Chapter Eight
November 21st 2168
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"Okay…" Shepard whispers. "Okay… oh… kaaaay…"
She has to whisper. If someone heard her playing this game she would look ridiculous. She does look ridiculous, in fact, but she can't think about that now or it won't work.
"No," she says out loud. "Gotta keep a clear head if this is ever going to work." She inhales slowly, worries she is concentrating too much on her breathing, exhales and shoots her arm forward, straightening it. Her fingers curl a little, as if they are gripping a tennis ball. She figures this is the best way to focus the imaginary burst of telekinetic energy. If she packs it into a tight little ball like this, it will be more powerful. Absently she wonders why she thinks this is the case. Has she borrowed that theory from an old cartoon vid she used to watch? It doesn't matter. Silly or not, she's always curled her fingers like this. That's how she does it. And now, if she doesn't curl her fingers there is no chance of it working.
She feels her grip tighten. She slacks it off just a touch, then tightens it a bit more. She is in complete control of her arm. Blinking once, Shepard looks ahead of her to see the soda can, defiantly still stood there.
"Not for long," she murmurs. "You just be ready, soda can. You're going over. You're going down. Oh…kay."
The arm pulls back and then thrusts forward. Once again, nothing happens. Damn. It must be because she concentrated too much on her breathing. She's forgetting all about the mental discipline involved. Just making the correct hand motion isn't going to topple the can! The hand and the arm are just a memory aid. It helps her to concentrate.
She flexes her fingers, takes her deep breath and stares hard at the can. This time she isn't going to blink. Perhaps she has been losing her concentration by blinking. That might just be it. Now she thinks about the can. She rehearses the push in her mind. Not just the physical motion, but the generation of the magic energy. The magic field, whatever one calls it. It is going to start off as a tiny crystalline ball in her hand, beautiful and complex, multilayered but not solid. A little gaseous marble of magic. From there it will expand, growing more detailed in impossible ways, and then, once she thrusts her arm, it will become a beam of energy and it will fly right at the can. Not because she points at the can or aims well, though she can aim pretty damn well, but because she wills it to hit that can and topple it.
Snapping her arm straight beautifully, she makes her move. For the seventeenth time today, just like every try of every day for the past year, the can remains completely stationary. Sometimes it isn't a can but some other piece of detritus. She has used more items for the game than she can remember. One day one of them will move by her will. One day. With God as her witness…
She realises what she is thinking and bursts out laughing. When her eyes close she falls completely out of the moment. Sometimes Shepard gets bored and takes the telekinesis game much too seriously. As she tries to shake off the temporary belief that she has supernatural powers, she places her hand onto her knee so that she isn't tempted to keep trying. That she has to do this makes her laugh even more. It started off as a way to pass the time but now her attempts to defy the laws of physics have become a daily hobby.
It is a fun game and she enjoys fooling herself, living in a strange magical world for a few minutes. Usually she gets bored of these games after a while. Little fads are common with her, but they wear off eventually and are replaced by something else. Typically though, her little obsessions only fade away once she has mastered them. Of course, she knows she will never actually develop magic powers, so she will have to give this one up voluntarily. Perhaps that's why she has been doing it for so long. She shrugs it off, pulls her blanket from her bag and starts making a bed.
There's no chance anyone will see her here behind the large brick wall, which also works with the roof to shelter her from the elements. The sloped floor feels nice to sleep on too. It's the closest thing to cosy she has found anywhere. The outside ramp of the First Glendale Public Library is the nicest spot to sleep in she has ever discovered, and she is so glad she has it. It would be wonderful if she could only find a way inside the abandoned building and make it a proper home, but there's no way. The windows have been sealed with more bricks and the doorway is bolted shut. The thought is interesting though. She could solve a lot of her problems if she found a way into one of these abandoned buildings some day. It might be worth investigating.
All in all, things are going very well for Shepard. In the last several months she has made an effort to really take hold of herself and make her life as pleasant as it can be. She has made a few mistakes, in particular trying to make a name for herself with a Colorado street gang and then moving South rather than North, but she doesn't dwell on them and she recovers quickly. Nothing hurts her anymore. If things go badly, she just forgets and goes to another city. If she masters something, she moves on anyway. No-one gets too close and she has freedom. It's a good life.
She isn't sleepy just yet though. Unfolding the worn, old blanket she has carefully wrapped around herself, she stands and moves it to one side. Now that her shoulders are above the edge of the bricks, she surveys the street. Even at this time of night it's crowded. She wonders how many more nights she will be able to hold onto her great spot on the library ramp before someone else spots it and takes it from her. She can fight if she has to, and she's learned to fire a pistol with surprisingly good aim too, but she would never fire on a person.
A lone woman, nicely dressed and with deep, rich blonde hair, moves away from the herd and heads to the garbage can next to the library. It's extremely rare for someone to actually use the cans. They aren't even emptied. She might be from out of town, this one, and she seems kind, but Shepard has to forget all of this because she clearly has a purse hanging out of her trousers' back pocket.
Shepard is behind her in half a minute, as much time as it takes the woman to reach the bin and bend over a little to drop her paper food wrapping. As she gets close the young thief detects a pleasant scent from the lustrous, clean blonde hair. She looks down for a second, enjoying the smell. It is hard to tell, but she may be one of the few remaining natural blondes.
No, she tells herself, silently this time. Don't feel sorry for her. She left the purse hanging out. You need it more and she will do fine. Just get it. And she does, looking at the crowd to see if anyone has noticed her there whilst keeping the woman's head in her field of vision, just in case.
She gets away easily, moves back to the library and drops down behind the wall. The moment she knows she has made it, her heart begins pounding. She has trained herself not to react until she is safe to do so. Inside the wallet is fifteen credits. That's food for three days, more if she rations properly. Shepard can't help but smile to herself. These days she rarely feels guilt at all when she picks pockets. She tells herself that she has no alternative. She has to eat after all, and she has done much worse things to survive back in Colorado. At least those days are over. She doesn't have the gall to actually keep the purse though. She slips the money out and into her own pocket, right at the bottom so it won't show, then decides that tomorrow she will drop the purse in the trash bin. She will be sure to hide it properly so that nobody else finds it and starts using the woman's cards.
She can still feel her heart beating against her chest, but it is slowing now. Normally she spends more time planning a theft. The spontaneity of this grab has made it rather exciting. As she leans back down to relax inside her makeshift bed, she sees the soda can in the corner of her eye. It is shaking a little. She must have either knocked it with the edge of the quilt or else she disturbed it as she ran past in her escape. She smiles, curls her fingers and quickly throws her right arm forward, stiffening it without even trying. She makes no effort to focus her magic powers this time and does not think very hard about it. She just thinks it would be really fun if this once, the can did move. It would be funny.
The can wobbles violently, moving faster than it had been doing, and in the wrong direction. It is still standing, but it is angled slightly and it could easily fall. Shepard feels her body freeze in panic and the can spins around on the smooth, circular bottom rim. She watches this spectacular, terrifying display for what seems like an eternity until finally the can stops moving and rights itself. It shakes back and forth for a millisecond, then stops moving altogether, unyielding as ever.
Shepard is staring at the can now and trying hard to find rational explanations for what just happened. Has she just pushed the can, however slightly, without touching it? Has she actually achieved telekinesis? She knows such things are possible, magic aside. Once she snuck into an Alliance Navy office, just to look around, the day she saw that broken engine and started feeling sick. She read that leaflet about their space station. Is she one of those…?
No.
That's ridiculous. She furrows her brow in anger and grinds her teeth for a moment. Then she lies down and closes her eyes, refusing to consider the ridiculous notion. When she lunged forward with her hand, she must have pushed the can using the air. She had simply pushed too hard, or been too close, and disturbed the can with a little gust of air.
Her heart is still beating. Now she can almost hear it. She wills it to slow down and it does.
Licking her dry bottom lip, Shepard frantically thinks about other things. Had that woman been a natural blonde? If not, she had dyed her hair both recently and skilfully. Shepard had been close to her hair and hadn't seen any difference in colour at the roots. Shepard wonders what shades her skin and eyes were. She had only noticed the striking hair.
The blanket is comfortable and she feels her body radiating warmth into its folds much more quickly than usual. She uses this to her advantage and makes herself sleepy. She's had a long day and she's made some money. It has been a productive day, in fact. She deserves a good night's rest, while she can hold onto the library ramp. She wishes she could break in. Maybe the books are still there.
Once, when she had lived in Illinois, she had been a member of a library. The day she joined they were in the process of replacing the books with soft copies. The man she spoke to was sad about it and kept saying he wished they could hold onto more of the old books. Shepard had thought the man stupid for wanting to hinder the already sluggish advance of new technology in the megatropolises. She had been a young girl then.
Breathing slowly and remembering the encounter, Shepard starts to drift off. When she yawns without meaning to, she knows she will be asleep soon. The certainty relaxes her fully and makes her smile. Tomorrow she will explore the town some more.
And she won't play that ridiculous game with the tin can ever again. It will go in the trash with the purse.