Seven Point Eight (13 page)

Grace took hold of his hands, and the sparkle in her eyes assumed a luminous intensity.

“Max has told me all about you,” she began. “You’re so important in the Lord’s plan, and that’s the reason you’ve come to The Institute.”

He helped her take a seat at the table.

“I know you think you’ve already gained a certain view on life that elevates you above all the rest, but there’s still plenty more to discover. Your journey will be rewarding, although it will be painful too. You must learn to stay strong.”

He found her words a little disconcerting. “How do you arrive at this conclusion?”

She smiled, revealing a fine set of dentures. “I have always known the truth about people.”

It all sounded fascinating.

“And what is there to know?”

“The future, of course,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”

Paul was amused but inherently inquisitive, and his body language reflected this.

“I know you must be thinking this is a Victorian parlour game!” she continued. “But I can say with certainty, that you’ll lead an incredibly long life.”

Hmmm, not a great start.

“Well, I guess I’ll find that out eventually. In my long life, will my work become well known?”

She paused momentarily before answering. “In many years time, the world will know your name, but not for the reason you expect. In fact, you’ll not want the recognition, as there’ll be a greater purpose. Your children will be part of this.”

He often felt frustrated that his work hadn’t been published, so anonymity would his last choice. He still found her predictions vague and unconvincing.

“Tell me about these children,” he probed.

Grace seemed more interested in this question.

“Oh yes, there won’t be any for a little while yet.”

“How many will I have?”

As yet, he still felt uninspired.

She frowned, putting her hand to her mouth in an expression of abject confusion.

“I can’t count them, there are too many.”

It was Paul’s turn to frown.

“Well, I’m thirty nine…I haven’t even begun procreating yet. In fact, I’m not married and there’s no love interest in sight.”

A mischievous glint flickered in Grace’s eyes.

“But there will be, you’d better hold on tight.”

For a long moment, they appraised each other. Paul wanted to believe her, but she’d made some quite generic predictions. Did she have any degree of accuracy?

“Are you always right?” he queried.

“No,” she declared, with honesty, “and that’s why you’re here. Not all my predictions are accurate. Max wants to know why some are, and some aren’t.”

“Okay,” he changed tactic. “Can you give me a prediction for this year, a world event…something important so I can check your accuracy for myself?”

She drifted off for a while and during this time, he fiddled impatiently with the teaspoon on the saucer.

“Two dogs…” she announced, finally. “I can see them looking down upon the Earth, and the world is watching them too. They are the new explorers, as will you be too.”

What a strange prediction. He pulled a notepad and pen from his pocket, scribbled it down and sat back in his chair.

“Well, Grace, it’s going to be a delight working with you.”

***

From that point onwards, I researched at The Institute, while Max Richardson continued to develop upon my previous work back at The Establishment. Still today, I don’t know exactly what that continuation entailed, but he paid me well throughout my time at The Establishment to not unduly worry about the exploitation of my findings. At least my work hadn’t been in vain, although, I didn’t find any conclusive proof of the soul. Yes, I’d discovered some tantalising clues, but I never saw my thesis published, which disappointed me.

Working at The Institute gave me a new lease of life
.
I soon became well acquainted with these gifted individuals and the more I witnessed, the more I believed they weren’t charlatans and were, in fact, highly psychic.

Sakie, for example, was a little eccentric but quite endearing with it. I measured her EM field in the second week at The Institute, and found it to be the most extraordinary spectacle I’ve ever seen. She could drive a compass crazy and short-circuit electrical equipment, sometimes accidentally to her chagrin, whilst listening to something beautiful on the radio, or watching a television programme. (In those days, we only had a choice between two stations, the BBC plus ATV, the commercial channel). Sometimes, she disappeared for several days to carry out contracts. When I asked her about them, she said very little, and not just due to her poor English.

Emilie proved somewhat shy and private, yet cooperative. I performed many experiments on her, to be sure her answers weren’t triggered by non-verbal clues and body language. Her accuracy impressed me, even when the volunteers’ faces were obscured. At that time, I never reached any particular conclusion regarding how she did it, but concurred that telepathy did indeed appear to be genuine, at least in Emilie’s case. Once I became more established at The Institute, I learned she was an interrogator’s assistant, contracted out when the usual lines of questioning weren’t forthcoming.

Beth carried a maternal air about her, while Peter always seemed quite serious. They claimed they could contact spirits and through rigorous testing, their accuracy startled me. Many facts could be checked, providing a good file of evidence. Maybe there is a form of existence after death…death of the body but not of consciousness, or of the soul. Possibly consciousness exists in another quantum state, another dimension even. I wasn’t closed-minded towards that probability.

Oscar proved to be the friendliest resident, whereas George was a great friend for more intellectual conversation. They both produced excellent results with their remote viewing experiments, and their ability to pinpoint what could be found at particular locations around the world bowled me over.

And Grace? Despite my initial reservations, I became very fond of her. A number of other so-called precognitives and modern day seers also came and went during my first year at The Institute, displaying the sort of accuracy that would be expected by chance. They tended to make dramatic, apocalyptic, and religiously tainted predictions about the long term future, which were impossible to verify in our time frame. However, Grace was different. She hadn’t asked for this and in a way, resented her life under scrutiny at The Institute.

Did I believe her?

I recall one particular night in my first summer there and at the time, I was typing at my desk with the Bakelite radio on in the background. A news broadcast caught my attention.

“Good evening, it’s the 20
^th
of August 1960 and the time is 9 o’clock, here is tonight’s news. Soviet dogs, Belka and Strelka, returned safely to Earth after spending a day in space aboard Sputnik 5. They were accompanied by a grey rabbit, forty two mice, two rats, some flies, and a number of plants and fungi, which also survived the trip. They are the first Earth-born creatures to go into orbit and return alive. Scientists hope this will pave the way for the first human being to reach orbit and return to Earth alive.”

I stopped typing and began to fumble around for my old notepad. I found it in the top drawer and flicked through the pages to find something I’d written down eight months earlier. Reading it, I laughed, picked up a pen and drew a huge tick next to it.

“Close enough, Grace, close enough.”

***

Paul became a fully integrated member of The Institute, with the previous facility fast becoming a distant memory. Before long, four seasons had passed and he’d progressed well into his second year there. In the evening, he enjoyed sitting with the residents in the communal living area, proud to be a part of their life. Finding a place to belong gave him a security often absent from his childhood. Prodigies were always the square peg.

In the spring of 1961, his destiny began to drop subtle hints, as fate often does. Television provided the entertainment, and the residents relaxed on the sofas while Paul sat with his notes. Grace entered the room and took up her favourite armchair. The news broadcast came on and George reached over to turn it up, being the nearest. Paul peered over the top of his papers.

“The
Soviet Union
has successfully launched a manned, spaceship into orbit around the Earth. Present aboard the ship was cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, an Air Force pilot aged twenty seven. The spaceship, Vostok, launched about 9:00am Moscow time and completed a flight in orbit, lasting a hundred and eight minutes, concluding with Gagarin safely parachuting to the ground in his ejector seat. Before the launch, he spoke in
Moscow
of his historic voyage…‘to be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage single-handed in an unprecedented duel with nature – could one dream of anything more?’”

The broadcast showed a news reel of the cosmonaut, the launch, and the subsequent celebration in
Russia
. Paul listened intently, as did Oscar, George, and Grace.

“Wow, what next, huh?” Oscar said.

Grace cut in.

“The race to the Moon, that’s what. Watch out for President Kennedy in the near future, he’ll show the way.”

George contemplated her words.

“That will be some feat. The human body must be strong enough to withstand not only the journey and the cold airless environment of space, but also the radiation from the Van Allen belts.”

Oscar seemed inspired and wistful.

“We can dream of reaching the stars one day.”

Paul decided to give his scientific offering.

“I entirely agree. There was a time when we believed the human body wouldn’t be able to withstand the speed travelled on a train, or when we believed flight was impossible, but it happened. That’s not to say it will be easy. Mankind has always been destined for the stars, ever since we gazed at the heavens through a telescope.”

Grace looked over at him, with a strangely enigmatic smile on her face, like a geriatric version of the Mona Lisa.

Paul had a sense of déjà vu as he completed a thesis on his findings at The Institute, and he found himself standing before a committee, the ones who pulled the strings for this particular facility. It was a somewhat smaller board, comprising of Max and two funding directors.

They used the communal living area as a makeshift presentation area, with the three members of the board sitting at the tables adjacent to the bay window. It was more informal, as they had cups of tea and a plateful of digestive biscuits on which to pontificate. The residents were either upstairs undergoing testing, or they had the day off. Paul stood before them, notes in hand, and his typed report sat on the table in front of Max.

“Thank you for the time and hard work you’ve put in here at The Institute,” Max began. “Please, summarise your findings.”

Paul cleared his throat and glanced at his notes.

“Although I came to no definite conclusions, I was able to hypothesise on the source and methodology of the residents’ abilities.”

The two funding directors watched him in a deadpan kind of way, but Max’s expression offered more encouragement.

“Let’s start with Emilie. In the case of her telepathy, I surmise that the human brain transmits some kind of radio wave and that Emilie has the ability to receive this transmission. However, the more I investigated, the more I realised that the signal appeared to be almost instantaneous. In a few cases, she received the signal before it was transmitted. It’s possible that light itself is the carrier wave for this signal, or that there’s some other, hitherto unknown process at large.”