14: Care to Try a Little Greek?

The next morning I got up, glanced at the sun out the window and smiled as I stretched, glad I didn’t have anything planned for once. However that illusion was quickly set aside.

“You need hurry up,” Anh told us from the door. “Becky, Melinda and Chalise are on way over. Since Chalise coming, we invite Kitty too. They be here soon. We also invite Brooke and family, so kids keep Caroline company. Get asses moving, lot do today.”

I looked around in confusion. “Did I miss an announcement somewhere?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Cate told me, “but our sisters have had something in the planning stages for a while now, so I guess it’s about that. Anyway, it won’t do you any good to lie in bed and grow even more gray hairs.” She quickly jumped out of bed before I could swat her, and I managed to get myself up as well.

When I got downstairs I found plenty of people waiting for me. Josh and Suzy demanded some immediate attention, although Suzy seemed more interested in the new girl and what her relationship to me was. Suzy looked like she planned to give Nikki a serious talking to. I could just picture that, a 9-year-old lecturing a 19-year-old on maintaining proper boundaries. However I wasn’t quite ready to focus on either one this early. Making my way into the kitchen I discovered everyone else there. Chalise gave me a kiss, telling me Kitty would be by soon.

As Chalise led me to the table Cate handed me a cup of coffee and Anh set some spicy eggs in front of me.

“God damn it, did you have to take the last of the coffee?” Melinda complained. I turned, ready to say something about children being present, but thought better of it when I saw the look in her eyes.

“Are you feeling OK, Mel?” I asked.

“Oh, sure, I’m just peachy. It’s not like all of us can come prancing down in the morning, having burned off all their tensions each and every night. And you look like a million bucks as well. It’s not like you have to worry about zits and wrinkles every day.” I figured we might have some problems this morning if this kept up. I glanced at Cate to see whether she might get on her sister’s case, since they’d been on each other’s nerves for a while. Instead Cate walked up to her and whispered in her ear. Melinda’s head jerked up and she looked back at me doubtfully before glancing at Cate again. However Cate merely nodded her head at her.

Slowly Melinda approached me, as if waiting for a cobra to strike, but when she reached me she grasped me and gave me a big hug. I looked at Cate in confusion, expecting her to make a fuss, but she merely nodded knowingly to me, so I just held Melinda and let whatever was supposed to be going on happen.

I had no idea what they both were thinking, but Melinda held me for a long time. It didn’t bother me, despite our not being overly close, I still loved her and I appreciated how dedicated she now seemed to be to my whole mission. However my eggs were getting cold! As if reading my mind, Anh picked my plate up to warm it up for me again.

No one did anything but watch us as the minutes ticked by, so I focused myself on comforting my sister, who seemed to be in a particularly bad mood today. I held her like I had Cate so many times. Not as a lover, but as I had always done in the past when Cate had been scared or simply needed a hug. Even Mom and Dad looked in to see what we were doing. Finally, Melinda turned her head to address Cate.

“You’re right, I feel much better,” she stated unbelievingly. “You mean I’ve been suffering for the past ten years when all I had to do was give my brother a hug?”

“You have no idea what you’ve been missing all these years,” Cate told her.

“You know, Mel, I’m curious about your earlier comment,” Becky said, now that the silence had been broken. “Alex, have you ever had trouble with your acne?”

I looked at her. “No, I’ve always had fairly nice skin. No problems like that. I figured we just had better skin than the kids at school,” I replied. “Mike was always complaining about his pimples.”

“Cate, what about you?” she asked.

“Nope, my skin was always nice. I hardly ever needed any make-up,” Cate informed her.

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but I know both Melinda and I had terrible trouble with zits while growing up. And I’d be willing to bet both Mom and Dad did when they were younger as well. Alex, how many colds have you had? How many days did you have to skip school because you had the flu?”

I simply looked at her in confusion.

“I can answer that,” Mom told her. “Neither he nor Cate ever got anything. Your father and I would be as sick as dogs, you and Mel would catch whatever we had, but both Alex and Cate would be as happy as clams. Neither one ever seemed to catch anything.”

“Hmm, interesting,” was all Becky said in response.

Chalise turned and regarded me. She’d been standing back from me this whole time, giving my sister free access to me. “You mean all I needed was to give this big lug a hug and all my problems would go away? Zits, cramps, colds and flus?” she asked, as if she’d just found the fountain of youth and couldn’t understand why it wasn’t labeled as such.

“Well, it may take more than that,” Cate told her as she walked up and slipped inside my other arm. “It seems to require daily access,” she replied, giggling as she nestled into my side.

“Have the rest of you noticed any health improvements?” Chalise asked the room at large.

“I no get cold since New Orleans,” Anh announced. “And it much cooler here.”

“Same here,” Shani echoed. Just then the doorbell rang. I started to make a move towards the door but Mom intervened.

“You stay like that and I’ll let Kitty in,” she said. I sighed as she disappeared from sight.

Kitty was laughing when she came in, but hesitated when she saw me holding my sisters.

“I knew you’d be up to something if I took too long coming over,” she teased. “You and Melinda getting along a little better now?” she asked.

“Cate’s idea,” I pleaded.

“It was her time of the month,” Cate explained. “She was about to bite someone, so I tried the only cure I’ve ever known to work.”

“You know, come to think of it, I noticed my last period was a lot easier,” Kitty said.

“For as informative as this is, isn’t there something more important to discuss then everyone’s menstrual cycle?” I asked.

Everyone quickly apologized, and I was once more given a warm breakfast and a fresh cup of coffee.

“It’s all part of the puzzle, Alex,” Becky said. “Your energy has healing properties. Your blow to the head healed incredibly fast. You haven’t been sick much in the last 17 years, and Cate, who’s spent most of her time with you, hasn’t either.”

“Yeah, I get it. So why was it so important I get up early this morning?” I asked, trying to shift the topic.

“We were waiting for Gail. She said she’d be here early this morning, but this part doesn’t require her. She wanted to be here for the later part,” she explained.

“There’s more than one part?” I asked.

“With you, there’s always more than one part,” Becky teased. “Shani, do you want to get this show on the road?”

I turned and looked at Shani. I wasn’t expecting any surprises from her.

“All right. Alex, you asked me to look into setting up a corporation to help us find a place to live in Carbondale. Well, after thinking about it I decided a non-profit would be better because, putting it frankly, you’re highly unlikely to be generating a profit for some time to come. Plus setting it up this way would allow any of your followers to contribute to your expenses.”

“That makes sense, though we’re supposed to be helping them, not asking them for money,” I reminded her.

“That might be so, but I’m sure they’ll be anxious to help. It also allows each of us, who haven’t had to pay much in the way of rent for the last several weeks, to contribute to its starting costs. We can use the non-profit, I kind of like the name ‘Angel Vision Foundation’, to pay for a loft space I found. It can also cover expenses like car rentals, moving and travel expenses. Plus anything put in is tax deductible.”

“Are we actually going to have many expenses?” I asked.

“As time goes by, yes. This allows anyone you help in the hospital to make a ‘donation’ to show how thankful they are. If any of your Watchers in New Orleans wants access to your sperm donations they could likewise make a contribution.”

“I wouldn’t charge them for that, in-vitro fertilization treatments are expensive enough as it is.”

“Actually, a simple transfer of sperm to a healthy fertile woman isn’t expensive,” she informed me. “I think you are confusing it with infertility treatments, which are much more complicated. But even if it were expensive, it’s not a matter of you asking for it, Alex. It’s going to be a matter of them wanting to contribute. You say it helps everyone to take part in your mission. Well that even goes for those you haven’t met yet. They want to help, and if they don’t have a specific job yet they can at least offer some cash or volunteer to help whenever we need something.”

“OK, I’m not necessarily objecting,” I told her. “Go on.”

“All right. Allison, Brooke and I have been looking at spaces in Carbondale and we found a nice loft space. It’ll take a lot of work, especially to make it look like a home to all of us, but it will be ours, and it’ll be a central location we can all work out of.”

“Yeah, it’ll make commuting to school a bitch, though,” I playfully complained.

“You’re already doing that by driving nearly all the way to SIU to pick up Chalise every day. Actually, it’d take less time than you spend now.” She had a good point, plus it would solve the overcrowding in our house and give us a lot more leeway. It sounded like a good idea all around.

“It would also make operating nationally, when you travel, easier,” Melinda suggested. “Your expenses would be covered, we could get corporate rates to hotels, and we could even issue you a corporate credit card.”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” I told them. “I’m convinced. Go ahead and set it up and let’s close on the loft.”

“You don’t want to see it first?” Shani asked, confused.

“If you have looked at it and think its fine, then I’m sure it’s perfect. I trust your judgment on this. What’s up next?”

Shani still looked both elated and confused, but she began to rapidly make notes. Melinda and Becky both stood up to present their own information.

“Tied in with that,” Becky started, “Melinda has been trying to find some way to help you out. She thought she could start a research project studying women on campus who showed ‘intuitive sensitivities’. However it’s much too late in the school year to get a study started, and even if she succeeded, she’d have to find a sponsor who’d want everything to be justified.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” I agreed.

“Well, she came up with a slightly different idea. Instead of trying to initiate a research project to find potential Seers and Watchers, we thought of a different way of interviewing students. Since you generally only attract women, we decided to investigate starting a sorority. By starting a chapter at SIU geared to helping women learn how to listen to ‘their internal voices’, we can direct it to your potential followers, as well as other women attracted by the concept. Then, when we have some likely candidates, we have you come in and see if any of them actually are.”

“Sounds like a lot of trouble—” I started to say.

“Not at all,” Cate observed. “It’s a wonderful idea. It will attract the people already predisposed to seek you out. You can gather them all together at once. Then, once you’ve found them, you have an organization already devoted to helping them out.”

“Exactly,” said Melinda, starting to get excited. “I’ve been recruiting around campus. I used some of Allison and Ryan’s contacts to get approvals for it, and I’ve run recruiting drives and started petitioning to start a new sorority. We’re having our first organized event this afternoon,” she told me.

“This afternoon?” I asked, suddenly growing cautious. “You want me to walk into the middle of a sorority cocktail party?”

“You pick up the obvious pretty well, that’s exactly what we’re planning.”

“Aren’t they going to question why a man is in attendance? A high school kid at that?”

“We’ll keep you hidden during the start,” Melinda explained. “We figure anyone on campus who we missed will be naturally drawn to you just by your proximity. Anyone who objects to your being there will obviously not be a likely candidate. If the idea catches on and we have some success, then we can try expanding to other campuses. I’m sure there are other Watchers in New Orleans who are going to school, or are alumni who can help organize a new sorority on other campuses. That way you can focus on searching large cities over the summer, and then in the fall we can start searching various school campuses.”

“Wow, this is all a bit much. You couldn’t give me a little advance notice?” I asked.

“That’s what this is,” Melinda replied. “We wanted to make sure we could pull it off before we presented the idea to you.”

“Actually, Melinda felt terrible she came between you and Cate, and wanted a way to make it up to you,” Becky told us. “This is largely her pet project. She organized this, got everyone involved, and did the research. This is her baby. It’s also her act of contrition. She hopes you’ll be one of the charter members, Cate.”

“Yeah, but we’re going to have a tough time telling our friends they can’t join our new sorority,” Melinda told us, trying to distract us to avoid forcing Cate into a difficult situation. I admired that action on Melinda’s part.

“I can’t see why we can’t have normal girls join as well,” I suggested.

“There might be a conflict if they figure out there is a tier system in place,” Melinda said, seeming to consider the idea, “with some members having information the rest of them don’t. But I can see wanting to include normal girls as well, since we need more than just the Watchers and a couple of Seers to make it viable. Having the Seers there to guide other girls would benefit all of them and would fit in with the general idea. But then, secrets and hierarchies are the basis of Greek life, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to hide.”

“Still, if we direct it to helping women develop their instincts, to trust their own judgments, we could direct it to all the women on campus,” Shani suggested. “That would feed into the whole ‘Angel Vision’ formula. We could use the foundation to push the sororities on campus. That could be part of its mission. That way we could maintain contact with current members, alumni and contributors, all without anyone asking any questions.”

“You know, this sounds right up my aisle,” Natalie suggested, looking eager about a new task once again. “Planning your trip this summer was a nice distraction, as it got me thinking once again, but this would be a great long term project for me. I could plan it out, talk to people about sponsoring it, arrange things with everyone involved. I’d love to get involved if I could.”

“Uh, sure but—” Melinda started to say hesitantly.

“Don’t worry, Melinda, I won’t steal your thunder. I’ll do all the dirty work. I’ll do schedules, I’ll do the bookings, I’ll figure out who to contact and how. You focus on the ideas and who to recruit, and I’ll handle everything else.”

“Hey, I love it when everything comes together,” I told everyone. “Fine. Natalie, you, Melinda, and Becky get together and hash out where you are going to take this whole project. Now, what’s Gail’s role? Why’s she coming over today?”

“When we suggested it to her, she insisted she wanted to go along with us, just in case there’s any trouble. We certainly wouldn’t expect any, but she takes her job of protecting you pretty seriously.”

I took that under advisement but wanted a little more information.

‘Gail, are you close?‘

‘Still another twenty minutes,’ she told me. ‘I’ll be there before you’re ready to go.’

‘Assuming I already know what’s up, huh?‘

‘I figured you wouldn’t be contacting me otherwise,’ she said.

‘I thought you were staying home to mend fences?‘ I asked her.

‘They didn’t need all weekend to mend. The girls only wanted to make sure I hadn’t lost my mind. I managed to convince them I’m still the same person, just that there’s a little more to the story than they might normally expect.’

‘So how’d it go? Are they convinced?‘

‘Yeah, and I hate to say it, but thanks for reaching out to them. I would never have done it myself. We’re all thankful you made the effort for me.’

‘Ha, tell them they owe me another dinner sometime. We’ll see you when you get here,’ I told her.

“OK, Gail will be here soon. Now, is there anything else I need to know?” I asked the room at large, knowing they usually liked to gang things up on me.

“Well, there should be quite a few people there, including a couple of girls who are coming up from New Orleans to help us. They’re part of Patricia’s group, so they’ll explain to the girls about how to approach family and how to spot potential Watchers and Seers. I’m sure they’re also very interested in meeting you, Alex. I figure you’ll be busy talking to quite a few new sycophants before long,” she teased me, knowing how I felt about people expecting great things from me, but also aware most of the women so far have been very supportive and helpful. “Just be warned, though, since this is a woman’s group we’ll have to keep you hidden. We have another group sponsoring us, so we’ll be using their facilities for the party. We’ll slip you in by saying you’re Melinda and Becky’s brother and you’re helping to carry supplies. Once we get you in, we’ll store you in a private room upstairs and you can conveniently forget to come back out.”

“That sounds good. Who are we taking with us?”

“Well, Becky and I are the organizers,” Melinda said. “Kitty, Chalise and Cate will attend as possible future members. Allison and Brooke will be there representing the hospital, giving some ‘career’ information. Shani will be there to help appeal to any minorities who may show up. Gail will either watch over you or guard the door. Natalie needs to be there to start getting familiar with what we’re doing as well, plus she can provide some useful personal information for any Watchers we find.”

“Excellent. Now, I’m going to head back upstairs where I’m going to finish getting ready. Anyone who wants to come upstairs and help me dress, and that’s a hint, Kitty and Chalise, we can get this little show on the road.”

When I made it back downstairs, dressed and ready to go, Cate stopped us.

“OK, Alex, Becky, Allison and Brooke, I need you in my laboratory for a few minutes.”

When Kitty and Chalise started to follow me, she stopped them.

“You may not want to watch this,” she warned.

“Cate, if we watched him put Mary out of her misery, then we can watch whatever you’ve cooked up,” Kitty announced as they both stepped around her to follow me out.

We all headed to the garage, which had now been transformed into a menagerie of animal cages Cate had dubbed her lab. She pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and pulled out a small mouse.

“Now, we’re going to do this with both a mouse and a rabbit. I don’t know if size makes any difference in what you can see, but I want to be sure we don’t miss anything,” she told us. I simply nodded, already guessing where this was going.

She waved Allison and Brooke in close, then cradled the small animal in her hands and held it up to me.

“His name is Omeg,” she told me. I groaned at both the idea she was telling me its name and at her strange logic.

“As in ‘Omega’, the Greek word for ‘the end’?” I asked. She simply nodded. Although I wasn’t anxious to do this, I’d known it was necessary for a while. I slowly reached up and did like I’d done recently. I simply put my hand over Omeg’s small head and watched as he simply stopped moving. It didn’t look very impressive to me, but I was well aware of what I’d just done to him. Cate looked up at me as if to be sure I’d actually done it, turned to be sure both Allison and Brooke were satisfied with the demonstration, then she held up a single finger and turned to put it on a small tray while she got another one.

“Omeg 2,” she told me simply. She showed him to us, and then she took a needle she had prepared nearby and injected something into his neck. Omeg 2’s end wasn’t quite as quick this time, but it was no less definite. Cate now turned to Allison.

“Well, what did you see?”

“It was like Alex thought,” she told us. “There wasn’t anything. The energy simply diminished. There’s still some left, but you can tell it’s dead.”

“When Alex did it you could see the energy in its forebrain go dim, and then the rest of its energy followed. I don’t think there’s any doubt, it looks like Alex was right about there being no sign of the soul passing on.”

“Not necessarily,” Kitty offered. “Don’t expect Anh’s spiritual realm to simply be a ghostly image floating away. I suspect there is much more to it than that. But I don’t think, if it does exist, that it occupies the same space we inhabit. It’s still possible there’s an afterlife, but like before, we have no way of observing it.” Everyone nodded at the wisdom of her words.

“So, should I do a rabbit now?” Cate asked.

“No, as much as I’d appreciate eating some rabbit stew, I think we can save poor little Psi 1,” Brooke told my sister, who merely nodded and proceeded to clean up her small lab while we observed. When she was ready, she dropped her stuff into a hazardous materials container and we all left her garage/lab.

We got to the campus early. The sorority—rather the ‘women’s fraternity’—hosting us was located at Sanford Hall. Silly me, I’d always thought ‘women’s fraternities’ were called sororities. I guess they had their reasons for renaming standard English words, but I figured that was their choice. I hadn’t been on campus much aside from moving both Becky and Melinda into their dorms and apartments before the school sessions started. We got busy carrying in the various supplies, including a fair amount of beer and wine (guess who got stuck carrying the heavy kegs?). The women of the group hosting us, Alpha Gamma Delta, didn’t pay me any mind so I wasn’t too worried, but I made sure I ducked away as soon as I could. Becky led me to a small upstairs room where she told me to lock the door for now, since she didn’t want anyone who lived here accidentally walking in on me. So, I just sat there, idly twiddling my thumbs.

I let Gail know where I was, and she told me she’d be available if I needed her, but she was doing the remaining heavy lifting I skipped out on, so I felt a little guilty, but not too much. After a while someone knocked quietly at the door. Not knowing if I should answer I waited for the signal, two knocks followed by another two.

“Hello, Mr. Alex, sir? Are you in there?” someone called out to me. Being curious I had to check to see who it was.

I found two quite pretty girls peeking in when I opened the door, so I did the only thing I could. I invited them in.

“Excuse us,” said a dark haired girl with light skin and pale lips, “we know we really shouldn’t interrupt, but we’re both from New Orleans. Pat ... I mean Patricia Moore sent us up to help. Anyway, we’ve been dying to meet you, and Patricia said you wouldn’t mind if we—” They were both so cute I couldn’t let them languish in indecision for long.

“Don’t worry, I’m glad you came up. I’m Alex, by the way, but then I guess you already know that.”

“Oh, we know all about you,” the other one, a brunette with darker skin replied. “You’re about all we talk about back home anymore. Patricia said if we helped get the charter house here off the ground, you’d help us set up our own at our schools.”

I smiled at their wide-eyed innocence. “And may I ask what you two beautiful women are called?”

“Oh, excuse us,” the first one laughed. “My name is Tina Shaw and this is Amy Ray. We’re both big fans. Amy saw you when you were still in New Orleans. I only heard about you afterwards, but I’ve been looking forward to meeting you ever since.”

Both were quite attractive. They wore glasses, though they had quite different styles. Tina’s were heavy black frames which highlighted her hair and set off her skin, while Amy’s were lightweight wire-rim glasses. Amy’s hair was a little mussed up, while Tina’s was well-combed with her hair dyed a couple of different colors underneath her darker hair. They looked completely different, but they both had the same adoring look and the same youthful playfulness to their eyes.

I was also struck by how well Patricia had perfected her identification process. Previously we’d only been able to identify Watchers by catching them gawking at me. However I’d been told these two were Watchers, and she’d been correct on that. Watchers were more difficult to identify than Seers were, so Patricia’s methods seem to have been firmly established.

‘Hey, Patricia, I just met Tina and Amy. I’m really impressed you’ve perfected your identification process. Good job, and thanks for sending them up to help us. They both seem very enthused and I’m sure they’re going to fit in really well.‘

‘Thanks, Alex. We worked on it really hard, talking to relatives and friends of the people I’d identified as Watchers here. We started noticing trends and when we followed them up, we learned even more about them. I think we’ve got a good system now, ‘ she told me, sounding quite pleased by my approval of what she’d been doing. It had been a while since I told her she’s been doing a good job, despite the amount of work she’s been putting in down there. I’d have to make my oversight up to her, but first I had a couple of girls to get back to.

“Well, it’s great to meet you both, and thanks for coming all this way to help us out. I really appreciate it,” I told them, which really seemed to please them both to no end. “I’ll have to think of a way of rewarding you for it. So, where do you both go to school?”

“I attend Tulane University,” Amy told me proudly. “That’s why I was in town when you were there. My family is from Alexandria, to the northwest of the city. One day several students started talking about ‘the angel of New Orleans’, so we had to see what the fuss was about. They were intrigued, but their interest didn’t last long. I followed your movements for the rest of your time there, and then I eventually found the community a little while later.”

“And I attend the University of Mississippi, near Memphis,” Tina said. “My family is from New Orleans, and I started coming home more often once I heard about you. After talking to several people, a girl by the name of Darice finally mentioned I should contact Patricia. They were both really nice and explained how we’re part of a new race of people. It’s great being part of the beginning of a new movement.”

“Yeah, but just remember, this isn’t about a new race for the people here today. It’s simply about a sorority which focuses on trusting women’s own judgments. That’s the emphasis. We’ll talk to anyone who shows any further inclinations, but we’re trying to generate a grass roots movement at this point.”

“Yeah, we know, we’ll make you proud,” Amy said excitedly. “Let’s get back downstairs, Tina, and see if we can find any more of us.” With that they both giggled and turned to leave.

“Wait, before you go, what the heck is the name of this new sorority?” I asked, my curiosity finally getting the better of me.

“Oh,” Tina answered, “it’s Alpha-Alpha-Alpha. It stands for ‘ἀεί ἀποπιστεύω αὐτογνωμονέω’,” she said, slowly sounding out the words carefully. “It means ‘Always Trust Your Judgment’.”

I was surprised by the response. “‘Triple A’? ‘And if your judgment doesn’t work out, you can always call to have your car towed’? Didn’t anyone think about what else it spelled?”

They both laughed, “Yeah, everyone already thought of that, but it was the Greek phrase which best encapsulated what we are trying to say to new members. The Latin sounds better, ‘Praecipue Animo Fiduciam’, which would make it Pi-Alpha-Zeta (Π-Α-Ζ). But Becky said the Greek would ensure it would always be listed first in the student guide,” Tina said, giggling.

“Oh, by the way,” Amy told me, “I’m a dual Marketing/Art major, and Melinda told me about your idea for the Angel Vision Foundation. I think I can come up with a really good logo for it. What’s more, I can file for the trademark for it, just to make sure it’s official,” she said, glad to be able to help.

“That’d be great,” I told her, gently kissing her forehead. She blushed and lowered her head, but I could tell she was really proud. Then they both ran out, giggling the whole way.

‘Alex, we’ve got some very anxious people down here,’ Gail warned me.

‘I’ll need more information than that. How anxious and what type of people?‘ I asked her.