Free Music of the Spheres by Valmore Daniels Page B

the more stubborn cracker pieces
under the soup, Kenny said, “I guess everyone tends to walk on eggshells around
you. No one really knows what you can and can’t do. I’m sure it makes you feel
less than human sometimes.”
    “Or more than human.”
    Kenny took a deep breath. “I’ll say it again. I think we got
off on the wrong foot, and that’s my fault. I’m new and I just wanted to
impress the hell out of everyone. I’m sorry if it felt like I was using you as
a stepping stool. I’m really a nice guy when you get to know me.”
    “Thank you.”
    Motioning to Alex’s lunch, Kenny asked, “You not hungry?”
    “I’m starving,” Alex said. “But not for food.”
    “Look, if I could do anything about that…”
    Alex offered him a conciliatory smile. “I know.”
    Twirling his spoon in his soup absently, Kenny drew his face
into a look of concern.
    He said, “I wanted to talk to you more about what you
mentioned in the lab.”
    “Chrysalis.” Alex picked up a fry and bit it in half.
    “For starters, yeah.” He stared into Alex’s eyes. “I went
through all the reports. I only found one where it’s mentioned, and Dr. Hoit,
who was head of the Quanta experiments at that time, basically dismissed
the notion. I’m reluctant to repeat his exact words.”
    “You don’t have to. I read the report.”
    Kenny looked startled.
    Alex said, “Back then I still had my abilities. I could see beyond my normal range of vision.”
    “Uhm.” Kenny looked uncomfortable. Not everyone could accept
that Alex had once had those powers, unless they saw it with their own eyes.
“Okay. So, let’s pretend I have a more open mind than some of the others. Do
you want to tell me about this chrysalis?”
    “There’s not really much to tell,” Alex said. “Both
NASA—when it was in charge of the project—and Quantum Resources have been going
about this the wrong way from the start. What they don’t realize is that I
should not have survived my first exposure to Kinemet. I tried to warn them,
but they classified everything I said. Sometimes people get a notion stuck in
their head and they’re unwilling to believe anything that goes against that.”
    “I have to admit, it comes with the territory,” Kenny added.
“Scientists can be the most close-minded people you’ve ever met.”
    Alex laughed without humor. Then he said, “The entire Quanta project was doomed to failure from the start. One of the reasons I involved
myself early on—”
    “By hijacking the Quanta ,” Kenny added, twisting his
lips in a half smile.
    “—was because they assumed that the pilot, once exposed to Kinemet,
would automatically return to a material state and turn on the electrical
systems when they arrived at their destination, and in turn be able to dampen
the reacting Kinemet.”
    “And you knew there would be a greater delay than what was
required? The report said it was several seconds—too long, as it turned
out—before you rematerialized.”
    “I didn’t know there would be a delay in my returning to
normal space, but I knew there wasn’t enough time to start the generators,
charge the battery and engage the dampers. The first time I was exposed to Kinemet
I was far too disoriented to be of any use. Any pilot in that situation would
take too long remembering what they had to do before being able to do it. It
was also foolish of the physicists at NASA to think they needed to irradiate a
pilot during a quantized flight to transform him.”
    Alex took a deep breath. “But that’s not the only thing they
were wrong about.”
    “The only thing?” Kenny was obviously struggling to
understand what Alex meant.
    “Light-speed travel is important,” Alex said. “But the way
they’re going about it is all wrong. You have to learn to crawl before you can
walk, and you need to learn to walk before you can run. From the moment Kinemet
was discovered, everyone wanted to go straight from the crib to flying through