Unforeseen Dives – 3 – Dives

<< 2 – Colleagues

Navigating in the Ocean is never a breeze. If I don’t dissolve, I won’t find a thing. On the other hand, who likes to be torn apart by foreign feelings? Achieving the perfect balance is a tricky art. Like most of my colleagues, I’d yet to find it. Unlike most of them, I swam the “torn apart” waters rather than the comfort zone provided by a chair on high filtering settings. For them, catching this wave would have been luck. In my case, it was thoroughness.
Amidst the daily dramas and fuzzy feelings that awaited New Yorkers for tomorrow, I tasted bitterness. I sorted the emotions to find the source. It was faint but unmistakably a mix of hatred and fear. I beamed it to Rebecca with a few words: “Open a case file.” Then, I latched to the feeling and waited for my green light.
Though being under completely cut me off from my office’s reality, I knew Becky had started to type in a report. So says protocol. That’s why we are a team. I can fully concentrate on skimming the Ocean, filtering the noise and netting the problems. I do not have to articulate my findings. My telepathic partner fishes the conclusions right out of my brain and streams them to the boss. It makes the prediction process more effective. Rebecca is also responsible for my safety during dives, pulling me in and out smoothly, and grounding me so I won’t drown in the feelings.
I felt her strong presence in my core, pulsing three times. I was secured and free to plunge. After a pause, like taking a deep breath before snorkelling, I cut out my personal mood and immersed myself in the emotions potentially leading to a criminal outbreak. I existed no more outside the spirits drifting in the Ocean. 

The brainwaves over New York are not easy to push through. The inhabitants are stressed and often have adrenaline spikes outside of life-threatening situations. It distracts our readings.
We rely a lot on the adrenaline current to lead our searches. May be we shouldn’t but whatever the crime, it always stresses someone enough to coat all the feelings in a  crimson shade. It makes the whole thing easier to spot.
The thread I investigated was strangely lacking in that department. Either I would get at the bottom of really intense lovers spat or… or it really didn’t bode well. Psychopaths types go through ordeals without even a hint of panic. Normal people don’t.
A twinge of fear floated out of me. Scouting the future of extreme mental patients had crippled one too many psychics. In these situations, a good partner is crucial. One year ago, an agent went postal after a dive to follow a serial killer. His partner hadn’t been able to keep the psychic’s mind whole. The agent had stabbed the telepath with a letter opener and wounded three colleagues before four guys subdued him. A scar on my left arm would remind me of that day forever.
Now isolated in a mental hospital, he waited for the murderer’s tint to rescind. Hopefully, he will eventually revert back to his former mind. Not that he would ever dip in the Ocean again but at least he might return to his wife and kids. Not that it would erase the new “going psychic” trend.

“I trust myself. I trust my partner. I can do this,” I thought.
“You bet your skinny bum, you can,” my tether echoed with a slight British accent she ripped right off our boss.
My tension eased and I forced myself forward into the cluster of feelings.

My height frustrated me. I hated women in heels. They looked down on me. My hatred resonated on the concrete with my every step, glowered at the world around. Once seated in my car, I loosened my tie.
“Man, 30 up,” I broadcasted. Rebecca amended it in something official-sounding like: “The suspect is a male over 30 years-old”. I didn’t have time to think about it. It did not even cross my mind to pull back and form a thought of my own. I was fully immersed.
I got rid of my stained clothes and slid in the shower. The water rippled over my muscles and took all my guilt with it. Relief washed over me as cleanliness conquered my skin.
Time flows on its own scrambled beat in the Ocean. It is up to the investigating psychic to piece it back together in a timeline – which can become incredibly taxing, by the way. This event was most likely after the infraction, whatever it may be. It was not what I needed. I needed a face and a crime.
I hovered over that piece of life, just in case I would cross a mirror on my way out of the shower. I did. And what a body I had! But my face remained obscure. I focused on my real self just long enough to grasp another part of my mystery man’s future.
Exactitude was key. A few drops of the wrong chemical, a stir a tad to quick and I was a goner. I went over the manoeuvres in my head. I was thinking in Arabic.
The Ocean froze around me. Bomb and Arab are words I never wanted to line up in a sentence. I have Arab friends and I supported them through the suspicions that plagued their lives after the last terrorist media circus. I wanted to break the stereotype. Now, my investigation forced me to fuel it. I relayed the information and grudgingly dived further to uncover more hints.
And then it hit me. 

There was no mistaking when this emotion wave would happen in the continuum. It was so intense, I wished I had picked up on that end of the thread before I embedded myself so far in this probable future. As it was, I was too deep. My heart skipped a beat and smashed to smithereens when the tidal wave of burnt bodies washed over me. A thousand brains scorched me with their pain. It came too fast for them to be scared, too strong for any to be spared. I was choked.
Tomorrow at lunch break, a religious hunk blows up Time Square.

4 – Reports >>