Chapter 3 -- One to Several Trillion Against

"Eight percent?" Declan repeated, frowning. "That's low."

"Low, but notable for how low it is, right," Jenny said, her voice taking on an eager edge.

Declan nodded, digging into his memory for information he had not heard since his undergrad psychology classes. "Isn't there a parallel… um… I know I've heard of these kind of low scores being significant in and of themselves somewhere in psychology."

She nodded. "Conversion blindness is the prime example. You flash a dot into a person's field of sight. Left, right, or dead center and ask them to guess where it was. If they're truly blind, they're going to guess right about 33 percent of the time. With Conversion blindness you see much lower numbers. The person's mind is reacting the way it thinks a blind person should. By missing a lot more consistently than you would by chance."

"You think that's what she was doing? Missing on purpose?"

"That's what I thought at first, yeah, especially given how her mind was obviously miles away, but then I really looked at her answers and what I saw… I mean, jeez, Declan, I've never seen anything like this!" Grinning excitedly, she picked up two sheets of paper. "Here are her answers," she said, handing him one. "And here are the actual answers."

Declan laid them side by side, comparing. There was a definite pattern there, he just could not see it, even though he knew it was there. He started reading the answers to himself in a whisper and then the pattern fell into place.

"She's guessing the next card in the sequence instead of the current one," he whispered.

She nodded gravely. "With over 90% accuracy, no less."

Declan stared, wide-eyed. "What are the odds on something like that?"

"One to several trillion against. Give or take a few hundred-thousand."


Declan rubbed his mouth. "This girl is the real thing, then?"

Jenny nodded. "Yes. I want a PET scan. As a start…"


"She's not going to like that." Declan sighed. "She's resistant to this whole idea."

"So I noticed."

"She was scared, hostile," Declan said. "I seriously doubt that she's going to want to take this any further."

"The woman predicts earthquakes, Declan," Jenny pointed out quietly. "God only knows what else she's capable of."

He nodded. "I know, Jenny, but…"

"But how do you force someone to use an ability like that?" She nodded. "And the answer is that you can't. You said she's scared? Well, something happened to cause that. We need to find out what and deal with it."

Declan nodded slowly. "I'll talk to her and see what I can do."

"Going to wait until Monday?" Jenny asked.

Declan nodded. "I kind of have to… I don't know where she spends her off-time."

"I can find out in five minutes," she offered.

Declan nodded. "Sounds good."

Jenny opened her office door. "Hey, James?"

"Yeah, Doctor Craig?" a young man asked, looking up from the Psych department's front desk.

"You know Gabe Watts, right?"

He nodded. "Sure."

"Where's she spend her Fridays?"

"Um, library before class. Afterwards, her and a group of friends usually hit the Firefly. They're there until the manager kicks them out most nights."

"Thanks." Jenny nodded and closed the office door again. She looked at Declan. "You know the Firefly?"

He nodded. "Coffee shop by campus, isn't it?"

Jenny nodded. "The Psych grads pretty much claim it as their own on the weekends. Them and the English majors."

Declan nodded. "Thanks, Jenny. I'll talk to her."

She smiled. "Go easy on her, Declan. I've had her in a couple of classes and she's… skittish…"

Declan raised an eyebrow and nodded. "I'd noticed. Any idea why?"

Jenny shook her head. "She's a nice enough kid, but she doesn't talk much, especially about herself."


Declan had noticed that, too. "Well, I'll see what I can do about that, too."

Jenny frowned faintly. "Be careful. Bite-shy animals tend to be pretty quick to bite, themselves."

Declan smiled. "Don't worry. I just had a tetanus shot." Winking, he left the office.

***

Entering the coffee-shop, Declan could see its appeal to the graduate students who frequented it. Larger than it looked on the outside, it was littered with normal tables and chairs, couches, end-table, coffee-tables, overstuffed arm-chairs, as well as a long bar lined with bar-stools. And judging from the menus chalked behind the bar, it did as brisk a trade in herbal teas as it did in coffees. Part were dim, other parts bright, and clusters of students sat everywhere, talking quietly or with more animation, studying in silence, typing on laptops, or just enjoying their coffee or tea, often with a pastry or slice of pie. There was a largish stage on one end of the shop, and a placard proclaimed Fridays to be amateur-poetry night. No one was on the stage now except for a young woman setting up a microphone and stool.

Declan walked up to the bar where Gabe was sitting, bent over a book. "What's good here?"

"Everything," she replied quietly without looking up. "Try the chamomile and leave me alone."

"Do you know what your problem is?" Declan asked, sitting down next to her.

She slammed her book shut, Freud's Totem and Taboo, and glared at him. "Um, I'm being stalked by an Anthropology Professor?" she ventured.

"I am not stalking you!" he protested.

"No, but you are annoying me."

Declan frowned and shook his head. "What's with the 180 towards me, huh?"

"You're a smart man, you figure it out," she told him, burying her nose in the book again.

"Jenny told me about your results."


"Great. Will you leave me alone now?"

"Yeah. Just as soon as I tell you that we're both relatively confident that you're the real thing."

"Please!" she scoffed.

"You were predicting the next card in the sequence with over 90% accuracy."

The book fell from her hands at that pronouncement and she stared at him in stunned silence for several minutes. "Fluke," she finally announced. "Must be. Fifty percent is considered statistically significant in parapsychology."

Declan blinked. "You've done your homework on this," he realized.

"So?"

"You knew?" he asked.

She rolled her eyes. "These things don't happen in the real world, Professor. It was a fluke." Sighing, she rose. "If you'll excuse me, I'm first up." She nodded towards the stage and then started in that direction, riffling through her pockets for the poem she was going to read.

"Um, Gabe," Declan called after her.

She turned, frowning uncertainly.

Declan held up a sheet of paper that had been sitting on the bar in front of her while she was reading her book. He smiled faintly. She had a habit of putting things in plain sight so she would not lose them and then managing to look right through them anyway. Strange for a girl with her… talents. Maybe some kind of defense-mechanism. Or maybe her ability to foresee what was going to happen simply did not include her.

"Thank you," she whispered, accepting the sheet of paper.

Declan gave her a reassuring smile. "This is something we need to talk about, Gabe."

"Not here, not now." She shook her head, looking distressed.

"When?" he asked.

"Monday. Just… not this weekend. I… I have plans."

Declan nodded, surprised by how unsettled and genuinely upset she seemed. "Monday. After class."

She nodded weakly.

"Mind if I stay and listen to your poem?"

"If you want." She nodded and turned towards the stage, only to be intercepted by a young man and a younger woman.

"Come on, Gabe!" the young man said, grabbing her arm. "We're waiting."

"Lose your own head if it wasn't screwed on," the girl added.

"She lost that years ago," the young man said, drawing laughs from all three.

Declan watched as Gabe allowed herself to be pulled towards the stage, curious as to what a girl like her was doing reading poetry for a crowd this size. While not exactly shy, she was hardly sociable, either, and he had always assumed that she disliked public speaking. She adjusted the microphone, rested her elbows on the stool instead of sitting on it, and began reading, not really looking at the sheet in her hands.

Declan might not have been a literary expert, but he knew what he liked and Gabe's poem about alienation was definitely on the list. When she was done, he joined in the standing ovation. She was a multifaceted young woman, to be sure. He was a little disappointed when she joined a group of friends instead of returning to talk to him some more, but he understood. Ordering a large chamomile tea to go, he left. Gabe observed his departure with relief.

"Who was the guy?"

"What, Grant?" Gabe asked, looking up at him. She had not really been paying attention to anything other than Declan's progress out the door.

"The guy you were talking to," Grant clarified, sliding an arm around Angie, his fiancée.

"Oh, that's professor Dunn."

"That Anth guy you're always going on about?" Debbie asked, chugging her mocha. "You forgot to mention that he's also a babe."

"Deb, you think any guy with a 5 o'clock shadow and a Ph.D. is cute," Angie pointed out, laughing.


Debbie tried to look offended but failed. "I'll have you know that they have to wear glasses, too," she laughed, rising to get a refill.

Bill, usually the quiet one in the group commented in a low voice, "Someone needs to switch her to decaf." He shrugged. "Good poem, Gabe. Almost believed for a second that you actually felt that way."

"Maybe I do," she said quietly.

Angie laughed softly. "How did you put it in the poem? 'Leave me alone, let me live my lie'?"

Gabe nodded, her good mood evaporating. "'Cause it's my lie, and it's all I have left." She glanced at her watch. "I should go now."

"We were going to play later!" Grant protested.

"I know. But my head hurts." Gabe shrugged apologetically. "Look, tomorrow night, me and my guitar will be here at the normal time."

"Okay. Need a ride home, sweetie?" Bill offered.

Gabe shook her head. "No thanks. You guys have fun. Bill, do a couple riffs for me."

"In a Gadda de Vida, baby," Bill promised with a grin. "Just for you."

"Thanks. Night, guys." Forcing herself to smile at them, Gabe turned and left the coffee-shop, breaking into sobs as soon as she was behind the wheel of her car.

***

Declan drove, lost in thought. The more he considered the poem Gabe had recited, the less he liked what it had to say about her, about her life.

Leave me alone,

let me live my lie.

'Cause it's my lie

and it's all I have left.

…

My life? A web of lies.

And me? A spider?

Or one of the flies?

As good, as moving as the poem had been, it left him wondering about Gabe herself, about what he thought he knew about her. Did she really consider her whole life a façade? And, if so, why? And was she starting to feel trapped by the web of lies that was her life?

Declan sighed and shook his head, confused and more than a little worried about her. It was not exactly a premonition, but it was not far off, either. He stopped at the first gas-station he passed and left a message on her machine, apologizing and asking her to call him. Sighing, he leaned against the phone-booth wall, wondering at his growing sense of dread.