Dreams Unleashed (26 page)

"I'd like to take a million dollars, hire an attorney, and sue the crap outta that city, just for her right to keep some hens for fresh eggs."

"Her neighbor just turned her in to the county, because they found a noxious weed on her farm. Now the noxious weed person from the county is harassing her, saying that his team will come onto her farm and spray her farm with pesticides to kill the weeds and then charge her for it. All of that, even though her farm is certified organic by the state. So my friend got out her shovel and dug up those weeds, and now the county tells her that she'll remain on their list forever, and that they'll be coming to her farm every year to inspect whether the weed is eradicated."

"That's insanity," Paul exclaimed.

"It is. What's incredibly ironic is that her county is millions short in their budget, and yet that noxious weed person has a full time job---harassing people like her. That job should be eliminated."

"That's exactly what I'm talking about. The harassment of individual citizens is an epidemic. Did you know there could be neighbors, right now in this neighborhood, who could be listening to our conversation by having the right equipment they bought off the web? I consider it my constitutional right to have my privacy, and yet we're losing it."

"Peekers."

"Yes, peekers. So you know about them?" he asked.

"I do."

"Mmm, that's interesting. You're an interesting woman, Ann."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"You should. Since we're both done picking over our dinner, do you want to sit on the couch?" he asked.

"Sure."

"So are you allowed to tell me about your work for the CIA?" he asked as we sat down facing one another.

"I can talk about some of it here, but not any specifics."

"Hmmm, okay."

"Remember the dream I told you about before I went to the conference in D.C.?"

"Yeah. You were freaked out about it, with the quartz showing up. I've thought a lot about it since then."

"You have?"

"Yeah; it was bizarre."

"Well, now I think I understand why it unnerved me."

He nodded, begging for more.

"When I was in D.C., I met with my old CIA boss."

"Tryin' to get your old job back?"

"Very funny, but no. I was trying to understand why the government sent men to my friends in D.C., asking why I was recently in Shanghai."

"You went to China? When?"

"That's the thing. I've never been to China."

"Then why did they think you had? And which part of the government was asking?"

"They were government
contractors
, hired by a certain agency, not the CIA. They thought I had been in China because I
dreamed
that I was in Shanghai."

I waited for his brain to catch up.

Silence.

He raised eyebrows...then recognition.

"No way. They saw you dreaming of Shanghai?"

"No, they saw me
in
Shanghai, as though I were actually there in real life."

Silence again.

He was a bit slow in wrapping his head around it.

"So you dreamed of being in Shanghai, and some government people, who presumably were spying on the same place in China, saw you. Then they started asking your friends why you were in China. The question is, what James Bond kind of technology allows them to see you as though you were there?"

"It's not technology; it's people. People who are trained to use the subconscious part of their brains to find out information, without actually being there."

"Holy cow. Is that what you used to do?"

"Yes."

"That's serious stuff. You're trained as a peeker without needing any technology."

"It doesn't exactly work like that, but I can't really explain it to you in detail. I would like to talk to you, though, about what's been happening since that dream."

"Okay."

At least he's open to listening to more, instead of running out of my house, screaming that I'm a spy
.

Looking at him intently, I said, "Warning...this is the scary part."

"Go ahead," he replied steadily.

"My training was like flexing a muscle that I didn't know I had. I strengthened my subconscious and made it into a power-muscle that allowed me to travel using my mind without bounds to gather information. I was very, very good at what I did for the Agency. I was the best they had, the entire six years that I worked for them."

I paused to ensure he was following. He nodded, so I continued.

"I flexed this muscle of my subconscious, and over all these years, I guess it's been getting more and more powerful. When I had the dream of being in Shanghai, my subconscious crossed over into reality. The last thing I dreamed that night was that there was an earthquake beginning, and when I awoke, there had been. That's why the Herkimer was there with me. In my conscious mind, I was really there. The government people saw me there. And I saw someone from that dream in my real life, here."

"Here in Bellingham?"

"Well, here in the Pacific Northwest. I saw him and talked with him. He was real, and he remembered being there in Shanghai with me."

"Is that guy in the program too?"

"I don't know."

"Hmmm."

"So you really were there---in Shanghai I mean."

"Yes, I was---but I traveled there through my dream."

"It's kinda like teleporting," he said, shaking his head.

I think he was starting to comprehend what I was explaining.

"I also learned something from my old CIA boss that I never knew before."

"What's that?"

"My first live target for the Agency was the same physical location that I went to in my dream. But the thing is, I never knew until he told me in D.C. this week that those coordinates were that physical location. You see, at that time I only had latitude and longitude, so I didn't know where the target was," I rushed to explain.

"That's heavy stuff, Ann."

"I know."

"Just to clarify...whatever you dream, you can manifest in reality?"

"Not always---I don't think."

"Can you control it?"

"No. I didn't even know that those coordinates from twenty-five years ago were the coordinates for the very location that I dreamed in Shanghai." I paused. "I might have killed all those people in Shanghai, Paul," I confessed, looking into his eyes.

"No you didn't," he firmly responded, reaching out to grip my shoulder.

"I dreamed of the earthquake, but I might have actually created it," I insisted, sharing my anxiety.

"You didn't, Ann. The CIA killed those people, by opening your subconscious and removing the natural barrier in your mind. They are responsible, not you. You can't put this on yourself. You would never do that," he argued, forcing me to look at him.

I looked back at him silently.

"Is the government still poking around your friends?" he asked me.

"No. My old CIA boss put a stop to that."

"He's still there, after twenty-five years?"

"No, he's retired. Well, I guess no one ever retires from the CIA after being there so long. But he was able to convince the people who were asking the questions that they had made a mistake and that I was never there."

"Well, at least that's good news."

"It's the only piece of good news. There is one other thing I really should tell you."

"What's that?" he asked with concern.

"Every single person who did what I did for the CIA is dead."

"Dead, as in killed, murdered?" he asked, stress in his voice.

"No, natural causes, all of them."

"Natural causes? What do you mean?" he asked suspiciously.

"The work we did caused psychosis in my closest friend from the project, and then he died of a heart attack a few months later. Others died of early heart attacks without having any genetic history, and some others died of unusual cancers. I'm the only original team member alive."

"But your old boss...he's alive," Paul countered.

"He ran the program, but he never...well...participated...in what we were doing."

Paul's face took on a pained cast.

"I don't think I'm in danger," I responded to his worried look.

"Why?" he asked, wanting me to prove it.

"None of the others who died had the natural paranormal gifts that I do. They were all
trained
for the technique. But I already had it."

"What do you mean?" he asked again.

His arm rested on the back of the sofa protectively, caressing my shoulder.

"Are you familiar with astral projection?"

"Like Shirley MacLaine?" he asked with his eyebrow screwed upward.

I laughed out loud.

"What?" he asked, unable to keep a straight face.

I laughed until I was doubling over on the couch, unable to let the humor of it fall away. It brought me back to John O'Brien, and how it cracked him up when I had said it all those years ago.

"What?" he said, clearly enjoying watching me.

I started to calm myself. "Nothing. But that was just
too
funny. Never mind. Yes, like Shirley MacLaine."

He gave me a look that said,
I don't like not getting the joke
.

I thought that was funny too---perhaps my laughter was a release of all my emotion.

I continued.

"Okay---astral projection. Since I was a young girl, I could leave my body at will. I had no idea that it was paranormal then."

He nodded.

"Also, when I was twelve years old, I had a near-death experience, brought on by an accident I had. My family was visiting friends, and their children and my sisters and I were all playing on their frozen pond, pretending to be famous ice skaters. Our friends pulled out their three-wheeled ATV, driving it over the ice. I decided to grab the handlebar on the back, and as the driver accelerated, my hand slipped off, and I flipped backward, hitting the back of my head hard on the ice. It knocked me out cold."

I looked at Paul, who nodded for me to go on.

"My spirit left my body, and I could see my body below, lying on the ice. I saw the kids move my body to the grass on the pond's edge. I fell into a coma and woke up three days later in the hospital. While I was out of my body, both at the pond and at the hospital, I had experiences that I remember."

His eyebrows went up at that. "What do you remember?"

"I was my soul, my energy, and I was separate from my physical body. That means that our bodies are not really
us
. Without the constraints of my physical body, I was able to float, as my spirit, watching and observing others. I heard what others thought. As my body was in the hospital bed, I floated around my room, listening to the people who were there, or I'd go into the halls and watch and listen to people as they passed by."

"Oh man. That's incredible. What did you say when you woke up from the coma?"

"Well, it was very difficult to explain. I was only twelve years old. Basically, no one believed me. My mother thought I was brain damaged. So I kept my secret. From that moment on, I knew that I didn't have to be constrained by my body."

"That must have been difficult, having no one believe you."

"It was."

"Was anything different when you recovered?"

"My dreaming became even more vivid. I mean, since I was a little girl I've had remarkable dreams, but after the accident, I noticed that bits of my dreams would sometimes come true."

Paul was nodding, and I could see he was processing everything I was telling him.

"Perhaps because I've been dealing with the paranormal for most of my life, I am able to manage that doorway between the unconscious to conscious mind. Maybe that's why I'm alive."

"Maybe," he seemed to agree.

"My friends that I worked with all those years...maybe their minds couldn't handle that open doorway..."

"So you're the only person alive who can handle this kind of swinging doorway between the conscious and subconscious?"

"Well, from the original program, yes."

"So if you're the best at the technique, why has the government allowed you to walk free?"

"What could they gain by taking me?"

He paused, looking into my eyes. "A weapon," he replied solemnly.

Chapter 24

BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON