Part 4
You look from person to person, not sure if you are ready to face the reality of the world outside. You are still weary from your effort in teleporting here and you're suddenly afraid of how much the world outside might have changed. here at least the surroundings and company are mostly familiar.
"I think I'd like to stay in the Lab for today." You tell the others who are waiting patiently for your decision.
"Yeah." Paul says with unexpected sympathy in his tone. "I can understand that. You look after yourself, Jay."
Elena just smiles at you as she follows Paul to the jaunting pad. They jaunt out within seconds of one another to their different destinations and you're left with John and TIM in the Lab. For just an instant you wonder if you made the right decision. The new John is somehow colder and harder than the young man you remember. The thought of being alone with him is disconcertingly intimidating. Nonetheless, you know, with every inch of your body that neither John nor TIM will harm you and there is a comfort in knowing that there are people who will look after you whatever happens.
"So," John says with a slightly forced cheerfulness. "What do you want to do, Jay?"
You shrug, uncertain.
"Perhaps Jay would like to catch up on a little of what's happened since he...left." TIM suggests, coming to your rescue. "I could prepare a short tutorial on recent world events and the rise of Information Technology."
"It sounds rather intimidating when you put it like that, TIM." John notes with a smile relieving the sudden anxiety that you had felt. "It sounds more like comething out of a film than reality."
"Nonetheless," Tim tells you both. "The Saps have made considerable technological if not moral and ethical progress in the last two decades. Fortunately with his superior knowledge and intellect Jay will not find the concepts difficult but there are details of day to day life that would be to his advantage to learn as soon as is practicable."
John looks down at you and once again you are struck by his old, worn face. It more than anything else keeps reminding you that what you're going through here and now is real and frightening.
"What do you say, Jay?"
You nod.
"I guess that's probably the best idea." You say.
*
You spend two hours listeing to TIM's calm and reassuring voice through headphones and gazing enthralled at a small screen before John interrupts. The older Tomorrow Person has been sitting on the other side of the Lab fiddling with a small piece of electronic circuitry and typing into the device it is hooked up to. Now he's put it down and walked across the Lab to look over your shoulder.
"I thought you said this was meant to be a short tutorial, TIM." He notes aloud. TIM's voice in your ears stops as he answers through his external speakers.
"Indeed, John, but much of significance has happened in the recent past. Jay and I have been exploring many avenues in greater detail than I had intended."
You nod, your head still reeling. You can't quite grasp the enormity of so many recent events. Two events stand out in italics from the scrawl of news that has washed across you during the morning.
The fall of the Berlin wall astonished and overjoyed you. You never once believed that the saps could put aside their differences even enough for that symbolic step. TIM has shown you the images of men and women standing on the wall, of soldiers with guns hanging loose in their hands, of a party that united two countries.
The events of September 11 2001 stand out for other, less joyfull reasons and you realise again why nature has brought forth you and your kind. A battered world needs some hope for the future and in this dark climate there seems to be little of that.
And all this against a background of such rapid technical development that you find it difficult to believe that the machines people use day to day as if they were typewriters are computers almost 100 000 times more powerful than the toys on which people once played `pong'.
*
Even despite your fascination and the rapidity with with you can absorb new information you are relieved when John suggests a lunch break. You both sit at the link table and TIM provides your first real meal for longer than you can remember. You eat quickly and then lean forward against the link table as John finishes his meal. The surface of the table glows white under your arms and you can feel the contact with TIM's telepathic boosters magnifying and focusing your inate telepathic ability. Your own mental shields are relatively low in the relaxing atmosphere of the Lab and after everyone you've been through. Even so you are startled when you realise that another mind is making contact with your own. You see through a child's eyes, looking up at the adults holding your hands, knowing they are your father and mother. There is a weariness in your thoughts as you look from side to side and you know somehow that you've been subjected to a whole battery of tests in a long and grueling morning.
"Keep up, Frankie." Your father says in an irritated tone that's trying to hide the anxiety you can feel radiating off him. And you do as he says. Even so, you wonder why you bother. After all, you're going to die pretty soon anyway.
The delicate mental contact breaks as John leans forward and touches the link table, altering the telepathic potentials. You look up at him, startled.
"Didn't you hear that?"
"Hear what, Jay?"
Do you:
a) Explain and ask for advice?
b) Jaunt straight to the place you saw?
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