“So…” I look around at the class with my hands nervously clapped together. “You just ask if there’s anything you need, right?” How did I end up in this position? I prefer the Mat, to be honest, him I knew how to handle.

“I’ll have a coke,” the pencil case guy sitting well leaned back in his chair tells me. I consider him for a second.

“Sure,” I agree and open the door to my room and summon my wallet. “Where’s the nearest place you can buy a coke?” He looks utterly confused.

“Down in the village,” he says with a ‘ha’ hanging in the air as if he’d like to see me try.

“Good. Here you go then, get yourself a coke.” He gets out of his seat and takes a hesitant step towards me and the money.

“What are you doing?” I demand.

“Didn’t you just say…”

“This is a Transporter class, isn’t it? I know every Transporter is different, that your abilities don’t work the same, but if you can move pearls you can move cokes, can’t you? Sit back down and get your coke.”

“You want me to get it from the village to here?”

“Well, first you’ve got to get the money from here to the village. You weren’t planning on stealing it, right?”

“I, eh…” He sits back down and stares at his lap.

“Anyone else thirsty?” They look around at each other. No one dares say anything.

“Okay, fine, I’ll get them from the village.” Every face before turned to classmates or the floor turns back to me.

“You will?” the girl with the sweater asks.

“Sure. Can someone lend me some paper and a pen?” Sweater girl pulls some out. I count the students. 23 students plus me and their teacher. I write a message on the note: “Can I have 25 cokes placed on this note please?” I show it to the class and fold it around 30$ and let it hover in front of the window. They all stare at me in bewilderment.

“Can anyone tell me the way to the village?” I ask. A few of them point. “I knew that much, I’ve seen the view. Can anyone tell me what the way feels like? Is there a funny shaped rock at the halfway mark, is there a path to follow, a funny bend, a turn maybe?” I know all of this of course, but I want to know if any of them will tell me about the tilted path or the well in the town square.

“A path leads from the front door to the forest. You have to get through the forest to get to the village,” Sweater girl tells me.

“Why do you need to know all that, you can’t see it anyway,” a brunette in the second row asks.

“No, but I can feel it.”

“You feel it?”

“You don’t? How do you guys pick up things?”

“Look at them and pick them up,” Coke guy says.

“How do you pick up the right thing?”

“I just look at it and think ‘up’.”

“Okay, I want you all to try something. Get out a pencil everyone.”

“Why do we need a pencil?” Second-row girl asks. “You want us to like take notes or something?” Preposterous idea, so old school!

“Okay, fine, take out an easily identifiable object and place it in front of you. Something that has a specific shape or texture.” Some of them pull out pencils, some take off a watch or an earring, one guy takes off his shoe - much to the discomfort of those around him - and second-row girl places her phone in front of her. “Okay, close your eyes and feel it. Just feel the texture, the shape, the temperature. Anything your hands can tell about the object, make an imprint of it in your mind, picture it.” I let them have a minute of silence before moving around them.

“You got it?” I ask the first boy I get to. He nods hesitantly. “I’m going to place this somewhere on your desk, try to find it without using your hands or eyes.” He reluctantly hands over the pencil, and I place it in the top right corner. I move on to the next one and do the same. Within half an hour every desk has something placed in the top right corner, and people with their eyes closed and hands clenched together sitting in deep silence.

The door opens quietly and the teacher steps back in. I call the pearls to me and write out “Sorry, I’m no good at following orders” in the air. She lifts up the pearls from a nearby table and writes out “What are they doing?”.

“Hey, who messed with my table? Not fair!” a girl in the first row cries out.

“Trying to find their pencils,” I write out.

“Hey, I’ve got it, I found it!” second-row girl screams in delight and opens her eyes. “Oh, hey professor,” she says in embarrassment.

“Keep going everyone, don’t look,” the professor says, and heads turn back down. No one peaked though. “This is advanced stuff,” she writes out.

“But it makes everything else so much easier,” I argue. She shrugs.

“If they can figure it out.” They do figure it out though. One by one they shout out in joy, some more loudly than others. It’s not about how difficult a teacher decides a task is, it’s about how much motivation, how much incentive, you can give the students, and about trusting that they aren’t idiots. The sergeant, when he was teaching me this, told me everyone has a sense of their ability at all times, that people like me and Hale, what they here call Transporters, always have a sense of where things are, and people like Mother and Marie always have a sense of when someone else is thinking something juicy. He told me it’s not about learning to locate things, but learning that I can locate things.

I look over the students. About half of them have got it now, and some are clearly closer than others. Sweater girl is sitting in deep concentration with her brow furrowed, eyes clenched, and seems to be biting her cheek. I pick up her pencil, turn the eraser towards her and send it flying straight at her forehead. She lets out a gasp of horror and opens her eyes, but the pencil is still in mid-air, and I’m not holding it anymore.

“You’ve got it,” I tell her. “Just trust yourself, trust your instincts.”

“We don’t usually throw things at the students,” the professor reprimands me.

“Then how do they develop their instincts?” I ask. I can’t count the times the sergeant has intentionally dropped things at dinner to see if I’d catch it. It got so bad in the end that mother had to warn me every time he thought about it, effectively taking the fun out of it. Eventually, it became a sort of baseball in the backyard instead, the sergeant throwing balls to/at me, Andy setting them on fire, me sending them along to Hale who’d make the bat hit them, and Nico flying around the field as fast as he could, trying to beat his own time. Only Criss never wanted to join in - too childish for him. We actually had to forbid Marie to play, the mind control just wasn’t fair in sports (and mother’s roses took a few too many fireballs when I “missed”). Mother trained those two instead. We learned about our abilities by using them, by having purpose and chores. Hale and I always did the dishes because we could do them and homework at the same time.

Within an hour every student has found their precious objects, and never before has a student been so happy to find a pencil. 5 minutes after the last person opens his eyes the cokes fly in through the window.

“I can see my class has been hijacked,” the teacher says.

“Sorry,” I apologize again.

“If they can make a pattern with the pearls by the end of today’s classes I will forgive your methods,” she tells me. I look at the time.

“20 minutes till lunch, 2 hours after that,” Sweater girl tells me.

“Okay then. Don’t let me down now.” I send the pearls up again and form the words “Who wants a coke?” They all look confusedly from me to their classmates, to the teacher, and back to me.

“Pearl written answers only, please,” I answer their unuttered question. A few sighs are heard, but other than that they get to work willingly enough. Now having a feel for the pearls, something to use for distinction other than ‘that blue one next to the pink one but further from that green one’ it seems to be going better for them.

Second row girl is creating small, black bubbles around each pearl to move them. Sweater girl looks like she doing things more like me, at least until a pearl rolls out of her grip and clatters to the floor. The teacher makes a note of it.

I notice one girl pick up a pearl with her hand, but the teacher holds out a hand to stop me from commenting. I watch her steady herself, sit as still as a structure, and then she disappears. A split second later she’s back again as if she simply blinked out of existence and blinked back. She lowers her hand with the pearl in a completely straight line and lets go. She opens her eyes. The pearl is now in place exactly where she wanted it. She can’t move objects, just herself. That can’t be easy, moving something as big as a human being with the precision it takes to move a single pearl.

“Once she masters this, she’ll have control of her landing down to a millimeter, perhaps even better,” the professor informs me. Not one of the students appears to be doing the same thing. One guy is lifting the entire table and somehow making just one pearl move when he tilts it.

“How are you doing that?” I ask him. I cannot see the point of moving the table.

“Gravity,” he says simply. “I’m actually a Nature, but my teachers thought this course would be good for me.”

“So what, you’re only letting gravity affect the pearls you want, the rest you balance just where they won’t move?”

“Yes,” he says plainly. I think he’s somewhere around the early twenties, and he seems to be used to the way the school works. Apparently, there’s nothing strange about attending classes for a gift you don’t have.

“Okay, but why the table then? That just seems like extra work.”

“What do you mean?” This time he actually looks up at me.

“Well, gravity makes things fall, and if you can control the degree of that, wouldn’t it be easier to just do it horizontally in the air? You have complete vertical control, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.” He considers it for a short second. “How would that work?”

“Lay them out flat on the table, turn it vertical in the air, that way the pearls are lying completely flat in the air. Ditch the table and arrange them in the air, if you need to move something horizontally you just put the table back up and return it to the floor, turn the table around and raise it all up again.”

“So I change left and right to up and down. Physically it’d be easier, but I’d have to invert the picture in my mind...”

“Or tilt your head.”

“Try it,” the teacher encourages. He lifts the table up first, getting it all in a more appropriate height. “We’re both here to catch if anything goes wrong, just trust your own power,” she encourages him. The table slowly turns, as if one side was suddenly heavier than the other. The pearls follow, but not one of them moves in relation to the others. He gets them vertical without a problem and puts the table down.

“Well done Brian, you’ll get the hang of this soon enough.” She turns and walks back to her usual position in front of the class, and I follow her.

“We don’t have anyone here who teachers that specifically, holding everything in the air, it’s not something most of us have use for, but in Brian’s case, I can see the benefits. Nicely spotted,” she compliments me.

“Thank you,” I let out. I wasn’t expecting that.

“We’re not incapable of recognizing talent or good ideas,” she tells me at the sound of surprise in my voice. “We’ll give you a fair chance here, hopefully, you’ll extend us the same courtesy.”

“I’ve got it now,” Brian calls to us. We both turn around to compliment him for getting the hang of something new so fast, but that’s not what he meant. In big, bold, broad letters are the words “YES PLEASE” hovering over his table. The professor turns to me as if it’s my line now.

“Oh, yes, right.” I send a coke flying to him, and he catches it with a big smile plastered on his face.

“Doesn’t all mass have gravity?” I ask the teacher quietly, thinking back on my school physics.

“Yes,” she replies as if she’s been waiting for me to realize.

“So the pearls have their own gravity too.” If he could learn to control smaller gravitational pulls, something besides the earth, he could move anything like me.

“He just needs to realize it for himself.” She meets my eyes. “He held the pearls steady in relation to the table, he used the table’s gravity without realizing that was what he was doing.” Self-realization, discovery of own potential. This place isn’t all bad.

Since the rest of them are all writing on the tables they can leave and come back after lunch. Slowly but steadily the cokes disappear as each student completes the task. Only sweater girl seems to have real trouble. The teacher writes a note and shows it to me.

“Help her so it’s less embarrassing, then ask her to stay here after class.” I would like to know why, but I don’t ask. At least she isn’t calling her out in front of the entire class. I help her keep the pearls steady but let her do most of the work herself. I don’t think she even notices, but it does go faster with my help. Once a ‘yes’ is somewhat readable on her table I send a coke to her, and the teacher rearranges her pearls to spell out ‘Stay after class’. I would have liked a ‘please’ added to that, but there aren’t enough pearls.

Half an hour before the end of class they are all sitting leaned back, sipping coke, and waiting for the final bell to ring.

“Not bad,” the teacher says. “Not bad at all. You can all be proud of yourselves - I wasn’t expecting you to master it this fast. I suggest you all go outside and try feeling things.” The class empties, but when I make to follow I am held back by a thin hand with long fingers.

“We need to have a talk,” she says.

“I think I’ve apologized enough, it was after all your choice to leave me here with them.”

“What you just taught them, the blind feel thing, that’s level 4.”

“So, they’re ahead, that’s not bad, is it?”

“I didn’t say it was. Tonight at 8, you are to show up in 704.”

“I thought the seventh floor was living rooms and the library.”

“704 is better known as the blue living room. 701 is black and white, 702 is brown since everything in it is wood, 703 is bright colors with a sort of 80’s vibe, 704 is deep blue, and 705 is red velvet. Students and staff pick and choose based on preferences or mood. For example, 701 is more modern, and 702 is rather old-fashioned. We try to accommodate every student and make them feel welcome.” She seems proud of what she does, proud of the school. She realizes she’s gone out on a sidetrack and quickly goes back to the matter of things.

“Tonight you will show up at 704 for an introduction to the school by the headmaster, and then the teachers from each level will show up to test you so we can determine how far you are, and what you could benefit from learning. Do you think you can find it?”

“Seventh floor, blue room. I know where it is,” I reply. She indicates to the door and I leave her to talk to sweater girl undisturbed. She seems like a fair teacher, I don’t think she’ll be too hard on her. I make my way to the staircase.