Synthesis

Hello!

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 18:21:02 GMT

Hi everyone! I just wanted to drop a note here to let people know that I'm while I'm not going to be using this format for my Nano novel this year, I will still be taking part in the competition. Anyone who's interested in keeping tabs on my writing can follow me on my actual LJ (theorangemonkey ), or on twitter at www.twitter.com/theorangemonkey. Happy novelling!

Synthesis!

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:20:47 GMT

I am very pleased to announce that as of March 28, my first published novel, Synthesis, is available to the public in print form. Originally written as part of National Novel Writing Month in 2007, and serialized during the writing process on the popular blogging site livejournal.com, Synthesis is an urban fantasy novel about a young man named Isaac King who has to come to terms with the dark side of himself. The story finds itself peppered with various genres and elements, including superheroes, monkeys, pirates, and ninjas, as Isaac struggles to come to terms with his new reality.

Synthesis is available for purchase in print, as well as for free download from online retailer Lulu.com at http://stores.lulu.com/ryanharron. Both the print and electronic editions of the book are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License. Readers are free to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work provided attribution is provided to the original author, Ryan Harron, and that any derivative work is used for non-commercial purposes. For more information about Synthesis and the author, please visit the official website for the book at http://ryanharron.googlepages.com/synthesis.

I would also like to remind everyone reading this that to keep up to date on all of my writing projects and everything, my primary blog is at http://theorangemonkey.livejournal.com. I've also created a group on facebook group for people interested in keeping up to date with my writing projects, including Haiku 365 and RH Balance. Join it at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5709228291!

Synthesis Part 30 - final day!

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:51:54 GMT

Isaac sighed. He knew that he had neither the time, nor the inclination to argue with her, but at the same time he desperately required the information that was in the book that both of them were holding on to. “So, are you like a big expert on Jung, then?” he asked her.
“Why yes, as a matter of fact I am,” the woman said, her eyes lighting up somewhat as Isaac mentioned her area of expertise.

“Oh, excellent!” he said. “We can make a deal, then. I'll let you have the book, but you have to take a few minutes to explain some concepts to me. Deal?”
The woman nodded her assent, and Isaac let go of the book as soon as she had. “So,” she said, a snotty tone coming through her voice, “what exactly is it that you need to know that is such a matter of life and death?”
“Okay, I know that This is going to sound totally crazy,” Isaac said, “but my shadow is trying to kill me. I need to find a way to get rid of her.”
The woman laughed at him in a manner that was entirely inappropriate for a library, and which no doubt was considered entirely inappropriate for a library setting, and which would have definitely caused a disturbance for anyone unfortunate enough to be trying to complete work within the immediate vicinity. “I'm sorry,” she said once her laughter had started to calm down, “but that just sounded really funny. Your shadow is trying to kill you, you say?” she said again, as if it was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard.
“Uh, yeah, that's right,” Isaac said.
“Well, how are you sure it's your shadow?” the woman said. “How do you know it's not one of your other archetypes?”
“Well, she told me she was my shadow,” Isaac said.
“You talk to your shadow?” the woman said, in a tone that suggested she was starting to believe that Isaac was attempting to pull a trick on her.
“Yeah – it's kind of a tricky situation to explain, really, but the long and short of it is that my shadow has been physically manifested, and she's trying to kill me. I know how that sounds, but it's the truth, and it's the reason why I need you to help me find a way to kill her. I'm afraid of what will happen if I don't.”
“Well,” she said after a long pause, “I would suggest to you that it's not possible to kill your shadow, and that you're being foolish to even try to do so. What you need to understand,” she said, taking on that tone that experts always take when they are talking to people with lower levels of knowledge than themselves, “is that your shadow is a part of who you are – it's part of what defines you. To exist without your shadow – it's inconceivable to do so. What you need to do, really, is to find a way to integrate the parts of your shadow with the conscious part of your personality.”
Isaac stared at her, lost so deep within his own thoughts that he didn't even realize that he was doing so. “Thanks so much for your help,” he finally said, “you've just helped me out with a serious problem.” With that, he handed the book over to her, and started to walk out of the library.
“Wait, hold up!” the woman said, running up to Isaac and meeting him at the elevator. “Seriously, what is This all about? You have to let me know!”
“Trust me,” he said, “you wouldn't believe me if I told you. It's a little complicated. But you've been a great help, really.” With that, the elevator arrived, and Isaac got into it, closing the door behind him.

As he left the library and started out in search of Cassie, Isaac started to mentally rehearse for their confrontation, planning out every minute detail several times. As he did, he started to wonder exactly how he was going to find her again – Toronto was a big city, after all, and although she wasn't the type of person to keep a low profile, it would no doubt be difficult to locate her.
He came to realize how wrong he was half a block later, as he turned a corner and saw Cassie leaning against the side of a building, taking a long drag off of a cigarette as she did. As soon as she saw Isaac, she dropped the cigarette, pushed herself off of the wall, and turned to face him. “Well, look who it is,” she said with a sneer. “I take it you're here to make another attempt at delaying the inevitable, are you?”
Isaac gave her a mocking smirk. “There's nothing in This life that's inevitable. Least of all what you're planning on doing.”
“So we're going to have to fight This one out, then?” she asked. “I was so hoping that you would come quietly.”
Before Isaac had an opportunity to make a wise-cracking quip of his own, she attacked him, manifesting shuriken that whizzed towards Isaac. In response he created a cricket bat, allowing the small shards of metal to embed themselves into its surface. As she prepared a second volley, he took a more active approach, creating an entire suit of medieval armor to protect himself as he started to walk towards her. It was slow going, but the weapons that she hurled at him This time did little to slow him down further, bits of metal bouncing off of his hard shell. The only downside to This was that it meant that his progress towards her was also slowed, each step of his clunky and measured. When she realized that what she was doing was having no effect on him, she turned to run, hoping to regroup and plan a more effective attack. Isaac, sensing that This was her plan, concentrated and created a thick rope that bound around her, forcing her to fall to the ground. As she lay there, trying to squirm out of the ropes, Isaac removed the armor that encased him, casting it down to the ground around him. Once it was all removed, he lowered himself down to the ground, embracing her as he did.
“What are you doing?” she asked as he grabbed a hold of her.
“Something that I should have realized I could do a long time ago,” Isaac explained. “Don't worry though, This shouldn't hurt a bit.”
As Isaac lay there, holding onto Cassie with all the strength that remained within him, he breathed in deeply and started to envision her becoming a part of him again. As he did, small wisps of energy, looking like black streams of smoke, started to cascade off of her, latching onto Isaac's body and then seeping into him. They started slowly, with only one or two of them taking root in him, but gradually grew, until the energy seeping from her form to his eventually appeared as a maelstrom of power. Finally, however, she was gone, and Isaac was left lying alone on the floor, huddling with himself. He breathed in deep and passed out, the influx of energy being too much for his body to handle.

“So, what do you think This guy's story is?” was the next thing that Isaac heard. He didn't recognize the voice – it was gruff and deeply masculine; the type of voice that one could easily hear doing dramatic readings or recording books on tape. He opened his eyes once he heard this, the bright light around him causing him to quickly blink them closed again.
“I don't know,” came another voice, This one was female, with a heavy Jamaican accent. “You just found him lying like this?”
“Yeah, it's the craziest thing. You think we should call the cops, or something?”
“No, don't,” Isaac weakly said, opening his eyes and starting the process of standing up. He was surprised to see that it wasn't just the two people that stood around him, but a larger group of individuals that encircled him. “I'm fine, I just had a bit of a weird moment there.”
“You sure, buddy?” the man with the deep voice said, patting Isaac firmly on the back as he did.
“Yeah, I'm sure,” Isaac said, dusting himself off as he did. “Thanks for looking out for me, though, guys.”
As the crowd dissembled, Isaac quickly patted down all of the pockets in his coat, making sure that no one had tried to take advantage of his situation and empty his pockets. None had, and so as he did, he pulled out his cellphone and immediately dialed Gen's number.
“Isaac?” she said immediately, in a hushed voice, “is everything okay?”
“Yeah, everything's fine,” he explained. “Are you out with my mother?”
“Yeah, I convinced her to come shopping with me – I made up This story about my cousin getting married next month, and that I needed a female opinion when it came to picking out an outfit for it.”
“I take it she's not there with you right now, then?”
“No,” Gen laughed, “she's off in a change room, trying something on. So, do you want to get together and talk about everything that happened, then?”
“I do, but not right now,” Isaac said. “I know This is going to sound totally lame, but my day has been absolutely, completely draining. I need to just go home and sleep for awhile. Would you be able to stop by my place in the morning, though?”
“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Gen said. “I mean, what are friends for, right?”
    Isaac woke late the next morning. He had made sure to close the blinds when he went to bed the afternoon before, but had forgotten to firmly close the window as well. A stiff breeze had blown through the window, pushing the blinds away and allowing a few rays of sunlight to slide across his face, creating just enough stimulation to wake him.
    As he came downstairs, he was glad to see that Gen was already there, sitting out on the back porch and sipping a mug full of hot tea. Steam was coming off of the top of the mug in little wisps, dancing with one another as they evaporated into the atmosphere.
    “Hey there,” he said sleepily as he approached her from behind. “Thanks so much for coming.”
    “Hey, where else would I be?” Gen said, not even turning around to talk to him. “So, why don't you have a seat and tell me all about everything that happened to you yesterday.”
    Isaac sat down in one of the free chairs, yawning as he did despite the long night of sleep that he had. He proceeded to tell her everything that had happened, starting with his encounter with the grad student at the library, right up to the moment of waking up, lying on the ground with a group of strangers surrounding him.
    “So she's inside you, now?” Gen asked, sounding a little confused as she did. “Aren't you worried that she might come out again, and we'll have to go through This whole dance again?”
    “No, not at all,” Isaac said, standing up to stretch as he did. “I mean, she's back inside me, but I'm a different 'me' now, if that makes any sense. The whole reason that all of this trouble arose is that I tried to deny that side of me, and in denying it I made it much more dangerous than it ever would have been in the first place. She's still a part of me, but one that I've integrated, now. She's not going anywhere.”
    “So what, now you're going to be all dark and mysterious all the time, talking about your dark side?”
    “No, you big goof,” Isaac said, gently pushing her shoulder as he did. “I'm still just going to be the same me that I always was. Just a little more in control of myself now, that's all.”
“So why are you smiling, then?” Gen asked him.
“I had a dream last night,” Isaac explained. “It wasn't the type of dream that you would normally consider 'special' or anything – just a dream of me relaxing on a beach somewhere, sipping on a fruity, alcohol-filled drink and basking in the sun. It was one of those dreams, though, where you could take in all of your senses. I could not only feel the warmth of the sun on me, but I could smell the breeze wafting in off of the sea, and taste the rum and fruit juice as it splashed against my tongue. There were seagulls off in the background, and I could even hear them cawing at one another. It was nice to dream again.”

Synthesis Part 29

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 03:57:23 GMT

While Gen traveled to Etobicoke to find Isaac's mom and Trebuchet, Isaac hailed a taxi and took it to the University of Toronto campus, running as fast as he could to the library. It was still early enough in the academic year that he found it rather empty, with only a few upper-year students wandering through the stacks.

After a quick search of the computer databases, Isaac found himself wandering over to the section reserved for psychotherapy. After a few minutes of of walking down aisles, head turned to the side in order to more easily read the title of the books as they sat on their shelves.

Finally, he spotted it, sandwiched between a history of post-Freudian thought and a biography of Carl Jung, was what he was looking for: a slim volume entitled Defining Jung's Shadow. As soon as he saw it, his hand snapped up, grabbing a hold of the top of the book. At the exact same moment, however, he saw another hand, slim and feminine, reach for it as well, grabbing onto the bottom half of the book at the same time that he grabbed on to the top. Both Isaac and the other person pulled at the book, creating an image that looked almost comical.

“Excuse me,” the woman holding the other end of the book said to Isaac, “but it looks as though you're holding my book.” She was a tall, slender woman, with long black hair framing her face, and had a soft, lilting quality to her voice, as if she had immigrated to Canada a long time ago, and that was all that remained of an earlier accent.

“That's funny,” Isaac said, a sardonic grin coming across his face as he did, “because to me it looks as though you're holding on to my book.”

“No, I'm afraid you don't understand,” the woman said. “I really need This book. It's important.” She gave the book a tug as she spoke, trying to wrest it out of Isaac's hands.

“Trust me, whatever it is that you're planning on doing with This book, it's less important than what I need it for. For me, it's a matter of life or death.” As Isaac said this, he playfully gave the book a forceful tug of his own, matching that of the woman's.

“Life or death?” she said. “You're telling me that you need to learn about Jung's concept of the shadow under life or death circumstances? That seems a little unlikely to me.”

“No, trust me,” Isaac said, a smile forcing its way across his face as he spoke, “it really is, but you wouldn't believe me if I tried to explain why.”

“Oh really?” the woman said firmly, putting her free hand on her hip as she did. “Well, let me explain something to you. I'm in the middle of a graduate thesis on Jung, and it's not going to write itself.

With the schedule I'm working on, I have exactly one more week to complete a literature review before I can start work on my own case studies, and I'm really behind schedule. If I don't get This done now, I'm looking at not only losing my scholarships, but also my teaching assistant duties, which would mean not being able to afford tuition any more, and thus having to drop out of school. Which would, quite possibly, kill my mother when I had to tell her, so don't talk to me about it. So please, don't talk to me about life or death situations, okay?”

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:09:26 GMT

"Reasonable people?” Cassie said with a laugh. "You still don't get it, do you?" she said to him, a sense of disgust obvious in her voice as she did so.

"You know, I'm starting to get a little sick and tired of your attitude," Isaac said, rising up to his feet as he did. "You keep acting like you are so high and mighty, and all-knowing, and I don't want to hear any more of it. Why don't you just finally tell me what this connection is that you keep going on about?"
"You want to know? You really want to know? Fine," Cassie said, practically spitting out the words, "here it is. I'm you, Isaac. Part of you, at least. Your shadow. The reason I have all of your abilities, the reason I know so much about you, is because I am all of those parts of yourself that you didn't like, and didn't want around any more."
Isaac reeled at the revelation. "You're talking crazy," he said dismissively. “How could you be a part of me, when you're standing right in front of me? It's ridiculous even to say it!”
“Is it really?” Cassie said, in a voice that suggested that the question was rhetorical. “Think about This for a moment, Isaac. We know that you have the ability to create things, and that your subconscious could make things without you even being aware of them. Is it such a stretch to imagine that it might want to give itself form?
“But why?” Isaac said, his mind still racing to make sense of everything that Cassie was saying.
“You tried to kill me,” she said, her voice suddenly turning to steel, small pauses forcing their way between each of the words.
“What? What are you talking about? I never tried to kill you!”
“Oh yes you did. Your little 'therapy' session? I could feel it as it tried to destroy me, to squash me like I was some kind of insignificant bug or something. And don't try to play innocent,” she added as she saw him start to open his mouth, “because I was there, inside of you. The doctor may have been the one who was in the driver's seat, but you were there the whole time, doing nothing to stop him. And that makes you just as guilty.”
“No, it wasn't like that,” Isaac said softly, although he said so in a way that suggested that he wasn't exactly sure how it really 'was'.
“Oh yes it was,” Cassie said, her voice full of conviction. “And, with you conscious mind distracted, it was easy enough for me to take control long enough to make a body for myself. It was at first only meant to be a temporary mechanism – long enough for me to survive until after you'd finished with the therapy session. However,” she said, running a finger up the side of her leg and torso as she did, “I've kind of grown attached to a life of my own.”
“I still don't understand how any of This is possible, however,” Isaac said. “I mean, aren't the things that we make only made to be temporary? Shouldn't you have disappeared three hours after you made This body for yourself?”
“Ah, ah, ah, how quickly they forget,” Cassie said with a smile. “True, for most things there's a three hour limit, but when you made that triceratops, we learned that that's not always the case, is it? Sometimes, if the thing wants to keep on living, they can overcome that little obstacle.”
Isaac was at a complete loss for words. "Okay, fine, let's say that I accept what you're telling me as the complete truth," he said. "What does it mean?"
"Well, we can't just go on like This forever,” Cassie explained. “With both of us being here, I mean. It creates an imbalance, both for the universe and for our own psyches. That balance needs to be restored.”
“So, you're volunteering to return to where you came from?” Isaac said hopefully.
“No, not exactly,” Cassie replied. “I was thinking more like my taking your place. I mean, let's be honest here, Isaac. You weren't getting much use out of This life of yours, anyways, were you? I didn't think so,” she said, after he failed to answer her question. “So why don't we just get This over with nice and easy?”
With that, she started to advance towards him again, This time manifesting not a sword, but a shotgun, murderous intent filling her eyes. Knowing that he had little time to react, Isaac quickly created some mud, flinging it into her face as he did. His instinct took over as the mud flew into her eyes, temporarily blinding her, and he ran, even though, had he been thinking properly, he would have realized that running further into the alley would end up making it more difficult for him to ultimately escape.
Isaac stopped short when he came to the end of the alley, brick walls surrounding him on all sides. Behind him, Cassie was cleaning the muck from her eyes, cocking her shotgun as she did. Knowing that he was possibly in the last moments of his life, Isaac pressed his hands against the wall in front of him, his mind screaming out the word 'door' as his heart started to pound faster and faster. Finally, one appeared in the wall. It was a simple wooden door, the type that would be found on any suburban home, but to Isaac, at that moment, it appeared to be the most glamourous thing on the face of the earth.
Hurriedly, he swung the door open, dived behind it, bringing it closed behind him. As he did, he heard the distinctive crack of a shotgun, and heard the wood of the door start to splinter. “Oh, come on,” Cassie yelled at him through the door, “do you really think that's going to stop me? You're only delaying the inevitable!”
Trying to do his best to ignore her words, Isaac focused on the other end of the door. He lacked the skill to 'unmake' the door consciously, but as he concentrated hard, he was able to create a new brick wall to block off the doorway. He hoped that it would be enough of a distraction to give him the time he needed to escape from Cassie long enough to regroup and plan a new attack.

Isaac knocked on the door three times before it opened. Even then, the door opened only the slightest of cracks, a space just large enough for one of Gen’s eyes to be visible. “What do you want?” she said icily.

“I need your help,” Isaac said to her, “please, let me in?”

“Oh, now you need my help,” Gen said, anger bubbling to the top of her words. “Maybe you should have thought of that before you locked me in a cage in the middle of the street!”

“Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had,” Isaac admitted, leaning his head against the door as he did. “I thought that I could do this on my own – that I had to do it on my own, in fact, but I was wrong. I screwed up, and now I need your help in order to make things right. Please, just give me five minutes to explain!”

Without announcing her intent, she unlocked and opened the door. As Isaac was still leaning against it, this caused him to fall forward, collapsing face-first into her front hall. “Okay, you have five minutes,” she said as he pulled himself off the ground.

As Gen went to the kitchen to ready herself some tea, Isaac did his best to relate to her everything that happened to him that day, including Doug’s death and Cassie’s revelations.

“Do you think she was telling the truth?” Gen asked as Isaac finished his story. “I mean, let’s be honest here, she’s not really the most reliable woman in the world now, is she?”

“I suppose not, but at the same time, as ridiculous as it sounds, I do feel this weird, unexplainable, metaphysical connection to her. I can’t think of any other explanation that makes sense!”

“So then what do we do next?” Gen asked him.

“I need to find out more about this whole ‘shadow’ concept – I remember hearing about it in a psych class once, but that’s about it. I’m going to the library to do some research. What I need you to do, though, is get my mom and Trebuchet out of town. I know it’s only a matter of time before she goes after them to get to me, and I’d be able to focus a lot more it I knew that they’re safe.”

Synthesis Part 27

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 03:22:32 GMT

"Looks like this is it for me, kid," Doug said, coughing once the words were out of his mouth.

"No, that's not going to happen," Isaac said firmly, grabbing the older man by the arm, "what good are these powers of mine if I can't use them for good?" With that, he waved his hand over Doug's wound, an airtight covering forming over the wound. "That should help with the bleeding. Until we get you to a hospital, at least."

"Just do me a favour, and make sure that you put a stop to her," Doug said faintly. "This power wasn't meant for the likes of her." With that, he faded into unconsciousness.

Knowing he had only moments to spare, Isaac immediately jumped into action, materializing an ambulance into the middle of the square. He picked up Doug's limp body, hoping to get it into the back. As they were walking towards it, however, a giant rock suddenly came hurtling towards it, landing on the ambulance and rendering it useless.

"You know what your main problem is, Isaac?" Cassie said as she stood up, rubbing the spot on the back of her head where the hammers had struck her, "it's that you lack, on a fundamental level, the ability to think creatively. I mean come on, you have the ability to create anything you want, and you make an ambulance? If it had been me, I would have come up with, like, a hoversled or something cool like that.”

Isaac looked at her, dumbfounded. “Don't you understand what's at stake here? This man is dying, Cassie!”

“Oh, come on, people die all the time,” she replied flippantly.

“This is a little different. It's your fault that he's in this state!”

“My fault?” Cassie said, indignantly. “I told you to come alone, because we needed to have this out once and for all. I can't be held responsible because you chose not to listen to me.”

“Could you stop and listen to yourself for a moment? You're talking about a man's life, here, and you sound like a petulant child.”

“Petulant? I'll show you petulant!” Cassie said, manifesting a katana blade in her hand and starting to charge at Isaac. She swung at him, but he managed to duck, the blade slicing through the air behind where he stood. As Cassie repositioned herself to strike again, Isaac hurried to create a shield for himself, as Well as a sword to fight off her advances with. She swung again and he raised the shield. As steel bounced off of steel, a large clanging sound echoed throughout the square.

Various people had started to gather around the battling duo, the klanging sound of the weaponry only forcing them closer to the two individuals. Cassie tried to swing again, but This time Isaac used his blade to parry her blow, attempting to use her momentum to force her to the ground. The parry threw her off focus, allowing Isaac to deliver a sharp kick to the back of her shoulder, forcing her to drop the blade. As he did, Isaac heard the approaching sound of police sirens.

Isaac's first instinct was to run, and he followed it, knowing that if the police were to catch him, there was no sufficient excuse that he could give that would prevent him from being arrested in connection to Doug's stabbing, so he ran. Cassie ran after him, tossing her blade aside as she did. She knew that, if she needed to, she could always create another one, and for now its presence would do nothing but slow her down.

Cassie was able to keep up with Isaac's pace, but his head start guaranteed him a bit of an edge in her chase. After nearly two blocks of running straight, he ducked into a street corner, Cassie following closely behind him. In a moment it became obvious that he was aware that she was going to do this, as she connected with the piece of wire that he had hastily created and placed across the alley.

“I really should have seen that coming, shouldn't I have?” she said a moment later, as she started to pick herself up off of the ground.

“Just another one of those tricks I have up my sleeve,” Isaac said, pausing for breath between each of his words. He was bent forward, trying his hardest to suck extra air into his lungs.

She tried to take advantage of his tired state, manifesting another sword and charging at him yet again. The running, and falling, seemed to have not affected her, and she attacked with force, swinging and thrusting as best as she could.

Isaac, in response, likewise created a sword for himself, and used it to once again parry and block her attacks. However, unlike Cassie, Isaac was starting to feel the effects of all the sudden physical activity, and could feel his arm start to tire more and more with each blow that he blocked. He realized that he would not be able to continue to fend her off forever; eventually, he would tire enough that he would make a mistake, and then she would do away with him. He needed to find another way out of the situation.

“Wait, stop for a second,” Isaac yelled out, hoping that she would be able to hear him over the din of the metal crashing against metal. “We need to talk about this – like reasonable people!”

Synthesis Part 26

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 03:58:10 GMT

At the same time, Isaac both opened his eyes and gasped for air, startling Gen and causing her to jump back into a standing position. "Are you okay?" she asked after she did so.
"I'm going to be okay," Isaac said, rolling over onto his side and continuing to gasp for more air. "At least, I think I will be."
"Are you sure?" Gen asked, "I mean, maybe it'd be a good idea to get you to a hospital or something."

"No!" Isaac yelled out, forcing himself to his feet at the suggestion. "I'm sorry," he said after a moment, "that was a bit of an extreme reaction, wasn't it?"
"Just a bit," Gen said in a sarcastic tone. "Mind telling me where that came from?"
"It's ... actually, no, don't worry about it. You'd just think I was being stupid."
"Oh, come on," Gen said, "we've been friends long enough that you know that you can tell me anything, right?"
"Okay, fine," Isaac said, taking a deep breath before continuing to speak, "like I said, this is going to sound really stupid, but there was this one time, when I was seven, that I had a really bad experience at a hospital. I was out trying to get an older friend to try and teach me how to ride a skateboard, and then the next thing I knew, my knee was broken! The doctor that looked at me in the OR was this old, creepy guy, and ever since then I've just had this weird thing about doctors and hospitals. I'll be okay - there's no need to involve another one of those quacks."
"Okay, that's good to know," Gen said, pausing to think over what he'd said. "So," she said, reaching for the next topic of conversation, "what was the meditation like?"
"It was really cool,," Isaac admitted. "It was almost like a dream; there was this definite surreal sort of quality to it. Which is weird, really, because I haven't been dreaming lately."
"Since when? Is this one of those side effects to your therapy that you never told me about?"

"Yeah, it was," Isaac admitted. "The night before my therapy was the last night that I had a dream in. It was a really weird one, though, so in a way I'm kind of g."
lad that I haven't been
"So what happened in it?" Gen asked with sudden interest.
"Well, I was downtown, and there was this really weird shadow that was approaching towards me. Then, everything started getting dark. At first I Thought it was just, like, a time-lapse kind of dream or something like that, but then something else happened. I came to realize that the dark shadow wasn't really a shadow at all, but instead it was a block of giant bats that were all flying towards downtown. They were so big, and there were so many of them, that they practically seemed to blot out the entire sky around me. It was absolutely terrifying!"
"Wow, that does really sound bad," Gen admitted. "So, what do you think it means?"
"I don't know. I'm not even really sure that dreams mean anything at all," Isaac said, sounding sort of dejected as he did.
"Oh, I don't know about that, I find that dreams usually have at least some sort of connection to the outside world. It may not be the most obvious connection, but trust me, there's something there."

"So, what we need to do now is figure out if that actually did any good," Gen said.
"Well, that should be easy enough to do," Isaac said, concentrating hard as he did. Sure enough, after a moment of concentration, a small, delicate rose appeared in mid-air in front of him. It started to drop to the ground, but Gen reached out instinctively and caught it, luck alone preventing her from catching one of her fingers on the thorns. "Well, I'd say it looks like you're back in business," Gen said with a smile as she handed the rose back to Isaac.

His powers back, Isaac and Gen started to return to the downtown area, determined to find Cassie and stop her before she caused anyone any more pain. The attempt to do so was made far easier as the entered the downtown area and found that all of the advertising screens that lined the sides of buildings had been changed in order to display the same challenging message: "Isaac King," the messages read, "meet me today, at Yonge and Dundas. Come alone."
"Come alone?" Gen said with a mocking laugh. "She's really fallen into a super villian cliche, hasn't she?"
"I don't know," Isaac said, "but I think that it's a good policy to have, regardless. I think that this phase of the game is something that I'll have to do alone."
"What?" Gen said, "are you crazy? I've been here with you throughout this entire thing so far! You really expect me to just sit by the sidelines while you go out and play hero?"
"Oh, don't worry," Isaac said, "I kind of knew that this would be the reaction that you would have. So I decided to just take the decision-making process out of your hands." He sounded mournful as he spoke, although his words were at the same time spoken with conviction.
Suddenly, Gen found herself inside a large box, the walls of which were perfectly smooth, and which had no doors or windows. "I'm really sorry about this," Isaac said to her, "but really, this is for the best."
As Gen started to pound on the walls of her cage, Isaac turned and started to walk away, doing his best to ignore her.

As Isaac reached the square, he was surprised to find Doug there as well, walking into it at the same time. "What are you doing here?" Isaac nervously asked him.
"I saw the signs," Doug said. "I take it that this is the woman that you were telling me about?"
"Yeah, this is her," Isaac said. "But you really shouldn't be here. She told me to come alone."
"And you did," Doug said in a matter-of-fact way. "I just happened to be here as well. It's a happy coincidence! What is she going to do?"
"I think we're about to find out," Isaac said as he looked behind Doug's shoulder and saw Cassie approach towards the pair of them.
"I told you to come alone," she said, her voice sounding like it was ready to kill. "Who is this guy?"
Isaac went to explain, but before he could, Doug jumped in front of him, offering his own explanation. "Well actually, technically, he did come alone," he offered. "We just happened to meet each other here."
"Well isn't that convenient," Cassie said. "You just happened to both be here at the same time. I don't know who the hell you are, but I needed to be able to talk to Isaac here one on one. So you need to just disappear, okay?"
"Listen, girl," Doug said, his voice suddenly changing completely, "you need to show a little bit of respect here. I'm the guy who's responsible for Isaac here, and as a result, you, having your abilities. Without me you'd be nothing."
"Well isn't that special," Cassie said sardonically. "However, what we have to talk about here doesn't concern you at all. So I'm going to give you one last chance - walk away from this now, and you won't end up getting hurt."
Doug and Cassie locked eyes, each of them refusing to step down from the other. Suddenly, from nowhere, Cassie acted first, swinging her fist and striking Doug in the face. He didn't back down, so she tried the same action again, this time a steel knife manifesting itself in her palm as she was in mid-swing. The knife dug deep into Doug's flesh, blood starting to seep out from the wound.
"Doug!" Isaac called out as the taller man dropped to the ground. "Don't even think about helping him," Cassie said, stepping between the two of them and putting her hand on Isaac's chest. "This is the only way you're going to learn?"
"Learn?" Isaac said, disgusted. "What the hell do you mean, 'learn'?"
"You need to learn that I am not a woman to be messed with," Cassie said in a plain voice. "If you had listened to what I had told you, none of this would be happening."
Isaac looked at her, his eyes filled with disgust, and Doug continued to bleed out onto the street. Desperate to help him, Isaac pushed Cassie aside, kneeling down to help his friend. Before he had a chance to, however, Cassie responded to his shove, manifesting an eagle that swooped down at Isaac, clawing at his head. Isaac was able to duck away from it at the last moment, and responded instinctively, creating a similar bird of his own and sending it out to attack Cassie's.
The two birds continued to swoop at each other, claws and beaks striking out, and feathers flying from both forms.
Cassie was momentarily distracted by the fighting of the birds, seeming to will on hers to fight harder. Seeing her distraction, Isaac pressed his advantage, creating a literal bag of hammers above the girl's head. Gravity soon took its course and the hammers dropped on Cassie's head, sending her down to the ground, dazed. At the same moment, Isaac saw the two birds fly off into the distance, continuing their battle with each other.
The immediate concern of Cassie taken care of, Isaac turned again to Doug, who was now lying completely prone on the ground. He beckoned for Isaac to come down to where he lay, and the younger man did so, kneeling down next to Doug.

Synthesis Parts 24 & 25

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 00:27:32 GMT

"So, how have you been?" Gen nervously asked, leaning against Trevor's kitchen counter. In addition to the few words that she spoke, her body language spoke volumes, screaming out how uncomfortable she was to be left alone with him.

"I've been well," Trevor said, although his tone betrayed the confidence that he wanted to convey. "I've been spending a lot of time hanging out with Cassie lately. She's really cool."

"Oh yeah?" Gen said, not entirely convinced of Trevor's estimation of the woman. "Isaac said that they met up downtown, and that he didn't seem to think she was all that cool."

"Well, no offense to your friend there, but I don't know if he is really the greatest judge of character."

Genevieve was prepared to unleash a witty rejoinder to his remark when, suddenly, Isaac burst back into the apartment, angrily sliding the glass door shut behind him, leaving Cassie alone on the balcony. Without looking back towards the balcony, Isaac walked with conviction, getting close enough to Gen so that he could whisper in her ear. "We need to get out of here. Now," he said, sharply accenting the final word.

Gen blinked at him, twice, not understanding why he was suddenly so adamant to leave. "I'll explain later, but we really need to get out of here now." This time Gen didn't question him at all, nodding sharply.

Gen hurriedly said her goodbyes to Trevor, and her and Isaac exited the apartment building, Isaac walking as quickly as his legs would allow him to.

"Okay, would you mind telling me exactly what that was all about?" Gen asked, trying her best to catch up to Isaac's quickened pace.

"It's her. That woman. She's worse that we even could have thought!" Isaac tried to explain, although he was sufficiently distracted and enraged that his words dribbled out as a stream of consciousness mess, the complete thoughts that were in his head coming out in singular phrases.

"Okay, I get it that you don't like her," Gen said firmly. "But what it is about her that you don't like? Please, explain it to me!"

Isaac stopped, paused, and took a deep breath, locking his eyes into Gen's as he continued.

"I'm sorry to be so random all of a sudden," he said. "When we were out on the balcony, Cassie was making stuff appear. Not just any stuff, though. She somehow had access to one of my deepest fears, and that's what she created. I don't know how she did it, though. How would she know that was she created would be able to affect me like that?"

"I don't know, that's really strange," Gen said. "If you don't mind my asking, what was it that she manifested?"

"Spiders. One at first, and then a larger group of them."

"Well, no offense, Isaac, but that's a pretty standard sort of fear, right? Maybe she just got lucky!"

"No, it wasn't that," Isaac said dismissively. "It wasn't just that she made spiders appear, it was her whole temperament about the whole thing. It was like she knew me, Gen!"

"That's pretty weird," Gen admitted. "Maybe she has extra abilities that you didn't have? Like she could read your mind or something? I don't know how all of this is supposed to work."

"Neither do I," Isaac admitted. "I mean, this is something that is so far outside of my regular reality. I think we'll have to get Doug involved in this again - he's the only one, I think, that knows enough about all of this to stop her."

Later, Isaac headed back to Doug's neighbourhood alone. Gen was unable to join him - she had an audition the following afternoon, she explained, and was horrifically unprepared for it. Alone, Isaac wandered the city streets, which took on the labyrinthine qualities that unfamiliar roads always took late at night, the building facades and storefronts all seeming to become one in the darkness as their windows were darkened and their entrances locked and barricaded.

After a few hours of fruitless searching, Isaac finally gave up, returning to the streetcar that he was becoming all-too familiar with and taking it home.

In the morning, after feeding Trebuchet and ensuring that he was continuing to return to a state of healthiness, Isaac completed the same journey in reverse. The soothing clacking of the streetcar took on an almost hypnotic quality, transporting him into a fugue state between consciousness and unconsciousness. It was only the eventual ringing of his cellphone that finally took him out of that state.

"So, did you have any luck trying to find our friend?" Gen asked him from the other end of the phone.

"No, none at all, sadly," Isaac said, sighing into the receiver as he did. "I was planning on heading back down to the same area today and resuming the search."

"Well, before you do that, I need you to come back downtown. Our friend Cassie is back at work again, and you need to see this."

"Oh god, what's she doing now?"

"No, really, you need to see this," Gen reiterated. "The action is going down at the corner of College and Bathurst. Just get here as fast as you can, okay?"

After transferring streetcars, Isaac found himself slowly moving up Bathurst, the combination of traffic and lights causing the vehicle to stop almost continuously. Each time that it did, he lurched forward slightly, momentum combining in order to make him slightly nauseous. Eventually he tired of this, and exited the streetcar, deciding to walk the final block and a half in spite of the unseasonal bitter coolness that was filling the morning air.

In retrospect, he was sort of glad that he approached the intersection on foot, because it allowed him to fully take in the absurd majesty of what was happening at the street corner.

Standing in front of him were dozens of people, all moving in unison, dancing. The marched forward in lockstep, and then backwards, and then shimmied both to their left and to their right. It was a simple, unpretentious dance, the type that looked like it could be taught to anyone that had at least a passing ability to move their body rhythmically. Standing in front of the group, facing the rest of them, was Cassie, barking out commands like a band leader. "Now, it's just a jump to the left!" she shouted, all of the group jumping to their left as she did. The sound of all of those people, moving in unison, echoed throughout the street. "And then a step to the riiiiiggght," she then sang, her vocal chords stretching as she sang. The group again moved in unison, although this time they did so in a much quieter fashion.

"Oh my god," Isaac said to no one in particular, both amazed by the audacity of what she was doing, and impressed by the style with which she was doing it. He hand never seen a live performance of the Rocky Horror Picture Show before, and he had never in a million years assumed that his first experience of such a show would be in such a public gallery.

As the crowd continued to time warp, Cassie turned around, her gaze fixing on Isaac as she did. "You!" she screamed out, pointing a finger at him as she did. Her hod on the crowd broken by her distraction, the rest of the crowd stopped dancing, but all turned and looked to see who this new interloper was.

"What are you doing here?" Cassie demanded as she started to walk towards Isaac. Still in lock step with her, the crowd started to walk as well. She stopped and turned to face theme. "Wait, stop, wait here. We need to have a moment of private conversation."

As the crowd stopped advancing, Cassie walked up to Isaac, sticking an accusing finger in his face. "What are you doing here?" she demanded. "I thought that we understood that you were going to stay out of my affairs!"

"Oh, I Just happened to be in the neighbourhood," Isaac lied, hoping that, whatever details she knew about him didn't extend to knowing what his schedule was.

"Oh really," Cassie said. It was clear from her tone of voice that she didn't believe him, although she had no way of actually knowing for sure that her feeling was right.

"Yeah," he continued, "I had a bit of time between classes, and I decided to just kind of wander around the neighbourhood a little."

"Seems like a bit of a long way to walk," Cassie said, trying to coax the truth out of him.

"I like walking."

"No you don't," she scoffed. "You forget how much I know about you."

"You don't really know as much as you think you do," Isaac said, his words becoming firmer with each sentence. "What exactly do you think you're doing here, anyways?"

"Actually, this is the coolest thing!" Cassie said, her eyes lighting up and her complete demeanour changing. "Okay, so you know how we have this ability to make stuff, right? Well, I found a way to use it to, like, make people do stuff as well. It was actually really easy to do. I just made these little nanite-like things that hacked their way into peoples' cerebral cortex, and affect their ability to work independently, which makes them extremely susceptible to anything that I tell them to do." She continued to babble on about neurotransmitters and brain chemistry, doing so with the type of rabid enthusiasm that only a true aficionado could muster.

Isaac paid no attention to what she was saying however, because he was too busy being horrified by the implications of what she was saying. It wasn't just a case of influence, or of convincing people to walk out into the street and dance along to instructions, she was actually changing the structure of their brain. He realized now that what he had said to Gen the day before had not been hyperbole. This woman actually was evil, and he needed to do something in order to stop her from continuing to do what she was doing.

"You seem a little distracted," Cassie said to him, which was such an understatement that he almost didn't register her complaint.

"What? Oh, yeah, I guess I kind of am," he admitted. "Do you realize what you're saying, though? What you're doing to these people - it's just not right!"

"Oh, give me a break," Cassie said in a mocking tone of voice. "Right and wrong don't even work into it. We have power, and they don't. Well," she said with a laugh, "I have power, at least. You don't really have it. I wonder if that means that I can make you do whatever I want."

As she spoke, a small, silvery slip of energy started to emerge from her forehead, working its way to Isaac. It looked like an eldritch inchworm as it did, moving in a winding, unnatural pattern towards him.

Isaac lifted up one of his hands, batting the thing away from him with it. The slip of energy fell lifelessly to the ground, writhing on its side. Isaac looked down at it, and then back up at Cassie, who was looking at him with a combination of fear and disgust.

"How did you manage to do that?" she said.

Isaac smiled as he responded, "like I said, there is a lot about me that you don't know," as he stepped on the piece of energy, squashing it.

"Okay, fine," she said, "I may not be able to affect you directly for some reason, but that doesn't mean that I can't affect you in other ways. I'm going to really enjoy this," she said as she turned to GEn, who had been standing incognito by the street corner. The same drama repeated itself, a silver strip of energy working its way out of Cassie's body, moving towards the other girl.

"Gen, watch out!" Isaac said to her, but it was too late. The strip of energy connected with the girl's body, sending her into convulsions, and causing her to drop down to her knees as she did. Cassie made an upwards-moving motion with her hand, and Gen rose from the ground, turning to face the two of them as she did.

"Oh, this is going to be fun," Cassie said with a devilish smile. ''Okay, Jennifer, here's what we're going to do."

"Her name is Genevieve," Isaac said through gritted teeth.

"Oh, whatever," Cassie said dismissively. "You have to understand, Isaac, that what she wants doesn't matter now. So say, for example, that I wanted her to walk in front of moving traffic."

At the suggestion, Gen started to walk, although the large group of people that was mulling around in the street meant that there was little actual danger to her person.

Angrily, Isaac walked up to his friend, grabbing her by the arm firmly. "Gen, stop," he said, squeezing her arm as he did. She paused for a moment, but then continued her march. "I'm serious, Gen, quit it!" Isaac said again, this time raising his voice as he did. The girl stopped this time, turning to face Isaac.

"It's so hard," she said, her voice full of terror. "I don't want to move, especially since I don't want to give her the satisfaction, but I can't stop myself!"
"It's going to be okay," Isaac said, "we're going to get out of here, and then everything's going to be alright, okay?" His voice was firm, yet calm, and it soothed her enough that she was able to stop her forward motion. "Don't let go of me until we're out of here," she said.

"Okay, the first thing that we need to do is go find Dr. Van Dyne," Gen said once they were safely out of the range of Cassie's influence.

"What do we need to see him for?" Isaac asked, puzzled.
"We need to get him to reverse your hypnosis Gen said in a matter-of-fact tone.
"What? Why? Don't you remember what happened the last time?" Isaac said.
" know that it's a scary thing, but it's something that we need to do," Gen said, her voice filled with restrained anger. "That woman needs to be stopped, Isaac, and you're the only one who is capable of doing it. We need for you to be able to access your abilities in order to stop her!"
Isaac tried to call Dr. Van Dyne, but there was no answer at his office, or on his cell phone. "Maybe he's in with a client," Isaac said. The two resolved, then, to go to his office, reaching it with a surprising amount of speed. When they got to his building, they were surprised to find it empty. This surprised Isaac, as the last time he had been there, it had been bustling with activity. Something that was even more surprising when they arrived at his office and found it similarly empty. While Gen stayed near the front door, Isaac penetrated deeper into the office, finding the doctor's inner sanctum. As he entered the room, Isaac realized that there was someone else in it, seated at the desk chair, facing out towards the window.
"Doctor?" Isaac asked, hoping to get the man's attention. "Doctor Van Dyne, I don't know if you remember me, but I was a patient of yours recently, and I need you to, well, undo my therapy."
There was no response from the person seated in the chair. Isaac then approached the chair, putting his hand on it to turn it around. He knew it was rude to do so, but he so badly needed to talk to the doctor that he felt it was excusable. Isaac was shocked as he turned the chair around, however, and found Dr. Van Dyne seated in it, a knife sticking through his sternum.
"ISAAC!" he suddenly heard Gen yell from the front of the office, "can you come out here?"
Isaac walked towards the front of the office, in a state of total shock as he did. With each step, he ran through possible scenarios under which the doctor could have met with his demise. No matter which scenario he created, however, they all boiled down to the same one, unchangeable factor: Cassie.
Isaac's shock continued when he reached the lobby area of the office, and found Gen standing there with a pair of police officers. "What's going on here?" Isaac asked the the group.
"We received an anonymous tip that a murder occurred here earlier today," one of the officers said in a flat tone. "Would either of you happen to know anything about that?"
"Well, there is a dead body in the private office, as a matter of fact," Isaac said, realizing how incriminating it seemed for him to admit that, "although we just got here and found him that way. Neither of us knows anything about how he got into that state." He knew that this was a lie, because he knew in his heart that Cassie was, somehow, connected to this death. He didn't, however, know of any way that he could explain to the officers how he knew this, so he thought it would be best to avoid the topic of her completely.
"Mind telling us what you're doing here, then?" one of the officers s asked. He was an older man, with the gruff kind of voice that one can never seen to master until they had reached a certain age.
"My friend here was a client of Dr. Van Dyne's," Gen hastily explained. "He was experiencing some side effects as a result of his treatment, and so we were coming here in order to find out what the doctor could do in order to help him deal with those."
"I see," the other officer said, pulling out a notepad and starting to write down the details of what Gen was saying. "So," he continued, "I suppose that this is all something that can be verified by Dr. Van Dyne's records?"
"I would imagine so," Gen said.
"So, sir, you say that you found the body inside the doctor's office?" the gruff, old officer asked Isaac.
"Yes, that's right," he said. "here, if you come with me, I'll show you."
Several hours later, all of the evidence had been collected, and their depositions had been taken, and Gen and Isaac found themselves having to take a long ride home from the police station. "I overheard them saying that they found some DNA evidence," Isaac said, "so hopefully this time I won't end up being falsely accused of anything!"
"So, do you think it was her?" Gen said after a few moments' worth of silence.
"Cassie, you mean?" Isaac said, although he was fully aware that that was what she meant.

"Yeah, Cassie," Gen said. "I mean, we know that she is capable of a lot, but do we really think that she could be capable of something like that?"
"I wouldn't put it past her," Isaac said, shrugging his shoulders as he did. "What are we going to do now, though? Without Dr. Van Dyne, I don't know how we're going to get rid of the mental blocks that he put in place for me."
"I have an idea, actually," Gen said with a smile. "A friend of mine was telling me about guided meditation, and how it can be used to get past subconscious blocks that we've set up. He showed me a couple of the basic practices involved in it, we could always give that a try." The way that she said it, it sounded almost like a question, her words lilting upwards near the end of her sentence.
"Yeah, I guess that would be a good idea," Isaac said. "I mean, it couldn't hurt, right?"
Later, they arrived to Gen's apartment, and started to rearrange the furniture in order to make it more conducive for the meditation process. "Uhm, I don't really know what the best way to sett this up is, but I guess we could do like a feng shui sort of thing?" Gen said, her voice fluctuating between question and statement.
"Okay," Isaac said, "I really don't know anything about any of this stuff, so you're going to have to show me the ropes."
They set the furniture up, and sat opposite one another, soft cushions beneath them and legs crossed. "Okay," Gen said, "to start, I want you to just visualize and empty plane."
"What, you mean like a 747 or something like that?" Isaac asked.
"No, I mean like, just a horizontal plane. Do you remember taking art class in high school? Just like that."
Isaac did his best to do so, although he imagined that the result looked more like something out of the movie Tron rather than what he imagined that Gen had been describing. "Okay," he said, "what do I do now?"
"Well, now that we're into the visualization process, I'll guide you through it - you're going to be creating a landscape that's a representation of your brain, and interacting with it. I want to say, though, that at this point it's absolutely necessary that you make sure that you keep your eyes closed, and stay focused on the visualization. Okay, well, we need to get inside of your brain, right?" Gen said. "So in order to get in, we first are going to need a door."
Isaac screwed up his face and concentrated, doing his best to visualize a door to his own brain in front of him. Finally, an old oaken door appeared. Isaac walked up to it and examined it. It was dark brown in colour, with cracks throughout, showing the age of the wood. In the center of the door was a giant bronze knocker, resting on an exotic-looking cast of an open, lidless eye. Without thinking, Isaac reached forward, grabbed the knocker, and rapped it against the unblinking eye. Despite the complete lack of walls or landscape around him, it echoed sharply, growing louder and louder as the seconds passed.
Eventually the sound faded away, and as it did, the door started to creak open, undergoing the same pattern of growing echoes as it did. Inside the doorway appeared to be nothing but darkness, but Isaac entered regardless. As soon as he was in, the room that he was in became illuminated, and he found himself to be inside a giant cavern, the walls of it smooth, looking like they had been gradually worn away by an underground river. The western half of the room was filled by a lake, the water appearing almost black from its depth. Isaac found himself both amazed by the beauty of the image in front of him, although at the same time he wanted to wince from the cliched nature of it all.
"Okay," he heard Gen say, "what do you see around you?" He related his new surroundings to her, and she got quiet for a few moments, trying her best to process the incoming information. "Okay," she finally said, "I'll be the first to admit that my knowledge of psychology is a little wonky at best, but it seems to me that the lake must represent your subconscious. So, if the hypnotic blocks are located within your subconscious, we'll have to get inside there!"
"Wait, are we sure about that?" Isaac said. "In my psych class, I remember reading that the psyche is supposed to have three parts to it, isn't it?"
"Yeah, if you listen to Freud, but does anybody really do that any more?" Gen said, the smile obvious in her voice.
"And since when did you become the expert on psychology?" Isaac said, slowing walking over to the edge of the pool.
"I used to date a guy that was a psych major," Gen explained. "I don't remember much about what he used to prattle on about, but one of the few things that I do remember is that most psych people don't really follow Freud at all any more.

"Okay, well, I guess that's good to know," Isaac said. "So, what am I supposed to do with this lake here?"
"You're not going to like this," Gen explained, "but I believe that you're going to have to go in there."
Isaac was afraid that that was going to be what she said. He had never been a strong swimmer, and was perpetually afraid of accidental drowning. However, he reasoned, since he was in his own subconscious, drowning was probably not something he needed to worry about.
Wading into the water, Isaac was surprised at first by how warm it was. He had always associated deep waters with coolness, but this was definitely an exception to that.
As the water came up to his knees, Isaac started to be able to make out some of the general contours and depths that lay beneath the murky depths. He knew that, after only a few more steps, he was going to reach a precipitous drop off, and would need to prepare himself for that.
Taking a deep breath, Isaac plunged under the water, doing his best to push himself further and further down. As he did, he found there to be no pressure on his lungs, as if none of the oxygen in them had actually exhausted itself. He knew that, since he was only really a psychic representation of himself, that this would be the logical outcome, but at the same time, he found it difficult to reconcile that with the reality that he knew about being underwater.
As he reached further underwater, he noticed a small light coming out of the bottom of the lake. He swam down to it, as fast as he could, hoping that whatever it was that was causing the glow would reveal to him what he was doing here.
Isaac reached the source of the light; it was a small treasure chest, the light seeping out of the cracks between the main body of the chest and its lid. There was a rusty old padlock keeping the lid of the chest down, but as Isaac grabbed a hold of it in order to examine it, it collapsed, crumbling away into nothingness. This obstacle gone, he shoved the lid of the box open, peering into it as he did. Inside, there was nothing but a ball of light, which seemed to glow more intently now that it was not being hidden away.
Again acting entirely on instinct, Isaac thrust his hand into the chest, attempting to grab a hold of the light. It had no substance, however, and rather than being able to hold on to it, his hand moved through it, permeating into his flesh. As it did, the ball of light started to dissipate, the energy flowing from the ball into Isaac's hand, and then throughout his entire body. Eventually he started to glow, a strange bioluminescence that felt roughly like all of the skin in his body had fallen asleep at the same time.
As he felt the energy rush throughout his body, Isaac's immediate reaction was to swim upwards. He did not want to be limited by the water anymore - he had an urge to sing out to the heavens, and knew that he would not be able to do that as long as he remained beneath the water.

Synthesis Part 23

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 22:41:14 GMT

"I'm here to talk to you, actually," Isaac said pointedly. "But I think it'd be best if we talked in private."

"Okay," Cassie said, "just let me throw some clothes on, okay? We can go out onto the balcony."

Five minutes later, the two of them found themselves on the balcony of Trevor's apartment, silently staring at each other. "So," Isaac said, finally breaking the silence, "I think you know what I'm here for."

"I believe I do," Cassie said with a defiant air in her voice, "but why don't you tell me all the same."

"You have the power to create things out of thin air," Isaac said flatly, as if it were something as common as being able to roll one's tongue, "and you've been using that power for selfish, destructive ends."

"And I suppose you would know all about that, wouldn't you?" Cassie said with a knowing smile.

"I know more than you might think," Isaac countered.

"Oh, I think you'd be surprised at how well I've got you figured out," Cassie said.

Isaac looked at her, puzzled, for a moment, before continuing. “You're probably thinking that these abilities of yours are a real rush, and that having them is just awesome. I want to warn you, though, that it's not all that it's cracked up to be. We weren't meant to have these kinds of powers. It's not natural, and there's no way that we can control it properly.”

“Well, you weren't able to control them, at least. That doesn't mean that the rest of us wouldn't be able to, though. Some of us are made a little more sterner than that.”

“How do you know so much about me?” Isaac asked.

“Oh, come on Isaac, you have to let a woman keep some of her secrets, can't you?” Cassie asked with a smile.

“I'm serious about this,” Isaac said, “you need to keep control of your abilities. You can't just go around using them whenever the mood strikes you.”

“Or what?” Cassie asked defiantly. “I'm sorry, Isaac, but I don't really see how you are in any position to make an ultimatum to me.”

“I may not have the same powers that you do, any more, but that doesn't mean that I can't stop you,” Isaac bluffed. “I have my own resources, you know.”

“Oh really?” Cassie said. “You may have resources, but are they enough to deal with these?”

As she asked the question, Isaac suddenly felt something crawling up the back of his leg. He looked over the back of his shoulder to see what it was, and saw a large spider staring back at him, its multifaceted eyes seeming to look into his very soul. Oh god, a spider, he thought. How did she know that he was afraid of spiders?

Isaac let out a yelp, jumping into the air as he did, almost causing himself to fall over the edge of the balcony. He grabbed onto the railing tightly, stopping himself from accidentally falling over it. He quickly spun himself around, looking for where the spider had landed when he jumped. Not seeing it, he looked over his shoulder again, trying to see if it was still attached to the back of his leg. It was gone.

“I hope that I've made my point,” she said steelily. Isaac failed to respond, and Cassie responded to that lack of response by waving her hand in front of him. As she did, the balcony became filled with spiders of all size and shape, all of them staring intently at Isaac. As one group, they started to move towards him, their spindly arms creating a constant wave of motion.

“Okay, stop,” Isaac said nervously as the spiders advanced. Cassie waved her hand again, and group of spiders all disappeared. Isaac let out a sigh of relief as they did, despite the huge smile that that brought across Cassie's face.

The girl walked up to Isaac, pressing her body against him so that she could whisper into his ear. “I'm glad to see that you're willing to see things my way,” she whispered.

Synthesis Part 22

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 04:19:43 GMT

“So, does your message have something to do with what I'm seeing on my TV screen right now?” Gen asked as soon as Isaac answered the phone later that evening.
“I think it probably does, if you're looking at what I think you're looking at,” Isaac admitted, reaching over And turning on the television.
The image of Cassie's ski hill filled the screen, the reporter's voice filled with a humour that contrasted sharply against the sense of dread that had filled Isaac when he had first seen it.
"So I take it the hypnosis you did with Dr. Van Dyne didn't really take, then?" Gen said dryly.

"No, that's not it!" Isaac said defensively. "The therapy was a success 0 this wasn't me at all!"
"Well then what happened?"
"Do you remember that girl, Cassie, that was at the organic market with Trevor?" Isaac explained, "I met up with her downtown today, and she said that she was responsible for this one. She says she has abilities just like mine."
"Oh, wow, that's crazy," Gen said breathlessly. "How can she do what you could?"
"I don't know," Isaac said. "She claimed that she had those abilities before we first me, but I can't shake the feeling that there's some sort of weird connection between the two of us."
"Weird," Gen replied. "Well, if it's any consolation, she's hanging around Trevor, right? I'm sure that he'll be able to keep a close eye on her."
"Yeah, I guess you make a good point," Isaac admitted. "Hopefully she'll be able to figure out what I did about these abilities without causing the same degree of property damage that I did!"
"Yeah, let's all hope that!" Gen said with a laugh that quickly started to trail off. "Actually, though, you raise a pretty good point. What if she ends up hurting people?"
"Well, there's hardly anything that we can do to stop her, is there?"
"I don't know, maybe. Maybe we should go and talk to that guy, Doug, that first gave you your powers. Maybe he knows some way to stop someone with this kind of power?"

The next day they tried again to search for Doug, and were less successful than they had been the time before. "God, this is such a waste of time!" Gen said with frustration after several hours worth of searching. "Where could this guy have gone? What kind of pressing matters would a homeless person have to attend to?"
"God, you're being so suburban," Isaac said, "I'm sure that he still has a life to live, even if he doesn't have a place to stay."
"Excuse me?" Gen said aghast. "You're calling me suburban? You're the one who lives in the suburbs, remember?"
"Yeah, but that's not the point," Isaac responded snottily. "The suburbs are a state of mind, Gen, and trust me, you're suburban, regardless of where you might actually live."
Gen huffed, and then started to storm off, determined to continue the search for Doug in a location that was at leasts somewhat separate from Isaac.
After several more minutes, an old-looking woman approached Isaac from behind, touching his arm in order to get his attention. "Uh, excuse me?" she said as he tuned to face her, "I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but overhear your conversation there a moment ago. Whatever it is that you're looking for, I think I could probably help you find it. I know the streets around here pretty well."
"We're looking for this guy named Doug," Isaac explained. "He lives on the street in this neighbourhood. He's tall - like six foot one, or something like that, wears a ratty old trench coat, and has a long, straggly head of hair and a beard to match. Have you seen him around?"
"Hmmn," the woman said, pausing for a moment to think. "You know what?" she said, "I think I may have seen him, as a matter of fact. Oh, it gets hard for me to remember, sometimes, though."
"How about we just cut to the chase?" Gen said, walking over to where Isaac and the old woman were standing. "How much is it going to cost us for you to remember exactly where this Doug fellow is?"
"Oh, I imagine around twenty bucks would a just about do it," the old woman said.
Gen fished out a twenty from her purse, thrusting it into the woman's waiting hands as fast as she could. "Let's just get on our way, then," she told her.
The woman shrugged, took the money, and started to walk back out onto the street, beckoning the two of them to follow behind her. They did, and she led them through a seeming labyrinth of streets, side streets, alleyways, and walkways that finally let them into an abandoned building, where they found Doug on a ratty old sofa, seeming deep in conversation with another man.
"Hey, Doug," the woman yelled out, breaking up the conversation just as Doug's acquaintance seemed to be in mid-rant, "these two said they were looking for you."
"Who? Aw, not those two! 'Tasha, what are you doing to me?" Doug asked as he saw who it was waiting for him at the entrance to the room.
"They paid me to find you," Tasha said, "it's as easy as that."
"God, Tasha, you're such an excellent little capitalist, even after all these years, aren't you?" Doug said with a chuckle. "Anyways," he said, turning to Gen and Isaac, you're here already, so I guess we might as well have a chat. Mark," he said, turning now to the man that he had been chatting with, "do you might if we pick this up later?"
"Not at all," Mark said, "I should get going, anyways. I've got to meet with someone from Child and Family Services in a little while. I'll see you around, though, okay?"
As Mark left, Gen and Isaac took their seats on the couch in front of where Doug stood, and he sat down to face them. "So, what is it you guys want?" he asked gruffly.
"I came here because I need to find out more about our powers," Isaac confessed. "There's a situation that's come up that might need me to deal with it, but I need to understand more of how all of this works first."
"Our powers?" Doug asked, "no, they're not mine anymore, they're just yours." He paused for a second before a look of realization came over him and he added, "actually, they're not even yours anymore, are they? What have you done, boy?"
"That's not important," Isaac started to say, before Gen cut him off.
"He underwent hypnotherapy," she explained, "because his powers were causing harm. But now someone else has them, and we're afraid she's going to end hurting someone with them."
"You gave them away?" Doug asked, surprised.
"Well, I didn't plan on it," Isaac said defensively. "As a matter of fact, since it was after the therapy, I didn't even know that I did it until after this girl showed up with the same powers as me!"
"Wait a second," Doug said, stopping Isaac before he said anything else, "you didn't consciously transfer your power to this girl?"
"No," Isaac said, blankly.
"Well then she doesn't have your ability. Simple as that."
"You're sure?"
"Completely. It took me a long time to figure out how to even do that, and even then I wasn't completely sure that it would ever work."
"Well then how else could she have gotten this ability?"
"That's a pretty tough question itself," Doug said, scratching his beard as he did. "As far as I knew, there was only one way to get those powers, and that was to get them from the Tibetan mystic that gave them to me."
"Well, then I guess it's possible that she went to Tibet and found this mystic, isn't it?"
"No, he's been dead for a long time. I was supposed to be the only person alive that he'd given them to, as well."
"You're sure he's dead?"
"Oh, absolutely. I killed him myself."

"I need to find this girl again," Isaac said to Gen as they left Doug's company, both of them a little shaken by his confession.
"Why?" she asked. "You're not planning on..."
"Oh god, no, not at all," Isaac said, shocked. "I think I just need to talk to her. I think I can make her see reason, Gen, I just need to have the opportunity to. She has to be warned about what it is that our powers can do."
"Okay," Gen said, "well, we should be able to track her down. Let's go over to Trevor's place and see if she's still hanging around there."
Not wanting to waste any time, they found the nearest TTC stop and made their way to Trevor's apartment. When they got there, they were surprised to find the door to the apartment wide open.
"Hello?" Gen called out, venturing into the apartment first, Isaac hesitantly following behind her.
"Oh, hey, you two!" Trevor cheerily called out, sticking his head out from behind the door of the opened refrigerator. "What are you doing here?"
"I need to talk to Cassie," Isaac explained. "Is she here?"
"Uh, yeah, she's just in the shower at the moment," Trevor explained, "but she should be out shortly. Hey, would either of you want a smoothie?" he asked, "I'm about to make a batch."
"Uh, no, we're okay," Isaac said, a little put off by the other man's sudden friendliness. He tried to tune his ears to the sounds coming from the bathroom, straining to hear the shower turning itself off. A moment later, Cassie walked casually out of it, a short white towel wrapped around her body, and nothing else. "So I was thinking," she started to say, oblivious to the presence of Gen and Isaac, why don't we just skip that dinner tonight and stay in. We can," she stopped, suddenly, when she realized that the two of them were not alone. "Uhm, hi," she said coolly, "what are you guys going here?"

Synthesis Part 21

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 05:04:26 GMT

“So, are you going to tell me what that was all about, or are you just going to play coy about the whole thing?” Trevor asked Cassie in the morning, as they sat in the kitchenette and drank their morning coffee.

“What what was about?” Cassie response, as coyly as she could, a large smile working its way across her face as she spoke.

“Oh, come on, don't give me any of that,” Trevor said, staring at her intently . “You know exactly what I'm talking about.”

“To be honest with you, I'm not exactly sure what it was,” Cassie admitted, “I know that's going to sound totally bogus, but it's the truth, I swear!”

“Is this something that you got when your memories came back?”

“I don't think so,” Cassie said. “I mean, I have memories of having these abilities from before the time when I lost my memory, if that makes any sense. I think that when I lost my memory, I just lost the knowledge about my powers as well, if that makes any sense. But,” she said with a devilish grin coming across her face, “it's back, now, so I say we have some fun with it!”

The first thing that surprised Isaac as he came out of the underground was that it was snowing. He had to admit that it hadn't been a particularly warm September, but at the same time the snow was, to say the least, unexpected. As the first flake of snow dropped itself onto his nose, he waited for the cold blast of wind that would no doubt come with it. He was shocked when it failed to come, although his body shivered regardless.

By itself, this would have been surprising, but hardly noteworthy – it wouldn't have been the first time that Isaac had seen September snow. What was amazing, however, was where the snow was coming from. Towering above Yonge-Dundas Square was a huge hill of snow, large and steep enough that several people were skiing down the side of it. Amazed by the sight of what he was seeing, Isaac started to wander over to the base of the hill, wondering how this could have been possible. The last that he had seen this area, it was knee-deep in construction contractors, all of them desperately wanting to get a hold of some of the reconstruction contracts following the destruction that he had accidentally partaken in.

As he stood there, staring at the hill, Isaac saw a figure race down the mountain towards him, turning at the last moment to stop the snowboard that it rode on, shooting snow up into the air and onto Isaac's face.

“Who the hell are you?” he angrily asked as he brushed the snow off of his face and shoulders. Isaac was shocked when the figure removed the ski mask that it wore, revealing Cassie's face underneath.

“Hey, you!” she said excitedly. “Is this cool, or what?”

“You?” Isaac said, his voice a mixture of surprise and confusion. “You're that girl that was with Trevor at the grocery store, aren't you? What are you doing here? Where did this thing come from?”

“Wow, you just need to relax, dude,” Cassie said, unclipping herself from the snowboard as she did. “Did anyone ever tell you that you ask too many questions?”

Isaac looked at her, exasperated. “You mean to tell me that a giant hill, covered in snow, suddenly appears out of nowhere, and I'm supposed to just go with it, like nothing's happened?”

“Okay, fine,” she sighed, leaning in towards him so that no one might overhear their conversation, “if you really want to know, I made it.”

“You made it?” Isaac repeated, not sure exactly of what to make of the situation. “What do you mean you 'made it'?”

“Well, okay, this is going to sound really crazy,” Cassie said with a smile, “but I've discovered that I have this ability to, well, make things appear. Out of thin air.”

“that is amazing,” Isaac said, suddenly becoming withdrawn, his mind racing to make sense of what the girl had told him. “How did you become able to do that?”

“I'm not really sure,” Cassie said, “it's a really long story. Listen, do you want to come for a quick run down the hill? I can make you a really great looking board if you'd like.”

“No, that's okay,” Isaac said, pulling away from the girl. “I just remembered – I have some stuff that I have to take care of back at school. So I'd better get headed back there and take care of it,” he said absent-absentmindedly as he started to walk away from her.

Cassie seemed to not notice the distracted nature of his excuse, and found herself immediately heading back to the top of the hill, desperate for another ride down.

As soon as the girl was safely out of earshot, Isaac thrust his hand into the front pocket of his messenger bag, reaching around blindly for a moment for his cellphone before he found it. His hands shaking from nervousness, he dialed Gen's number, punching the air in silent frustration as her answering machine picked up.

“Hey Gen, it's Isaac,” he said, speaking as quickly as he could into the phone. “Can you make sure to give me a call as soon as you get this? It's about my recent situation,” he said, pausing mid-sentence in order to emphasize the word 'situation'. “I think that I may not have been as rid of my abilities as I thought I had been, and I may have accidentally passed them along to someone else. Just give me a call when you get this, okay?

Synthesis Part 19

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:38:21 GMT

"Trust me, professor," Isaac said, "this is the one time that I think that that statement might not be the case. It's the kind of thing, though, that I'll be the first to admit sounds crazy, which is why you just need to come with me. Once you see what I'm talking about, you'll know that I'm on the up and up."

"Young man," Munroe said clearly, "I'll admit that you have me a little intrigued with your ranting, but really, I'm not going anywhere with you, so you might as well just say whatever it is you have to say."

"What if I was to tell you that, right now, I had a living triceratops in my bedroom?"

"To be honest with you, I would tell you that you are crazy," Dr. Munroe said with a sigh. "Even if we were to ignore the fact that triceratops has been extinct for 65 million years, the average triceratops was more than eight meters in length, and likely had a temperament similar to that of an elephant or a rhinoceros. I can't imagine the physics of you getting one into your bedroom, never mind the practicalities of it."

"This one is, uhm, smaller," Isaac explained. "And he's really well-trained, too." As Isaac spoke, he realized that he must sound ridiculous, but he continued anyway, convinced that he needed to make Dr. Munroe see his side of things. "See, professor, I had these ... abilities ... to create things that shouldn't exist. And I went a little crazy, and I created a pygmy triceratops. But now he's sick and I don't know how to treat him!"

"You 'had' magical abilities?" Munroe asked him. "You don't have them anymore?"

"No, not exactly," Isaac explained. "They were causing problems in my life, so I went to this therapist and he hypnotized me so that I wouldn't be able to use them anymore."

"That's certainly convenient," Munroe said. "So you have no way of proving to me that you actually had these abilities you claim to have, then?"

"Wait, I do!" Gen suddenly exclaimed, breaking the silence that she had kept since Isaac had started talking to the professor. "Have a look at this," the girl said, taking out her cell phone and playing the video file stored on it. The video showed a healthy looking Trebuchet, exploring through Isaac's bedroom.

"When did you take that?" Isaac asked, suddenly distracted by the video.

"It's from the day you first showed him to me," Gen explained, "I thought he was so cute that I just had to take a video of him!"

"I have to say, that's an amazing-looking video," Munroe said. "Is it CGI or animatronic?"

"What? No, Dr. Munroe, it's neither of those," Isaac explained. "This is a real video, I swear! If you'll just come with me, I'll be able to show you the real thing."

"Okay, fine, you know what?" the professor said, "I'll humour you. Let's go have a look at this 'triceratops' of yours, okay?"

Dr. Munroe refused to take the transit system out to Etobicoke, where Isaac lived, so instead Isaac and Gen rode with her in the back of her SUV as she drove them to Isaac's house. "God, you'd think that someone who works with fossils her whole life would be a little more hesitant to use fossil fuels," Isaac quipped during the ride.

"You'd be surprised how often I hear that sentiment," Munroe replied, sounding somewhat irritated by the suggestion. "But it's one that I've never really fully understood. The fossils I research have their use - they give us a doorway to the past. The fossils that got turned into fuel have their use as well, so we might as well make use of them as well as we can. It's not like the oil's doing anything else sitting there in the ground, is it?"

They sat in relative silence for the remainder of the car ride, Isaac not wanting to say anything else to annoy the professor, lest she suddenly decide to back out of her meeting with Trebuchet.

"This is the place here, on the right hand side," Isaac finally said, directing Munroe to his house.

When they entered the house, they found Trebuchet exactly where he had been left, his chilly, despondent-looking form doing its best to hide underneath Isaac's covers.

"Oh my god," Munroe breathlessly whispered as she saw the triceratops, "this is the real thing, isn't it?"

"Sure is," Isaac said, a sense of smug satisfaction temporarily overcoming his sense of concern for his friend.

"Is it okay if I hold him for a moment?" the professor asked.

"I think so," Isaac said, "but, I mean, you're the real expert here, right? So if you think it'd be okay, then I guess it would be!"

Without responding to Isaac's snide remark at all, Munroe sat softly down on the bed, reaching over and stroking the skin behind the dinosaur's frill. She broke out into a smile as she saw him respond to it, doing his best to nuzzle up against the back of her hand. As she rolled her hand around to make it easier for Trebuchet to reach the back, the dinosaur let out a slight cough. After this, the professor suddenly became all business, pulling her hand away from the animal. "Go into my car, and bring out the emergency medical kit that's stored under the rear seat," she commanded, pulling the keys out of her purse and tossing them towards Gen as she did. The younger girl obeyed instantly, grabbing the keys out of mid-air and running out of the room without a second thought.

"How long has he been like this?" she pointedly asked Isaac, without turning around to look at him.

"Not that long," Isaac explained. "Since sometime this afternoon, maybe? I was out at school at the time."

"I see. You wouldn't happen to have a flashlight handy, would you?" Munroe asked him.

"There's one in the top drawer in the nightstand," Isaac replied, pointing at the nightstand in question as he did.

Without saying anything further, Munroe reached into the drawer, pulled out the flashlight, and shone it into Trebuchet's eyes, the little dinosaur instinctively closing them in response to the harshness of the light.

"Well, that's a good sign," Munroe said as Gen walked back into the room, medical supplies in hand. "I'm going to take a blood sample from him to make sure, but from the looks of it, it's a case of simple vitamin deficiency. Make sure he's getting lots of roughage - spinach, kale, that sort of thing - and when I have anything further I'll let you know."

Isaac mumbled out a "Thank you very much," as he scrawled out his phone number and email address on a spare piece of paper for her. "Please, call me as soon as you've got anything," he pleaded.

"I will make sure to do that," Dr. Munroe said with a curt formality.

Synthesis Part 18

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 01:29:35 GMT

"Thanks for meeting up with me," Isaac said to Gen as they sat down in the restaurant, waiting for their pizza slices to come out of the oven.

"No problem," she said, "I don't really have anything planned tonight, and isn't this what friends are for, anyways? So, what seems to be the matter?" she asked, mockingly adopting the tone of a therapist as she did.

"It's kind of hard to explain, but ever since I went and saw that therapist, I've been feeling ... off," Isaac explained. "It's hard to really explain what it is, but it just feels like my emotions are kind of flat, if that makes any sense."

She nodded, unsure exactly of what to say in response. Luckily, the server behind the counter announced that their pizza was ready, giving her a few moments of respite.

"You know," she said after they had sat back down, "what you're describing is kind of similar to something that this director I know said started happening to him after he started taking anti-depressants. Maybe it's something like that?"

"I hope that's all it is," Isaac responded, after swallowing the bite of pizza that was in his mouth. "It's a really horrible feeling. I tried to do some writing this morning - nothing serious, just a scene for a play - and I couldn't come up with anything!"

"Well, keep in mind that people are always their worst critics, right?" Gen offered.

"No, that's not what I mean," Isaac explained, "it's not even that I can't create anything good - that I could deal with. I was absolutely inable to think of anything to write. Like the creative side of my brain was completely turned off. I couldn't imagine so much as a single sentence to put down on the page!"

"That sounds fairly serious," Gen said. "Maybe you should talk to Dr. Van Dyne again. He did say to call him if you noticed any unusual side effects or anything like that, right?"

"Yeah, he did," Isaac explained, "and I'm scheduled to have another meeting with him tomorrow, anyways. I guess I'll just bring it up with him then."

"Sounds like a good idea," Gen said. "So, how have things been with you in general, anyways? I feel like we haven't really had a chance to talk about 'real-life' stuff, what with all of this craziness going on around us."

"Oh, things have been okay," Isaac said lifelessly. "School, to be honest with you, hasn't really been drawing me into it lately, and my mom and I have been getting along around as well as we always do."

"By which you mean not at all, I'm assuming?" Gen said, hoping to raise a smile out of him, but getting nothing.

"No, it's been okay. We mostly just each do our own thing, y'know? How have things been with you?"

"Oh, they've been going well," Gen explained, "I just had an audition the other day, and the director seemed to like me. It's just for a Fringe thing, but everyone involved in it seems really cool. It might be a good chance for me to open some very important doors for myself in the future. Especially since, y'know, some people haven't even bothered writing those amazing plays that they said I would be starring in," she said with a smile, teasing her friend playfully.

"I'm sorry, I really should get on that," Isaac replied in a mournful manner. Gen wasn't sure if he was adopting a deadpan tone to play along with her, or if he really meant to be apologetic, so she decided to drop the subject.

Gen decided to stop by Trevor's apartment to apologize for standing him up on their coffee date several days prior. There was no answer to his phone at home, but she stopped by his place anyways, hoping that she would be able to catch him either coming or going. When she knocked on the door to the apartment and it was answered by Cassie Fitzgerald, dressed in nothing more than an old, ratty pair of cut-off fleece shorts and a halter top. Gen wasn't quite sure what to make of the situation.

"Uh, hi," she stammered out after a moment of confusion, "I'm looking for Trevor Starkey. Is this his apartment?"

"Yes it is," Cassie replied, "but he's not in right now. Would you like to come in, though?"

Hesitantly, Gen walked into the apartment, Cassie shutting the door closed behind her.

"So, Trevor's not in, you said?" Gen asked. "Did he just step out for a moment, or something like that?"

"No, I think he's at work actually," Cassie replied. "He probably won't be back for another few hours, at least. If you want, you can leave a message or a note or something and I can get him to give you a call when he gets home."

"Yeah, that's probably the best idea," Gen said, walking over to Trevor's desk in search of some paper to write with. "Actually, you know what?" she said after a moment, "I'll just give him a call later. I'm just going to grab myself a glass of water, though, okay?"

"Sure, not problem," Cassie replied.

"So, how do you know Trevor?" Gen asked as she reached into the fridge in search of a water jug, "are you an old friend from college or something like that?"

"I guess you could call him a friend," Cassie said with a little chuckle, "although he's not an old one. We just met a couple of days ago."

"Oh, really?" Gen asked as she took a sip of her water, "and you're staying here already?"

"Yeah," Cassie said, her feathers obviously being ruffled by the personal nature of Gen's question, "he found me in a bit of a tight spot, and offered to help me out. He's a good guy, Trevor is."

"He sure is," Gen replied icily. "Although, y'know, sometimes I worry that he might be a little too nice. I'd hate to see him get taken advantage of because of how nice he is. Anyways, can you do me a favour and let him know, when you see him, that Gen dropped by, and that I'll give him a call later? Thanks a lot," Gen said, heading for the door as she did.

As Isaac arrived home, he was somewhat perturbed to find the door to his bedroom laying wide open. "Uh, hello?" he called out as he walked into the room.

"Hello there, honey," his mom said, turning to face him as she did.

"Mom?" he said, his voice raising into a questioning lilt even though he wasn't actually asking a question, "what are you doing in my room?"

"Oh, sorry, I just heard a noise in here while you were out and thought that I would come and have a look at what caused it."

"Mom, you can't be doing that!" Isaac said angrily. "As soon as I started paying you reent, this became my private, personal space, remember? You can't just come barging in here because you feel like it!"

"Isaac, calm down," his mother said in a curt tone, "it's not like I'm trying to spy on you or anything like that. I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't anything the matter, which is when I found this," she said, motioning towards Trebuchet, who was laying on Isaac's bed, his head the only part of his body that was sticking out from underneath Isaac's blankets.

"That's, uh, a pet lizard that I got," Isaac explained, reasoning that within the confines of the strictest sense of the word, he wasn't technically lying by saying that.

"Where did you get a pet lizard?" his mother asked, using that tone of quiet exasperation that only mothers ever seem to be capable of mastering.

"That's kind of a long story," Isaac said, nervous to tell his mother about the abilities that he no long had.

"Well, regardless, the poor dear seems to be ill or something," his mother explained. "He keeps coughing."

Isaac had been worried that something like this would happen. Triceratops physiology wasn't something that he really had any experience with - he'd been trying to supply Trebuchet with a steady diet of ferns and greens, but had been a little worried about accidentally poisoning him or something like that. Unsure of exactly what to do, he sat down on the bed next to the little triceratops and started to stroke the skin behind the dinosaur's bony frill. It responded by trying to snuggle up closer to him, obviously grateful for the interpersonal contact.

"I must say, I've never quite seen a lizard like that before," Isaac's mother told him. "Would you be able to take it to the local vet or something?"

"I don't know," Isaac said, not wanting to look up from his pet, "he is a pretty rare breed. I might have to try to track down a specialist to see if they can tell me anything."

"Okay, well, I've got to get going to work," his mother explained, "but I'm glad that you're home to look after your little friend here. He's kind of cute, for a reptile; I'd hate to see something happen to him!"

After making sure that Trebuchet was comfortable, and had access to food and water, Isaac began to frantically search the internet, vainly hoping that he would be able to find someone local who knew a lot about triceratopses. He became so lost in this research that he almost didn't hear the telephone ring when Gen called him several hours later.

"Hey, are you busy?" Gen asked as he picked up the receiver.

"Uh, kind of," Isaac said. "Trebuchet's sick,and I'm looking for a specialist in triceratopses that I can maybe take him to. Turns out there's one in Toronto, working at U of T!"

"Really?" Gen asked, "are you going to go try to see this person?"

"Yeah, I was just going to go hop on some transit, actually," Isaac said.

"Would you mind terribly if I came with you?" Gen asked, "I've had a rough day and I would really rather not be alone right now."

The ride to the university was rather uneventful, Gen meeting Isaac on the streetcar there. "The dinosaur specialist here is Dr. Munroe," Isaac told her as they worked their way through the cavernous hallways of the University of Toronto, "and according to the U of T website, she has office hours today until 5:30."

"But it's 5:20 now," Gen reminded him.

"I know that; I really hope that she didn't decide to leave her office early today," Isaac said.

Walking down the hallway to the paleontology department, Isaac was disheartened to see a middle-aged woman locking the door to her office, briefcase in her hand.

"Excuse me, Dr. Munroe?" Isaac called out as he started to run down the hallway after her.

"Yes?" she replied, half-turning around as she did, "how can I help you?"

"I have a question about a dinosaur, and I was hoping you could answer it for me," Isaac explained.

"If you're in the Paleo 100 class, just come see me before the start of the lecture tomorrow, and I'll be very eager to help you answer your question then. But for now, I've had an incredibly long day, and I really need to get home to my couch and mug of cocoa."

"Uh, no, it's not like that," Isaac explained, surprised by her frankness,"I'm not in your class. In fact, I don't even go to school here," he admitted.

"Oh, well in that case, this will definitely have to wait until tomorrow," the professor exclaimed.

"Please, Dr. Munroe, I need your expertise in triceratopses. It's urgent."

"Triceratops," she corrected him.

"I'm sorry?" he said.

"Triceratops," she repeated, "not triceratopses. It already ends in a consonant with an s afterwards, so the plural is just the same as the singular. And if I may be so bold, young man, let me suggest to you that the words 'urgent' hasn't really been applicable to the state of triceratops for the past sixty-five million years. I'm sure that whatever this is, it can wait until morning."

Synthesis Part 17

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 00:42:55 GMT

"That's absolutely amazing," Van Dyne said as he examined the robot in attentive detail. "How did you do this?"

"I'm not entirely sure of the mechanics," Isaac explained to him, "really, I Just think of it, and it appears."

"And you want to get rid of this ability?" Van Dyne asked. "Think about all of the good that you could do for humanity!"

"I don't think it would do too much good, doc. See, the things I make don't last - entropy gets a hold of them eventually, and breaks them back down to their component parts. Also, did you see that article in the paper? I don't want to be responsible for anything like that again."

"I suppose you raise a good point," Van Dyne said pensively. "So, you want me to use hypnotic suggestion to somehow block you powers, is that correct?"

"That's right," Isaac confirmed. "So, can you do it, doctor?"

"I think so," Van Dyne said, one half of his mind obviously focusing on how to solve this problem, while the other half continued to speak to Isaac. "I mean, it would be easier to do if I knew what part of your psyche is was that was responsible for this behaviour."

"You mean, like, what part of my brain? Do you need me to do a CAT scan or something like that?"

"No, not your physical brain, your psyche," Van Dyne explained with the patience of someone who obviously did not spend much time around other psychologists. "Do you know much about computers, Isaac?" he asked.

Isaac nodded a yes. He didn't know that much about computers, to be honest, but he knew enough to fake his way through a conversation with someone who likewise wasn't an expert.

"Well, you've got your brain and your psyche, and they kind of work like hardware and software," Van Dyne explained, his hands reflexively miming out the shape of a human brain as he spoke. "Well, usually when doctors try to deal with mental problems, they do so by trying to change the hardware. They use drugs, surgery, or whatever, but what they ultimately try to do is change the way your brain works. What I, and other therapists like me, try to do is make changes to the brain's software - it's psyche - rather than taking the more drastic step of changing your actual brain. Make sense?"

Isaac nodded to show that he was still following, although he was a little fuzzy on the details of the metaphor. "So, what we have to do," Van Dyne continued to explain, "is set up a new piece of software in your brain - the hypnotic suggestion - that's going to block whatever it is that's allowing you to do this."

"Is this going to be an irreversible treatment?" Isaac asked, a sudden degree of hesitation and nervousness coming into his voice.

"Not really," Van Dyne explained. "In the unlikely even that something does go wrong, it's nothing that we won't be able to undo afterwards. And, of course, you will have all of my contact information, including my home phone number, in case you have any worries or doubts about this afterwards. I have to assure you, though, that the odds of something going wrong are very, very slim. I've been doing hypnotherapy for nearly ten years, and I've only had one client who's had a bad experience as a result. It really is a safe procedure - safer than most encounters you'll have with a doctor, to be honest with you."

"Okay, doc, sounds good," Isaac said after steeling himself to the idea of the procedure, "let's do this."

"Okay. Would you mind just having a seat on the couch here," Van Dyne said in a way that, while technically being a question, had the connotation of a command to it. As Isaac went and sat down, Van Dyne went over to his desk and picker upp his office telephone. "Hello, Ms. Nash?" he asked when his assistant picked up on the other end, "I'm about to start the procedure with Mr. King, and I just wanted to make sure that all of his paperwork is in order before we start. It is? Excellent. Thank you very much, Ms. Nash."

Gen half-heartedly worked her way through a fashion magazine, wishing that she had brought a book of her own with her, as she listened to Ms. Nash talk to Dr. Van Dyne over the telephone.

As she started to get lost in learning about the various sexual poses that she "absolutely had to try with her man", Gen heard the telephone ring again, Ms. Nash answering it on the first ring. After hearing a brief, one-sided conversation with the person on the other end, Gen was shocked to see Ms. Nash slam the phone down on its cradle, reach into her desk, pull out a first-aid kit, and then run with it in the direction that she had earlier taken Isaac.

Hurriedly, she ran after her, following the woman into the office where Dr. Van Dyne and Isaac were. As she got there, she was shocked to see Isaac laying on the floor, convulsing. "Oh my god!" she called out as she saw Nash kneeling down next to him, checking his vital signs.

"He seems to be coming out of it," she explained, seeming to want to calm Gen down as much as she wanted to inform Dr. Van Dyne of his patients' status.

"Okay, that's good," the doctor said. "I've never seen anything like this; after I had finished planting the suggestion, he just had a seizure."

"Isaac," Van Dyne said as the man came around, "how are you feeling? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I feel fine," he said as he raised himself back up to his feet. "Did it work, doctor?"

"I think so," Van Dyne said, "why don't you give your powers a try and we'll see?"

Isaac decided to try something simple, picturing a rose in his head and concentrating hard on the empty space in front of him, trying to make it form. It was the type of thing that, by now, should give him absolutely not trouble to create, but he found himself unable to make it appear.

"Looks like you did it," Isaac said to Van Dyne. "Great job, doc!"

"Excellent," the doctor said. "Now, before you leave, Isaac, would you please schedule a follow-up meeting with Ms. Nash here, maybe for some time next week? After your reaction to the treatment, I think it would be a good idea if you swung by at some point, so we can make sure that there aren't any permanent side effects."

Trevor sipped his coffee in the empty coffeehouse as he waited for Gen to arrive. He hadn't talked to her since the afternoon after their last date, which was several days prior, and he was starting to get worried that he was in the process of being stood up.

Suddenly, a group of three college students burst their way into the cafe storefront. "Hey, is there anyway that we can use the telephone?" one of them burst out, running up to the front counter. "It's an emergency."

His ears pricking up at the mention of the word 'emergency', Trevor got out of his seat and headed over towards where the group of students were standing. "Excuse me, is this emergency something that I can help you with?" he asked, taking his badge out of his coat pocket and flashing it at them as he did.

"You're a cop?" one of them asked, Trevor nodding in confirmation.

"What seems to be the matter?" he asked them.

"We were just cutting through the alleyway next door," one of the students explained, "and there was this girl passed out in a corner back there."

Trevor sighed inwardly as he put his badge back in his pocket and started to head towards the alley. His years on the police force had given him a somewhat jaded view of what constituted an 'emergency', and dealing with a case of what sounded like public drunkenness did not qualify as such.

As he made his way into the alley, however, Trevor realized that this was not a simple case of public drunkenness. For a start the girl, while being unconscious, was also completely naked, her body shivering in the cold.

Trevor ran over to her side, instinctively taking off his overcoat as he did and placing it over her. As he gently did so, she awoke, seeming more to come out of a deep sleep than the drunken state he had assumed her to be in.

"What's going on?" she asked, starting to lift herself up off the ground. "Where am I?"

"You're in an alleyway beside a coffee shop on Queen St.," Trevor started to explain, "but how you got here is a mystery to me, Ms..." he trailed off, hoping for her to fill in his blank.

"Cassie," she spat out after a moment's worth of hesitation, "my name's Cassie Fitzgerald."

"Well, Ms. Fitzgerald, I'd offer to shake you hand, but I'm afraid that you might end up a little exposed if you did. So, do you mind telling me how you ended up here?" Trevor asked.

"What are you, a cop?" she asked as she started to put on the coat that he had draped over her.

"As a matter of fact, I am," he said plainly. "My badge is in the coat you're putting on, if you want to have a look at it."

"Oh," Cassie said sheepishly. After an awkward pause, she added "this is going to sound really lame, but I don't actually know how I got here. My memory's a complete blank."

"Really," Isaac said doubtfully. In his career as a police officer, it never ceased to surprise him how forgetful people tended to be, especially when they had been caught doing something illegally. "You can't remember anything at all?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said flatly, "I can't remember a single thing prior to waking up in this alley." Her voice took on a tone of terror as she realized herself to be without memory.

"Okay, well, let's get you down to the hospital, then, to make sure that thererr isn't anything seriously wrong with you," Trevor said, putting his arm on Cassie's back to usher her out of the alley. "My car's just around the corner, so I'll give you a ride down, okay?"

Trevor and Cassie waited in an empty hospital room, waiting for the doctor to deliver the young girl's results. Despite the seriousness and totality of the girl's amnesia, Trevor had still had to call in several favours, and use all of the influence that he had muster, but he managed to get them to perform a CAT scan on Cassie mere hours after they had arrived at the hospital.

"Ms. Fitzgerald?" a young female doctor asked as she walked into the room, holding a thin manila folder in her hand as she did.

"That's me," Cassie said, and the doctor opened the file and walked closer to where the girl was standing.

"Well, I've got the results of your CAT scan here, and I've got some good news, and bad news for you," the doctor explained. "The good news is that your scan came out completely clear - as far as we can tell, there is nothing wrong with you brain." As Cassie breathed a sigh of relief, the doctor continued to speak. "The bad news," she explained, "is that the lack of brain trauma does not make your amnesia any less real; it just means that there is some sort of psychological reason behind it. Amnesias this total, without any physical reason causing them, are almost unheard of; I'm afraid that you're probably looking at many sessions of psychotherapy before you're able to get your memories back, if you are in fact able to get them back at all."

Cassie took a deep, mournful breath as she heard the doctor's words. "If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them," the doctor offered.

"Yeah, I do," Cassie said in a flat, emotionless voice, "but if you don't mind, doc, could I have a few moments to myself first?"

"Of course," the doctor said, closing up the folder and walking out of the room.

"I can leave, as well, if you'd like," Trevor offered.

"No, I'd really like it if you stayed," Cassie told him, "I know this is probably going to sound really weird, but since you're the one that found me, I feel this kind of connection to you, and after what that bitch of a doctor just said, I think I need to not be alone at the moment."

"Bitch?" Trevor said, "isn't that a little harsh?"

"Oh, come on," Cassie said, "did you hear the way she was talking? That flat, uncaring voice, as if she was just giving me the weather, and not telling me that my entire life before today is gone?"

"Cassie, I know you've had a really emotional day, but she's not the enemy," Trevor explained. "I think you should cut her a little slack."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Cassie said with a sigh that suggested that she didn't really agree with him, but was willing to say that she did in the interest of keeping the piece. "I'm just a little stressed out," she explained, "I mean, I don't even know if I have a family, or a house, or anything to go back to! Where am I going to sleep tonight?"

"Well," Trevor offered, "until you've figured out what you're going to do next, you can always borrow some space on my couch. Hopefully, though, you have a family, or at least some friends, that are looking for you, and they're going to contact the police soon to make a missing person's report. Once they do that, we'll be able to match you back up with them, and your life can at least start to get back to normal." He spoke with authority, as if cases like hers were something that he dealt with on a regular basis, and she found this comforting.

"Thanks for the offer," she said, "it really means a lot to me."

Synthesis Part 16

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 03:44:10 GMT

They hopped over the turnstile of the subway station, and ran to the empty platform. "You're not expecting us to run down that subway tunnel, are you?" Isaac asked in a surprised voice as he saw Gen heading in that direction.

“Oh gods, no,” the girl replied. “I mean, we’d be fine for now – as soon as the TTC officials heard about your fight, I’m sure they closed the station off and evacuated it right away – the last thing that they would want would be a lawsuit coming from a giant lizard crashing through the roof of the station. But, at the same time, we don’t know when they’re going to start them back up, now that the beastie’s dead. So instead, we are going to make use of the magical world of service tunnels to get ourselves to another station without being seen.”

Gen quickly located the entrance to the tunnel, and the two of them walked down it single file. Aside from a few emergency lights, it was pitch-black in the tunnel, so Isaac quickly created a pair of flashlights for them to use. “Okay,” Gen said once they were near the end of the tunnel, and the next station, “so what the hell was that all about?”

“I really don’t know,” Isaac replied despondently. “I’ve been trying not to use my powers at all. Maybe my subconscious mind was rebelling against the idea?”

“Your subconscious?” Gen said in a way that suggested she didn’t fully believe him.

“Yeah. Well, that’s how all of this started, right? Those pirates, the ninja – you don’t think that those were things that I wanted to have happen, did you?”

“Oh, of course not,” Gen said, firmly agreeing with him, although her eyes still displayed a silent relief at hearing this. “But, be honest, was the giant suit of armor really necessary?”

“Okay, in retrospect, maybe that wasn’t the greatest idea I’ve ever had,” Isaac admitted, nervously rubbing the back of his head as he did. “But I seriously thought it would work. I know in the movies the random destruction always stops when the hero shows up to fight the monster!”

She had to stop and smile at the lameness of his defense, and how earnestly he offered it. “I guess we’ll have to put it down to an honest mistake, then.”

They came to a stop, having reached the end of the tunnel, and faced the door that led back into the subway station. “Before we go any further,” Gen said to him, “I think we need to figure out what we’re going to do about these abilities of yours. I don’t know how much longer the city can hold up to these random creations of yours!”

“Yeah, I was just thinking about that,” Isaac offered, “and if it is my subconscious that’s involved, then it’s going to take a bit more than just promising not to use my abilities to stop me. I think we have to consider something a little more serious.”

“Oh god,” Gen exclaimed, suddenly horrified, “you’re not talking about getting, like, a lobotomy or something like that, are you?’

“No!” Isaac replied, not having considered that as a possibility, “that would be a little too extreme for me. What I was thinking of is that I have this uncle who’s a smoker. He tried everything he could to quit smoking, but wasn’t able to until he underwent hypnotherapy. It totally cured him!”

“You think that would work in a situation like this?” Gen asked with more than a little doubt in her voice.

“I think so,” Isaac said, “I mean, what could it hurt to try, right?”

The next day, the two friends found themselves in the waiting room of Dr. Van Dyne, a psychotherapist and hypnotherapist who had his office near Gen’s apartment.

“So, this guy is like, the best, right?” Gen asked, nervous for her friend.

“Let’s put it this way – this guy is the best that is covered under my mom’s health insurance from work,” Isaac replied with a sarcastic grin.

"Ah, I see," Gen said, an equally sarcastic look filling her eyes as the doctor's assistant walked into the waiting room. "Mr. King, the doctor will see you now," she explained. As the two of them stood up, the woman stuck out her hand in order to stop Gen. "I'm sorry, but Dr. Van Dyne will have to meet with the patient alone," she explained.

"But I'd really like her to come with me," Isaac explained.

"I'm sorry, but the rules are rules," she said. "You'll be more than welcome to stay here in the waiting room for the duration of the session," she explained, turning to Gen as she did. "Now, Mr. King, if you'll just come this way," she said to Isaac as she turned around and began to walk towards the doctor's office. As she did, she didn't look back at him to check his progress, which hampered his ability to protest.

After walking down what appeared to be the longest hallway that he'd ever been in, Isaac followed the assistant into Dr. Van Dyne's office, where she left him to wait for the doctor. As he waited for the doctor to arrive, Isaac examined the room. It seemed like the perfect stereotype of a psychiatrist's office - leather couches and chairs, with a desk off to one side, and giant bookshelves covering most of the available space along each of the walls. Catching Isaac's attention, however, was a glass case off to one side. Within the case, suspending in perfect stillness, was a black slip of a dress. Isaac went over to it to examine it further, and found it to have an odd, almost ephemeral quality to it.

"Amazing, isn't it?" came a voice from behind him.

Isaac quickly turned around to see who it was that was speaking, assuming it to be Dr. Van Dyne.

The doctor was an older man, with slight dustings of grey starting to show around the hair on his temples. The grey was even more noticeable on his goatee, where it sat intermingled with his jet black hair. Matching his hair, he was dressed in an all-black suit, a turtleneck sticking out above the top of the suit jacket.

"Uhm, I have to confess that I don't know what it is," Isaac nervously said.

"It's the slip that Gloria Swanson wore in the final scene in Sunset Boulevard - you know, the 'I'm ready for my close-up' one?"

"Oh," Isaac said, faking that he understood what Van Dyne was talking about. He hadn't seen the movie, but he did know enough about movies to know that it was the type of movie that he 'should' have seen if he wanted to have an informed opinion on film.

"Yeah, it cost me a fortune on Ebay, but it's worth it, just to have as a conversation piece," Van Dyne explained. "Plus, as long as I keep it here in the office it's a business expense, so I claimed it on my taxes," he said with a smile. "So, you're name is Isaac King, right?" he said, checking the file on his desk as he did. "So, Isaac, why don't you tell me what you're here for?"

"Well, doc, it's kind of complicated," Isaac began.

"Trust me, Mr. King, if there's one thing that being a therapist has taught me, it's that people are almost never more complicated than they appear to be. So, what are you here for? Smoking? Weight loss? Have any unacceptable sexual habits that you're trying to get rid of?"

"What? No!" Isaac said, not sure exactly which suggestion it was that he was being offended by. "Listen, doctor, this is going to sound kind of crazy, but the reason that I'm here is that I've recently discovered that I have certain ... abilities that I don't want to have. I'm here because I need you to try to get rid of them for me." He was unsure of exactly how much to tell the doctor - while he knew that anything he said would be protected by the rules of doctor-patient confidentiality, he knew as well that Van Dyne would not be likely to believe him when he told him what his abilities were.

"Okay," the doctor said in a tone that was surprisingly nonjudgmental. "I'm afraid that you're going to have to open up a little bit more before I can start to treat you, Isaac. Do you mind if I call you Isaac?"

"Yeah, it's fine," Isaac said. "The thing is, doctor ... I can make stuff. If I think of something hard enough, I can cause it to appear in front of me."

"I see," Van Dyne said, suddenly taking on that slight change of tone of voice that people take on when they believe the person they are talking to to be mad. As he spoke, he began to write down a series of notes onto his pad of scratch paper. "So, Isaac, why wouldn't you want this ability? It sounds pretty beneficial to me."

"You would think so," Isaac said, noticing but deciding to ignore the doctor's change of voice. "The troublesome part is that I don't have full control over it. Even if I tell myself that I'm not going to use it, my subconscious starts to use it against my will, in ways that don't have a lot of regard for other people."

"I see," Van Dyne said, writing further on his pad of paper. "Isaac, I think we're finding ourselves at a fascinating juncture here. Do you know why?"

Isaac shook his head, declining to comment further. "I'm just going to speak plainly here, Isaac, because I think that that's what you deserve. You're at a crossroads right now, Isaac. It seems to me that you're falling into hallucination, but you're not fully there yet. You worry about what will happen if you sink further into your illness, so you're hallucinating these abilities and this battle between your conscious and unconscious."

Isaac had been expecting a response along these lines, and so answered in the exact way that he had rehearsed with Gen that morning. "Do you happen to have a copy of today's newspaper, Dr. Van Dyne?" he asked.

The doctor went over to his desk and picked a copy of the paper up, handing it to Isaac. "Do you see that?" Isaac asked rhetorically, pointing to the picture underneath the headline "Giant Monsters Battle In Downtown Core."

"That's me," Isaac explained. "The lizard thing was created by my subconscious, and so I created the suit of armor in order to get rid of it."

"Isaac," Van Dyne explained, "you appear to be an intelligent man. So I'm sure that you can appreciate how this looks. Does it really seem logical that that's you?"

"Okay, fine," Isaac explained, an overtone of frustration coming into his voice, "if that's the case, then how do you explain this?"

Without a second though, Isaac thrust his right hand outward, fingers splayed out for maximum dramatic effect. As he did, a perfectly-scaled miniature version of the robot armor he had made the day before appeared on the ground in front of him, laying on its back.

"I don't know about you," Isaac said as Dr. Van Dyne picked up the miniature robot, "but to me that looks like it would make one hell of a conversation piece."

Synthesis Part 15

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 04:36:57 GMT

Gen took a step back from Isaac. The energy around him started to coalesce, and take solid form. Within a moment, Gen was amazed to find herself looking at a giant, robotic suit of armor, with Isaac encased within it.

The form was enormous, standing nearly thirty feet tall from Gen's quick estimate. It had an almost regal look to it, red and silver alloys of metal combining to mimic the rough outline of a human body, only blockier. Isaac sat seated within the head of the creation, ready to pilot its every move.

"What the hell is this?" Gen called out to him. The gleaming metal form responded by reaching down and picking Gen up, depositing her on its steel shoulders.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Isaac called out from inside the robot's head. "I couldn't hear you from all the way down there!"

"What are you doing?" she cried out again.

"I'm going to stop the monster, just like you said I should."

"With this? I swear, Isaac, only you would come up with this. Why didn't you just conjure up the Air Force or something like that?"

"It wouldn't be conjuring," Isaac explained, "it would be creating. And I'm not entirely sure that I'm prepared for all of the metaphysical angst that would come from creating a bunch of soldiers."

"Metaphysical angst? What are you talking about?"

"Creating human life out of thin air? That's a little too much like playing god if you ask me."

"Oh come on, you've already created a bunch of things - those pirates, for example. And what about that triceratops?" Gen asked with a slight hint of exasperation in her voice.

"Most of those were accidental - I wouldn't have made them if the choice had been up to me," Isaac explained. "Trebuchet was a one-time deal; I didn't know much about my powers then, anyways," he added defensively.

"So this is what you're going to do instead," Gen said, the frustration evident in her tone.

"Hey, it makes sense to me," Isaac explained, "who better to stop a dragon then a knight in shining armor?"

As Isaac grinned at his own cleverness, the creature reacted to his presence in a way that suggested it both heard and understood what he was saying, as it spat out another ball of flame in his direction. Isaac instinctively reacted by commanded his armor to raise its opposing hand up to the shoulder that Gen stood on, blocking the flames from singing her.

"Okay, I think it's time this was taken care of," Isaac called out at her. "I'm going to set you down, and then I need you to get as far away from here as you can, okay? I want to make sure that you're safe."

Gen nodded vigorously, showing that she both heard and clearly understood what Isaac was saying. As he gently returned her to the ground, however, she immediately ran for cover behind the nearest hot dog cart, not daring to go any further lest Isaac somehow have need of her.

"Okay, listen up," she heard Isaac's voice booming, through loudspeakers that he had attached to the outside of his armor. "You probably won't understand a word of what I'm about to say, but I need to say it anyways. This destruction that you're causing is unacceptable, and if you do not cease and desist immediately, I will be forced to stop you through any means necessary."

The creature stared at him again, cocking its head slightly to one side as it did so, unsure of what it was looking at. Finally, obviously feeling some sort of threat to its dominance, the creature started to rush forward at him. With its strong hind legs, it was upon him in no time, pushing all of its weight on top of Isaac and his armor.

Despite the weight and strength of the suit, Isaac was forced backwards as the momentum of the creature overcame him. Although he managed to prevent himself from falling, he was forced to take several steps backwards, accidentally stepping on one of the cars that had been parked on the street as he did. As quickly as he was able to, however, Isaac fully righted himself again, pushing the creature back as he did. Before it could balance itself, he followed up with a punch to the thing's chest, forcing it backwards into the facade of one of the buildings on the street. While the structure of the building withstood this, Isaac could hear the crunching and breaking of glass as the beast collided with the building. Quickly, however, it jumped back to the attack, swiping at him with its claws. The claws dug into the chest of Isaac's armor, tearing through the steel and into the circuitry inside.

Undaunted, Isaac again attacked the creature, punching at its face with both arms. It howled with pain as he did, the force of its growling setting off the few car alarms that had not already been activated by the carnage they had encountered.

Isaac reached down onto the console in front of him, pressing a solitary button on the display. As he did, the panel beneath the display fell away, leaving a small joystick on the display. At the same time, one of the silver panels on the arm of the suit of armor collapsed itself, a twin-mounted laser cannon appearing from within it. Aiming the cannon with the joystick, Isaac fired, the blast connecting directly with the beast's chest. The creature fell backwards, crashing into another building as it did. This one was not as sturdily built as the last one, however, and bits of the brick and mortar outside came off as the creature stood back up. It volleyed another blast at Isaac, the liquid flame insinuating itself through several of the holes it had dug with its claws.

Inside the command center, klaxons sounded and alarm lights flashed. "Warning," a computerized voice called out, "internal system stability has been compromised. Please halt current activities to repair unit before additional damage is registered."

Staring at the controls and displays in front of him, Isaac bit into his lip, unsure if he would be able to take another hit like that. He had to end this battle soon, but was unsure of how to do so. Finally, he had an idea, and he became a man possessed, keying in commands and activating sensors throughout the command unit.

The suit of armor began to charge forward at the creature, colliding with it again. This time, however, rather than pushing it backwards, giant steel arms embraced the creature, holding it firm in what may have been the largest bear-hug ever recorded. Once the creature was firmly in the grasp of the armor, Isaac pressed another button, activating repulsor-jet controls from the back of the armor, and the two of them shot into the sky.

They quickly receded into the horizon, streaking away from the scene and the devastation until they appeared as a pin-prick, and then nothing at all. For the next fifteen minutes there was silence, and the debris began to settle in the downtown core. Once it had, however, Isaac's giant, gleaming form reappeared, thrusters bringing it down in the middle of the public square. Gen ran to the robot form as Isaac began his descent down from it.

"That was unbelievable!" she said as she reached him, grabbing ahold of him and hugging him tightly. "What did you do?"

"Well," he explained in a matter-of-fact way, "I realized that I wasn't going to beat him quickly, so I grabbed him, carried him up into sub-orbital space, and then let go. If my calculations are correct, he should land somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean."

"Isn't that kind of dangerous?" Gen asked, surprised by the coolness of Isaac's response.

"Dangerous? Not really," the young man replied. "I mean, to start with, he has a three-hour time limit applied to him, right? Furthermore, I'm assuming that from the height and speed that he was falling at, there won't even really be that much of him left to hit the ground by the time he reaches the sea floor."

"Isn't that going to cause a tsunami, though?"

"I don't think so. I mean, where I dropped him is pretty far out from anywhere inhabited. It shouldn't cause any problems, really."

Gen was still disturbed by the nonchalantness of Isaac's reply, but decided not to press the issue. "Okay, cool," she said, "but I really think we should get out of here, okay? The cops will probably be here any minute now."

"The cops?" Isaac said with a dissatisfied air. "What would I have to worry about the cops for? I'm a hero, in case you haven't noticed."

"I'm not trying to argue that, but take a look around, hotshot. They're such as hell not going to be impressed with all of the property damage that you just caused."

"I didn't really cause it," Isaac said defensively, crossing his arms as he did. "That monster thing did. I was just doing my part to safeguard the community."

"Do you really think they're going to believe that?" Gen asked, "especially if they were to learn that that thing came out of your subconscious?" She started to whisper as she spoke, but her words still contained a sharp, disapproving air about them.

"I can't control what's going on in my subconscious, Gen," Isaac pleaded with her.

"Well, looking at all of this, I would say that you're going to have to find a way," Gen snapped at him. "For now, though, we have more pressing matters to attend to. Like getting the hell out of here, for one. To the subway?"

Isaac nodded, and the two of them began their descent into the underground, running as fast as they could towards the ticket agents. Both booths were closed, the station appearing to be temporarily closed due to the violence that had been occurring above.

"Okay, so what do we do?" Isaac asked in frustration.

"Well, there's no booth collectors, so we jump over the turnstile," Gen explained, as it what she was saying was the most obvious thing in the world.

"But the station's closed. There aren't going to be any trains coming any time soon!"

"Don't worry," Gen explained. "Where we're going, we don't need trains."

Synthesis Part 14

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:50:06 GMT

Isaac froze momentarily in his feet, his hair starting to stand on edge as he heard another sick, sadistic sounding roar blanket the city streets.

"Uhm, okay, what the hell is that?" Gen asked as the other gathered civilians started to run.

"I have no idea," Isaac replied, although both of them knew, on some level, exactly what it was that they were looking at.

The beast leaned back on its haunches, lifting its head upp and letting out a roar that filled the sky. As it did, they were given a perfect opportunity to observe the creature in all its glory.

Its feet were the size of compact cars, each of them serving as the base for one of the impossibly think legs that it stood on, thick sinews like cables waiting to unwind and thrust him at those nearby. The legs were matched with equally-powerful looking arms, currently hanging at his sides, each of which ended in a four-clawed hand, one of which ended in opposition to the others.

The creature's entire body was covered in dark, greenish scales, which glinted with hints of gold as the sun reflected off them. As it lowered its head to face forward, Isaac noticed that it had a mouth full of sharp, dagger-like teeth that could have no purpose other than to rend and kill.

The creature shrieked out again, this time swinging with one of its mighty arms as well. It connected with one of the tall office buildings that lined Dundas, taking a chunk of the building out with it as it did.

"Isaac, what is a tyrannosaurus doing in the middle of the street?" Gen asked pointedly.

"Actually, that's not a tyrannosaurus," Isaac explained, "just look at the arms. Those are way too long, and too strong, to be tyrannosaurus arms."

As if to show its agreement, the creature belched at them, a large ball of fire shooting from its mouth as it did. No, this was definitely not a regular dinosaur.

The flame evaporated before it reached Isaac and Gen, but they could still feel the blistering heart from the flame as its wake wafted over them. "Isaac, you have to do something," gen said quietly as the creature tore into another building, leaving debris falling to the ground behind it.

"Me? What am I supposed to do?" Isaac asked incredulously.

"I don't know!" Gen said, "but that's something that came out of you, so you have to find a way to fix it!"

"What?" Isaac said. "But ... I didn't ..."

"Don't play coy with me, Isaac," Gen said, her voice firm. "Whether you planned for it or not, that thing came out of your subconscious. You know it, and I know it. That makes it your responsibility. Now do something about it already!" he said, strongly accenting the word 'do' as she did.

"Okay," Isaac said, "let me just think about what I can..."

"Can't you just, I don't know, wish it away or something?"

Isaac decided to try the girl's advice, and focused intently on the giant creature as it continued to storm through the city. It wasn't easy to do; another breath of fire had left several carts along the street aflame, and panicked workers were streaming out into the street in order to escape the onslaught. Finally, however, Isaac was able to focus in intently enough to try to force the giant reptilian creature into non-existence.

Nothing happened. He focused again, trying as hard as he could to picture the beast being unmade, it's molecules fading away into nothingness, but again he was unsuccessful. "This just isn't going to work," he admitted to Gen as a worried look crawled its way across her face.

"So what are we going to do?" Gen asked, a worried quiver in her voice.

"Don't worry, I think I have an idea," Isaac said, closing his eyes to concentrate. As he did, Gen felt a peculiar energy start to amass itself around them. Whatever Isaac had planned, it was obviously something big.

Synthesis Part 13

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 04:44:36 GMT

When Isaac awoke in the morning, he found himself to be sweaty and hungover - coincidentally, these were two of his least favourite things to be. The sweatiness he proscribed to his dream, which still haunted him - it was too late in September for there to be another cause of the sweat. His head pounding, Isaac tried his best to recall the night before, which gradually came back to him. He remembered acting like a total douche, and vaguely remembered Gen yelling at him, although he couldn't really remember what she was yelling for. One thing that he was wiling to assume was fairly certain, however, was that whatever it was, had had probably deserved it.

Although his reasoning ability was hampered greatly by the effects of the hangover, Isaac realized that this fight was probably going to end the same way that every fight he ever had with Gen had ended. He would refuse to apologize, she would yell at him and call him thick-headed, and then refuse to speak to him until he had come around and seen her side of things. Then, he would eventually realize that he was being an ass, and would break down and apologies. It was a complex little dance that they had, but Isaac reckoned that this time he just didn't have the time for it, and he needed to talk to her today. To that end, he fumbled around his bedside table for his cell phone, finally finding it and thumbing through various menus until he came across her number.

He dialed the number, but there was no answer at first. He found this odd - she was usually a light sleeper, and from the few times that he had slept on her couch, it seemed like her brain was somehow attuned to the ringing of a phone. Perturbed by this, he tried calling again. This time, at least, she picked up, but only to hang the phone up again immediately afterwards. Obviously she was awake, and was screening her calls as well.

Not allowing himself to be daunted by this, Isaac got out of bed, pulling on some random items of clothing as he did. He then wandered down to the nearest shopping plaza, shoved two quarters into the slot, and dialed Gen's number again. She answered on the first ring - he knew that she would, because she used her cell phone for all of her business contacts, and wouldn't want to pass up on the chance that he was someone calling about an audition or something like that.

"Gen, it's me, don't hang up," Isaac spat out, the words coming from his mouth so fast that they all seemed to slur together in one mass of words.

"What do you want?" she said in response, her voice sounding icier than he had ever heard from her in the decade that he had known her.

"I wanted to apologize about last night," he said, "I was being an idiot."

"Yes, you were," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "You were pathetic,with you cool-guy clothes and the bimbo on your arm. You were the type of guy that you would have mercilessly made fun of, if you saw yourself on the street."

Isaac wanted to make a snotty reply to her, but had nothing to say in rebuttal, so he continued to accept her abuse. "Did you forget that guy we saw yesterday?" she said to him, "do you really want to end up like him?"

"I'm not going to ..." he started, but she interrupted.

"You're not going to end up like him? How do you know that? You've been given this great power, and all you choose to use it on is an attempt to get yourself laid?"

Isaac wanted to be able to respond to her, but could not find any words within him to justify how he had behaved. "I am really and truly sorry," he finally mumbled out.

"Sorry about what?" she demanded to know.

"I'm sorry that I hurt you, and that I behaved like such a jackass. These abilities that I have are clearly not something that I know how to use properly. So I've come to a decision, Gen. I'm just not going to use them anymore. Last night was the last time."

"It's going to be that easy?" she asked him, the disbelief obvious in her voice.

"I'm not saying it's going to be easy," he replied, trying to brush off her disbelief, "but I'm saying that I'll do it. I have to - I'll only end up hurting people if I don't."

Several days later, Isaac was wandering through the halls of the Eaton Center, wasting time between an early morning and late evening class, when he bumped randomly into Gen. "Hey, how's it going?" he said, initiating the 'I'm not mad are you still mad?' verbal dance that two friends always go through after an argument.

"I'm doing great," Gen responded, giving him a hug as she did. She did so hesitantly, however, which suggested to Isaac that she was at least playing the same game in her head that he was in his.

"So what have you been up to?" she asked.

"Oh, not much, just busy with school and stuff," Isaac responded.

"Cool. So, uh, I guess there's no real easy way to ask this, but have you been, uh..."

"Nope, not once since we last talked," Isaac said, correctly assuming that she was referring to his usage of his powers.

"That's impressive," she said. "No offense or anything, but I was sure that you were going to crack."

"Well," he said with a smile, "I was pretty sure that I was going to crack as well, to be honest with you. Do you want to get out of here?" he said after a moment, "I always find this mall kind of stuffy."

Gen agreed, and after picking up a pair of coffees, the two found themselves outdoors, enjoying the splendour of the downtown core.

"Good idea coming out here," Gen said as the two of them sat down in the public square across the street from the shopping mall, "I mean, who knows how much longer we'll have this nice weather for."

"Yeah, I guess," Isaac said, looking around as he did. "I don't know how anyone can live downtown like this, though," he admitted. "I mean, there's so much steel and glass that you can barely see the sky!"

"Oh, come on," Gen said, playfully pushing his shoulder as she did, "like the suburbs are any better!"

"Hey, I'm not saying they're the greatest place in the world," Isaac said, defending himself, "but yeah, I'd say it's better living out there than it is here. It's too cramped, too crowded. I'm not usually someone that's claustrophobic, but this place gets to me."

Gen said nothing, but rather gave him a look to suggest that she thought him to be full of crap. "God, there's too much advertising here, as well," Isaac said as he continued his diatribe. It was obvious to Gen that he had something bothering him on a deep-seeded level, so she decided to allow him to continue uninterrupted. "God, it seems sometimes that these buildings exist only to sell cell phones to people. It's disgusting, really."

Finally Gen began to get nervous, that with his ranting Isaac would start to lose some of the self-control that he had been displaying over the past several days. "Okay, Isaac, I get your point," she explained to him, putting a hand on his shoulder to stop him from pacing back and forth as he continued to rave.

"Oh, god, you're not worried that ..." he said, trailing off in mid-sentence as he did. "Gen, I told you, I'm fine. I've got the whole thing under control now," he explained, both to her and to the random crowd of individuals that had started to gather around the pair of them, drawn by both Isaac's volume of his voice, and the intensity with which he was speaking. "You don't have to worry about random ninjas showing up or anything like that, I promise you."

"Ninjas?" the elderly woman who stood next to Gen leaned over to ask her, "what the hell is he talking about?"

"He's talking about back-stabbers," the man standing on the other side of Gen said before Gen had the chance to explain that he was, in fact, talking about actual ninjas. "He's talking about those people that you think are going to be with you through thick and thin, but then next thing you know, you come home and find them in bed with your wife!"

"No way, man," came another voice from the back of the crowd, "he's not talking about that at all. He's talking about politicians, with their silver-tongued promises and their shifty eyes!"

It was clear that Isaac's words had somehow struck a chord with the audience, who started to cheer him on and commiserate amongst themselves about what exactly it was that this young, upstart prophet meant with these words of his. His sense of self-satisfaction started to rise as he saw them all staring at him, waiting on his next words. A deep, wide grin came across his face as he looked at them, looking at him, and he became so enraptured with their attention that he almost didn't hear the sound from behind him, as a deep, demonic sounding roar echoed through the city streets, reverberating amongst the skyscrapers and other buildings that formed the downtown core.

Synthesis Part 12

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:59:08 GMT

"Well, I should warn you ahead of time," Gen said with a smile, "keeping him in your bad books is not a good way to try to get into my good ones, if you know what I mean."

"So, turns out Gen's a little too busy to chat," Isaac explained to Trebuchet the triceratops as he hung the phone up. For all he knew, the pygmy dinosaur was more intelligent than your average miniaturized sauropod, which meant that conversing with him was perfectly reasonable. "God," he continued, "this is so typical of her! She was asking me to talk about my 'feelings' earlier, but then when I am actually ready to talk, she's completely unavailable. Well, you know what, little buddy?" he asked rhetorically, "Just because she's unavailable, doesn't mean that I am just going to sit around home by myself waiting for her to be ready to chat. I'm going out - I think it's time I gave these abilities of mine a little more of trial run, anyways."

Trebuchet gave Isaac a knowing sort of look, one that showed that the dinosaur not only understood what the young man was saying, but also that he understood the implications of the statement, and disapproved.

"Oh, what would you know, anyway?" Isaac asked scornfully. "I mean, let's be serious here, you are still a dinosaur, after all is said and done."

Trebuchet had no response to this, so Isaac started to ignore him and continued readying himself. "Hmmn, I think I'm really in the mood for something a little more flashier," he said to no one in particular (and definitely not to the triceratops in the room, for he was still mad at him for his disapproving gaze). With a snap of his fingers, more for the flair of it than anything else, Isaac found himself garbed in a beautifully-cut suit. The slacks were cut from a smooth black fabric, almost with the composition of silk, and shimmered slightly in the light of the fluorescent bulb that was suspended from the roof of the bedroom. The jacket that materialized for him appeared to be made of the finest leather, and fit perfectly as he put it on over the plain white shirt that he wore.

"Yeah, I'd say that just about does it," Isaac said, continuing to talk to himself, and started to walk out the front door of his house. As he did, a yellow Viper appeared in the driveway of the house, the keys waiting for him in the ignition.

With his sports car and stylish leather jacket, Isaac was let in immediately when he pulled up to the nightclub of his choice. While there he was the life of the party, being able to talk freely to all the women he wanted, and being able to supply them with a seemingly-endless supply of the drink of their choice, even though the bartenders of the club never had the pleasure of meeting him.

Eventually, though, he approached the wrong woman, a statuesque blonde who had a pair of black stilettos, a silver dress that glistened in the dim light of the club, and boyfriend who was built like a linebacker.

"What do you think you're doing?" the boyfriend asked when he came out of the washroom and found Isaac chatting with his girlfriend.

"Hey, don't worry man, this is nothing," Isaac slurred, obviously drunk.

"Doesn't look like nothing to me," the guy countered, reaching over and grabbing the edge of Isaac's coat as he did.

"Watch the coat, it's new," Isaac said, putting his hand on the other man's wrist, and staring into his eyes in an optic battle of social dominance.

The linebacker was not as intimidated by this as Isaac would have hoped, and proceeded to punch Isaac in the face, knocking him to the ground.

Isaac got back up as quickly as he could, now magically armed with a cricket bat as he did. He swung the bat once, an upward motion that connected with the other man's jaw and knocked him to the ground.

"That was amazing!" the drunken girl next to Isaac exclaimed, taking a sudden interest in him. "Where did you get that bat from?"

Isaac's first instinct was to act nonchalant, but he knew that the bar security would be on him in a moment. "You know, that's actually a really funny story," he explained, dropping the bat as he did, "but I don't know if this is really the best place to tell it. You feel like getting out of here, babe?"

As they exited the club, Isaac instinctively turned in the direction of the sports car, pulling keys out of his pocket as he did. "Oh no," the girl said, pulling them out of his hand, "you're not in any condition for driving. There's this great coffee shop I know just around the corner from here, though. Why don't we go and get a cup, and then afterwards we'll see how you're doing, okay?" She took the keys and stuck them down the front of her dress as she did this, counting on social mores to keep him from reaching for them.

"Okay, fine," he said, "we'll go get some coffee."

Trevor and Gen were on their way out of the coffeehouse when Isaac and his nameless date started to stumble their way through the door of the establishment. "Well hey, look who it is!" Trevor said with mock enthusiasm.

"You!" Isaac responded, his drunken state making it impossible for him to hide his dislike for the officer. After a moment, his drunken brain started to form connections, and he stared at Genevieve. "And you!" he said, "I thought that you were supposed to be out with your friend that you met at an audition! What the hell is he doing here?"

"How about you try not raising your voice at the lady?" Trevor said, reaching forward to put himself between the two friends, years of conflict resolution training overtaking his instincts. As he moved forward, however, he came to realize that a pair of iron shackles were somehow attached to his legs. He fell forward, landing face-first on the pavement in front of him. As Isaac immediately doubled over in laughter, Trevor knew that somehow he was responsible.

"You think that's funny?" Gen angrily asked, pushing Isaac down to the ground as she did. "You're unbelievable! How do you know he's not really hurt?"

"Oh, come on, Gen," Isaac said, forcing himself to quiet his laughter, "he'll be fine. I'm just having a good time, y'know? I figure I should make the most of this mojo while I can."

"And you're not worried about ending up like Doug?" she asked him accusingly.

"Oh, I'll be fine," Isaac explained, "there's no way I'm going to end up like that loser. I'm too smart for that."

"Yeah, well you're sure not showing it," Gen admonished him, her eyes filled with disdain as she did. "I think it's time you went home, Isaac. Crawl into bed, deal with your hangover in the morning, and give me a call when you're willing to deal with your situation like an adult, okay?"

Later, as he found himself drifting off into an alcohol-induced sleep, Isaac once again found himself in the midst of a dream. This one, however, seemed to be much less intriguing than the last one had been. For a start, there were no naked women present at all in this one; Isaac found himself laying flat on his back, staring up at a stuccoed roof that was illuminated with a naked fluorescent tube, that flickered intermittently. Isaac couldn't immediately recognize the sensation of what he was laying in; it was too comfortable to be a floor, but at the same time not comfortable to be a bed. Sitting up, Isaac immediately learned two things, both of which horrified him. The first was that he was sitting in a dentist's chair, although he was clearly not in a dentist's office. The walls of the room were naked and plain, with only one old, metal door breaking up its monotony. The floor was less monotonous, but only because its drab grey finish was spotted with dirt and other detritus that Isaac was unable to identify. By itself this would have been concerning enough, but this was compounded by the fact that Isaac found himself strapped to his chair. As he pulled on the straps, the door opened, and a man dressed in a pair of olive-green scrubs, wearing a surgical mask over the bottom half of his face, walked into the room.

"Okay, man, what the hell is going on?" Isaac spat out at the man, who silently walked up to the dental chair that Isaac found himself strapped to. The dentist made no response, other than to reach under the chair and pull out a small table with a variety of tools of oral surgery on them. With a glint of sadism in his eyes, the dentist surveyed his instruments, pulling out a pair of rusty, antique-looking pliers from his table and turning towards Isaac. It was at this moment that Isaac realized that the man was wearing a name tag on his scrubs - he made an effort to read it, but found the letters in the name to be nothing but a disorganized jumble. As the dentist reached into Isaac's mouth with the pliers, the reluctant patient made an attempt to scream, but was unable to do so with the pliers pressing down on his tongue. The tools left his mouth with two teeth in them, however, and as they were extracted, Isaac found himself able to scream, and did so to the fullest of his ability. The dentist's only response was to pull down the surgical mask and put a single gloved finger to his thin lips. As Isaac found himself wanting to pass into unconsciousness from the pain, he realized the worst thing of all - the face that he stared into, glove still at its lips, was his own.

Synthesis Part 11

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 04:09:39 GMT

"What's that supposed to mean?" Isaac asked, circling around the man as he spat the question out.

"Well, especially at the start, manifesting can take a lot of energy out of you. If you're not careful, you're going to tire yourself out," Doug explained, bowing his head down and staring at the alley ground as he did. "But I'm sure you know all about that already, don't you?" he asked, not adjusting his head at all, but moving his eyes up so that he met Isaac's gaze, as the young man completed his circle, standing once again in front Doug.

"Maybe I do," Isaac said, doing his best to not portray any emotion in his voice as he did. "And maybe I'm just so good at what I do that that's not something I have to worry about."

Doug laughed. "Okay, listen, why don't you do us both a favour, and drop the tough-guy routine, okay? I've seen enough crime and police shows on television that this is old hat to me. You're not fooling anybody, kid."

"Okay, fine," Isaac said with a sigh that was equal parts frustration and relief that he didn't have to put on the same act any longer. "But I have some questions, and I know that you have the answers, so we're not leaving until after you've answered them, okay?"

"Okay, fine," Doug said half-heartedly, "I don't really have anything planned for today anyways, so I guess I'll humour you. What do you want to know?"

"Okay, for a start," Isaac said, "what did you do to me?"

"I gave you my curse," Doug said, "which I realize was a bit of a mean thing to do, but I was frustrated and angry, and you were there, so I lashed out at you. Basically, what you can do know is have your mind re-arrange basic elements. It's not something that you can really consciously control, but if you want something badly enough, your mind can take the molecules of air and change them so that they can become anything else."

"Can it do this even when I'm not aware of what I'm doing?" Isaac asked. As the other man nodded out a yes, Isaac realized that he had, in fact, been responsible for everything that had been happening to him of late. He gasped a horrified gasp when he realized that this included even his boss, Mr. Williams, who had been attacked shortly after he had gotten his ability. He realized, then, why Doug would have referred to it as a curse.

"You called it a curse," Isaac said, pressing for further information, "why would you call it that? I've been having nothing but fun with it so far," he lied.

"Oh sure, it's fun for a while," Doug admitted, "but give it enough time and you'll see what I'm talking about. The power inevitably goes to your head, kid. You might start out with the best of intentions, but next thing you know, you're crossing lines that shouldn't be crossed, and making careless mistakes that you have no excuse for making."

"Is that what happened to you?" Gen asked from behind Isaac.

Doug chuckled as he began to recount his story. "My vice was always greed," he explained to the two of them. "Ever since I was a child. So, as you may be able to guess, when I first got this ability, I kind of went to town with it, you know? I made myself all the fanciest sports cars, and all of the finest things for myself and my girlfriend at the time. And, as I'm sure you've experienced, I quickly learned that these things don't last, especially not when we make them. I wanted a way around that, though - I'd developed a notion that these things were owed to me, somehow, and I was determined to do whatever it took for me to get them. After thinking about it for awhile, I realized that this ability would be perfect for a life of crime, so I turned to counterfeiting."

"Really?" Isaac asked smugly. "That's funny, because the idea of a criminal lifestyle never even occurred to me."

"Well," Doug said with disdain, "I guess that you're just a better person than me, aren't you? Anyways, can I continue with my story here?"

As Isaac nodded, Doug continued with his story. "So, as I was saying, I'd decided to turn to a life of crime, and thought that I'd had the perfect plan all worked out. I manifested a big stack of bills, and went around town, buying up everything that I could. The things we manifest always end up being perfect copies, so there was no way for anyone to tell that they weren't the real thing, and by the time that the bills uncreated themselves, I was always long gone. The storekeepers, completely baffled, would end up calling the police, who started noticing that I was a common theme on the security camera whenever this money was reported missing."

"Yeah, but the money would uncreate itself, right?" Isaac asked, getting obviously drawn into the story, "they wouldn't have any evidence to put you away on."

"That's a very good point, kid," Doug said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette and a book of matches. He struck the match, letting the pop and fizz of the phosphor fill the empty air of the alleyway, and then lit the cigarette, taking a long, smooth drag from it before he continued. "As you so knowingly brought up, they didn't have anything to convict me with. They did, however, have enough suspicion to arrest me on, and to search my house with."

"What did they find?" Gen asked, obviously as captivated as Isaac was in the story.

"Nothing, but that's not the point. You have to understand what my position was at the time. I was a young, hotshot attorney at a law firm. My wife was a city councilor. They might not have had anything to convict me on, but the image of me being taken away in handcuffs was enough to ruin my career ambitions, and having police rifling through your belongings was enough to seriously impact her chances of re-election. She left me not long after that - I confessed to her what I had been doing, and left me. Said she couldn't stand to live with a man who was willing to play so freely with our future."

"Wait, I don't get it," Gen admitted. "You were an attorney, and yet you still felt the need to defraud these people? Weren't you rich enough as it was?"

"Well, first of all," Doug said, looking snottily at Gen, "when you're first starting out as an attorney, you don't make nearly as much money as people seem to think that you do. Even then, though, the money was almost beside the point. I thought that I'd figured out the perfect crime - I would be able to get off scot free. Knowing you can do that is as addictive as any drug can be."

"So why were you running away from us when we saw you in the store?" Gen suddenly asked.

"Well," Doug replied, taking another drag of his cigarette as he did, "I had the feeling that your friend here was going to be pretty upset with my for forcing my ability - my curse - onto him. Looks like he's still at the point, though, where he considers this a blessing, so I guess I had nothing to worry about," Doug said with a knowing smile.

"Yeah," Isaac said, "as a matter of fact, I do consider it a blessing. Can you do me a favour?" he asked. "I still have a lot more questions for you, but I need some time to process everything that you've been telling me. Is there any way that you could meet me again tomorrow, to give me some time to think about all this? We could go out for coffee or something like that."

"Okay, fine, but forget about coffee - you want more out of me, it's at least going to cost you lunch. I'll meet you back here at one o'clock, okay?"

"Wow, that was pretty intense," Gen said as the two of them started to walk back towards the nearest subway station, "do you need to talk about it?"

"Yeah," Isaac said, "I mean, yeah, it was pretty intense. I don't need to talk about it, though. I just need some time to think about it. I'm working tonight, though, so I don't know how much alone and introspective time I'm going to be able to get."

"I know you're probably thinking that I won't understand, and that this is something that you're just going through by yourself, but I can still help, I think! Remember that time that I did that summer internship back in high school?"

"On the movie set? God, you were miserable there."

"Oh, I remember. Working as a PA for an aging actress can be a scary, eye-opening experience. So I don't know what it's like to make stuff materialize, but I do know what it's like to look at someone who used to be in the same position you're in, and not liking what you see."

"This is your stop, isn't it?" Isaac said, hoping that she would get the hint and allow him to change subjects subtly.

"Yeah, this is me. Give me a call when you're home from work, okay, and we'll talk some more," Gen said as Isaac reached over and kissed her on the forehead to say goodbye.

As Gen started her descent down into the subway, she frowned as she looked back and saw Isaac getting into a red sports car, one that she knew had not been there before.

Half an hour later, as Gen was climbing out of the subway stop near her apartment building, her phone beeped at her, letting her know that someone had left her a voice mail while she had been underground.

"Hi, Gen, it's Trevor Starkey," the voice on the other end explained, "I know that the last time we saw each other was kind of weird, but, well, I've been thinking a lot about you lately. Are you free for dinner tonight? I'd love for us to be able to see each other if you are. Give me a call when you get this, okay?"

Gen stopped in the street as the message ended, unsure of what to do in response. She knew that Isaac would probably freak out if he knew that Trevor was calling her, but, she figured, if he was still investigating her friend, it would probably be best to stay on his good side.

The phone rang twice before he answered it. "Detective Starkey," his voice came over the line, sounding firm and self-assured.

"Hi, Trevor? This is Genevieve. You just called me?"

"Oh, yeah, Gen, hey! Good to hear from you," he said, suddenly stumbling more on his words and losing the sense of self-confidence.

"So what's up?" she asked.

"Well, I know this is kind of last minute, but I was wondering if you would maybe be free to go out to a movie or something tonight?"

Gen, who had started walking down the street again, was forced to stop dead in her tracks for the second time in the past five minutes. "Uh, sure," she said.

"Sounds great. I'll pick you up after I'm done my shift, okay? Say maybe around 6:30?"

"Sure thing," she said. "My address is ..." she started to tell him.

"Oh, don't worry, I already have it," he replied. She could tell from his tone of voice that he was smirking as he said it.

"Oh really?" she asked, "and how did you manage to get your hands on that? Secret police databases?"

"No," he said, laughing as he did, "I just looked you up in the yellow pages. Anyways, I'll see you at 6:30, okay?"

The movie was pleasant, but entirely forgettable, and afterwards the two found themselves chatting over a pair of lattes at a local coffeehouse. "So, I have to ask," Gen ventured, "isn't this kind of conflict of interest? I mean, you are investigating my best friend, aren't you?"

"Our investigation is ongoing," Trevor explained, pausing to sip from his coffee before continuing, "but, to be perfectly honest with you, we don't have any direct physical evidence connecting your friend Isaac to the crime scene. So, unless you have some reason for me to think otherwise, he can't officially be considered a suspect, and there's no conflict of interest present." Trevor made the slightest of pauses between each of his words, as if to suggest he really wanted Gen to prove him wrong as he said them.

"Well, that's good," Gen replied, either not picking up on his subtext, or just choosing not to read into it. "Because, to be honest with you, I would hate for us to have to cut this short."

Trevor opened his mouth to respond, but before he had the opportunity to, Gen's cell phone started to ring. "Hold that thought for a moment," she said to him, standing up and pulling her phone out of the pocket of the jeans she was wearing. "Oh, hey," she said, walking away from the table as she did, "how's it going?" After a moment's pause, she continued with a "oh, nothing much, just out for coffee with a friend. No, uh, it's not anyone you know. Just a girl I met at that last audition I went to. We really hit it off at the audition, and neither of us had anything planned for tonight, so we got together. Listen, I have to go, okay? Yeah, I know I said we'd talk tonight, but I'll give you a call tomorrow, though, okay?" As she ended the call, Gen also smoothly switched the phone off before returning it to her pocket.

"Was that...?" Trevor started to ask before Gen cut him off.

"Yeah, that was Isaac," she explained. "I figured this wouldn't be the best time or place to tell him that I was out with you for the evening. To be honest with you, he doesn't have a very high opinion of you."

"Yeah, well, I don't really have a high opinion of him, either," Trevor explained as he took another sip of his drink. "Off the record, of course. Officially my position on him is completely neutral." He smiled as he admitted his dislike of the other man.

Synthesis Part 10

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 22:16:14 GMT

"I don't think that's going to happen," Isaac said, his voice lacking the confidence that he sought to exude.

"Well, why not?" Gen said, clearly not believing what he was saying.

"Well," Isaac said, kneeling down to pet the miniature triceratops as he did, "I don't know how, but I think that for some reason it just works differently when there are living things involved. This little guy, for example, was made last night, and he's still around. It doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense, but what in life does?" Isaac asked with a chuckle.

His response forced Gen to crack a smile, her concern for the small, defenseless animal being lightened somewhat by what Isaac had said.

"So, have you decided what you're going to do with this ability of yours?" Gen suddenly asked him.

"I've been thinking about that," Isaac said after a moment. "I was thinking this morning that maybe I could, like, hire myself out for parties and that sort of stuff. As a magician, so the kids would just see all this cool stuff but never really know how I was making stuff appear out of thin air."

"That's it?" Gen said disdainfully, instinctively pushing herself back from Isaac as she did. "You have this amazing ability, and that's all you can think of doing with it? Hiring yourself out like some jackass to overprivileged rich families? Why not try to do something a little more beneficial to society with it? You could make food, or medical supplies, and send them to Africa, or Southeast Asia, or something like that!"

"Actually, Gen, I couldn't," Isaac said, although he secretly did feel guilty that his first thoughts had been selfish ones. "Like I said, the things that I make only last for a few hours after I create them. What good is that going to do anyone in the developing world? By the time that anything I made got there, it would be unmade. I've found that food doesn't work, either. It's tasty enough when you first eat it, but then, just like anything else, it fades away after a few hours, which means your stomach ends up being just as empty as it was before, and you're even hungrier than you'd been before that."

"Still, there's got to be something," Gen said ponderously. "Maybe there's some way to do something and get around this three hour limitation. We've got to be able to find out more about your powers. Where do you think you got them from?"

"I don't know," Isaac admitted. "I mean, I know that in comic books, people usually get their powers from scientific accidents, or alien encounters, or they're born with them, but then they've usually manifested themselves by adolescence. Actually, though," he said, the light of awareness going off inside his head, "there was that weird encounter I had with that homeless guy last week. Maybe that's what caused this!"

"Homeless guy? What are you talking about?" Gen asked cluelessly.

"Didn't I tell you about that? It was on the night that we went out to Holy Joe's. Remember how I went out to talk to my mom? Well, while I was out there, I had this weird encounter with this homeless guy. Long story short, he touched him, and when he did, I got this weird shock from him."

"That sounds like it's as good a culprit as any," Gen said. "So, do you think we'll be able to track this guy down?"

After an hour of searching through the streets and alleyways of Queen West, Isaac and Gen were both ready to give up and go home.

"This is ridiculous," Isaac said as they walked into a convenience store, "there's no way we're going to be able to find this guy. We don't even have a picture of him!"

"I can't believe you can't conjure up a picture of him," Gen said dejectedly.

"I can't really remember what he looks like! I mean, he's a homeless person - how much attention does anyone ever really pay to them?"

"You are so suburban," Gen said dismissively. "They've people too, you know. They have their own lives, and their own wants and needs."

As Gen continued to lecture him, Isaac felt himself start to drift off. As he tried ot wrestle with his disinterest, knowing what could happen if he was psychically inattentive, he saw the homeless man that he had saved the week before, leaning against the counter of the store and talking loudly to one of the customers.

"Hey, you're buying some chips?" the homeless man asked the customer.

"Hey come on, Doug, if you're going to stay here, you can't be bothering my customers," the clerk behind the counter said to the homeless man.

"Don't worry about it, he's not bothering me," the customer said, turning to Doug. "Yeah, I'm buying some chips. What of it?"

"Well, this is just me, but I think you should buy some of those tortilla chips over there," Doug said to the customer.

"Is this some sort of weird promotional thing?" the customer asked.

"It's funny you should mention promotional things," Doug said, "because they were having a promotion, where you could send in a picture of yourself, and they would pick people at random to have their picture featured on the bags. Well, sure enough, I sent my picture in, and I won! My picture it totally on that bag of chips there!"

"Really? Well, that's quite the interesting story," the customer said, picking up his bag of items as he did. As he spoke, he used that type of dry, condescending voice that people always used when talking to someone whom they thought was, because of their position in life, inherently incredulous.

"You don't believe me!" Doug said, a tone of indignation creeping into his voice. "I'm telling you, I'm on there! Listen, we'll make a bet of it. Let me go get one of those bags from there, and if my picture's on the front, then you have to buy it for me. If I'm not there, though, then I owe you five dollars." As Doug spoke, he was getting obviously more and more excited, to the point where he was starting to drop off sounds from the ends of his words, and it sounded like he said "fi' dolla".

"Listen, really, I don't want your money," the customer tried to explain, but Doug didn't hear him, because he was already starting to walk over to the rack that the tortilla chips were located on. He violently grabbed one of the bags, and walked back to the counter, staring intently at it as he did.

"Well, crap," he said, throwing the bag of tortilla chips down on the countertop, "looks like you were right all along. Guess I owe you five dollars."

"Really, don't worry about it," the customer explained, "I do have to get going, though. Have a nice day." With that, he rushed out of the store, purchases in hand.

"Maybe we should see if my picture's on the front," Isaac said from behind Doug. As the man slowly turned around to see who was speaking to him, his eyes went wide and he realized instantly who it was that was speaking to him. Without a moment's hesitation, he turned and ran, leaving the store as quickly as he could. Instinctively, Isaac ran after him, Gen trailing behind so as not to be left alone.

Bursting out into the street, Isaac saw just the tail end of Doug's coat as he ducked into the alleyway that was next to the convenience store.

"Wait, stop!" Isaac said as he continued to run, going into the alleyway after the other man. Whether Doug heard him and paid no attention to him, or just didn't hear him, was immaterial, as the man did not slow at all as he continued to run in the alleyway.

As he ran, Isaac began to focus on the space in front of Doug, trying as hard as he could to manifest something that would block him. The first two attempts failed; the first was too late, and didn't materialize until after Doug had ran past it, and the second was too soon, giving him ample time to sidestep it effortlessly.

Isaac's third attempt, however, was successful. The ottoman that he materialized in front of Doug was a thing of beauty, with a velvet top and magnificent oaken legs that looked as though they had been hand-craved, even though obviously it was not. It was functional as well; it appeared at just the right time for Doug to trip over it, falling forward and colliding with one of the large dumpsters that lined the sides of the alleyway.

He didn't appear to be hurt by this at all, but he was slowed down enough that Isaac would catch up with him, huffing and puffing as he did.

"Get away from me," Doug said, trying to push past Isaac as he did, "I don't have to explain anything to you."

"Oh, I think you do," Isaac said, manifesting a set of ropes around Doug's feet as he did. His feet constricted, the man started to fall over again. Isaac grabbed a hold of him, keeping him upright, and manifested a simple wooden chair behind him, pushing Doug into it.

"You really should be careful, you know," Doug explained as he adjusted himself, trying to make himself comfortable. "You really shouldn't go throwing your energy around like that."

Synthesis Part 9

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 23:24:26 GMT

"Hey, are you here?" Gen asked as she let herself in the front door of Isaac's house. "I just got your message, and you sounded pretty excited. What's going on?"
"I'm out back," Isaac's voice came from the rear of the house. Gen quickly walked through the house, moving as quickly as she could in order to avoid a chance encounter with Isaac's mother.
"So," she said as she entered Isaac's postage-stamp-sized backyard, "what is so important that I had to come out to the suburbs for the second time this week?"

"You need to check this out," Isaac said. His voice trembled slightly as he spoke, and he had the appearance of someone who hadn't slept in several days - dark circles rung around his eyes, and his hair was disheveled and matted.
"Are you okay, Isaac?" Gen asked as she got a better look at him.
"Trust me, I have *never* been better," Isaac replied with conviction, although Gen still wasn't sure that she believed him.
"Anyways," he continued manically, "like I said, this is something that you have to see," he explained. He pointed at a dropcloth that looked like it had been hastily thrown over something. A giant grin was plastered across Isaac's face as he pulled the cloth back, revealing a large, cumbersome drumkit. It was all black, and the sunlight glinted off its metal framework and symbols, temporarily blinding Gen.
"You bought a drumkit?" she said incredulously, "Since when do you play the drums?"
"I don't. Never have. But it's something I've never had the time or disposable income to get into. Now I can, though!"
As Gen opened her mouth to ask for further clarification, Isaac interrupted her. "But wait, that's just the start. Check out this," he said, pointing towards the table in the backyard. Sitting on it were at least a dozen identical copies of an old-looking comic book. "This," Isaac explained, pointing back towards the drum kit, "is the exact same drum kit that Neil Peart used during the Farewell to Kings tour. And that is a coppy of the first superhero comic ever published. Each copy is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is just so amazing!?"
"Okay, Isaac, I need you to calm down a little, because you're not really making any sense right now. What happened, did someone give you a credit card and let you go on an Ebay shopping spree or something?"
"No, that's not it at all," Isaac said, pausing for a moment in ordeer to compose himself somewhat. "I made this stuff, Gen! I don't really know what or how, but somehow I can make things. With my mind."
Gen shot him a sideways glance, as if she was trying to decide whether or not she should humour him. "You can make stuff with your mind? What are you talking about?"
Isaac searched for the words to explain himself better, but was at a loss. "Here, let me show you," he said, walking over to the edge of the table. Staring at its surface, and focusing intently, he caused a teddy bear to pop into existence, an exact, perfect replica of the ones that he had practiced making only a few days earlier.
"That is so awesome!" Gen exclaimed, pausing briefly between each word in order to emphasize her feeling. "How did you do that?"
"I really don't know," Isaac explained, "I just know that I can do it. Anything I want, I can make. The only problem is that after three hours or so, whatever I've made disappears back into the nothingness from whence it came.
"So what else have you made, then?" Gen asked, obviously intrigued by what she was hearing.
"A bunch of things," Isaac said, the joy of a young child obvious in his voice. "Most of them have faded away by now. Except for this," he said, motioning to one of the bushes behind him. As he did so, as if on cue, a small, pudgy dinosaur crawled out from behind the bush. It was a triceratops, with rough-looking aquamarine skin and with yellowed horns and beak protruding out from it's otherwise flat, squished-looking face. He was no more than two feet long, and stood around a foot off the ground, which was small for a triceratops, but the moment so amazed Gen that she didn't think to say anything about that. "He's so cute!" she exclaimed, sticking her hand out to try to pet him. He nuzzled up against her hand with his head, and she found the rough-looking skin to be surprisingly soft and gentle to the touch.
"So, does he have a name?" Gen asked as she felt the animal's sandpaper-like tongue start to lick the back of her hand.
"Yes!" Isaac said excitedly, "Genevieve, I would like you to meet Trebuchet."
Gen started to laugh as she heard the name. "Trebuchet?" she said. "You named him Trebuchet? Do you even know what a trebuchet is?"
"Uhm, er, not really," Isaac admitted sheepishly. "It's just one of those words that I remember hearing from history class, and it sounded kind of cool, so I thought it might be an appropriate name."
"Well, for the record," Gen said with a smirk, "a trebuchet was a type of weapon they used for large-scaled warfare during the middle ages. And as adorable as this little guy is," she said, rubbing Trebuchet on the back as she did, "I think it's fair to say that he's not going to be knocking down any castle walls anytime soon."
"Yeah, I guess not," Isaac admitted.
Suddenly, all of the colour drained away from Gen's face. "Wait a second," she said, "you said that the things that you make kind of fade away after awhile, didn't you? Does that mean that this little guy is going to..." she trailed off, unable to face the idea of Trebuchet fading off into nothingness.

Synthesis Part 7

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:41:30 GMT

What unhinged Isaac the most was not what he was doing, but instead how perfectly normal it all seemed to him as he was doing it. He resolved to try it one more time, just to make sure that he'd be able to quiet the skeptical side of himself.

Isaac set the teddy bear back on the table in the backyard, and focused on it intently. As he did, he focused mentally on the bear, and how he really needed not only one of them, but two of them in front of him. After several moments of this focusing, the air beside the bear started to shimmer, the molecules of air re-organizing themselves to take on the form of the same bear. As Isaac stared intently at the shimmer, it started to solidify itself, taking on more fully the appearance of the bear that it sat beside.

Isaac picked the bear up - he didn't consider himself an overly superstitious person, yet he felt that holding it would make it more 'real' that merely seeing it in front of him. Touching it, feeling its tactile 'realness' as he squished the furry cover of it between his fingers, was the final proof that Isaac needed of his new ability. He didn't know how it happened; he had never been a scientifically minded person, so he had no way of explaining the phenomenon that he had witnessed and taken part in. Despite that, the simple truth remained: he could make stuff with his mind. Tossing the stuffed bear into the pile with the other seven copies that he had already tried and successfully formed, Isaac reflected on how this explained everything that had been happening to him of late. He had been bored, and listless - his subconscious must have decided that the best way to deal with that was to access this ability of his, and give him some pirates, monkeys, and ninjas in order to spice things up a little bit. This was clearly a great, impressive ability, but at the same time, he was kind of embarrassed by the fact that his subconscious couldn't come up with anything more original than that!

Deciding to exploit his ability in a more direct way, Isaac walked from the back yard to the front of his house, attempting to draw up as much imagery as he could muster as he did so.

Arriving at the front of the house, Isaac put all of his mental energy into picturing the car of his dreams, a Porsche 911 roadster, cherry red and with its top down so he could take fully advantage of the convertible nature of the car.

As he pictured the car, and thought consciously about how much he wanted it, Isaac saw it start to manifest itself in front of him, drawing itself in from the air at a steady, consistent pace. As he formed the car, Isaac felt a sharp pain enter his forehead, assaulting him with a strong blast of pain that almost made him lose focus on what he was building in front of him. As he focused more on the pain, the car began to fade away again. Panicking, Isaac brought his focus back towards what he was doing. AS he did so, the car began to solidify again. Screwing his face up, as if it caused him physical pain to do so, Isaac continued to bring his mental focus into the car. Finally, it popped fully into view, as if it had always been there.

A sense of fatigue and weariness washed over Isaac as he stared at the car that sat in his driveway. Part of him wanted very much to go, right now, and drive it, but the larger part of him felt the fatigue work its way through his body, and demanded sleep. There would always be time, he told himself, to take the car out for a quick spin, but first his body needed rest. He slowly trekked his way up to his bedroom, pausing at every opportunity to look out a window at the car as it sat in the driveway.

As he slept, Isaac was again given the opportunity to relax into a dream. The dream was unusual for several reasons, the first of which was the fact that everything around him seemed to consist of rich, brighter than life watercolours. He was standing on a lush, rolling green hill, one of several verdant outcroppings into the sea. Ahead of him were several robed figures, floating in the air, with large billowy wings helping to keep them aloft as they surrounded a large clamshell that was open with its back facing to Isaac. "My god," he thought to himself, "I'm inside a Botticelli painting!"

Isaac ran towards the clamshell, wanting desperately to get a glimpse of the legendary Aphrodite figure that was the centerpiece of this painting. When he reached the front of it, however, he was horrified to see Gen standing in the clamshell, naked.

"Hey there, Isaac," Aphrodite-Gen said nonchalantly, as if she wasn't standing naked in an oversized clamshell, "took you a while to get here, didn't it?"

"Gen?" Isaac gasped. "What are you doing here? This doesn't make any sense!"

"Of course it doesn't, silly, this is just a dream," Aphrodite-Gen admonished him. As she did, she immediately covered her mouth with her free hand.. "I'm so sorry, you hadn't realized that yet, had you?"

Isaac stared at her blankly. "A dream?" he asked her. "Then what does this mean?"

Leaning towards him, but making sure to keep her arm and long, flowing hair positioned in a way to hide her nakedness, Gen whispered into his ear, "You're a big boy, I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out."

By the time that he woke up, the car was gone. Not believing his eyes as he stared out of his bedroom window, Isaac ran downstairs at full speed, bursting out of the front hallway and into his front lawn. The car, stubbornly, insisted on being not there in spite of this.

Isaac sat down on the front stoop, dejected and angry at the same time. He had had his dream car for all of what, three hours, before it was stolen away from him? His first instinct was to go to the police and report the theft of it, but as he thought about it, he couldn't escape the feeling that this would be an absolutely horrible idea. He had no papers to prove that he owned a Porsche, and there was no one who could vouch for him ever having owned one.

Frustrated, Isaac started to wander his way back into the back yard. The thought of someone driving away in *his* Porsche, enjoying the experiences that should have been his, gnawed at him.

Isaac sat down on the backyard picnic table, picking up the lone teddy bear that lay on it as he did. As he held the bear in his hands, he came to a revelation - it was a lone bear. Quickly jerking his head to the left, and then again to the right, Isaac searched for the other eight bears that he had fashioned into existence, but they were all gone. This both puzzled and disturbed him. It was one thing for someone to steal a Porsche - it had obvious value and use. But teddy bears? What kind of sick mind would break into his backyard just to steal a bunch of teddy bears?

It then dawned on Isaac that maybe there was a simpler explanation involved in all of this. From what he had seen when he originally made the bears and the cars, variouis atoms and molecules had brought themselves together in order to make whatever it was that he wanted made. What if, without his continued attention being paid to them, they just disappeared?

Returning to the front of his house, Isaac again focused on creating a new car from the ether. It seemed to be more easily accomplished this time; after a few minutes of dedicated attention, the car was sitting there in the driveway, ready to be driven.

Isaac spent the next three hours just driving around the city, exploring the various streets and neighbourhoods as best he could. Although part of him hated to admit it, as well, he enjoyed the assorted looks that he would get from pedestrians and other drivers as he rolled up to an intersection in the Porsche. Some looked at him admiringly, some looked with desire, some with jealous - what mattered most, though, was that they all looked, unable to ignore his arrival to an intersection.

This all changed, however, as Isaac arrived at the corner of Bloor and Bathurst. The light was red, so he brought the car to a stop and waited patiently for it to change. As he waited, he looked over to the car next to him; a small hatchback with a couple of girls his age seated in in the front. He smiled at them, and they smiled back; people always smiled back when you were in a car this luxurious. Isaac was about to yell something out as an introduction when, suddenly, the car began to shimmer and fade.

Isaac concentrated as hard as he could on the car, trying to get it to maintain its constitency, but it was of no use. As the car continued to fade and started to fall apart, Isaac jumped out of it, walking towards the sidewalk as it started to disappear. "What can I say, it's hard to find good craftsmanship these days," he called out to the girls, both of whom had already started to ignore him.

Crossing the street to get to the subway station, so he would have a ride home, Isaac searched his pockets for his transit pass, which he appeared to have left at home. Feeling uneasy about making his own tokens for the subway, Isaac rifled through his pockets for change, being able to find just enough for his trip home.

Synthesis Part 7

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 22:47:32 GMT

Isaac's sleep was again restless that night; while he had no memorable dreams at all, and he found himself tossing and turning throughout the night, unable to sleep consistently at all. The combination of events over the past forty-eight hours, and the complex emotions that were associated with them, were almost too much for him. By the time his alarm clock started to play the trite rambles of its 'wacky' morning DJs in the morning, Isaac's bedsheets were a complex, twisting morass, and he found himself completely lost within them.

Pulling himself out of bed, Isaac surveyed the room, sure that something was different somehow, although he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. Finally, sitting next to a scattered pile of laundry that needed to be washed, was a small, velvety-looking bag that he had never seen before.

Isaac was puzzled by the bag. At first glance, it had appeared to be the type of bag that the larger bottles of Crown Royale usually came packaged in, which would have been unusual enough by itself; Isaac hadn't hard liquor since he was in high school.

Upon closer examination, however, he realized that it wasn't that at all - the purple of the material was a little too deep, and the drawstring was a different colour than the liquor bottle would have had.

Isaac snapped the bottle up, perturbed by it. He didn't know what it was, or where it had come from, but he knew that there was definitely something unusual about it. His suspicions were confirmed as he opened the bag up, and was overcome with the glinting and glaring of the contents contained within.

The bag was filled with diamonds! Or, at the very least, stones that seemed to resemble diamonds, he told himself. Because they couldn't be diamonds. How could a bag full of diamonds have made its way into his bedroom, especially right after he had been arguing with his mother about money the night before?

Isaac sat himself back down on his bed, dropping the bag of diamonds into his lap as he did. He wracked his brain, trying to think of any possible explanation of where these diamonds had come from, and how they had found their way into his bedroom.

As he did this, Isaac thought he saw a shape move out of the corner of his right eye. He snapped his head to the right, but that side of the room stood empty, aside from several MC Escher reproductions that clung desperately to his wall with the flimsiest of masking tape.

Nonplussed, Isaac turned his attention back to the diamonds. As he did so, the radio station playing on his alarm clock switched from music to news, and Isaac found himself listening intently to the top news story.

"I have to admit, this sounds like a fairly bizarre story, but the Toronto Diamond Exchange was robbed last night. According to our sources, all of the surveillance equipment and security alarms in the exchange were put out of commission before the robbery occurred; eyewitnesses at the scene reported seeing what they described as a 'moving shadow' exiting the building around the reported time of the heist."

Isaac sat there, amazed at the outlandishness of the story he was hearing. He wondered if that was a possible explanation for the diamonds being in his bedroom. Could it be that, whoever had robbed the diamond exchange came to Etobicoke on their escape route, threw the diamonds into his bedroom, and then continued on their escape?

The only problems with that theory, from what Isaac could tell, was that his window was closed, and secured from the inside, and the diamonds had been placed carefully on his pile of laundry, which was on the other end of the room from the window. Isaac admitted to himself that it wasn't a perfect theory, but he was unable to think of anything more reasonable as he sat in his bedroom with his pile of now obviously contraband diamonds.

As Isaac thought about the diamonds, he thought that he saw another flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, this one to the left of him. He again swung his head about, again catching nothing as he did.

Taking a different approach, Isaac decided to relax his eyes as completely as he could, trying his hardest to not focus or look at anything in specific. It was only when he did this that Isaac was able to see the figure standing in front of his closet door. It was a man, robed entirely in swaths of black fabric, an identical black mask covering his face. Only one small slit across the fabric revealed the skin, and eyes, of the man inside. Isaac gasped as he realized that there was a ninja in his bedroom.

Turning to face the ninja, Isaac was amazed to see that he completely disappeared again. Turning around in an almost comedic fashion, Isaac realized that the ninja no longer appeared.

"Uhm, hello?" Isaac said in a tone that was equally exasperated and confused. "Mr., uh, Ninja? Where did you go? I have some questions for you." Hearing himself say those words, Isaac couldn't help but question his own sanity, a questioning that ended only when he felt a tapping on his shoulder.

Isaac spun around, and was face to face with the ninja, their gaze locked into each other's eyes. "How did you do that?" Isaac asked nervously, which caused the ninja to change the expression in his eyes to one of smug satisfaction. "Okay, well, that's not really important, anyways. Where did these diamonds come from?"

The ninja's brow furrowed somewhat, as if to suggest that Isaac already knew exactly where the diamonds had come from. "Did you rob the diamond exchange last night?" Isaac asked, more pointedly this time. To this the ninja replied, slowly and determinedly nodding his head a single time. "Okay, good to know I can at least get some kind of response out of you," Isaac said. He carefully considered his next question. "Why did you steal the diamonds?" he asked, hoping that this would be the type of question that the ninja would be able to answer through charades, even if he couldn't talk.

Instead, however, the ninja merely pointed at Isaac. "Me?" the young man asked, shocked. "Are you trying to say that I made you do this?" The ninja again nodded to show his agreement. "What makes you think that I told you to do this?" The ninja, in response, eyed Isaac in a sarcastic, knowing sort of way. "Another thing," Isaac said, his brain starting to catch up with the situation at hand, "where the hell did you come from? You don't often see many ninjas in the suburbs, you know."

The ninja took half a step forward, tapping Isaac on the forehead as he did. He followed this with another tap, this time on Isaac's chest cavity. As he did this, the ninja started to shimmer somewhat, in an effect similar to what you would see from an old science fiction movie.

"Wait, what's happening to you?" Isaac asked as he saw the ninja start to fade from view. Within a minute he was gone completely, and Isaac was left alone in his bedroom, still clutching onto the bag full of diamonds.

Isaac thought about the ninja's last actions, tapping him on the head and the heart. What did that even mean? He thought back to all of the literature he'd read, the heart usually symbolized emotion, while the head was ... rational thought? Cognition? Was the ninja trying to tell him something about how he should try to balance his emotional life and his rational thinking processes? While that was no doubt as true a statement as it was a trite one, he failed to see how that really applied to the situation in front of him.

Isaac decided to keep that conundrum running in the back of his head as he dealt with the more urgent situation of what to do with the diamonds. He needed a place that was both secure, yet nondescript, to ensure that they wouldn't be stolen from him, and yet a t the same time he wouldn't have to answer any unwelcome questions about them either. It was as he was walking back and forth through his bedroom, looking for this mythical hiding place, that Isaac tripped on the trap door in the middle of his bedroom.

This shocked Isaac, for the simple reason that he had lived in this same bedroom for all of his life; he knew all of its nooks and crannies, and he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he did not have a trap door in the floor of his bedroom. And yet, there it was, a small, hinged doorway, leading into a small, cozy little burrow that appeared to be completely safe and secure. Looking at the lid of it, as well, Isaac noticed that the surface of it blended in perfectly with the grain of the wood used in the floorboards. It appeared to be the perfect hiding spot, and it sat there, inviting Isaac to use it as a hiding place for his purloined goods.

As Isaac placed the diamonds inside, securely closing the door after doing so, he came to a realization about what the ninja had 'said' to him before disappearing. He had desperately wanted money, and then this morning, a bag full of diamonds had shown up in his bedroom and then, while he was manically searching for a hiding spot, the trap door appeared. As crazy as it sounded, it appeared as though whatever he desired strong enough was coming to pass in front of him!

Synthesis Part 6

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 03:29:15 GMT

Before the ship had even stopped moving, the pirates were already in motion, rappelling down from the sides of the ship and splashing down into the shallow waters of Lake Ontario. As soon as they did, they were in motion, running onto the beach and towards the crowd gathered at the beach.

As the pirates started to attack the crowd, Isaac's first thought was that this had to be some sort of promotion, probably by one of the liquor companies, or something like that. He admitted that, whoever it was, they had done an amazing job: the pirate costumes looked incredibly real, their cutlasses and muskets looking perfectly aged and distressed.

The rationale of this explanation fell apart moments later, as the 'pirate' nearest to Isaac pushed a woman to the ground, kneeling on top of her and pulling out his blade. Whatever the explanation for this occurrence was, it was definitely something that was happening for real.

Acting on pure instinct, Isaac ran forward, pitching all of his momentum into his upper body and tackling the pirate in front of him. The pirate was immediately bowled over, and Isaac went with him, turning head over heels in the air and landing squarely on his back.

Standing back up, Isaac stood motionless on the beach, absolutely transfixed on the scene that was unfolding before him. The rational part of his mind told him that what he was seeing was impossible; that there was no conceivable way that a galleon full of pirates would be able to make their way to Toronto, purely on a logistical level if nothing else. And yet, at the same time, there they were, descending on the group of hapless civilians in order to pillage them.

Isaac had absolutely no idea what to do about the situation. Part of him thought to call the police; but really, the other part of his mind reasoned, was this the type of situation that they would be at all able to deal with? He rather imagined not.

As Isaac considered what to do next, the situation became much more immediate as he heard his name called out. Turning, Isaac saw Genevieve, slung over the back of one of the pirates, as he started to walk up the wooden plank that had been dropped to give the pirates easier access in and out of their ship.

Without thinking any further, Isaac broke out into a run, charging in the direction of the pirate who had Gen. Luckily for him, the other pirates between the two of the ignored him; they were obviously too busy looting and pillaging to notice his charge.

Isaac followed the pirate up the gangplank, stopping suddenly once he was inside the ship. It was then that he realized that he was operating purely on instinct, and had absolutely no idea what he was going to do next.

This fact was made all the more pertinent by the fact that the pirate that he had followed had obviously become aware of his existence, because he was standing in front of Isaac, Gen still slung over his shoulder. Menace seemed to exude from his every pore, and his eyes drilled into the back of Isaac's head.

"Listen, you," Isaac said boldly, sticking a defiant finger out at the pirate, "you put her down right this second!"

Without hesitation, and without breaking eye contact with Isaac, the pirate did as he was asked, flinging Gen off of his shoulder and dumping her into the corner. His smug grin dared Isaac to question his actions.

Isaac, who found himself again acting purely on instinct, swung his fist at the pirate's face, connecting with the man's jaw and creating a loud cracking sound. The pirate, however, did not seem to react to this at all, and continued to stare at Isaac with murderous intent.

"Gen, get out of here," Isaac yelled at his friend as she pulled herself out of the corner were she had been unceremoniously dumped.

"Okay, but you have to come with me, too," Gen replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Yeah, no worries - I'll be right behind you," Isaac replied, picking up a table leg that randomly lay on the ground in front of him.

Gen did as was asked, and dutifully ran out of the ship as quickly as she could. Isaac hurled the table leg at the pirate's head, hitting him squarely on the forehead and momentarily dazing him. In the free moment, Isaac turned and followed Gen, running back onto the beach.

The scene that they ran to was utter chaos. Pirates stalked everywhere, clutching at handbags and jewelry, and people did their best to try to escape them, although they were no doubt mesmerized by the random nature of the scene that was unfolding before them.

Isaac and Gen both breathed a sigh of relief as they saw the police arrive. Although Isaac still had his doubts about how effective those officers would be, their presence there at least brought a slight amount of reality into this surreal situation.

As if on cue, the pirates watched the police officers as they began to set up a perimeter around the beach, and then they began to leave themselves.

As quickly as they had arrived, the pirates returned to their ship, which hauled up its anchor and began to speed away from the beach, the unseasonably strong winds suddenly changing direction and assisting their escape.

"What the hell was that?" Isaac asked, exasperated. Before he had an opportunity to say anything else, however, Gen's arms were around him, embracing him tightly. "Whoa!" he said nervously, trying to pull away from her. "What' this all about?"

"You saved me!" she yelled out, breaking the embrace and taking a step backwards as she did. "That was the most amazing, selfless thing that anyone's ever done for me!"

"Well, of course I did," Isaac replied nonchalantly. "We are friends after all, right? It was the least I could do."

"No, the least you could do would be significantly less than running onto a pirate ship and saving me from some weirdo pirate," Gen said in a sarcastic tone. "Wow, I can't believe that just happened to us! Talk about a rush!"

Isaac smiled as his friend as she jumped into the air from excitement. "Yeah, that was pretty crazy. I think, though, that between that and the monkeys, I've had a little bit too much craziness for one day. I think I really should get heading home."

"Aw, are you sure?" Gen asked, pouting slightly as she did. "I've got a total adrenaline rush going through me right now. We should totally go do something."

Isaac faked a yawn. "Seriously, I can't. I need to go home and sleep, for like, three days."

Gen pouted the entire way back to Union station, where the two friends parted ways. "Give me a call when you're feeling more up to having fun, okay, party pooper?" Gen said, playfully sticking her tongue out at Isaac as she did. His only response was the give her an equally-sarcastic mock salute as he boarded his subway train.

An hour later, as he arrived home, Isaac was surprised to find his mother sitting in the living room, in front of the television set. "Authorities still have no explanation or suspects in what is being called a massive hoax that was perpetrated on Toronto citizens earlier this evening," a TV news reporter droned on as amateur video of the pirate attack flashed across the screen. "The hoax, involving pirates, appears to have police baffled at this hour."

"Hey, that's awesome, I was at the beach when this happened!" Isaac said, his mother turning the TV off as she realized her son was home.

"Hey, why'd you do that?" Isaac asked her, "we should have seen if I was going to be on that video!" When his mother didn't respond, Isaac's critical thinking skills started to enforce themselves. "Hey, wait a minute, ma, what are you doing here, anyways? Aren't you supposed to be at work?"

"It's funny you should ask that," his mother said, putting the television remote control down on the couch beside her, "because we need to have a chat about that. Come on, have a seat."

Hesitantly, Isaac sat down on their old, tattered, beige couch, right next to his mother, and she turned to face him. "There's no easy way for me to say this, so I'm just going to say it," she explained, taking a deep breath as she did. "I got laid off from work today, son. They're shutting the plant down and moving it to South America."

"What?" Isaac said, instinctively jerking backwards as he said it. "What does that mean?"

"Well, for now at least, it means I'm out of a job, son, and my prospects don't look so great, to be honest with you."

"Can they even do that?" Isaac asked. "I mean, don't they realize that they're screwing around with people's lives by doing this?"

"Oh, I'm sure they know, but deep down inside they just don't care," Isaac's mother said dejectedly.

"We're going to be okay though, right?" Isaac asked defensively. "You've got to be able to find something else, will all of the experience that you have!"

"Yeah, I've got experience, but I don't have youth, or computer training, or a good back, so I don't know how good my chances really are."

"We have savings, though, right?"

"We have a little, but not nearly enough. Most of what we had was frittered away paying off your father's debts before he died."

"So what are we going to do, then?" Isaac asked, a sudden sense of fear working its way into his voice.

"Well, I know you're not going to like the sound of this, but I think you might have to think about taking a break from school, and get yourself a real job," his mother said authoritatively.

"A real ... ma, I can't do that. I already took one break from school; if I end up taking another one, who knows if I'll ever end up finishing my degree!"

"I'm not saying it's an ideal situation," Isaac's mother started to explain, "but at the same time, son, we have to be sensible about this. Until we know what the future's got in store for us, we need to try to cut back on non-essential things."

"Oh, and that's of course the first thing you go to?" Isaac replied, his voice suddenly becoming angry and defensive.

"It's not like that, Isaac," she tried to explain, "but we need to make some hard choices. I'm only trying to do what's best for both of us."

Isaac took a deep breath, obviously trying to calm himself down. "Listen," he finally said, "I have had one really messed up day today. I really can't process this kind of argument, so why don't we just both take a breather, go get some sleep, and then tomorrow we can worry about what we're going to do, okay?"