"You called?" she asked, slowly appraising my nude form, lingering on my dripping and raging hard-on.

"I what?" Her eyes seemed to captivate me.

"You called." A statement this time.

"ho is it?" Christy called from behind me, pulling a sheet around her.

"Sleep," the strange woman said to her. I looked back to see Christy collapse back on the bed. "Mind if I come in?" she then asked, already making her way into the room.

I followed her, grabbing only a pair of boxers to wear. This, I could sense, would be more important than maintaining my modesty. Besides, if it wasn't, I could just turn any memory of me into a dream.

"Oh, I wouldn't allow you to do that," she said aloud, in apparent answer to my unspoken thought. "Such a fine specimen of manhood shouldn't be forgotten."

"Thanks," I said automatically, wondering just what the heck was going on.

"Yes, it is time for me to let you know what's going on. My name is Gail Claeys. And it's obvious that I'm the first one to contact you. I've never been first before, so forgive me the little game we just played. It's just that, well, it was too perfect an opportunity to pass up. You and her, I mean," she gestured at Christy. "I can see why you'd pick her. She's beautiful."

She noticed my impatience. "Anyway, since I'm the first to contact you, it's up to me to explain things. But before we go into that, I want to make sure we're on even footing. The guy who indoctrinated me, well, he sorta took advantage before I could defend myself. So I'm real sensitive to that. First thing, then, is for you to scan me. So go ahead, just see what you can see."

So she knew about scanning? OK, I'd been ready to do it anyway. I jumped into her mind to find her name, her memories of the past few moments, and...nothing else. No, not nothing. A wall. A wall that seemed made of...TV snow? The kind you get when you turn the channel and there's no signal. TV snow? Her wall stretched from side to side as far as I could see. Looking up, though, I could see the top, and instinctively knew that if I approached from up there, I'd have full access to everything in her mind. But that wall...that wall intrigued me. How did she do that?

"How'd I do that?" she prompted me. Her mind reading was getting to be annoying. But I'd put up with it for the information. "It's actually an easy process for someone of your apparent abilities," she said, smiling at Christy, who lay softly snoring on the bed. "I can help you do it, if you let me just make a little tweak to one of your neural pathways."

Well, I didn't like the sound of that, and said so.

"Good!" she clapped her hands delightedly. "You already know the first lesson of our kind: Trust no one. There have been some who, for whatever reason, have taken talented mentalists and turned them back into regular people. So don't let anyone enter your mind unless you want them there.

"Now, another way for you to learn to protect your mind is to watch how I do it. So, knowing that I could turn your mind to mush if you probe me any more than you should, I'm going to let my wall down so you can see how I build it. Once you're able to do it for yourself, we can get started on answering your questions."

Building the wall was one of those "Why didn't I think of that" moments. Not that I'd had reason to think of it. But a somewhat embarrassing lapse, nonetheless. My first walls were more like hedges, full of holes for peering eyes. After a few minutes I'd gotten the hang of it, building a reasonable wall that closed off my mind to most of Gail's test probes. I'd even begun to develop a personal style. Where her wall resembled TV snow, mine was like very tightly woven brambles, punishing anyone who probed too ardently. Best of all, once raised, the wall took no effort at all to maintain. The key, Gail told me, was not in the length or depth of the wall, but in its height. If someone wanted in, they'd keep probing higher and higher, making you protect yourself and taking energy away from your aggressive efforts. That was why her wall was so high, she explained. Safe behind my wall, I didn't reveal that I had already spied the top of her wall and could easily breach her defenses. How powerful did that make me?

"If you like, I could sit here and tell you everything you need to know. But that would take hours. And as you know, it's much more efficient to take information from a person's mind than hear it from their mouth. So I'm going to put a pool of information in front of my wall for you to scan. I can tell you already know how to store memories, so that's what you should do first. Then you can browse it while I'm here and I'll answer any questions you might have.

Delving into that pool of information was a turning point in my life. No longer was I just a horny teenager with the ability to lay any woman I wanted. No, I was now part of a group of extremely talented people able to tap into the vast potential of their minds. I could measure myself against my peers. I could see how far I'd come, and how far I still had to go. And, seeing just some of the activities that went on, I could still lay any woman I wanted.

"It's something, isn't it?" Gail smiled. That was putting it mildly. At the time of my indoctrination, I was joining a group with over 10,000 members worldwide. That may seem like a lot, until you remember that there are over 6 billion people on the planet. Then our numbers seemed absolutely minute, putting us in the "almost extinct" column among the world's species. Yet no species had more potential.

According to Gail, members of our group had gone well beyond simple telepathy, mind reading and manipulation. The Mentalists, as they liked to be called, were experimenting with telekinesis, teleportation, transmutation, and all manner of "impossible" mental activities. As in all human societies, there were members working for the greater good, those in it only for their own gain, and those, like myself, who were indifferent to the greater questions. Though they had no formal policy, the Mentalists as a whole leaned against wholesale intervention in the regular world. In fact, several Mentalists who had attempted to manipulate vast groups of people had been "tweaked" into a less-aggressive state by more talented Mentalists.

As in most societies, there'd been much debate regarding Mentalist policy towards widespread evil, such as the Nazi ideal. While several Mentalists did battle Hitler on their own, none made the mistake of acting only on emotion. While turning Hitler into a simpering mental idiot may have shortened the war, it may also have had other, more traumatic consequences down the line. Our kind had learned the Rule of Unintended Consequences quite well. Worse, such interference may have led to discovery of our kind, and all the inquiries and panic that may have caused. Most Mentalists believe that man in inherently good...unless confronted with the unknown, which often results in evil done in the name of greater good. And the Mentalists had no doubt who would suffer the most.

On the whole, the Mentalists lived as Gail did, and I'd begun to: using our powers for small pleasures and to smooth out the bumps in daily life. Her talents had appeared in a fairly typical fashion for the Mentalists, as a special benefit at the onset puberty. Something about the mix of hormones and chemicals had changed a few neural pathways, and voila, instant Mentalist. Like I, she'd honed her skills in high school, turning a relatively dreary existence into one brimming with opportunities. According to Gail, my own experience, of pushing my brain into overdrive, was pretty rare. More rare, in fact, than those who gained their talents as a result of a head trauma. It was just one more thing for me to ponder from the wealth of information Gail transmitted to me.

"There's still one thing you haven't answered," I said, trying to wipe the dazed expression from my face. "How did you know where to find me?"

She smiled. "Remember when I said that you called? You did, literally. Your commands to her were so strong and unfocused, any Mentalist within 5 miles could hear you. It's like you're trying to use a megaphone to communicate with a baby that's right next to you. You need to learn to focus your commands more."

After she invited me into her mind to see how to best send and receive, I could only reply with a Homer Simpson, "Doh!" Another "I shoulda thunka that," moment. "But how did you get here so fast," I wondered, hoping that she held the key to teleportation.