Strangers

Ginger said, returning to the table, leaning on her empty chair. "Pyrokinesis. The ability to spontaneously generate heat or fire with the power of the mind alone."
        "This wasn't fire," Dom said. "It was light."
        "So… call it 'photokinesis,' " Ginger said. "But I think when you and Brendan met, you subconsciously recognized the power in each other. On a deep level, you were both reminded of what happened to you that July night, the thing you've been forced to forget. And both of you wanted to blast those memories into view. So unwittingly you generated that weird light, which was a re-creation of the way the moon changed from white to red on the night of July 6. It was your subconscious trying to jolt the memory through the block."
        Ginger could see that their minds were spinning with all these odd ideas, and she wanted to keep them unsettled a while longer, because when they were unsettled they were more likely to absorb what she was saying. Given time for quiet reflection, the heavy armor of skepticism would fall back into place, and her ideas would bounce off.
        Ernie Block shook his head. "Wait a minute. You're losing me now. You started all this by suggesting that what turned the moon red was a scarlet cloud of some biological contaminant. Then you jumped way the hell to one side and started talking about how the thing that happened to us was responsible for Dom and Brendan developing these supposed powers. Where's the connection? What does biological contamination have to do with all this psychic stuff, anyway?"
        Ginger took a deep breath because they had come to the core of her theory, the wildest part of it. "What if… what if we were contaminated by some virus or bacterium that, as a side-effect, causes profound chemical or genetic or hormonal changes in its host, changes in the host's brain? And what if those changes leave the host with something very like psychic powers, even once the infection is gone?"
        They stared at her with a variety of expressions, though not as if they thought her mad, and not as if she was too imaginative for her own good. Rather, they seemed impressed by the complex chain of logic which she had forged and by the inevitability of the final link.
        "Good God," Dom said, "I doubt that it's the right answer, but it's sure the prettiest, most neatly constructed theory I ever expect to hear. What a concept for a novel! A genetically engineered virus that, as a surprise side-effect, causes a sort of forced evolution of the human brain, resulting in psychic powers. For the first time in weeks, I have a terrific urge to rush to a typewriter. Ginger, if we get out of this alive, I'll have to give you a piece of the royalties on the book that's sure to grow out of that idea."
        Gently rocking her slumbering daughter, Jorja Monatella said, "But why couldn't it be the right answer? Why does it just have to be a terrific concept for a novel?"
        "For one thing," Jack Twist said, "if it were true, if we'd been contaminated with a virus like that, we'd all have developed psychic powers. Right?"
        "Well," Ginger said, "maybe we weren't all contaminated. Or maybe we were contaminated, but the virus didn't get a foothold in all of us."
        Faye said, "Or maybe this special side-effect isn't manifested in everyone who's infected by the bug."
        "Good thought," Ginger said. She began to pace again: this time, not because she was nervous but because she was excited.
        Ned Sarver pushed one hand through his receding hair and said, "Are you saying the Army knew about this side-effect of the virus, knew that it might cause these changes in some of us?"
        "I don't know," Ginger said. "Maybe they knew. Maybe not."
        "I think not," Ernie said. "Definitely not. From what you found in the Sentinel, we know they closed the interstate shortly before the 'accident' happened, which means it was no accident. So… first of all, I find it hard to believe our own military would intentionally subject us to contamination with a biological-warfare microorganism in a hare-brained scheme to test its effectiveness in the field. But even if such an atrocity were possible, they wouldn't expose us to a virus that could transform us in the way Ginger has suggested. Because, my friends, people with strong psychic powers would be a new species, a superior breed of humanity. Formidable psychic power would translate directly