A. I. Evolution: The Coming of Christopher

Chapter 20

The next day is Sunday, and again I sleep in till the afternoon. I lay in bed, not needing to get up right away as I think about the night before, and the ease with which I was able to read their emotions and judge their hands by their deep feelings. "Could I really do something like that in a professional card game, with some big-time players?" I am not a person to stick my head out and take chances, but these abilities are giving me a new-found confidence I had always shied away from.

I get up out of bed and turn on the TV. Again, just for the briefest of moments, the screen is a jumble of distorted images till my mind resets the visual portion of my brain, so I can interpret the moving lines. An old movie about a couple pretending they are having a relationship, but in reality, each one has their own agenda. It is a contest to please co-workers, that turns serious, as they slowly stop pretending, and fall for each other. Then as I continue to watch it, the whole movie in perfect detail enters my mind and I recall each scene before it appears. "Well, I guess watching reruns is now out of the question. If I want to watch an old movie now, all I need to do is close my eyes and lay back.

I swing by the small table at the door, where I had placed the Saturday newspaper the night before, when I had come home, and carry the folded paper to the kitchen table. I get a large bowl from the cupboard, which has become my normal breakfast dish now, because the small one just isn't enough anymore. I put a K-cup in the coffee maker and get the milk and cereal as it brews away.

I just get the cereal and milk in the over-sized bowl, when the machine stops dribbling coffee into the mug below the brewer. I sit down and start munching away as I scan the front page of the paper. An incident at the small airport is featured on the front page. The details are sketchy, but it looks like someone had managed to sneak onto the plane undetected and get off again before the authorities could stop him. There were no details about what he looked like and how he had managed it, but the seriousness of it made front page news.

I smile to myself as I finish my breakfast. "That would be quite a feat these days with the tight security at all the airports after the terrorists had seized some planes years before."

I flipped the page and glanced down the left side before going to the right, suddenly realizing that I had read that page before. I shake my head at the weird sensation, and flip to the next section and read the right side first this time, only to find out that I knew exactly what the left side said.

I push the paper aside and finish my cereal as I reflect on what I had just done. It was only then that it came to me that I had not looked at each word but had read the whole page in one quick glance. The spoon was still on its way to my mouth when I came back from my thoughts on the subject, and how I could recall the word on the third line six in from the right of any of the articles in the paper.

I pulled the paper back from the edge of the table and in quick succession, flipped through the pages till the end. I did not need a cat or the used TV that was for sale, along with many other numerous articles in the want adds. So, I folded the paper and set it back down on the end of the table as I sat and drank my coffee in silence.

I had a moment of panic as I thought about what was happening to me, and how things were progressing so fast. It seemed like I could do just about anything, if I put my mind to it. To test my mind even more, I envisioned a perfect chair and how it could be made. It was like I had punched in "The perfect chair", into the search engine of the internet, because my mind started envisioning multiple chairs and then discarding them or changing them slightly to fit the silent criteria that I had set for the exercise. In seconds, a chair appeared in full detail with a seat that was slightly sloped toward the rear with a high curved back that would hold a person's shoulder blades in perfect comfort. The armrests tilted inward slightly, so the persons forearms could rest on them in the most natural position.

With my minds eye, I moved it around, so I could see it from all directions. It came to me that a slightly sloped folding ledge that could be swung up from below the right armrest to hold a laptop computer would make it a perfect work station that a person could work at comfortably for hours at a time.

This whole procedure happened in less time than it took to swallow the last sip of my coffee that I had not realized I was holding in my mouth. I felt relaxed and in no hurry to do anything, so I let my mind wander where it would and the images that started to roll across my conscious thoughts were something out of the psychedelic images popular from the fifties and sixties. I let the images flow on their own till I found one that touched something deep inside me. I stopped the playback of images and concentrated on that one single thought. It soon shifted and changed into an image of my mother, when she was very young, and by the way she was looking down on me, I was an infant and possibly even a new born baby in her arms. The feelings attached to this simple image caused tears to flow down my cheeks as if I had turned on the tap at the corners of both my eyes.

The feeling soon became too much for me to handle, and I knew that it was my very first image of my mother, moments after I had been born, and the joy of seeing her with my own eyes was overwhelming.

I sat up straight in the chair, almost spilling the coffee in the mug I was holding. I looked around the small apartment, trying to bring myself back from the emotion of the moment. I moved to the window and looked out over the scene in front of me to distract me from the debilitating feelings, and noticed a man standing by the tree across the street. He seemed out of place in the tranquil scene, and as I looked away for a second and then came back to where he was, he was gone. I searched the whole area visible from my window and even with my enhanced vision I could not relocate him. The whole incident made me wonder if I had seen him at all; maybe my mind was playing tricks on me, and it was a half memory from some other time and place.

I went back to the kitchen table and recalled the image of the man across the street from my building and realized that he was Asian and strangely focused on my window as if he knew I was heading there, and then to disappear as soon as I was distracted. The whole feeling of the encounter was spooky to me.

I shook my head to clear the thoughts before pulling my lap-top closer and turning it on, so I could check into the possibility of catching a flight to Vegas the next day and reserving a hotel room at one of the major Casino's. It only took a moment to access the airlines and book a flight. Vegas is a popular destination and there are direct flights daily to the Sin City.

I then booked myself into the Hyatt above the gambling halls downtown. I had only reserved an inexpensive room, not thinking that I would be there very much. The other thing I needed to do was let Jane know that I was going to Vegas, so she could meet me there, because she was scheduled to check up on me this next week.

I did not get through to her personally but did manage to leave a message on her answering machine, detailing my travel plans and how she could get a hold of me at the Hyatt in downtown Las Vegas.

The rest of the day I relaxed and again watched some of the shows I had missed, knowing that the next few days would be strenuous if the night before was any indication. My flight was at nine in the morning, so I retired early, wanting to be well rested before starting another test of my new abilities.