《Overlap》Chapter 103: Clairsentience
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As I sat silently in the back yard of the house, alone with everyone else at work or school, I felt pretty amazing considering the slow day I drifted through. Thanks to my powers growing and expanding rapidly, the day was only going to become more eventful.
After the bombardment of psionic practice last week, tacked onto the fact that I've become somewhat of a high school loner these days, I decided this morning would be a good idea to take a break from it all. I normally don't get the right to just stay home from school just because I feel like it, so I simply feigned a headache to stay home, just this once. I've had headaches less frequently since a couple of months ago, and thankfully it didn't take much to convince anybody that I was too sick for school.
I sure wasn't about to waste the break either. This morning and afternoon were still amazingly cold. It's like an arctic blast blew through here and made the area much colder than its normal April average. Shouldn't take much to guess that I called Lumina again. Spending some quality time with her at home was more fun this way.
Still, even though I was burned out on school for the moment, it didn't mean I was exempt from my psionic practice... Okay, skipping one day on that wouldn't be so bad either, but I want to keep up with this practice. Seeing eighteen hours into the future of any remote location I want to is becoming more amazing the longer I use it, unless I use it directly on myself. It's no wonder the Altiri use the ability to much to watch us humans. We're a reality TV show to them, and now to me as well.
I'm not going to spend too much time on it tonight. I only want to pop in real quick, see what's going on at school. Not today of course! School is basically about to be over today anyway. I'm interested in the early beginning and middle parts of my tomorrow. Maybe if I'm lucky, I can snuff out a pop quiz before one surprises me. Still, in order to do this, I'll still target everyone else before myself, simply for the reason that some of my usual suspects experience heightened emotions a little more often than I do.
I asked Lumina to stand by for the moment for my next phase of clairvoyance, which she happily obliged. I did everything the same way as I did last time, planned on using the same invocation style in the same way. However, when I concentrated with shut eyes and activated my projections, my own partial clairvoyance was cut short, and replaced by something else entirely.
My visual perception went dark, but deep inside, I felt a controlling rush of anticipation and excitement, so strongly that I mirrored the sensation through myself. Even Lumina could feel it echoing off me.
"Everything good?" Lumina tried to understand why I was washed with such powerful excitement, trying to understand what she could not see.
What I felt kept me engaged in the continuous use of my projection for longer than I meant to be involved, but once the ability ended, I was so sure that whatever I felt was part of the entire school, outside of myself. This exact feeling, this kind of excitement, it's too unlikely me to be a spontaneous spur of the moment without any planning, especially if it's coming from within the high school. What the heck was that I just felt? "Maybe? Look, just give me a moment to try again. Something went wrong that time."
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"Okay." Lumina gave me her silence and her patience, waiting on me to determine what the next day should be like in advance.
Meanwhile, I tried again with more patience than before to invoke clairvoyance again. It was strange to me that everything I was supposed to see suddenly became contaminated with strong foreign emotion, but not entirely surprising. Something like that happens on rare occasions during my moments of clairvoyance invocation. I'll try and focus on a moment, and instead, I'll suddenly become immersed in some strong feelings. At the same time, I almost sense who or where these feelings come from, but I concluded like all previous instances for this to just be a fluke. So, I tried once more.
Just like before, I was immediately overcome with a powerful rush of excitement. Somehow, I could determine that this excitement started shortly after the initial morning of the school day, and instead of coming from one individual, it felt as though the entire school atmosphere carried this together. No visual data though... It doesn't make sense. It shouldn't make sense.
"Let me know when you are done."
"I failed." Did I though? I know I felt something, the same sensation as before, stronger too. Why was I so certain that everyone in school tomorrow would be excited about something? I can tell it's something to do with right after school ends for the day, but I can't call up why. I can't see anything!
"You failed? That's not like you."
"No, I mean... I can feel them instead. I can feel the excitement of tomorrow... But I can see what's actually happening at all."
"That doesn't make any sense," Lumina easily replied. "You felt them?"
"No way that would actually happen tomorrow, right? I mean, as far as I know, we don't have anything interesting going on that day, not even a fieldtrip anywhere else."
"You don't think..."
"It couldn't be, remember? You told me that any active scion who learns a specific Clair-ability can only learn that one Clair-ability. Once something attaches to them, it's always that one ability for life."
Lumina paused for a short moment before replying, giving us both time to consider the impossible. "I know what I said... But maybe it's easier to learn multiple abilities at once after all."
"It is?" No way! I didn't even practice to learn clairsentience, so I can't have possibly mastered it by mistake.
"I mean, there is a reason we say that only one Clair-ability pertains to specific individuals. There are strange genetic traits we don't exactly understand which determine the affinity level a scion will have for a very specific ability. For example, it's easier for you to learn clairvoyance than claircognizance, and it's especially easier for you to learn future-sight abilities than it would be for other scions. It's for that reason you shouldn't be able to learn any other Clair-sensing ability. However, if a person has a psionic aptitude level high enough, it would then be plausible to invoke more than their one best ability. You recently hit your peaking period, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised."
"Clairsentience? I can really use clairsentience now?" This is totally amazing! If I can combine clairvoyance and clairsentience at the same time, there's no stopping me anymore.
"I'm actually proud of you Reed. I never expected you to hatch another one so soon. Though, you did say you lost control of clairvoyance at the same time. Maybe you'll have to practice cycling between those modes."
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"As usual, you make it sound so easy."
"What did you feel?"
"Huh? Oh, right. Something exciting is happening after school tomorrow, something that has all the students riled up. I can't say what though."
"Wait, all the students? Not just one person?"
"Yeah, it seems kind of weird to me too." I knew already the possibility that I could just be mistaken, to show up to school tomorrow to learn that nothing I felt was true. However, my recent track record with these smaller abilities is pretty damn accurate. If the entire school were happy all at the same time, then it's no wonder why their collective excitement overrode my visual snooping mode. The law of thought dynamics: Emotions which are projected at high intensities carry more energy and psionic influence than emotions with lower intensities. At the same time, emotions, even with medium or low intensities, if felt by a large collective group simultaneously rather than an individual will be amplified tenfold when projected as a dynamic thought. Since dynamic thoughts and emotions pertain mostly to clairsentience, it's no wonder why it feels so strong. In fact, given what I know, I'm probably exaggerating the individual intensity level of excitement a bit, felt strongly only because many feel it at the same moment. This means, something exciting will happen tomorrow right at school end, something worth being happy over, but not as if it were raining diamonds. It's something more subtle, something that would have easily flown under my social radar, since I still can't stand casual small talk.
"Listen Lumina. I can't explain how I know this, but when I go to school tomorrow, something is going to happen after school, something good I think."
"Well that's something to be happy for. Can't complain about good news."
"Yeah, but I still want to know what it is."
"Just be patient," she advised. "You can ask the students tomorrow. Use that moment to confirm whether or not your clairsentience is real."
How did I not think about this already? "You're right. I can wait until then. Anyway, let's say we get back to enjoying the day?"
"Lead the way."
I aimed to make the day as normal as ever, but what I felt earlier could not be shaken away. A terrifying amount of certainty accompanied my sensation of the earlier rush of emotion. It was similar back to when I had those premonitions. Clairsentience is a much different ability than what I'm used to working with, but in this instance, it activated in the same way clairvoyance did. The energy signature protocol was different, but it was still ahead of time in reference. I could feel what others felt in the future too; the ability does not extend to foresight or foresound.
On one hand, it freaked me out, since I never asked for clairsentience in the first place, plus there is much newer data I don't understand about it yet. On the other hand, it's still a cool ability if I could learn to control it properly... Now I have three abilities.
"Hey, there's something I have to ask you about." I kept myself in my seat, both hands in lap as I let my twinkling eyes rest towards Zero sitting beside me.
Both of us have long since gone far ahead of our classwork, so there was plenty of time and opportunity to talk. Zero seemed distracted in her own head, just enough to delay her attention on me. "What's up?"
"Be real with me. Is there some reason why the entire school is excited today? I mean, did I miss something, or is there some strange event prepared for after school?" I had to speak casually, since Zero also knows nothing about my powers. I'm still not even fully certain this clairsentience activation was a real moment, but I can tell others are more energetic today. I've waited long enough to ask, and didn't want to reuse the ability today before knowing more about it, since Lumina isn't here this time.
She perked her expression slightly, bewildered by my cluelessness. "You mean you haven't heard? Onyx is coming to our school later to perform."
"Who is Onyx?"
"You don't know them? They're a rock band!" she exclaimed matching the energy of others in the room. "They're coming to our school later to perform some music for a while. They're a good group, and everyone is staying after school to listen to them."
"A rock band?" I'm not surprised that Zero would know what's going on, but this certainly wasn't what I expected.
"I know, right? How often does a real band come to our school and play?"
She's right though. Even something as simple as this is pretty rare for our high school. Most of the administrative staff have something crammed so far up their ass, nothing fun ever gets approved unless it somehow makes us more miserable in the end. I swear, we have an assistant principle or someone in the ranks who is secretly a totalitarian villain, dead set on sucking the purpose out of everybody. "So this Onyx band is coming to school, shortly after this school day ends, and everybody else knew about it?"
"The announcement was made only yesterday around this time, but you were absent yesterday."
"Yes, I know..." I let myself sink deeper into my thoughts, comparing the set of coincidences together. The reason I had no prior knowledge that something weird was happening was because of my absence yesterday. Yet it was because of this absence which enabled me to test the theory of clairsentience in the first place, given what I now know. So, everybody gets excited about hearing a band play, and all the way from my own home, I can feel their collective excitement, in the moment of yesterday, but especially in the future reference of time, which equates to now. "So I really did feel them."
"Huh?"
I wagged my wrist up and down at Zero, trying to distance her interest in anything I said. It still felt like a stretch to me, that I could somehow capture the collective emotional sensation of hundreds of other students from a distance of both space and time, yet be accurate about the particular emotion and reason for it. In essence, I invoked clairsentience yesterday, in a successful, provable manner. "Don't worry about it Zero. It's fine."
I couldn't share the sentiment of everybody's excitement myself. I personally don't dislike rock bands, and I think it's pretty cool that the school is allowing something good for once in a lifetime. Even so, it's not something I can be hyped up about. I'm not the biggest fan of super loud noises, rock isn't my preferred music genre, and there are things I'd rather do at home than stick around after school. Plus, any possible chance of me enjoying something like that is diminished with Lumina's absence given today's bump in environmental heat.
I can't deny some of my internal excitement though, given everything else. It was already amazing enough that I've mastered clairvoyance, but now I have the clairsentience ability too? Looking back, I never would have expected any possibility that I could ever become as strong as I am now... I wonder what the yogis would think about a situation like this one, or what the student body would think of me if they somehow knew what I was really capable of.
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