Free Interesting Places (Interesting Times #2) by Matthew Storm

said.
    “You wiped them out. Your power…it
destroyed their entire race.”
    “I know,” Oliver said. “It’s not
something I’m proud of.”
    “Oh, I knew that. You felt
terrible, I know. It’s just…” Sally leaned forward slightly. “I remember you
said once you didn’t mean to kill them. You weren’t trying to hurt anyone.”
    “I doubt I could have hurt them if
that’s what I’d been trying to do.”
    “Then how did you do it?”
    Oliver didn’t have a great answer.
“You realize there’s no Hogwarts for this, right?”
    “I don’t know what that means.”
    “Really? You’ve seen Dracula but you don’t know Harry Potter ?”
    “I started with the classics.”
    “Fair enough,” Oliver said. “I mean I
didn’t go to school for this. What I’m learning here, I’m learning from this,”
he held up one of the files, “but there isn’t anyone like me. Everything in my file is stuff I already knew or put in there myself.”
    “But you did those things. You made
Jeffrey talk. You wiped out the lizards.”
    “Yeah. With Jeffrey, I’m not really
sure. I said things would be easier if he could talk, and suddenly he started
talking. I didn’t will for it to happen. I didn’t wave my hands over him
and say magic words. It just happened because on a subconscious level I wanted
it to. I don’t know if that makes much sense.”
    “It makes sense. What about with the
lizards? You wanted them to leave you alone, so they all vanished?”
    “No.” Oliver thought about it. It
wasn’t that he’d wanted them gone, and it wasn’t just because he’d wanted to
live. It had gone deeper than that. “I didn’t want to kill them, you
understand? I wasn’t trying to commit…” he stopped just short of using the word genocide . “I don’t think I’m putting this very well.”
    “You’ve thought about bringing them
back, haven’t you?” Sally asked. “I know you must have.”
    “Is that what this is about? Bringing
the cyborgs back?”
    “Maybe.”
    Oliver nodded. He’d seen this
question coming. “Yes. I have thought about bringing them back.”
    “But you don’t. It’s because you
can’t, isn’t it? You would if you could; you’re that kind of person. So what
makes it different? Because it’s easier to destroy than to create?” Oliver
blinked. He’d heard Artemis use that line before more than once. He might also
have seen it on Star Trek .
    “No, because…you remember I’d been
drugged more than once when all that was going on. I’d also been hit in the
head quite a few times.”
    “One of them by me, I think. Sorry
about that, by the way.”
    “It was actually the day before, but
forget about it. I was barely aware of what was going on around me at that
point. I thought I was delusional. I didn’t believe the Kalatari were real. I
actually said that to the Matriarch just before…”
    “Just before they weren’t real
anymore.”
    That was more or less it, Oliver
thought. That, and the sound of rushing water that only he could hear that
always seemed to accompany any manifestation of his power. It had been almost
deafening when he destroyed the Kalatari. “Exactly. And the thing is, I can’t
just convince myself now that they are real and have them reappear. I
know they’re gone. I’d have to somehow trick myself into believing that they
were up and walking around outside or something.”
    “You had to believe,” Sally mused.
“And what you believed became real. Interesting.”
    “I guess.”
    Sally stood up. “Thanks. Good talk.
It was really…therapeutic for me.”
    “Oh,” Oliver said. “Um…you’re
welcome.” He watched as she left his office. That might have been the most
unusual conversation he’d had in a while, he thought. It might have also been
the longest he’d talked to Sally one-on-one before.
    Jeffrey was waiting at Oliver’s house
when he got home later that night. “I was thinking we should have Thai food
tonight,” the cat said.