Dimensions

Prologue

PROLOGUE

In a shopping mall near Toronto (in Canada), Cameron was strolling with his parents and his sister between shops full of rushed people, clearly late to buy their Christmas gifts. It was the 22nd of December, and Cameron's family was looking for a present for their favourite uncle's birthday, which was almost a week after Christmas. They searched for the perfect gift in almost every shop of the mall, but they kept searching because they weren't satisfied by everything they saw yet. It was hard to barely find anything interesting because all the merchandise has already been bought by other, faster customers. They were pretty tired of walking so they made a stop at an Ice Cream parlour, to get something to eat. Even if it was winter, a lot of people stopped by at this stand.

While Cameron was drinking his cold Slushie, he started to think deeply about everything around him. He could hear everything, like some babies whining, the "screech" sound every shoe made when walking (everyone's shoes where logically wet from the incessant falling snow), and he could even notice the annoying sound of someone chewing his bubblegum. He wasn't only hearing everything, he was seeing every little detail around him, just like Sherlock Holmes. The letter of a shop's sign probably going to "die" soon was the first thing he noticed, then the incredible bargains on anything he could see from where he was sitting and even what a man was ordering for meal at a McDonalds (quite surprising that he was getting a real meal, not only a snack, because it was around 3 o'clock in the afternoon).

Getting tired of assimilating such useless details, Cameron started to look at the faces of everyone passing by. It wasn't actually better, but maybe he could recognize someone he knew.
Cameron could read every expression any face showed, even if it was subtle. As a matter of fact, he mostly looked at their eyes because it's the easiest way to "read their mind" and to recognize someone (especially if you have an awesome vision - just like Cameron has). He mostly saw brown eyes, brown eyes again, again and again. Sometimes they were blue, but so intense that he had to stop for a moment. He continued, having nothing else to do.

5 minutes later, getting bored, he was about to stop but then he found two green eyes that he knew from somewhere - they were Mandy's, a beautiful girl he loved that happened to be in his class. Her eyes were special, and they had something particularly weird - they were almost unreadable.

When he "zoomed out" to make sure it was her, he noticed she was with her best-friend-forever Candice, walking with a guy he did not know. He was tall and he seemed older than the two girls, but Cameron didn't remember his face from anywhere. He wasn't at least in his school. The guy was too young to be one of the girl's dad, and he was holding one hand of each girl, and as far as Cameron knew, they didn't have a boyfriend. Maybe he was the brother of Candice, because Cameron knew that Mandy didn't have a brother, neither a sister. But it couldn't possibly be Candice's brother because the guy was holding their hands. It seemed like he didn't want the girls to get out of his grip, not even a meter away. It was very schemer, so Cameron started to look intensely in Mandy's green eyes, to see if he could know what she was thinking, until their gazes finally met.

When she saw him, Cameron started to look away because he thought she might think he's weird of looking at her that way, but Mandy's face drastically changed. She was panicking. Not by seeing him, she was actually glad to see him, but she wanted Cameron to help her. Since her eyes were special, he couldn't exactly tell what was going on. He looked at Candice, and her face told:
"What's he going to do with us? Anyone, help me and my friend!!"

Cameron realized the guy wasn't someone they knew either. If no one else would help them, he would. He didn't know what were his intentions, but they probably weren't good. Cameron stood up really fast, and he was about to go help the girls, but his dad stopped him.
"Hey, where do you think you're going? You stay with us."

Cameron rolled his eyes. "Come on, dad. I saw two friends of mine and I just wanna say hello." It wasn't the very truth, but it wasn't false neither.

His dad wasn't in the mood to argue. Cameron noticed that, but he absolutely needed to help Mandy, even if he didn't know what was really going on.
"I said no, and I want to get home as fast as we can. So you stay here, and you'll say hi when the Christmas vacations are over. And please don't insist, I'm not really feeling like it right now." His dad said.
Cameron's mom was curious about the situation. "Look, honey, it's not going to take him 30 minutes only to say hi, am I right?"
His dad grumbled. "No. We're going home. Now."

"Damn," Cameron thought, "I hoped I wouldn't have to do this on my family. But I guess it's necessary."

Cameron closed his eyes, and disconnected from the world around him. He didn't hear anything, just like in space. The only thing he saw were blue gloomy shadows everywhere. He didn't actually see them, he felt them. His eyes were still closed. The shadows were the soul of all the people near him. He grabbed his fathers, his mothers and his sisters. He was now inside their head. Then he could see everything that was passing through their mind, like lines of code. All of this was happening in Cameron's head, faster than anything.

Not even a second passed yet.

He had a complicated task to achieve. He went deeper into his dads mind, to find the "No I'm not gonna let you go" thought. In everything his dad was thinking - and without knowing it, we all are thinking about million things at the same time - Cameron needed to separate every random thought, without altering them, and to find the one his dad thought a second ago. When he found it, he replaced it so it was now "Alright, make it quick."
Now that his dad would be letting him go, he needed to do something so that they wouldn't mind about where was Cameron and what he was doing. He dug further to put this "relaxed" status deep in his fathers mind, so that it would stay like this for maybe half an hour. He repeated the process for his mom and his sister.

When he was done, and made a quick scan to verify if everything was working great with the new configuration, and he came back to reality.

Cameron opened his eyes, blinked a few times and he would be ready to go. But just to make sure once again everything was working great - a mistake was easily done - he asked his dad.
"Hey dad I saw two friends of mine passing by, can I go say hello?"
His dad couldn't do anything but answer: "Alright, make it quick."
"Thanks," said Cameron with a grin on his face, and he added "I'll be back and you won't even realize I've been gone."

He stood up and started walking toward his friends. He needed to be discrete and to merge with the mass of people around him, but still keep an eye on them. It wouldn't be that hard because he can concentrate on anything easily. They walked for a full minute, but then he realized he wasn't thinking about them anymore, he was focusing on a scratch on his glasses (pretty ironic). He didn't need to wear glasses, he only wore them for the look. Only his family knew that, of course.

When he looked out to see Mandy, she wasn't ahead of him anymore. Panicked, he looked everywhere around to see them. He couldn't lose them from sight that easily. He's better than that.
He went to the wall to his right, leaned on it and closed his eyes.

(To be completed soon)