Pulse

Meredith—when Meredith moved with a kind of speed Faith had rarely seen before. She was sitting in the red chair, and in the blink of an eye she was missing. Before Faith could turn around searching for her, the chair flew up in the air, hovered over her head for a moment like it was deciding if it should fall on top of her or not, and then it, too, was gone. Faith found herself staring at an empty concrete wall and two folding chairs, one with the envelope sitting on top and one with the green apple.
    “Could you put the chair back where it was? Let’s start there.”
    Faith spun around and saw Meredith at the farthest end of the room. She was standing next to the red chair. “Don’t overthink it. Just put it back for me. I’d appreciate it.”
    Faith thought about the red chair flying across the room and ending up where it once was. The chair didn’t move. It sat there like it was bolted to the floor.
    “Wait, something’s not right. This usually works.”
    Faith focused her mind as hard as she could, scrunching her eyes to mere slits as she willed the red chair to move. When nothing happened, Faith became frustrated and turned away from Meredith just in time to see the green apple fly away. Faith heard the pop sound when Meredith caught it at the far end of the room.
    Meredith held out the green apple, letting it balance on the palm of her hand.
    “Let’s try this instead.”
    Faith didn’t bother turning around. She knew the apple had arrived in Meredith’s hand and hoped she could do something about it. She thought of the apple, her emotions tied up in knots, and then she felt the apple brush by her head and slam into the concrete wall, bursting into pieces.
    “Were you trying to do that, or was it an accident?” Meredith asked calmly.
    Faith felt like she was failing whatever test she was being given and used her mind to try the red chair again. This time she felt the sharp pain in her neck, which buckled her over. When she recovered, both Meredith and the red chair had returned.
    “It’s okay. Red is a common problem at the beginning. Nothing to worry about. Not yet anyway.”
    “So you’re like me,” Faith said, intrigued but also afraid. The woman before her was clearly a lot more advanced in her ability than Faith would probably ever be.
    Meredith ignored the question. “Science is a tricky business, especially when people are in a rush. Normally there are rules, regulations, a lot of red tape. A paper trail is an awfully nice thing to have when you can get one.”
    “I’m going to assume you’re telling me this for a reason.”
    “There was a moment in history,” Meredith went on, “when there was no time for regulations, documentation, anything that might slow progress. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
    “Dylan and I discussed it. He said I had some of my facts wrong. I asked which ones, but he wouldn’t say. Apparently it’s above his pay grade.”
    “I’m encouraged to see you still have your sense of humor,” Meredith said, though Faith was quite sure it wouldn’t make it through the rest of their conversation.
    “Hotspur Chance was given authority to do things no man should be allowed to do. So begin there—no rules—and imagine what might happen. Then you must always remember that Chance was not an ordinary man. He was one in a trillion, by all accounts the smartest person who had ever lived. The reason this is important is because it makes him—and his motives—unknowable. Even if you doubled the IQ of the smartest people on Earth, they would be halfwits compared to Hotspur Chance. And when you get into that kind of thinking, one has to imagine a certain godlike quality.”
    “You mean he had a god complex?” Faith knew what this was from one of her many classes, though she couldn’t say for sure exactly how she’d come by the information.
    “No,” Meredith said. “I mean he is, in a sense, like a god to us whether we like it or not. He understood the universe, our world, our bodies, our minds—all in ways that go far beyond what we know of ourselves. It might have a way of compromising one’s morals.”
    Faith felt like Meredith was dancing around all sorts of things she didn’t really want to say or wanted Faith to figure out on her own. It was maddening how she wouldn’t just say what she meant. Either way, Faith wasn’t getting the information she wanted and decided to play along.
    “Everyone worships the ground Hotspur