Hi diddle dee dee, a grocer’s life for me. I’m pretty sure that’s not the original version, but it works, and so do I. I’m amazed at how much better I feel having an income instead of mooching off the parents. Some of that is my desire to be the master of my own fate, the captain of my soul, as the poem goes. With a job and income, I can get a room at a boarding house if the parents get too, well, parent-y. Or if I blow up the root cellar and get evicted.

I know it’s not a big surprise, given my memory bonuses and all, but I had the prices memorized by Sevenday morning, taking me a bit longer than I’d thought. I hadn’t worked on magic at all this tenday, just some meditation every day. The constant moderate exertion from being on my feet all day plus stocking shelves, helping customers, and general gofer work was draining me considerably more than I’d expected. I was sore, stiff and tired at the end of every workday. I would come home, help with supper. Do some stretches and then meditate and go to sleep. It would fade from painful to merely irritating by the next morning, so I made it through the tenday, passed go, and collected 12 of my 19 thaler, using the remaining pay for 5 stone of food to take home instead of cash. I even got a small pack of seeds that was the last one in the store, so Henrig threw it in for free. Not sure we’ll use them, but worse case, I can chuck them into the garden and see what happens. For now, the enddays were here again, and it was time for more experiments.

First order of business, I want to make a force burst. No heat, just impact. Pure force. Something like a punch, only without using my hand. I try the obvious method, imagining the actual punching of something with an invisible hand. I feel some drain, but there are no tangible results. I keep chanting, changing my visualizations, with not a single thing to show for it. Frustrated, I try punching out my real fist, visualizing it coated with power like a gauntlet. My fist slams into my target on the wood pile, doing no damage to the wood, and not a little damage to my hand.

“Mother of Pearl!”

That wasn’t like a power punch. That was the fragile flesh fist of failure. Owwww. That’s not a viable visualization. I’ve split open the skin of my hand, and it’s dripping blood. I may have cracked a knuckle. I cradle my damaged hand with my intact one, and walk over to the shed. I grab out the bucket, then flip it over and sit down on the upside down bucket. I meditate, concentrating on blocking out the pain in my hand, pretending it’s just fine. After my thoughts settle for a few moments, my hand begins to feel itchy and hot, like I had punched poison ivy instead of a hunk of wood. The blood has stopped leaking out, so I touch it gently with my left hand, exploring the damage, only to find that there is a line of slightly raised flesh where the split was five minutes ago. It’s still somewhat tender underneath, but the itching part has faded quite a bit. There’s no scab, and the wound is at least half healed.

So.

Freaking.

Awesome.

I can heal. I wonder if I’ve been using this healing myself all tenday, that’s why I wasn’t waking up sore every morning. When was the last time I checked my status?

{Status:

Name: Grintel Coddlestahl

Age: 17

Mental:

Acuity:

Perception:

Memory:

10

8

10

Psyche:

Wisdom:

Insight:

Willpower:

7

8

13

Physical:

Strength:

Coordination:

Endurance:

6

6

10

Skills:

Energy Conversion

2.898

Energy Emission

2.562

Energy Control

2.113

Channeling

0.044

Meditation

2.549

Walking

5.015

}

It’s not a new skill. Therefore… I have no clue what to conclude. None. I’d venture to guess that it’s another application of one of the energy skills. But I can’t be sure which one. It might even be something to do with the meditation I was performing. I didn’t know which was the trigger, but a flash of inspiration hit me.

What if…

Just what if…

This isn’t magic.

This world doesn’t HAVE magic.

What if the power they call magic here is more along the lines of psionics?

Perhaps the distinction is small, but it is very significant. But back in the old world, in the days where I did some tabletop gaming, psionics was a niche role, something like a monk, only often less directly physically inclined. They had varying skill sets, but there were several types that were inclined toward personal adaptation and not very good at other things. What if the most powerful few happen to be of the variety that does better at magic-like effects? What if those few were captured in legend and imagination? I’ve seen no stories about magical healing, no mind control, hypnosis isn’t even a thing I’ve heard of here. I suppose the distinction might be small, but the visualizations, the chanted focuses, and the other things I’ve learned just now all point to psionics. Psionics, with the vast majority of the population either not attuned to the elemental sides, or not strongly psionically endowed. A psionic specialist with a physical attunement and no elemental aspects trying to be a mage would be a really crappy mage. So much effort for so little effect would have probably disheartened me, if I didn’t have the boost of moving numbers and the addiction to math. I was also hyper focused on magic as an unhealthy coping mechanism to hide from the people around me.

So… what if, the whole state, or country, or planet is full of effectively low level psions, all squelching their power because they are convinced by what the stories and legends prompt them to believe? Or because there’s some cabal in power that has prompted them to believe that way?

OK, that last bit is a stretch. Don’t want to be paranoid. I don’t miss conspiracy theories. Too much.

What if I’m just crazy? Seems like a possibility too, given I’m making up conspiracy theories.

It’s possible I’m different because of the way I got here or my tie to the ThanaTopiary system. Scratch that. It’s clear that I’m different, but is it in play in this case?

This makes sense to me, given my eclectic memories of otherworldly mythos. It’s not likely that there’s some magical mana, or world generated essence around, I think that would be more potent. This is people. Wait, that sounds a little too Soylent Green, so let me rephrase. It’s innate, generated from the life and minds of individuals. It’s not gathered from the outside, but springing up from within, creating different limitations in terms of potency and energy availability, which I’d already verified through repeated exercises.

My pulse raced along with my thoughts.

Elemental effects are flashy, but they are so hard to produce. I’ve spent a great deal of 5 years doing this, and I’ve gotten better at it than anyone I know, purely through sheer force of will. All of that work and it still takes more than a minute to produce any significant elemental effects. The external application of power hasn’t been nearly as effortless or fast as what just happened with my hand.

Looking at it, I’ve had some clues all along. Even the skill names aren’t magic sounding. They aren’t elemental X or mana Y or any of those things. It may just be that pure mental and physical energy being used to manipulate things isn’t efficient at elemental results. Healing my hand was fast, and much less draining. Maybe it was an affinity issue? I need to calm down and work through the steps, not just jump to all these conclusions.

First things first, I’m going to meditate further on my hand being uninjured. Since my hand is still tender and beginning to swell at this point, perhaps more meditation will finish what I was doing before the unusual sensations distracted me. This would provide dual or even triple benefits. First, it would heal me. Additionally it might confirm some of my hypothesis about psionic power, and last but not least it would help corral my scattered thoughts.

It takes me several minutes to enter meditation, squelching each distracting train of thought and flight of fancy. That process consumes far more time than it takes for my hand to start itching again. Which brings excitement and distraction. I barely manage to maintain my concentrat… nevermind. My mind goes off on a tangent as I pop out of meditation. Concentration plus power usage, perhaps that’s channeling? Connections are flying in my head again.

Swirling,

whirling,

freewheeling,

tumbling,

soaring,

falling.

Chaos.

I can’t focus. I can’t concentrate. I’m panting. I literally need to move, my legs twitching and bouncing up and down. Fine, If the brain is going to run away with me, then perhaps the body should burn off some of the excess.