Lying in bed very early in the morning with her eyes shut, Hermione pondered the new information she'd gathered on the most recent trip to London. It had brought to mind a number of concepts that she'd been aware of but not addressed so far, as she was more concentrating on her telekinesis and HOP designs.
There was definitely something strange going on. That much was clear. So far she'd directly seen three people carrying those strange not-really-a-HOP tools about their person, the things very distinctive to her H-field sense and almost the same in each case. There were small individual differences that gave the impression of the devices being hand made, or in very small quantities if done by machine, but they were mostly so similar those had to be a sort of personal customization of a standard design.
And as they were both so similar and so obvious, it was a sensible conclusion that all the other such things she'd detected that she hadn't seen with her eyes, the ones at long range, were the same class of device. Whatever they were intended to do, it implied there were a number of people wandering around with them out there. The sample size was small, but she'd so far noted sixteen of them over the last few months. Mostly in London or the immediate vicinity which made sense because of the number of people who lived there. Where their house was had a much lower population density, and as far as she could currently tell, didn't have any of the things in range. Which was nearly a four mile diameter circle at this point.
So what were they? What were they for? How many people had them? Where did they get them? Why were they, assuming it was the same root cause, hiding behind an SEP?
She had no proof it was the people with the devices that were behind the SEP at that pub, but given two strange occurrences with very similar H-field manipulation going on, it wasn't a stretch to think they had to be directly connected. Not to mention that the overall… construction, for want of a better word… of the SEP and the other oddities surrounding the Charing Cross site were essentially identical to the mystery devices.
Hermione was seriously reconsidering her initial wild idea it was aliens behind all of this. As mad as that sounded. A secret alien base hiding in the middle of London with aliens disguised as ordinary humans wandering around doing… something? It wasn't quite as unlikely as she'd initially thought when she'd had the idea, although she was still fairly sure that wasn't the truth. It would make a good novel, yes, but in reality it seemed just a bit far-fetched.
She made a mental note to perhaps try writing that novel one day, as she'd found she rather enjoyed writing books…
So… Assuming it wasn't aliens, what was it? A secret society of people who could do things via something related to, but simultaneously not, psionics? Hiding in plain sight for some reason rather than becoming known to the public? Why? What were they hiding from? If they were genuinely hiding, why on earth do it almost in the center of the largest city in the country instead of in the middle of nowhere? Where did they learn to do what they did? When did they learn it? And how? The people she'd seen included one girl only a few years older than her, which seemed young for some sort of secret government project like her parents had suggested, unless that was some sort of disguise. Which, if true, raised even more questions…
How many of them were there? That was one of the more interesting ones, of course. At least sixteen assuming that none of them had more than one notHOP tool, but she had to presume rather more than that to have gone to so much trouble as to hide a quite large piece of London. From what she'd determined it was at least twice the amount of area as the street her house was on, which seemed a lot to simply disappear into mystery. Looking at a map didn't show anything untoward, which both didn't surprise her that much as it would be too easy to locate if it did, and suggested that whatever was hiding either had government aid to stay off maps, or predated the ones she'd found. Or both, of course.
It seemed very likely that they didn't know about psionics or the H-field, since their own methods stood out like a lighthouse when looked at from that viewpoint. Which presumably wasn't the desired behavior. From everything Hermione had seen, what they were doing was hideously inefficient if you considered minimal energy usage as a design goal, although she admitted to herself that they might well have different design goals and thinking of their work as wrong wasn't entirely fair. It was clearly the result of considerable knowledge she didn't herself have, so whoever it was had been doing this for quite a while.
Aliens, government agents, or just sneaky people with unusual skills. Those seemed like the three most likely candidates, although she could easily come up with more simply by thinking about the fiction she'd read. Her father undoubtedly would have even more ideas. Aliens did seem like a stretch even now although in some ways it would be the most sensible, even if implausible, reason. A hidden society of sneaky talented people seemed a touch unlikely too, as it would have taken a lot of work over many years to pull off the Charing Cross thing. It certainly wasn't impossible but it seemed a little strange even so as far as she could see. Although again she might, almost certainly was for that matter, be missing key bits of information.
The government doing something classified was in many ways the most likely possibility but even there it didn't quite fit. On the other hand, since she did have far too little information, it was entirely possible that the whole thing was completely sensible when you knew the truth. Perhaps it was something Cold War related, which she was well aware had produced some very strange outcomes over the last forty years. Her father had told her some really bizarre stories he'd read about that made it clear governments were filled with people who were sometimes rather dim. Or just paranoid.
Or paranoid and dim, which seemed like a bad combination.
She sighed faintly. All this was just speculation running wild since she simply didn't know the truth. Her mother was a little concerned about the whole thing, as was she, and while her father shared those concerns he was also quite interested in it too. He'd read too many spy stories over the years, and fantasy books.
Hermione smiled to herself at his suggestion it was a bunch of wizards from another world who moved here in secret to escape a demon of some sort. That was another good novel idea, but hardly likely as far as she could see. Perhaps she should encourage him to write a book too.
Oh well. Until and unless she managed to get more data on the whole thing, it was probably best to put it to one side, stay out of the way of whoever it was behind it all, and get on with her own work. Perhaps at some point she'd discover what was going on, but right now she had other things to think about.
Although she'd had quite a few ideas sparked by observing that not-very-well-hidden pub in London. And studying the way they did what they did had let her work out some very interesting things.
The H-field was, as far as she could tell so far, present everywhere in essentially the same way and at the same levels. That was what she'd put in her book, arrived at by months of careful observation and experimentation. She really wanted to see if there was any variation with altitude, and location further away than London, but everything she'd seen so far had only shown at worst tiny variations that came and went apparently randomly, quickly damping out to the background level.
When she used telekinesis she was essentially directly altering the H-field flux running both through her and the environment around her, by an act of will. Precisely how this happened was still a bit of a mystery, but it was certainly real. And could be taught, as she'd proven with her parents and grandmother. Why she herself had managed to do it spontaneously wasn't known to her but she assumed she was just naturally that little bit more sensitive to the H-field than they were, to the point that she'd accidentally manipulated it those times. Emotion definitely heightened sensitivity, she was satisfied of that. It also reduced ability, since being all wound up didn't help one's mental clarity at all. So it was important, as Yoda said, to avoid the dark side of the force. Which still made her giggle when she thought it.
Her HOPs and all the other techniques she'd come up with were doing the same thing, but offloading most of the power handling requirements in electronic terms to something that wasn't inside her head. Which allowed for a lot of interesting possibilities and seemed logically to be much safer too.
However, what the mystery people were doing was quite different in some crucial ways, from what she'd seen. They didn't appear to be directly accessing the H-field at all. All their equivalents to her own constructs were far more complex than anything she'd so far made, but at the same time a lot of that complexity didn't seem to be doing anything useful. Or indeed, in a few places, anything at all.
It also manipulated H-field energy in a strange way, she'd noticed. Almost like this was a byproduct of the original goal rather than the goal itself. It seemed to her that what they were doing was using a higher level of manipulation, which masked the actual H-field connection under an interface method that allowed complex effects to be achieved without having to build them up from first principles.
Her eyes opened and she stared at the ceiling in the dimness of predawn light. "That's it," she said as things clicked together in her mind. "That has to be it. It is a different layer like I thought." Hermione smiled to herself as a few things resolved themselves, although it also led yet again to even more questions without answers.
If one likened the H-field to an electric field, which it wasn't, but it was close enough for the analogy to work for the moment, what she did was divert, reinforce, and otherwise manipulate that field to cause useful work. A HOP was at its simplest level just as she'd initially thought very similar to a field effect transistor, and acted in a way that was remarkably close to that sort of device. A small control signal controlled a much larger power signal, which then led to the possibility of constructing much more complex 'circuits' from the basic elements. It mapped remarkably well to electronic theory, both analog and digital. Much more complex effects could be realized by offloading the effort into a construct designed for that specific task rather than by doing it manually, so to speak.
And having it all made out of the very energy that such things controlled allowed all manner of interesting possibilities that one could never do with electronics. She was sure an entire computer could be made that way, for a start, and had already produced simple logic gate equivalents in addition to her original feedback systems, which were the basis of analog rather than digital computers. A mix of both ideas could undoubtedly produce some remarkable results although it would be a very complicated thing to do.
That led her to the obvious conclusion that once you had an H-field computer, you would necessarily require H-field computer programs. And some sort of programming language. Which in turn suggested that once you had all that, you might well have people who knew how to use those programs but might not actually understand exactly how they worked…
Was that even possible? It somewhat fitted her preliminary observations. Perhaps those notHOP tools were actually a sort of pocket computer that had a lot of premade programs available to it, and the user could utilize it to indirectly manipulate the H-field without ever having to even know that's what they were doing. She considered the idea and decided it wasn't entirely out of the realms of feasibility. Hermione could see roughly how to start the design of something of that nature although it would be an awful lot of work to successfully pull off.
But it would, at least in part, explain the general fuzziness of the things she'd seen. Why they did it in a very complicated way, and seemed to be inefficient from a power usage standpoint. If it was using some sort of… library of subroutines, in effect, like a procedure in BASIC, that might well result in something that was effective even if not efficient. Capable of doing something very complicated indeed without requiring the person behind it to know all the theory and practice to achieve the same effect by hand, as it were. At the expense of wasting a lot of the energy that was being used, which might well not matter to them if they only cared about the results rather than the method to arrive at them.
So had someone at some point discovered the same thing she had? And actually made an H-field computer system? Or was she going down entirely the wrong path?
If they had done that why didn't they publish their results? Why hide?
She shook her head a little. Again, there simply wasn't enough information, and it was entirely possible she'd come up with a scenario that was completely wrong. It also didn't quite seem to be a complete explanation somehow, as if she was still missing a key insight or two. That said, it did have some interesting possibilities for her own work and was worth thinking more about at some point.
Leaving the actual mechanisms behind the whole thing aside for now, though, still left her thinking about what was being done. That SEP field was a good example; unlike telekinesis which acted at a physical level and allowed things like lifting and moving objects, creating force fields, diverting energy, and such effects, making people ignore something that was right in front of them was acting, probably, on a mental level. It wasn't actual invisibility in the usual sense of the word. She was fairly certain that a modification of the method she'd come up with to make a force field visible could also be used to make something behind that force field invisible. Which needed to be tested, now she considered it again.
That pub wasn't doing that, though. It was making people look right at it and not see it, without being literally invisible. Presumably a camera could well record an image of it, unless some of the other effects surrounding it that she'd noticed were meant to stop that as well. But the primary effect that made it an SEP right out of Mr Adam's books was that it did something to the mind, directly. A normal person wouldn't even notice that they weren't noticing something.
Which gave her some truly fascinating ideas.
Right back when she'd first realized that psionics were real and so was telekinesis, she'd wondered if she'd be able to pull of some of the other fictional ideas of the concept, like telepathy. Due to her experimentation with HOPs and all the other things she'd put that on the back burner, as she didn't really have any good ideas yet how to proceed down that path, but… That SEP field was doing something that obviously wasn't a million miles away from the same sort of idea. If a pseudoHOP could affect the minds of random people from a distance, did that mean it was possible to do the same thing by hand through psionics?
It was a scary thought, actually. What would the limitations be? And the risks? She could immediately come up with a whole series of examples from literature that varied from beneficial to very, very much the opposite. Shivering for a moment, Hermione decided that any experimentation along those lines would have do be done excruciatingly carefully, if at all.
She already knew that her energy sense could detect the H-field interactions that happened with living things, it was how she could sense people, animals, and even plants from a significant distance. The minute distortions they left in the field contained a lot of information about them, information she was still working on deciphering. It was fairly straightforward to determine emotional state, for example, which was immediately an empathetic talent straight out of science fiction. So far she hadn't really pushed that beyond noting it was getting easier, but perhaps she should put in some more time on this area of research. However it did show yet again that the H-field and a living thing had a connection, even if the living thing wasn't able to actively manipulate the field at will.
In fact, the entire existence of H-field manipulation proved beyond doubt that it interacted with the mind. At least one way. The SEP phenomena proved it went the other way too under the right circumstances, which seemed fairly logical if you thought about it.
The question was, of course, could she do the same thing? She knew what the result was, and she could see roughly how it was being done, so it should be feasible to come up with a method of her own to duplicate the results even if she couldn't yet directly copy the exact way they did it. Not that she particularly wanted to copy their method exactly if there was a better way to achieve the same results. One that wouldn't radiate wasted energy like it was going out of style. If nothing else than because if the point was to hide something from someone, hiding it behind a giant screen covered in floodlights and a huge sign saying "Look away, there's nothing to see here," seemed suboptimal.
Although, quite in keeping with the book description, she thought with a grin. Perhaps Mr Adams had known more than he'd let on.
She spent a couple of hours before getting up for breakfast and heading off for school thinking about how to make her own SEP, taking many pages of notes in the process, and ended up going down the rabbit hole of ever more elaborate methods to hide and protect an area from anyone you didn't like. By the time she finished she'd come up with at least a dozen methods to do some really quite bizarre things, which was going to take a lot of experimentation and the help of her parents. And it had opened up an entirely new field of research and most likely a whole new book at some point.
All in all, it was quite a productive morning in her view and she hadn't even started the day.
"I had a very odd phone call this morning," Jerry commented as he sat down in the cafeteria at the same table as several of his friends and colleagues.
"Isn't that almost inevitable for someone in your field?" Christine replied with a quick grin. "Ghostbusting is always going to attract odd people. For example, you." She pointed at him with a fork, before sticking the cherry tomato on it into her mouth and looking amused.
He sighed heavily as the other two at the table started snickering. "It's not ghostbusting, it's research into parapsychology, as you damn well know," he complained, taking the plate and cutlery off his tray and sliding the latter to the side. "I'm studying a completely sensible field."
"So sensible there are only two places in the entire UK that are currently paying people to study it," Farouk chuckled from the other side of the table. "And so sensible there are no actually verifiable or reproducible results from any of the experiments anyone has ever carried out. How your department ever got funding is beyond me."
"We got some very good data on electronic random noise generators being influenced by an act of will last year," Jerry protested. "Well above statistical chance."
"For one week. You haven't been able to do it again," the other man replied, grinning. "It was equipment error. Just admit that."
Stabbing his fish with his fork, the first man scowled. "We had a whole series of tests that showed it," he grumbled. "Something went wrong with the setup and we couldn't reproduce it perfectly when we moved it to another room. But we controlled for all the environmental parameters, so I still think it was real. We don't know why our subjects couldn't do it again yet. I'll figure it out though."
"Sounds like equipment error to me," Farouk taunted, grinning. "You had a loose connection or something like that."
"You helped me build the rig, you idiot," Jerry sighed. "So if there was a loose connection it was your fault." He ate some fish, then mumbled, "It wasn't a loose connection. I checked."
"You have to admit there's not a lot of evidence for what you're trying to find, though, Jerry," the fourth person at the table, William, put in, having been listening with an expression of enjoyment to the same sort of thing that happened every time. "I won't deny there's a lot of very circumstantial evidence for psychic phenomena, but there's never been anything even remotely resembling proof. It's all anecdotal at best, with a very small number of exceptions that never seem able to be reproduced."
"If there is some very subtle way that a human mind can directly interact with something outside the body, which I don't think there is, it does vaguely make sense that it would be highly prone to the exact conditions needed to show it," Christine commented, smiling a little. "So if it's real, it would be very tricky to consistently reproduce."
Jerry looked pleased.
"But it was probably equipment error."
Jerry looked annoyed again. She grinned at him.
"What do you expect, you muppet? You're trying to convince a semiconductor researcher, an electronics engineer, and a biologist that psychic powers are real." She waved her fork around at the others. "If you want to convince someone you'd probably have better luck with the other soft science types."
"They think I'm nuts," Jerry muttered into his coffee.
"That's because you are nuts," Farouk laughed. "But we still like you." Jerry gave him a put upon look which only got a grin in response. "So what was odd enough about this phone call of yours that it stood out from what must be a constant stream of bonkers people trying to explain how they saw next week's pools numbers?"
"It was from a dentist near London who says his whole family can do some sort of telekinesis and wanted to talk to someone who researched that sort of thing," Jerry replied, brightening up. The other three exchanged dubious looks, then turned as one to him. "I know, it sounds weird, but he seemed perfectly rational unlike some of the people who call us. And he got my name from somewhere, he'd obviously done his research. Normally the really daft ones just phone the main reception and scream about gremlins or something of that nature."
"It's a scam of some sort, it always is," Christine told him patiently. "You remember that chap last year who tried to convince you he could win the premium bond's top prize if only someone would give him enough money to buy a lot of bonds? He was a complete con artist, and not a very good one."
"I remember, yes. This is different." Jerry shook his head. "I did a little background research of my own. His name is Michael Granger, and he took a first class BSc in biology here, then went to Kings College for a BDS in dentistry, again first class. His wife is also a dentist, studied at Bristol University, degrees in dentistry and radiology, and they both met at Kings. They have a successful and very well regarded private practice in Hampshire, ten or twelve miles southwest of Guildford, which has been running for some seven years now."
The others were staring at him as he finished speaking. After a moment, William said in some disbelief, "Jesus, Jerry. Are you a Parapsychologist or a private detective?"
"I know a few people, and it's all public information," he replied, putting a little more pepper on his fish while smiling. "The point is that he's not a swivel-eyed nutter according to people who know him. And from what I picked up he spent a while looking into me before he called. Several people said he'd phoned up out of the blue to chat and happened to ask about the department. We did our research on each other by the looks of it."
"And you think that means he's not deluded or something?" Christine asked a little warily. He shrugged.
"I can't prove it, but I don't think he is. I've fielded more than a few of those sorts of calls, and you get a feeling for them. He seemed sincere as best I could tell."
He frowned slightly, thinking back to the call that morning. "Bit cagey though. Like he wasn't telling me everything. That was the odd part, other than the entire call. But I suppose I'll find out when they turn up." Putting a few chips in his mouth he chewed and swallowed.
"When's that supposed to happen?" Farouk asked.
"He wanted to visit next week, on the 9th of April. During the Easter holidays, so his daughter could come as well." Jerry finished his coffee and put the cup down, ate the last of the chips, and leaned back. "It fits my schedule so I said yes."
"Must be hard finding a hole in that schedule, what with all the high powered international trips you do," Christine chortled, making him sigh yet again.
"You never give up, do you?" he plaintively asked.
"Nope. It's much too much fun," she grinned, standing up. "See you later, Jerry, I've got a date with an electron microscope. Have fun with the ghosts."
"Not ghosts!" he shouted after her as she left, then looked around with embarrassment as every other faculty member present stared at him. Christine was still laughing when she left the cafeteria. As she vanished she started whistling the iconic film's theme tune.
Putting his hand on his face he moaned. "She is such a pain in the arse sometimes."
William snorted with laughter. "Don't worry, she's like that with everyone. And you have to admit you're a tempting target."
"Oh, god, don't you start," Jerry grumbled. He also got up. "I have work to do. Thanks for the moral support."
"Any time!" Farouk saluted him with his coffee cup as he wandered off, feeling a little hard done by and underappreciated. Jerry waved over his shoulder as he headed back to his small department, wondering if this Granger bloke was going to be yet another disappointment as so many had been before.
Helen sighed a little as Michael led her into the garage from the kitchen, her hand over her eyes. "Is this really necessary?" she asked with mild asperity. "You could just tell me what the surprise is."
"That would spoil it, dear," he chuckled. Guiding her into position with his hands on her waist, he rotated her a little. "All right. You can open your eyes now."
She did so, then looked around. The garage was empty, with only a circle of masking tape about three feet across on the floor right in the middle to differentiate it from the last time she'd been in here that morning. After a moment or two she turned to him and folded her arms, giving him a hard look. "Practical jokes now, is it?" she asked. "I suppose Hermione is in on it. You two are impossible."
"It's not really a joke, dear, but yes, Hermione is involved." He was smirking in a very annoying manner, causing her to shake her head. "And she's closer than you think."
She gazed at him, then suspiciously scanned the entire garage again. "I can't help feeling I'm going to regret this, but what are you up to?"
"No, no spoilers. You have to work it out for yourself."
Helen put her hands on her hips and glared at him, only getting a grin back in return, then turned on the spot and very carefully inspected the entire garage, paying special attention to the marked circle. As far as she could tell nothing was amiss, and their daughter wasn't hiding under the workbench about to jump out and shout Boo!
Her eyes stopped on a cardboard box upside down against the rear wall of the garage, one that had originally contained the mower and hadn't quite managed to get thrown away yet. "Aha!" she said with satisfaction, stalking over to it and flipping it over. "I found…"
She sighed as Michael laughed from behind her, as the box was entirely empty.
"This is getting annoying," she complained. He kept chortling in the manner of one who was playing a grand prank and was not going to get dessert as she turned around and glared at him.
"Getting colder," he giggled.
"You are a proper pain in the arse, Michael Granger, I hope you realize that." Helen looked around again, then finally had a thought and closed her eyes. "Oh, you little sods," she grumbled as she very carefully tried using the energy sense. She could clearly detect her annoyingly amused husband on the other side of the room, and in the middle of it, there was something… She frowned slightly as she tried to work it out. Something wasn't quite right there, but what?
Opening her eyes again she stared very hard at the circle of tape, moving her head from side to side, then crossing her eyes almost accidentally for a moment. She could just make out, now she was looking in the right way, something that was sort of flickering in and out of existence in that area. Concentrating very hard on it and remembering what had happened in London, she closed her eyes again, fixed the exact location of whatever it was in her mind, then slowly opened them once more without moving her head.
"How on earth did you do that?" she finally said with great restraint as she found herself squinting at her daughter, who was standing in the taped off circle grinning at her, very slightly wavering like she was on the other side of a bonfire. It was making the inside of Helen's brain itch in a way that she'd never encountered before and didn't very much enjoy. "Stop doing it," she added with asperity. "It's annoying."
Hermione popped back into normal existence, still looking highly pleased with herself, as she stopped doing whatever she'd been doing. Clearly the girl had somehow managed to work out how those strange people at the pub had pulled off their trick, although this felt quite different in some hard to define way. It seemed to do much the same job though.
"Sorry, Mummy, we needed someone who didn't know what was happening to test it," Hermione replied, smiling widely. "If you knew I was there it would be much harder to make it work. Daddy knew and he could still see me. You didn't, and you couldn't, although you did very well with sensing the H-field distortion."
"How does that even work?" Helen asked, feeling startled and despite herself rather impressed.
"It's using the H-field to directly manipulate the senses," Hermione explained. "More or less exactly what the Charing Cross anomaly is doing, but via a different mechanism. I think. I'm still working on how they managed their results. It's not through the normal H-field methods at all, it's much more complicated than that and seems almost too complicated to be sensible. But I finally worked out what it was doing even if I'm still slightly puzzled about how and designed my own method to do the same thing."
She waved a hand at the circle of tape. "I set it up so anything inside this zone was in an SEP, and your mind just told you there was nothing there, so you saw and heard what you expected not what was real. I think it works with smell and probably touch too, although we haven't tested that properly yet."
Helen shook her head in wonder as she stared at her daughter. "That is possibly more terrifying than anything else you've done so far," she commented a little uneasily. "Affecting the mind? How is that possible?"
"The H-field is directly connected to the mind all along or we couldn't do telekinesis," Hermione responded as Michael leaned on the workbench to listen as well. "Right at the beginning I wondered if other fictional psionic abilities would be possible, like telepathy for example. This is, in a way, demonstrating that they are. I don't know if reading someone's mind is actually something that can be done, but fooling the senses turned out to be fairly simple when you understand how to do it. I'm still working on how to fool the H-field sense, which is a lot harder, but I can't say it can't be done. I just don't know if it can."
She was clearly quite excited with her latest work. "It opens up all manner of possibilities, actually. I wasn't thinking much about the mental aspect, only the physical, because that's what I initially started with, but when I saw that pub and what it was doing it made me interested all over again in something I'd considered at the beginning but hadn't really spent much time on."
"You're going to have another book to write at this rate," Michael remarked.
She nodded. "I had the same idea. But it's still very early yet for this field. I need to do a lot more work on it. I was just curious to see if I could make an SEP of my own and it turned out I can." The girl grinned happily as her parents exchanged looks.
"Well, it's very good work, but if you start jumping out at me from thin air there is going to be trouble, young lady," Helen said in a dark voice. "We'll have none of that, do you understand me?"
"I'll be good," Hermione replied in a small voice, causing Michael to chuckle. Helen whirled and pointed sternly at him.
"You, don't encourage her either. I know you."
"Me, dear?" He put a hand on his chest and affected an innocent expression. "Would I do that?"
"Yes," both Helen and Hermione echoed, before they all fell about laughing.
Then they went back into the house for lunch with Helen wondering what the next bizarre trick would be.
"It's very pretty, Daddy," Hermione said wonderingly as she looked out of the car window at the ancient stone architecture surrounding them as they slowly drove through the heart of Oxford city center.
"Oxford University is the oldest educational establishment in the English-speaking world," her father commented as he looked both ways, then turned right onto High Street. "People have been learning here since 1096, nearly nine hundred years ago. It's been in operation ever since. It's also undoubtedly one of the best universities in the world. The city more or less grew up around it, as far as I know. A lot of very famous people went here over the centuries."
"Where did you go?" she asked curiously.
"I was in Christ Church, that big one we passed back there a minute ago on the right," he said, pointing back over his shoulder. "We can stop off later and have a look if you like. It's got some fantastic places inside, such as the main hall, which is like something out of a fantasy film." He smiled at her in the mirror. "You'd probably love it."
"We need to take the next left onto Longwall Street," Helen put in, looking up from the Oxford A-Z she was holding. "Just along there, about a hundred yards away."
"I see it," he replied, indicating. Moments later they turned onto the new road.
"Follow it round to the left, then turn right onto Mansfield Road," she continued. "At the end we turn right again and it's on the right at the end before the corner. The Tinbergen building."
"I vaguely remember that one, but I never went inside," he said with a nod. They drove past a number of other interesting looking buildings, turning appropriately, until the correct location arrived on the right. Hermione looked up at it curiously. She could feel a lot of people all around the place, all apparently hard at work. On the way she'd been keeping watch for any of the strange pseudoHOP users but hadn't sensed one since they'd passed High Wycombe half an hour ago on the M40. There had only been a few here and there even then, in total she'd detected nineteen since leaving the house. And she was almost certain that at least two of those were ones she'd felt before, on the first trip to London, in the vicinity of Leatherhead.
She frowned very slightly as her father looked for somewhere to park. There was something niggling at the back of her mind about the H-field around here, like it was trying to tell her something but doing it very faintly indeed. Closing her eyes she tried to localize whatever it was but couldn't quite get a good fix on it, only that it was there.
"Ah, there we go," her father remarked with a satisfied tone. He'd finally turned around and gone back onto Mansfield Road, finding some free space there. Pulling over, he turned the car off, then stretched with a sigh. "Quite a long drive, but we made it. Now, do we know where we're supposed to meet this Doctor Jerry Langham?"
Her mother checked the faxed map the parapsychological researcher had sent them. "It says to go to reception and tell them we're here, and he'll come and find us," she replied.
"Simple enough, then." Hermione's father nodded as he took the keys out of the ignition. "Might as well leave everything in the boot for now, until we need it. No point carrying it all around with us." He opened the door and got out, as did the other two. Hermione looked around, then up at the buildings, wondering what this man was going to be like and how he'd react…
They'd find out soon enough. Soon, having locked the car, they were walking back to the Experimental Psychology building and a meeting with someone who should find her work worth looking at. She patted the bag over her shoulder that had a copy of her book in it, feeling a sense of accomplishment all over again.
Pushing the door open, Jerry walked through it, hurried down the corridor, and went into the reception area while looking around. He spotted three people, a man, a woman, and a girl of about ten or so, who were standing near the wall on the other side looking out the window. With a glance at the reception desk, he got a nod in their direction as he'd expected, so he went over. "Doctor Granger?" he enquired.
The man turned and met his eyes, nodding and holding out his hand. "Doctor Langham, I assume," he replied with a smile.
"That's me," Jerry said, smiling back. "And this is the other Doctor Granger, and Miss Granger too, by the looks of it."
"Correct," the woman replied. "Please, call me Helen."
"In that case, I'm Jerry."
"Michael."
"I'm Hermione. Pleased to meet you, Doctor Langham," the young girl chipped in, looking at him with a slightly shy gaze overlaying a certain level of examination he was amused by. She gave the impression of being a bright young lady, if he wasn't mistaken."
"Likewise, Hermione." He looked around at them. "Shall we go up to my lab? It's only a couple of minutes walk away and less public than this is."
"After you," Michael Granger nodded, causing Jerry to turn and walk off with the small family following. A few minutes later they were inside his tiny domain, where he, two other professors, and five postgraduate students attempted to find the science behind what most considered fantasy.
"This is my office," he said, waving them through into the room, then closing the door. Going behind his desk he sat down while indicating the other chairs. All three Grangers sat as well. Leaning forward he folded his hands on the desk and examined them. None appeared to be visibly disturbed, which was a good sign, but not absolute proof they weren't yet another group who thought the aliens were talking to them through their cornflakes.
Hopefully it wasn't that. Not again. He'd never hear the end of it from Christine aside from anything else.
"So. You told me on the phone that you believe your family can all perform some form of, how did you put it, psionic ability? Telekinesis if I remember correctly."
They exchanged glances, with what looked for a moment like hidden amusement. Michael Granger cleared his throat. "That is essentially correct, yes. It's something we've been learning to do for some time. But I thought that we might have reached the point where a professional in the field might have some useful insights. After all, we're both dentists, and my field of knowledge is biology with specialism in teeth. Not psychic abilities."
Jerry nodded slowly. They sounded sane enough. A good start. "All right, that's more or less what I gathered. Well, we do study this sort of thing here, although I would have to admit it's a very difficult field to get solid reproducible results in. There are a vast number of factors that can interfere with the excruciatingly small effects the mind can bring to bear on the external world, although I personally am satisfied that this is indeed possible. I've seen some perfectly convincing data more than once that showed an effect that was statistically highly unlikely to be chance, or equipment error. We have a lab next door which is set up to monitor a huge number of physical parameters, such as temperature, magnetic fields, air movements, thermal measurements, you name it. Everything we could think of that might show some real world effect under experimental conditions. We also have access to the latest MRI technology and more computing power than you'd believe."
He smiled a little. "I've been doing this research for seven years now and the technology has advanced enormously even in that time alone. I'm fairly confident that if there is some subtle effect that you can produce, we can spot it. And if there's some other explanation, we can spot that too." Leaning back, he went on as they listened, "With all due respect, you must understand that we get a lot of people making this sort of claim here, and honestly the vast bulk of them have so far, unfortunately, turned out to be mistaken. I'm not saying it's fraudulent in most cases, as the people in question usually honestly believe in what they're telling us, but it's quite easy to convince yourself of something when you want to believe it."
Chuckling ruefully, he added, "It happens to researchers as well, I'm afraid. So we have to be very, very cautious to make sure we're not seeing what we want to see."
"I understand," Michael replied with a nod, glancing at his daughter then his wife. Both seemed to be almost smiling. "It would be disappointing to us as well if we were mistaken."
"Of course it would." Jerry smiled again. "But just think about if you're right! It could be an enormous breakthrough in a field that has been sadly neglected for all too long, and plagued with far too many charlatans. We take it all very seriously and if there is something going on, we'll almost certainly be able to find it."
"That sounds ideal, Jerry," Helen said quietly. "How do you want to begin?"
Her daughter seemed to stifle a small giggle, probably due to nervousness.
"Let's get some details on all of you first," he said, pulling out three sets of consent forms for experimental investigation. He put them on the desk in front of them, pushing a small jar with some pens in towards them as well. "This is the standard form we need filled in for our experiments, just to keep the ethics board happy, you understand. Nothing we do here is in any way dangerous. Then we can get a medical base line, before setting up the first experimental process. Telekinesis is something that is so delicate it requires a very careful calibration process to be completely certain that we're seeing a real effect."
"Have you ever managed to record a real example of telekinesis before?" Michael asked as he picked up one of the forms and looked through it.
"That is… somewhat subject to debate," Jerry sighed. "The readings we got on a number of experiments were non random enough that statistically we're fairly sure we had something, but we were unable to duplicate them on the next occasion. It's such a tiny effect if it really exists it's extremely hard to measure accurately. But I'm always hopeful, and we've improved the experiments enormously since then."
The man nodded, looking up. "I see. And you haven't managed to find anything completely unambiguous yet?"
"Not… quite, no," Jerry was forced to admit. "Not in an experimental environment."
"Well, let's hope this is your lucky day," Michael smiled.
A scraping sound made Jerry's eyes drift to the right, and then stop dead and widen.
One of the pens was gently lifting out of the jar of them. He followed it with his gaze, not even breathing, as it floated blithely through the air to land in Michael's hand. Feeling lightheaded, he kept staring as the man looked up again. "Do you need my mobile telephone number as well?"
Jerry looked very slowly at the jar, which was missing a pen, at the pen which was in the hand of someone who hadn't gone within two feet of the jar, at the expressions on the faces of all three people on the other side of the desk which ranged from amused to mildly resigned, then back at the jar.
He took a breath, realizing rather suddenly he was about to run out of oxygen.
Then, quite deliberately, he picked up his phone receiver, put it to his ear, and dialed a two digit code from memory without looking away from the man sitting opposite him.
When it was answered, he said hoarsely, "Farouk? Get your arse over here right now."
Then he put the phone down without waiting for an answer, leaned forward, and said, "Do that again."
Michael did it again.
Jerry nearly fell out of his chair, before he jumped out of it and danced around the office like a bloody lunatic.