Prologue

Alex glanced up at the early morning light filtering through the leaves overhead and drew in a deep breath, enjoying the scent of the forest around him. It was a beautiful Monday morning when Alex, Cate and Gail were finally ready to set off on their grand adventure. They’d been looking forward to this for some time, as each prepared for it in their own way. They each felt apprehensive because they knew many things would occur which they couldn’t anticipate.

It was true Alex lived in town and thus wasn’t technically within the forest, but the town in which he lived, Shawneetown, or rather New Shawneetown, resided next to a large national park, and he always felt close to it. The town had never grown very large, and so it still maintained a lot of the natural feel of the nearby woods.

Shawneetown was one of the first settlements in Illinois. What is now “Old Shawneetown” was built along the Ohio River and was subject to repeated flooding, so the residents eventually built a new town which took the name over from the original. Shawneetown’s greatest claim to fame occurred when a group of the residents went to the local bank for seed money to start a new town in Northern Illinois. The bank refused, claiming there was no future in the location they’d chosen. That site later became known as Chicago. That seems to show the ambitions of many of the inhabitants of the region to the current day.

These thoughts floated through Alex’s mind as he took in the feel of the familiar surroundings. He’d spent his entire life living in this quiet little town. His first foray into the wider world was on a recent trip over spring break to New Orleans. It was during that trip his entire world had changed as he discovered he was far from a typical kid. While he had been far from exceptional, he’d suddenly found women were attracted to him, feeling themselves drawn to him because they felt some ‘power’ emanating from him. It turned out he was giving off a previously undetected energy associated with all life, and which these women felt drawn to.

But it was more complex than that. It was only certain people, and aside from a few strange cases, it seemed to always be women. That was where his sister, Cate, had come in. While Alex and his sisters were quite bright and did well in school, Cate patterned herself as a budding scientist like her elder sister, Becky. Cate had glommed onto his new abilities quickly, and provided him with a series of theories concerning it. Since then she’d provided him with excellent advice, both about his abilities, the science behind it, and about how to deal with the many changes in his life.

He’d quickly gone from a loner, uncomfortable with people, focusing mainly on reading books and playing games with a couple friends, to a central figure in multiple people’s lives. Several women followed him home from New Orleans, and each looked to him to provide them with direction and purpose. That had made him grow up rather quickly.

At their instigation he’d made a stab at dating, as they didn’t want him to miss out on a “normal teen experience” just because of those following him. That had quickly gone south, as the kids at school soon took notice of the attitude of those around him. Fortunately, he’d found two girls who accepted him as he was. They seemed to be able to deal with him without presuming they knew all about him based on what they’d heard, and they hit it off almost right off the bat. One of his followers, an older Vietnamese woman by the name of Anh, theorized he was being led to find kindred spirits in the people around him, and that was why they’d gotten along so well. However Alex still wasn’t sure how he felt about that particular concept.

His involvement with those two girls, Kitty and Chalise, had defined the last couple of months. The family of one of the girls, Chalise, took exception to him, and the situation quickly degenerated when an older brother physically attacked Alex in his own home while he was on a date with her. It ended with the father taking out a contract on his life, paid for by her older brother throwing a professional baseball game in exchange for an underworld bookie doing the deed.

Alex had grown up a lot over the course of these events, but now he was looking to the future. He’d just graduated high school, and the need to reach out and help these people who were tied to him meant he had no time for college or a normal job. Adding to the urgency of the mission, Cate thought he only had a limited amount of time to live due to the energy he was giving off. His mission, therefore, boiled down to his finding as many of these people he could and ‘activating’ them. Something they feared no one else could accomplish.

His sister Cate observed Alex seemed to be aging prematurely. From graying hair, hair loss, his eating habits, and his overall health it seemed this energy he felt coursing through him was killing him. She paralleled it to having the equivalent of a nuclear power plant in the space of a couple of millimeters in his brain. But the energy itself, since it seemed to be associated with living things, had its own healing properties. Thus he found himself in a strange limbo. His body healed quite rapidly, but it was also degenerating at the same time. This strange dichotomy meant that his health was difficult to measure, but everyone around him was convinced he only had a short time to achieve whatever he was meant to. The big question was just how long he may have, whether it might be weeks, months, years, or even decades, no one had a clue. But he knew he had a lot to accomplish, and he couldn’t waste any time in doing it.

The abilities he possessed were both simple and complex. They were simple in that he couldn’t do very much with them, but complex in that they didn’t seem to follow any established logic. The energy coming from him couldn’t be measured or even detected. However, those he activated (he dubbed them ‘Seers’) were the only ones who could actually see this new form of energy. They reported it revealed numerous things as shown by a glow around people which looked like a multicolored aura, from the health of a person and each of their organs to the nature of the person’s soul and even their changing moods. Alex, however, was unable to see any of this, and thus found it difficult to apply these ‘abilities’.

Alex essentially acted like a catalyst. He triggered changes in people with a certain, unrecognized genetic trait which allowed them to feel this energy he produced. Once he ‘activated’ them, they were able to see this energy. They’d found out a lot about what he seemed to do, due to his friend Ryan, the head of the Carbondale Memorial Hospital, who’d examined what he did to his Seers with a series of MRI scans. However what they’d learned didn’t significantly affect how they behaved.

He was also able to communicate telepathically with the people he ‘activated’, though again it wasn’t like you’d typically read about in a sci-fi story. It was the equivalent of a cheap walkie-talkie, except it didn’t seem to be constrained by either physical distances or hindered by obstacles. The communications were instantaneous, and couldn’t be explained by traditional wave theories. They seemed to use some other method for transmissions. They were also able to send thoughts, images, and occasionally physical feelings. Again, it was both simple and complex.

The women he activated—it had only been women so far—seemed to have certain properties which made them susceptible to his abilities. Cate theorized they had a dual gene pairing that gave them this ability. It appeared these genes existed on the X chromosome, and that having a single one resulted in a person being a Watcher, so named because they could be identified by their tendency to watch Alex in fascination from afar. It seemed they could sense his energy without being able to specifically identify it, only knowing he held some amazing ability. Those with both genes became the Seers. They started out being able to sense others’ emotions, though they never understood why. These genes also seemed to only work with women. Though there were a couple of male Watchers, there were extenuating circumstances which specifically exempted them from this ‘females only’ condition, proving it the ‘exception that proves the rule’.

When Alex met one of these women, the potential Seers, all it took was for them to lock eyes with him to activate them. But of course, it got more complex than that. Over time, Alex found that stressful events advanced his abilities. One thing he’d found is deeply emotional events triggered advances as well. Thus he learned when he made love to his followers, their own abilities would advance. The Seers, who normally could only communicate telepathically through Alex, could communicate with the other Seers without his assistance. What’s more, once he made love with a Watcher, she’d advance to the same level as a pre-activated Seer, meaning they’d be able to sense emotions in others even though they still couldn’t see what the Seers could.

Which brings up yet another oddity about Alex, in addition to possessing this energy, he could direct it as it flowed out of him. His family decided that simply by being exposed to him over time, his sister Cate had developed some related abilities of her own, and that both of them had never been sick with anything which typically affects young children. By applying this energy to others who were sick or ailing, he was able to achieve some amazing medical advancements, although it was quite limited. It only worked in select cases, specifically when organs lacked the energy he provided. But it was hard to forecast in which cases his abilities would help someone and when it wouldn’t. What’s more, since Alex himself couldn’t see this energy, he had no real idea of how to apply it, thus he needed one of his Seers with him to direct him. Alex had been involved in the local hospital helping out and thereby gaining experience, but it had been a confusing time because of the highly mixed results.

Now it seemed he had a mission to his life: to try to find as many of these women as he could, both the Watchers and the Seers, so he could build a community which would survive him and would hopefully be broad enough to provide a functioning genetic base after he was gone. But the other thing he needed to accomplish was to produce offspring. Since he seemed to be the first person with these unique talents, it was important he produce an heir who possessed the same abilities, otherwise all he had accomplished in finding these followers would be lost once he passed away. Sure, these women could all pass on their genes, but without someone to activate their children they’d never gain the abilities Alex had activated in them. Everyone’s hope was he would not only produce an heir like himself, but he might be able to produce a hybrid, a female with the same abilities as him, who could both see and manage the energy flowing through her.

Alex and his women classified the people around him into three categories, actually four if you got right down to it. The first type was the Seers. The second type consisted of the Watchers, while the third were the normal people who surrounded them. To hide what they were talking about from prying ears, they’d refer to these people as ‘type 1s’, or ‘type 2’. The ‘type 3s’, or those without any abilities who chose to follow him due to their own feelings, were further divided by a subset Anh described as fellow spirits who seemed to be on a parallel journey to his own. These seemed to share more than just a passing interest in Alex and his abilities. They hadn’t settled on a name for those as yet.

Now Alex turned and faced those collected around him, ready for him to begin this next step on his journey. He was going to hit the road, traveling cross country, trying to find and help as many people as he could, helping them understand who they were, and to activate whatever abilities they may have. It was a big mission, and one which was vital to each of them.

The people gathered around him now were here to see him off, since he could only travel with so many. He’d decided to travel with only two others. One was Cate, his sister, his lover, his confidant, his most trusted advisor and his main scientific specialist. The other person was his personal bodyguard, an ex-policewoman Seer who’d dedicated herself to watching over him, since he seemed unable to keep from attracting unwanted attention.

The others there were his closest followers, his immediate family and his two girlfriends who had made sure they came by just to see him off. Each regretted letting Alex go off on his own, fearing the troubles he’d likely be facing, as the occurrences of a few weeks earlier, when someone had attempted to assassinate him, clearly demonstrated. Besides, none of them knew just how much longer he had. They each realized this could very well be the last time they’d ever see him, so they made their farewells that much more emotional.

Alex worked through each of his girls, moving in largely chronological order from the newest, Nikki, to the earliest, Shaniqua. Each gave him a tearful but positive goodbye, each knowing they’d be in constant communication with him even though they’d be separated by hundreds or thousands of miles.

“It’s especially difficult saying goodbye to you, Nikki. It seems like I just found you again, and I’m already saying goodbye,” he told her with a catch in his throat.

The story of Nikki, his ‘lost girl’, was well known to everyone who knew Alex well. She was a girl he’d passed on the highway on his way back from New Orleans. He’d accidentally activated her when they’d locked eyes while passing over the Frisco Bridge in Memphis. Unable to find her, her existence continually wore at his own sense of responsibility. He felt himself responsible for each of ‘his’ girls, and he’d unintentionally abandoned her when she needed him the most. However, through a series of difficult steps, she’d eventually tracked him down and located him, returning as his own prodigal daughter. Thus he felt it especially difficult letting her go again.

“That’s OK, Alex,” she assured him, patting his back. “I’m doing much better now. You’ve given me a home, taught me what I need to know, and given me my own mission. I’ll be fine as long as I have my fellow sisters, although I’ll miss you terribly. You’ll always be close to my heart while you’re gone.” Each of Alex’s followers called each other Sisters, again as a way of discussing their relationships to each other without calling attention to themselves.

He simply hugged her tight before moving onto the next girl, Brooke Knowles. Actually there were several girls absent from this sendoff. Jennifer Pickford, a cancer survivor he’d helped overcome an ‘incurable’ form of bone cancer, had gone on to help on a mission of her own, although he planned on meeting her in Utah as he traveled west.

Then there were Ruby and Clara, two people he’d discovered in St. Louis but who had proved a disappointment. Ruby was 83 years old and suffered from an advanced case of Alzheimer’s, while Clara had proven to be untrustworthy, since she couldn’t separate Alex from her own preconceived notions of who he should be and what he should do. Alex had quickly distanced himself from her for everyone’s good, while still hoping to assist her by giving her purpose and objectives of her own.

There were also several followers who attended the nearby Southern Illinois University (SIU). They included Molly Bishop, a law professor who taught there, and Diane Lane, an undergraduate who hoped to write the next philosophical novel, both of them Seers, as well as numerous Watchers and fellow type 3s.

Brooke was an EMT he’d met in New Orleans. She’d used her abilities to become one of the premier EMTs in New Orleans before her activation, and since then had found she could do much more than she ever did before, although she had less chances to use her unique knowledge due to the lesser population around Carbondale where she now worked.

Before he could reach Brooke, her two kids, Josh and Suzy—who’d been waiting quite patiently—ran and threw their arms around him. Josh idolized Alex simply because he was a likable guy who played with him, while the rest of the time Josh was surrounded by women, a situation made worse now that his family was augmented by all the women surrounding Alex. Suzy, however, was another Watcher, and thus thought Alex was not only wonderful, but also knew he possessed enough power to do both amazing and terrible things. She loved him almost as much as his other ‘girls’ did.

“We love you, Alex, and be careful. We’ll miss you,” she told him before grinning at him snidely. “And maybe when you come back I’ll be old enough for you to make me one of your girls.”

“We’ll have to see, Suzy, but somehow I doubt I’ll be gone quite that long,” Alex laughed, happy with the fact she’d remain a little girl for a while yet.

“Well, if you don’t do it soon, mom says it may never happen,” she pouted.

Chapter 01 »