“The Catalyst” Series
Chapter 05: First Date and an Examination
Getting into the car, after finally escaping the crazy scene where all my girls had confronted Kitty in my living room, I realized I’d hardly said a dozen words the entire time, as it’d just been a dizzying rush so far. Turning to look at her, I smiled.
“In case I forgot to mention it in that little menagerie, you’re absolutely beautiful tonight,” I whispered. And she was, too. She was wearing a dark blue silk dress, which somehow matched the corsage I’d given her. I guess they’d compared notes beforehand. Her hair was done up, mostly on top of her head instead of in the pony tail she usually wore at school, making her look older. The material of her dress made her smaller breasts stand out, so they looked much larger than I’d seen at school. She had a combination of blue/green eye shadow to match her green eyes and her blue ensemble, and her makeup simply made her even more adorable. Her lips were a deep red that made me want to kiss her then and there. Instead, I simply squeezed her hand and then fastened my seat belt.
“We’d better go, our reservation awaits.”
“So, Alex,” she inquired as we got under way, quickly digging into the heart of the matter before we’d even gotten past the traditional idle chit-chat, “whatever did you do that everyone is so thankful to you? Shani said you changed their lives, that you ensured that everything in their lives is different and they see their lives completely differently. It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing a kid does during spring break. I’d have expected you to maybe sneak a couple of beers and possibly peek at a bared breast in New Orleans; not change several people’s lives so much they up and quit their jobs and leave their families.”
“Uh,” I mumbled, trying to stall for time. “I just gave them a fresh perspective. A simplified view from a teenager’s point of view, that allowed them to see their worlds differently than they’d seen it previously,” I adlibbed like crazy.
“Yeah, that’s your story?” she asked, clearly not believing what I’d just told her. “And they are crazy about you as well. It sounds like those three on the phone are all older. Didn’t you meet anyone your own age?”
“Uh, not really, I just reacted to whoever came up to me,” I said.
“They came up to you? What, they took one look at you and figured you had the potential to change their lives?”
I knew I had to watch myself in answering her here. “No, we ran across a lot of different people, and conversations just developed. It didn’t take long before they’d say something that I’d respond to, and as you undoubtedly already know, I tend to approach life a little differently than your typical teenager.”
“You’ve got that right,” she snickered. “So, is that all of your women, or do you have any others I haven’t met yet?”
“Uh…,” I hesitantly replied. “Actually there are a few more, but I never did anything with them. There were a few more that were like Natalie and Rebecca, in that I didn’t do anything like changing their lives or anything. However, both Natalie and Rebecca were so thankful to be included in the group they acted like the rest.”
“So, you’ve got six women who feel they owe you their lives, you’ve got two who will do anything for you just for including them, plus an untold number who’d love to join the group, but you haven’t allowed them to yet? Do I have that about right?” she asked with a smile.
“Well, I like to think it’s a bit more nuanced than that,” I tried to argue. “Besides, the other group also includes a couple of men.”
“Uh huh, and did any of the men offer to do anything for you?”
I wasn’t expecting that question and it put me in an even worse position than I was already in.
“Uh, yeah, but I told him I wasn’t into guy-guy stuff. Luckily neither was he.”
“Wait a minute, a guy who you met from out of the blue, who felt no obligations to you, offered to sleep with you, even though he’s not gay?”
I rolled my eyes, knowing there was no way I was getting out of this easily. We’d reached the restaurant and I’d parked, but I simply turned off the engine so I could talk this all out.
“Look, it’s not as odd as it sounds,” I tried briefly to convince her.
“Considering all the other strange things you’ve been doing in the last week, somehow I believe that,” she replied, still smiling as she said it. She leaned over and gave me a brief kiss. “Don’t worry, though, I’m glad you didn’t take him up on it. Now at least I know I only have half the population to worry about.”
I smiled at her response and, as we started to get out of the car I quietly responded to myself, “Not quite 50%, more like 5%, tops.” Apparently she heard me because she turned to me.
“Are you serious? I can expect 5% of the population to react this way to you whenever you encounter them?”
“I don’t think it’s even that high. There are certainly more than 100 kids in school, and there’s only one who—”
“You’ve already got another one at school?” she asked, clearly shocked.
“No, no,” I hurriedly tried to correct her. “I’m not involved with her or anything. I was just saying that, out of the entire school, there’s only one girl who’s like Natalie is.”
“Like Natalie is?” she said, considering it briefly. “You said that Natalie was simply thankful to be included. Have you included her in any fun?”
“No, absolutely not. She’s like the others in New Orleans. They’re fascinated by me, but I haven’t done anything besides talk to them. Her name is Betty Taylor, if that helps. I had lunch with her on Tuesday and Wednesday.”
“Oh, that girl. I was wondering who you were talking to, especially since you looked so upset after sitting at the smart table.” It was clear that Kitty had been watching me before I’d ever approached her, but then Darrell had said as much.
“Yeah, again, I was telling her some things about herself that she hadn’t really noticed before. She was appreciative, but not like Shani and the rest.”
“You know, you sound more like everyone’s father than their boyfriend,” she commented.
“Well, I wouldn’t really call any of us boyfriend/girlfriend. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but I haven’t been able to think of a more descriptive title than that yet.”
“Yes, I’d say it’s more complicated,” she said, snuggling up against me to shield herself from the cold wind. “I still can’t figure out how all these grown women with jobs and responsibilities, get so carried away over a teenage boy that they’d do such wild things?”
“It’s a good question, one I’ve asked myself a number of times,” I replied honestly. “My dad seems to think it’s my responsibility, but I kind of think it was just unusual circumstances, and everyone didn’t know how to handle the situation.”
“Yeah, it sounds like you believe your father, you keep talking about your ‘responsibilities’ to them. Normally it’s the adults who are responsible, not the teenager. And what exactly made it an ‘unusual circumstance’, the fact that adult women were fooling around with a kid?”
“Well, it’s a bit involved to get into just yet, but let’s just say that everyone wasn’t thinking clearly at the time.”
“That’s just it, you’re a real enigma,” she sighed, making me wonder just how many of my fellow students would just drop a word like enigma into a sentence. It especially made me wonder about Darrell’s interest in her, as I couldn’t picture him using such a word either.
“You talk up someone who threatens you,” she continued, “you act like having women follow you across the country is no big thing. You play down everything that happens to you. Your friends and family imply things I can’t figure out. Just what am I supposed to do with you?”
“Well, you could just give me a chance, just like I asked you to do with Darrell. A chance to get to know me regardless of the rumors, the hangers on, and anything else you don’t know about me yet.” I looked at her with my most sincere expression, while trying to send reassuring emotions at her, hoping what Dad had been saying about me influencing people had some truth to it.
“There’s a lot more to you than even the rumors hint at,” she told me, hugging my arm. “Sure, I’ll give you a chance to start over, but I’m kind of fascinated with the enigma I have right here.” With that she leaned over and gave me another quick kiss on the cheek. That had to be a good sign, I told myself. Someone who’s about to dump you doesn’t keep kissing you, do they?
We preceded to our destination then, a little French restaurant my parents said was a nice quiet romantic getaway they’d visit occasionally when they wanted to escape from obnoxious kids. Kitty seemed to finally recognize the small subtle sign over the door, despite our having been standing in front of it for some time.
“Oooh, the ‘ l'Oignon Pleurer,’ I’ve always wanted to try eating here! I’ve heard good things about it, mostly from my parents’ friends. The kids at school never go here.”
“You know, if you’re going to give me a fresh start, you’ll have to get back into the car. That other guy wasn’t much of gentlemen,” I suggested. She smiled and climbed back in, watching me as I formerly opened her door for her, bowing slightly as I did so.
“You know, that might work better if you didn’t have such a crappy car,” she laughed. I hooked her arm with mine and escorted her across the parking lot to the restaurant.
“Hey, it’s the best my parents and I could scrape together with two older sisters in college, and two more getting ready,” I protested. “Besides, it got us here and that’s what counts.”
“Says the man with a jacket and tie who pinned me with a corsage for just a ‘normal’ date.”
“Hey, it’s a big occasion for me. I don’t get out on many dates.”
“Yeah, you don’t need to,” she replied, smiling at me again. “You get all the action you need just from the girls you casually pick up while on vacation.”
“If a little action was all I was interested in, I wouldn’t have asked you to accompany me tonight,” I stated, kissing her on the cheek before I opened another door for her. As we approached the maitre d’, she suddenly reached up and rubbed her thumb along my cheek.
“Lipstick,” she mouthed to me.
“Party of two?” he asked.
“We have reservations,” I explained, “The Jennings party.”
“Ah yes, if you’ll please follow me.” Kitty hugged my arm tightly as we walked down a dim, candlelit aisle to a quiet little table near the back.
“Madame?” he asked, holding her chair for her. She glanced at me and giggled slightly, as if she expected me to be holding the chair for her, then sat, smiling the whole time.
“Gosh, this is nice,” she gushed once we were established and we’d ordered a simple iced tea for each of us. I felt it was a sin to be ordering tea in a nice French restaurant on a romantic date; especially since the girls and my parents had been letting me drink a bit of wine with dinner recently, to ‘let me get used to drinking, so you don’t get into trouble when you do it in public’.
“I’m glad you like it,” I enthused, touching her hand, “I aim to please.”
“Well, you’re doing a very good job.”
She asked for recommendations while we were perusing the menus, probably because most of it was in French. Luckily Dad had prepared me for this, so I had a few.
“The French are known for their sauces, they were initially developed to help cover sometimes questionable meats. I like to think my extravagant manners will do that for me, helping cover the obvious gaffes of inexperience and just plain ineptitude.” She just beamed at me.
“Your girlfriends didn’t warn me what a little charmer you were.”
“Let’s not go on about others, not here. I’d rather focus my attention on you alone.”
“Getting tired of inventing excuses, eh?” she giggled.
“Yeah,” I groaned in mock despair.
The dinner was very nice. We both enjoyed ourselves. The waitress was very friendly, and despite her presenting her ample bosom on frequent occasions. I managed not to stare, at least not too overtly.
We talked of several things, thankfully keeping away from all the obvious ones, like girlfriends, innuendo, or other followers, and talked mainly of school and various aspirations, family and friends. She told me she was considered a bit of an odd duck, as she liked to think independently. She always liked to find alternative approaches to things and refused to accept what she was told to believe in school or on television. I thought that sounded good, as would give me a bit of leverage in my own dealings with her.
On the drive back she pointedly asked me if I should call ahead. I simply smiled at her, feeling glad I had made such a clear impression on her.
“No, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you didn’t think of me as a purely sexual being, hurrying you off to bed the first opportunity I get. You already have a bad enough image of me because of my current living arrangements. Behaving badly won’t help that any.” She laughed, hugged my arm and told me it was alright. She’d respect my wishes, as long as I didn’t hold out too long.
I would have liked to simply kiss her at her door, but I had to take her home to get her car. This, of course, entailed coming inside to say hello. When I opened the door suddenly there were girls and women everywhere. I quickly introduced her to my parents before she could be dragged away by the various women. The ‘rents asked us politely how our night was, to which Kitty hugged my arm and said “Very nice. He’s such a gentleman.” Then, before a female confab took place, I managed to steer her away with the explanation that she needed to conspire with Chalise before all my women poisoned her mind.
Having achieved a relatively clean getaway, I escorted her out to her car, where I did manage to get my goodbye kiss. It started simple, I again wanted it short and sweet, but she made it a bit more interesting and I couldn’t very well deny her, now could I? But, as always, it ended way too soon and she climbed into her car and drove away, honking her horn as she left. She had an old celery colored Volkswagen bug, so its beep sounded just as happy and cheerful as its owner.
Reentering the house, I was swarmed with inquiring female minds, all wanting every intimate detail of the date.
I briefly described the better parts of the date to them, and they all ohhed and ahhed at the appropriate parts.
“So, did she have any problems with your unorthodox lifestyle at all?” asked my father.
“Uh, no, she seems to have accepted everything the girls told her pretty much at face value, but she knows we’re trying to hide something. She just doesn’t know what.”
“But again, she didn’t deny you anything, make any reasonable demands or ask any sensible questions?” he pressed.
“Oh, she asked LOTS of ‘sensible’ questions. She pressed quite a bit on the drive over there.” I then told them about how she’d asked for more information about the others left behind in New Orleans, and how I’d mistakenly told her about the watchers, including David. They all looked surprised, but after a bit they all started giggling at me, apparently relieved she hadn’t reacted badly to the news.
“I finally deflected her enough to finally get her to drop her line of questions at the restaurant,” I told them. “I used the line, ‘please give me the same chance you’re going to give Darrell, to start from scratch’.”
“Clever, remind her of the very opportunity you asked her to extend to Darrell,” Cate replied, much too cleverly.
“I’m just saying…,” my father said as he walked away.
The girls all wanted a detailed analysis still, but I feigned tiredness, which only shifted the discussion to my bedroom. That only left Mom out of it, although we all knew she’d be brought up to date soon. Cate didn’t bat an eye as the girls promptly stripped me out of my clothes and soon had me lying on my back in my bed. Anh even had my cock out, ready to keep it warmed up for when I got to the good parts, but I had to disappoint them when I explained why there were no good parts. They all sighed when I explained what I had said, which I found a bit odd, but we stayed up for quite a while as we rehashed events and made future plans.
The girls simply straightened and hung up my clothing as if nothing unexpected was happening on the bed as I told my story. Cate simply sat in the chair I had by my desk to listen to my recitation. The girls finally got me going as they resumed playing the part of Kitty, teasing me with their imitations of her saying all kinds of naughty things to me while they played with my cock. Of course Cate didn’t leave the room for this. None of us could help but laugh as both Shani and Anh pretended they were wayward virginal teenagers setting out to seduce me. Allison’s imitation was just a bit too spot on, though. I kept glancing up to see if Cate was going to be either offended or want to join in, but she seemed to be a happy little voyeur from her chair. I ended up with a couple dinners at the Y in addition to my meal at the Crying Onion. I think Cate quietly exited as we were all drifting off to sleep.
The next morning we got up and moving early, since we had a scheduled meeting with Becky. She’d asked me to bring both Allison and Shani with me. Of course Cate was dying to go as well, since this would be a chance for her to see her older sister do the kinds of tests Cate really wanted to do on me. Plus I actually think she wanted to make sure nothing Becky might have planned could potentially harm me in any way. She might be my younger sister, but she was as protective as a mama bear!
Becky had also asked that we call her as we were pulling into the parking lot, so we did. As we were parking, we could see her and two other assistants running out to meet us. They were both young, like Becky herself, and were likely filling the same role as she at the lab. She quickly explained that she had a series of tests planned, mostly to simply rule out various things, so she doubted we’d actually discover much today. As a part of the test, she wanted each of us, Shani, Allison and me, to go to separate buildings where we’d run consecutive tests. She also explained that she had us come early on a Saturday merely as a safeguard.
“You’d said you thought the occurrences were simply numbers based, so I didn’t want to risk you running into anyone if we could prevent it. If there is anyone on campus you might be able to activate, I’d like to be there when it happens. This early on a Saturday, there just aren’t many people here.
“I also want to warn you, Alex, the guy that’s going to be testing you isn’t much into claims of telepathy and extrasensory perception, so just go with the flow. Don’t let him provoke you, OK?” I agreed with her, and the various people led us off in different directions, with Cate following Becky and me into her office block. She led us to a small side room where I was introduced to a small brusque nerdy looking guy by the name of Nate, who wore thick glasses and a lab coat.
“I heard you had your first date last night,” Becky told me, while Nate was attaching things to my forehead, chest and wrists. “I would have loved to have been there and watched her reactions, but Mom thought she was likely to be overwhelmed with all the women there already, so I’ll have to meet her another time.” Her comment alerted me that Mom wasn’t just gossiping with my girls about me, she was also gossiping with my sisters. I’d have to make sure that was as far as it went. If she started gossiping with the neighbors, I was going to be upset.
“OK,” Becky started to explain, “We’re going to be testing a wide variety of things. The electrodes on your head will be testing for standard brain waves, those on your chest and wrist will check your vitals. Normal brain waves, Alpha, Beta and various others are really too small to cover much distance, so Nate’s also set up a crude device to measure the various electromagnetic spectrum to see if you might be broadcasting on any other wavelengths. If you’re giving off anything, it’ll be picked up here.” I nodded my understanding, so she continued.
“We’re also going to be doing other things as well. During the proceedings, this little computer screen will show you various random things. I want you to send the messages, just as they are, to both Shani and Allison. We’ll try to detect anything you may be sending, but we’ll also check the message for reliability. There’s also a couple of pictures included as well, so just send whatever you can and we’ll interpret their responses to see if they’re in the ballpark.” I again nodded, letting her know I understood.
“We are then going to try to detect any limitations to your messages. First, we’ll talk to you, then we’ll try noise canceling on these headphones,” she said as she fitted me with a large set of headphones. “Finally, we’ll send interference patterns with them, to see if we can disturb the messages.” We all agreed, although I could see Nate sneer in the background. With that we began the test.
The images the computer generated were an odd mix. Most were random quotes or pieces of literature, others were mathematics or numbers, occasionally a picture or a short film would play. I knew I could convey the images and visuals well enough, but I didn’t know how well Becky could measure the accuracy with which I sent it. I think she was just measuring how well my girls could remember the events I transmitted to them. While this was going on, the headphones started emitting various obnoxious sounds.
At first it was just little beeps, then it was music, gradually increasing in volume, then it became an annoying series of odd sounds. Some made it really difficult to concentrate, as I really just wanted to get rid of the damn earphones, but I tried to maintain my composure and concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing.
Finally, the screen began to show multiple images, and Becky asked me to send one to Shani and another to Allison. Luckily, sending images didn’t take as much thought as did words, since for that I normally just spoke the words in my mind. For images I just pictured and projected them, so it was actually much easier.
Nate didn’t seem very happy during this whole procedure, making faces as it progressed. Occasionally Becky would instruct me to send a message to Anh or Brooke, hoping the distance would make a difference, but I couldn’t detect any.
When it was over, Becky removed my earphones and Nate took the various tabs off me, being none to gentle as he ripped the adhesives off. I could tell he wasn’t in a very good mood.
“I knew there wouldn’t be any response,” Nate said, addressing the room in general. “Telepathy just isn’t possible. The waves released by the brain are all way too weak to travel any meaningful distance. There’s no kind of antenna anywhere in the body to receive any kind of broadcast waves, and there’s no region in the brain equipped to handle processing of any kind of messaging,” he complained about being pressed to do such a meaningless examination. “I know it’s sexy in stories and on the TV, but it’s just a bunch of hokum.”
“Even if it were possible, you didn’t give off any more waves than you would at any other time. Science doesn’t lie buddy!”
I could see Cate bristle at someone saying hurtful things to me, but Becky just shook her head in response, effectively telling her to ignore it. Nate left after he finished, feeling full of himself, while we remained on our own.
“We’ll examine the results and compare them,” Becky explained once Nate was well away from the room. “It’ll take some time, which is precious since I asked everyone to help as a personal favor, as no one’s being paid for any of this. However, I’m pretty sure you’re going to have succeeded in virtually all of the tests. Still, I’ll go over the results in detail and let you know if I find anything unexpected.
“Now, these tests were just meant to document what you can do and to rule out possible explanations. However the next test would be to get you under a MRI or something that could measure your brain activity while you’re doing all of this. Unfortunately we aren’t set up for that here, and you’d likely need to either pay for the tests or get a medical prescription for them. I’d suggest you talk to either Brooke or Rebecca in New Orleans and see if they could possibly arrange for something like that.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s likely,” I told her. “They’re just an EMT and a nurse. No one’s going to listen to their views in regard to a hospital’s services in another state that they have no affiliation with. It’d be hard enough to arrange in their own hospital. Still, I’ll pass it by them and see what they say.”
When I did they both surprised me, saying they’d look into it, but not saying anything further. I’d thought they’d both just quickly shoot the idea down and I’d be done with it.
“So, is there anything we can attribute to the lack of any outward signs of Alex’s mental telepathy?” Cate asked her sister.
“It’s not really a setback, as it was what I was expecting. It means they’re using some unknown mechanism to communicate. Waves are very 19th and 20th century. I think your abilities are definitely 21st century, or farther.
“I’d love to figure out how you’re doing it. Not how you can perform telepathy, but the mechanism that allows the information to pass through physical space. Since he gets instant messages across several hundred miles, that implies that it either travels faster than the speed of sound, or somehow it’s not physically limited by distance. That’d earn me a Nobel Prize right there, but of course I’d have to reveal you in order to collect it. Hopefully once we discover it, I can find some way of duplicating or recording it independently. Then I could win one, although I still don’t think it’s worth the risk to the family.”
“So, do you have any ideas on how Alex may have gotten these abilities?” Cate asked her sister. “I’ve been trying to figure out whether he’s been this way from birth, or whether something happened to him that nobody knew about. Do you think it’s related to his DNA?”
“Well, everything in the human body is related to their DNA,” Becky explained. “Even cancerous growths are generated by degraded DNA. Given everything I’ve been told about him, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that God granted him these amazing abilities. But frankly, I like Anh’s approach. Whether you buy her theory about his being a spirit from another realm or not, her point is that what’s important is what his ultimate mission is, and in how we can all help him achieve it. I don’t know if we’ll ever have any clue how he got his abilities, and I don’t think it matters.
“I think you’ve got to get off this kick of explaining everything, and listen to Anh when she talks about Alex intuitively knowing what to do. You’ve been worrying about Alex getting hurt because he asked the wrong girl out. Somehow, he seems to have done a fairly good job of selecting someone who didn’t react negatively when given all of his dirty little details. I think you’ve got to trust in his abilities a little more, and stop assuming you can protect him from the world.”
Cate didn’t respond to that, but seemed to be thinking it over as Becky turned her attention back to me.
“Oh, by the way, Melinda had a couple of questions so you may be hearing from her. She started doing that internet search to see if anyone has similar abilities, as I told you earlier,” Becky explained, resulting in a raised eyebrow from Cate. Apparently I’d forgotten to mention it to her.
“Any idea what she’s concerned about?” I asked her.
“No, just that it’s not an easy thing to search for. Apparently it’s not easy to reduce your vague abilities into easy Google search terms,” she replied, laughing at the prospect of trying. I just shrugged. We went and got the other girls and met the other lab techs.
One girl, a pretty young blond, smiled at me. “That was positively amazing,” she announced. “I was watching Shani during our phase of the experiments. Becky told me to keep strict protocols, so she didn’t even have wireless enabled on her machine. I actually pulled the wireless card on her device, yet she seemed to have responded accurately to each message you sent. I haven’t examined the data yet, and Becky hasn’t actually said anything to me, but you’ve already got a believer in me. If she’ll let me, I’ll be glad to participate in any further studies she’d like to do for you.”
I thanked her but looked a bit askance at her, wondering whether such interest might not bode ill for our attempts to remain hidden at the moment. All we needed was a junior lab assistant to start posting messages to someone up her food chain. All it would take would be a certain higher level researcher taking her seriously and we could have some trouble, in whatever form it might take. I’d have to talk to Becky about that later.
“Actually, the room Alex was in was completely shielded, so no broadcast waves of any kind should have gotten through. Again, that seems to show that what Alex is using isn’t impeded by physical space and obstructions. Also, it implies that the two girls share the same mechanism in their brains as he is, and that they aren’t merely piggybacking on his ability. When he ‘activated’ them, he must have made some significant changes to their brains in order to allow that type of capability.
I simply shook my head at all the possible implications to all of this, though Cate was beside herself about it. The girls were fascinated by the whole experiment, as well. While their tests hadn’t been quite as extensive as mine, they’d also had the obnoxious headphones testing what annoying sounds would do to our communication abilities. We talked about it on the ride home. Becky followed us home; she’d told us that Melinda was already at the house. While the girls talked, I started to turn my attention to the next item on my radar, my upcoming date with Chalise.