ACCUMULATOR (4)

4.1: Zikzak

Zikzak - no one knows why he's called that, no one alive now, at any rate - is an orphan...like Ferron himself. Parentless, alone, he is one of the thousands deprived of the lives they once knew when one morning, the earth had moved so violently it was as if it had been trying to shake the entire San Francisco Bay Area off of itself and send it flying off into space.

Zikzak survived his whole family by simply not being home at the time disaster struck. By the time he returned, the tsunami - the terrible tidal wave that followed the killer quake sure as thunder follows lightning - had engulfed most of what was left of the Sunset District. Shaken, stirred, roasted and carried out to sea: his family, everything he owned, his soul.

Especially that.

In the years after, as he drifted through his teen years making his living as a wandering itinerant techie, living job to job and hand to mouth fixing any machine or computer he could figure out how to fix, his only friends have been machines. Mostly, the really magic machines: hypercomputers, immersivators, and machines that make sound.

Especially those.

They had met in a park one day and known brotherhood.

Until he had connected to Ferron - whose godhood he has never once questioned, having seen - and felt - what comes from him, he has never been able to get close to people...deeply fearing that they, too, will just be swept away from him.

But Ferron's not...just not like the others. He has something that makes Zikzak feel safe as nothing and no one else can.

By that evening, he also had given him a home, his first in years. Zikzak lives in the house itself...while his benefactor chooses to stay in that odd contraption in the backyard.

Everything the two of them know they have taught themselves. And each other. With a little help from a growing group of...associates.

As time went on, bringing growing trust, the secret of the Accumulator was at last revealed to him. Beyond amazed, Zikzak spent several nights in rapt contemplation of the possibilities.

And then they both spent a summer building the Synchronopticon together. As well as some other things. Sonic things. Subsonic things...

"Someone's coming up the driveway. I think we should go have a talk with him. Is he far enough into your prox field for you to freeze him?"

"Zor, you know I don't do that. It's not ethical. Besides, that's not our target there...he's a sapiens."

"I don't mean turn him into statuary, Elli, just...you know, make him get really fascinated with the patterns in the driveway asphalt or something. Just slow him down enough so I can get a little closer to the place and have a chat with him..." Zorlorn tells her as he gets to his feet and starts walking in the direction of the house with the palm tree behind it.

The two Ohm Special Forces agents have been hiding behind an old dumpster behind the dead 7-11 market next to the house all night, trying to figure out the best way to approach the resident. The wrinkle of the situation is the realisation that they've been called down here from their homes in the Ohm Clandestiny asteroid belt solely on the basis of one panicky call from a freaked-out psiont at a nearby Ohm commune who thought he sensed something scary in this general area. And then the commune's elders had informed Zor and Elli upon arrival that there had been no deaths in the area that matched the modus operandi of a psi vampire for a long, long time.

Which meant that whoever they were chasing had not - as far as the rulebook went, done anything that warranted the kind of immediate and severe repercussive response that the two agents had figured on having to make.

Something was up, all right. They know that for certain, now. There was certainly a buzz around this house - Zor and Elli had been feeling that all night. "Felt" in the sense that it was perceived by one of the many extra senses that the Ohm possess: perceiving psionic emanations for Ohm is something akin to a combination of hearing and tactile sensation, but with added components that defy description.

But unless the Ohm that lived in this house has been breaking Ohm law - which, at this point, as it applies to the scattered Ohm on earth, is rather simple as laws go, forbidding only murder and "grievous and/or permanent bodily or psychic injury" of a living person, whether Ohm or human - they have no right to just waltz over, bust down the door, brainfreeze the perpetrator and haul him, her, any combination thereof, or other off to OSF Headquarters for a tribunal. They can only investigate, and try to learn more about the situation.

Zor immediately recognized that the kid heading up the driveway is likely to be a good source of information. The kid who had been heading up the driveway...before he stopped walking and started staring at the ground in front of him.

[[[ Thanks, Elli. You can let up on him as soon as I start talking to him...]]]

In only a few strides and a jump over the knee-high remains of a cinderblock fence, he reaches the slightly dazed kid on the driveway. He is slight of build and quite young, though not pre-adolescent, with a round face and darkish hair. When Zor approaches him, and Elli lets up her mind's hold on his, his eyebrows spread up towards his forehead in a very recognizable expression of fear.

"Uh, excuse me, do you live here?" he asks the boy.

Still looking scared, nearly white with fear, he nods his head yes.

"I'm Zorlorn Narlok. I'm with the OSF." He holds up his left hand, flicking a microswitch on the side of a ring on his index finger, which opens flowerlike curved petals to reveal a little holographic ID plate. Lets him get a quick look at it and taps the button to make it fold shut again. "Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

Zor is hoping the kid just assumes that "OSF" is some branch of the confusing bureaucracy of the Earth government: the Global Amalgamated International Alliance, known to most as GAIA - that he might not be familiar with, and will just comply with his request out of the sheer government-obedience habit that most humans do everything according to, without any thought at all.

"Uhm...yeah..." he stammers. "But...I don't make the recordings. I just give him the equipment and help him figure out how to work it. It's like, you know, my job. He's the one who makes the music, you'll have to talk to him. I haven't done anything wrong."

Perplexed by this, Zor turns to Elli, who's been hanging back to see how this plays out before making her appearance.

[[[ What the hell is he talking about? Recordings? ]]]

Elli figures it out quickly.

((( He thinks you're "AdCorps". The Sponsorship Cops. He probably plays in a non-spon band and thinks you're here to bust him. Unbelievable law they passed down here requires all artists and musicians to put advertising in their work or it's illegal. You knew about that, right? )))

[[[ I'd heard about it. Guess I just didn't believe it. How do these people down here live like this? No wonder they're all going insane...]]]

Zor shakes his head, a sad and incredulous look crossing his face.

He turns to the kid, who looks even more anxious now. "Look," he says, trying his best to be reassuring, "We aren't the advertising police. Matter of fact, we're not really cops at all. Not exactly. More like...investigators. We think there might be a dangerous person in the area and we're trying to find out more about what's been going on."

"Are you the ones they talked about on the Lattice? The guys who are hunting down the aliens?"

"Aliens?"

The kid answers: "You haven't heard? I thought everyone knew about all that stuff happening down in SoCal. Don't you guys get newsfeeds? There are these weird people running around, they look just like humans, except...that they have powers..."

[[[ Looks like the mutagent's spreading...Elan's "garden" grows pretty damned fast. ]]]

((( Doesn't really surprise me. He knew it wouldn't take long.)))

[[[ Just keep your guard up. There's going to be a shitstorm of resistance. ]]]

Zor scratches his chin for a second, thinking. Then asks, "Are you worried about anyone you think might be one of them?" Excellent lead-in for getting on with the business at hand.

"Nah," the kid says, and looks more relaxed now. "I'm not afraid of anything or anyone, long as Ferron is with me. He'd kick their asses if they came around here!"

"Ferron? Who's that?"

"My friend. He's got powers too. But I'll bet his are stronger."

"Oh...really?" Zor tries to look nonchalant. "Does this...this Ferron...does he live around here?"

"Yeah, this is actually his house. He just lets me stay in it. When he met me I didn't have anywhere to live. My...uh...my family's gone."

Elli can feel the kid's troubled energy at the mention of his family. "What do you mean, gone?"

"I used to live in San Francisco, in the Sunset district..." he says, as if that explained everything.

For Elli, it actually does. Gently peering inside the boy's conscious thoughts she sees a dreadful memory of the 8.3 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that levelled most of the city and tore a great big chunk out of its western edge. She immediately feels the need to hug the kid, and do the things she can do that would lift the pain from him where it has been festering for the past seven years.

If he were only Ohm, she could heal him. But her special methods don't seem to work on humans. She'll have to settle for soothing words.

"Oh, you poor dear...that must have been terrible to have to go through...er, what did you say your name was?"

"I didn't, actually, yet. It's Zachary, but that sounds stupid, so people call me Zikzak. Which sounds kinda stupid too, I guess, but it's better than Zachary." Zor introduces himself and the two of them share the instant camaraderie of those who have in common a lifetime of being last on alphabetical lists. Of course, since the Ohm population tends towards a mass affectation for names beginning with the letter of the alphabet that was once called "Omega" - and represented by the horseshoe "Ohm" glyph which they have come to use as the oriflamme of their race - "Zorlorn" is actually last on fewer lists than "Zachary".

"You guys want to come inside? Looks like it's gonna rain again." The two of them nod their heads in assent.

"Maybe you'll get to meet him. Ferron, I mean. He's definitely a weird sort of guy, but really cool once you get to know him." Zikzak opens the door and motions to his new friends to enter. Zor and Elli exchange sharp glances, register one another's expressions, and follow Zikzak into the old tract house.

"He sleeps in the backyard," Zikzak goes on. He seems very happy to have people to talk to. Zor can see immediately that the kid is catastrophically lonely; Elli - a grade five empath - can feel it much too clearly.

"In the backyard? Even when it rains?" Zor asks.

"Oh, he sleeps in the..." The kid stops short as if realizing he's suddenly spilled himself onto secret ground of which he shouldn't speak. Elli notices this immediately and gives his mind a slight little flick, gentle as touching it with a feather. But enough to cause the automatic reaction intended: Talk...speak what's there on your mind...loosen your mouth, spill.

"He...sleeps in the Accumulator. He kind of...lives in it, most of the time. He built it himself. He's real proud of that."

"Accumulator?" Zor catches on to Elli's maneuvers and continues his questioning, but softens his voice in a lulling mode; he also, adds a warm wash of overmental persuasion of his own: it will help in getting the kid to relax, trance out, enabling them to get as much information from him as they can.

"It's a big pyramid made out of iron. No, not a pyramid, sort of like one, but with three sides...well, four, counting the floor, I guess. A heedron, I think he calls it..."

"Tetrahedron, you mean?"

"Yeah...that's it, tetrahedron...It's got some stuff in it. A simple quasi-immersivator unit I rigged up for him - it's not like a real one, doesn't do full immersion, but he acts as if it does. Like I say, he's a weird guy..." Shrugs his shoulders. "I also helped him set up a bunch of sonic equipment and a generator. I don't know what he does with all this stuff, but whatever it is, he really likes doing it, because he does it nearly all the time..."

He stops suddenly as if the haze is clearing and he's beginning to realize that he is saying too much. "Uhhhhhhhhhh......" This elicits another little "touch" from Ellysine.

[[[ Elli, don't keep doing that. My gestalt-sense tells me this is a pretty smart kid ...I think he might even have latent psi somewhere in there. Some humans do, you know...If you keep doing that, he'll subconsciously react...freeze up. Not trust us. ]]]

Elli "hears" him and relents. The last touch was just enough to get him to talk long enough for Zor to find out what he wants to know.

"Is he - your friend Ferron - is he in this thing out there - right now?" He points to the plate glass door leading to the yard. Looks out the window but can't see anything but heavy rain and green things.

"I think so. He goes away from here a lot, but usually at night. He goes out almost every night, whether it's raining or not. Don't know where to. Comes back in the morning, maybe says hello, maybe doesn't. And just goes out back again. I think it's how he charges himself."

"Charges...himself?"

"Yeah...I guess he'd need to, so he can...do some of the things he does."

By this time, Zikzak seems to have forgotten any pact he had to keep secrets; possibly as a result of Elli's "touches", or perhaps it's just happening out of a strong need to bond with a couple of other human beings...or, in this case, not-quite-human-anymore beings.

"What sort of things does he do?"

"Oh, you know, charisma-type stuff.. Gets people to do things for him, for both of us, actually. Like during that month when the food labs went on strike again and there was hardly anything to eat around, he'd get people to give us food. Even real fruit sometimes. And he's getting our recordings out but keeping the heat off our backs... Ummmm...." He looks nervous again. "Look...you guys swear you're not AdCorps? You don't work for them or anything like that?"

Zor slowly shakes his head. "Noooooo...Zikzak, We aren't here to arrest you for not making commercials." Pulls his hair back out of his face so he can look into Zikzak's eyes, and continues to ask his questions in that same low, lulling, rolling tone of voice.

"What sort of recordings do you do? I'm rather fascinated by some of these new underground sounds I have been hearing lately."

"Well, it's hard to explain. It'd be better if I showed you. Why don't you stay in the living room awhile and I'll get some of the equipment set up? It's raining a sea out there and besides, if there's some bad person around here, you should really have somewhere to stay. Plus you really ought to ask Ferron about it. He knows everything! And if this person is someone really bad, he's someone really good to have around."

Zor and Ellysine look at each other for a long stretch.

"I can't think of a better idea," Elli announces. "Can you?"

"Not really. And I didn't get much sleep last night behind that dumpster. We can crash out on the sofa here for a while..." And continues...but only to his partner:

[[[ And yes. We'll take turns...one of us should stay alert while the other sleeps. It's only sensible...]]]

((( Agreed. You can sleep first if you want. I want to talk with Zikzak a little more, anyway...)))

Ohm tend to drop right into sleepstate instead of arriving in stages; a simple practicality which has been made part of the life process itself. Before he can even phrase a telepathic response, he's out.

4.2: Neuratonal Voices

When he awakens again five hours have elapsed and his entire aural receiving spectrum is filled with sounds and subsounds.

Neuratonal music. He recognizes it instantly. It's the prototype Neuratonal artist, AKZON. AKZON essentially invented this form...and the rest of the genre's artists build upon its foundations, or are imitators.

These are the sounds - and "almost-sounds" - which he had been "dissecting".., figuring out how their structures affected neurotransmission....the individual tones, and the sympathetic vibrations that occurred as they overlay one another in various configurations.

Yawning himself awake and stretching, he gets up from the sofa and walks quickly to the back of the house...where he finds Ellysine staring transfixedly at the collection of unidentifiable computers and machines from which the layers of monotone noise and bending doppler-effect drones are emanating. Occasionally Zikzak leans over and twists a knob or taps a touchscreen and part of the sound becomes enhanced in some way. Sometimes behind the tones there's a barely-perceptible rhythm which shifts in and out of aural focus.

And behind that, there's something else. Something scary. Scary for anyone anywhere, but particularly scary to Ohm.

Zor is slowly realizing why Elli has flashed her illusionarily-changeable face into that of a tranced-out mystic who's seeing and hearing some seriously heavy shit. In fact, Zor thinks he's probably getting that same poleaxed look on his face - and he's not even a faceshifter.

[[[ Elli...do you hear that? What I'm hearing?...]]]

Nothing from her head. Her eyes are closed and she's trembling a little. Lowering himself down to the floor half-squatting, he reaches a hand up to her eyes to test their sight. Waves it back and forth a couple times. Nothing.

[[[ Elli! Elli! You in there?...are you okay?...]]]

((( Oh Zor! You're up, finally! I'm alright...I think, anyway...but this shit is really fucking weird...)))

[[[ It must be. You never cuss like that. ]]]

((( It's scary. Amazing, but scary. I can't figure it out. Are you listening to this crazy sound? What is this?)))

[[[ It's AKZON. Essentially AKZON started the whole Neuratonal thing. Zikzak...he's AKZON, or one member of AKZON, at any rate. Small universe... ]]]

((( No, no, that's not what I mean...Besides the Neuratonal stuff. Can you hear that OTHER sound? I don't know if it even IS exactly a sound, if you know what I mean. )))

Zor tunes his infra-aural and ultra-aural senses up several notches. And then he starts getting it...

Aunquaa!" Zor himself cusses, but in Ohmspeak, which bears a stronger emphasis. now understanding why she looks so freaked out!

((( It sounds - it FEELS! - like being in a crowded public place and having a bad, bad case of input filter breakdown...Is that what you're getting too? )))

[[[ Exactly!]]]

It's like the madness of a broken-minded psiont who can't narrow the cone of attention...who can't avoid hearing every thought from the minds of everyone around going on at the same time.

((( What the hell could be causing this? Zor, I thought my OWN filters had broken down when it started... The only way I've kept sane for the past two hours is to just keep telling myself it's some sound effect the kid's using. But it's not. It's not part of the music. He's not even hearing it... )))

Zor can only try to analyse what's going on with whatever mental clarity he can muster up in the middle of the trouncing that his mind's getting: the deafening psi-noise...the undiscernible mishmashed mess of thoughtvoices from what he is growing more and more certain is actually the combined brainwaves of a few hundred people all going on at once.

He thinks - no, knows - that in the midst of the cacophony there rises an occasional "voice" that seems to cry out in glee. Or pain.

He suddenly recalls the thing that the old Ohm woman from the commune had told them about the way that the psi-current around this house had been described... [[[..."like an atonal chorus coming from the Wheel of Terror and Ecstasy"...]]]

Suddenly he bolts up from the floor and goes running towards the sliding door leading to the backyard.

Ellysine calls after him to stop - or at least wait for her to come with him. She has seen the look on Zor's face and knows from past experience it usually means trouble: it's the look he gets when he's acting without forethought to consequence.

Zikzak cries out, "No! Don't go back there! We're not done translating yet!"

But Zor has already pushed the sliding door open and is heading into the jungle of undergrowth in the back yard. The rain appears to have stopped.

The atonal noise-music, along with its undercurrent of mindvoices, pitchbends down to the lowest possible note and trails off into empty, broken silence.

4.4: Rogue

Zor yells back to Elli telling her to stay on the porch. And - very emphatically - that she should turn her firewall way, way up - as high as it will go.

Zikzak is utterly and wholly confounded. Confused about Zor's urgency - and not just a little bit afraid. His face contorts into a big question mark. All he sees is that his two new friends are suddenly rushing around like there's some sort of emergency and saying strange things about "firewalls."

"What the---???" He tries to get their attention, but fails. All thoughts of his compromised recording are drowned out. He stands behind Ellysine at the open porch door, watching anxiously. And suddenly, he understands: knows the identity of the "bad person" they're looking for.

In the yard, Zor tramples through the rain-drenched cornzillas. The pest-plants, which are the result of a monstrous failed bioengineering experiment, resemble corn plants - but the gene which was supposed to make them insect-resistant also makes them bear inedibly toxic corn. And since the damned things were built to be hardy, they have become a weed even more persistent than crabgrass.

He turns his head this way and that looking for anything that could possibly resemble an iron triangle...or a wild Ohm lurking behind the huge mutated weeds, waiting to get the jump on him.

As he comes to the huge palm tree in the back of the yard, he sees it: the damned thing is about twelve feet high to each side and takes up about half the yard. Zor realizes that he's been walking right next to the thing... covered, as it is, with moss and ropy vines, it is virtually invisible against the riot of neotropical flora surrounding it.

Coming closer, edging slowly around the corner of structure, he sees a circular hole with what looks to be a sliding plate recessed into one side of it: the entrance.

Zor stops short of reaching out and touching it and takes a deep breath, readying his senses and defenses. Feeling very nervous about the sheer level of nervousness this whole thing is making him feel.

He no longer senses the meshed-together multi-mindwave flood that engulfed his consciousness a few moments ago. Now he senses the deathly stillness - and this stillness is putting him on edge just as much. Maybe even more...

And then...it starts.

The subtle yet blatantly present forcefield of power rises and emanates from the tetrahedral pylon. It seems to be...deliberately...pushing him backwards.

His whole being lurches off balance. He tries to narrow his thought-focus to a thin line, a piercing beam that he knows has been sufficient to knock down a rogue Ohm from twenty paces distance. He realises that he is backing away from the Accumulator, step by step...and for the past few seconds, he has not even been conscious of doing it.

The sliding plate on the triangular face of the pylon slowly opens...and a flash of something silver-white and shiny whirls up from out of it and jumps up from the ground. And Zorlorn finds himself face to face with the object of his mission: Ferron Orgone. Who does not look particularly happy to find himself with company.

Zor gasps quietly in spite of himself, taking in the spectacle before him...the sight of him, in shiny halfway-unzipped second-skin with the long whitish-blonde hair manically whipping about in the wind, dancing from side to side-- and his eyes--

[[[ Ach! A mistake, to look at his eyes! ]]]

--burning intensely underneath it, aimed straight at him.

And also, the other things: the invisible things that only an Ohm mind is privy to. Like the staggering level of power that the Rogue emanates. That is - demands to be - the first thing that gets noticed. It very nearly literally knocks Zor off his feet like a gust of wind...and it screws with the balance function in his ear so for a moment he feels wobbly and unstable.

[[[ Gnarrrcht! What the.........HELL.......is he doing? ]]]

Ellysine can barely hear his telepathic signal as she has caught sight of Ferron herself and is also having trouble keeping her balance...but for a slightly different reason.

Being farther away from him than Zor is, she can feel the force that knocked Zor for such a loop - but at a slightly safer distance, allowing her mind to function with slightly more clarity.

But this clarity, too, is dangerous...it gives her a less-interruptive view. She has never ever sensed anything like this before...and she becomes flushed.

She decides once and for all that she never EVER wants to be on the wrong side of that relentless power. It could so very easily overwhelm her. After years of training with Ohm Special Forces to handle just this sort of thing, she's not used to feeling so seduceable by another Ohm's emanations.

It is she who had been sent here with Zor as the one who was intended to DO the seducing, if this got to be necessary to lure their rogue into submission. She's done it so many times before...waylaying the hot spirits of rogues with her own tricky systems of push and pull, that it has felt like second, third and fourth nature by now. But...

The essential problem is this: she can see something about Ferron that is just...so wrong There's a searing level of malevolence about him...but this malevolence is not entire. There is a whole other aspect of him which is of such advanced intellect and ability that it far surpasses even that of charismatic leaders like Elan Xanaste. And that part of him has a childlike curiosity and innocence.

Something - everything - about him is as innocent as it is evil, and the innocence is part of the reason why the power he emanates is so pure and unfettered. He does not know enough to even have his own malevolence be able to stain his soul. He is guiltless...and yet permeated by a wily guile that chills her to her core.

Not to mention the fact that he's also so stunningly, unforgivably hot - in an undefinable way that's more than "hot" adequately conveys. Oh, but she's trying so very hard not to pay attention to that. If she pays attention to that for a moment too long, she knows she'll be done for.

She tries to see the more unattractive parts. The uncontrolled, unrefined aspects of him. Like the way he isn't standing up straight to meet his adversary. He is shifting his weight from one foot to the other, back and forth, as if he cannot quite balance himself, with the rest of him following this motion in a screwy sort of swaying. He sways, to and fro, while his eyes remain fixated forwardly.

Hypnotically...

It's no use. Elli feels herself starting to swoon.

She is reminded of a scene in a wildlife program in which two king cobras faced each other off. The two snakes were about a foot from one another and had coiled with their necks puffed out into hoods, and each had its head and neck four, five feet up in the air - at perfect eye level with one another. And they were slowly swaying...just like he is. Each holding the other at eye level and studying one other. Sizing each other up. Trying to figure out which one of them would devour the other. And it's exactly what Zor and Ferron are doing.

Except Zor isn't swaying. He's standing completely still, arms folded against his chest. Eyebrows crooked in a concentrated frown of scrutiny.

[[[ He's scared of me, Elli. Look at the turbulence.]]]

+/// No! ///+

Ferron's own psi-voice shouts loudly into their minds, the raspy sound of tension grating all the way through it.

+/// You...are like me! How can this be???...I want to know how it is that you are able to make the silent words. Tell me how you learned this! ///+

Elli shores up her mental firewall with every bit of strength she can muster.

((( Zor...can you believe this? He doesn't know what he is! He's been living for years...like this...and doesn't know he's Ohm!)))

[[[ I think you're right. I'm pushing at him a little and he's fighting me off hard, but he's not experienced. He's never had to defend his mind before. It makes him unsteady. See? ]]]

((( But that power! Where the hell is that coming from? He's got to be getting that from somewhere. Oh no...Zor, he's looking right at me...)))

+/// Yes...I am!....and you know what? I think I like doing it..." ///+

Time seems to move very slowly now for Elli as the rogue's eyes find hers before they can hide from him.

+///El-lyseeeeen...So that is your name. Very pretty. Like your face...Like...the rest of you. So very pretty...I would look longer, and see more of you... ///+

((( Oh! my........He can hear right through the firewalls, Zor...)))

The tone of her thoughtvoice does not even reflect concern; she even seems to be almost...celebrating the fact, the way she is thinking of it.

[[[ Oh damn it! Elli, get back in the house, fast! Don't let him get in your head! ]]]

(((But...I've never felt anything like this...the sheer degree of--)))

[[[ Break contact! Stop looking at him, Elli! Please! He's thralling you! ]]]

The rogue spins around on his heels to face Zor again. His eyes are chips of ice.

+/// Mind your own business, stranger Zorlorn! May I remind you that you are trespassing on my grounds here? And who are you to tell the pretty thing not to look at me? She wants to look, she can look! ///+

The thoughtvoice seems to go deeper than most do, as though it is tearing through protective braintissues. Scalding him inside. Watching Ferron's swaying is starting to make him feel something like the initial gravitational disturbance when a shuttlecraft comes from space into global orbit. It is terribly unbalancing.

+/// You have not even identified yourselves to me. Or stated your business. Kindly do so now. ///+ The whole of his attention is now focused on Zor.

Elli quickly comes to her senses and darts backwards into the house, before Ferron can turn around and stare her down again. She feels so dizzy it's almost like nausea.

[[[ You happen to actually BE my business here. You seem to not require introductions as you are apparently pulling our names out of our heads...without us thinking of them consciously. I'd sort of like to know...how is it you are able to do THAT?...]]]

An insane ecstasy flashes across Ferron's face like a breaking ray of sun.

+/// How is it I am able to do anything at all? Orgone! Just the right degree and amount...That is how it is done. How everything is done. The power of the Orgone, which is for me, which is mine, because I call it to me, and it comes to me. I pull the Orgone to me and it and I are one thing! ///+

The glee in his bliss-bombed thoughtstream is as disturbing as the prior anger.

Zor tries to be as diplomatic as he can.

[[[ Look, Ferron. We just want to talk to you. We are here to help you. Not hurt you. We're your own kind. We're called Ohm....and you're one of us. We have a lot to talk about. ]]]

The unwavering shield of power cools down a bit and Ferron stops swaying back and forth. The quiet stillness again, stretching out for at least ten seconds.

For the first time since the beginning of this meeting, the rogue speaks out loud.

"Ohm. Ohm?" Testing the sound, the feel of this word.

"Ohmmm..."

"Yes. We're all a species that is called "Ohm". All but your talented friend Zikzak here, who is human."

Everything is quiet for one very long, excruciating moment. Then, the rogue turns to Zor, some of the alienness melting from his face.

"Do you know...where it is I come from? Can you tell me that?" All the malevolence has gone out of him: his face is that of a lost child. "Perhaps we can. There's so much we need to tell you, and so much to learn. Can we go into the house and talk a while? Looks like it might rain again."

Actually, Zor isn't concerned about the weather. He just wants to get Ferron away from that damned Accumulator - and away from whatever it is that it "accumulates". He dimly hopes his motive is not too transparent. He's thinking underneath his very last firewall. The rogue examines him again.

"Yessss. We can talk. In the house..." Ferron declares this as though to make sure everyone present knows that they will be following his decision, not someone else's. "We go. Inside."

4.5: Discussion

"Ohm. So that's why I can do all these...ah, interesting things. I'm not Homo Sapiens. Well, I've always known that much, but...not that I was not the only one..."

Once the four of them - Zorlorn, Ellysine, Zikzak and the rogue, Ferron, had all gathered together in the living room of Ferron's house, and Zor and Elli told him all about how the search for capabilities to accellerate evolution by self-willed mutation had instigated the creation of a means of implementing it.

They told him about the Original Triad of Moebius Rex, Nimbus Halo and Krystal Blitzer - the core members of the DECON cult. They told him about how DECON had grown and swelled during the early twenty-first century, but were forced into nomadism by a suspicious and trigger-happy United States government.

They went on with the story, Ferron listening with wide eyes and the receptive mind of a little kid who is eager to learn about the world around him. They explained how DECON managed to take over a military installation and a NASA base using their most special of gifts - the ability to control human minds through seduction. Told him about how the new species, weakened in spirit by losing so many important members to skirmishes with the military, had decided the only hope for them was to leave the planet and grow in number elsewhere. How no one thought it could be done...but with the new minds' increased speed of knowledge acquisition and improved acumen for science and technology in addition to everything else, it WAS done.

They told him about the Clandestiny, and its colonies, each one named after a colour, except for Phlayze, which had been named for their leader at the time who'd insisted that his homeworld be eponymous. How for a century, the group had fared only slightly better than barely at all - but persevered, knowing that to return to Earth before the proper time meant certain death for all of them. And persevered because they were creating a new life - a new species that was going to make ordinary humans seem, when compared to them, exactly as chimpanzees seem when compared to normal humans.

They explained how the species came to start thinking of itself and calling itself the Ohm...which some said meant Order of Higher Minds, and others insisted meant Over Human Manipulators. The sound of "Ohm" itself, Zor pointed out, had been a trance-inducing mantra chant for transcendental spiritualists of the Buddhist stripe for many many centuries...and also, the word "Ohm" had another meaning in the field of electronics, being associated with the measure of resistance in an electronic circuit.

They noted that some of the Ohm never made it onto the space shuttles...for one reason or another, there were some that never found out about the exodus in time. Or were holed up in compounds and communes, hiding from the military. Told him that he was likely the descendent of one of the ones who'd gotten left behind...and that because of the scrambling of the nets, and an extremely concentrated censorship effort, any information about Ohm or DECON would have been almost impossible to come across. So, they surmised, he had grown up all his life knowing nothing about his origins.

And then, they told him about Elan Xanaste. And what was going to be happening next.

Zor had gotten out his bag, and pulled out his datasoft. With Zikzak's help he managed to set up a net relay that would bypass the scrambling that the GAIA regime had going constantly so that communication between the Earth and the Clandestiny would be all but impossible. Zor got the screen of the computer to show some of the now-quite-famous Elan X. video.

When they showed this to Ferron, a silent state of agogness had come over him and did not lift itself for a long, long time. The others in the room had all watched him experiencing humbleness for what was probably the very first time in his life.

This was what he himself had wanted to do. Of course. His dream had been to "Accumulate" everyone, everywhere, somehow. He just hadn't...figured out the particulars, yet. Figured out how to make it all fit inside his mind. And now, suddenly, to deal with the idea that he is not the only one granted his gifts...that someone else was using those same gifts to actually succeed in controlling hundreds, thousands of ordinary humans.

His face went white.

"No, you're not Homo Sapiens." Zor says at last. "But you aren't a god, either. None of us are. We have bodies. We live and die like normal people. A bullet can shoot us and kill us just the same. Though maybe someday, the psi academies will finally manage to imprint a telekinesis circuit into the brainpan. You can be sure they're working on it. But the main thing everyone's working on right now is getting this planet under control. Things are going to start getting crazy very, very soon...." Looking some more at the screen of his datasoft, he adds, "Looks like 'soon' just became 'now'. Look at this..."

Everyone leans over and focuses on the hi-def video screen. A news broadcaster is trying to remain calm as he reads a report that claims that the President of the United States issued a decree that the murder of any "non human sentient" is to be considered as much a crime as the murder of a human being.

"Well, either the President or his wife seems to have been seduced by Ohm. This thing spreads FAST. I wonder if the mutagent contains any extra sexual programming in it? I uh...wouldn't be able to really test that theory myself, of course."

Suddenly he wishes he hadn't let that slip.

Ferron looks him straight in the eye and states, "You're a eunuch."

A sharp glance from Zor zings back at him. "I wouldn't exactly put it that way."

"But you are. I can feel it now. She's got something in her psi index you don't have."

Sighing heavily, Zor tells him about the girl on the beach in Los Angeles twenty years prior, and how since she had been too young for the mutagent to achieve her transversion to Ohm, it had sent her into a horrid state of mental chaos...and tells him about the psionic sterilization that he had felt he had needed to do to himself afterwards, leaving out most of the details.

"Well, that was a stupid thing to do! I thought you said you Ohm were smarter than people. I never would have done that! What was the point?"

This is not what Zor wants to hear. His fist slams against the table and makes a huge noise, knocking the datasoft onto the floor.

"NOBODY ASKED YOU FOR YOUR FUCKING OPINION, you asshole. You know something? You aren't exactly whole yourself. There're some seriously flawed things about you, and I want to know about a few of them. Now we made a deal. I said to you I'd tell you about who we are and what YOU are. We've done that. Now you talk to us. What the fuck is that pylon out in the backyard FOR, exactly? What do you do in it all the time?"

Ferron has snapped into defensive mode, radiating the danger of a recoiling serpent. Even sitting down, something in him causes him to slightly sway to and fro.

This tall man with long black hair - the Ohm called Zor, seems to have the idea that he can make him do things he wants him to do. This cannot be permitted.

And something else can be emitted.

Staring blankly at Zor's tense, pissed off face, the rogue blasts the ultrasonic mindweapon at him point-blank.

Zor screams. He cannot hear himself doing so--

[[[/,/,/,/,/,/,/,/,/,/,aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!,/,//,/,//,/,/,/,/, ]]]

Hands flash up to his ears reflexively--

The sound that is not sound seems to be scraping the inside of his skull like fingernails on chalkboard but he is the chalkboard and he is the fingernails and he is the screeeetch they make and the chalkdust that is under the nails--

"Ferron! Stop doing that! Please! You're hurting him!"

Zikzak - who'd been so quiet during the storytelling hour that everyone seemed to forget he was even there, has sprung from his seat, and he is tugging at Ferron's shoulders and shaking him.

The terrible "noise" abates.

Slowly, Zor recovers his senses. Makes a mental note that a neurocircuit to filter or somehow bypass that wavelength is going to need to be fabricated as soon as he can get a minute to himself. Or better yet...Another idea, but he hides it, because he doesn't want the rogue picking it out of his brain.

Even though he's seen evidence that he can, anyway.

All at once about five hundred thoughts go through Zor's mind, in the wake of the ultrasonic torture.

This creature sitting across the table from him has now become his nemesis. One of two things is going to happen, he resolutely decides.

Either that guy is going to come around and learn to be a credit to his species - or at least not such a debit to it - or he's going to have to be...dealt with, somehow.

At this precise moment, he wouldn't mind taking him out himself with his bare hands.

But these are dangerous thoughts to have. Apparently Ferron hasn't killed anyone - at least, not psionically - but Zor can see something in him that tells him that the possibility that he would if he really wanted to is glaringly obvious.

Maybe the only reason he can recognize it so well is because it takes one to know one.

4.6: Deep Revealings

Two hours later, Ferron is gone, having stalked off without a word and gone back into his sanctum.

Ellysine is sleeping on the living room sofa. She seems to be having a lot of dreams.

Zor sits down in Zikzak's room to have an important chat with him. The kid seems overly apologetic, considering it was not he that attacked Zor, but his friend. It is arranged that Zor and Elli can stay here in the house while they both try to "help" Ferron.

"Your friend has a lot of...powers," Zor explains to him, "but he is not aware of a great many things, and he has never learned how to deal with people he disagrees with. He has the ability to subjugate human beings...but when those people he disagrees with are Ohm, he's going to find that they don't just surrender to swarm at his feet. He's going to take a hard fall when this happens...his core ego will start to break down."

"You're not going to...hurt him or anything, are you?" Zikzak pleads. "Even though I know he hurt you a lot with that skullscraper thing..."

"That's a damned good name for it. I still have a headache from it."

"It doesn't last very long, I think. I've seen him do that a couple of times to people, when we've been out foodgathering, and people have tried to attack us. Once it was a couple of guys all fucked up on pepsi, and once it was a cop. He told me to be careful because the skullscraper only knocked them over for a few seconds and after a minute or two they'd be fully recovered. Though the guys fucked up on pepsi seemed to stay knocked over longer..."

"Fucked up on Pepsi? The soft drink?"

"Don't you guys ever get the news? Oh, wait!" he suddenly realizes, "...you said you live in space! And that GAIA scrambles the transmissions." He explains, "Pepsi...it's a synthetic cocaine analog. From Asia. God, it was first made like, way before I was born, sixty years ago or something like that. Knocked the American coke business right on its ass. The stuff's like six times stronger, with an addictive factor of one hundred percent. Some people say it's what finally did the national government in. But hardly anyone uses it anymore...it makes people too violent. Most pepsiheads end up killing each other off."

"I would imagine..." Zor says, stunned at the levels humans have had to go to for a thrill - and yet pondering the levels of violence he knew his own race to be capable of producing in its own way. Then asks:

"Would you mind us staying here for a few days? We think there may be a way to help your friend before it's too late. But you'll have to help us. That might feel strange to you, like some sort of betrayal. All I can say is this: when the Ohm find their way to Half Moon Bay, they're not going to put up with your friend's attitude very long. Ferron could get himself killed if he tries this shit with them. He's what we call a Rogue. Some of the earth Ohm call ones like him 'Skews'. Rogues have very strong powers. Or different ones than usual. Or maybe both, like Ferron does. And they are very hard for others to get along with, since they always think they're better than everyone else. They do things that sometimes get humans AND Ohm hurt or killed. Our laws - the Ohm's laws - stipulate that rogues are to be dexed - taken out - if they are causing any serious trouble. Ferron could be serious trouble. We don't know yet.

"We should be straight with you. We said we're not cops. I guess we lied a little. Ellysine and I are agents of the Ohm Special Forces, which is essentially our law enforcement agency. Our job is to respond to reports of possibly dangerous rogue Ohm and deal with them. Most of the time, we can help them not be such a threat to others - and to themselves. Because they mostly endanger themselves, not others, by the way they behave. Sometimes things don't work out as nicely as we'd like them to, though.

"At OSF, they train us to undergo heavy psionic stress...That skullscraper was nasty, but I would imagine you've seen it do worse to others than it did to me. That's no accident. This is what we deal with...most Ohm don't commit acts of physical violence. But we can be very scary psychic warriors. That's why we don't need to carry guns. Our weapons systems are here..." Zor casually points to his temple. "As are our defenses. I have already configured my neurological system to give Ferron a bit of a surprise if he pulls that skullscraper crap again. It's like a mirror: if he tries that again, the only one who'll get noise in his head is himself. It doesn't work with every sort of weapon that Ohm possess, but I think it will do for this one.

"Now, I know this is a lot to have to think about all of a sudden like this..."

Zikzak nods his head. "My brain feels overloaded..." he says, quietly,

"There's a lot more we have to talk to you about, but most of it can wait until later. Except for one thing. I have to ask a...well, embarrassing question." Zor swallows, his throat dry from talking so long.

"Go ahead. I don't get embarrassed about stuff, really."

"Has Ferron...has he...do you...um...has he ever tried to...do anything with you?"

"You mean like sexually?"

"Uh, yeah. Exactly."

He is silent for the moment. Zor fears the worst somehow.

"No, not exactly DO anything...I mean, he hasn't ever touched me or anything like that. But..."

"Go on...please...it's important."

"He makes me WANT to sometimes. It's that...that power he has. Sometimes it makes me feel like I want to...you know...be close to him. It's like he pulls at me. Makes me think about doing stuff that I don't know if I really should do. I mean, I'm not really sure if I'm gay. I might be, but I don't really know. It's...well...I've sort of never had sex with anyone before. I'm kind of a loner, if you haven't already guessed."

Zor feels incredibly relieved to hear that things have not gone that far...at least, yet.

"I understand about that power you talk of. It's a big part of how Ohm deal with each other. I used to have it myself but - as I mentioned earlier - I made it go away, so I don't have it anymore. That's why he called me a eunuch. It means a man with no testicles. I still got THOSE...but not in my mind, if that makes any sense."

"That wasn't very nice of him to say that to you."

"No, it wasn't. I would imagine he says things like that a lot, right?"

"Actually, he doesn't. He's always been very friendly to me. I just stay out of his way and everything's fine."

"Well...keep doing that. For now. Try not to get too close to him for a while. I've felt a need to explain all these things to you...but now that you know some of them, I fear that he might...come to distrust you. See, he seems to be able to pull stuff out of the unconscious areas of minds. Most Ohm actually can't do that, not at that level. We can tell what a person is thinking of at the particular instant that it is being thought about. But not anything beyond that. Ferron gets at the stuff beyond that."

The boy's face is full of chagrin. "Please don't do anything that would make him hate me. He's the only friend I've had since...since the day of that earthquake. And there's something else...Without Ferron, there is no AKZON."

"What is his part in AKZON?"

"He IS AKZON. I just...translate." Zikzak is apprehensive again. Zor readies himself to goad the boy with the most gentle of subconsciously persuasive touches, but this proves unnecessary.

"The waves from his head, from all the people in there. The ones he "accumulates". Mixed in with that power he accumulates - the stuff he calls Orgone. The tetrahedron is a thing called an orgone accumulator. And Ferron is...a mind accumulator. He like, talks to all these people in his head and I think he also...you know, does stuff with them. Sexual things. He says they all like it done to them. Even love it. He has a universe in there and he brings people into it. I think that's what he does when he goes out - brings new people into it."

Zikzak's been needing to talk to someone about all this so long that the words rush out of him with no prodding at all from Zor.

"The machines I have in here collect the frequencies he emanates from out there..." he rambles, pointing to the backyard. "I translate the biofeedback patterns into soundwaves and subsonic modulations. Each time we do it there tends to be one central chord that the other wavelengths revolve around. That's why it's called Neuratonal. It's neural, and it's also atonal. The various sounds mix together into this one chord, but that chord is...more than a chord. You can hear other stuff in it if you listen real carefully."

Zor smiles. "We don't have to listen carefully at all. Could you see what this music was doing to Ellysine? She could feel it, not just hear it. So could I. It was astoundingly frightening to us. At the same time it was very powerful. Very compelling. I could feel the power when I listened to the recordings - but it comes forth tenfold here where it's actually happening."

"What I wonder about sometimes is what he has to do to make some of those sounds, especially the parts that have that backlayer of rhythm to them. The sound that's like a..."

Zor can see his mind making the words he is too modest to say out loud.

Like a throb. The way your penis throbs when you're REALLY horny and you can't think of anything but doing it with someone...

"I think I understand."

"It's the Orgone. To hear him talk about it, it's what it's all about..."

"Orgone. I believe I have heard that word before. We Ohm have our word for that. We call it "Slasm".

"Yeah. That fits. Definitely."

[[[ Pretty bright kid, really. Ach, what a tough situation this is going to be... ]]]

A long pause.

"Look," Zor finally says. "I think I need to go have a talk with Elli. She's sleeping now, but will wake soon, and there's some things I needs to make her understand. I saw the way Ferron looked at her. And the way she responded. Let me just say that it's not normal for her to behave like this."

"I saw the way he looked at her, too. It's not normal behaviour for him! I've seen him bring girls over here a lot. He looks at them like they're furniture...or food, maybe. But the way he looked at Elli was like how you'd look at flowers. It was weird."

"That's interesting..." Zor ponders this for a moment - only a moment, as it's something he doesn't want to think too much about.

"I know what you're thinking - that she must be my mate, or that I'm just very fond of her...that I'm just an older guy who's jealous of an attractive and powerful younger guy. But that's not the case. It's a different matter entirely. It's just that...well, if he seduces her, I probably won't be able to help him. She would turn against me. And things would get completely insane."

Zikzak doesn't get that one at all. His face is one big round "Huh?"

"It's a lot more than I could explain - it's all about Ohm cultural habits, which would probably seem rather alien to you. In Ohm society, sexual power is the determining factor of so many of our personal interactions...in a very different way than it is with humans..." Then, correcting himself, he adds, "Actually, the essential idea's not really that much different, I suppose. The individual with the most charismatic influence always ends up at the top, whether in human society or Ohm society. It's just that humans tend towards this behaviour unconsciously, while Ohm have distinct, deliberate rituals concerning this - and the awareness of power takes place on a much higher level of consciousness. It's sort of like Ohm are on psychedelic drugs all the time. Except that's not an accurate picture, since drugs tend to incapacitate the mundane senses in humans. Our minds can function in mundane reality while simultaneously being on a level you'd think of as sky-high."

"That's pretty wild...I did some meta-lysergic once. I couldn't even find the bathroom by myself."

"You'll learn to tune out the distractions, I think..." he says, before even realizing just what it implies.

"What do you mean when you say that?"

Before Zor can answer, Zikzak remembers the news broadcast and all the talk of Elan Xanaste and the "seed" he brought with him. His eyes grow wide.

"I can see quite a bit about you from this...higher vantage point, so to speak. You've got a knack for communicating - for communing - with Ohm. I'd say it won't take long before you meet one who takes hold of your soul - among other things - so fast that before you know it, you are one of us."

The youth cannot hide his excitement at the prospect. "I think I would...I know I would like being Ohm. Being more than human! Being like Ferron...or like you and your friend...It would be so exciting! When will I be...ready to do that?

"It's hard to say. Only you can really know that. If I might offer a bit of advice, though: don't hop to it with the first Ohm you see, unless you can pair-bond enough that you don't find it difficult to stay with that individual continuously for a week or so. Two weeks, if possible. It's important to have a guide when you transvert - just like it's important to have one for a meta-lys trip. More important, since this one will last the rest of your life - which should be about twice the span of an ordinary human's. And don't do it at all until you're at least eighteen - or maybe even longer..."

More puzzlement. "Why not?"

"Because you could end up with your brain developing too much and not enough. Your whole world could end up feeling - not just sounding like, but being - one of those multimind-tracks in your AKZON recordings. Now...I must go rest. I've said enough for one evening."

[[[ And probably also far too much...]]]

Zor heads into the living room to be with Ellysine, and Zikzak goes to bed, with entirely too much chaos in his mind to sort out, even as it is.

No one is looking into the backyard now as the moon rises over the gathering stormclouds...its light reflecting from the rain beginning to fall yet again through the hot and overhumid air. No one sees the sliding portal of the Accumulator open, or sees the sleek and angular form of its denizen dart out into the rain to race across the backyard jungle of mutant corn and tangled tall grasses...to slip, completely unnoticed, to the chainlink gate - scramble up and over it fast as an alleycat - swing around and leap to the ground on the other side...

And just as quickly, dash off into the night...with a gleam on his face that could signify only one state of being: that of undivided attention to purposeful action.