothingness.

Cindy and Dave both looked at the results with a kind of dazed expression. The room they stood in was coated with watermelon pulp. Shards of green and splats of pink dripped from every surface. They were covered in it as well where, unnoticed by them in the heat of the moment, watermelon had dropped off the ceiling, or rebounded off walls, or ricocheted over the top of the screen, and hit them. As they became aware of their new, somewhat fruity outfits they looked at each other and laughed.

“Cindy, Cindy, Cindy,” Dave said with mock-exasperation, “What are we going to do with you?”

“Well I guess I could help make fruit salads,” she replied, laughing still.

Dave laughed anew, then after a minute said “Ok, we need to get cleaned up. Nip back to your unit and I’ll meet you back here in, let’s say half an hour, for some more … wait on …” he trailed off as something caught his eye on the far wall. Cindy followed his gaze and saw where he was looking. There was a black mark of some sort where he was looking. No, not a mark, she thought …

A hole. Dave finished. They both walked up to it slowly. It was a small hole in the wall about 2cm across. It hadn’t been there before. Dave reached into a pocket and pulled out a slender PCD stylus. He poked it into the hole and started scratching around inside it. It seemed to go into the concrete about 3cm before he came across something. He wiggled the stylus around until it dislodged something inside the hole.

The last watermelon seed dropped onto the floor.

Dave and Cindy looked at each other. Neither spoke. Finally Dave broke the silence:

“Right. Well. I think we best be careful when we undertake any further tests.”

Sorry, sent Cindy.

You know, you’re going to have to stop saying that. If anyone should be staying sorry it’s me – I have to stop underestimating you. Anyway, as I say, we’ll go get cleaned up and come back here for some more tests. “Some careful ones!” He finished out loud, his smile returning. Cindy felt reassured, and headed off to wash and change.

The rest of that day Cindy spent with Dave doing a series of more controlled tests. She lifted a series of differently weighted objects – square blocks made of some kind of metal. Dave didn’t ask her to try and destroy anything further, although they did do a set of what he called ‘projectile tests’, where she had to mentally flick objects at a set of targets around the room. She was interested to note that without the building excitement she had been experiencing when she spun the melon there were no further wall-piercing incidents. That was worth remembering – there was a link between the power and her emotional state. Perhaps it was an adrenalin thing. She asked Dave.

It could be, he replied, quite frankly we don’t know. Knowledge of the talent is in its infancy, really, and of necessity we’ve had to be pretty focussed on developing a clear set of defensive skills without having much time or resource to research the nature of it. Christof has done some work, but The Controller has done the most research on that side of things – because he has a strong interest in learning how it can impact someone, for reasons you know about.

Yes, she did. That was interesting. Will I ever meet him? She sent.

There was a pause before Dave answered. A loaded pause. I’m not sure, was all he finally managed. Cindy decided not to push it, so she changed the subject:

I was thinking, Dave …

Yes?

This work we’re doing, it feels like it takes quite a lot of power ...

Yes, it does.

And I have quite a lot to use you keep telling me ...

Yes, you sure do. You buried a watermelon seed knuckle deep in a wall for pete’s sake!

“So how come I’m not shining out like a beacon to every Turg between here and Andromeda?” She finished aloud.

“Ah,” Dave responded in kind, “I wondered where this line of questioning was going. Well, along with a couple of other rooms in this compound – not including the common rooms as you can probably guess – this training room is surrounded by a fiendishly complicated defence shield mechanism. We have one operative always directing power into a central … kind of like an electricity substation thing. Do you know what I mean by that?”

Cindy thought she kind of did, largely from talking to her Father about his work. She nodded.

“Well, there’s a way that the defensive mindshield gets amplified and spread out across the three rooms to form a very strong, very effective block. Scrying into these rooms is pretty much impossible.”

“So why not have that across the whole facility?”

“Simply because we don’t know how to do it,” Dave admitted. “The person who built it is no longer available to explain their construct or build us any more.”

“It was Nancy, right?” She asked.

“Yes, it was Nancy.”

There you go, she thought, I bet that’s why he wants to work out how to fix her. So he can use her. For the galaxy. She gave a mental snort. She wasn’t spinging anything, but Dave gave her a sidelong look anyway, although evidently decided not to say anything, other than:

“Well, that’s enough training for today. You’re off for the evening – back to the common room tomorrow at 0800 for some group work.” And he strode off out of the room.