The lesson with Tyler Marius had lasted three hours. Then they had each been given another massive charge and sent home with instructions to practice. They were going to meet again the next night at Schenley Park, just outside the conservatory. Tyler Marius had asked each person to pick a day that week to have a private lesson with him. Bartender Bill, having the most flexible schedule, volunteered for Tuesday. Smith had Wednesday, Srinivas Thursday, Mike Friday, Varanelli Saturday, Spencer Sunday, and Jimmy the following Monday.

Mike ignored the lovebirds on the ride home, then spent an hour doing the homework exercises. He used teleotic attraction to increase the surface tension of water in a bowl so that it could support the weight of various objects. The paper clip he tried first was mildly encouraging. Then he progressed to a metal spoon, the television remote, and a can of soup. He impressed himself with the last one. Then he took the exercise a step further by freezing the water, using an ice cube from the freezer as a model to copy. Rejected heat radiated out of the bowl as the water molecules crystallized. Running low on gravitas from his activities, Mike switched to training kinesis. He started small, blindfolding himself and navigating the apartment using his kinetic sense. That exercise was easy with his mind expanded.

The next exercise involved moving various objects to hone his fine control. Mike started by pushing coins around the top of the coffee table. They slid around easy enough, so he moved onto other items. The coffee table rose into the air and hovered a moment before he set it back down. Now for the hard stuff. Mike turned his attention to the bowl of water, which had rapidly melted once his efforts to solidify it ended. They had been instructed to work with liquids to hone their 'edge'.

Kinesis worked by imparting momentum to matter through the corona. By default it was an area effect. Levitating the coffee table had involved pushing upward over the entire region it occupied. Lifting the piece of furniture with his hands would only impart force at the points his hands contacted it, but the area effect encompassed every atom of the object within his influence. This was convenient for all manner of applications, but there were situations where he would want to apply force through an invisible surface. For example, cutting or bending objects required the concentration of force.

The challenge in this was that a corona existed without much internal differentiation. To overcome that, you had to deform your corona in certain ways. Tyler Marius hadn't provided much more useful guidance than that. Unless you counted his analogy to newborns learning to coordinate their randomly flexing limbs as useful. Mike did not.

The water in the bowl bobbed and bubbled as he concentrated on it. He ran low on animas before making any progress, which at least provided an end to his frustration. Mike hated being bad at something. If the skill was something he valued, he tended to obsess at overcoming his shortcomings. When he first transitioned from high school wrestling to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu over fifteen years ago, he had taken everyone in the room to the ground with a double leg, then tapped like crazy as every last one choked his exposed neck. That had been maddening, at least until he became proficient in the very techniques that had once been used against him. Some day these talents would yield their secrets to him and he would be a master of them.

He waited until his mind began collapsing back to its normal state with the exhaustion of nous, and then he used up all of his animas and gravitas so that everything ran dry at the same time. The most important thing Tyler Marius had taught them was that they risked crippling themselves with a partial atunement if they weren't careful. Mike didn't intend to surrender any part of the power available to him.

The next morning, he woke late after silencing his alarm and had to rush to work. He slid into his desk beside Srinivas, who was sipping coffee and staring at his emails. "Late night?"

"I had to make the most of my charge," Mike said.

"It was same with me."

"Anything big happening around here I need to know about?"

"Big shipment of semiconductors on Thursday."

"You took off Thursday . . . ."

"Good job seeing correlation." Srinivas smiled. "Where is lunch today?"

"Thai?"

"Had yesterday."

"Oh. How about trying that middle eastern place again?"

"No."

"Sandwiches?"

"You will drink if we go there. Very awkward."

"Right. Sometimes I forget you're my boss. How about you suggest something?"

"Sushi?"

"Maybe."

"Or we do barbeque food truck."

Mike pursed his lips. "I could go for that."

"Not a surprise," Srinivas said.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

As Mike dove into reading through the emails that had accumulated from his day off, Srinivas wheeled his chair closer.

"So . . . I am thinking our new friend is dangerous."

"If you mean the guy who told us how to murder someone with a brain push, then I agree a thousand percent."

"Are you still intending to learn from him?"

"Unless he pushes on my brain, yes, I am going to keep showing up for classes."

"Easier for a military man to ignore danger."

Mike grunted. "Former military man now. And running towards trouble is more of a character flaw than a product of any training I had over the years."

"I'm thinking danger will be worth the reward."

"That's the spirit." Mike brought up the software that tracked their work. Three small shipments went out the door that day. Two of those were raw material orders, so very little QA would need done. They just needed to verify the volumetric and mass measurements of the boules, print out the records of the furnace runs, and send everything down to shipping with the packing slip. The final shipment was an order for ten blank silicon carbide circuit boards. It was a military order, too, which made for extra paperwork.

The morning passed quickly as Mike measured, recorded, calculated, certified, and handed off. No part of his work required a significant degree of intelligence. Exacting attention to detail in following established procedures got the job done. Any unusual circumstance was escalated to Srinivas, who would often call down the sales engineers for judgment calls. Those guys on occasion passed the buck to the design engineers. And at least twice since Mike had been at the company, the head engineer and chief technology officer had descended from his corner office to decide if some discovered flaw precluded shipping on time.

Their products were not commodity items, so customers tended to understand the tradeoff between strict adherence to specifications and speed of fulfillment. The one area that received zero sympathy was QA. Sales wanted rapid and perfect metrology reports. They blamed QA for taking too long and then disappointing customers by finding problems. Operations flipped out any time a customer return happened, insisting QA hadn't done their jobs properly. Accounting constantly questioned the expenses for specialized testing equipment. Engineers resented being interrupted with questions. The receptionist thought they took too long on their lunch breaks . . . .

"Hey, Srinivas, I think it's lunch o'clock."

On their walk to the barbeque food truck, Srinivas managed to persuade Mike to grab a bowl of Pho instead. Mike managed to pay with his credit card for both their meals, which got him fifteen dollars in cash he could put towards rent. The temporal shell game had begun. In a month the credit card bill would come due and future Mike would need to figure a way out of that conundrum.

The second half of the day proved busier than the first. Mike had to go over readings for a furnace that had had two bad runs in a row. There hadn't been any significant temperature fluctuations in the data, but he eventually noticed that the readings weren't as frequent as they should be. A trip to visit the furnace in person and he could identify the problem. Crud covered the connector from the thermometer to the control unit. He snapped a photo with his phone, then returned to his desk to shoot off an email recommending another preventative maintenance task be added to their checklists.

He left for home, ate some ramen noodles, and when Smith showed up again, he informed Varanelli he would be driving separate so that he could run some errands. Leaving early as he had, Mike stopped by a beer distributor to pick up a case. He had intended to buy something cheap, but a six pack of a Russian Imperial had begged to come with him. It was all going on the credit card anyway. Future Mike could handle it.

Parking by the conservatory, Mike put two bottles in his pockets and found a bench. He popped the top with the can opener on his keychain and took a swig. It was rough stuff, all dark and malty and alcohol-y, just how he liked it. Mike lifted the bottle to take another gulp and no liquid came out. He turned the bottle upside down and raised it up to look inside. Predictably, it poured out at that moment to coat him. He jumped to his feet, choice words tumbling from his mouth.

The bottle wrenched free of his hand to fly away. Mike's cursing cut off. Tyler Marius caught the bottle.

"This is not acceptable, Mike Dombroski."

"Sorry, Tyler."

"If you're trying to be informal, it's Marius. Tyler is my patronymic."

"So your last name is your first name."

"My second name is my familiar name." Marius lifted the bottle in his hand. "Do you have a problem?"

"No problem. I was just running early and thought 'why not'."

Marius put the bottle on the ground. "Dump the one in your pocket."

Mike pulled out the second bottle to pop its top and then set it on its side to drain beneath him. "Seems like a waste of perfectly good beer."

"And you seem like a waste of a perfectly good man. Don't ever drink before a lesson again, Mike. I would set an agent on your mind if I had more skill in that area, but I don't, so you will need to manage your behavior with what tools you possess."

"Understood, sir," Mike said. "You see, it's just a bit stressful at the moment. My room mate, Kendra Varanelli, is dating that loser Smith. It's going to end badly and give me a headache. But I can't say anything right now or I'm inconsiderate. And Erica Spencer is going to be here, too. I don't want to get into the details, but she is the last person I want to spend time with. Real bad history. And money is a bit tight at the moment."

Marius studied him with cold eyes. "I understand you have both military training and martial arts training. Such a background seems like a major asset to me. But all of this drama? It makes me wonder if you can live up to my expectations. Can I depend on you, Mike Dombroski?"

Mike looked down at his hands. "I won't let you down."

"See that you don't. I'm not the sympathetic type. Show me you are a liability and you will be gone that moment." Marius sat beside him. "If one of us had an excuse to drink, Mike, it would be me. I have committed atrocities in the service of my people. I fully expect to do so again, even knowing that my people now consider me a traitor. Your domestic concerns seem trifling in comparison."

"My wife is dead," Mike said.

"Did she die today?"

"Three years ago."

"Then get over it. I'm building an army, not a support group."

Mike kicked the empty bottle beneath the bench, sending it rolling away from them. "Consider my problems handled, sir."

Marius sighed. "Bill dropped out today. He wanted to be excused from night classes due to his bartending schedule. I offered the man true power and he turned it down because he couldn't miss a week or two of work. He expected me to make an exception for him. I couldn't make him understand that personal sacrifice would demonstrate how serious he was. So he's done. I'm down to six pupils, none of whom have impressed me much so far. The recruiting has not gone well so far."

They sat in silence until cars began pulling up. Marius hopped to his feet. "Look alive, Mike, tonight we delve into telepathy."