Head resting on his hand while sitting at his kitchen table, Clark was in deep thought. ‘How can I ensure that I can do something next time, if I want to? Is it even possible to use this tome to affect other people, or anything at all beyond my body?’ He could improve his own recovery and healing, at least for physical wounds. But he’d never tried it on someone else. He wasn’t planning on revealing his secret to anyone, after all.
As he was flipping pages of his tome, he also realized that there were several stories he hadn’t even tried using. Why would he channel a story about someone going through a particularly nasty flu? His brows furrowed, he considered it. ‘I’ve never failed at channeling a story. Unless we’re counting the failed attempt at manifesting fire at the start through a story about campfire stories and melting s’mores. But then again, that was when I had just learned to channel individual stories instead of a person’s entire collection of stories.’
He shuddered as he recalled channeling a person’s entire collection. The result was significantly weaker, a very mixed package too. And the strain it put on him was much higher. Then again, the strain caused by channeling stories actively had been feeling lighter and lighter as time went on. What caused that? Was it trainable as well, not just the passive effects? He thought of the feeling of the mental load as well as the load he could only describe as “spiritual,” nothing like any normal sensation he was used to and distinctly different from mental strain. Both of them had lessened as he had used the tome over time.
Granted, the strain was significantly less immediately after he had started using specific stories, but he knew using several stories at once was worse, so it was no surprise. The next big step had been when he learned to consciously focus and direct the stories in a wanted direction. Simply channeling the whole story about the Vietnam vet’s boot camp was weaker than focusing it on either strength or physical ability. Certain stories gave better results to lifting a heavy object when focusing it through the concept of strength, others when using physical ability.
Clearly he had grown complacent. Already content with what he was able to do, focusing on growing his available repertoire of stories, especially since they each had a passive effect on him, which was a mixed bag until he managed to differentiate effects he thought as harmful and beneficial.
Doing so had caused him a constant buzz of strain at the start, so he simply lessened the harmful or non-beneficial effects until the strain was manageable and didn’t ramp up too much over the day, which took some trial and error. He stopped before bed, and dialed them down again each morning to the same level of strain. Eventually he had effectively turned the non-beneficial effects off without realizing it, since his reference point had been the strain, not any other effects he could perceive.
He only noticed it one morning as he was unable to get the same level of strain he had been used to and was unable to lessen the effects further. He smiled as he recalled the moment of realization. Some quiet shouts and jumping had ensued, as that meant he could finally try leaving the passive effects active through the entire day and night, with only beneficial effects. Initially he woke up to increased strain, but over time it didn't seem to rise through the night, until slowly but surely, it seemed to eventually manage to dissipate entirely, beyond a sensation of "spiritual weight" devoid of strain, letting him know that the passive effects were active.
He started to tap on the table, considering. ‘I need to test my limits, nothing’s seemed straight-up impossible yet, except trying to reduce the non-beneficial effects to below “nothing.” Trying to manifest fire didn’t fail per se; I channeled the person’s campfire story successfully, it just didn’t result in manifesting fire by itself.’
Getting up from the table, he walked to his kitchen sink and turned on the faucet, rotating it to cold water. He held his palm facing up, next to the stream of water, focusing on that same story now, with his current knowledge of directing the story to a specific direction and result as he began channeling it. ‘Fire. Flames. Manifesting. Creating. Projecting.’ He flinched as he quickly added another direction for the story to flow through: ‘ABOVE MY RIGHT PALM.’
Cold sweat appeared on his brow as he felt his heart rate rise. ‘That could have been really bad if it succeeded and I had to specify it in my mind, even though I was expecting it to manifest above my palm.’ As he felt the channeling of the story succeed, he saw nothing, though he was immediately aware of the slight mental strain a single story focused in a specific direction had on him. Then he felt warmth on his palm, causing him to furrow his brows as he looked down at it, even as it kept getting hotter.
At the first sign of pain, he reflexively threw his hand under the faucet, which seemed to help, but the pain slowly increased even then, and he finally had the thought to stop channeling the story, pain immediately subsiding under the cold water. ‘That was… unexpected.’ as his hand felt ok again, he removed it from under the water and looked at his palm, seeing that it was slightly pink. ‘What happened? Manifesting fire inside my body? No, I don’t think I would have gotten away with just some heat if that was the case. Did the channel result in increasing my body heat in my palm?’
Rubbing his palm with his other hand’s thumb, he wondered. He went to his bedroom, pulled his scale out from under his bed, weighed himself at 77.3 kg, then stepped off. He channeled the Vietnam vet's story and focused it through the concept of strength, then stepped on the scale again. 77.3 kg again. He stepped off and repeated the process, this time focusing on resiliency and toughness. He stepped on the scale again, only to confirm his suspicions. It was the same number. He rubbed his chin in thought.
He could increase his strength magically, as well as resilience and toughness, without increasing his weight on a scale, at least to any meaningful degree, so channeling stories with those concepts didn’t seem to create anything within his body temporarily, nothing with mass at least. But heating up a body part and probably his entire body? He was intrigued by the new finding, but slightly disappointed that his initial goal had once again evaded him. ‘Probably too ambitious of a step, if it is possible. In the first place, I don’t need to create fire for anything. I can just buy a lighter. What I need is to channel the effects outside my body and onto other people.’
Turning around before pacing around his living room, he pondered on a smaller next step in the process of trying to figure out how to be able to externalize the effects outside his body. ‘Trying it on a person might work, but there’s no way to do that, especially if it goes wrong. I’m not risking prison or getting caught, simply for testing things and improving my ability to channel the stories. Though if there was no risk of backlash or accidentally harming people, maybe hospitals could be useful? I could volunteer again and only see people once? I’ll file the fledgling idea for later.’
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He stopped in his tracks. ‘Down from human trials. Animal testing. Where would I find a literal test mouse? Do I even need one? Aren't there smaller and less intelligent animals? Preferably ones I don’t need to buy to have access to, that aren’t owned.’ He hummed. ‘What about insects? That could work, plenty of pet shops have mealworms etc. as pet food. Fishing shops might have worms. Below animals would be… plants? That might be better for now. Simpler. I could monitor lasting changes/effects if any. I’d also need to come up with specific stories and ways to focus them that’d be applicable for testing on plants.’
Clark clapped his hands loudly. ‘Sounds like a plan. Easiest plant… A cactus? That’s the one people buy first, right? They’re meant to be cheap too.’ He got on his phone and looked up the nearest shops that sold flowers or cacti, and found one that he’s passed by sometimes but had forgotten about, just 3 blocks away. He grabbed his things, put his tome in his backpack and got on his way.
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Once he got there, he looked over the flowers that were on small tables outside the store, but they were mostly bouquets of flowers, too expensive and temporary for his purposes. The door was propped open and he walked right in. Immediately his olfactory senses were barraged with a strong mix of different smells, mostly pleasant. He channeled a story about visiting a flower garden and focused on his sense of smell. His sense of smell got sharper, and somehow he could appreciate each individual scent more. He smiled at being able to use that one.
The store was bigger than he would have thought for a street level store, and he couldn’t see any of the smaller cacti when he did a scan of the plants he could see around the store from the entrance.
A worker was kneeling and bent forwards toward a cluster of green plants with large green leaves doing something, though Clark couldn’t see what from behind or put a name on the plants. Approaching the man, Clark tried to get his attention “Excuse me, could you tell me where the cheapest indoor cacti are?”
The worker turned his head around to look at who spoke. He was a middle aged guy who had a metal ring on his large dark beard, and it seemed he had been using small clippers to cut something. He turned back to the plant, “It’s a few rows over, I can show ya, one second.” He gave it a once over, moving to snip a small brown portion off the otherwise green plant, placing it into a bucket before standing up, placing his clippers into an open pouch on his apron and walking past Clark, pointing at something in the direction he was heading in. “Over here.”
As we passed 4 rows of differing plants, we arrived at a section with large and small cacti, previously covered from sight by the surrounding specimens with large upright green leaves.
The worker pointed down “The tiny ones are 5$ each, the 2 inch pots have a price tag on ‘em that ya can check, sometimes there’s a cheaper runt mixed in there.” Pointing to a different section of equally small cacti, he continued “There’s also a mixed 4 cacti collection in 2 inch pots for 15$. Ya ever cared for a cactus before?” He raised a brow towards Clark.
Squatting down to look at the individual cacti and the mixed collections, he answered “No, it’s my first time getting any plants, actually. But they’re pretty resilient for a first plant right? Think I’ve heard that people usually drown them by accident instead of them dying off in another way?” He looked up and the worker nodded while sighing, scratching the back of his head.
“Wherever ya heard that is right, sadly. People who buy ‘em because they’re scared of killing their first plant tend to overwater ‘em and not see the signs that it’s too much, which are discoloration, swelling and softening. Root rot too but ya can’t see that. Mold too if it’s in too damp places.”
He kneeled down, pointing at one round ball of spikes, tag called it a “silver ball”. “Caring for ‘em is really simple. Water it every 2-4 weeks only when the soil’s completely dry, keep them out of damp places, if you switch pots, then get one that has drainage holes. They need plenty of direct sunlight though, lack of it will cause it to go pale and stretched. If ya somehow underwater it, it’ll shrivel up and let ya know.”
Simple enough, he thought. “Got it, thanks a lot.” The man waved him off, “No worries, good luck.” as he walked past the large leaves towards where they had both come from.
Clark looked through the individual cacti’s price tags, no cheaper ones this time. So he looked at the mixed collections, before settling on choosing a mix with 3 out of 4 cacti that weren’t entirely covered with spikes, so he could touch the green part.
Two of which were “spider cacti”, the picture on the tag showed two pretty red flowers blooming from one, and they were round green balls with sparse spots that grew several spikes each. One was another silver ball, covered entirely in thin silver spikes, and the last one was a “barrel cactus”, with ribbed sections spreading out like a star when looked at from above with more spots than the spider ones, that also sported longer spikes.
Happy with the chosen specimens, Clark went to get a basket so he could carry them to the checkout without having to juggle what were essentially organic balls of sharp spikes. He paid for them and got a paper bag to carry them home. Quite a painless process for such spiky plants, thanks to the helpful worker.
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Once he closed his apartment door and kicked his shoes off, he gently placed his paper bag on the kitchen table, lifting the small pots out one at a time. They looked a bit… cute? Now that he looked at them again. ‘Should I water them? Wait, they’d have been taking care of all the plants in the store, and I was supposed to check…’ Testing the soil on each of the cacti with a finger, he muttered “Yup, not entirely dry… No need to water them.” He turned around and brought them to the kitchen window, the place that would be getting the most sunlight each day, then opened his curtains for them. ‘Huh, they really are easy to take care of.’
Leaning over them, he stared. ‘Hopefully you’ll survive if and when I manage to affect you with the stories from my tome. Now… It’s time to brainstorm which stories to use and what concepts to focus them through, to start my testing. I’ll make sure to never feel that powerless again.’