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Alf and Jackie were still waiting. Ten minutes earlier, Apex had
vanished in a puff of smoke leaving behind him a fully stocked bar where
the door had been. On it had been a note by the ice bucket which said
"Please wait. I'll b back shortly." All the monitors in the computer lab
where they were trapped also echoed this message.
Since then Alf had diligently tried all the keyboards in the room to see
if any of them did anything except take up desk space, while Jackie had
disconsolately watched him from her perch on one of the barstools. She
clutched in her hand an inexpertly made Tequila Sunrise. You could tell
because the grenadine had all gone down the side and pooled at the
bottom of the glass.
Alf tapped some obscene message on the last of the unresponsive
keyboards and kicked the processor cabinet beside it when there was no
answer. It's screen said "OW!" for a moment then went back to "Please
wait...". Alf turned away from this show of electronic defiance in
despair.
"Sod it! I give up!" He threw his hands in the air and stormed towards
the bar where the grabbed the nearest bottle. After a couple of frenzied
gulps he spat grenadine all over the polished brass surface and reached
for something a little stronger.
When he'd taken a good swig of the whisky and his coughing fit had
subsided, he noticed Jackie's resentful look. "Look, don't blame me if
we've been imprisoned in a deserted computer room with a bunch of pain
sensitive terminals! I only seem to be using this body part time at the
moment so I can hardly be held responsible for what it gets up to in its
spare time."
"Alf, I don't blame you. But we need to talk and I resent the way that
you spend your time kicking computers and getting drunk instead." She
took hold of his arm and looked intently at his face. For a moment he
returned her gaze, then turned away roughly and pulled his arm from her
grasp. He tried not to look her in the eye.
"Jackie, I know ... no, I don't know. That's the whole problem isn't it?
I hardly know you, yet you've spent three weeks with me. But of course,
it can't have been me since I don't remember any of it."
Alf turned back to her and took hold of her hands. He looked into her
eyes and tried to put on as honest a face as he could. Of course, the
whisky fumes on his breath didn't help to inspire Jackie's confidence
but no matter. "Jackie, I could really get to like you a lot, maybe even
love you. But I don't think I can stay with you until I know if it'll be
me or not. I just can't timeshare my body."
"But Alf ... where does that leave me? God help me, but I think I'm
falling in love with you!"
"Jackie, don't you see? You can't love me! You love somebody else,
whoever it is who runs my body while I'm blacked out! Shhh!" Alf quieted
Jackie, who had been about to answer. "We're being watched."
"How do you know?"
"I just know. I get this tingling all over my back, like pins and
needles, whenever I'm being watched. Ever since I was fifteen, when that
Uri Geller bloke was on the telly. I was really into all that spoon
bending and stuff. I mean, I never got it to work but I always had a go
at it. Anyway, once I was following Geller's instructions on the telly,
'clearing my mind to let the unconscious energies flow'. So I closed my
eyes to help empty my mind and I got this tingling up my back. I thought
'Yeah! It's really worked!' and so I looked at the spoon in my hands.
Straight as a die of course, but my sister was standing there grinning.
"Anyway, since then I've refined my little talent to the point where I
can usually tell where I'm being watched from. Which is the odd thing
now. I can't tell where - not even the vaguest notion."
"Have you any idea where this tingling comes from?"
"Not really. I'd always assumed it was mind power, since I seemed to
have picked it up from Geller. But now I'm not so sure - could it be
magic like Apex uses?"
"Indeed Mr du Plex, it is magic." Alf shivered as the voice penetrated
his brain - he hadn't heard that curiously resonant timbre since that
day on the train from Liverpool. He looked up and it was indeed Apex.
But not the Apex who had disappeared so rudely a few minutes earlier.
Gone was the battered suit and in its place was a flowing midnight blue
robe. A pointed hat of the same colour clung to the top of his head.
Strange sigils embroidered in golden thread seemed to pulse and throb
with barely restrained power. The magician continued.
"You may not have realised it, but your talent of eternal watchfulness
is merely a minor manifestation of a vast untapped reserve of magical
power which you possess. It was by sheer fluke that the charlatan
Geller's false methods opened a subconscious channel to that reserve
thereby initiating the career of a potentially very powerful sorceror."
Slowly what the magician had actually said sank in. "You mean", began
Alf slowly, "that with the proper tuition I could harness power which
until a few minutes ago I didn't even know existed?"
"And not only that, but you have the ability to become one of the most
powerful magicians thw world will ever see."
"I'm sorry, I just don't believe it. Not only can I not accept that I
have this power, however unharnessed, but I am highly unsure of your
motives for telling me about it."
"Your immediate acceptance of the idea that you possess such a vast
reservoir of untapped energies was not something I expected. On a
subconscious level, you know I am right since you have been utilising a
very small part of them for some time. Your conscious mind will, I can
see, take a little while to take it on board.
"As to my motives, it is true that they were not entirely altruistic
from your point of view. Frankly, the delivery of such awesome power
into the hands of such an undisciplined spirit fills me with something
approaching dread. But I have higher concerns, namely the fate of the
entire world."
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