I got up and walked down the hall to the nearest bathroom. In this part of the hospital, the bathrooms were individual ones and I was able to lock the door and have the space to myself. Once I was secure, I shifted back to reality. It was possible that having the field in R1 would influence the test, so I brought the field back to baseline and concentrated on ‘the feel’ of my field. Its constant presence immediately became more noticeable, and I looked around for something that I could put a field around and compare it to. I remembered my backpack in R2 and I shifted it back to reality and hung it up on the coat hook on the back of the door.

Initially, the two fields felt identical, but as I continued the examination, I did notice a slight difference. The field surrounding my backpack was sending me tiny bits of information about the contents of the bag. One camera, one notebook, one pen, two quarters. If I concentrated, I could get more information. Two quarters, mostly copper, some nickel iron. I was able to interpret what each item was by its shape and size and because I put the item in the bag and knew what it was. The surprising aspect of the information is that I had to actively search for it. I wasn’t getting it unless I concentrated on it. This was very different from my scans of people where I got too much information without wanting it.

What if there wasn’t a difference between the scan of my bag and the scan of that guy earlier? What if the loudness was simply an alarm that something was wrong? I thought back to my unplanned scan of Andrew. I’d gotten disoriented from the scan, but it wasn’t nearly as loud and disturbing as the scan of the guy with the broken arm and it also took longer before it impaired my ability to function effectively. Likewise, the scan of my bag was whisper quiet to my senses, because nothing was wrong or broken within the bag. Come to think of it, whenever I’d handled metals at dad’s forge, I’d always known right away when there was something wrong, even before I knew about the field. The metal just felt wrong. I didn’t know it then, but as I picked up the metal, my field would enclose it and I’d just know that the metal was impure.

Of course, that opened up the door to ask how the field defined wrong or impure or broken. Especially since alloys, metals composed of several metals, were the very definition of impure. Did it take a certain percentage to set off the alarm? Did it do a comparison to all the other times that I’d picked up similar ingots and determine that this one was different and ‘wrong’? I had no idea. Short of having a manual on how to use the field, I was winging it and spinning out theories on the fly.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

If the field acted as an alarm for things that are wrong, and it determined ‘wrongness’ based on my interactions with other people over the course of my life, then the louder the field shouted the information at me, the more that was wrong with the person. I needed to test this theory out, but now I was doubting whether the hospital was the best place to try this out.

However, I was already here, and I might as well try out my theory. I put my backpack back on, unlocked the door, and slipped into R2. Looking for healthy people in a hospital seemed counterintuitive, but I figured that the employees were my best bet.

A short walk down the hall, I found a cleaning lady moping the floor. Bracing myself for the onslaught of information, I put a field around her and was pleasantly surprised. The information didn’t overwhelm me at all. Yes, it felt much louder than the bag, but it was also much quieter than that guy with the broken arm. I wondered whether the alarm was detecting stress or pain or something else.

I moved on to test several other hospital employees, including two doctors, a nurse and a secretary. All of them were similar to the cleaning lady in terms of quietness. I took that to mean that they were in reasonably good health and I set them as my baseline normal. By this time, I had wandered away from the orthopedics department and found myself close to the pediatric oncology department playroom where I volunteered. I walked in to see the kids busy at play, with their parents or family members watching over them.

Evan, the boy who loved magic, was performing a trick for his father and I watched for a bit. Evan’s dad looked worn out and tired. He tried to look upbeat for Evan, but I was sure that Evan saw it. I think Evan was trying to cheer his father up with the magic tricks. I’d been spending time with Evan for several weeks now and I knew that he had a brain tumor. I went to his room to look at his chart and see if there was anything new there. There was. Evan’s astrocytoma wasn’t responding to the treatment. That’s why Evan’s dad looked like that.

I returned to the playroom and sat down next to Evan. As he prepared his next trick, I put a field around him and prepared myself for the alarm. If I rated the baseline normal hospital staff at a 2 out of 10 in loudness and the broken arm guy at an 5 out of 10, then Evan was a solid 4. Now I was completely confused.

Cancer was way worse than a broken arm. I was expecting Evan to feel like a 10 in terms of alarm volume, but he wasn’t. Could it be that the break was a more obvious damage than a tumor and so it set off a louder alarm or did the guy with the broken arm have a lot more wrong with him that I’d known about? I would need a lot more data before I could come up with any conclusions.

I wasn’t going to figure out how the scanning worked today, though. I had the impression that I’d have to work at scanning every day for months, just like practicing with my new shield, before I could use it properly. When I did understand it and could use it properly, it was going to be awesome.